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山田, “Yamada”.
The name had always left Hizashi...disappointed. It was so common, so plain, so boring . It didn’t match his loud and exciting persona at all.
Secretly, selfishly , a small part of the reason he had become a hero was so that he could change his name to something with a bit more pop , a bit more flare . There must have been hundreds of people called “Yamada-sensei”, but “Mic-sensei”? Now that was cool . It was unique, it was fresh, it was exciting! Surely no one could forget a name like “Mic”!
He thought about his legal family name -or more just mentally bemoaned its boringness- as he snuggled up close to Shouta on their couch.
相澤, “Aizawa”.
Another pretty common name, but Hizashi felt like it fit Shouta fairly well. Or, at least, “Aizawa” fit Shouta better than “Yamada” fit Hizashi. Did it fit Hizashi, too? They couldn’t legally get married, sure, but it was still fun to imagine what it would be like to try on the surname of his partner.
“Hey, Babe?”
“Hm?”
“How does ‘Aizawa Hizashi’ sound? Good? Bad?”
Shouta turned from the (rather dull) movie they had been watching together on this, their one night off in a long time, and regarded Hizashi with some confusion. “Aiza… ” He began to repeat back until what Hizashi had said finally registered. “Oh.”
“Oh?” Hizashi echoed, his voice light with unvoiced laughter. “What does that mean? You don’t like it?”
“No, that’s -that’s not-” Shouta stopped his own stumbling with a sigh. The movie on the television screen switched to a day scene, and in the brighter light Hizashi was able to make out a faint blush on Shouta’s cheeks. “It sounds fine.”
“Fine?” Hizashi pushed himself up off of Shouta to face him more fully. “That’s all you have to say? That means you don’t really like it.” A playful pout came to his face. “I thought the two middle za ’s made it sound nice.”
“I said it sounds fine.”
“So there’s another reason you don’t like it?”
As Shouta’s eyes tried to escape Hizashi’s gaze, an unwelcome doubt lodged a piece of his heart into his throat. Maybe -Maybe even in a world where it was possible, Shouta didn’t want to get married, didn’t want to give Hizashi his name.
It was a ridiculous thought. They had given each other everything else (including, in a handful of particularly dire circumstances, their own blood for the other’s emergency transfusion), so what was a name? Hell, Hizashi had already given Shouta one: his hero name, “Eraserhead”. Shouta owed him this little fantasy!
“I…” Shouta’s voice snapped Hizashi out of his tangent thoughts and back into the moment. “I always thought that if we could get married, we’d just… combine the kanji of our family names. Come up with something new.”
Oh.
山澤, “Yamazawa”. Now that - that was a name with a little funky pizzaz thrown in! It wasn’t an unheard of last name, but it was certainly rarer than “Yamada”. And, sure, a “mountain swamp” was a somewhat depressing image, but the word really did roll right off the tongue when paired with their given names : Yamazawa Shouta and Yamaza Hizashi. Just thinking the names made Hizashi more impatient for something that couldn’t be!
Hizashi threw his arms around Shouta and smooched his stubbled cheek. “You’re a genius, babe! Yamazawa would sound great!”
Shouta eased his body back into Hizashi's. “Why are you so focused on the sound?”
“Becaaaaaaause! It’s important to have a name that rings so people remember it!” He snorted out a soft chuckle. “I guess you wouldn’t really understand, Mr. Underground Hero.”
Shouta rolled his eyes and pressed his forehead to Hizashi’s. “Well, I think the other option sounds a little better.”
“The other option?”
“Mhm.”
Now Hizashi regarded Shouta with confusion. “Why?”
A small smile turned up Shouta’s lips. “Sound it out, Hizashi.”
相田, “Aida”.
愛だ, “Ai da”, “It’s love”.
Oh.
It was love.
Oh, that was sweet. Stupidly so.
Hizashi loved it. He made sure Shouta knew how much he loved it, too.
Who could have guessed that the combination of their names could read as a homophone for love? Wasn’t that the sort of thing saved for fantasy stories? And to think, it was a combination that could only happen because Hizashi’s hated name had started out so plain in the first place.