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He told himself there was no longer a reason for his body to be on high alert. For these constant nagging thoughts to fill his mind with the sense of danger, repeating the idea of his eyes needing to stay open on a continuous endless loop.
Then came the silence. The all engulfing, never-ending, suffocating silence. He heard everything and nothing. His pulse quickened. His heartbeats ricocheted off the walls of his room. Crashed back hard into his chest. It hurt. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t blink. He shouldn’t blink.
“Aizawa?”
The silence broke and he could breathe again. He could blink. But the heaviness in his heart didn’t lessen. It weighed him down, pressing his body into the mattress as soft footsteps crossed the room, stopping at his bedside.
“Aizawa, are you awake?”
The world blinked back at him from within the darkness, curiously searching his face for any sign of life before a soft paw padded his cheek. Poked at his wounded eye. Poked his other eye to clarify it was open although she was clearly capable of seeing in the dark.
“Are you trying to blind me?” His voice was deep, exhausted, and Ohgi’s ears twitched at the sound. She didn’t say anything, her paw switching to his right eye socket and continued to softly pat him. He lifted his hand, closing it around her paw and pulling it away. “I’m awake.”
“You’ve been awake,” she responded, her eyes searching his face. “I could hear you thinking all the way to the top left, broken-door-having-drawer in the kitchen.”
“Then why ask such a stupid question,” he asked with a sigh, pressing down on the mattress to lift his heavy body to a sitting position. The bedsheets pooled around his waist, his eyes studying Ohgi’s reaction to seeing his bare chest.
There was none. There never was.
There was no shameless ogling in those marble sized worlds she had for eyes. No shyly looking away to give him a sense of privacy. There was a small spark of curiosity shining through, but that was always present in Ohgi’s eyes. She had no more interest in him than she did the paper grocery bag he brought back from the store the night before.
“Did you break a drawer door, Ohgi?”
“It was a weak door,” she defended, lifting herself up into his bed and taking hold of his hand within her paws. Without a single thought of danger in that strange brain of hers, she placed his hand on her head. “And you shouldn’t put the melon bread all the way up there if you don’t want me parkouring myself off the walls.”
It was then that Aizawa realized that it hadn’t been his heartbeat ricocheting against the walls of his room, it had been Ohgi jumping off the walls to get to the melon bread he’d specifically told her not to eat too much of. She had gobbled down three in less than five minutes yesterday and was now trying to break a record by taking more than her fair share.
“Why aren’t you asleep?”
Ohgi didn’t answer, instead cuddling into his side, curling around his waist, and pressing her head further into his hand. The fabric of his shirt, which she had stolen the night before and wore it as if it were her own, bunched around her legs as she tried to make herself comfortable in his lap.
“It’s late.”
She kept quiet, the only sound coming from the soft taping of her split tail against the mattress, which was odd. Ohgi had wrapped her tails together with a bandage when she’d moved in with him, trying to hide her Nekomata Quirk from the landlord who still believed she was Aizawa’s ‘pet cat’.
“Ohgi,” he tried again, softly slapping her cheek for her to listen to him. For her to answer. For her to open her eyes. She had to open her eyes. He needed her to open her eyes and look at him. And she did. Gold-green swimming within bright ocean blue looked up at him. “Are you alright?”
He’d grown accustomed to touching her. To her letting him touch her. To her crawling into his lap during the evenings and into his bed during the nights to cuddle into him when things became too quiet.
She would go out of her way to hug him throughout the day, wrapping her arms around his waist when he cooked breakfast in the morning, pressing up against his side when he packed their lunch, and rub up against his leg during dinner, because Ohgi was a terrible, terrible cook. He’d never tell her that though.
Ohgi had always hated being touched in any way, he still sported some scars she’d given him years back when he’d accidentally petted her, but she’d been docile for the last year and a half. Hell, she’d been actively searching out anyone that she trusted to try and cuddle into. Like Hizashi, but he’d only patted her head once or twice, wary of the sharp glare from her eyes and the twitch of her tails.
Aizawa hadn’t questioned the change in her because it was nice having Ohgi beside him. The warmth and soft heartbeat at his side grounded him to this new reality. It kept that dangerous silence away at night. It allowed him to close his eyes and rest.
But Ohgi…it was too drastic a change that he’d unintentionally ignored.
“Are you,” she returned the question, grabbing onto his stilled hand, and dragging it back to her ears. “You’re breathing changed for a bit and then suddenly stopped all together.”
“Just…bad memories,” he responded honestly, scratching behind her ear. “I didn’t notice I’d stopped breathing. You didn’t kick the door in and straddle me like you did last time. I think you should be commended for your self-control. That is, if you hadn’t broken the drawer door.”
She glared, and the familiar gesture made him smile.
“You started breathing again the moment I slammed into the floor,” she explained. “Scaring you would be counterproductive in that situation, so I took the opposite route.”
“Confusing the hell out of me by letting me cuddle you in your cat form?” He grinned as her glare grew in intensity, but she didn’t move from his lap or pull away from his hand. “You’ve been extra friendly for a while now, and although it’s strange, thank you for your service.”
He felt the change before he saw it. Soft fur turning into smooth skin beneath his fingertips, her head resting in the crook of his neck instead of his chest, and long, thin legs wrapped around his on top of the bedsheets.
“Don’t say it like that,” Ohgi hissed. Literally hissed, showing sharp white fangs that glinted with the light spilling in from the open bedroom door. “It sounds dirty!”
“You’ve been sneaking into my room, slipping into my bed completely undressed, and cuddling into my bare chest for a while now. If it sounds sketchy, it’s because there is a sketchy element to it.” He explained with a smile that infuriated Ohgi to no end, her split tail tapping away furiously on his hip. Aizawa swore he could see flames in her eyes. “So, tell me, what’s going on in that sociopathic mind of yours.”
“I’m not a sociopath.”
“All cats are a little bit sociopathic, and if you’re not wanting something from me, why be overly cuddly when you hated being touched in any way, shape, and form? I still have your fangs scarred into my shoulder and phantom pains of your claws on my missing leg.”
Ohgi rose to her knees, running a hand over the shoulder in question before breaking into a Cheshire-like grin. “I think my fangs on your shoulder suit you. Want me to renew it, make it look fresh?”
“Says the sociopath that said she wasn’t a sociopath.”
“I’m not!” She argued, settling back down on his lap as if that were the only available seat, and he groaned. “It’s just…I’m just…”
Her eyes lost a bit of that curious spark that brightened the blue and green and gold hues, the grin falling from her face. Aizawa couldn’t help himself and caressed her cheek, cupping her face in his hands when she didn’t react at the touch.
“I don’t want to be alone,” Ohgi whispered into his palm. “And I don’t think you should be alone either.” He felt her nails dig into his arms when he tried to pull away, locking him in place as she spoke into his skin. “I don’t mean settling for whoever is nearby regardless of who they are, so don’t misunderstand my actions for—”
“For pity? Is that not what it is, what it started as, anyway?”
“Do you keep me around for those reasons,” Ohgi asked, blinking attentively up at him. “I don’t mind if you do, but don’t you dare think I chose you out of pity because I didn’t.” She dropped his arm and pushed away, trying to create a space between them that hadn’t existed for a long while now.
Aizawa wrapped an arm around her waist, the other around her shoulders, and crushed her into his chest when she tried to unwrap herself from him. Tried to leave his side.
“I’m not doing it for those reasons,” he assured her, very much aware of her sharp nails digging lightly into the skin of his chest, the sharp fangs grazing the scars on his shoulder. She wouldn’t attack him, and she wasn’t threatening him. It was an unconscious action, a response to stress and anxiety. “It’s for my own selfishness. I want to always keep you at my side, even though reason tells me that’s not possible.”
“Not possible,” Ohgi questioned, relaxing into his body to such a degree that she felt boneless in his arms, and he fell. Dropping back into the mattress with her melting into his side. “We work together, share the same reckless students that force overtime on us on a weekly basis, and wake up to each other every morning. How is it not possible?”
“Well, it doesn’t feel permanent,” he said, hugging her tighter against him as her tail wrapped around his thigh to bring him closer. “There’s no rule against two people sharing an apartment yet you refuse to clear up the misunderstanding with the landlord. One can only assume that it’s because you want a clean get away when you choose to leave.
“Or it can be because you have a nosy landlord that asks too many questions,” she snapped, her hair bristling like a cat’s, tail tightening around his leg. “He speaks to me even though he thinks I’m just a cat. Asks too many unnecessary questions from someone who supposedly can’t speak.”
“He likes cats, that’s all.”
That’s why he had chosen this apartment in the first place, because the landlord didn’t mind his tenants feeding the strays or bringing them inside during the harsh weather. But to Ohgi, Ohgi who dealt with people who rarely told the truth and that constantly hid who they were, courteous behavior was suspicious behavior.
Friendliness was always a means to an end.
In a way, he fit that bill much better than the landlord ever would, but Ohgi chose to go along with his selfishness. Possibly for her own selfish desires that aligned so perfectly with his that neither had noticed, chose to ignore it, or didn’t care one way or the other.
Aizawa gave her the company she had craved after losing the only person she had ever been close to, Nemuri. Although she would never mention her name and conveniently went deaf and mildly stupid at the mention of it.
Ohgi pulled him out of that deadly silent darkness that engulfed him during the most unexpected times, bringing him back and grounding him to the present with the simple soft whisper of his name and the beat of her heart. And possibly the taps on his eyes, her favorite go to method once she was sure he was awake.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she sighed into his chest, her breathing evening out as she began to fall asleep. “There’s nowhere…I need to be…”
If there was a place she needed to go, then she would go. Much like him. They were both heroes after all, and there was a long way before their retirement. But for now, they would stay. Stay where they were needed the most.
With whom needed them the most.