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“Hey, kiddo!”
Shouto flinches, and promptly knocks his head on a broom handle. It clatters in place, slipping from the already-precarious angle it’s tilted at in the custodial closet he’s hiding in, but he’s saved the surely grievous head wound when the person invading his little hiding spot catches it at the last second.
“Sorry,” says Takami. “You’re eighteen now, right? I should’ve said ‘hey, adult,’ but that’s what they don’t teach you in high school—that you’re actually legally an infant until you turn twenty-five.”
“Aren’t you twenty-four?” Shouto croaks, flushing when his voice comes out shattered and hoarse. Even if Takami can’t see how swollen and red his eyes are in the low lighting, his voice makes it obvious that he’s been crying.
“Yeah,” Takami says, propping the broom back up and swinging inside. The door clunks shut behind him, and he plops down cross-legged next to Shouto, deliberately juvenile next to the stiff way Shouto is holding himself. “That’s why your dad thinks I still have acne problems.”
Shouto touches his jaw. He has acne problems. They’ve actually gotten worse since he started acting. All the makeup clogs his pores or something.
“So,” Takami pipes up after a long moment of awkward silence, propping his elbows up on his knees. “Crying alone in a closet, huh? I’d say it sounds like prom night, but something tells me you’ve got more serious things on your mind.”
Shouto ducks his head and scrubs the sleeve of his pressed white uniform shirt over his eyes. It comes away wet, and yet his eyelashes are still sticky with tears. At least the makeup caked on him for this episode is seriously water-proof, what with how hard they’ve all been sweating for the action scenes.
He’s not in the mood for crude humor, but Takami manages to deliver the line with a gentleness to his voice that reminds him of his mom. He misses coming home to her with his dad and having her ask about her two famous boys. They’re all the way across the country right now, though, so the flamboyant guy always making fun of his dad is the closest Shouto will get.
It’s a weird reminder that he’s got a lot more in common with Takami than anyone else on the cast today. Shouto is the only one of the students who’s on set at the moment, so they’re the two closest in age, and Takami isn’t shy about cracking self-directed gay jokes. It seriously flustered Shouto at first, before he realized that the other actor’s sexuality is such old news that nobody would bat an eye anymore.
Shouto resists the urge to snort. Maybe that’s how Takami knew to look for Shouto in the closet.
“It’s nothing,” he mumbles in the end. “I’m just overwhelmed.”
“Is it about what your dad said?” Takami asks, eyes cutting over to meet Shouto’s.
Shouto winces and looks away. There’s a box to his left, stuffed with an old clapperboard and some miscellaneous props that don’t look like they’re even from My Hero Academia. Much easier to look at than a sharp-eyed co-star that has too many similarities to him to not catch why he’s so upset.
“It’s not a big deal. He didn’t mean it like it sounded, and he was right.”
“Maybe that’s true,” Takami allows, leaning forward onto his elbows, “but that doesn’t mean it didn’t upset you. I mean, I’m here to hide from Rumi ‘cause she found out I nicked her waist trainer, but after what I heard, I can’t say I was surprised to find my time-honored crying closet already occupied.”
“...Crying closet?” Shouto can’t help but ask, effectively baited.
“Well, yeah.” Takami scratches at his cheek, huffing a laugh. “This isn’t the first gig I’ve filmed in this studio, and I started acting at, like, age seven. I’m sure you saw all the drama about it on the news when it happened, but my mom wasn’t ever the best at, y’know, being a mom. So: Crying closet. Congratulations, you’re continuing a tradition. Pretty sure Enji has sent me here at least a few times.”
Shouto stares up at him, owl-eyed.
He’s not sure what to say. Takami always seems incredibly cheerful, both in interviews and on-set. He bickers with Shouto’s dad, but it’s comfortable needling, nothing that would indicate that the joking barbs thrown around genuinely upset him.
“Obviously, it upset me,” Shouto begins quietly. “But it’s not—like that. This is just the first time I’m acting in something with my dad, and I really wanted to impress him.”
“Mm.” Takami nods and looks to the other side of the closet. Shouto lets himself relax a little, more comfortable when he’s not being dissected with that steady gaze. Does Takami ever blink?
“He likely didn’t intend to be cruel,” Takami tells him. “I’ve seen how he acts with you most of the time—he clearly loves you a lot—but keep in mind that this is his first time acting with you, too, so he’s probably all stuck in his head about making sure you get a good impression and have a good experience.”
“I’m trying to make a good impression,” Shouto tells his knees, glaring down at the ground. “I didn’t even do anything wrong. He didn’t need to correct me like that.”
“You’re right, he didn’t,” Takami allows easily, and it blows the wind out of Shouto’s sails as quickly as it came. “To be honest, little dude, your dad just sucks at working with kids.”
Shouto barks a laugh, high and wet with leftover congestion, and slaps a hand over his mouth. “Didn’t you just say I was an adult?”
“Infant,” Takami corrects with a grin. “For another, what? Six years? Seriously, though, you’re not the first person Enji’s made cry. He forgets that he can’t treat the younger cast members the same way he treats the people his age who don’t look at him and see this intimidating, hulking dude with an IMDb page longer than their birth certificate. That’s why I’m on his case so much, to be honest. Call it revenge for the experiences of my own youth, but he used to be much worse about it.”
Shouto gnaws on his lip. “Worse?”
Takami shrugs, rubbing his fingers over his beard. “And lamer. Trust me—as impressive as your dad seems, you’re already shaping up to surpass all expectations.”
Shouto ducks his head again, but this time it’s to hide the flush that’s trickling its way up his neck. It’s not like Takami isn’t a really well-respected and experienced actor by this point, either—you don’t act from age seven to twenty-four without building a hell of a resume. Shouto still has a shirtless movie poster of Takami up in his childhood bedroom that he bought when he was fourteen and had a stupid kiddie crush. To get that kind of praise from him on Shouto’s first major project with his dad is putting butterflies in his stomach.
How embarrassing.
Shouto used to see Takami on-set sometimes when he was a little kid, when Takami looked like just another one of the adults but must have been no older than sixteen himself. He was so cool then, too. Shouto never would have imagined that he was ducking into a closet to cry.
“Thanks,” Shouto mutters. When he looks over, Takami’s smile is a little too knowing, but also blinding in its sincerity.
“Don’t even sweat it,” Takami chirps, and rocks to his feet before offering Shouto a hand. “Now, c’mon. Help me bully your dad into apologizing. He’s gonna look super awkward when he realizes he crossed a line, I promise.”
Shouto swipes his sleeve over his eyes one last time, getting the last of the tears gumming up his eyelashes, and grabs Takami’s hand.
