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Shouta laughed suddenly, harshly and Hizashi had to catch him from falling over with the force of it.
“Pretty stupid of them to out you as a spy, then tell you to do something that would have been monumentally easier if you hadn’t been outed.”
He was rambling slightly but didn’t care so long as Hizashi kept holding him. It had been weeks since someone touched him kindly and it simultaneously comforted him and set him on edge.
He took the opportunity to nuzzle in closer to Hizashi, inhaling the raw scent of his hair without all the fancy products and the leather clouding it.
“I love you.”
“Sho…”
“I mean it. I’ve never said it enough and I-”
He was interrupted by the harsh chirp of Hizashi’s phone. (Not the usual music. Just a pre-set tone.) From the way he stiffened, it was probably important and/or terrifying.
With shaky hands, he pulled out the small flip-phone and skimmed the message. A sharp breath hitched in his throat and he began to tear up again.
“‘zashi? Hey, what's going on?”
Hizashi didn’t move, his hand still firmly clutching Shouta’s cuffed wrist before raising it to gently kiss his husband’s knuckles.
“I am damaged.”
“What? Why are you singing? I don’t-”
“Far too damaged.”
“Damnit Hizashi, just tell me. We can fix this. I won’t let you go.”
“But you’re not beyond repair.”
An old memory tickled the back of his mind. Back when Hizashi was obsessed with American musicals, he was constantly singing them and even used them to help tutor Shouta in English.
But what did this one mean?
“‘Zashi, I don’t remember this one. Please just talk to me.”
“Stick around here, make things better. ‘cause you beat me fair and square.”
Beat him?
“Hizashi I didn’t beat you, I’ve been in a villain’s cell for the past month.”
Instead of responding, Hizashi caught the loose end of the handcuffs and quickly attached them to a pipe jutting out of the alley wall.
“Hey!”
“Please stand back now.”
He started to back up despite Shouta desperately trying to hold him closer. Weeks of starvation and dehydration had degraded him to almost nothing. Thus, he couldn’t hold on.
“Little further,” Hizashi murmured as he pulled away completely.
“Don’t know what this thing ’ill do.”
From his pocket, he pulled out what almost looked like a blank epi-pen.
Shouta suddenly remembered the song.
“Don't you fucking dare!” He screamed as loud as he could as he tried to jerk forward, only to succeed in nearly tearing his arm out of its socket. “Please, Hizashi!”
“Hope you miss me.”
“Hizashi!”
“Wish you’d kiss me.”
“Let me out of the cuffs then!”
“Then you’d know I worship you~”
Shouta just hiccupped through a sob as Hizashi put the syringe to his neck, smiling through the tears and the lyrics lamenting his own death.
“I’ll trade my life for your’s.”
“You don’t have to!” Shouta shrieked, managing to halt Hizashi mid-breath. “Before I got kidnapped I told Nezu everything! Their promise to take away your ‘cursed’ quirk. The lies. The blackmail. Everything! All fifteen years of it! He still wants to help you. We all do. Just let us help you.”
Hizashi stared at him for a second, still in shock before smiling sadly.
Quickly, he stepped forward just far enough forward to kiss Shouta once on the lips before backing away.
“No, please.”
“Once I disappear.”
“Wait, hold on!”
Shouta didn’t even realize he had slipped into Veronica’s part. The words coming out spoken instead of sung.
“Clean up the mess down here~”
“Not this way!”
Silently, Hizashi brings out a pretty standard hero-alert tracking remote and presses the emergency button.
“Our love is God.”
He tosses the remote to Shouta who doesn’t even bother catching it.
“Our love is God.”
“No!”
“Our love is God~"
He pauses, staring at Shouta, waiting for him to finish the song but the man can’t bring himself to speak. It can’t end this way.
There’s a moment where he looks almost hurt but then he relaxes into a smile. The needle is once again raised against his neck as he mumbles the last line of the song.
“Say hi to God.”
He used his thumb to press the plunger down, the needle piercing the skin of his neck directly to the artery.
For one suffocating moment of hope, nothing happens.
Then slowly, Hizashi’s body relaxes as his eyes roll back into his head. He sways for a moment before collapsing into a crumpled heap of limbs.
His body convulses once, twice, then lays still.
Shouta can’t hear the other heroes arriving over the sounds of his own screams.