Chapter Text
If it had said “We need to talk” or “I need to talk to you”, Shota might have ignored the text. But the word ‘want’ was a clear olive branch and maybe more than Shota deserved. The location was familiar – Shota walked through the forest of the training ground, where Hizashi had gone up against Jiro and Koda. Spotting Hizashi wasn’t hard. Even out of costume and missing his speaker, the man was naturally conspicuous.
Shouta looked up into tree where Hizashi had perched.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Hizashi, looking down on him, locked eyes. The tears he had held back at Nemuri’s were brimming over now, streaming down his face. He was looking into the tired of eyes the only man he could talk to about this but the only man who could silence him, the only person on Earth who could refuse to listen. The times Shota had used Erasure on him flashed through his mind – sometimes it had been funny, perfectly dry comedic timing. Other times, it was physically and emotionally suffocating.
Through the tears, Hizashi coughed out, “We haven’t sparred in a while, you know.”
Shota’s eyes widened, “You want to fight me?”
Hizashi nodded and offered no other explanation before screaming, letting his Quirk loose.
Shota covered his ears. He had come without his capture weapon, not really expecting a fight. But, Hizashi was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, his directional speaker absent. So it wasn’t an earnest fight, or at least, it wasn’t a fight about training. Hizashi’s attack was different too. He typically fought with elongated “YEEEEAAAAAAAsss” and catchphrases or taunts. This barrage of sound that shook the trees around them and shook the needles off the pine trees was wordless, a primal nose. Sheer expression of pain. Hizashi was screaming through his sobs.
Shota looked up, hands still firmly clasped over his ears, thankful for the lack of speaker. Hizashi had moved since he started his first wail, but he was easy to find again. Balancing carefully on a study branch and leaning one hand against the trunk of the tree to steady himself, Hizashi took a breath and let out another cry. It was cut off. His sobbing was reduced to a human level as Shota activated Erasure, his hair floating and now tangling in the pine needles and leaves still floating in Hizashi’s leftover wind.
“This is what you chose?” he shouted, stare steady, “To come out into the woods and scream at me?!”
He was furious and heartbroken, a weird mix of emotions that felt bitter and burning at the same time, like a kettle boiling over with bitter tea.
With Erasure activated, Hizashi’s voice was dramatically muted, but the unenhanced volume was still loud. The pitch was still sharp and painful. It still felt like it reverberated in Shota’s heart strings, plucking at his tendons and making all his nerve endings shiver.
Hizashi looked at him right in the eyes, daring him to blink, and started with a volume that was loud on anybody else but meek on Present Mic, “You’re the only one I can talk to about him! You’re the only one!” he gasped, “And you’re the only person in the world who can choose to not listen to me!”
He was still sobbing as he pushed off the branch, legs like tightly wound springs, and jumped at Shota. He connected, fist to Shouta’s chest and other hand to his shoulder, pushing them both down on the ground. The impact forced Shouta to blink. Hizashi had pinned him down and the tears streaming down Hizashi’s face were falling onto Shouta, into his eyes and across his cheeks. He blinked them away as his own tears start to well up.
“You can push me away, Shouta,” Hizashi was loud again, voice cracking through his crying, “But you’re going to have to actually push, and mean it. You’re going to have to fight me off.” He lifted Shota’s pinned wrists up and inch and slammed them back into the damp, cold Earth. It might have hurt on concrete or the gym floor, but here it just felt like a weak expression of Hizashi’s frustration. Hizashi’s words gave way to more wordless sobbing as he closed his own eyes and cried over his pinned friend, muscles still tensed for retaliation.
And then, Shouta stretched his fingers around to Hizashi’s wrist where he was pinning him and tapped three times. A tap out. Their tap out since high school, recognizable through the mud and cold and emotions from years of sparring together. Shouta had surrendered, already, barely a fight.
Hizashi collapsed on top of him, pressing Shota’s back deeper into the mud. Hizashi cried, laying on top of him like a dead weight that Shouta found strangely comforting. He hadn’t been this grounded since visiting Tartarus – but now, pressed into the Earth, aware off the dampness and mud and smell of rain, listening to the noise of Hizashi crying, a sick siren song that tethered him to the moment, he felt alive again, less floaty, human and flesh and centered. Where Hizashi’s right hand had gone slack, giving up on keeping him pinned, Shota weaved his own fingers into his friend and squeezed, and waited for Hizashi to cry himself out while he looked towards the sky, through the cover of branches, watching the stars shine through the darkening night.