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Aizawa got enough of scolding children in his day to day, but he had to admit it was fun to occasionally turn the skill on his friends: Particularly when it was Nemuri, patron saint of enforced social bonding, who finally cheated on Thirsty Thursday.
They jumped on the chance to give her hell for it, but it 'simply couldn't be helped.' According to her hearts- and roses-laden text the morning of, it was her monthly 'appointment' with her masseuse friend of several years – a tiny, curvy heteromorph with four arms, a pheromone Quirk and a true pain kink, the only person Nemuri could really push the envelope with as a professional sadist – and with Finals on the rise she needed her relaxation. It was impressive that someone could get laid as reliably as she did, and so Aizawa sent her a rare high-five emoji in their group chat, too tired to pretend offense and glad she was finding time to take care of herself.
He and Mic dutifully carried the torch in her absence, but that was only the beginning of the night's surprises. As if her chair simply couldn't go empty, Toshinori stopped by out of the blue and joined them for a little while. Taking his customary glass of sparkling water, he served the very fine purpose of distracting and placating Mic with talk of the band they'd seen the previous weekend, conscientiously layering in absolution upon absolution regarding Hizashi's personal involvement in the disastrous night and freeing him from his guilt.
As the two talked, Aizawa could see his best friend finally relaxing and opening up after a week of writhing silently under his own self-hatred, so he ordered food and generally enjoyed the second-hand solitude. It was nice. He hadn't been expecting nice, the three of them sitting at a bar together, but nice was the only word for it.
He got in maybe an uninterrupted forty-five minutes of eating and nodding at appropriate times and decompressing when Toshinori politely begged off, citing grading to catch up on and wishing them well.
“Careful on the way home,” Aizawa said in low tones, glancing over at him as he rose from the bar. Toshinori's gaunt face instantly split in a smile, and he reached over and patted him genially on the shoulder, his big, hot hand lingering just a second too long for Aizawa not to consider taking his food and following.
Just a thought, of course. A silly, very tired thought.
“Of course, Aizawa-kun,” he answered humbly, giving Mic a small wave and retreating with his usual self-conscious slouch. Aizawa was already deep in his noodles again by the time the bar door shut and didn't even glance up when Mic deflated with a gusty sigh, slumping back in his seat.
“Oh man I'm so freakin' glad he's okay,” he said in a rush, rubbing at his temples like the weight of the world had been lifted from his mind.
“Told you he would be.”
He didn't press it. He'd already said his piece, after all, and didn't take nearly as much pleasure in being right as the world seemed to think.
“Well, yeah, but it's different to see it,” Mic whined, then poked at his food, suddenly and intensely pensive.
It generally wasn't good whenever his friend's thoughts were louder than his voice, but Aizawa couldn't do a thing but wait and eat, almost too tired to chew after the day he'd had.
“It's pretty cool,” Hizashi began after a little while, keeping his voice so soft that Aizawa had to look over. His best friend had a cockeyed little smile on his face as he tapped him gently on the shoulder with his fist. “After all these years, you still wow me. You didn't have to help him like that. Afterward, I mean.”
Aizawa grunted, definitely not thinking about how much he had wanted to follow Toshinori into the bedroom that night. He'd helped him, yes, and in the most responsible and respectful way possible. Namely, one that involved zero spooning.
Only proper, after how the man thought he was trying to strong-arm him into something just minutes previous. It was a little impressive that Toshinori climbed into bed with him a day or two later after Aizawa passed out post-session. He was resilient. And a good hugger, despite the boniness.
He shook the last thought out of his head the second it arrived, frowning.
“Yeah, well.”
It was a mark of their time together that such nonsense was a completely acceptable answer to Hizashi, who leaned close with a grin.
“You're a true hero, Eraser,” he cooed into his ear, in English, and Aizawa smacked him in the chest, growling something vaguely threatening and symbolically scooting his bowl away with a glare. The Voice Hero brightened, now tapping his chopsticks on the side of his plate in rhythm.
There he was. Good old 'Zashi – and it was only a split second before Aizawa regretted the return of his bubbly personal interrogator, who had a very bad habit of being far more observant than either he or anyone else realized.
“Kinda seems like you guys are getting better, huh?”
Aizawa glanced over at him, wary, and gave another grunt, but Mic wasn't really looking for feedback at the moment. So Aizawa stuffed his face with noodles and tried to ignore the deep, happy, expounding intake of breath to his left.
“Like, when All Might first came on staff, you were glaring daggers all the damn time and foundation of education for the children and culture of senseless self-sacrifice and blah blah, and now you get along! And 1-A looks great because of it! Even the kids' English homework looks better – didja know they said he helps them with it sometimes? He studied in America, y'know! Shinsou in particular has really leveled up. He nailed the last quiz. Like, can we get this man to tutor regularly or something? Wow! I mean, pretty unfeasible with the whole … time limit thing, and maybe a little boring for the Symbol of Peace, but talk about a guy of many talents.”
He was right about one thing. Aizawa bit his lip to keep from smirking, temporarily sidetracked by his most recent memories of “Yagi-san” being very talented in his general vicinity.
He would text him later. Not now, but later, and casually.
Wanna fuck around? Or maybe the classic hey come over. Toshinori clearly liked being invited: The older hero showed up at his door twice as flustered because of it, tugging at every part of himself and smiling at the floor. At the core of it, he liked feeling wanted and Aizawa was becoming an unexpected expert at wanting.
“And here you thought he was just a pretty face!” Mic continued adamantly at his side, completely unaware of exactly how pretty that face looked with the blue lights of his eyes flickering dreamily and his mouth parted just so, further distracting him.
“He's alright,” Aizawa admitted, if just to get his horny head back in the game.
And a game it was: He didn't like Yagi Toshinori. He hated All Might. He put up with but was beginning to understand them both and the scar that divided the two, if only through the thinnest veneer of professional courtesy. That was the story, and it sounded good.
“Still can't teach worth a damn,” he added with a shrug, taking another mouthful of udon and slurping the broth noisily, as if to discourage further conversation.
“That takes time, Eraser!” Mic sighed, loudly enough to rattle the glasses on the bar, like he was an expert when he couldn't even follow through with giving kids detention because it meant he would have to stay after school to watch them and he was, quote, 'not about that life.' Asshole.
“Look at it on a personal level, dude. He's trying, and I think you're trying, too! He braved the oonsen theme park thingy with you! You guys are grading together all the time and he's met your demon of a cat! And I also saw you shotgun him with like zero hesitation which I didn't really register at the time because I was already pretty high? But now, thinking about it, I guess that's not really disgruntled coworker behavior? And again, I was super fucked up, but, this is crazy, I could have sworn I heard you call him Toshi, but that's just … I mean, that would be …”
And as Hizashi inevitably, painfully trailed off into silence, a malevolent chill zipped down Aizawa's spine, freezing his spoon halfway to his mouth.
Abruptly, a particular kind of effusive dread gushed up and clouded his seated body, freezing time around him: It was the ancient dread that all secret-keepers feel when they hear a vital thread being clipped free from their manicured story, and total unravelling becomes a matter of time instead of diligence. Aizawa swallowed his scalding soup. Hard.
Well fuck.
“So,” Mic repeated faintly, manicured brows knitting. He fell silent for an awful minute, staring into space before looking up at him with vibrating, neon uncertainty. “You guys are … good?”
Aizawa wanted to sigh, but also bash his head into the bar. He did neither. Had it come to this already?
In that moment, he had a decision to make, and it was surprisingly easy: He might as well. It would be better in the long run than Mic finding out on his own.
Mic was infinitely sensitive to things concerning secrecy – his secrecy, specifically. In a way, Aizawa knew he'd never forgiven him for his stint undercover, or more specifically the way he had disappeared overnight. He had to, to protect them all, but it was one of those pretty, functional facts that didn't dissipate the scars it had caused.
Deceptions, even logical ones, were a huge point of anxiety for his friend and, looking at it with the same logic, Mic could be trusted with the truth. There was an appreciable difference between Present Mic and Yamada Hizashi, after all.
Not that there was much to tell, really. But was everything good?
“Well,” Aizawa said through another mouthful of noodles, pretending to think. He shrugged. “We're fucking.”
“WHAT?!”
“Clarification. We're fucking around. He's old-fashioned,” he said, taking another slurping mouthful, leaning back to open his mouth and let the steam escape, puffing softly. Hizashi just stared at him with his own mouth open and empty, painfully aghast.
“That's funny. You're joking. That was a joke,” he said with a high-pitched, loopy giggle, then his expression abruptly blanked into sheer panic, wide eyes pinned on his knees. “A whimsical and well-timed joke. Not your usual nihilistic conversation-closer. You're not joking. You're telling the truth.”
It was funny, getting to see Mic's thoughts evolving in real time as he worked through it all. Maybe it was a little rude to drop it on him like that, but he was also rude to ask. Sort of. Whatever.
“How long?” Hizashi yell-whispered, his knuckles white on the bar. He looked ready to climb onto his barstool and bodyslam him for the info.
“Jumping straight to the important information, as always,” Aizawa muttered into his beer, and then, with a smirk, just because he knew Hizashi wouldn't take him up on it: “Inches or centimeters?”
“Oh no!” Hizashi yelped, and then predictably he laughed. No, he threw his head back and guffawed, absolutely tickled, because his best friend was a nine-year-old boy and Aizawa knew exactly how to turn that to his advantage. At least it took the edge off his panic and loosened him up a little.
“Dude, why didn't you tell me?” Hizashi eked out when he could breathe, giggling and wiping at his eyes. All Might's daddy dick, indeed.
“Maybe because you're the school announcer,” Aizawa grumbled. “And I didn't want this announced.”
“But –! I'm your best friend, your lead guitarist, your number one!”
Hizashi's voice inevitably skyrocketed and he lapsed into nasal English as he was so fond of doing when thrilled or horrified.
“Your unexpected friendship with me brings optimism and intrigue to your otherwise gloomy character!”
“You're too much,” Aizawa muttered, rolling his eyes without bothering to ask what half of those words meant. He hunkered down into his capture weapon and his beer. “I didn't tell you because there's nothing to tell.”
“Uh, nothing?” Mic squawked, hands out. “This is not nothing, this is All Might! All Might!”
“Not All Might,” Aizawa snapped, immediately scanning the bar to see if anyone looked up at the shout or the name. No, they might as well have been a couple of hero fanboys at a bar, which made him feel a little queasy, considering. His frown deepened. “Toshinori.”
The instant he said it, he knew he'd made a mistake.
He should have stuck with his surname, to be certain – the little intimidation ploy he'd begun, using his given name so rudely and without asking permission to demonstrate his utter lack of respect for him, had morphed into habit, and Mic didn't miss it. Aizawa furtively rearranged the coils of his capture weapon to hide any flushing, if he was flushing, as Hizashi stared at him without shame.
He could almost hear his best friend's hyper-intelligent mind ripping through the new information and contorting to fit it into the schema of their daily lives, and worse, the seedy underbelly of everything he hadn't been told.
“Are you seriously on a first name basis with the Symbol of Peace?” Hizashi asked at length, hushed.
“I guess.”
They sat like that for a moment or two, each reassessing their personal resources and beginning to cope, which included some purposeful alcohol gulping.
“I thought you didn't care for ... that hero,” Mic tried again, hesitantly, not looking at him. He was proceeding with caution and trying to make things fit with the story he'd been told. Aizawa huffed, trying to ignore his own whiplash as he thought about it.
“I don't like that buffoon, it's true.”
All Might was an incredible hero in action, his strategy and power impeccable. He was a genius. Aizawa couldn't regret what the other hero had done, or stood for, as there was no one like him and it was no exaggeration to say he had changed the world. In the staff room, however, before he dropped the boisterous, flashy act ... Aizawa almost sighed from the migraine of a memory. It was just a radically ill fit, and Aizawa's first priority was the student body, which cornered him into a defensive, resentful position directly at odds with the man whom everybody was honor-bound to love.
It grated. Of course it grated, especially when he saw the Number One Hero's reckless attitude as a threat to the long-term survival of his students. By the time Toshinori lost it in his kitchen at the beginning of all this, he had been ready to do much more than kick him to the ground. Aizawa almost cringed at the thought and the selfishness behind it, knowing what he did now.
“There is an entirely different man underneath that thick skin,” he said quietly, remembering the graphic blood spatter on his linoleum floor and the wet, snarling sound of Toshinori's coughs as he struggled against his capture weapon. It was the first time Aizawa had realized something was truly torn inside of the older hero, and maybe he was going through something painful that deserved respect, or at least space.
He wondered if there were still shards of that mug underneath his cabinets or if Himawari had scouted them out for toys. It would be a fitting transmutation, he thought, swilling his glass in his hand.
“Different how?” came Mic's voice again, still cautious, maybe because he was staring into nothingness like a dumbass. Aizawa shrugged and drained the last of his beer, setting the glass onto the scratched-up bar.
“Buy me another drink and maybe I'll tell you.”
Mic obliged with a raise of his hand, signaling the bartender, but it was just to buy time.
Aizawa didn't intend to offer anything of substance regarding the gap between the boisterous, primary-colored symbol and the quiet frizzy-haired specter that floated into the staff room because he wasn't comfortable with those lines of separation, either. He didn't really know where to draw them anymore, but he was beginning to recognize when Toshinori was being himself and when he was being All Might, or even when one was eclipsing and draining the other, and that was enough for now.
In the silence, Mic pushed a freshly-poured beer toward him and tried again.
“How did it happen?”
Aizawa shrugged again.
“It just did.”
It was another mark of their history that his best friend accepted it with a nod. Things simply happened to him – much as Hizashi himself had “happened” to him in the first semester of Hero Academy, pursuant to an obsession with a certain band, and here they were so many years later. His “number one.” Unexpected, yet oddly perfect.
Anyone who knew Aizawa knew that he didn't tolerate anyone. He may not get excited and jump around like a fool when they entered the room, but he also didn't put up with anything he didn't explicitly want and didn't hesitate on formalities regarding leaving people in the dust.
“Wait!” Mic squawked suddenly, sitting upright and snapping his fingers. “What happened to your other guy?! The boy-toy? Shou-chan, you scamp!”
Aizawa just looked at him. And kept looking, brows raised, until Hizashi's face blanked again.
“Oh,” he warbled faintly, cheeks coloring. “Oh. Um. Well. Wow.”
Aizawa laughed under his breath as Mic clearly struggled to regroup and do the math, as someone for whom all sex was emotional sex. Aizawa let him take all the time he needed and worked on his free beer in the meantime.
“Ooooooh if you don't tell Nemuri soon she's gonna be mad,” Mic whispered at last, green eyes as big and round as saucers. Aizawa grimaced.
“She can wait,” he said, shooting him a look.
“I won't tell!” he yelped instantly, hands up. Aizawa held that look and narrowed his eyes, making sure Mic knew the level of violence that would greet him if he did. Mic hunched over the bar and rubbed at the back of his neck with a faint pout, rebooting.
“Wow. Huh, well. I didn't know he was gay. Or, uh bi, or whatever.” His fellow hero glanced over at him doubtfully, fingers drumming on the bar. “Or into you.”
It was a tricky thing.
All Might was a holdover from the last generation, before the persistent evolution of Quirks had firmly bent the last of Japan's conservative ideas of what was “natural” or biologically imperative. Regardless of if heroes could be seen with their same-sex or trans or morphologically asexual or intersex partners, or even interviewed for a casual Sunday feature, there was something so very national and traditional about All Might as a hero that he couldn't rightly be seen sweeping businessmen off with a kiss.
It was a tragic product of his profession and stature, true, but the man also didn't know what he liked because he'd never prioritized himself. Ever.
“I don't think even he knows what he is,” Aizawa said pensively, his glass motionless at his lips, “besides desperate.”
“Heyyyy now that's not very nice,” Mic protested, then cocked his head and frowned sharply. “To either of you!”
The truth about these kinds of things – touch starvation, self-denial, being a stranger to your wants and needs in order to burn your every resource at the altar of the common good – was rarely nice. Aizawa shrugged and drank. It was good beer. Better than the stuff at their last place, anyway.
“Is he ... How does it... I mean, which ...” Hizashi flipped through propositions like a revolving door, squinting and twirling his finger.
“He's fine the way he is,” Aizawa muttered, finding his voice low and a little reluctant for the first time that night. When Hizashi looked over at him, he just barely stuck a pinky out and imitated what Nemuri had said earlier in the year: “Tendons for days.”
“Ahhh, okay, okaaaaay,” Mic crowed softly, rubbing at his chin. He was beginning to understand, unfortunately, and the knowing smile borne of 15 years of friendship was quick to follow.
Aizawa grunted in non-response, fiddling with his drink and as close to self-conscious as he ever was.
Hizashi knew his preferences for slim men, wiry bodies and sharp features, and had watched him shrug off boy after boy through their time in UA without so much as a conversation, prioritizing studies and training and especially sleep with a shrug. After the initial awkward boys-vs-girls conversation, his best friend's enthusiasm and game-show vetting of potential romance candidates (usually to distract himself from his neurotic inability to pursue his own crushes, in Aizawa's reckoning) had done nothing to motivate him. He just couldn't be bothered.
But despite multiple villains' best efforts, he still had eyes, and Toshinori had surely caught his eye. With concern. Because he looked damn sick. So naturally, a few months later they were fuckbuddies.
Surely, in some alternate universe, it made perfect sense.
Aizawa tried not to tense as he waited for some kind of judgment from his best friend. Instead of commenting on his tastes or lack thereof, however, Hizashi just leaned back next to him, content with the epiphany and perhaps the first bit of sense he'd heard all night. Staring up at the ceiling, he crossed his legs and his faux leather pants creaked gently.
“Wow. To think, he was on every magazine when we were in school. Surreal.”
“Hm,” Aizawa agreed, unexpectedly somber as the gap between now and then rushed up to meet him for the first time in several thoughtless, highly enjoyable and insanely stressful months. Hizashi rubbed at the back of his neck with a short laugh, expression pinched.
“Dude. Do you remember when he came to UA for that conference and we skipped class to go see him? And ran so fast we nearly puked on his feet?”
“You skipped class and dragged me along.”
He had also been the only one struggling not to puke, which left Aizawa in the supremely uncomfortable situation of being the only one capable of speech or explanation while Hizashi heaved, bent double, for minutes straight in front of the golden hero, whose only crime had been walking in the hallway on the way to a legitimate engagement. He had just stared at All Might's feet, paralyzed, until Hizashi managed to catch his breath and screech a lifetime of admiration at the poor man.
When Aizawa looked back on it, he remembered a full, deep laugh. Red and white and black, and a floor-length cape, which wasn't so incredibly out of fashion then. Legs like tree trunks and an energy like the sun. It was more than his height, more than his fabled 200 kilos – he was just huge. In that memory, All Might took up the whole room without even trying.
The whole embarrassing ordeal ended up with a signature and a selfie that was still on Hizashi's wall at his apartment. Aizawa had escaped with a handshake and zero eye contact and nearly strangled Hizashi behind the gym the very next period for the embarrassment of it.
“What a rush,” Mic sighed, a thousand miles away. “It seemed like so much to live up to, even then. And that TV face! It was like he glowed.”
“Not much has changed.”
Hizashi gasped so quietly next to him that he didn't register it as a noise – until, that is, Aizawa realized what he had actually said.
“Shou-chaaaaaaan!” Mic screeched with villainous glee, super-powered voice tightening up to the point where the glasses rattled on the bar as his friend grabbed him by the shoulders and shook. Aizawa's bloodshot eyes twitched, clapping his hands over Hizashi's and digging his fingers in.
“Is he everything you dreamed? Big spoon or little spoon – gotta be big spoon, right? Am I right? Ooooooooooh has he shown you Texas Smash?!”
“Shut up,” he snarled, mortified. Hizashi only shook him harder, now babbling at a register that Aizawa's ears couldn't physically handle and panic flickered through his chest. What if somebody looked, or heard?
“Shut up, or –”
He couldn't even finish the threat before his hair flumed up and he erased as hard as he fucking could, sending his fellow hero's squeal cracking into silence. Mic clapped his hands over his mouth, wheezing, and Aizawa didn't regret it the tiniest bit as the ice water that always accompanied his Quirk surged through his veins with a vengeance.
“Calm down,” he ordered in a hiss, surveying the bar for any rubberneckers. A few, in the corner. A pointed finger, a hushed conversation.
Scalp prickling as his hair swayed dreamily above him, he ducked his head and tugged his scarf up. They might have to move locations again, this one might still be too close to campus. Damn, just when they'd found a place with decent food.
Beside him, Hizashi patted his throat with a piteous expression, looking properly contrite, and Aizawa released his Quirk, following it with a flat look just to drive the message home and head off any further fantasizing about him and the Symbol of Peace.
“It's not a dream, it's an agreement. It's working for now, we're both getting what we need out of it, and it's fun. I've got no concerns beyond that. When it stops working, we'll stop. We agreed.”
He waited on a knife's edge for whatever snotty little comeback was headed his way, but Hizashi took a little longer to answer than he expected, even coughing dryly into his hand and taking a minute to sip on his drink.
Aizawa didn't use his Quirk on him very often and usually there was a kind of humorous, reassuring kickback of Hizashi trying to squirm back into his good graces – of feigning injury, huffing pitifully and motioning him closer, and so forth. More often than not, he leveraged it into a ritualized excuse to get physical affection.
Here, now, Mic just coughed and cleared his throat and when he finally spoke, it was a normal tone. Low, even.
“I mean ... buddy, it's nice to hear that you've got this whole thing planned out, but you know what they say about plans and mice, and a couple of guys ... or something like that.”
Aizawa stared at him. He was about to ask if it was a weird English expression when Hizashi shook his head, leaning on the bar to trace through the condensation with a finger.
“What I'm a little concerned about is, like ... Can you even do that with All Might? Even I'm a little besotted with the guy, he's got this gravity about him that turns your guts to goo and gets you caught up. He's inspiring. He's just good, and nice, and honest. Like, his secret Quirk is practically 'everybody loves me whether they want to or not'.”
Aizawa honestly didn't know what was more ridiculous – the idea of him falling for Toshinori, or Toshinori falling for him – but he smirked into his drink at that last part.
“Then my Quirk is perfectly suited.”
“Ughhhh Shouta come on,” Hizashi groaned with the first hint of true aggravation, slapping his hands on the bar and flicking his fingers to sign a dirty little something in his direction. Aizawa ignored it. “You're being an ass. You're not invincible. It's just common sense: Battleground or booty calls, you don't go toe to toe with All Might and –”
“Toshinori,” he said gratingly, doubling down because of the beer and the heat in his face, and Mic threw up his hands mid-sentence, apoplectic.
“Toshinori! See, you're making me worry, here!” he shouted, gesturing wildly. “Firstly, no, shut up, it's Yagi-san. Secondly, you're talking like you're friends! Like you know him! Are you even friends?”
“We're friendly,” Aizawa said after a moment, glancing away. Mic fell back so hard he nearly tipped his chair over, releasing a ground-shaking groan and throwing his arm over his face.
“Oh my fuck. I can't believe this. You are hanky-pankying with the freaking Symbol of Peace, who is way too nice for you and probably just needs a fucking hug, and simultaneously super ruining any chances of me getting him on my show for his exclusive retirement interview! Why does your dick always have to get in the way, dude?”
“Poor you,” Aizawa said with a bored curl of his lip.
He knew Toshinori would give him his retirement interview, no questions asked, and the extent to which Aizawa's dick had altered Hizashi's path in life could be counted on one hand. That one time he slept with his potential girlfriend's closeted brother (who then proceeded to sabotage their relationship like an asshole) was regrettable, yes, but that was a decade ago.
Just like Mic, to get histrionic and make it about him.
“Are you guys at least, yannoe ...”
Very, very reluctantly, Aizawa obliged the wheedling tone of voice and looked over at his friend. Hizashi squirmed for a second, then gulped. Audibly.
“Look, I gotta ask. Are you using protection and all?”
“No,” he replied, then shook his head when Mic immediately bristled. “You know for a fact that Recovery Girl's Quirk protects the recipient from all disease transmission for two weeks after. One of us is always camped out in her office in one way or another. There's literally no threat of it.”
Still, he could feel Mic staring at him. Drilling holes of high-school educator dismay through his skull, a thousand reprimands on his tongue.
“We talked about it,” Aizawa said truthfully. Then, a little firmer, and through his teeth: “It's fine.”
And besides they weren't fucking, not yet, and Aizawa resented that extremely. He wanted the man to just throw him down and split his ass in two and cum in him, holding him down on the floor with nothing more than the girth of his cock and a hand in his hair, and the longer that it wasn't happening, the more desperately dirty and specific the fantasies got.
By the time Toshinori got the backbone to fuck him, he would probably need a costume and props to even get going. Damn. How long could he wait before asking again? What were the parameters of unacceptable desperation in fuckbuddy world? He was going to die.
“That's not ...” Mic frowned, clearly struggling with the semantics of the doubt he wanted to express. He took a deep breath and squinted up at the ceiling. “I dunno, man, you said he's old fashioned. Don't you think you might be … communicating something particular by going bare with him? It's an intimacy thing. Are you monogamous or what?”
“We're both too tired to go out and fuck other people, if that's what you mean,” Aizawa said dangerously, then snorted, curling his lip again. “Don't use that word.”
“I'm gonna use that word if that's what fits,” Mic countered, unusually stern. He puffed up and started three different equally outraged sentences with a cracking voice before leaning forward and signing in the space between them, clearly distressed:
“Eraser, are you hearing yourself?”
Aizawa grunted dismissively, and for once in many years Hizashi didn't look at all satisfied with his usual non-answer. The underground hero felt a prickle of mild alarm and instantly clamped it down, along with any notion that Hizashi might actually be talking sense and he should listen.
The switch to signing, in fact, mandated that he had to listen, because it meant Hizashi was upset or otherwise overstimulated and that just wasn't good. Bracing himself, Aizawa turned and faced him.
“I just wanna say something.” Hizashi tilted his head, still impressively mean-mugging him. Aizawa wasn't sure he'd held a scowl this long his entire life. “You gonna let me say something?”
Aizawa frowned, undeniably defensive, but his own silence was answer enough – refusing Hizashi's so-called counsel would be its own kind of indictment of the situation, so he tried to play into the language shift instead. He flicked his hand: saying, in his unofficial vernacular, go on.
“I don't know if it's just because we're getting old or if it's just All Might, but I'm catching some serious heaviness between you two. Just the way you're talking about him … I dunno. Say what you will – this doesn't seem like fuckbuddies to me,” he finished, shaking his head emphatically amid the soft slap of his fingers and palms on leather.
“And you would know?” Aizawa asked aloud, dryly – okay, he could admit it, bitterly and immaturely.
Hizashi had never had a fuckbuddy in his entire existence, but his best friend didn't rise to the jab about his lack of a sex life. He didn't rise at all, in fact, but kept staring him down, and that alone was a little alarming. More alarming.
“I know what your version looks like,” Hizashi answered, gestures heavy and cutting with frustration. “Over and over again, and for years. And this isn't it.”
Is it so impossible that I like someone that I'm fucking?
Aizawa didn't have anything to say to that, so he just took a drink, hand clawed around the glass. Abruptly, he wished he was a thousand times drunker, and also that he'd never left the house that night.
Hizashi eyeballed him over his stupid vintage glasses, accusing gaze burning into the side of his face for what seemed like forever before sighing and leaning on the bar again. Then he cleared his throat and spoke in horrible monotone, like he was reciting a disclaimer:
“Look, Shou. Fuck, I'm not … judging you, and I'm not trying to say I know how you're feeling, or even what you're looking for with this. You're smart, and more importantly, you're people-smart. You're responsible. You've checked every box for something like this and I get how it can – or could – work. You talked with him, you have a plan if things start to go sideways, and you know the rules on dating faculty.”
“We're not dating,” Aizawa said shortly, only barely resisting adding the necessary expletive.
“You're not dating,” Hizashi repeated in a tone that would be best used to calm a psychotic bomber, one hand raised. Then he sighed again, visibly crumpling in his seat and picking at the last of the paint on his nails.
“I'm with you as long as you're happy – or, you know, less grumpy than usual. Maybe remember that everyone isn't as logical as you, and you've gotta take that into consideration, okay? Sometimes shit happens, and promises are only as good as the circumstances that surround them. I like him, but I love you, and I want good things for both of you. Just, you know, make good choices while you can. That's all.”
There was something strange about the way Hizashi said it, like there were plenty of bad – or emotionally compromising – choices to be made, as well as a time limit where good choices were no longer possible. But he wasn't like that. It wasn't like that, in general.
It was just an arrangement. Aizawa had checked. He had double-checked, and yet was firmly ignoring the dangerous irony of ordering Toshinori to take him out to breakfast not four days prior when whatever lines they had were so thin already.
“I'm going home,” he said, his only real answer to all of this. As he gathered his bag a little more roughly than necessary, Mic made a piercing whining noise. The Voice Hero leaned back out of his chair with his arms flopping at his sides, pouting and noodley, like Aizawa's impending exit had sucked all the strength from his body.
“Heyyyyyyy I miss you! Finals are coming and I never get to see you. Can we do this again but without the arguing or the terrible private life reveal?” Mic called after him as he left, profoundly pathetic.
Aizawa stopped mid-step and turned to look over his shoulder, smiling just a little. Relenting, and breathing a little easier for it.
He hated being mad at Hizashi. It felt like frostbite on his heart and he couldn't let it sit. Worse still was Hizashi being mad at him, but it seemed his friend was willing to tolerate him and his grievous bullshit for at least one day more.
A fucking miracle.
“Yeah. I'll be at your show tomorrow.”
“You will?! Oh my god, yeah!” Brightening instantly, Mic flashed him a thumbs up and tapped his glasses down his nose to wink at him. “I like you when you get fucked! Carry on, my man, and we'll see you dark and early tomorrow! You're awesome, I love you, bring snacks!”
Olive branch extended, Aizawa rolled his eyes and turned to leave before any chaos or last minute questions could follow, but was unable to resist signing fuck you almost pensively under his chin as he escaped.
He breathed in deeply when the door of the bar shut behind him, drunkenly aware of the weight of his bag cutting a stripe into his shoulder and the distant sound of cars. The evening was warm and still, all conflict left inside, the only thing remaining a walk home. Aizawa exhaled sharply and lingered on the sidewalk, palming his phone in his pocket and staring out at the dark streets.
Of course he tried to shrug off what Mic had said, but it itched at him. He was well-known for jumping ship as soon as he scented emotional attachment, something his friends lambasted him for on a daily basis when they weren't extolling his famously shitty taste in men. That's what made it all the more ridiculous.
He wasn't going to fall in love (love?) and screw up his job, All Might or no. Laughable. Mic was just looking for something to lecture him about, because they hadn't hung out lately. Clingy bastard.
Aizawa started walking.
A few quiet streets in, it was strange to realize that he didn't like walking home alone as much as he used to. Or maybe, with the course load increasing as the semester drew to a close, he dreaded the paper pile back home. Probable. He wondered, with an idle drunkenness, what Toshinori was up to, but froze with his phone half out of his pocket.
Probably nothing. Definitely nothing, because he was supposed to be grading, too.
Or sleeping, like he should be.
Maybe more annoyed to realize he'd stopped walking in order to think about such things, Aizawa defiantly turned his phone off, shoved it back in his pocket and set off anew in the direction of his house, grumbling to himself.
Sleep was what he needed, and now, and it required no assistance from fuckbuddies.
While that was true, it wasn't really about requirements anymore: His blurry brain helpfully reminded him that sleeping could be better with Toshinori. If the other hero truly was doing nothing, there was no actual reason why they couldn't be sleeping the best sleep together. And on that bed. That fucking decadent western-style sponge cake of a bed.
With just a phone call, a word, the two of them could be warm and bundled and tangled in arms and legs, all easy breathing and comforting pressure that kept nightmares at bay: The kind of somnolent ecstasy that left Aizawa staggering to school in a daze and smiling at nothing.
They were fucking (around), so was actually sleeping together really all that unthinkable in the scheme of things if it benefitted both of them? Wasn't that part of the deal, or just the deal itself? Why was he overthinking this?
Aizawa made it halfway home before he booted up his phone, opened his texts, and realized he might have a bit of a problem that he would absolutely deal with when he was fully sober again. Right? Right. His thumb hovered above the keypad and he heard himself swallow, head spinning from something far more potent than beer.
Across campus, Toshinori's phone lit up on his nightstand (you awake?), but even with the extended hours it was still just an arrangement – the same way Mic was just stupid, even if he was technically a genius.