#presentmicxreader

There’s something about a packed train that has become comforting to Y/n. A packed train lined with the tired faces of commuters staring blankly at their phone screens meant that there must not have been anything big going on. Having the job of a hero meant that you also had the baggage, the hypervigilance, reluctance to relax at night, the nightmares. A stinky train car rocking bored passengers back and forth meant that nothing was happening. No one was panicking, there were no tears, or fire or violence. Just a normal commute on a normal Tuesday afternoon.

Since Hizashi and Shota had moved into the on-campus dorms to strengthen U.A. 's security you were effectively alone in the apartment throughout the week. Shota and Hizashi had been in the big city their whole lives, they were somewhat desensitized to the high villain activity here. You on the other hand, having only moved here a few years ago from a province that generally experienced a low crime rate, were having a hard time keeping up. It all felt never ending, nearly every hour at work brought a new villain report.

First it was the JSW attack, where Shota nearly died. You had night terrors about losing him for weeks after, Hizashi had to calm you in the night. Then the hero killer in Hosu City created the need for more heroes so your agency partnered up with one stationed over there. You had worked two weeks there and one back in Musutafu of and on until the killer was taken down. You had spent your nights in Hosu City looking over your shoulder and eyeing every shadow big enough to conceal a person and your days calling Hizashi or Shota between classes. After Stain the world had never been the same, there was more violence. More casual crime involved knives and guns and you’d hear his manifesto echoing through the dark streets.

It was the brief moments of the day, the crowded train, the line up at the food cart, the busy coffee shop, that gave you peace. There was nothing notable happening, yet things were still happening. There wasn’t the same kind of silence like there was at home, there wasn’t any loneliness. Everyone there was living their lives unaffected by the villains lurking the alleys. It was all very mundane, but it was what made being a hero worth it.

It started at the far end of the car once the train pulled away from the station, the shifting of bodies rippled through the passengers. A young woman shrieked, and the panic spread like wildfire. Phones were dropped, newspapers abandoned as everyone rose from their seats and crowded towards you. You instinctively began pulling people behind you, trying to maneuver your way through the crowd when a sharp metallic clang rang out, a cluster of sparks burst from the now scrapped metal ceiling.

The passengers swarmed with renewed fear and you felt yourself getting pushed backwards. You could just barely make out a ragged red scarf and mask of bandages through the crowd when your view was blocked by a tall man with broad shoulders. You recognized that combination anywhere and your gut twisted as you fell back into another passenger. Stain couldn’t have broken out, he couldn’t. There would have been an alert.

You fished in your pocket for your phone and looked at the screen, nothing from the police or the agency. You unlocked your phone, Hizashi and Shota holding twin cats smiling up at you. It was brief but you felt your chest warm and nerves settle for just a moment. You shook your head clear and dialed 119 , thrusting your phone out towards a lady who was currently clutching a bright yellow railing. She fumbled with your phone, her wide eyes swirling with confusion and fear.

“I dialed 119, tell them there is a villain on the train and what station we’re going to!” You instructed, taking off your coat and rolling your shoulders.

You took a deep breath, steadying yourself, and focused. You jumped up and grabbed onto the railings attached to the ceiling and pulled yourself up until you could see above the crowd’s heads.  What looked like a young man, not having filled out with muscle yet was dressed up in a makeshift Stain costume. He was slighter than Stain and his hair which poked out of the top of the mask of bandages was dark blue and hung limp. He had one arm wrapped around a child that couldn’t be more than ten years old, the other brandishing three long claw-like blades that appeared to be growing from his knuckles. Less than a few feet away a young woman bearing striking resemblance to the young child was clutching a bloodied hand, tears streaming down her face.

The Stain copycat looked down the car, a sadistic Cheshire grin plastered across his face. He raised his blade wielding hand towards you, blood wicking off the blade.

“A hero!” He squeezed the struggling boy tighter against him. “Come and do your job!”

You scanned the car looking for a visible spot of floor to land that wasn’t directly in range of the villain. A brief gap in the crowd appears and you phased out of the world, erupting in a cloud of swirling purple smoke. In another puff of smoke, you appeared crouched in the ground where you’d managed find a gap in the passengers. You got to your feet quickly and began pulling passengers behind you as you marched towards the villain.

 When you breached the other side of the crowd you stopped and took in the situation again. The boy’s mother was closer than you had originally thought, this made things more difficult but not impossible. The boy was bleeding from a scratch across his cheek but given how fiercely he was struggling to get away there didn’t seem to be any fast-acting poisons or paralytics on the blade. That meant you could stand to take a few hits if need be. You need to separate him from the boy, once the boy is free he’ll run to his mom who’ll put distance between them both and the villain.

The crowd behind you was beginning to settle, with nowhere to go for the next few minutes they could do nothing but cling to each other and hope you kept them safe. That silent hope pushed up against your back, there was no turning back and there was no escape for you. That wall held you right there, in the line of fire so others didn’t have to be. And though you trembled, and fear was burning through your guts, you knew you couldn’t be anywhere but here.

I chose this. You reminded yourself just like you had to do every night you woke from the terror of your dreams.

You launched yourself forward in a puff of smoke, in another reappearing at chest height. With one arm you grabbed the bladed hand, missing his wrist and grabbing down on his fist and the root of the blades. With the other arm you shoved the villain back with a solid elbow to the sternum. You crashed into him, quickly pulling backwards to let the boy wiggle away from the two of you. You trailed him as he scrambled to his mom who scooped him up and fell back into the crowd.

You took your eyes off of your opponent for too long and a fist connected with your jaw. The world sparked white then black and you stumbled back into the bench. You steadied yourself and blinked your eyes clear. The villain shoved off the wall of the train and lunged towards you, you through yourself sideways and rolled. He collided with the window, the double-paned glass crackling under his weight.

You glanced at the passengers as they flinched away from the fight and that wall of hope hit you again. You couldn’t allow the fight to spill over onto them, this was between you and the copycat hero killer.

The man groaned and he pushed off the window, the whine of the broken glass giving you an idea. You jumped to your feet and in a puff of smoke were standing with you back to the window directly across from you opponent. He growled and his other hand began to ooze blood as three more metal claws sprouted from his knuckles. With both taloned hands shoved forwards, he launched himself forwards again, this time you jumped up grabbing onto the ceiling railing. You swung yourself forward over his head as he burst through the glass, an ice-cold wind ripping through the train car. You kicked off the ceiling swinging back into him. In one swift movement the two of you went through the window, one of his flailing arms catching your ribs as you both plummeted off the train bridge.

You kicked off of him and looked around panicked, the only surfaces you could see from here were the underside of the bridge and the riverbanks which were just out of phasing distance. The best you could do for yourself now was make the fall to the water shorter, so you looked down and focused on the top of the water. In a puff of smoke, you hit the water, the surface shattering against your body with a loud clap.

***

You winced as the nurse tied off another suture. It wasn’t that it hurt with the anesthetic salve, but more the uncomfortable feeling of the tugging needle. You had needed six stitches in your hand and twenty-four in your abdomen. The nurse gave you a final wipe down and wrapped your hand up with bandages. Just as she was cleaning up her station there was a soft knock at the door. You looked over your shoulder to find Shota, hair tied up in a bun, leaning on the door frame. He held two coffees, one in a paper cup with steam rising off the top and the other filled with ice and cream.

“Hey.” He greeted casually, stepping into the room.

Your heart fluttered at the sound of that soothing voice, so calm and warm. He handed you the iced coffee and pulled up the stool the nurse had been sitting in when she was stitching you up. You took the coffee with your good hand and placed it on the examiners bed and reached out towards him again. His hand instantly found yours again before he even settled into his seat.

“I was filled in a little bit by the police but what exactly happened?” He asked, using your hand as an anchor to pull himself closer on the rolling stool.

“Oh, you know.” You sighed. You hadn’t seen Shota in person in nearly two weeks and you didn’t want to spend what little amount of time you had with him talking about the bad things in the world. “Hero stuff.”

 “Hero stuff, huh?” Shota grinned and perked an eyebrow. He planted a kiss on the back of your hand and laughed into your clasped hands. “Well, I’m a hero and I’ve never thrown myself out of a moving train window.”

“And I’ve never raided a Yakuza den.” You smiled cheekily. “What interesting lives we both live.”

Shota was good at reading between the lines, he could tell you didn’t want to talk about what had happened. Since he stood to gain nothing from hearing about the attack at the immediate moment he let it go, instead he chuckled with you and rubbed circles in the back of your hand with his thumb. He only needed to make sure of one thing, everything else could wait. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” you nodded. “I’ll heal up fine.”

Shota’s eyes went from sleepy and calming to searching and intense. You looked away; you didn’t like what he was looking for. He put down his coffee and grabbed your chin, his hand still warm from holding the cup.  He turned you towards him and said nothing, his eyes boring into your own. Shota has always been the more intense one out of the three of you, always more pensive and serious. He was able to reach depths in you no one was able to, even Hizashi.

You couldn’t look away from him, that would be admitting something was wrong. But if you looked into his eyes any longer you knew you’d end up telling him eventually. He was a tricky bastard who knew exactly how to get  through your walls. Your eyes started to burn with tears, and you tried to blink them away but instead they began to fall.  Shota softened instantly, both hands cupping your face and pulling you into his chest.

“I missed you.” You whimpered into his chest. “The apartment is so empty, now.”

Shota clutched you closer to him, resting his chin on your head. You felt small against him, like a piece fitting into the rest of the puzzle. This felt right, felt safe. You had missed this. He held you for a while, the smell of coffee and laundry detergent wafting over you.

“Hizashi is at home, he’s been freaking out.” Shota whispered into your hair, eventually.

“It’s just a few stitches.” You mumbled, still holding onto his chest.

“Thirty is more than a few.” Shota chortled. “Someone posted a video online of you chucking yourself out a window and one of his students showed him before the hospital even called us.”

You pulled away and looked up at Shota. His eyes were sleepy and glossed over now, oozing with affection. His lazy smirk sent a shiver through you as you straightened yourself out. “You make it sound like I did it for fun! I can teleport, you know.”

Shota grinned and stood up kissing you on the forehead. “That’s why I stopped to get coffee on the way here, I know you’re too crazy to die.”

“Thanks, I feel sufficiently loved.”

***

 Hands were on you the moment you walked into the apartment. Hizashi nearly broke a few of your stitches from hugging you. He refused to let go to the point that Shota had to run to the kitchen to grab a pot that had begun to boil over. He peppered you with kisses, and in between each one he scolded you for launching yourself from a window.

According to Hizashi he’s nearly had a heart attack, an aneurysm and a stroke all thanks to you. He was the worrier out of the two boys, always finding it hard to rationalize his way out of fear. He knew, like Shota, that you were a pro hero and that you could teleport and that you could handle yourself. Where the rationale stopped was when you flew out of a window and he had to imagine what happened next. After the attack at the JSW Hizashi had become a little less carefree when it came to you and Shota. Shota was the one who never got hurt, who could take on anything and make it out. After nearly losing him, you hadn’t been the only one having trouble sleeping.

After an ample amount of fussing you found yourself sandwiched between Shota and Hizashi, a warm meal in your belly and the TV quietly playing some reruns of a show you and Hizashi had watched while it was still running. Shota was snoring something fierce, his head drooped back over the back of the couch. One of his arms loosely wrapped around your shoulders and you curled up into his side. Hizashi was hugging your legs that draped across his lap and leaning his head on Shota’s hand that draped over your shoulder.

This is how it was meant to be. This apartment was meant to be filled with snores and bad television, with burning pots of food and the three of you curled up into each other. What had happened today, and the fear you felt had already melted away. As you drifted to sleep, Shota’s steady heartbeat lulled you to unconsciousness, and nothing but sleep came to you. For the first time in two weeks there were no echoes of screaming civilians or crying victims. You saw no whispers of fire and blood in the shadowy corners of the apartment. For the first time in two weeks you had a dreamless sleep.

***

You woke to bright streams of light shining across your face and a warm purring cat at sharing your pillow. You had been moved to your bed at some point during the night and stripped of your pants a sweater. Sushi swatted at your stray hairs, catching your head a few times before you lifted him off the pillow. You squished him against your chest, which he accepted for a grand total of thirty seconds before mewing in melodramatic agony. You kissed him on the nose and let him go, watching him dart off the mattress and out the room like it was a prison break.

“You’re awake!” Hizashi sang from the living room. He hopped through the doorway and strode towards the bed, leaning down to give you a chaste good morning kiss.

“You’re here?” You asked.  If the sun had made it high enough to shine through the window and hit you then he and Shota should have definitely been gone for work by now.

“Yeah?” Hizashi cocked his head to the side. “Should I not be?”

“Why aren’t you at work?”

He smiled at you; it was a weird smile. It was sweet and made you feel warm, but it was also a little melancholy like a secret apology tugged at his heart. He took a seat on the edge of the bed and ran a hand through your hair. Hizashi, though loud and hyperactive most of the time, could also be so gentle and sweet.

 “You can’t lift your arms above your head without tearing out your stitches, love. One of us is going to stay here with you until you can get them taken out.” Your heart skipped a beat.

“Really?” You couldn’t help the excitement that leaked through to the surface. “You guys are staying here?”

“Don’t get too excited, we’ll annoy the shit out of you soon enough.” He grinned and stood up. “Now I need your advice.”

“On what?” you asked as he took his phone out and began typing furiously. He looked at you, with the utmost seriousness and sprung backwards over your legs onto the mattress.

“A song.”

“A song?”