Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He’s glaring at a particularly distasteful selection of soup cans in the grocery store when somebody catches his eye. Not because he sticks out all that much, but because he does the complete opposite, and Aizawa Shouta knows somebody trying to make their presence smaller when he sees it.

The dark clothing makes it difficult to get a read, but Shouta’s keen observational aptitude isn’t notorious in the underground circles for nothing. It’s evident in the way that his shoulders are pinched around his neck like a puppet on strings; the way that he hugs himself into his hoodie, ragged and worn thin at the elbows like they'd been scuffed against the ground one too many times; that he wants to exist here entirely undetected, and it has his brain ticking.

It almost works, too. Amongst the sea of post-work patrons milling around the grocery store, nobody gives the child lingering before the flower stand so much as a second glance. A child, because he’s much too small to be anything else. A child that is entirely unremarkable in every way and yet there is something about him that, to Shouta, has him sticking out like a sore thumb.

“Sho?” The line crackles and Shouta wrinkles his nose, internally cursing the terrible signal strength on this street. It’s as if someone had taken TV static and crammed it down into the phone.

“I’m here,” he returns. “I think I’m losing you, Zashi. I’ll see you at home.”

“Ju-- ner-- see--”

That low, warbled buzzing suddenly fluctuates in volume, before the screen snaps to black like a whip being cracked. Startled, Shouta pulls the phone away from his ear. Never has it done this before -- not even when Hizashi had accidentally broken his previous phone with his quirk after laughing too hard at a cat video -- and his stomach throbs because something about this doesn’t feel right at all.

“‘Zashi?” he tries feebly. “Can you hear me?”

At the flower stand, the child finally chooses a bundle of pastel hydrangeas. He inspects them; strokes their bicoloured petals; twists and turns them in his palms, running the pads of his fingers over the rough ridges in their stems; considering them with meticulous methodicity, as if they have to be nothing short of perfect. In the next moment, so suddenly that it was as if a switch had been flipped, his head snaps in Shouta’s direction.

And then he disappears.

The phone screams and gets so hot that Shouta is forced to drop it. Apparently, his hadn’t been the only one that had spontaneously combusted, for there’s a crescendo of noise as everybody else in the vicinity does something similar, dphones and watches dropping to the floor like flies. Those that stoop to pick them up again wince and draw their hands away, the tips of their fingers singed by the surface temperature of their devices. The kid had slipped through the air and left a trail of electronic destruction in his wake.

His eyes flit to his feet. The screen hadn’t shattered upon hitting the floor, but it’s producing thin, curling wisps of smoke from its crevices, the insides smoldered beyond repair. The noxious smell of fish stinging his nose tells him that the electrical components are fried. It doesn’t bother him as much as it should, though, for only one coherent thought clarifies itself to him; “what the fuck?”

The hydrangeas are lying in the spot where the child had once been standing. Some of the soft pink petals had been ripped out, but the bundle is otherwise unscathed by the ordeal. Shouta picks them up and clutches their stems as if holding them will teleport him to wherever the Hell that kid had disappeared away to.

Definitely a quirk, but what that really means, Shouta has no idea. Is it teleportation or is it inducible invisibility? What kind of quirk lets somebody disappear off-the-cuff like that, while simultaneously frying every cellular device in the surrounding area? It probably doesn’t affect whatever he’s holding seeing as he’d left the flowers behind, so how did his clothes disappear with him? Alternatively, was leaving the flowers possibly intentional?

All of this and more cycles through Shouta’s mind as he wades through an ocean of weary onlookers to reach the checkout and pay for what he’s already got in his basket. The extent of their shopping list is in no way fully accounted for, but he’s got bigger fish to fry right now, and Hizashi has cooked more out of less before.

>><<

“I don’t follow,” Shouta deadpans.

“You know I trust you with everything in me, Eraser, but you shouldn’t meddle here.” Detective Tsukauchi Naomasa rarely looks as serious as he does now, and Shouta regrets telling him the location of that grocery store. “The perpetrator is the Commission’s problem. It’s nothing you should be concerning yourself over.”

“The Commission is… they’re manhunting a child?”

Something dark flashes across Tsukauchi’s face. “Stay out of it, Eraser,” he reiterates. “Please.”

>><<

It takes him  all of two minutes to disable the attacker. Shrouded amongst the shadows cast into the alleyway by the streetlights, he’s straddling a woman and whispering honeyed threats into the crook of her neck, and he barely has time to react before Shouta knocks him unconscious with a boot to his head. His skull makes a resounding crack as his steel toecap connects with his jaw and sends it into the concrete at a sickening velocity.

“Are you okay?” he murmurs to the woman as he pulls the zip ties taut around the criminal’s wrists. If the brute force he puts into it is unnecessary, well, nobody has to know. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

There are filthy scuffs in her grocery store uniform and ladders have been shredded in her tights where the material must have caught on the concrete. Shaky as she is, she appears otherwise unscathed. “He didn’t,” she confirms. She gazes at him unsteadily from where she’s propped herself up against the wall. “You-- you got here just before…”

And she just trails off, after that. With a decent idea of what she was going to say anyway, Shouta doesn’t push for elaboration; just shoves the criminal into the dirt with the heel of his boot and pulls out his phone. 

Only, there are glitches skipping across the screen, and he drops it immediately. “You again, huh?”

The woman blinks. “Uhh. Who?”

“Stay here. I’ll be back.” With a final, hefty kick to the side of his skull, Shouta ensures that the assailant is well and truly out of commission before he stomps around the corner, capture weapon poised, to get a look at the street.

It’s late enough that the city takes on the look of an old photograph, everything doused in familiar shades of grey, and yet Musutafu -- a city that never sleeps -- is alive with lights and music. Traffic from the main road rumbles a low hum and there is boisterious yelling from outside of a bar ringing against the walls. Footfalls knock through puddles and the passing chatter is unassuming, each bystander unaware of the gravity pinning him down. Charcoal eyes comb through the heads littering the pavement. No one is catching his eye.

And then he sees it -- the boy standing in the neon gaze of a convenience store’s flickering window sign, shoulders hunched against the bitter wind, ragged sneakers tapping impatiently as he stares out at the road.

Detective Tsukauchi be damned; there’s absolutely no way he’s letting the kid slip away from him this time. The innate feeling that something is very, very wrong with this child grips him and that is not something he tends to ignore. With a newfound determination, he adjusts his grasp on his capture weapon and wallows through the ocean of people milling about between them, his eyes glued to the boy with a feverish sort of ascertainment, as if losing sight of him for even a second gives him too large of an escape window.

“Hey, kid--”

And that’s all he manages to get out, because the very second that the boy is aware of his presence, he’s rotating on his heels and bolting. Nobody parts to let him through and yet he seems to slip through the crowd seamlessly nonetheless. 

There’s a commotion from somewhere behind him and Shouta just sighs as he watches the man he’d apprehended earlier stumble out of the alleyway with his hands still bound, bowling pathetically into the sea of people who pass by. Maybe he’ll get luckier next time.

>><<

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Shouta whines, letting himself flop bonelessly into the couch.

“I hate to say it, Sho, but I’m with the Detective on this one.” Hizashi, looking comfortable in his Present Mic hoodie and paint-stained sweatpants, offers his husband a slow, sympathetic blink through rectangular lenses. The coffee he palms smells faintly of caramel. “You should leave this to the Commission. You don’t know anything about this.”

“I know that they’re hunting down a child,” Shouta refutes, irritated that Hizashi isn’t levelling with him.

Voice an unwavering anchor, Hizashi doesn’t let up. “You don’t, though,” he points out.

“Zashi…”

“You need to consider everything that the Commission is, Sho. They’re just as much of a crime investigative organisation as they are the idiots who dole out the provisional hero licenses. As unethical as it sounds, they’ve been known to use kids in undercover work before. You might be messing up a lot of important stuff if you stick your nose in. Besides, Tsukauchi clearly knows what’s going on, right? You know Tsukauchi wouldn’t stand with the Commission if they were doing something really shady.” 

And the fundamental rift between daylight and underground heroes has never punched him harder. Hizashi clearly puts more faith in the Hero Public Safety Commission than Shouta does. Something about it -- an organisation created so as to maintain the balance of influence between heroes and regular members of society; something that sits above everybody else with their fists plunged in sheer, unrelenting, systematic power -- just feeds the roots of corruption at its very core, and it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

Call him paranoiac, sure, but Shouta is a seasoned underground hero who sees a lot of the dark, twisted turmoil that society hides under the grooves of modernity. Corruption can cast shadows across those cracks and he refuses to let himself become blindsided by it. He places the right to free-think atop a very tall pedestal.

Despite this, he’s aware that Hizashi has a point. The Commission does what they’re supposed to do and that isn’t something he likes to admit. They protect. They maintain balance. When it comes to the Commission, there’s always the possibility that interposing without knowing the whole story could put a lot of important hero work at risk. Trying to investigate just what is going on with the mysterious child in front of that flower stand is probably more trouble than it’s worth. Right?

… right?

“Promise me that you won’t, Sho,” Hizashi pushes, placing two firm hands on his shoulders. “Promise me that you’ll leave it alone.”

Running his tongue thoughtfully over his teeth, Shouta searches his husband’s face for any sign of-- well, anything that could explain the uncharacteristic chill in his voice. His eyes flit past him, to where Hitoshi is loitering in the kitchen, chewing slowly on a spoonful of rice and observing his parents with mild interest.

“Okay.”

Hizashi squints. “Sho.”

Shouta’s eyes soften and his cheeks blow out, and he inclines his head towards his doting husband with a candid, “okay. I promise.”

>><<

It’s two months later and Shouta knows he’s there before he even sees him.

The crackling communicator is an immediate tell. Reflexively, he tugs it out of his ear, abandoning it onto the concrete beside him. The phone had gotten extremely hot very fast the first time this happened and there is no way he wants that baking his brains.

From where he perches on a nondescript rooftop, charcoal eyes pick through every head weaving through the crowds below. Not that he’s sure of what he’s even looking for, because he isn’t; he’s never seen more of the kid other than his ratty hoodie and the approaching promise of the evening chill means that everybody else is donning something of the sort, too.

He’d wholeheartedly promised his husband that he wouldn’t meddle in the Commission’s business, but that day in the grocery store all that time ago sticks to the forefront of his mind like wet mud, and he can’t bring himself to forget the kid who had caught his eye trying to hide away from it. It almost makes him feel guilty before he remembers that this is a child, and even when it's not supposed to be anything to do with him, he has every right to worry when it comes to his endangerment. It's not only his job as an underground hero, but simultaneously his duty of care as a citizen.

The minutes roll by like the tide and he’s beginning to think that he’s missed his chance. With a dejected sigh, he straightens up, scooping up his capture weapon from where he'd left it lying just a few meters from his feet. Maybe it's just a coincidence; maybe his communicator is just feeling his age. They don't exactly last forever when they're under so much stress on the job, after all, and it's probably time he gets a new one fitted anyway.

It’s as he’s teetering on the edge of the rooftop in preparation to leap across to the next that he notices it; the subtle shift in the air; the soft scuffle of feet scattering loose gravel across the concrete behind him. He spins to face them with honed, instinctive reflexes, his capture weapon looming, hand itching for the dagger sheathed in his belt, and--

--the cap of an aluminum baseball bat is digging into his throat.

It’s ice-cold on his skin and that's what catches him off-guard. Fortunately, it isn't pressing hard enough to impair his breathing. His eyes slide down the barrel, across the ghostly hand gripping the handle, and finally to viridian eyes that stare him down with the intensity of a thousand suns. He’s angry -- very, very angry, and Shouta struggles to understand.

“I know they put you onto me,” the boy snarls. “Stop following me.”

Everything about him is dangerous and raw, like a caged animal putting up its final fight. He's standing his ground, though, with his chest heaving and hands quivering even as they're poised for defence, and it has hot bile crawling up Shouta's throat because fuck, that's the stance of someone who is well and truly cornered. Even when they're standing on the vast, empty space of the rooftop, the kid feels stuck.

“I’m not following--”

“You are!” The exclamation is thick with fear as it rips out of his throat. “They all are! All day, every day, everywhere! All of you never-- they-- they never--”

And he whines, then; a very real, shaky exhalation that exudes animalistic distress and terror. The steely resolve is beginning to fray at its edges. The baseball bat twitches where the cap presses into the flesh of his mandible. “Just--” He chokes on bated breath, like it’s a solid mass in his throat. “Just leave me alone. I-- I didn’t-- I wasn’t trying to find all of that.”

“Kid,” he tries, holding up his hands placatingly. “Kid, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit.”

There are a billion and one flaws in the kid’s defensive stance -- his feet are angled inefficiently; he’s inclined too close to his opposition and leaving himself wide open to an attack -- and Shouta knows that this could be over in seconds. There’s nothing stopping him from aiming a palm just below his chin, throwing his head back and pinching those nerves clustered at the top of his spine to send him sprawling across the concrete.

But he looks into the swirling inferno of those viridian eyes and does not see a two-bit criminal he needs to subdue. Right now, he is not faced with somebody inherently evil, but someone who wholeheartedly believes that they are fighting for their life, and that thought has dread skittering up his spine like a spider.

“I want to help you,” Shouta says gently.

“No,” the kid bites, “you want to kill me.”

And that's when Shouta's heart jumps into his throat, because something is very dangerously wrong here, and there is absolutely no doubt that it has something to do with the Commission. There's nothing villanous to him -- no, everything about this kid, from his cracking voice to his spindle-shanked frame swamped by ragged clothing, screams 'frightened, traumatised child who found out something he shouldn't have and is just trying to survive', and there's no way in Hell he's going to skim over this without doing his own digging.

Years of working with kids and adults alike has given Shouta the keen ability to read people by their body language, facial expressions and the subtle inclinations of their voice, but this kid, admittedly, is stumping him. Mistrust leeches off him like a bleeding wound and it’s very clear it’s terror that brings this anger, but there’s something else in his grinding teeth and wide, owlish eyes and Shouta struggles to place his finger on it.

“I-- I thought you-- you of all people…” The boy is blinking rapidly, shallow breaths wheezing through unhealthy lungs, and Shouta knows that he’s close to flagging. “I thought you’d understand.”

Understand what? Questions burn his tongue, but he doesn’t bend. Whatever delusion this kid is drowning in, a heart-to-heart on a rooftop isn’t going to trounce it. No -- what he needs more than anything in the world is some real help, and if that means roughing him up so as to get him to stand down, then so be it.

The kid sways dangerously, then, and Shouta immediately takes advantage of that. He clasps his hands around the barrel of the baseball bat and pushes it into his chest, sending him stumbling backwards across the loose gravel scattered on the concrete. The intention had been to put him onto the floor, but the kid had caught himself. “I don’t want to fight you,” he tries. “Just let me get you help. You need help.”

“You’re just like the others!” A burst of anger spurs the boy forward like an exploding hosepipe and Shouta barely has time to adjust his footing before the metal pipe is impelling him backwards again. Underneath the soft pools of moonlight splitting the clouds, Shouta can see him struggling to stand upright. “I didn’t mean-- I thought I could--”

It’s then that the kid clamps his jaw, exhaling frustration, and he shakes the baseball bat as if he were refamiliarizing himself with the weight in his palms. It’s an unconventional choice of weapon -- a wooden one would pack much more of a punch than something lightweight and hollow like the aluminum ones -- and the customary rubber gripping is missing, but Shouta doesn’t peg him as someone who had a particularly wide variety of options. It’s probably something he picked up from the street.

Shouta loops his capture weapon around his knuckle and sends it towards the bat in hopes of disarming his opponent, but he’s not fast enough; the boy stumbles out of the firing range, clearly aware of his intentions if the way he shields the bat with his body is any indicator. Viridian eyes flit around and Shouta can only will that he doesn’t pull off another disappearing act.

Maybe approaching this from a new angle will inspire cooperation. “Can we just talk, kid?” he says, maintaining a steady posture. “I can’t say I know what you’re talking about, but I want to understand. I can’t do that unless you talk to me.”

The boy’s lip curls into a snarl. Shouta can see he’s going to bolt -- he naturally brings the baseball bat closer to him and the balls of his high-top sneakers swivel on the gravel as he starts to change direction -- and doesn’t hesitate to utilise his capture weapon while he’s got that momentary upper hand.

The cloth snares his waist and the underground hero tightens it into place. With a scream so fearful that it pinches at Shouta’s heart, he tears at the binding with broken nails, thrashing around in an impotent attempt to free himself. It’s hard to watch, and Shouta has to remind himself that this is for the greater good.

“I’m sorry, kid,” he says. He really is.

But the boy doesn’t seem to care for any kind of feeble apology; just continues to writhe as Shouta reels the capture weapon back towards him, panting and groaning. The baseball bat makes an ugly grinding noise as hollow aluminium drags across the concrete.

His chin rolls against his chest and he starts to lose his fight. The grip he has on the baseball bat wavers finger by finger, as if he doesn’t have the strength to hold onto it properly anymore.  Their scuffle is well and truly finished, now, because even if Shouta were to risk releasing him, he isn’t sure that the boy would have the energy to go anywhere anyway.

Nevertheless, he isn’t stupid enough to underestimate even a child. Teaching has taught him that much. Shouta drops down onto his haunches to get a better look at the kid and sees bruised cheekbones and freckles smattering pale skin like constellations against an inky sky. Childish; so painfully childish, and it tugs at his heart. Tufts of dark hair stick out from underneath his hoodie and Shouta is about to pull it away from his face when he feels it; the subtle shift in the wind; the crack of something cutting the air; and he catches the baseball bat moments before it shatters his skull.

The kid’s eyes are open again and they’re angrier than ever.

“Nice try,” Shouta says, smirking good-naturedly, “but I’m afraid you’ll have to be faster than that.”

For but a moment, everything feels still. A slow, unsteady smile dimples the boy’s cheeks and creases the corners of his eyes. “Okay.”

Everything goes white, and Shouta is thrown into dangerous, swirling black.

Chapter Text

Shirakumo Izuku often contemplates destroying the thumbdrive hanging around his neck. it's barely as big as the palm of his hand; rectangular, black and entirely visually underwhelming considering the sheer weight of the information it contains. It carves a groove into the skin on his chest as he rolls over onto his stomach, trying to find a comfortable sleeping position that doesn't put so much strain on his bones; a near-impossible feat when your metaphorical mattress is, in fact, the floor.

It’s almost hysterical, really, how fragile it is. There’s nothing particularly special or enhanced about it; it’s just the same as every other thumbdrive out there. All it would take is a single strike with the heel of his shoe or a puny spark from his own fingertips so as to overheat it -- Hell, maybe if he slept on his stomach for too long, it would do the job, too -- and everything the Hero Public Safety Commission is putting him through would be as good as over.

That’s what he would like to think, anyway. Whether or not he gets rid of the thumbdrive, he still knows exactly what it holds, and the Commission knows that. Finding everything he did was an accident, really, and in the beginning he had no intentions other than the gratification of closure, but the deeper he burrowed, the more he realised he couldn’t let this sit and rot in silence, and they’re absolutely hellbent on getting to him before he gets anywhere with it.

The promise of the night kisses the sky, painting the jagged horizon in a brilliant crescendo of reds, pinks and purples, and the streetlamps finally shudder to life. Underneath the awning of a store on a long-abandoned backstreet, the light misses him, and with his hood bunched over his hair to conceal the lightning that crackles through it and his baseball bat behind him so the aluminium barrel doesn’t catch the setting sun, he’s practically invisible.

And, as he flops unceremoniously onto his back again, angling his head so he can gaze at the stream of people strolling back and forth on the bustling street barely fifty meters away from him, he realises that this is just the way he likes it. Being completely and utterly invisible is the best you can get when you’re being manhunted for harbouring dangerous government secrets, after all.

It takes a lot of meticulous precautions to be as imperceptible as Izuku is. He sticks to dark clothing so as to not draw unnecessary attention; he’s never static out of pure principle, constantly moving around and changing locations; he doesn't have any belongings other than what he can carry on himself. He'd owned a mobile phone and a laptop once upon a time, but he'd been forced to destroy it for the sake of his own safety. Not once since all of this started has he allowed himself to get close to another person. Anybody could be working with the Commission; he isn’t stupid enough to take that risk and let himself become trapped by the intricacies of personal relationships.

It means staying out of the way of trouble, too, although he's never been the type to intentionally seek it out in the first place. Where there is trouble, there are generally criminals lurking around to cause it. With criminals come the police, and the last thing he needs at any point is to get noticed by the police. They're predators on the hunt just as much as the government agents are.

He stays out of trouble, but it never fails to find him anyway, Izuku realises, because all he’s barely minutes away from dozing off when the distinct rhythm of rubber-soled boots thumping into concrete rushes towards him and something hits his leg hard.

The speed at which Izuku moves, then, is driven by nothing but pure instinct. He jerks onto his feet, skittering backwards to put more distance between himself and the assailant, his knuckles bone-white around the handle of his baseball bat. Lightning jumps from his fingertips and around it’s scuffed aluminum barrel; it skips and crackles dangerously like a firework ready to blow; and the natural glow it gives off provides enough visibility for him to slide his eyes up to see just who exactly is attacking him.

But there’s nobody there. When he looks up, he catches the delineation of a figure sprinting away from him, presumably in the direction opposite in which they came from. There are hand-shaped scuff marks in the grimy dirt on the concrete from where they must have stumbled on Izuku’s leg and caught themselves on the fall. Clearly, they want nothing to do with him. They were probably just jogging on the street and failed to notice him lying there before it was too late. He huffs, irritated that he was disturbed, and lowers his baseball bat.

It’s then that something else hits the air, something that has adrenaline pooling in his veins out of pure consternation; shouting, violent and angry in the way they volley out curses and threats as if it were a second language; steel-toe boots pounding against concrete; the approaching wail of a police car’s siren.

It’s difficult to see properly what with how this backstreet lacks functional lamps, but Izuku can just about make out the shapes of maybe four people running, outlined by the glaring red and blue of the police car now parked at the entrance of the road. Several torch beams hit the puddles and bounce off the walls. He can’t pick out which ones are the cops, but that doesn’t matter; at least one of them is, and that’s all he needs to know that he needs to get the fuck out of dodge.

Rotating on the heels of his feet, Izuku books it for the closest hiding spot that he’s aware of in the vicinity. He’d seen it when he’d been looking for the ideal place to sleep the stars away, but it had been just a bit too cramped and wet for him to sit or lie down comfortably in for a long enough period of time, so he’d just filed it away in the back of his mind in case of an emergency. It’s a little alleyway branching off the backstreet; probably twenty meters long and barely two meters wide, with old trash scattered on the floor here and there. At the end of it is a half-wall. He isn’t sure what’s on the other side of that, but it’s probably low enough for him to jump it, so it’ll have to do.

“Stop right there!”

Something squeezes Izuku's heart. His shoes skid on the wet, dirty concrete as he careens into the alleyway, and he throws himself into the shadows, crouching down right in the large puddle left by the rain that stretches all the way into the backstreet he’d come from. The lack of things to hide behind -- trashbags, metal skips, anything big enough to conceal him -- is glaring, and he prays to any God that will listen that sitting in the darkness and hiding the reflective surface of his baseball bat from the torch light is enough.

“You’re only making it harder for yourself!”

“Leave me alone, will you?”

That, Izuku thinks, is definitely the person that the cops are chasing. They don’t sound all that terrified; just irritated, as if being chased by the police is an annoying inconvenience rather than a genuinely dangerous situation; and he finds himself wondering idly if this is a common occurrence for them.

The footsteps come ever-closer to his place of hiding and Izuku hugs his own legs, his anxiety freezing him to the spot. It has hot bile curling in his stomach; something thick lodging in the back of his throat; and his breath naturally picks up so he can still inhale around it. Even then, he stays silent, ever-conscious of every tiny sound he makes with schooled discipline.

He can see the torch beams again. They bounce around on the giant puddle he’s sitting in and, panic pooling in the pit of his stomach, Izuku just shrinks further into the wall. This is it, he knows. This is it. They’re going to see him because he was too stupid to run further. They’re going to catch him and take him in to the Commission and they’re going to hurt him and punish him and-- and--

The sound of splashing water startles him, and when Izuku finally blinks the world back into focus, he realises that there’s somebody standing in the alleyway with him. Or, rather, they’re crouched down in the shadows barely five meters away from where he’s sitting, breathing heavily, a thick reptilian tail whipping around in the puddle underneath their feet. They’re so close -- close enough that, if he wanted to, he could lean forward and grab onto that tail with his whole hand -- and yet they don’t seem to be paying Izuku any mind at all. Maybe he hasn’t noticed him. Maybe he doesn’t care.

“Where’d he go?”

“Shit! Did we lose him?”

In a valiant effort to stay silent, Izuku hasn’t been intaking enough oxygen for far too long, and he’s forced to exhale heavily so as to relieve the unremitting tension curling in his lungs. At the same time, the person [lizard’s?] head whips around to face him, and he stares at Izuku with eyes so owlish and shocked that it was almost as if he were seeing a human being for the first time. “A kid?”

Shuddering torch beams and footsteps pace back and forth just outside of the alleyway. In the fleeting moments where the lights catch the puddle, Izuku can see the outline of a reptilian head and jagged claws decorating the end of each finger. And he is suddenly winded; he’s so overtaken by blind, frigid terror in that second that he’s entirely frozen on the spot, just staring emptily into slanted yellow eyes, heart trilling so violently that he’s certain that he could choke on it.

The guy must see something on his face, because he suddenly leans towards Izuku, though not without sparing a glance in the direction of the backstreet to where the officers are still loitering in the vicinity. He’s saying something in a voice so low and careful, but all Izuku can see is the way his shadow looms over him [they want to trap you! They want to kill you!]; the way his hands come towards him, threatening and dangerous [they’re going to take you away!]; the way he’s getting closer and closer, pinning him into the corner [run, run, runrunrunrunrun--]

Something cold touches his shoulder, then, and Izuku doesn’t even feel his own body moving as he plants his hands into the puddle underneath their feet and electrifies it with everything he has in him and more.

>><<

Hizashi rubs tiredly at his temples. “I just can’t believe he was electrocuted.”

This doctor in particular -- director of Musutafu General’s hero ward, Doctor Nishihara Kenji -- is not somebody they are new to. Today, apprehension twists his eyes as he regards Shouta, who impatiently shuffles under the weight of his stare. “He’s certainly lucky that whoever did this had adequate control of their quirk,” he says. “A higher voltage could have done some serious damage, seeing as it was delivered directly into the palm of his hand.”

The bandages are a stark white compared to the pallid blue of the sheets. Waking up in a hospital bed with absolutely no feeling in his arms was, admittedly, terrifying. It could have marked the end of his career as an underground hero there and then. He doesn't remember it, but Hizashi had informed him that, upon waking up and realising the gravity of his situation, he'd panicked so intensely that they had to sedate him to regulate his breathing again. There was a touch more feeling in them when he'd woken up again. The tips of Shouta’s fingers are still tingling, but at least he can move them now -- albeit a little weakly -- and he supposes that it's definitely not the worst outcome of them all.

These particular symptoms of electric shock aren’t all that serious in the grand scheme of things; just some minor numbness and enfeeblement in his arms as well as a lot of muscle pain that has Shouta wincing when he moves his head. And while it isn’t severe, it’s certainly at a fresh level of fucking irritating, because his fingers don’t work the way he wants them to and he’s still too weak to lift his arms for more than ten seconds.

But the worst of it, he thinks, is probably the electric burn itself. It’s raw, ugly and surrounded by blackened skin, stretching from his palm to the tips of his fingers from where his entire hand wrapped around the baseball bat, and as he absently drags the pads of his fingers over the bandages protecting it, he is quitely frankly relived that he doesn't have to look at it. He could probably wrangle Recovery Girl into healing it for him when he gets to UA tomorrow morning.

“And his current symptoms will be gone in the next few days?”

“It can clear up or it can be permanent. Only time can tell. Just rest assured that his central nervous system is undamaged, so I am inclined to think that he’s not going to be experiencing this forever.” Nishihara hands Hizashi a sheet of paper. “That’s a prescription for some cream for the electric burn. He’s free to go whenever you both feel up to it. Just make sure you pick that up on your way out.”

There isn’t much more to it after that and so the doctor politely makes his leave. The second that the door shuts behind him, Hizashi spins on his heel, all but launching himself onto his husband like a fly to a glue trap. “Come on, Sho, let’s get going,” he says. “I got you some clothes from home.”

“Lifesaver,” Shouta rumbles. “Scrubs are itchy.”

It doesn't take them long at all to pick up the prescription, complete the necessary patient paperwork and get the fuck out of dodge once Shouta is wearing something comfortable. Neither of them are particularly keen on loitering in hospitals, preferring the considerably less finicky method of letting Recovery Girl deal with it, passing out and sleeping away the following twelve hours.

Halfway through the drive home, Hizashi leans forward to dial down the radio and asks him, “do you remember what happened?”

Shouta itches to turn it back up again, but he doesn’t. “I think so.”

“It was Hawks that brought you in,” Hizashi continues. “He told Doctor Nishihara that he happened to be in the area for a job and he spotted you lying on a rooftop as he flew over. You’re lucky he’s so observational! Who knows what might have happened if he didn’t see you there?” He pauses, and when he speaks again, he sounds softer. More careful. “What do you remember, Sho?”

And Shouta hesitates, then, as Detective Tsukauchi and Hizashi’s respective warnings all of those months ago resurfaces at the forefront of his memory. This is the kid who’s got the Commission on his tail -- is it okay to recount the experience when there is clearly something fishy involving him, or should he lie to maintain his safety?

If it were the Detective asking him -- and, mind you, he’s well aware that he can’t get away with much what with the nature of the man’s quirk -- he may feel more inclined to keep the true story a secret. But this is Hizashi, and though Hizashi definitely has a different opinion regarding the HPSC than Shouta does, he would never just look the other way when it comes to the safeguarding of a child who’s very clearly in dire need of help.

It comes back to him in choppy increments. He remembers the kid’s thunderous viridian eyes and the ice-cold bite of the baseball bat digging into his mandible. He’d been angry -- so very angry and frightened for his life because he believed that Shouta was hunting him down, and that must have tipped him over the edge. There’s a gap, then, before he’s suddenly catching the bat as it comes flying towards his skull at a sickening velocity. After that, everything was just hot.

It makes sense that the kid has some sort of electric quirk. So much sense, in fact, that Shouta feels like an idiot for not seeing it sooner. He’d known that he manipulated surrounding electrical energy in some way -- so far, the kid has every cellular device in his vicinity frying like chicken on the spot wherever he happens to be lurking -- but he definitely failed to put some critical thinking into it and-- well, he’d woken up in the hospital without any feeling in his arms and a horrendous hole in his hand for it.

And that probably means that the baseball bat is an intentional choice of weaponry. Aluminium is an extremely conductive metal and it was missing it’s customary rubber gripping, meaning electrical charges can transfer directly from his hand to the cap of the bat, essentially turning it into an oversized taser there and then. If the kid can generate and manipulate electricity, using something like that to charge it in the ideal direction rather than letting it explode every which way is, admittedly, a stroke of genius. Kaminari would definitely benefit from a similar sort of support item.

They’re pulling into their reserved parking space by the time Shouta finishes. Hizashi is worrying his lip, eyebrows pinched under the starchy orange lighting of the private apartment complex carpark, fingers drumming against the steering wheel as he works through the brand new information in his head. He’s always been a loud thinker, as if the thoughts cycling through his brain are too vast for his body to contain it all.

“And this,” he starts eventually, “this is the same kid you kept seeing a few months ago? The one who broke your phone after he disappeared in the grocery store?”

“Yes,” Shouta affirms. “I’m sure of it.”

The voice hero swallows as if there’s something thick lodging itself in his throat, glancing out of the windows at the empty expanse of the carpark. “This… wow. This doesn’t sit well with me at all.”

Shouta nods seriously. “I always knew those Commissioner bastards were up to no good,” he mutters, his volume naturally dipping, as if they were standing around the corner, listening to every word. “I need to do some digging.”

“I don’t know, Sho.” Hizashi’s voice is thick with concern. Now parked, he switches the car’s engine off. “Is that safe?”

So Hizashi doesn’t trust the HPSC as much as Shouta initially thought he did. That’s probably [read: definitely] a good thing.

“Probably not,” he replies, “but you know I can’t just let that sit, Zashi.”

“I know,” Hizashi agrees quickly. “I know. I want the little listener to be safe, too. Just be careful, please, Sho. Please.”

The Hero Public Safety Commission is a law enforcement and government agency that is responsible for managing the interactions between professional heroes and the general public. Not only that, but they’re a crime investigative organisation that works to solve the most dangerous of the dangerous cases -- most noticeably the ones that pose a threat to the society they upkeep as a whole.

There’s no one to govern them; no one to keep them in check. They work above the law because they are the ones who create and enforce it. They’re nothing short of an unrelenting, systematically formidable powerhouse, amd while Shouta never once doubted that they’re harbouring a sickening plethora of secrets behind the concrete walls of their tower, it wasn’t until he met the strange, frightened child on the rooftop that night that he ever felt inclined to really do his own reading.

Saving that kid is priority number one. Well, at the very least, figuring out what’s going on with him in the first place is. Whether or not he genuinely pulled something so terrible that it’s worthy of the Commission’s attention, he has to get to the bottom of it. 

And, honestly, it’s a relief that Hizashi feels the same way. Of course he does -- anybody with a shred of common sense and surface-level human decency would. There’s no excusing the animalistic fright he’d seen in the kid’s eyes that night. Having somebody as reliable and capable as his husband on his side, at least, takes a the hefty burden of secrecy off his shoulders.

The moment Hizashi bustles him through their apartment’s front door, Teriyaki is on him an instant, a thick body of charcoal-grey fur winding around his feet as if she were a hungry vulture scavenging for its next meal, her round, yellow eyes blinking up at him. Almost as immediately, Hitoshi peers around the corner from the kitchen. “Electrocuted, huh?” he comments, baring his teeth in a curious grin. “How’d that happen? Did’ja jumpscare Kaminari?”

"Hitoshi!" Hizashi scolds, good-natured.

“Get me coffee,” Shouta replies shortly, stepping over Teriyaki. “Then I might tell you.”

Hitoshi squints at him. “So you’re not going to tell me.”

“Waiting on that coffee, Toshi.”

“Don’t you ‘Toshi’ me,” Hitoshi retorts, but disappears into the kitchen to start the coffee pot nonetheless.

>><<

Detective Tsukauchi Naomasa sits back in his chair, deep in thought. “And, just to reiterate,” he says finally, as he tiredly pinches the bridge of his nose between the pads of his fingers, “you said that it was an electricity quirk that knocked the assailant unconscious?”

“Yes, sir.” The officer kneads his hands together nervously. “It’s theorised that the electricity was discharged through a puddle on the floor. The light it produced and the assaliant screaming is what alerted me.”

“And you don’t know who did it or where they went.”

“No, sir.”

“No cameras?”

“No, sir.”

His quirk is biologically incapable of making errors, but Naomasa had asked the officer shifting on his feet in front of his desk to recapitulate what he’d already told him earlier in hopes that he’d somehow heard it incorrectly, because this is really not something that he likes to deal with. It smells like dangerous Commissioner business and stacks upon stacks of paperwork -- some of his least favourite things. “That kid,” he mutters under his breath.

At that, the officer’s interest is evidently peaked. “You know who he could be, sir?”

“Oh, not at all.” The lie is as smooth as peanut butter. “I really have no idea.”

“Are you going to investigate them? You could bring them in.”

Naomasa huffs, tired and, quite frankly, just ready to go home for the evening, already feeling the onset of a headache. He busies his impatient hands by needlessly shuffling whatever stack of papers he has lying on his desk in front of him. “No.”

The detective isn’t sure that he could bring him in what with how he seems to be adept at slipping out of everybody’s grasp like sand through their hands, but he has no intention of trying to do so in the first place. And, despite the fact that he should, he doesn’t intend to update the Commission on the events of tonight, either. As far as they’re concerned, his officers took down the assaliant with their own ability, and the mysterious shadow with the electrical quirk doesn't exist at all.

Chapter Text

𝘚𝘏𝘐𝘙𝘈𝘒𝘜𝘔𝘖 𝘐𝘕𝘒𝘖

2273 - 2315

𝘛𝘏𝘌 𝘎𝘖𝘓𝘋𝘌𝘕 𝘚𝘌𝘌𝘋 𝘛𝘏𝘈𝘛 𝘉𝘓𝘖𝘖𝘔𝘌𝘋 𝘈𝘕𝘋 𝘛𝘏𝘙𝘐𝘝𝘌𝘋 

Graveyards need not be grave, but in this place of stony regimentation, Shirakumo Izuku has never felt greyer.

It’s nestled at the back of a public park, crumbling and decrepit with no one to care for the graves that stretch over the grassy hillside. Lichen stains the headstones like it’s parasitic and disgusting weeds sprout from the earth underneath them. The team who maintain the park don’t so much as glance at this corner anymore, probably because they’re under the assumption that nobody visits anymore anyway, and they’re almost on the money, too. After all, it’s a place so forgotten that not even the ghosts of those who lay here keep their roots.

Izuku remembers, though. By now, he’s the only one who does. It’s been a few days since he’s had the chance to visit his mother and, while her headstone is scarred from rain and slanted where it digs into the ground, it’s otherwise spotless, the font carved into the grave easier to read than anybody else’s. The ugly weeds once besmirching her place of permanent rest were pulled out and burned long ago. Worn into the grass is the years he’s spent keeping her company.

He stares at the flowers lying on the ground, their petals dead, dry and fragile where they’re attached to withered stalks. It’s the first time since she’s been buried that he hasn’t brought something fresh and beautiful to replace them and he knows he’s a bad son for it.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers hoarsely. “I keep hurting people, mom. I'm just so-- so scared. But I'm trying.”

If she were here, she would hold Izuku like an anchor in her arms and rub solacing circles into his back. She would tell him that he doesn’t have to move mountains for her to love him all the same; that, no matter what, she would always be so, so proud of him; and Izuku would breathe in that sickeningly sweet scent of coconut shampoo and listen to the soft lull of her breathing as he basks in that all-encompassing warmth forever.

But she isn’t here, and he’s just cold.

Rain patters the headstone and he throws his hood over his hair as he stands up. Underfoot, the ground squelches, leaving wet grass clinging to his jeans and green stains on his ragged sneakers. It’s been drizzling all morning, but it’s becoming heavier by the second, and Izuku doesn’t thermoregulate well enough to keep his mom company any longer. The last thing she’d want is for him to get sick for her.

“I’ll see you soon, mom,” he promises before he makes his leave. “I’ll bring flowers. Your favourite.”

>><<

“And where do you think you’re going?”

One of Shouta’s legs is already dangling out of the window and he thinks he might be able to slip away before Hizashi can grab him, but there’s a hand snagging the nape of his jumpsuit before he can even hope to move, and he just huffs and resigns as he’s dragged back into the bedroom.

“Your hand is still all gross, Sho!” Hizashi chides as he confiscates his capture weapon for the second time that day, sounding particularly doting, like a mother concerned for her reckless child. “I know you really want to go and find that kid, but you should at least wait until the bandages come off. You can hardly hold onto anything with them!”

Which, admittedly, is the truth; having your hand wrapped all the way to the tips of your fingers doesn’t exactly make it easy to use. He can’t shift his digits or even fold his hand into a fist. It’s a hidden blessing that Shouta had trained ambidexterity into himself all of those years ago because he would otherwise be rather stuck on trying to do, well, anything until these bandages came off.

Eventually, Hizashi stands himself directly in front of Shouta, planting two heavy hands on his shoulders and pointedly levelling with his charcoal eyes. “You care so much about people in need, Sho, and I love that about you. But that doesn’t mean you can neglect your own health while you’re at it. We’re seeing Chiyo tomorrow morning, remember? You can go and chase the kid around all you want after that.” He pauses, then. Tilts his head as he always does when he’s thinking, like a confused labrador. “Well, kinda. You know what I mean.”

And Shouta thinks that Hizashi is being quite dramatic, really, but he decides to keep that to himself. He reckons that he could successfully jump away while Hizashi is distracted with putting his capture weapon back in its place in their closet, but he realises that there is no point; not while the rest of the apartment is awake, that is. Instead, he just gripes, “I’m fine, Zashi,” and holds his hands up so as to give his husband space to heedlessly fuss over him.

After he’s confident that Shouta isn’t hiding any more surprise weaponry on him, he bustles him out to the living room, where Hitoshi is watching the television and half-heartedly doing homework. He doesn’t bother turning to look at them. “You’re lucky that Toshi heard you opening the window,” he’s rambling, “I didn’t have my hearing aids in! I didn’t know you were leaving.”

Hitoshi does look over, then, winking cheekily at Shouta.

“Snitch,” Shouta bites out.

“Not my fault you’re so bad at sneaking out, old man,” Hitoshi returns, baring his teeth in a brazen grin, and Shouta has to swallow down the intense urge to throw the nearest solid object at his head.

“Sometimes I can’t believe that you’re adopted, Toshi,” Hizashi comments off-handedly as he sails into the kitchen.

The second he’s crossed over the threshold, Shouta doesn’t hesitate to flip the bird at Hitoshi, who makes an exaggerated crying face and returns with two fingers of his own before he makes a point of turning his full attention back to his homework. And, yeah, sometimes Shouta can’t believe it, either.

>><<

It takes Izuku the better half of an hour to find a store that sells the flowers he’s looking for. The last one had been great -- it had a high amount of foot traffic that he could slip through completely and utterly undetected and, while the colourful warnings stuck to the windows loudly proclaimed the use of security cameras, Izuku knew that they’d been broken for years -- but it’s been swarming with Commission agents ever since he’d been spotted by Eraserhead and he was therefore forced to skirt it entirely. A bummer, but what’s new?

The new one is tucked amongst crowded rows of nondescript stores lining a narrow street. It has flowers displayed on wooden stands just outside of the window, the ragged blue awning casting shade over them so as to not let the petals get singed by midday Japanese heat or beaten by rain, and Izuku zeroes in on the bicoloured petals of hydrangeas from halfway down the road.

Sometimes, he thinks he could see them from miles away. It feels as though they’ve always been present in his life, sprinkled throughout the honeyed memories of his family; they’re sitting in a water vase in the middle of the dining room table; wrapped in plastic in his father’s hands as he steps through their apartment’s front door late at night; between the pads of his mother’s fingers as she gazes at their pastel curves. Those same pastel curves stare back at him today, and he carefully selects the bushiest, most colourful bunch amongst the pile. 

“Those for a girl?” comes a voice, and Izuku looks up into yellow eyes and a shock of blonde hair. A shock, he observes bemusedly, because there's a dash of black lighting streaking through his shaggy side fringe, pushed away from his forehead by a pair of orange-tinted sunglasses. Something -- and he definitely cannot identify exactly what is giving him this idea -- tells him that he’s looking at somebody with an electric quirk.

He’s wearing a black polo shirt labelled ‘Ikebana City’ and it’s then that he takes stock of the fact that he’s currently face to face with an employee. Izuku huffs, irritated and already itching to leave this store behind, because it means he'll actually have to pay for the hydrangeas this time. Getting the police called on himself by trying to steal it will only alert the Commission as to where his new circles are and that is the opposite of what he wants.

“Love, harmony and grace,” he continues. “I think. Err, something like that.” He sticks a finger in the air, then, and drops into a dramatic stance with the theatricality of a drama student. “Perfect flowers for the perfect woman!”

“Right,” Izuku replies, unwilling to bring down the mood by pointing out the fact that they are, in fact, a gift for his dead mother. “How much are they?”

“¥250.” The boy leans forward and plucks the bunch right out of his hands. “Come on, I’ll scan them through for you.”

Nodes of anxiety cling to Izuku [he's not with them he's not with them he's not with them], but he follows the boy into the store nonetheless. It's a humble little place, the shelves lined with traditional Japanese snacks barely leaving room for people to walk amongst them and the bare-bulbed overhead lights shuddering in the breeze, and Izuku is hit with the distinct sensation of novelty. A large, colourful bird clacks its curved beak and blinks at him from its perch behind the register.

“That’s Ume,” the boy supplies passively. He discards the flowers on the counter, before disappearing towards the back of the store, leaving Izuku to loiter with the parrot glaring holes into him with its beady eyes. Just as quickly as he had left, he comes back, through, brandishing two bottles of water. “Here, I got you some water, too. You’ve got to be hot in that black hoodie with the hood up like that, right? It’s getting hotter in the day around here even when it's raining. Isn't that nuts?”

And Izuku falters. He can’t afford water and flowers. “Uh-- umm, no, it’s okay.”

The employee just shakes his head, then, scanning through and bagging the products anyway. “It’s on me,” he tells him carefully. “The flowers, too.”

“Oh. Oh, wow, you really don’t--“

“Take it.” He drops the bag into Izuku’s hand before he can say anything else, yellow eyes leaving no room for question. Immediately, something in the air between them changes, like a switch being pulled. “You-- uhh. It’s just that you really look like you could do with it, and I’d feel bad taking your money. So take it, okay? Please?”

Izuku isn’t one to accept a strangers’ random act of kindness at the best of times -- he feels much too guilty taking up their time and resources when, really, he doesn’t deserve all that -- but he doesn’t know how to go about pushing it away when it’s so clear he has no choice, so he just blinks at the boy, holds the bag close to himself and murmurs out a feeble, "thank you."

Something unreadable flashes across the cashier’s face, then, but it’s gone as soon as it had come, quickly replaced with a warm smile that lights up his entire face and crinkles the corners of his yellow eyes. Leaning forward across the counter towards Izuku, he cups his hand around his face and says to him in an exaggerated stage-whisper, "just don’t tell my boss. He isn’t here right now, and he always gets mad at me for buying stuff for customers. It doesn’t really make sense, because he’s still getting money anyway, but adults are always weird about stuff like that, aren’t they?”

“Right.” The unrelenting social confidence leeching off this boy is, admittedly, rather overwhelming. Izuku sticks a thumb in the vague direction of the door and awkwardly stumbles a few steps backwards. “Right-- umm. I should… uhh.”

“Oh, okay,” the boy says simply. If he’s bothered by Izuku’s glaringly inept people skills, he keeps it to himself. “Come back soon, okay? You’ve got to tell me everything that happens with the lucky lady you’re giving those flowers to!”

And, well, Izuku considers the headstone slanted in a shrouded corner of a public park, and thinks that he doesn’t have anything to say to that.

>><<

Shouta is all-too-aware of the fact that he has time to move out of the way as Chiyo’s oversized syringe comes speeding towards the cap of his skull, but he knows better than to escape her wrath at the best of times, and so he just resigns to getting swatted as if he were a large fly instead. “Trying to leave through the window with this on your hand? Did you get your brain fried, too?” she snaps.

“For a good reason,” Shouta insists.

“I’m sure,” Chiyo responds, sour.

Hitoshi rolls his eyes from where he’s reclining in one of the padded waiting chairs and Hizashi good-naturedly clips the back of his head.

The only difference between the burn yesterday and the burn today is that it’s now a lot more sterile from where the doctor at Musutafu General had cleaned it up before it had been bandaged. Otherwise, the skin is just as mangled and raw, as well as itchy and considerably sensitive to the touch. It’s really not any less stomach-turning to look at.

“Quite the wound. Must have been a very powerful electrical quirk that you got hit with.” Chiyo angles him towards the window so as to look at the wound properly in the natural light. She prods at a particularly sore spot just below the base of his middle finger and it sends pain skittering to the tips of his toes. “Who did you say did this, exactly?”

“I didn’t.”

And he doesn’t plan to, not right now; a child who is in trouble with the government is not somebody who’s existence he can just throw around, especially when he only knows random, unconnected increments about the entire situation. It’s going to take some digging and learning before he can understand how he should approach these particular intricacies.

Chiyo must sense the finality in his tone, for she just hums and busies herself in poking around some more. "I am curious as to whether or not they controlled the voltage of the attack, or if this amount of damage was unintentional.”

Admittedly, Shouta is curious about that, too. In the grand scheme of things, the specifics of the kid’s quirk is not as important as ensuring his safety -- not that it wouldn’t help, of course, because he would rather avoid incidents like this again -- but that isn’t to say that he isn’t interested in whatsoever.

It’s clearly a formidable electricity quirk. He can at least manipulate electricity if he cannot generate it out of his own body, and for but a moment, Shouta ponders over the possibility that the reason his devices like his phone and his communicator get fried in his vicinity is because he’s extracting the electricity from them there and then. Maybe he can even do so much as transport through them if the way he seemed to have disappeared on the spot upon their first time meeting is any indicator. 

Whatever it is, it’s at the very least powerful. Versatile. Useful.

And Shouta is hit with the distinct sensation of debacle, then, because he realises that he’s subconsciously looking at the kid’s quirk through the same lenses in which he would look at his students’, and he knows that, if things were any different, he would probably make a fantastic hero.

Another wave of pain slams him and he’s jerked out of that particular train of thought to see Chiyo squinting up at him, her hand still hovering dangerously over the wound. “Oh, stop twitching, you big baby,” she tuts. Although her words are harsh, Shouta has been inside of this infirmary throughout his career as an underground hero enough to pick up on the undercurrent of fondness between those lines. “I know you showed up early to rest before classes begin, but have you got a cover for your homeroom sorted, just in case? This isn’t exactly a scratch.”

“Ectoplasm is available,” Hizashi inputs. “I’ll talk to him. C’mon, Toshi, let's go get something to eat before classes start. I’m so hungry that I’m practically wasting away!”

“Wasting away. Sure.” Hitoshi stands up and hauls his backpack over his shoulders, his arms swinging moodily at his sides. Then, he turns to give him a wave that is just condescending enough for it to be perceivable, baring the grin of a Cheshire cat that tells stories of just how much he enjoys seeing tough guy Aizawa Shouta all grouchy and vulnerable on the infirmary bed. "Have a nice nap. Don't let the bed bugs bite."

“See you later, love,” Hizashi gushes, leaning on the threshold of the door to blow him an affectionate kiss.

“Yeah, yeah.” Shouta waves dismissively at them.

They disappear after that, and Shouta can hear their chattering bouncing off the walls in the corridor outside as they head for the cafeteria together even over the rhythmic hum of UA’s campus as it finally starts to wake up for the day. In fact, it’s the very last sound he’s listening to before Chiyo plants her lips on his forehead, and he feels the welcoming arms of sleep pulling him under before his head even hits the pillow.