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When Shinsou Hitoshi wakes up, it’s to the unfortunately familiar feeling of metal cuffs cinched tight around his wrists and to the dry mouth feeling of having previously been drugged into unconsciousness.
“Oh good!” a cheery voice proclaims from the darkness somewhere across from him. “You woke up!”
Hitoshi merely groans in response. “Not again,” he grumbles, refusing to open his eyes on matter of principle.
“Again?” the bright voice asks, seemingly intent on giving Hitoshi a headache with volume and exuberance level alone. “Does this kind of thing happen to you often?”
Hitoshi rolls his head on his neck in the laziest nod he’s ever given just to be a little shit about it.
“Um… You okay dude? You’re looking a bit…”
“Drugged?” Hitoshi finishes for him, finally bothering to open his eyes. “Yes they tend to do that. And I tend to prolong the inevitable by pretending to still be unconscious for as long as they let me so if you don’t mind–” He cuts himself off then as his eyes adjust to the darkness enough that the person cuffed to the chair across from him finally becomes visible.
“You’re… that strong one from 1A right? Um… Rock Lee?”
Kirishima blinks at him. “Dude no way you don’t know my name.”
Hitoshi fights to keep his lip from twitching at how put out the hero student sounds.
“You’re right, I do know it. But you need to understand something Rikimisha.”
Kirishima makes a scandalized noise at the butchering of his name and repeats it to himself in a disbelieving tone but Hitoshi just keeps going.
“To successfully survive a kidnapping like this, one must first preserve the sanity. I do that by being a little shit. It’s nothing personal but once turned on it can’t be deactivated so easily. Sorry not sorry.”
“Oh.” Kirishima says. He blinks at Hitoshi like he’s letting the words sink in and then his face splits into a wide smile. “Cool! None taken Shinsbro!”
“The fuck did you just call me?”
Kirshima merely grins at him.
Hitoshi sighs.
“Alright enough small talk, let's talk shop. What all do you have on you?”
“Uh… a pack of gum and some emergency hair gel?”
“Useless,” Hitoshi proclaims, testing the give of his cuffs against the chair. Sometimes these villains tend to splurge on the fancy stuff as far as restraints go and then forget to maintain the chair. He’s gotten free more than once by simply snapping off the armrests, and on one memorable occasion, by tipping the entire chair over to reduce it to splinters. He’d been picking wood chips out of his ass for a week but it was worth it in the end.
Sadly this time the goons seem to have gone all out.
“Um Shinsbro? Whatcha doin?”
“Plotting a breakout,” Hitoshi mumbles, petulant in the face of that stupid nickname. “Why? What are you doing?”
“Contemplating life and shit. Like I’m sure with my quirk I could survive any physical abuse they try to attack me with but this was the worst time for me to get kidnapped.”
Hitoshi rolls his eyes and leans back to see how far away he is from the wall behind him. “Why? Had a hot date?” he teases. “In that case you should let them bruise you up a bit. It's supposedly a hot look and you’ll get sympathy points.”
“What? Dude no!”
Hitoshi looks him up and down. “Yeah what was I thinking?”
Kirshima just stares at him.
“Right yeah that was too far, I'm sorry I really can’t turn it off, it's a coping mechanism. I'll buy you ice cream or something after this.”
“Deal!” Kirishima beams, totally mollified by the apology alone. “Anyway what I meant was that it was a bad day to get kidnapped because bro I’m telling you I just had the worst acne breakout this morning, I was so ready to not be seen by people and then Bam! Kidnapped.” He hangs his head, honest to god pouting about it. “I’m mortified.”
“Well at least you used that word correctly.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing,” Hitoshi sighs. “Why did they grab you anyway? I know why they kidnapped me of course–”
“–For your stand up comedy obviously.” Kirishima cuts in.
Hitoshi stares.
Kirishima grins.
“Damn okay,” Hitoshi laughs. “Rikimisha got jokes.”
“Thank you,” he beams back.
“Okay but seriously.”
“The truth?” Kirishima mumbles, ducking his head in embarrassment.
“Obviously!” Hitoshi snarks back, “if I wanted a lie I’d ask Monoma.”
Kirishima shudders. “Dang not Monoma.”
“Riki…” Hitoshi wheedles. “The truth. Now please. Before they come back to do all the villainous things.”
“Right right yeah okay this is just so… um so apparently they were looking for, quote, ‘the hero kid who’s hair defies gravity’ and uh we were both waiting for the light to turn green on the same corner so–”
“You’re shitting me,” Hitoshi gasps, tacking on his best victorian woman scandalized gasp at the end to cover his genuine surprise.
“I’m really really not.”
“Okay but that’s great,” Hitoshi murmurs. “If they don’t know which of us they really wanted then they won’t know which of us has the brainwashing quirk.”
His head snaps up to look at Kirishima. “And they won’t have known to fortify the cuffs against your quirk!”
Kirishima’s mouth falls open and then he’s activating his quirk and tugging his hands apart.
The cuffs shatter into a million pieces because of course they do and Hitoshi fixes Kirishima with his best unimpressed stare, ala Aizawa-sensei, with the raised eyebrow of disapproval and everything.
“Listen, in my defense, I assumed they knew better.” Kirishima says sheepishly.
“Well congrats you made an ass out of u now get over here and break me out before they come back to investigate that noise.”
“Make me,” Kirishima grins.
And so Hitoshi grins back and uses his quirk to do just that.
Later when they’re newly freed and have phoned Aizawa-sensei to come get them Kirishima pouts and says, “I didn't mean that literally!”
“No no, I think you did,” Hitoshi smirks back.
But he does buy Kirishima an ice cream in apology while they wait.