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Hizashi is fifteen, and his opponent has him captured, knocked to the ground and pinned in a flash of red. He stands over Hizashi as an eclipse, pitch black hair floating like the moon pulls the waves. Hizashi loses with a smile and the victor helps him up with strong hands. He stares too long and the other boy’s moonlight pale skin pinks with a blush before he turns and leaves. He’s beautiful. Hizashi is struck dumb and waits too long to shout his name at his back.
He doesn’t learn his name until they are standing on the winner’s stage. Aizawa Shouta does not smile, even as victory is placed around his neck. Hizashi manages to slip a paper scap torn from a backstage flyer into his hand mid-congratulation. He tries not to stare as it is casually pocketed.
He waits for way too long, phone in hand, for a text to come. He regrets inviting his new friend over because Oboro teases him about his silly little crush. Hizashi throws a pillow at him. Oboro falls back into a cloud with a dramatic shout. The phone is set aside in favor of a vicious pillow fight.
Oboro grins knowingly at him when the class seating puts the sullen shadow-haired boy in-between them. He ignores Hizashi’s panicked gaze, introducing himself with his usual enthusiasm. His protests go unanswered and Oboro drops a piece of scrap paper with his number on the boy’s desk. Hizashi levels his best glare over Aizawa’s head. Oboro invites him to lunch.
He worries he is coming on too strong, too loud , but Aizawa nods along to their conversations, and takes scrap papers with the tiniest of smiles. His shout is silent when he cheers at the first text, he fears his happiness would crack his quirk-strengthened room if he let himself have even a whisper. They text back and forth late into the night. Shouta is filled with words when he doesn’t have to speak them. His dry humor is a clever sharp-tongued thing that has Hizashi struggling to catch his breath.
Oboro and him came up with their names together. Late night silliness shouldn’t be the foundation for their careers but Loud Cloud and Present Mic are written down on serious paperwork anyways. Careful, quiet Shouta is unbelievably unprepared. Eraserhead is born with dual grins and a fond sigh.
The internships separate them, Shouta joins a hero he’s never heard of and he joins Oboro. A week spent with a top-ranking hero’s side-kicks, going on safe publicity patrols and filling out mounds of paperwork.
Oboro demands from under a pile of cats at their favorite cafe that if they are going to have boring paperwork they will have it together.
Shouta is pulled fully into the Underground. Their Sports Festival rematch is instead a private spar. His friend fights like a riptide, pulling him in before he knows what's happening. His victorious grin is inches from his face and it fills Hizashi’s chest with a fluttering warmth, jackrabbit heartbeat not just from the fight. Oboro arrives frustratingly on time, and the moment breaks.
His match with Oboro is filled with teasing words. A question with a friendship changing four letter word brings a distracting realization. He is knocked out of bounds with a cloud that turns pointedly heart-shaped. He lost the match but he can’t help but smile, grin growing wider when they both find Shouta in the crowd, openly smiling. A reassuring hand on his shoulder reminds him to breathe and walks them out of the arena.
Oboro insists on a celebratory sleep-over, and Hizashi is deliriously happy as they watch the stars, pressed shoulder to shoulder on a suspiciously small blanket. He turns to listen to something Shouta says and the full moonlight is caught in his hair, soaked into his pale skin. He is ethereal.
The internship is going well, it's fun with the three of them, even the paperwork.
Until the day falls like dominos.
The trio splits up, and Hizashi joins another classmate.
A villain appears.
Present Mic uses his quirk.
The villain uses his Voice.
A building falls.
The villain is defeated, and he can’t find Oboro.
Hizashi finds his Moonlight, standing at the edge of red-stained rubble. He holds him tight, and it's the only thing keeping him standing. Thunder roars above their heads, dark clouds filling the sky.
Hizashi doesn’t speak until the funeral. The whispered words, guilt-laced condolences, feel like broken glass on his tongue. The only people he wants to speak to are a ghost and a shadow.
His Moonlight pulls away when he reaches out. The silent cloud-shaped space steals their words, blankets them in sky-blue echoes when they try to sleep. Their fractured friendship becomes nothing more than a low tide tug-of-war.
It starts slow, the grief begins to burn, grows hot under his skin. Anger scalds his mouth and loosens his tongue. His voice grows above a whisper for the first time in months. He yells at his Moonlight, at the sky, at himself. Shouta yells back, the anger catching him and burning away the shadow, just for a moment. The world condenses to the moment, burns hot and fast, leaving them exhausted ashes in the wake of it. They become a tangle of limbs, willing themselves to close the space missing between them.
Hizashi wakes in the middle of the night, too warm, almost completely under the blanket one of them pulled over them. He pulls the blanket down. Shouta is a solid weight sprawled half-way over him. He can’t help the fond sigh that eases the tightness in his chest. Moonlight pours over them from the window, lighting the shadow-black hair fanned across his chest.
They grieve together now, sharing sleepless nights and whispered words when his thoughts drown out his voice. And when the shadows are too heavy, his Moonlight comes to him, and they carry it together.
Graduation is a blur of avoidance. Shouta and him move as one, and no one mentions that they are pressed together arm in arm. No one mentions the empty chair Oboro is supposed to be in, just silently piles cards to fill the space. He avoids the row of sky-blue reminders at the back of the room. Teachers, classmates, and strangers come up to them, and all of the congratulations are unsaid apologies.
Congratulations!
Sorry your friend won’t graduate.
Congratulations! Top of your Class!
It's a shame you couldn’t be the big 3.
Congratulations! What's your plans after you graduate?
Sorry, I heard you had big plans for your own hero agency, before…
Yamada Hizashi!
Shirakumo Oboro.
The call to the stage separates them, and it feels like he loses a limb. The diploma feels feather-light, like it could float away with his future in an instant. He doesn’t look up at the applause.
Aizawa Shouta!
Shirakumo Oboro.
His Moonlight looks shattered on the stage, doing what he couldn’t, watching the crowd for painfully familiar faces.
Shouta returns to his side, and they hold each other in white-knuckled hands. The empty space, the moment of silence that stretches across where his name should be fills Hizashi with ice-cold agony.
Shirakumo Oboro
Shirakumo Oboro
Shirakumo Oboro
He screams his name in his head. His Moonlight turns to look at him, pulling them to their feet, gathering cards, guiding him out of the auditorium. No one stops them.
They read the cards to an unanswering grave. Each story, each goodbye, is a wave crashing over his head, pulling him under. He drowns silently, voice cracking wetly over words. His Moonlight pulls him tighter, taking over where his words fail. He overflows with his grief until he cracks, splitting and spilling out. He leans back into Shouta and floats until he can breathe again.
His own goodbye spills forth absent of broken glass and burning. He repeats it louder. And louder. Shouta doesn’t stop him from shouting at a grave.
Their apartment is small, and terrible but Shouta is there and that's all he needs to make it a home. The best part is his knowledge of little things born from proximity.
Shouta can fix almost everything, at the cost of paint,grease, or water ending up freckled across his face.
Hizashi ends up with pink socks, and learns Shouta’s never done laundry with light colors before. He takes over laundry after that and learns that the capture weapon is machine washable in a special bag.
In their cramped apartment there isn’t space to hide. His Moonlight watches him practice his radio voice, watches him sing in the living room. He pretends he doesn’t notice him tapping along to the song, and Shouta pretends, pink cheeked, not to notice when the lyrics are too close to a confession.
For the first time in years, he is happy inside as much as he performs outward. He smiles wide, eyes crinkling and his Moonlight smiles back.
Shouta gets pulled into the Underground and comes home most days bruised and exhausted. Hizashi finds him asleep anywhere but a bed for months. On the couch, reports spread around him. At the tiny dining table, an empty plate pushed aside. In the hall, sat against the wall, steps from the bedroom. Red-faced, he catches him sprawled in the empty tub, jumpsuit halfway unzipped, pooled around his waist. Hizashi buys him a sleeping bag the next day, bright yellow.
Hizashi works two jobs, both making him prove himself all over again like he is fifteen and standing at the towering doors of the entrance exam. Present Mic works two jobs, and is a hard working, enthusiastic side-kick. An easy-going, eager, up and coming radio host. Present Mic takes the PR patrols, the feel-good filler interviews with a smile. Shouta listens to Hizashi’s complaints with a fond smile. When a reformed vigilante happens to request Present Mic, and only Present Mic, to give an interview, his Moonlight listens to it after with a smirk.
Renewed contracts, scheduled patrols and careful planning mark an end to their year long failed balancing act. Shouta falls asleep in his bed for the first time in months. Hizashi wakes from his own paralyzing nightmare to Oboro’s name called out from across the room. He wakes Shouta just in time to cut off a broken scream. His Moonlight tries to pull away, to leave himself alone in the shadows. He pulls away, tucking himself against the wall. Hizashi fills the space left behind without a thought, whispering the words he tries to tell himself.
They pretend for a while. He pretends Shouta’s screams don’t pull him from silent terror. Shouta pretends he doesn’t leave a space in his bed, pressing himself against the wall before he falls asleep. They both pretend like they don’t sleep better together.
Shouta goes on a mission for days, and Hizashi is tired. He shoves their beds together the day his Moonlight returns, and insists they stop pretending if only so he can sleep without being trapped in his own head. Shouta mumbles that it's logical to stop waking Hizashi with his nightmares, like it's the noise and not his pain that pulls Hizashi out of the dark.
The nightmares still come, but he is no longer paralysed, forced to watch. He can wake in the night before Shouta makes a noise. He smooths his thumb over his furrowed brow, smoothing out his Moonlight's distress before he allows himself to sleep.
His Moonlight is injured, bandage-wrapped and trying to walk out of the hospital on his own. Hizashi gives up returning him and carries him home, lays him on their couch and checks the bandages with well-prepared patience.
He is not prepared for the way the pain-killers loosen Shouta’s tongue.
Sunlight.
The word falls from his Moonlight’s mouth with the same familiarity he holds the moon. He laughs until Shouta starts talking about his ears, and his mouth, and he slaps his hand over Shouta’s before he can continue. The hospital strength medicine wears off him a merciful few hours and Shouta wakes with a remembering blush.
His Moonlight apparently decides to both not talk about it and to let the name free. Hizashi almost breaks a glass with the startled noise he makes the first time Sunlight is said in a casual request. His smile comes after his surprise. Shouta narrows his eyes at his reaction and decides to make it his mission to surprise him in quiet moments. The first week Shouta is clearly bored from healing and Hizashi’s face hurts from smiling.
His Moonlight is a terrible patient. He pops a stitch doing not-light-at-all exercise. Hizashi fixes him up with a sigh and a teasing demand to please find a hobby, any hobby.
Of course he doesn’t find a hobby but a whole other job, the idea brought to him a week later in a halting explanation that starts with Oboro’s last words and ends with him agreeing to a third job if only to keep the first determined look Shouta’s had in weeks on his face.
Having three jobs is harder than agreeing to three jobs, and Hizashi is back to long hours with little sleep.
Something has to give, and Hizashi likes teaching way more than he likes patrols mobbed with radio station fans. He switches from patrols to select, specialized missions. His boss at the station likes his new stable hours and decides to retire. All at once he has a classroom full of children and a radio station to run on his own. He gives himself a Friday show and manages the rest.
His Moonlight comes home one day with a story of an internship, a villain, and no lives lost. They tell it again to a grave, spill their regretful relief under fluffy clouds and warm sun.
Like a walking nightmare, he finds himself once again too late. Too late for the victims, too late to call for backup. They surround him with cruel, soulless eyes that promise they won’t stop. They are too late to flee as he screams the walls down around them all.
He wakes slowly, and his Moonlight fills his blurry vision. His smile hurts but he does it anyways, needing to wipe the clear agony that is etched into Shouta’s face. The expression is wiped by a kiss that is both expected and a surprise.
He echoes his Moonlight’s words between kisses.
My Moonlight.
My Moonlight.
I love you too, my Moonlight.
Everything and nothing changes. He understands Shouta’s restlessness as he heals. He floats on the fact that he can finally kiss him when he wants to, touch him when he wants to, without pretense.
His nightmares scream now, but the universe matched them with their quirks in mind and he wakes to a flash of red instead of shattered windows.
Shouta blushes when he suggests a bigger bed, his previous protests seeming silly now.
His Moonlight worries about traditional things, like dates, and it's so sweet but they aren’t traditional about anything. He makes a game out of declaring dates out of ridiculous things.
It's everything he thought he would never be given.
Shouta plans a real date, a perfect picnic. Their only free-time is weeks away and Hizashi takes the opportunity, gives a white lie about the station needing him in early and stops at the closest jewelry store he can find. The woman behind the counter looks oddly amused, but he figures it's because he can’t stop himself from talking about his Moonlight.
It's perfect, and he is stuck stunned as Shouta stumbles over rehearsed words, and he can’t help but laugh when his Moonlight pulls out a ring, fumbling in his own pocket when he fails to form words. His Moonlight huffs a laugh of his own, bright and full of joy. They both spend a moment smiling at the sky, hoping Oboro found this amusing.
Their answers are given unneeded between an absurd mix of laughter, smiles and kisses.
They get married without trying to fill the missing space. They say their vows in front of an unanswering grave. The courthouse is nothing more than paperwork and required words. Their friends understand and Shouta goes to a party just to make him happy.
Hizashi is married to the love of his life, his Moonlight.
He gets a starlit echo for a child. His Moonlight comes home with a story of stars and their own light shown back at them. Shouta pretends, and he lets him. Unnamed things take time. He pretends to be just Eraserhead, to be just a mentor. Hizashi doesn’t meet him for years after, he feels like he knows him when Midoriya Izuku enters his classroom with nervous enthusiasm.