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The sun was just starting to dip below the tree line, illuminating the UA grounds in crimson light as Shouta finally decided to call it quits for the night. He’d started to push his training time later and later into the night. His parents hadn’t seemed bothered or seemed to notice at all for that matter; he supposed even if they had noticed the change in his training habits, this was time he’d previously spent hanging out with Oboro so it was no less time at home than usual. Oboro, who was no longer with him because Shouta had failed to act with the necessary quickness. Shouta had vowed that would never be the case again, and his improvements in his hero courses furthered his dedication to train as much as possible during his time at UA.
Typically, he had the training grounds to himself in the evenings, especially as he moved further into the woods. He preferred it that way; no distractions, no one trying to socialize, just pure training. This evening, however, he spotted another figure moving through the trees making a beeline for the clearing he was using to train. Though he could still only see the form’s silhouette in the diminishing evening light he could tell they were moving with determination and purpose.
Hopefully looking for someone else, he thought. It took a while to find a spot I wouldn’t be found or stumbled on.
Unfortunately, as the shadow emerged from the tree line, it revealed itself to be Nemuri. Shouta considered briefly that she may have timed her entrance because the shadows and last rays of red light highlighting her face certainly emphasized her aggravated facial expression.
“You’re here awfully late, Kayama.” He said, opting to ignore her expression and begin packing up his things instead.
I’m really not in the mood for another ‘intervention’ about my ‘coping mechanisms,’ as though that’s anyone’s business.
“What’s your problem?” She shot her first question at him with such force that he paused. That had not been what he’d expected.
“I... I’m not sure what you’re talking about...”
“Is this what you’re doing now? You don’t have time for anyone else? Morning, you train until class. Lunch, you train. Evening, you train. Weekends, you train. Is that all you’re going to do? Fuck the rest of us, I guess we never get to see you?” Nemuri was yelling, almost frantically, hands gesturing wildly as though trying to find an outlet to release her anger and frustration.
Shouta felt anger build inside him in response, why was this so hard for everyone to understand? Why couldn’t everyone leave him be?
“Yes. This is what I’m doing now... I watched my friend die in front of me,” his hands were clenched at his side and he could feel tears welling in his eyes. He cursed his eyes for betraying his anger and his grief. “He died because I wasn’t ready, but that’s never going to happen again. I’m not going to watch anyone die when I could prevent it. I’m sorry you don’t like how I’m dealing with it but that’s not my problem!”
Shouta was yelling now. Tears still pricking his eyes he can feel his face start to heat up, grateful now that night had fallen, and she hopefully couldn’t see he red face.
“And I don’t see why you’re so upset, it’s not like we were hanging out all the time before anyway. Most of the time I’m spending here I would have spent with Shirakumo...”
“And Hizashi.”
“... What?”
Nemuri had gone completely still. She may have been largely obscured by the darkness of the moonless night, but he could feel her eyes boring into his.
“And Hizashi.” She repeated punctuating each word.
His blood ran cold. All at once, the darkness and the chill of the early spring night caught up to him as he considered how to respond. If he was being honest, he’d been avoiding Hizashi outside of class and their classroom interaction was a necessity based their seat proximity but he’d kept in short and polite. The reasons had been numerous and, in Shoutas mind, logical. One was that Shouta desperately wanted to avoid Hizashi trying to talk to him about how he was feeling or coping. Shouta knew what he needed and wanted to do; he needed to get better, he needed to train and improve and learn from his failure. He was tired of everyone telling him he should take a break and recover. It was his mind, his grief, he knew how to get better and no one could understand that better than him.
The second had been the obvious side effect of his new routine. Hizashi was a social person, if he’d been with Shouta training he’d certainly have wanted to talk and distract Shouta and steer him to some other more exciting activity. He couldn’t afford that.
The third was perhaps less logical and more emotional, how could he look his friend in the eye after having let their other close friend die?
Shouta wasn’t dumb, he knew she wanted to know exactly that, why was he avoiding Hizashi? Yet, under her intense gaze he felt unable to verbalize any of his reasons. He’d never been good at sharing what he felt and why. He could tell, however, she was not going to move or continue until he said something.
“He seems like he’s doing fine to me. He was back to being the social butterfly within a month, I’m sure he can find better people to spend time with. I don’t know why he’d want to hang out with me anyway.”
He could tell instantly that he’d said the wrong thing.
“Why can’t you two ever just talk...” she’d whispered it, but in the silence that had fallen over them she may as well have screamed it in his face.
“He’s not okay.” Her voice was measured, as though she was putting a great deal of effort into keeping it steady. “He’s not. Okay. I’m worried about him, and you should be too. I’m worried he’s going to close himself to everyone and I don’t know what it will take for him to open up again... you think he’s strong because he can run around smiling all the time pretending nothing is wrong, but he’s not. It’s the opposite. He doesn’t know how to share the burden. Somewhere along the way he learned to close his true feelings off and just show what he thinks the world wants from him. But it can’t work forever, somethings going to break someday...”
Shouta felt his limbs growing numb and he was unsure if it was the cold or the creeping dread inside him.
“.. how am I supposed to help him? How do you even know he wants to see me?”
“Fuck, Shouta, he doesn’t need you to be his therapist, he needs you to be his friend!”
“I doubt he even still wants to be my friend...”
Kayama‘s eyes locked on him once more... she regarded him carefully, her face changing from confusion to recognition.
“You think he blames you for Oboro...”
He averted his gaze, finding an interesting patch of grass to study.
Kayama sighed, running her hand through her hair.
“Listen... I can promise you two things. One, Hizashi absolutely does not believe that. Two, he definitely wants to see you... more like needs to see you... The rest of your feelings you need to work out together, I won’t be the middleman for everything.”
She closed the gap between them and placed her hands on either of his shoulders.
“Please, go talk to him... for both your sakes.”
Shouta turned his head back towards her, gaze still firmly planted on the ground. After a moment he looked up and gave her a nod.
Finally, she seemed to relax, she spun on her heel wrapping her arm around his shoulder, leading him back toward UA.
“Thank you. Now please, let’s get out of here before I freeze to death.”
Shouta had dragged out his post-training shower for as long as he could justify but finally, he found himself walking the familiar route to Hizashi’s house. He wished he could do something about the tightening knot in his stomach. Every train and bus station he passed he fought the urge to just break off his path and head home.
Soon, he found himself outside a familiar home. He felt the knot tighten once more as he noted that all the lights appeared to be on. It was nearly 830 pm and in the back of his mind he’d hoped they would all be out and he could justify leaving so as not to disturb the rest of the Yamada family. But, as he reminded himself, it was a Friday and no one in the home had work or school to worry about.
He stood outside their door for what felt like an eternity, staring at the pale grain of the wooden door. After a minute, he willed himself to ring the doorbell, still hoping that no one would answer. He was quickly greeted by the familiar face of Hizashi’s mother. Shouta tried not to flinch at her emphatic signing as he was ushered into the house. He felt the knot tighten; she seemed a little too relieved to see him.
Shouta realized that, lost in his introspection, he’d entirely failed to process what she’d been signing to him. Granted, she’d signed with such speed and enthusiasm he may have had a hard time fully following it even not lost in thought.
Sorry, I’m tired, would you mind again slower? He returned in slow, unsure signs. He’d picked up quite a bit if he’d say so himself; Hizashi always laughed and said he’d give Shouta credit for his technical signing but deduct points until he could add in appropriate facial expressions to make his JSL complete. Shouta would like to say his lack of expressiveness was his big hangup now but really he’d never been the language savant Hizashi had and he could feel the holes in his knowledge where what he’d learned had slipped away since he’d not had cause to practice signing over the last few months.
It’s okay! We’ve missed you! I hope you are doing well it’s been quite some time. Is Hizashi expecting you?
No. Is he here? Where is everyone? Now he was just stalling. He hoped his lack of expression wasn’t making him seem curt.
She gave him a curious look but her smile quickly returned and she resumed signing, My wife’s in America for work, always traveling! The girls are in the kitchen. Hizashi is upstairs in the room you can go up.
He could see Hizashi’s three older sisters peering down the hall curiously at them. The youngest two seemed happy enough to see him, the oldest was somewhere on the fence between uncertainty and disapproval. She’d always been a mama bear, even more so than her mothers. He averted his gaze from them and looked up the stairs.
He signed ok with a nod and made his way up the stairs. The hallway that connected most of the bedrooms was, as always, brightly lit, brightly colored, and adorned with more pictures, paintings, and knick-knacks then he thought any house in Japan probably had spread across its entirety. The only thing out of the ordinary was the silence. The Yamada's house was generally quieter than most homes since a majority of the communication was done via sign. However, this particular hallway was typically home to the sound of Hizashi blasting music at a just north of comfortable volume. Shouta often said he wished the other would be quieter, but in this moment he found he didn’t appreciate the others silence as much as he’d thought.
He gently knocked on the door he knew to belong to his friend. After some minor rustling behind the door it opened to a familiar face.
Hizashi looked... tired. Surprised to see Shouta, but more than anything tired. It was strange to see the blonde without any product or work in his hair, it was just held back by a simple head band. In general he was lacking his normal luster. Shouta wondered perhaps if Hizashi had looked this off at school and he had not noticed.
They stared at each other awkwardly for an eternal minute.
“... hey.” Shouta said dumbly.
Hizashi’s eyes widened and he made a vague erratic gesture in Shouta’s direction signaling him to wait. He ran back into his room, making a beeline to his hearing aids sitting out on the desk. Shouta made no move to follow him in, waiting awkwardly just outside the door wringing his hands. He’d been in this room a hundred times, but he couldn’t break through the feeling that he had no right to cross the threshold. A feeling that felt infinitely worse when Hizashi looked back in his direction seeming to have expected him to follow and been disappointed he had not. At least Shouta thought that it had looked like disappointment. He felt a little on edge about the ambiguity, normally Hizashi wore his heart on his sleeve and was one of the few people Shouta had no problem reading. Right now, the blonde’s expressions were subtle and vague, Shouta had a hard time making it out, especially over that big, fake smile Hizashi had just forced back onto his face.
“Haha sorry about that, what’s up? I wasn’t... expecting you...” Hizashi threw up some equally unconvincing finger guns to go with his wide grin. Shouta doubted this display would even be strong enough to convince their loosest acquaintances.
“I just wanted to see you... how you were doing that is...” Shouta hated how awkward it sounded, he wished he could communicate his feeling normally.
“How I’m...? Well I’m fine! Of course, I’m fine!”
Shouta averted his eyes and dropped his hands to his side clenching and unclenching them. God, he wished Nemuri was here. She had no problem expressing what she felt and what she thought others were feeling. He felt himself starting to get frustrated as he tried to figure out how he would get the other to open up. He had never considered that he’d be on this side of the conversation, normally it was Hizashi who was weaseling his way into Shouta’s thoughts.
“Are you ok? It’s not like you to drop by unplanned and started talking about feelings haha…”
“Please stop.”
Hizashi was taken aback. “Stop... what?”
Shouta looked back up to meet the other’s eyes.
“Please stop pretending you’re fine. I think I know you well enough to know a fake smile, or are you so done with me that’s all I get now.”
Hizashi’s expressing quickly changed from shock to anger, something Shouta has never been on the receiving end of from the blonde before.
“I’m done with you? I’m not the one who spends every waking hour running away from everyone to train in the woods! I can barely say two sentences to you before you run out of the classroom every day.” As he spoke, his volume increased to just above a normal volume and Shouta involuntarily flinched. Hizashi recoiled and mumbled and apology looking down at his feet.
Shouta was really wishing he hadn’t come.
“Look, I get that you don’t want to hang out with me anymore...” Fat tears had started spilling from Hizashi’s eyes, he desperately rubbed at them beneath his glasses. “Hearing my voice is probably just one more reminder of that building collapsing, even I can’t use my own quirk without the memory of it bringing down the building on Oboro replaying again and again.”
Ah. Shouta finally understood what Nemuri had meant. Hizashi didn’t blame Shouta for Oboro’s death, he thought that Shouta blamed him for it. He felt wretched, but he also felt like a massive weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He felt tears begin to run down his own face.
Finally, he crossed into the bedroom and wrapped his arms around Hizashi, who tensed in his arms. Shouta wasn’t big on physical contact, but he knew Hizashi was and he didn’t think he minded it so much if it was with Hizashi.
“I don’t think it’s your fault, Hizashi,” he mumbled onto the blonde’s chest. “I was afraid. Afraid of being too weak to save others... afraid that you would see that I was too weak to save Oboro...”
Hizashi choked on a sob and finally released the tension he was holding and returned Shouta’s embrace. He buried his face in Shouta’s hair.
Sniffling for a little while longer, Hizashi finally managed to compose himself.
“That’s pretty stupid.” He half laughed in a raspy voice.
Shouta snorted, “You’re pretty stupid.”
“Maybe so.”
Shouta finally pulled away and looked his friend in the face. “We are having basically our first emotionally sincere conversation in months and you quote a GIF at me?”
Hizashi starts laughing again, wiping the last tears from his face.
“Sooooo… does this mean we can go back to hanging out again? I miss you. At the very least can I come hang out with you while you train? I promise I’ll be quiet.”
“I don’t want that...”
Hizashi immediately looked like he was about to cry again and Shouta cursed himself for his lack of verbosity.
“I mean I don’t want you to be quiet... well I kind of do sometimes... but I don’t want you to be quiet unless you want too...”
“Awww Shouta! So soft! I can’t wait to distract you at training and peer pressure you into doing things that are actually fun!”
Shouta stifled a laugh, “I retain my ability to revoke your invitation.”
Hizashi pouted and threw a hand up to his heart and the other to his forehead, dramatically flinging himself onto the bed.
“I don’t think I can take the heartbreak!”
After a few overly exaggerated death throws and a few seconds of pretending to be deceased, Hizashi popped back up and looked at Shouta.
“So... do you wanna, like, spend the night? It’s getting pretty late and I feel like if you try and go home, you’ll just pass out under a train station bench like a salary man. Plus, we’ve got plenty of catching up to do. Well I’ve got lots to tell you, as you’ve done nothing but train like a dork, I imagine this is gonna be pretty one sided haha!”
Shouts rolled his eyes and dropped his bag on the floor. Sending a quick text to let his mother know he wasn’t coming back, he flopped face down on Hizashi’s bed.
“Wow you could have at least laid down on one side and not the middle; it’s like having a pet.” Hizashi laughed, aggressively throwing himself on the bed half on top of Shouta, who grumbled but didn’t move.
As Shouta listened to Hizashi ramble about the goings on at UA and the student drama, he felt lighter and more relaxed than he had in months. He wiggled his hand free from under Hizashi and draped his arm over his friend, blinding grabbing at one of those wildly gesticulating hands. Hizashi brought his hand down and allowed their fingers to intertwine, a thoughtless action which caused no pause in his exuberant gossiping.
Shouta allowed himself to starting drifting off to the sound of Hizashi’s rambling. Though he would never admit to her, as he lay there, he was incredibly grateful to Nemuri for coming to interrupt him that evening.