Chapter Text
“You two do know you have to fight to the death to determine who gets to stay here, right?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Miu. There’s no need for bloodshed. What they need to do is settle this over a game of ping-pong.”
“Nah, you gotta make it fair! Shuichi’s awful at ping-pong, believe me.”
Here at the Hope’s Peak Fruits Basket, members often had the opportunity to partake in such enlightening conversations as the one Miu, Nekomaru, and Kaito were engaging in. This club was a place of education, after all, so it was only natural its members would commonly have civilized intellectually stimulating debates regarding which Ultimate Detective was permitted to stay in the club. Obviously.
From her seat by Taka’s side, Kyoko Kirigiri of class 78-A shot Tenko an inquisitive look. “I take it there isn’t actually a rule preventing two students who share a title from attending these meetings.”
“Of course not! The Fruits Basket is open to all, talent or no talent, even if someone isn’t actually a Hope’s Peak student. We welcome everyone!” Tenko said.
“Maybe we shouldn’t, though? I mean, just think of how bad poor Shuichi must feel having to share a space with a detective who outshines him in every way. Are we really going to subject him to that?” Junko asked.
“Hey! Shuichi’s a great detective, not that you’d know!” Kaede barked back.
“Damn, a great detective who needs his girlfriend to come to his defense, huh?”
“I see Junko likes to cause trouble here as well. A small part of me was hoping she’d be better behaved.” Kyoko sighed and shook her head. “Oh well. I guess proper introductions are in order. My name is Kyoko Kirigiri, one of the two Ultimate Detectives alongside Shuichi here. Essentially my entire class is part of this club, so I wanted to investigate for myself.”
Tenko clapped her hands and grinned. “We’re glad to have you, Kirigiri-san!Now then, everyone, welcome to this week’s meeting of the Hope’s Peak Fruits Basket! We’ve got another exciting subject to discuss today, but first…” Tenko whipped her head around back to Junko with a look of disapproval. “Enoshima-san! I thought I asked you to keep Kotoko-chan home today because the meeting wouldn’t be appropriate for a girl her age!”
Junko raised her hands in defense. “Hey, I don’t control her.”
“I know a lot more than you think I do, for your information.” Kotoko scoffed, rolling her eyes. “I’m not some dumb little kid.”
“Of course you aren’t! But I wouldn’t want us to make you feel unsafe or anything like that, especially with how inconsiderate some of our club members can be.” Tenko eyed Teruteru and Miu in particular, who both stared back at her innocently.
“Hah! As if any of you could ever make me feel unsafe. I’m the most secure girl in the world with my big sisters by my side,” Kotoko said proudly. “Talk about whateeever you want.”
“Yes, please do. I must admit, I’m quite curious to know what subject you have in mind for us today,” Korekiyo said.
Kokichi snickered behind his hand. “As if we couldn’t guess.”
“Right then!” Tenko stood tall, hands on her hips, and cleared her throat. “We have a very important topic of discussion today, so I’d like to remind everyone to take this seriously! Today, the Hope’s Peak Fruits Basket will be discussing… sex!”
“Oof, I don’t know if I want to do that with my brother in the room,” Komaru said, looking at the boy in question and cringing.
He looked back at her with an equal amount of comfort. “And I’m not sure I want to do that with my sister in the room. How about whatever we say here stays here?”
“Deal.”
“Sheesh, girl, you couldn’t have waited a few weeks?” Mondo asked. “You get your v-card punched and immediately make that the Fruits Basket topic?”
“Hey now, she’s excited. Let her be,” Sayaka said. “A lot of girls have sex once and tell all their friends about it as soon as they can.”
“Nyeh… a-actually, it was six times.”
“Six times?!” Hiyoko echoed in surprise. “Not all at once, right? I know some girls can go all day, but damn!”
“No no no, not all at once! We were alone at Himiko’s house for a whole weekend, you know!” Tenko said. To her surprise, she… actually wasn’t very embarrassed right now? She figured she’d be absolutely mortified—talking about sex? With Himiko? In front of people???—but she felt surprisingly normal at the moment.
“Six times is nothing, anyway. The first time Miki and I had sex? Hoo boy. We—”
“W-W-Wait, I didn’t consent to talking about that!” Mikan shrieked, holding on to Junko’s sleeve for dear life. “It’s t-too embarrassing…!”
“Oh yeah! We’re going to be talking about our personal experiences today, but if that involves your partner, please make sure they’re comfortable sharing that with other people. No one wants their most intimate moments shared without their permission,” Tenko said.
Kaito nodded in understanding, then lightly nudging Maki in the arm. “Hey, Maki Roll. Should we—”
“Absolutely not.”
After the couples of the Fruits Basket took a moment to deliberate among themselves, the meeting could begin in earnest.
“Alright, going to be totally normal about this. Tenko, Himiko, how’d it go?” Aoi asked curiously.
“It was fun,” Himiko said, still not completely able to look anyone in the eyes as she spoke. “Scary, but fun, like… a rollercoaster.”
“Fun? Is that all?” Teruteru was practically bouncing in his seat. “Come on, give us the juicy details! We’re all dying to know.”
Tenko shot him a death glare, and that was enough to get him to back down. “Ugh. We’ll keep the specifics to ourselves, but it was an interesting experience. I was so sure I’d be bad at it!”
“Were you?” Angie asked.
“At first, yeah, but I followed some advice some friends gave me and just talked my way through it, and that’s when it got really good!”
Chiaki smiled. “Aw, that’s so sweet. What about you, Himiko?”
“Um. I just kind of did what felt natural to me. I didn’t read any tutorials or get advice from people, but I think I did a pretty good job.”
Miu raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean ‘did a good job’? It’s not like you have to do much. Just lie back and let Tenko do her thing like a good pillow princess and bam, you’re done.”
“What the heck is a pillow princess?” Himiko asked, scrunching up her face. “And for your information, I did stuff, too! Stuff like—ah… nyeh… n-never mind.” She pulled the brim of her hat down over her face, though it did little to hide how red she’d become. Tenko couldn’t help but smile at the sight. It was so cute that she was more embarrassed than Tenko was.
“Come on, Miu, you shouldn’t assume the role someone likes to take during sex based on vibes alone,” Kaede said, her tone like a scolding mother. “Just look at Mondo and Taka! No one can tell who does what with those two.”
Taka promptly cleared his throat and adjusted his collar, a single bead of sweat rolling down his forehead. “Nor will we be disclosing that information! The intimate physical relationship Bro and I share is private, and we would like to keep it that way, thank you very much.”
“Catcher, pitcher,” Junko called, pointing to Mondo and Taka respectively. “Back to the blondies, though, you two are a good example. It’s can be hard to tell who does what at first glance. Then again, it’s easy once someone actually gets to know either of you.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, it’s kind of obvious that Miu is like, extremely subby, isn’t it?” Komaru asked. “Despite all her big talk.”
“That’s only a single example. You need more than that to build a solid case,” Kyoko explained. “Otherwise it’s a fallacy. A person’s outward personality doesn’t necessarily reflect their behavior in the bedroom, nor does everyone conform to rigid roles.”
“I would hope we’re all mature enough to know that by now,” Mahiru said.
“Of course we are! That doesn’t make it any less fun to speculate, though.” Hiyoko smiled in that michievous way she always did. “And it’s always fun when someone ends up surprising you. That can say a lot about a person, right?”
“Hah! Don’t I know it!” Miu grinned and clapped a hand on Kaede’s shoulder. “You all probably think this gal’s some gentle vanilla angel, but—”
“Hey hey hey hey, keep the details to a minimum, please!” Kaede shrieked, burning bright red.
Miu rolled her eyes, annoyed, and scoffed. Clearly she wasn’t having any of this. “Oh, come on! What, you don’t want everyone to know how hot you are when it’s time to play, huh, Maestro?”
The mortification on Kaede’s face promptly drained, and in its place rose a calm, unassuming smile. Kaede slowly placed a hand on Miu’s thigh, and only then did Tenko sense the quiet fury boiling just beneath the surface.
“Miu, honey,” she began, her tone soft yet oh-so-threatening, “what did I tell you about calling me that in front of people?”
Just like that, every ounce of Miu’s bravado crumbled like a sandcastle destroyed in mere moments by a single wave. Fear and anticipation alike filled her eyes as she let out a small squeak.
“S-S-Sorry! It won’t happen again, I promise!”
Kaede must have believed her, because she patted her head before folding her hands in her lap. “I know it won’t. Good girl.”
The mood in the room was different after that, to say the least. It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, until the silence was disrupted by the sound of Junko just barely managing to hold back laughter.
“Maestro, huh? I like it. I prefer Mistress myself, but yours fits you like a glove,” she said as Mikan hid her face in shame. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, though. Why hide that part of yourself?”
“Yeah, I mean, it’s not like everyone doesn’t know about the sort of kinky BDSM shit you and Miu get up to,” Kokichi said with an absolutely inappropriate casuality and nonchalant shrug.
Tenko nearly got whiplash from the double take she did. “Uh, w-what?”
“Yeah! What, did you not know?” Ibuki asked. “C’mon, Miu wears her kinks on her sleeve and Kaede loves her all the same! You just gotta put two and two together.”
Tenko did not know, actually. In fact, she had no idea, but everything seemed to click into place as she stared at the women in question. It was one thing for Miu to be into the sort of depravity that was too much for polite conversation, but Kaede? Sweet, kind, normal Kaede? There was no way! She was the farthest thing from a degenerate there was!
Kaede huffed and crossed her arms, evidently dissatisfied with the attention Miu had brought her. “It isn’t that I’m embarrassed by it. That’s just a side of me I’d like to keep private. It isn’t anyone’s business what sort of things Miu and I do when we’re being intimate. I like it, she likes it, and that’s all that matters.”
Shuichi muttered. “I have to admit, even I’m pretty curious why,” He only raised his head when he realized everyone had heard him. “I mean, it’s not like you and I have ever talked about it, even though I know that you know that I know.”
“I… Ugh, fine. I guess I can explain, then.” Kaede sighed and crossed one leg over the other, slouching forward and resting her head in her hand. “For me, sex lets me sort of become a different person for a while, one that doesn’t care about the things I worry about every day. It’s an escape, really. That version of me is totally free in every definition of the word, and a lot more, ahem, hardcore. Getting to be her for a while helps me blow off steam and indulge in some of my more out there desires, but that isn’t a side of me I want people seeing or even thinking about, because I’m worried it’ll change the way everyone thinks of me. Regardless of what I like to do in the privacy of my own bedroom with a consenting Miu, I’m still just Kaede at the end of the day, you know?”
Kokichi nodded in sagely understanding. “Right, right. Kaede the Friendly Dominatrix. Go easy on little ol’ Shuichi when he eventually gets in on that, would you?”
Miu and Kaede alike glared daggers at the boy. “As if! Shuichi couldn’t handle half the shit my girl does to me!”
“Right here, you guys,” Shuichi mumbled under his breath.
“Well… if it’s any consolation, I agree with you! Sadist or not, you’re still our friend Akamatsu-san!” Tenko said with a hearty smile, even if she was still coming to terms with the fact that one of her closest friends got off on hurting her girlfriend. She’d heard before about how she and Miu weren’t exactly vanilla, but now her imagination was running wild.
… And getting the better of her. It was best to shove those thoughts out of her mind.
“It’s perfectly normal to want to keep your sex life private and even keep it away from your friends,” Kyoko said. “It’s not as if I go around telling people about my own escapades.”
“Escapades?” Sakura cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t mean to pry, but I never took you for someone who gets around.”
Kyoko merely shrugged. “I’ve had my share of flings here and there. You meet a lot of people in my line of work.”
Junko whistled, impressed. “Wow, Kyoko. Never pegged you for a slut.”
“I wouldn’t call myself that.”
“Neither would the rest of us! Don’t be rude, Enoshima-san!” Tenko huffed. She didn’t need Junko scaring off any new club members, even if someone like Kyoko was certainly used to her by now.
“Rude? What’s rude about calling someone a slut? It’s only an insult if you take it that way,” Junko insisted. “We love sluts. Ain’t that right, Ibuki?”
“Hell yeah it is!” Ibuki exclaimed, throwing her arms up in the air. “It’s cool and all that most people think sex is something hella special you should only do with someone you love, but that’s never really worked for Ibuki, you know?”
“Aha. So you get around then, do you?” Teruteru asked with a suave smile.
“Mhm! Ibuki’s never been in a serious relationship, but she sure has hooked up with a lot of people! It’s hard not to. When the energy at a gig is at an all time high and everyone’s all sweaty, it’s like, don’t you just want to grab the nearest cutie and get all primal in the green room?”
“Oh, baby, I know exactly what you mean. It’s the same feeling I have when I get the perfect cook on a wellington. You know, I’ve actually always wanted to go to one of your shows—”
“Gross… cut it out already,” Himiko said, making up her face.
“Please, you’ll make people uncomfortable,” Sayaka added before turning her attention back to Ibuki. “I guess I understand that. Promiscuity isn’t really for me, but if you find someone who you connect with and both of you are alright with just hooking up, I guess it makes sense to just go for it.”
Mikan, ever the shy one, hesitated to speak up. “U-Um… so long as you take the necessary precautions, of course. It’s important to practice safe sex.”
“Yeeeaaah, Ibuki was a little reckless before she met you, but lucky enough to avoid getting burned!” Ibuki said, sticking out her tongue and knocking on her head in a silly little gesture. “Listen to Mikan, everyone! Get tested, wrap it up, all that good stuff!”
Himiko’s nose crinkled. “Does that stuff apply to Tenko and I? Since we’re both girls?”
“Of course it does,” Mahiru said, a little surprised. “Huh. The sex-ed at your middle school must not have been very robust. But yeah, there’re dental dams you can use for oral sex and little condoms for your fingers, too.” She wiggled her fingers and giggled. “It might sound kind of silly, but it stops stuff like cuts from getting infected.”
“What the—why the heck do you know about that stuff? You’re straight,” Hiyoko said.
Mahiru shrugged. “Like I said, sex-ed at school. Honestly, I thought this stuff was common knowledge?”
“Our nation’s standard of sexual education is far from perfect. It’s no surprise homosexual activity would be excluded from most curriculum,” Korekiyo said.
Kokichi rolled his eyes. “Okay, can you not say ‘homosexual activity’ like that? You make gay sex sound boring.”
“It can be,” Toko grumbled.
Kaito’s eyebrows raised in what appeared to be genuine surprise. “Woah! You’re not sayin’ Komaru’s bad at sex, are you?”
“What? No! I’ll have you know I’m perfectly capable of satisfying my girlfriend, thank you very much.” Komaru pouted. “She’s just not always in the mood is all, even when I am.”
“That’s the reality of being with someone with a low sex drive,” Kyoko said. “Not every couple is perfectly compatible in that way.”
Tenko took a moment to consider that notion. She didn’t think she had a high sex drive. Sure, she took care of herself every now and then like most girls her age, but it wasn’t as if she’d been chomping at the bit to have sex with Himiko. She’d mostly been too terrified to really be excited until the moment of truth arrived. They’d been together a few times since then, trying things out, familiarizing themselves with each other’s bodies, but what about the future? Was Himiko the type to jump at the opportunity for sex every chance she got, or would Tenko have to go several weeks before getting to touch her like that again?
“So… do you two just not bother whenever Toko’s not feeling up to it?” Makoto asked.
“Inquiring about your little sister’s intimate life, Makoto? For shame.” Celeste tutted and shook her head in disappointment. “And here I believed you were a better man than that.”
“H-Hey, I’m not trying to be weird, I swear! I’m just curious.”
Thankfully for Komaru, Toko answered in her place. “Sometimes. Other times I just let her do what she wants. It’s not like I h-hate it or anything, and it is kind of nice even when I’m not in the mood, but most of the time I’d rather do something else.”
Miu clicked her tongue and nodded in understanding. “Ah, gotcha. Gotta do what she wants even when you’re not up to it if you wanna keep her from getting too attached to the ol’ magic wand, eh?”
“Um? I’ve never actually used one of those,” Komaru said, a bit bashful. “They seem kind of intense.”
“For real? Girl, I have got to put you on. I’ll text you later,” Junko said.
Rantaro tilted his head. “Do girls just… share sex toy reccomendations with each other? Or is this just a Junko thing? Sorry, I don’t really get it.”
“Oh yeah, totally. She’ll never admit it, but I sent Mukuro a link to a rose toy during one of her crankier weeks and I swear she perked right up.”
Mukuro sat up stiff in her chair, red rising right up to her ears. “That was not because of—”
“Sometimes all you need to destress is a little self pleasure, ya know?” Junko snickered and leaned back in her chair with a self-satisfied grin.
Meanwhile, Himiko wrung her hands in her lap, still nervous even now. “Nyeh… How come so many of you can talk about this stuff so easily? Isn’t it embarrassing?”
“A little bit, but it’s no big deal, really,” Komaru said. “If you ask me, I think people are waaay too weird about this sort of thing. Sex is such a big part of the books we read and the TV we watch, but it’s like when you actually start talking about it, no one wants to have a conversation. I mean, what gives?”
“Needless to say, sex is a taboo subject in some cultures and perfectly ordinary in others,” Korekiyo explained. “I’m certain the people of Angie’s homeland are quite comfortable discussing it, for instance, whereas it would come as no surprise to me if word of this particular meeting reached Hope’s Peak staff and Tenko was disciplined for it.”
Tenko’s heart sunk in her chest. No way she would actually get in trouble for hosting this, right? It wasn’t as if they were doing anything worthy of punishment. Surely a school that would allow her to establish a club like this to begin with—even if it took weeks of Tenko pestering them—would be fine with a bunch of gay teenagers having an open and honest conversation about sex, right?
Luckily, Tenko didn’t need to think about it any more than that, as Kyoko quieted her fears promptly. “Don’t worry. I have strings I can pull to make sure this club is left alone,” she said.
“Oh, the perks of being daddy’s little girl,” Junko sang. “While you’re at it, could you get them to throw a little funding our way? I’m feelin’ like a field trip to Ni-Chome would do this club some good!”
“You know you could get any amount handed to you if you just asked.”
“But where’s the fun in that?”
“Thank you, Kirigiri-san,” Tenko said, letting out a sigh of relief. “I know the higher-ups don’t really like there being a club like this at Hope’s Peak, so it’s nice to know that you’ve got our back in case anything happens.”
Kyoko simply nodded. “I think you’re providing a valuable resource for the students here, so I’d like to ensure you’re able to continue doing so.”
“You sure you’re not doing this to piss off your old man by supporting a club his bosses probably give him shit about?” Mondo asked.
To Tenko’s surprise, stoic honor student Kyoko Kirigiri actually smirked.
“That’s just a bonus.”