SHOUT !

(   continued  from  here.  )   ///   ➤ @fortevoce.

the bitter truth is, he is now — as he has ever been — powerless. stronger, maybe. quicker, sure. but he’s powerless to change what’s happened, and powerless to shape fate in his or anyone else’s favor; he is what he is ( nothing ), and that’s how it’s always going to be, unless he makes himself better. dumb stupid luck won’t save him every time, nor will the phantom voice of someone who believes in him more than he ever could in himself.

if it’s at the cost of smooth, callous free hands and rested eyes, he has to be more; so be it. but, some things can’t be priced, even if they can still be lost. there was once a pair of eyes that he’d look for in searching glances, and they’re right there, looking at him now from beyond the curtain of hair that blocks his own view and centers his focus on the ground. then, on his bleeding hands, and he watches as hizashi’s hand grabs his wrist and tugs him upright before his focus can fade, steadying the soles of his shoes more firmly to the gym floor. 

and then his hand drops. it goes away, and he’s… just standing, and his shoulders relax once he’s let go. ( he wonders if they’d visibly tensed, once contact had been made. wonders if hizashi will think it’s his fault, or if he’ll know it’s because shouta had been somewhere else mentally until that touch. if he’ll know that he was just scared to come down.

he’s so scared, and it is… so pathetic. )

shouta isn’t blind to the rift between them, nor is he ignorant to what the force is that separates the rest of what is left of himself and the one thing, the one person, he has left to lose —  it’s him, he’s self-aware of that — of his own ox stubborn intuition to pull away, accept nothing, and what that might do to hizashi — and…  it changes nothing.

you’re not, hizashi starts, and he doesn’t have to finish for him to pick up on the plea in his voice, or for shouta to get a feeling as to where that might have been going. he takes it somewhere else, somewhere gentle and familiar and purely concerned; because as much as he wants to ignore what’s happening here, he knows hizashi well enough to credit him in being able to tell when something is wrong.  

when did you last sleep?  when did you last eat?  those are questions only someone who cares about you will ask, and if he cares about hizashi at all, he should tell him to invest in some better company — someone who won’t stand there like he is now, considering if it’s worth lying to his best friend about something he already knows — he points it out, too, in the form of food found left untouched — and staring at his own feet in some kind of pathetic show of half self-pity, half shame. he doesn’t bother answering his questions, because hizashi already knows. why would he tell him something he already knows? no sense in it.

you sure know how to pick ‘em, shouta thinks with a glare hard set on the floor — he doesn’t say it to hizashi, because there’s no point in being self-deprecating, or in being hurtful to someone already hurting himself. ( that must be the worst part, of all this; hizashi’s been there for him through everything, through oboro, through niisan — and yet. ) hizashi’s trying, and shouta still won’t even look at him, but he can feel that stupidly charming expression shining through and raining down on him; warm and inviting to someone without the decency to even face it.

if for no other reason than knowing that he owes something to him, shouta surrenders. 

glare hard set on the ground, two trembling, bandaged hands come up, fingers outstretched and palms out, signaling stop. just… alright. “ …fine, ” he says after too long, voice strained and low, even now. he knows hizashi hears him. knows he sees him, too. 

he can make up for lost time tomorrow morning, maybe. and he isn’t stupid — he knows the importance of taking care of yourself, it just ceases to matter in the moment, doesn’t it? and you know how moments are. they just keep happening. ( he might really keel over if not for hizashi being there to remind him. and who reminds hizashi? ) get better friends, he thinks to hizashi, angrily. be better, he thinks to himself, angrier. 

“ … just for tonight. ”

    hizashi hadn’t seen oboro die.

    he only saw the aftermath. he only saw shouta in the aftermath, the look on his face when he realized oboro wasn’t with him anymore as the rain drenched them all. it’s -- it’s really, really horrible to think that it isn’t even the first time he’s seen shouta in the aftermath of death, and they’re still teenagers.

    at least the first time, there had been something hizashi could do. he’d had a home to offer, a family. shouta had come closer to him, even as he’d struggled through the loss. this time...

    sometimes he stays in the gym, hidden in a doorway, watching shouta train. he can be quiet, when he wants to be; usually shouta doesn’t even notice him, too focused on his training, on the rope that scrapes his hands until they bleed. except for days like today, when he can’t bear to sit back and watch. he thinks it might be punishment. he doesn’t know what shouta’s thinking, but he’s afraid of what shouta thinks he might deserve.

    shouta glares at the ground, and hizashi doesn’t know if he’s angry at being called out or angry that hizashi is here or angry at himself or -- maybe all of it at once. or none of it. that’s the whole problem, isn’t it? hizashi doesn’t know what goes through shouta’s head these days; he can only guess, and his own guesses scare him. he’d felt shouta tense when hizashi had grabbed him, and it doesn’t have to mean anything, because sometimes shouta just doesn’t want to be touched and that’s okay, but also maybe it does mean something, and hizashi’s hand drops like it’s been burned once he’s sure shouta isn’t going to keel over.

     like he has so many times in the past few weeks, he wonders what oboro would be doing right now, if he were here and it were someone else’s death shouta was mourning. he’d know what to do -- he always knew what to do. oboro had known instinctively how to inspire shouta from the start, when it had taken hizashi ages to learn anything about him. oboro had been quick and shameless and unafraid -- he cheered people up as easily as breathing. people compared them a lot, because they were both energetic and cheerful and bold. but the truth is that oboro did everything with the instinctive confidence of someone who had never had to wonder what the right way to act was, who had never had reason to doubt himself. he didn’t have to pretend and analyze and brute-force his way into the persona he wanted, the way hizashi did. oboro just was.

     it’s not that hizashi was jealous of him, even when he got along with shouta like it was the most natural thing in the world, even when he had all the easy confidence hizashi had put himself through the wringer just to be able to simulate. you couldn’t be jealous of a person like oboro, genuine and altruistic as he was, and besides, they were too good of friends for that. if anything oboro had inspired hizashi -- yes, this, this is how i want to be -- and it had felt so good, so right, to have someone else by his side on the mission to Make Aizawa Shouta Believe In Himself. 

     but now he’s gone, and everything is fractured and wrong, and it makes hizashi wonder if it had been oboro gluing them all together all along, for all that hizashi had known shouta first.

     shouta’s raised hands bring him back to the moment, dissipating the phantom boy who would have just slung his arms around both of them and found something to laugh about. fine, shouta says, and hizashi’s breath stutters in relief. he will? he will. hizashi won’t have to walk home alone tonight. he smiles a little, already thinking about texting his mom to make sure she makes something shouta likes ‘cause he’ll definitely eat it tonight, and then shouta adds just for tonight and hizashi’s expression shutters a little.

     ...right. it’s still a victory, he tells himself quickly. a chance to make sure shouta takes care of himself, at least for a little bit. a chance to spend some actual time with him and maybe ease the lonely ache that seems to have taken up permanent residence in his chest. just for tonight, so shouta can come back here tomorrow, and tonight will be a shield for him, i listened to you once, i let you manhandle me into thinking about my own needs once, what more do you want from me? and hizashi will have to let him do it, concede the point while he calculates how often he can have this battle before it only makes shouta pull away more. (oboro wouldn’t have to calculate. he’d know what to do and he’d do it.)

yellow = kiss on the hand

     It is a hero function of the kind Shouta despises, Hizashi knows. He’s sure Shouta would have happily feigned illness or emergency to skip it, but given the recent uproars surrounding U.A., it’s even more important than usual for those involved, the teachers and heroes, to put forth a positive face both for other heroes and the press that always surrounds galas such as these. Hizashi still suspects Shouta would’ve skived off if he could, but Hizashi’s been keeping a close eye on him to prevent just that.

     He’s not doing it because he so rarely gets to see Shouta in a suit. It’s just an added bonus.

     Hizashi himself would be lying if he said he didn’t love things like this as much as Shouta hates them, and usually he’d be all over the place, chatting up whatever friendly faces he sees and doing his best to bully his way into control over the music. Tonight, though, he stays near Shouta. Partially so Shouta can’t escape out a window or something, partially because Shouta might hate the whole affair less if Hizashi acts as a buffer between him and unwanted small talk, and partially because -- well. Hizashi still gets sort of anxious if he can’t find Shouta in a crowd, these days.

     So he never gets too far from Shouta, and he restricts himself to complaining about the music only at particularly cliched and outdated tracks, and he doesn’t suffer socially because he is very easy to pick out in a crowd and between the hair, the glitter, and the voice anyone who wants to talk to him definitely knows where to find him. But he does manage to very skillfully, if he does say so himself, rescue Shouta from a few situations where he might be forced to talk to someone he has absolutely nothing to say to; the nice ones he engages in pleasant conversation with, turning their attention towards him, the assholes he makes a point of sliding into the conversation with as annoyingly and intrusively as possible without actually saying anything rude enough for them to complain about. It’s a fun game, and he whispers the cutting remarks he refrained from saying out loud into Shouta’s ear after the offending personage has excused themselves, and all in all Hizashi thinks things are going pretty well.

     Then a particular song plays, and Hizashi has an idea. It is not part of the Save Shouta From Accruing Any Unwanted Attention plan. It is in fact a purely selfish idea, but here is the thing -- Shouta is in a suit, one that actually fits him well (thanks to Hizashi’s efforts, obviously), and Hizashi has had to physically stop himself from just staring at Shouta most of the evening whenever he’s not actively talking to someone else and sometimes when he is. And the music is an old song, one he remembers from their high school days, and it’s possible Hizashi has some associations. Some romantic associations. Some sixteen-year-old-pining-hopelessly-over-his-best-friend associations. And he is at heart an incurable romantic, and Shouta knows this and sometimes even puts up with it.

black = neck kiss

     Sometimes, he needs the world to just stop for a little bit.

     It’s not exactly a part of his character – Present Mic, loud and proud and ready to take on the world. He in himself is a whirlwind of sensory hell, and usually he can handle it. Usually he has no problem with the loud, the bright, the quick.

      Sometimes, though. Sometimes it’s nice to take his hearing aids out, bury his face in a pillow, and enjoy a dark and muffled world. Sometimes everything’s a little too close, and his own racing thoughts overwhelm him, and all he needs is a chance to be still.

     It’s that kind of evening. Nothing had been wrong at work – just the usual hustle and bustle of teaching a bunch of rowdy super-powered children. It’s the kind of work that usually energizes him, but the term’s drawing ever closer to an end and Hizashi can feel the dragging feeling beginning to build in him, that slow-building strain that tells him he needs a break, needs a rest, before his usual cheerful extroversion gets worn down to a frayed mess of overstimulation.

     So it’s a relief to come home and strip out of his leather, rinse the product out of his hair, and collapse onto the couch in soft sweatpants. Sometimes in these moments he’ll put on music and let himself dissolve into the ebb and flow of the melody, but today headphones feel like too much, so he lets himself exist in the soft, padded silence his ears afford him instead.

     He’s not sure how long he lies there – he’s not dozing, not really, just letting his mind drift. Long enough for Shouta to get home, though; Hizashi doesn’t hear him come in, of course, but he knows, can feel the slight weight of Shouta’s footsteps and the way he pushes the door closed behind him. Hizashi doesn’t bother looking up, though his mouth curves into a slight smile against the pillow, until he feels Shouta’s weight settle next to him on the couch. Hizashi extracts an arm, signs a lazy one-handed hello. The fact of his face still being smushed against a pillow precludes the possibility of him seeing Shouta’s response, but he’s not worried. Shouta’s familiar with this sight by now, and Hizashi feels him lean back against the couch, and, a minute later, the sudden weight of Hime jumping up onto his lap.

     It’s a good sign, that the brush of Hime’s fur against his hip as she gets comfortable on Shouta’s leg doesn’t send an uncomfortable jolt through him, and in another few minutes Hizashi feels settled enough in his body to turn himself over, fumbling for his glasses on the coffee table and blinking his eyes open for the first time in a couple hours.

      He has to admit, Shouta in profile, examining some paperwork while a cat purrs on his lap, is a pretty nice thing to open his eyes to. 

@purraser

     i’m absolutely fine.

     and it’s a shouta thing to say, isn’t it. because shouta doesn’t like to talk about his feelings, sometimes shouta doesn’t like to admit he has feelings, and that’s – that’s fine, they all have different ways of coping. except that hizashi lives with shouta, and he doesn’t have to have his hearing aids in to know that shouta’s not sleeping, that half the time he slips out the window to sit on the roof, or steal off somewhere to train. and that’s on top of all the time he spends solo training now, off where nobody can tell him to stop, to rest, to look at me, shouta–

     when shouta had swayed on his feet, hizashi had reached out, catching his wrist, steadying him. now he lets go. he picks out the shadows under shouta’s eyes, but shouta’s . not looking at him. of course shouta’s not looking at him.

     “you’re not–” and he stops because it comes out cracked and too loud, and he worries like he always does that if he pushes, if he says you’re lying, he’ll lose what little of shouta he has left.

     he knows. he knows it hurts. he can’t know what it’s like to be shouta, to have been there, to have been right there. he doesn’t pretend to know that. but he knows what it’s like to lose a best friend.

     he’s afraid he’s losing two.

     “when’s the last time you slept?” he asks instead, voice deliberately soft. not an accusation. he itches to still be holding onto shouta but he doesn’t. shouta’s hands are in his pockets now anyway. he slouches even more now that he’s gotten tall, like he still hopes he can be invisible. but hizashi’s always seen him. “or really ate? i know you don’t eat proper meals when you get home late.” because of course he has to train after school too, or that’s what he says, and hizashi’s mom always leaves leftovers for him but hizashi checks the fridge and knows shouta doesn’t always eat them.

     there’s a thought in his head, and it’s not bitter, okay, it’s just – it’s just sad, it’s just loss. it’s, he could’ve cheered shouta up. he could’ve made shouta eat.

     “c’mon,” he says, not letting the thought show on his face. “take a break tonight – we can hang out, watch some cat compilations or something – mom’ll make food. it’ll be nice. you gotta rest, shouta.”