Work Text:
This story is inspired by Flares by The Script and Somewhere Only We Know by Keane :)
Enjoy and take care!!
Hitoshi knows a panic attack when he sees one, knows when the bags under someone’s eyes are caused by nightmares or insomnia, knows when shaking hands are caused by anxiety or nervousness, knows when he’ll have sleepless nights and hazy mornings.
Hitoshi knows when tea can help and when coffee will add fuel to the fire, knows when music will grant him peace or grate on his nerves, knows when a classmate staring at a wall is a normal occurrence right after math class or when someone on the couch groans sounding half-dead out of boredom. Hitoshi learned to read these things – he had to. He had to dedicate half his time to observing people – he had to work with what he had when his quirk settled in. If he wanted to be a hero, he had to figure out a way to make someone talk, especially when everyone pretended that he was invisible.
That’s why when he woke up the Saturday morning after Aizawa-sensei told him what he’d been dreaming to hear his entire life feeling sluggish and heavy and tired, he knew then that his mind was his enemy. And for someone with a mental quirk, wasn’t that ironic? And wasn’t it just a heavy pain in the ass to sleep so happy and thrilled that finally, finally, he had a chance at being a hero and he wakes up a couple of hours after just feeling like someone spiked his coffee with salt?
He laid in bed with unblinking eyes and wondered if anything was worth getting up for at… what, 2:47 in the morning? Really, he would try to fall asleep if he could, but with the way the heaviness was settling on his chest, sleeping will only he give him nightmares, so he does the next best thing he could do at the moment – he packs.
Aizawa-sensei told him that he would be moving in with Class 1-A sometime tomorrow, and he would rather not rush it with saying goodbye to his friends in 1-C. And isn’t that another funny thought? Him, making friends, after explicitly saying that he isn’t here to make friends.
Hitoshi finished packing sometime around 4:58, not that he had much to pack, and still the heaviness on his chest wouldn’t leave. In fact, it spread to his arms, his shoulders, and every few minutes it feels as if he forgets how to breathe, as if every few minutes he has to kick his brain and remind it that it had a job to do so he wouldn’t have to try to catch his breath even in the moments that he sits still. He did it when he zipped the lock on his suitcase, when he walked down the stairs, when he entered the kitchen, when he poured his coffee on a thermos, and still found himself doing it when he was walking behind the dormitories, purple jacket with one hand and his coffee in another.
Hitoshi walks aimlessly – or, more accurately, he walks according to muscle memory. He found the place by accident, during one of the first few training sessions he had with Aizawa-sensei as he looked for the gym the man had mentioned to him a week after the Sports Festival. As big as UA was, you would expect to find just about anything, including a mini forest with a man-made waterfall in it. He looked for doors, of course, or at least any sign that the place was another training ground he had witlessly walked in to but a thirty-minute around the perimeter told him that it was exactly what it was, whatever it was.
And this was Hitoshi’s safe space – a little clearing with dozens of trees surrounding it, hidden behind massive gym structures, with a little waterfall behind it. And he swears, if he just knows where to look, there should a little stream with fish, too.
But he’s never been here in the mornings.
He’s never seen the grass this green, nor heard the sound of water so loud yet soothing. And he’s never, ever, seen anyone else lying down in this clearing – especially not a hero student.
He steps on a twig before he can stop himself and faster than he can blink, Midoriya is suddenly in front of him, fist poised to strike, only stopping just an inch away from his face. He blinks. And Midoriya blinks back, as if just seeing him.
They stay like that for a minute until Midoriya flushes red and begins apologizing profusely.
He reminded Hitoshi of a strawberry.
“What are you doing here?” Hitoshi asks once settled, his back against a tree, and warm coffee in hand. He notes that Midoriya is wearing his running gear so most probably, Hitoshi assumes, that Midoriya is out for his morning jog.
“Aizawa-sensei said that I should try running when I want to think,” Midoriya says quietly as he sits next to him. “Or when I feel trapped.” And Hitoshi blinks again at that because whoa he did not ask for drama so early in the morning, he already has enough of his own.
“Trapped?” he asks against his better judgment. He ignores the way Midoriya’s shoulder tenses, ignores the way his smile freezes, ignores the way he turns away from him as if the grass by his red shoes were more interesting than Hitoshi. Maybe it was, and maybe he shouldn’t have asked. He ignores all of them because it is too damn early for this.
“I asked Aizawa-sensei if I could go to the roof and he told me to run instead, said that maybe a change of scenery would help me better.”
And wow, wasn’t that a whole can of worms Hitoshi didn’t want to lie in.
But it would make sense, he guesses. Midoriya’s quirk suddenly mutated on them in the joint training. It hurt him. It downright looked like it was ready to devour him – and Hitoshi suddenly felt afraid. He was afraid for the boy beside him, who smiled too big and grinned too wide. Hitoshi saw a lot of things he didn’t want to see, even before he encountered Midoriya in the Sports Festival. He saw the way his shoulders tensed each time someone drew near, saw the way he flinched when someone became too loud, heard the mumbling before he can pinpoint its source, and it wasn’t as if Hitoshi was watching him on purpose but it was so hard to not find his eyes being drawn to someone he can’t help but see parts of himself in – and before Hitoshi can put to use his brain to mouth filter, he asked the question that’s been bugging him ever since.
“What’s your deal, Midoriya?” And Midoriya blinks at him, surprised, as Hitoshi cuts him off from congratulating him. And he sees the shift in the boy’s eyes and he knows that he’s in for another long-ass round of apology and the weight on his chest is getting heavier and heavier and he doesn’t want to deal with any of that so before Midoriya can rain him a barrage of “I’m sorry” that he doesn’t particularly care about, he adds, “What’s a hero student like you so afraid of that you think everything you do is a mistake against the world?” and he hears it before it happens, the hitch on the other boys’ breath, and he feels like shit for even inciting that response from him and he –
“I’m quirkless,” Midoriya suddenly interjects and the world. stops. The static in his head stops. The pressing weight stops. Even his breath feels caught in his throat and he turns his eyes to look at Midoriya to see green eyes staring back at him and Hitoshi couldn’t comprehend just what exactly did he mean by that.
“What?” Because really. What. Because he could swear on Eraserhead’s training that Midoriya was, in fact, not quirkless. He’s in the Hero Course for crying out loud. And he has those green lightning things coming from his body whenever he uses his quirk and then just yesterday this black thing came out of him and how the hell was that not a quirk?
“I was, rather,” Midoriya says softly, much softer than he did when he made the first declaration. “My quirk didn’t come in until about a year ago.”
Oh.
Oh.
That’s what he meant.
And Hitoshi can’t help but feel like such an ass because he remembers what he said, remembers word per word what he told Midoriya just to get him to talk in the Sports Festival, remembers the burning anger he had on his chest and the jealousy and the hate that motivated his every move, all the wrong things that welled up inside him that it would overshadow his want to be a hero. More than anything, he wanted to prove them wrong – that he could be a hero – that he will be a hero – so whether it was spite or ambition, Hitoshi moved forward. One step at a time, two steps if he can manage, even though every time he does so it feels as if he’s taking five steps back.
“What would you know? You were blessed with a strong quirk with a path paved for you just because you got lucky while I have to fight for even just a chance to get in the ring.”
And wow.
Wow.
And he still can’t understand why Midoriya doesn’t hate him.
“You didn’t know,” Midoriya said, and when Hitoshi’s eyes focused on him, Midoriya gave him a sheepish smile and said, “you were mumbling.”
And Hitoshi can’t help but laugh at the irony of it all.
Because here was Midoriya, quirkless, and conveniently got a quirk over a year ago and then he’s suddenly in the hero course while Hitoshi got his quirk all his life and still he had to fight his way through and still he –
“Shinsou-kun? Shinsou-kun? Hey, hey! Breathe! You gotta breathe with me!”
And Hitoshi doesn’t know the why or the how but suddenly everything is too heavy and everything is too big and nothing makes sense and the anger is back and the envy is back and h couldn’t help but feel disgusted with himself because he knows he knows he knows that the hell he’s been through couldn’t possibly be compared to the hell Midoriya has been in because he’s heard stories of how very rarely do the quirkless reach the age of fifteen. He heard the stories of much people would call them useless and stains in society and how they should just drop dead. The world only ignored him and called him a villain, told him he would never amount to anything, but what did they tell Midoriya? What did they –
Something cold hits him on the face and for the second time that day, the world stops again.
He blinks.
Once.
Twice.
Until he sees Midoriya standing in front of him with his empty tumbler, water dripping from it, and his wide eyes looking both apologetic and concerned.
“You wouldn’t breathe,” Midoriya tells him and as quickly as it happened, Midoriya whips out a towel from nowhere and hands it to him, careful and quiet and gentle.
And they sit like that in silence, Midoriya staring at his hands, and Hitoshi drying himself off. But it was enough to calm him, to bring him back to the present, to silence his own thoughts, then –
“I didn’t mean to set you off.”
Hitoshi shakes his head at that, not trusting his voice to speak but he sighs because he knows he has to. “It’s not your fault,” he says. “I can’t fault you for something you can’t control.”
And if there was anyone who would understand, shouldn’t it be Hitoshi?
And if there was anyone who could understand him back, his fears and his doubts and his hesitation, wouldn’t it be Midoriya?
And Hitoshi remembers the heaviness on his chest, the one that sits on his shoulders, the occasional voice that would spout lies in his mind and he tries to shut them out as he strengthens his own resolve.
“Do you remember what I told you when you asked me why I wanted to be a hero?” Hitoshi begins and he watches Midoriya nod as the other boy looks at him again.
“’You can’t help what the heart longs for,’ right?” And he smiles – because Midoriya remembers – because someone actually paid attention to what he had to say.
And, well, if anyone were to know exactly what his heart longed for, wouldn’t Midoriya be a good place to start?