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Shouta is just getting out his sleeping bag when Nemuri walks in and levels him with a look.
“Wait,” she says and immediately steps closer, closer than Shouta really likes and so he leans back as far as he can, until he hits Hizashi’s desk. “I never realised but is that the same fucking sleeping bag you had since graduation?” Nemuri asks and Shouta frowns at her.
“Of course it is,” he gives back, because he’s been caring for it well, thank you very much, and it would be wasteful to replace something that’s still good to use.
“Next you’re telling me you’re still living of mostly jelly packs, too,” Nemuri sighs out, pinching the bridge of her nose as if this is hurting her and Shouta can’t quite hide the guilty look it seems, because Nemuri squeals.
“No way! You have your hubby to cook for you though, don’t you?”
“Rude,” Hizashi mutters without looking up from the papers he’s currently grading and Shouta sends him a betrayed look when he doesn’t say anything else.
He could at least come to his aid here, Shouta thinks, but his attention is caught by Nemuri again when she lets out a long-suffering sigh.
“You really did not change at all,” she mutters. “Still the same as during high-school.”
“I just like my things to be consistent,” Shouta grumbles back and then worms his way into his sleeping bag, prepared to ignore Nemuri for everything else she might say.
Nemuri doesn’t abandon her spot in front of Shouta’s desk though, so he shuffles underneath Hizashi’s, who readily makes space for him and when Shouta can lean his head against his leg he admits that this might be the better place anyway.
“You’re so gross,” Nemuri whispers and now that gets Hizashi to look up.
“We’re not even doing anything,” he confusedly says and Shouta doesn’t have to open his eyes to know that she’s waggling her eyebrows at him.
“I know, that’s the entire problem. That’s the prime position for some naugh—”
“Good night,” Shouta loudly says, cutting her off and then wills himself to fall asleep, simply so he doesn’t have to deal with this anymore.
It’s a good way to escape this stupid conversation.
~*~*~
Shouta can’t stop thinking about it. Nemuri’s words have wormed their way into his brain and he can’t stop thinking about them. And he can’t stop noticing how right she was.
He’s still the same he was in high-school. He still has the same sleeping bag, he buys the same brand and flavour of jelly packs, he dresses the same. He hasn’t changed at all and it’s suddenly bothering him.
Apparently enough so, that even Hizashi picks up on it because one evening he levels Shouta with this look that looks straight to his core.
“Spit it out,” is all he says, because he knows Shouta well enough to know that something is on his mind and probably also because none of his tells have changed over the years, either.
Fuck, it’s bothering him so much.
“Why do you love me?” he blurts out, and even though that’s not exactly what has been on his mind, he realises that it’s exactly what’s been bothering him.
Shouta himself is fine with being exactly like he was as a teenager. He didn’t lie when he said he likes consistency, and he liked who he was as a teenager as well, no matter how unlikely that seems, and in all honesty, Shouta doesn’t deal well with changes.
But Hizashi is like water, always moving, always filling up different shapes and he fails to see how someone like Hizashi could still love him when he’s like a rock.
Hizashi only blinks at him, clearly caught completely off guard and Shouta’s mouth twists unhappily.
“I mean, why do you still love me?”
“I—don’t understand,” Hizashi admits after another long moment of silence and Shouta heaves out a sigh.
“I’m—still the same as during high-school,” he mutters and Hizashi’s frown only deepens.
“So you mean to say you’re still the same guy I fell in love with then?” he asks as if it should be obvious but Shouta shakes his head.
“No, I mean—yeah,” he says, frustrated that he can’t properly put it into words and when Hizashi lifts his arm in invitation, Shouta happily scuttles closer, pressing right into his side, because thinking is a little bit easier like this, with his favourite person close and those scrutinizing eyes no longer in his field of vision.
“I still don’t get it,” Hizashi tells him once Shouta is settled and this, too, hasn’t changed.
Shouta is still as unable to talk about his own feelings as he had been years ago.
“It’s just. I haven’t changed. I don’t understand why you’d still love me when I haven’t changed one bit since our high-school days,” he finally blurts out and Hizashi lets out an amused laugh.
“Right, because how dare I still love you if you are the same as when I fell in love with you. How silly of me,” he teases but he presses Shouta close, dropping a kiss to his head. “And you have changed, you just didn’t change,” he then goes on as if that makes any sense at all and Shouta pokes him in the side for it.
“You’re speaking nonsense,” he informs him and Hizashi hums, clearly thinking about his next words.
“Your base traits are all still there, you just got—more intense about them?” he then tries out and Shouta feels him nod. “Yeah, you’re more intense about things. All the things actually. You value your sleep even more now, you tolerate bullshit less than ever, you love so much more intensely than before. It’s all just you still, but dialled up and I guess that counts as a change.”
“And it doesn’t bother you?”
“Why would that bother me?”
“I—basically didn’t grow up at all,” Shouta huffs out, because it might be bothering him.
“Maybe you were born fully grown, did that ever occur to you?” Hizashi shoots back and Shouta blinks, because in all honesty, it hasn’t occurred to him.
Maybe he truly has always known who he was and simply didn’t have to figure that out, so that’s why he didn’t change. He still likes the same things and does things the same way, because that’s how he likes it and because it’s simply who he is.
“Could be,” he admits after a moment and Hizashi huffs.
“Is this about what Nemuri said a while ago?” Hizashi asks because he’s way too perceptive and Shouta shrugs, which is as good as a resounding yes. “She didn’t mean to give you an identity crisis, you know.”
“I know,” Shouta sighs out and he knows exactly where Hizashi is going with this because ever since that interaction, he might have avoided Nemuri. Just a little bit.
“You always were like that, avoiding people when they gave you something to fret over until you had it all figured out in your head.”
“And I never managed to do it on my own, I always needed you or Oboro for that,” Shouta admits because Hizashi is right.
This hasn’t changed at all, either.
“That’s right,” Hizashi agrees. “It makes you kind of—mhh, predictable, but not in a bad way. It’s comforting, to know how your mind works.”
“It’s comforting?”
“Very,” Hizashi says and then leans sideways against the arm of the couch, so Shouta is draped more firmly over him. “I like knowing what to expect with you. You’re a constant and I love that.”
Shouta hadn’t looked at it that way before, hadn’t realised that someone else might find comfort in that kind of stability as well and it settles something in him to hear it from Hizashi now.
“Good. I love you, too,” Shouta mutters as he buries his face in Hizashi’s chest and he shivers when a laugh rolls through their bodies.
“And I can always be sure that that is not going to change any time soon,” Hizashi whispers as he cards his fingers through Shouta’s hair and he realises that Hizashi is most likely right about that.
Shouta has loved him almost since the moment he laid eyes on him and it’s been years since then. And he only ever loves Hizashi more—gets more intense about it, like Hizashi said—and that’s not going to change any time soon.
~*~*~
Something’s been bugging Hizashi, Shouta can tell. There’s something brewing in him and Shouta has no intention of letting it boil over so when Hizashi passes the couch for the third time that evening, his mind clearly somewhere else, he stops him by reaching out for his sleeve.
“Hey, come here,” he says and tugs on his arm, until Hizashi goes with the program and stretches out on the couch with Shouta, draped over him like a blanket, his forehead just in reach for Shouta’s lips.
“What’s going on?” Shouta asks once Hizashi has gone truly boneless on top of him and instantly the tension is back in his frame.
“Who says something is?” Hizashi tries, but they have not been married for years for Shouta to be fooled by his fake ass Present Mic smile.
If anything it’s really driving it home that something is wrong, because once he’s home, Hizashi sheds Present Mic like the skin he is, so to have that smile directed at him now is setting off all kinds of alarms in Shouta’s mind.
“That right there,” Shouta mutters and pokes Hizashi’s cheek with his finger until the smile drops. “Tell me what’s going on.”
He’s no longer asking to let Hizashi know that the ruse is up and Hizashi seems to come to the same conclusion, because he buries his face in Shouta’s chest.
“It’s just—our talk a while ago. It got me thinking,” he admits, his words mumbled and barely audible and Shouta frowns.
“Our talk? The one where I was an insecure mess and wondered why you still love me?” he asks because now that it’s done and over with Shouta can damn well own up to what had driven his thoughts there.
It always makes him insecure to think Hizashi might one day stop loving him, so to hear him say that Shouta’s constancy is something he adores helped a whole lot.
“Yeah that one,” Hizashi huffs out and briefly digs his chin into Shouta’s chest, making him grunt.
“What about it? Can’t have been good thoughts,” Shouta mutters once Hizashi has settled down again and he doesn’t need to see his face to know the exact expression he’s pulling.
“Weren’t,” he simply gives back. “Aren’t, really,” he then admits and Shouta slings his arms more firmly around him.
“Tell me about them.”
“It’s just—why do you still love me?” Hizashi finally blurts out. “I’ve changed so much and I keep changing all the time, too, seeing how it comes with my fucking job to put on a goddamn persona all the time and I guess I just—I don’t understand why you still love me.”
The last part is barely audible even though they are so close and Shouta knows that this is really eating away at Hizashi.
“Because it’s you. Because despite everything, it’s still you.”
“Some days I don’t even know who I am anymore. How can you love me like that?”
“It doesn’t matter who you are in the moment,” Shouta slowly says, scrambling to bring his thoughts into an order that will make Hizashi understand, that will put his fears to rest, just like he did for him a while ago. “You could have fifteen different persona’s and I would still love you the same, because at the end of the day you’re still you. And that means you’re mine.”
Hizashi only hums at that, so Shouta goes on.
“Yamada Hizashi promised to love me until the end of our days, and I believe that, so that makes him mine.”
“But Present Mic—”
“You forget that I was the one who gave you that persona,” Shouta interrupts him, reminds him. “So that means he’s just as much mine as Yamada Hizashi is.”
“I am,” Hizashi promises him, even though Shouta knows that very well. “I just—you like things constant and never changing and here I am, always changing, always someone different and I just can’t help but to wonder—”
“You’re not,” Shouta cuts in again. “You’re not always someone different. At the core of you, you’re not. You might change the outer layers, you might bend yourself to fit whatever mould was presented to you, but your core traits are always the same.”
“So what? My core trait is loving you?” Hizashi snorts out and Shouta’s lips twitch up in a smile as well, even as he cranes his head to press a lingering kiss to Hizashi’s forehead.
“It kinda is, yeah. There are other things that always stay the same, like your need to do good, the tendency to go too hard on yourself, but. Yes. You’re mine no matter who you are, what persona you’re currently playing and I know that. So the rest doesn’t matter to me.”
“I do always love you, no matter who I am at the moment,” Hizashi says after a moment and Shouta nods.
“I know,” he simply says and feels how Hizashi goes boneless on top of him again.
“’kay,” he mumbles contentedly and Shouta can’t help himself, he just has to drop another kiss to his head.
“Love how Nemuri managed to make both of us insecure messes,” Shouta muses and relishes the way it makes Hizashi laugh out loud.
“She certainly has a gift,” he agrees, and then turns his head, so he can look at Shouta.
Shouta knows what he’s going to say, so he rushes to say it first for once.
“I love you.”
Hizashi’s face goes soft in the way that makes Shouta’s heart stumble in his chest and he doesn’t need to hear him say it, to know he does, too, but of course Hizashi is not known to be quiet.
“I love you,” he gives back, just as heartfelt and Shouta knows, down to the marrow of his bones, that Hizashi does.
No persona, no mask he puts on could ever change that and he guesses in that regard they are the same after all.
Never changing, always changing but most importantly always in love.