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Izuku stares nervously down at his hands, fidgeting. Reo had been excited when Izuku suggested this but now even Reo has adopted some of Izuku’s anxiety.
Shinsou sits in Reo’s usual chair, looking between the two of them with a raised brow. “If you’re about to tell me you’re dating I already know.”
Izuku’s head snaps up with a heavy flush. “We are not.”
Reo can only snort in response, shoulders rising with a laugh. A matching smile makes its way to Shinsou’s face, curiosity reignited as he leans back in his seat. “What did you want to tell me then?” And he gets to watch in real time as Izuku shrinks back into himself rather sheepishly.
“Well— You… supported Piper right?” Izuku’s fingers twist in his lap. Shinsou doesn’t know what he has to be nervous about.
Still, the question catches him off guard. Shinsou presses his expression into something carefully blank. “No, this Piper themed hoodie I’m wearing right now is actually just an elaborate ploy to dig up vigilante sympathizers across Musutafu so I can report them to the Hero Commission.”
Izuku swallows thickly, eyes flickering away. “Okay that may have been a stupid question, obviously I know you were a fan and everything with all the videos and the whatever else but my point with all of this is really— well… I may know who Piper was—” He wrings his hands together, anxiety peeking.
Shinsou’s eyes widen, gaze flickering between them as he shifts forward in his seat. “What? You know who he was?” then, after only a moment’s thought, “You both know who he was?” Because it’s clear that Reo is in on whatever this is, encouraging Izuku where their shoulders press against one another, not the least bit surprised.
“Aizawa’s gonna kill me,” Izuku mutters quietly, then louder: “But— I trust you so…”
“Aizawa knows too?” Shinsou asks, voice rising in pitch, half frantic with an almost panicked curiosity.
Izuku takes a breath, eyes flickering up to meet Shinsou’s. Two burning nebulae of emerald. He looks impossibly determined about this suddenly, about trusting Shinsou enough to share such a secret. “I… Well, I’m Piper— was Piper I guess, since, well, you know,” his words fall quiet at the end, determination dissolving back into worry.
Disbelief, realization. “Piper died,” Shinsou states dumbly.
“Yeah,” Izuku agrees, quietly. “It’s a uh— it’s a long story.” He reaches a hand up to absently rub at the back of his neck where Shinsou knows an odd scar remains puckered and discolored.
Shinsou turns quickly to Reo. “You believe him?”
Reo huffs a soft laugh. “I made the mask.”
Izuku’s eyes widen, elbowing him with a hiss, “You agreed not to mention that.”
But Reo only grins at him, something like relief and gratefulness— like love written in the crinkled corners of his eyes. “Can’t let you take all the credit.”
And, like all the others before him, Shinsou can see it. How glaringly obvious all the clues are now that he’s been handed the cypher.
“You can’t tell anyone about Reo being involved,” Izuku begs, turning back to him, “I never told Aizawa or the others about that. I didn’t want him getting in trouble for it.”
“You’re really him?” Shinsou asks.
Izuku looks at him, something soft and tender, sad almost. “Yeah.”
“He died,” Shinsou repeats,
“Piper… became more than I ever was,” Izuku admits, gaze finding the knock off poster on the wall behind Shinsou, Reo had surprised the both of them with it a few weeks ago. It’s a nice illustration of the vigilante’s silhouette, outlined by a bright red sun, pipe held high as if leading a charge.
They’d made jokes about how it could’ve just as easily been a poster for Izuku, for Red Sun. Shinsou wonders now if that’d been Reo’s intention all along. A reminder that who had been lost wasn’t really gone, simply reshaped, reformed into the hero-in-training just across from him.
Izuku recounts his story carefully and Shinsou hangs onto every word, every lesson learned, every new scar, every near death experience. “I got in too deep,” Izuku continues, “Too invested in a case that killed me once and nearly did so again.” His eyes are somewhere far away.
Reo takes a careful hold of Izuku's hand, squeezing.
The boy takes a breath, blinking back. “It was a steep learning curve, doing what I was doing,” Izuku continues eventually.
“The USJ almost killed him,” Reo cuts in.
“I was getting reckless,” Izuku admits, “being Piper was getting more and more dangerous, so I— faked my death,” he replies sheepishly, “All those crazy theories online turned out to be… not so crazy.”
Shinsou’s not quite sure what to say, how to react. Izuku was Piper, his friend, his inspiration. Piper, who Musutafu had immortalized as a hero, as a martyr. Izuku who was quirkless, who was strong despite everyone's misgivings, who was strong in spite of everyone’s misgivings. Aizawa knows, Present Mic knows, their husband and Reo and Reo’s uncle and Eri and now… Shinsou too, privy to Izuku's greatest secret, privy to Piper’s past, to his present, his future.
Reo says something that has Izuku turning to him, swatting at his arm, smiling, laughing, tension melting. Shinsou watches with no small amount of awe. How normal they seem: Piper and his man in the chair, Midoriya and his best friend.
“Piper?” Shinsou asks.
Izuku turns to him almost innocently. “Hmm?” The smile on his face is as gentle as the rising sun, the beacon of a lighthouse guiding Shinsou back into himself.
And somehow the world feels not so tilted in that moment, not so dull as it had been following Piper’s death. One hadn’t needed to know the vigilante to mourn him, to weep bitterly, to ache with a loss like that of a friend.
“You cosplayed Piper at Hero Con,” Shinsou says instead of any of that. It comes out slightly choked though he thinks he does a good job at disguising it. But it’s the only thing he can bring himself to say, the only thing that grants him some sense of stability. “You got second place,” there’s amusement creeping into his voice, easy as it’s always been because Izuku was once Piper, because Izuku was Shinsou’s friend, because Izuku trusted him with this.
Izuku flushes with an embarrassed sort of look at the reminder but Reo laughs from beside him, loud and bright and contagious.
And Shinsou can’t help but mirror it.