Work Text:
Shouta is fifteen, standing scowling over his opponent, pinning the hero student to the ground with his foot on his chest, crudely made capture weapon wrapped around him. He is declared the winner over the roar of his own heart beat. His opponent has a halo of sunlight yellow hair, and he’s grinning up at Shouta.
His hands are warm when Shouta pulls him up, capture weapon pooling at their feet. The moment lingers until his cheeks start to burn, blush reaching the tips of his ears.
Yamada Hizashi introduces himself to Shouta’s back as he practically runs off the Sports Festival arena. He tries not to fall into his orbit, to keep as much distance as first and second place can have but he leaves with a medal on his neck, a spot in the hero course, and a phone number burning a hole in his pocket.
He does not text Yamada Hizashi, scrap paper phone number gripped too tight in his hand. The number stays typed but words unsent. He doesn’t need friends. He spent too long fighting his way through the calls of “Villain,” and of the avoidance his quirk brought him. He doesn’t need distractions now.
His first day in the Hero Course, Shouta slumps into his seat, pointedly ignoring the loud bright blond to his left. He quickly realizes he also needs to ignore the loud blue haired boy who grins when he glances over.
Shirakumo Oboro introduces himself to the back of Shouta’s head. Midway through class a tiny sky blue cloud drops another scrap paper number into his lap. The number isn’t new but the handwriting is.
They sit next to him at lunch, talking over him. He finds himself nodding along to the conversation.
A week and a pile of scrap paper later, he caves, and texts Yamada, “Hello.”
He soon finds out talking to him is as easy as breathing. He catches himself grinning at a joke late into the night, phone illuminating his smile.
He gets a text from an unknown number the next day, nothing but a cloud emoji. He adds that as the contact name, and after some thought changes Hizashi’s to the sun. He tells himself it’s just to fit the theme.
The class plans for internships, and with that comes hero names.
Present Mic and Loud Cloud are pre-prepared and Shouta is left thinking before he caves, and turns to his new friends.
“Eraserhead!” is said with a sunlight smile. Shouta ignores the warmth in his chest, focusing on marking down his new name.
He has a boring paperwork-filled internship alone while Hizashi and Oboro join a Daylight Hero together. Oboro promises later in their favorite cat cafe that they will join him next year.
He spends his first year at UA learning more about the Underground, about the shadowy but important work. His teacher warns him that it’s hard and taxing but Shouta isn’t worried because he will be at a hero agency with his friends. His friends who already pulled him from his own shadows with sunlight and sky blue clouds.
Second year he watches the Sports Festival from the stands. Future Underground heroes don’t participate. Oboro knocks Hizashi out of bounds but they are both smiling like they won.
He doesn’t cheer, and most would find his applause unenthusiastic but he does grin at them both when they catch his gaze. That night they have a sleepover under the stars and talk about the future.
Shouta is sixteen, and his internship is going well. It's not boring, not even the paperwork with Oboro and Hizashi around. A child smiles at him as Oboro carries them across the street in a silly game. He laughs when Oboro tells him that he should be a teacher. From one moment to the next, the laughs turn to panicked shouts and children sobbing, safe under cloud cover.
Shouta is sixteen, and the villain is defeated, his friend cheering him on from a distant place.
Shouta is sixteen, standing in front of red-stained rubble. His Sunlight, pressed tightly against his side, is the only thing keeping him standing.
Clouds, dark, angry, sad clouds fill the sky above them, erasing the blue sky. It’s fitting in a way that makes Shouta want to scream. He doesn’t realize he is pressing his fist to his mouth until a warm hand pulls his away, gripping it tight.
Shouta is a shadow. A shadow at a funeral, surrounded by sobbing sky blue reminders. The Shirakumos whisper words at him in suffocation hugs.
Not his fault.
Not his fault.
Not his fault.
A shadow at school, shying away from his teachers, his classmates, his sunlight. There are meetings with counselors, pats on the back, and texts ignored, phone calls left unanswered, empty hall conversations avoided.
Not his fault.
Not his fault.
Not his fault.
His Sunlight is angry. Standing in the middle of Shouta’s room, Hizashi yells, carefully controlled, that he lost a friend too. That he is grieving too. That he feels the guilt pressing down on Shouta. He knows under the weight of the shadow that his Sunlight is right, he can see it in the shadows under Hizashi’s eyes, a tiredness ill-fitting and wrong in every move of his body.
The knowledge doesn’t prevent the words, angry and burning, from tumbling from his mouth, louder than he has ever been. He doesn’t know the words, they leave his mind the moment they pass his lip but they feel like an echo, repeating guilt and grief.
He doesn’t know when their echoing shouts turn to broken hiccuping sobs but they fall into each other, landing on the floor in a tangle of limbs.
He doesn’t know when one of them drags blankets and pillows off the bed but he wakes the next day to Hizashi bathed in sunlight from the window, face inches from his.
Shouta brushes sunlit hair out of Hizashi’s face, and he blinks up at him with bright green eyes. His Sunlight smiles, and it is not quite right, not yet, but it’s close and that makes Shouta smile, thin and barely there, not yet.
The shadow fades, slowly but Shouta knows now that if the weight of it is too much, darkness whispering lies in his mind, that he should turn to his Sunlight to chase the shadows away.
His Sunlight knows when his dark clouds thunder in his head, cracking too loud for him to hear himself, that he can call Shouta, and they can weather them together.
They graduate, and the principal’s speech leaves out its usual praise for the Big 3, his year refusing to pick when they know, unspoken, what the broken pair of sunlight and shadows would have become as two parts of a whole.
Shouta and Hizashi sit next to an empty chair, filled with seventeen graduation cards. They are filled with stories from a classroom of people who felt the missing piece in their classroom.
It’s at that moment, that Shouta thinks of the potential of a life cut short. He sinks into the unseeable, unknowable thoughts of how the future would be shaped by one broken loss of potential. This echoing thought of potential would shape decisions for the rest of his life.
The thoughts fade like a dream as a warm hand grips his too tightly. His Sunlight is watching him, concern marking his face. Shouta squeezes his hand reassuringly and he gets a smile in return.
He watches Hizashi walk first, and his clap is echoed by a family in the crowd. The Shirakumos sit towards the back, standing when his name is called. They remain only as long as he stands on stage. He understands, for the silence that follows, absent of the planned and dreamed about clouds, is deafening. The diploma feels heavy in his hand, and he tells himself that he is not fleeing the stage, but being efficient with his time.
Hizashi and him stay for the few of their classmates that follow, pressed together as close as their chairs would allow. No one stops them when they leave, cards in hand and he and Hizashi go to the only place that feels right.
They read the cards to an unanswering gravestone, spilling stories of friendship and laughter, of mischief and bravery. Shouta knew Oboro’s reach was far beyond them but the final words given to him by their classmates lightened a weight on him. He wasn’t just remembered and preserved in the memories of him and Hizashi. Even if they didn’t spend every moment of their lives trying to remember him, someone would be.
It's barely a discussion that they would get an apartment together after they graduated. It's tiny and cramped. The kitchen faucet leaks, he can’t stand fully in the shower, and the front door creaks in protest every time it opens. They have to shove twin beds on either wall of the too small bedroom. Shouta can’t find it in him to be annoyed when Hizashi decorates every inch in bright colors. They paint the bedroom ceiling a sky blue, and for the first time in almost 2 years, the color brings a fond warmth to his chest instead of a sharp aching cold.
They settle into a routine as easy as breathing. He learns that Hizashi can’t cook, and takes over after too many days of swallowing down overdone, underdone, too much or too little seasoned food. He learns that he doesn’t know how to wash clothes that aren’t shades of gray. Hizashi does the laundry after he turns all of his socks pink.
Shouta stands watching Hizashi practice his radio voice in the middle of the living room, his coffee-run and phone-answering internship finally turned into something real. His Sunlight turns, catching him with a wide smile, and starts giving him a fake interview, hair brush mic pushed towards him. He plays along easily, and when his face starts to hurt from his own smile he is struck by just how truly, genuinely happy he is.
It’s not perfect, he is pulled into the Underground immediately, near lawless work that needs no official agency. He spends too many nights working sundown to sunrise, stumbling in just as Hizashi is waking, ready for a long day of sidekick hero work rushing straight into afternoons at the radio station.
Everyday they get an hour, fleeting and gone too fast, spent in each other's orbit, bumping shoulders, leaning over and around, hands brushing as they move through boring, but necessary chores. The unnamed quiet thing they have is a familiar anchor in their burgeoning adulthood. Shouta is content to watch his Sunlight’s smile, to catch glances of his hands, rings glinting in the light.
They push themselves for a long, exhausting year. Their ceaseless dedication is rewarded with carefully planned breathing room. The time they carve out feels endless.
For the first time in months, Shouta falls asleep to the sound of Hizashi’s breathing. His sleep is not a light, restless thing, and so he dreams.
It was inevitable that his dream would turn to crumbling stone and blood spattered bricks.
He wakes mid-scream to Hizashi’s face etched with concern. He pulls back from warm hands. Turns away to ignore the weight of Hizashi’s gaze on him. Allows himself to be shuffled over against the wall, warm weight stilling a tremble he wasn’t aware of. He falls asleep to soft words murmured into his neck.
Shouta finds out the hard way that time gives the shadows a chance to creep back, no longer held at bay by bone deep exhaustion leaving no room for anything else.
He wakes screaming more times than not for what feels like forever. Without fail he ends up in a tangle of limbs on his too small bed, uncomfortable even as it’s comforting.
They don’t talk about it until he comes home to their beds pressed together. His Sunlight is kind enough to insist it’s because he sleeps better, that Shouta would be doing him a favor.
The nightmares still come, but now they are snuffed out before they fully form, his Sunlight pulling him close.
He makes a mistake, but the villain is defeated and he is alive.
His Sunlight is much more concerned about his bandage wrapped torso than he is, but that might be the medication.
He isn’t aware that his commentary is external until he sees his Sunlight blush an adorable pink, the color reaching his perfect ears before his hand lightly covers Shouta’s mouth.
He doesn’t have time to think about Pandora’s box of compliments before sleep pulls him under.
The incident is added swiftly to the unnamed thing. Unleashed, the pet name spills from him in quiet moments, never failing to make his Sunlight smile, eyes sparking with warm joy.
The shadows itch at him like his healing wounds as he waits to be cleared for duty.
It’s not like he thought he would never get hurt on the job. He thought that he would either remain standing or end up dead.
A burden stuck in limbo wasn’t an option. He pops a stitch in his impatience, Hizashi just drags out their well stocked first aid kit with an exasperated sigh.
He heals slow, purposeless and adrift, until an offhand comment from a ghost starts echoing in his head until he frees it as an idea brought up haltingly to his Sunlight, who grins and agrees instantly, happily taking on more work, selfless in a way that makes Shouta ache.
Shouta takes the advice of Oboro, whose last true words give him a purpose, a way to make up for potential lost.
UA teaches teaching the way they teach hero work. Too fast, with hands-on learning and lots and lots of paperwork. They both are teaching a class under observation of actual staff in a few weeks. The children love Hizashi, drawn into his orbit instantly, hanging on his every word as he gives a lesson.
Shouta spends his nights staring at their sky blue ceiling, wondering what Oboro saw in him that made him think he could do this. He doesn’t get an answer until a year later, when a second year on a work study saves a woman’s life, and stays alive himself because of what he taught him.
He’s tough on his students, instills the reality of hero work in them early. Most of them don’t like him and that’s fine because the only thing he needs from them is to stay alive.
His Sunlight works three jobs now but insists under the exhaustion that he is happy. He watches him coo over a first year with a scraped knee, whispering soft words of comfort and know that they both truly are.
There is a piece of the unnamed thing that grows as they settle into themselves, into routine.
The world decides they are doing too good, being too happy, because he gets the call, the one that fills every hero with dread.
His Sunlight is dimmed in the stark white of the hospital, buried under layers of bandages.
He wasn’t supposed to be out there, doing a favor over spring break. The report makes him want to scream, shadows filling his chest.
Present Mic was too late to save the victims. Bad intel, overwhelmed, and outnumbered, he brought the abandoned building down around them all.
The sound of rubble fills his head as he runs, shadows dragging him away from his Sunlight.
The news reports of a mysterious vigilante leaving dozens of minor villains left tied to pipes and fences. He keeps going until the sun dawns the next morning, returning to his Sunlight’s side.
Hizashi wakes slowly, turns toward Shouta, covered in a night's worth of fighting, and smiles at him. Even bruised and bandaged it’s the most beautiful thing he has ever seen and the unnamed thing overflows.
It’s so easy, between one breath and the next to press his lips to his Sunlight, who sighs against his mouth, sleepy and content.
His wipes his own tears off of his Sunlight’s face, words spilling from him between kisses.
My Sunlight
My Sunlight
I love you, my Sunlight
Everything and nothing changes. Hizashi heals. They go about their routine the same, chores spent in each other's orbit but with kisses and whispered words of love spilling from their lips.
His Sunlight wakes up with silent screams, rubble-filled nightmares cut by Shouta’s quirk, flashed before he realizes he is awake.
They get a bigger bed, paper thin pretense no longer needed.
With five jobs between them, they don’t have dates, not in the traditional sense.
His Sunlight declares dinner and tv as a date or folding laundry, or getting a rare eight hours of sleep.
It’s everything he thought he would never get.
He counts the years of the unnamed thing when he takes a different route home, stopping into a store of priceless gems and glinting metal. Months might be too fast, but their lives are fast and time is not a guarantee.
A ring, perfect and shining, is brought before an unanswering grave stone. He doesn’t know if he is asking for permission or forgiveness. The sky above is a calm blue, fluffy clouds drifting gently.
He waits until they have time, a real date under the clouds, a blanket spread on a hill. It’s perfect, even as he stumbles over his words, his halting practiced speech interrupted with his Sunlight’s laugh.
His Sunlight pulls a ring out of his own pocket, joy, pure unfiltered joy on his face. Shouta huffs a laugh at the sky, Oboro must have spent the week laughing at them both for their plans.
The next few minutes are spent whispering their answers against each other's mouths.
Yes
Yes
Yes
They discuss trying for a real wedding. But their best man is dead, and nothing would be able to fix the missing space they would feel. So they don’t try. Courthouse weddings come with a witness if you don’t bring your own.
Their friends understand, his family doesn’t but they never did, so it doesn’t matter.
Shouta is 26, and he is married to the love of his life, his Sunlight.
He stands on the edge of a roof, catching a child. He is a starlit wanderer, stubborn and bright. Midoriya Izuku has a quirk that lets him see Shouta’s Sunlight as brightly lit as he does.
His quirk is part of a whole that keeps him playing chase in the small hours of the night. It’s been over a decade but he sees Oboro in the way the kid holds himself. Unguided potential, in danger of being snuffed out.
With a simple offer, the starlit wanderer doesn’t have to wander anymore.