Chapter Text
There’s a moment after Eijirou has successfully reached safety where the two of them simply lay there on the harsh rough ground, struggling to catch their breaths in the dust filled air surrounding them– and a part of Eijirou can’t help but think that all this time he must have simply misjudged Monoma.
Of course the blond has to go and immediately ruin it by lifting a clenched fist into the air above him and crowing in a somewhat breathless voice, “Hahaha you owe me your life now!” and Eijirou realizes that all that bullshit about not letting the rivalry stop him was exactly that. Bullshit spewed in the heat of the moment so that the asshole would be able to feel superior and throw it back in Eijirou’s face like this.
“God you’re the worst,” Eijirou groans, rubbing his face with his palms in agitation and then frowning at the wetness meeting his fingers. “And I need a shower,” he mumbles, sitting up slightly so he can study his hands and the odd sticky wetness on his fingers. He’d thought it was just leftover from his cry-laugh earlier but this looks darker somehow. Like something had been dripping on him from above at some point and he’d been too distracted to notice.
Honestly even without proper lighting to really and truly see it, it almost feels like—
“Here.”
An embroidered handkerchief is unceremoniously dropped on his face and by the time Eijirou removes it the lights coming off Monoma’s wrists have been noticeably dimmed, presumably to conserve the battery.
“If you’re quite through studying your own grimy sweat, we’ve got work to do.” The words are carelessly tossed over Monoma’s shoulder as the other boy is now back on his feet and fully turned away from him as he studies the walls of their current enclosure and Eijirou makes quick work of wiping himself off before pausing.
“Wait… Where’d you get the handkerchief from?”
Monoma scoffs at him like that’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard but sue him the handkerchief had been clean and crisp, all pressed and ironed and fucking scented as if fresh from the wash so Eijirou can’t even imagine where Monoma had been keeping it.
He can no longer make out Monoma’s expression in the muted circles of light coming from the other boy’s arms but it’s still easy to see the way he starts patting pointedly at various parts of his costume. “It’s this brilliant new invention,” he drawls, pulling out a fountain pen from somewhere and twirling it dramatically around his fingers. “Called pockets.”
He pauses then and Eijirou can just tell his own costume is being given an obnoxious onceover. “...something you unfortunately don’t seem familiar with… My condolences.”
“Hey!” Eijirou snaps, all but leaping to his feet so he can return the used handkerchief by slapping it over the smarmy asshole’s face. “I have pockets!”
“Oh good,” Monoma snarks back, unflappable in the face of the dirty cloth which he swiftly wipes his own face with before tucking up his sleeve for later. “Then allow us to pool resources.”
So saying, he then proceeds to unload what feels like a shitton of stuff, more pens, tiny notepads, a miniature first aid kit, a compass, a phone charger, a pocket knife, another three of those damn perfectly folded handkerchiefs, some chocolate, a pack of chewing gum, an official Ms Joke hygiene mask complete with smiley decals, and a deck of playing cards.
It’s a fake deck from the support department made entirely of extra durable aces which Monoma uses to skillfully throw at villains because of course it is.
Eijirou can feel a single bead of sweat make its way down the back of his neck as he takes stock of himself in response.
“...I’ve got a protein bar.”
He reaches into said pocket to pull it out and grimaces. “Half… Half a protein bar.”
“Oh goodie,” Monoma sneers, “my favorite.”
Eijirou opens his mouth to retort– probably something snappish about Monoma not needing to share it then– but before he can even get a single syllable out they’re interrupted by an ominous rumbling that has fresh rubble and debris coming loose from above.
Eijirou reaches out without looking, his hand grabbing for Monoma blindly as his eyes frantically track the oncoming projectiles.
Monoma’s stupidly soft hand clasps tightly to his own and they activate Eijirou’s quirk as one, the bricks and beams clattering harmlessly off of their hardened forms until silence returns once more.
For a moment neither of them speak, the only sound in the darkness being that of their harsh and rapid breaths as their heart rates slowly return to normal.
Monoma breaks the silence first because of course he does.
“We should find a more defensible position.”
Eijirou breathes slowly and finally releases his hold on Monoma’s hand. “Yeah… Good idea…”
After a brief discussion (read: argument) they ultimately decide to try and break through to the probably an elevator shaft again to see if it’s clear enough to be used to somehow climb up and out. This involves slow and cautious digging with the use of Eijirou’s quirk– the largest pieces being left intact and carefully moved aside into a somewhat tent formation so they have somewhere to rest in and take shelter in case of any further collapses.
It’s as Monoma reaches over and pokes at Eijirou’s shoulder to refresh his hold on the quirk that a thought suddenly occurs.
“Hey!” he calls, turning towards Monoma as an anticipatory grin pulls at his lips. “Protien bar aside, I am pulling my weight sharing resources because I’ve got the quirk!”
He’s expecting a snarky response honestly. Not only does Monona hate Eijirou personally but he definitely strikes as the type of character who would hoard resources in a post apocalyptic setting.
Contrary to his expectations though, Monoma immediately removes one of the glowing timepieces from his wrist and tosses it at Eijirou with an eye roll and a pointed, “Yeah, yeah, watch yourself.”
Eijirou resists the urge to snort, but barely. Of course, he’d forgotten to account for Monoma’s unwillingness to be in anyone’s debt.
They dig carefully for a while, the two of them on opposite sides of a large pile as they both focus on trying to locate a stable breach into the elevator shaft that won’t bury them any further and the silence stretches as both of them focus on their respective areas without comment.
It’s an indeterminate amount of time later that Eijirou registers with a sudden start that there’s what feels like a cool breeze blowing on his face.
He leans forward intently, dialing up the bezel on his new watch to crank up the light until he can make out a noticeable split in the rock before him. His mouth drops open as he reflexively takes the first deep breath of fresh air since he’d first woken up down here.
This is it! They can really do it! They’re going to be fine!
He turns towards Monoma, excitement all but spilling out of him as he shouts, “Hey! I’ve got fresh air over here!”
Monoma doesn’t respond right away and when he does it’s more of a wordless stumble in Eijirou’s direction as he slowly makes his way over and…
And the light coming off the now brightly glowing watch on Eijirou’s wrist fully illuminates Monoma’s face.
Eijirou can’t hold back the horrified gasp that escapes him as the maxed out brightness allows him to get a good look at the other boy for the first time since the building had come down.
“Y-You’re injured!” he yelps, all at once panicked and on the verge of a freak out at the mere sight of the asshole’s visibly bloody face.
“Am I?” Monoma sighs, one hand reaching out for the wall to keep himself upright as he stares unseeing at the ceiling above them. “If I refuse to acknowledge or investigate it, does it truly exist?”
“What? Of course it does!”
“Shroedinger’s head wound,” Monoma murmurs as if to himself, his fingers shaky as they finally manage to clasp onto the wall. “Shroedinger’s concussion.”
“That’s not even remotely how that works, shut up!”
Monoma seems to actually listen to him for once and it’s that more than anything that has Eijirou’s heart suddenly jackrabbiting in his chest.
Shit but they’re so fucking screwed.
He strides closer with purpose as Monoma gingerly lowers himself into a sitting position.
Fuck let this not be anything serious, please let this have been a superficial scratch and not a fully fledged wound, please let Monoma be o–
He cuts off the thought before it can finish.
He’s not worried about the asshole that’d be ridiculous.
He’s just… thrown. By the loss of the partner who’d been helping to dig them both out.
Yeah.
And the urge to get closer and take Monoma’s stupid face between his palms so he can check how bad the wound really is, that’s just… morbid curiosity.
Yeah.
Which, now that he’s thinking about it, now that he’s able to get a really good look at him and the dried blood already soaked into that previously starched white collar and caked into his usually blond hair– something isn’t adding up.
“How are you this injured when I’m not?” he manages to croak through a throat gone dry. Because he’d already thought it weird that he’d somehow ended up lower down than the other boy when the building had collapsed but now…
Monoma scoffs, leaning his head back against the wall behind him and carefully dabbing at his face with another one of those stupid pressed handkerchiefs. “I already told you, didn't I? Not all of us have a quirk like—“
“But you should have! We were. We were right next to each other when—“
It all comes back to him in a sudden rush.
Arriving on scene with Fat Gum and Amajiki-senpai. Rendezvousing with the other teams on sight. Being led into the lobby where Ms Joke and her own intern Phantom Thief had been guarding the elevator. Being tasked with standing guard in Ms Joke’s place, him and Monoma being instructed to keep flat to the wall on either side of the doors so that anyone coming up from the underground labs could be dealt with swiftly from behind before they had a chance to sound the alarm. Being left there, just them two, silent and serious as the pros had geared up for one final debrief outside.
And then the shaking.
The very walls against their backs vibrating fit to come apart and Monoma’s face, clear for once of sneer and malice, of bluster and bravado, as he’d all but shoved Eijirou away.
“Look out!”
Eijirou had fallen back, his quirk activating on instinct.
And he’d managed to look up just in time to see Monoma, stupid asshole Monoma, going down to a chunk of rubble to the head.
“Y-You,” he gasps, struggling to reconcile the bastard who’d rubbed his face in his weakness with the same Monoma who’d apparently taken a hit for him. “You pushed me out of the way. You saved me.”
Monoma immediately pulls a face. “Ugh don’t make it weird! I was clearly aiming for your quirk.”
And Eijirou thinks about how if that had really been the case then Monoma wouldn’t have gotten hurt at all but says nothing.
The rest of the newly recovered memory sinks in then and Eijirou flinches back as he realizes, “Wait shit, the heroes, what happened to everyone els—“
“Calm down,” Monoma huffs, lowering his now bloody handkerchief from his hairline to his lap and grimacing down at it. “It was just us in the building, remember? They know we were in there so they probably had to wait for better quirks to show up before they could attempt to dig for us.”
“Huh?” Eijirou isn’t following. “Better quirks? There was a whole slew of top pros right there!”
“Uh huh,” Monoma tsks, eyes fixed on his fingers now as they shakily fold and refold the dirty cloth in his grip. “Ms Joke and Midnight with quirks suited to crowd control and rapid takedowns of large groups… Fat Gum with his capturing abilities and counter attacks, but nothing for stabilization against a building collapse… Suneater’s probably off panicking somewhere about his precious little kouhai and Manual’s only here because they were expecting literal firepower… Lastly they had Rock Lock who could stabilize the upper collapse while they waited for rescue heroes but of course couldn’t do anything about the lower layers keeping us trapped so…”
Monoma’s head ducks slightly, his hands finally ceasing their folding to fall uselessly at his sides as he continues. “They probably called for… Thirteen. The Wild Wild Pussycats. And maybe Earphone Jack to… better locate us faster depending on how far away Gang Orca is today… Cementoss maybe if he’s available…”
The longer that Monoma talks, the slower the words seem to come, his head starting to droop, body listing to one side, and Eijirou has to frantically rush forward to prop him back up before he can fully tip over onto the harsh dusty ground.
“…Frostfyre maybe if he’s interning close enough…” he murmurs. “And Hawks… Yeah… Hawks would be good…”
“H-Hey!” Eijirou yelps, suddenly out of his depth at the turn things are taking and resisting the urge to grab Monoma and shake him back to normal by the very shreds of whatever’s left of his self control. “Open your eyes!”
“Ice to stabilize the structure…” Monoma mumbles, his words fully dragging now as his chin droops to tuck against his chest. “…f-feathers to slip through… cracks looking for…”
Despite himself Eijirou finally gives in to his earlier impulse, his palms grabbing Monoma’s face so he can gently run his fingers over every inch of it searching for the wound itself and checking if it’s still actively bleeding. Monoma had a first aid kit in his portion of the resource pool so assuming that the damage is external and not internal then even Eijirou will be able to–
Monoma lets out a small sound, almost like a hum and when Eijirou glances down it’s to the sight of the other boy staring right at him with an honest to god fond expression on his face.
“You have… the nicest eyes,” Monoma says, his tone warm and soft like he isn’t literally dropping a fucking nuke right into Eijirou’s lap.
“What???”
Monoma’s forehead creases slightly at the loud yelp delivered directly at his aching head in point blank range. But instead of saying anything about that, all Monoma adds is a slow and tired, “You’d think… with teeth like yours… that even a smile would be… terrifying…”
He pauses briefly, his eyelids fluttering like he’s fighting to stay awake. “But it’s… it’s in the eyes that…”
He trails off and Eijirou finds himself leaning forehead, exhaling a harsh breath he hadn’t even known he was holding to croak out a desperate, “in the eyes that what?”
Monoma doesn’t answer him though and when Eijirou lifts the watch on the other boy’s wrist and cranks the bezel as far as it will go, the light coming off the watchface illuminates a pale, bloody and uncharacteristically silent Monoma, his eyes closed as if he’s merely sleeping, as if those stupidly long lashes will suddenly flutter at him ostentatiously once more as soon as he wakes up from his ill-timed nap.
Except…
Except that deep down Eijirou knows that this is about as far from a fucking nap as things could possibly get.
Okay, first things first, Eijirou quickly removes one of Monoma’s spare wristwatches and moves to place it near the fresh air spot. The asshole is being an inconvenience right now, that’s true, but pretty soon he’ll be back to his regularly scheduled programming and they’ll need to remember where to pick up the search.
That done, Eijirou removes the sole surviving pocketwatch from his boot that Monoma had passed down to him what feels like weeks ago now.
It’s got a larger face and therefore a larger amount of light spilling off it and he quickly sets it down so he can get a better look at Monoma’s–
Oh.
Oh fuck.
The entire front of Monoma’s hair is plastered to his forehead and Eijirou finds himself reaching to brush the fringe off his face because surely his hair is simply damp from sweat, surely he isn’t still actively bleeding, surely he hasn’t been actively bleeding the entire fucking time!
His fingers come away wet and dark and Eijirou’s heart skips a beat.
If Monoma had still been bleeding when he’d pulled Eijirou up to safety then… then him getting winded so fast wasn’t a sign of everyday weakness but a sign that he’d been pushing himself in an already weakened state.
The memory of earlier when Eijirou had touched his own face and been surprised to find it dirty and Monoma had dropped a handkerchief on him and dimmed the lights and turned away, like he’d known that Eijirou had found his blood, like he’d known his wound had been dripping while they’d been hanging across the ledge, like he’d purposely been trying to hide it.
Because of course he’d been.
The realization of all that Monoma has done– (and for what? To protect him? Because he’d panicked at the sight of the terrible chasm to his right and Monoma had thought he wouldn’t be able to handle it?) –is suddenly almost too much to bear.
The silence.
The stillness.
The blood.
It’s all suddenly too fucking much.
“Y-You know what you are Monoma?” Eijirou sniffles, fighting back rising tears with deep breaths that hopefully ward off further panic as he rapidly pats down Monoma’s stupid monkey suit so he can locate those stupid hidden pockets and find that stupid tiny first aid kit already.
Many words come to Eijirou’s mind in that moment as an answer.
Annoying.
Infuriating.
Possibly Dying
But then Eijirou’s gaze falls on the last of those damn pocket watches, its purple and grey brothers lost but not forgotten and inspiration hits like a bolt of lightning.
“YOU’RE THE ACE IN THE HOLE!” he shouts.
Where the previous touches to his suit and his face had done nothing to wake him, it’s this that has Monoma stirring again with a low groan.
Because of course it is.
“That was terrible,” Monoma breathes, shifting minutely with a pained grimace.
Eijirou laughs, and it’s a wet little half sob that he pointedly ignores as he chokes out a halfhearted, “You’re just jealous that you didn’t come up with it yourself.”
Monoma neither confirms nor denies but then again that practically says it all.
He does produce the first aid kit with minimal prompting though and the two lapse into silence once more as Eijirou focuses on finally performing some triage.
“...you said you weren’t injured.” The words slip out without his permission as he’s finishing up securing the bandage around the asshole’s head, but Eijirou simply presses his lips together once they’re out and doesn’t say anything else.
Monoma lets out a near silent huff. “No. What I said– and I’ll quote– was, ‘it’ll keep.’ Which it did… Until it didn’t.”
He sits up gingerly then, wincing as he leans back to prop himself against the wall again, his eyes closed once more in as much sign of pain as he’ll allow himself to visibly show. “How long was I out?”
Eijirou blinks at him, momentarily thrown by the question. “Oh uh. I’m not sure exactly… a couple minutes maybe?”
Monoma stares at him incredulously and then pointedly glances down, first at his remaining pocketwatch, and then at the five wristwatches still between them.
Eijirou flushes. “Okay look I didn’t say I couldn’t check! I just didn’t think to, shut up!”
“Oh I would,” Monoma hums, a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth even as his forehead remains slightly creased in a clear sign of what is at the very least a killer headache. “But every time I do, you start yelling at me to wake up.”
“Oh my god you’re insufferable!”
“Oh yeah? Well you’re…” and Monoma stops, looks at him with a downright goofy expression as he finishes the sentence with, “unbreakable.”
Eijirou’s mouth opens, closes and then opens again. “What?”
“Ha!” Monoma laughs. “Never let them know your next move!” The words are accompanied by an ostentatious wink, followed immediately by a wince as Monoma grabs at his forehead with a groan.
“Stupid,” Eijirou huffs, rolling his eyes as he digs through the first aid kit for some painkillers.
“You would know,” Monoma sighs, leaning back against the wall once more, palms pressed against his eyes.
“Okay what is up with you?!” Eijirou snaps, dropping the provisions and all but leaping to his feet as the culmination of all the annoyance and frustration has him practically vibrating out of his skin. “First you save me, then you insult me, then you save me again, insult me again, compliment my eyes and my teeth and my quirk, and now we're back to insults?? Do you hate me or not???”
Monoma stares at him evenly, his gaze unblinking and his expression serious. “I don’t hate you.”
Eijirou snorts in disbelief. “Coulda fooled me!”
“No it’s… Do you remember when…” Monoma stops, swallows, starts again, his words slow and oddly careful like he’s still working out what to say. “Immediately after our provisional license exams. We met briefly.”
Eijirou sighs. He can already tell exactly what Monoma is talking about.
“You mean when I embarrassed myself by loudly assuming that you’d failed again?”
Monoma laughs, though it’s nowhere near his usual exuberance and more of a pained huff. “Yeah. I only…”
He falls silent for a moment and Eijirou is surprised to see him looking away with what looks like an embarrassed flush rising in his cheeks.
“I only… tracked you guys down because I was hoping you would say that…” He looks back at Eijirou and grins. “and you did.”
“Yeah.” Eijirou allows, totally and completely bewildered as to what about that could possibly have Monoma grinning. “I did.”
“It’s funny. You’re always so bright and friendly to everyone else, even that famous asshole Bakugou. Yet somehow I was the only one you ever bantered with. I was the only one you really exchange insults with. And I realized that I… at some point I started looking forward to it.
He huffs another laugh and meets Eijirou’s gaze head on. “It’s fun.”
And despite himself Eijirou finds himself huffing a rueful laugh of his own.
“Yeah,” he says, reaching out slowly to carefully ruffle Monoma’s hair without disturbing the bandages. “I guess it is.”
And that’s exactly how Lemillion finds them, his head popping suddenly out of a nearby pile of rubble and scaring Eijirou so bad he punches straight through the wall and gets his hand stuck.
From behind him, he can hear Monoma let out a loud snort and a mocking, “unbreakable indeed!”
And despite himself Eijirou finds himself grinning.
Monoma Neito, hero name Phantom Thief, is definitely still a b class asshole.
But even Eijirou can’t deny that a part of him, a teeny tiny, practically nonexistent part of him, finds Monoma entertaining.
And as they’re finally rescued, Eijirou being enveloped in a bone crushing hug by Fat Gum, and Monoma being loaded into an ambulance and accompanied by Ms Joke, he can’t help but accept that a part of him is looking forward to whenever he’ll get to interact with Monoma again.
Because of course he is.