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Hizashi’s hands are shaking around the gun, the muzzle digging into his cheekbones, keeping him form talking. From using his quirk. He feels useless. His eyes land on Shouta, chained to a chair and blindfolded. There is someone standing over Shouta, one arm turned into a sword, holding it to Shouta’s neck. There are hands over Hizashi’s, a voice from just behind him. He can’t move, can’t stop shaking.
“Come on. That villain can’t see you. Don’t you want to protect your husband? Nobody will know it was you. There is nothing else you can do.”
The hands fall away and Hizashi is alone in holding the gun again. The villain behind Shouta raises his arm, moving as if to strike down, as if to decapitate him. Hizashi barely thinks about it as he raises the gun and shoots. The sound is almost deafening and Hizashi’s ears are ringing. He knows how to use a gun, though he hasn’t held one since he got his license. Still, the bullet hits and Hizashi’s hands no longer shake as he lowers the gun, clicks the safety back on while the villain collapses, luckily away from Shouta.
“Good job. You kept him safe.”
Hizashi feels like he’s drowning.
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Hizashi wakes up in cold sweat, hands shaking and empty as he raises them to his face. No muzzle. There is still a faint ringing in his ears, as if from a gunshot, thought Hizashi knows that it isn’t real. It was a nightmare. He still has a hard time breathing, reaches out to his side almost on instinct. The bed is cold. Right, Shouta is on patrol tonight. He pulls his knees up to his chest and curls against the headboard. The room is blurry without his glasses, only made worse by the tears gathering in his eyes. Hizashi burrows his face in his knees and cries.
It takes him a while until he calms down and when he does Hizashi feels cold. He doesn’t often get cold, not like Shouta. But it’s almost as if the iron of his nightmare sapped all the warmth out of him. Hizashi just breathes and thinks. He knows Shouta is okay, if anything happened someone would have told him.
Still, worry about Shouta isn’t the only thing hanging over Hizashi’s mind. What worries him more is the fact that in the dream, he barely hesitated to shoot the villain. That he went straight for the head, straight for the kill. Hizashi stares at his hands, blurry without his glasses. He should really put them on unless he wants to get a headache. Should get a glass of water, too. He doesn’t move.
Would he really do that? Would he really shoot someone? Kill someone? He doesn’t need to think too much about it before he knows that, to keep Shouta safe, the answer is yes. When did that happen? Was there a point in time where he looked at Shouta and knew, right then, that he would kill for him? Or was it gradually, like falling in love?
Hizashi takes a shaky breath and puts on his glasses. He gets up and starts walking to the kitchen. He feels like his body is moving on its own, like he isn’t really deciding on where to go. In his nightmare things were different. There he knew exactly what he was doing. He consciously lifted the gun, felt every muscle as he aimed and pulled the trigger.
Hizashi closes his eyes and leans against the wall while he breathes. He supposes that it’s better that it was a gun. At least he didn’t feel himself killing someone with his quirk, not on purpose, at least. Hizashi knows which frequency would leave someone with permanent hearing loss, which frequency can shatter glass and how he would have to whistle to kill someone. He knows how dangerous his quirk is because he can’t risk doing any of those things on accident. He can’t risk yelling at someone and then seeing them collapse, knowing he killed them.
How would it feel, he distantly wonders, to kill someone? Not shooting a faceless villain in a dream, but using his quirk to kill a person on purpose? Hizashi is careful, always has been, ever since he started learning how to control his quirk. People have died during his fights before, but his fatality rate is low, almost non-existent. He barely even injures the villains he fights long-term. Not when he can avoid it. Not when he knows how to knock them out with a well-placed sonic blast.
He pours himself a glass of water with shaking hands, leaning against the kitchen island as he drinks. The clock reads 4am. Shouta won’t be back for another hour, when the spotlight heroes start their patrols. Hizashi doesn’t think he’ll be going back to sleep, not with how loud his mind is being. They both have school in a few hours, will have to leave about an hour after Shouta gets home. Hizashi lets his head fall. He feels shaky. It scares him, to think that he knows what he would be willing to do. Has been willing to for a while.
He knows he isn’t a typical spotlight hero, has been around Shouta too long for that. He is quick to judge, though he doesn’t act on it. He hates the press and soaks up gossip quicker than people expect. He also knows that Shouta has had to kill before. It left his husband in a bad mood for weeks, sleeping more often than not. But that’s the price an underground hero like him has to pay. He also knows Shouta avoids any situations like that as best as he can. For all that his husband is brutally efficient, he believes that people can change. That most people have a reason for what they do, even if it isn’t a good one. That’s why he works with vigilantes sometimes.
Hizashi also knows he isn’t like his husband. He isn’t quick to forgive, isn’t secretly soft despite pretending to be an asshole, doesn’t hold onto cold logic as well as Shouta does. Hizashi knows he’s smart, has a talent for languages and picks up on more than people give him credit for. He can be just as calculating as Shouta, if he needs to be. But unlike Shouta, his public persona is someone friendly. Someone easy going who rather laughs than anything else. Someone kind.
Sometimes Hizashi wonders if he really is as kind as he pretends to be. Especially after the nightmare he had, especially after realizing that he is fully ready to take a life if it comes to it. Especially when his anger is burning, wanting to break out in a wave of total destruction, when his throat aches with the need to scream. Really, between him and Shouta, Hizashi would say Shouta is the kinder one. Because any kindness coming from him is real, is not staged. And Hizashi doesn’t know if he can say the same about himself. Not when he knows if it came down to it, he would choose Shouta over the world. He huffs a weak laugh. Not that his husband would allow that to happen. He would hate him for it.
Hizashi stays in the kitchen until Shouta comes home.