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Hitoshi flies back to Japan on New Year’s Eve. He crosses eight time zones in twelve hours, like he’s trying to fast-forward through the last day of December and leave his colossal fuck-up behind in a different year as well as in another country.
It doesn’t work. His plane lands with a light snowfall just before eleven, and everything follows him home.
The international rep who had supervised the mission had told him it wasn’t his fault. The president of the Hero Public Safety Commission had told him it wasn’t his fault. Aizawa had told him it wasn’t all his fault, which was honestly the only thing that made Hitoshi feel a little better. Personal protégé and somewhat-successor or not, Aizawa would have let him know if it was time to hang up his capture cloth and retire early to Antarctica, never to be seen nor heard from again. Instead he’d just said, We’ll talk about it, which means that Hitoshi is twenty-two years old and still getting ‘see me after class’d. He’s doing amazing, thanks.
He'd tried to sleep for as much of the flight as possible, if only to keep the last few days of the mission from replaying in his head the whole way home. Every slip up. Every bad call. Everything he would have done differently, if given the chance.
The downside of his sleeping strategy is that he dreams instead—not of the mission, exactly, but of something blurrier, less distinct. It’s dark. He’s in the wrong place. Something bad is going to happen—has happened, and he’s already too late to stop it. He throws his capture cloth and it stretches out endlessly without an anchor. He can’t tell if he’s falling or if he was trying to catch someone and missed.
No one died, is what Hawks had said on the phone. Each time he jolts awake, Hitoshi can’t stop thinking about all the ways someone could have.
He catches a cab from the airport. The only person he’d ever pester this late—and on a holiday, no less—had mentioned a New Year’s Eve party the last time they’d talked.
What Monoma had failed to mention was that they were hosting said New Year’s Eve party.
For the most part, Monoma is a good roommate. Hitoshi was just as surprised as anyone—Monoma should have been pushy, and intrusive, and obnoxious, and he can be. But he also does his part to keep the apartment neat, prepares an additional serving when he has time to cook, and always lets Hitoshi know when he’ll be having company over—except, apparently, this once.
Hitoshi tries to remind himself of all this as he stands on the sidewalk across from their building. It’s an old building, but it’s roomy and the rent is reasonable, and Hitoshi appreciates that he can step out their front door into the open walkway, jump the railing, and swing to work without bothering with pesky things like ‘stairs’ or ‘crosswalks’ or ‘fellow pedestrians.’
He also appreciates that he can see their second floor apartment from the street. The lights are still on, windows haloed in a warm golden glow against the deep blue night. Silhouettes move behind the glass, beneath the drooping shadow of some kind of party streamer taped to the other side.
Bakugou’s car is parked far enough down the street that it is theoretically hidden by a lamppost. Shouji’s car is theoretically hidden behind Bakugou’s. It isn’t hard to put two and two—and hopefully significantly less than twenty-two—together. Their place isn’t that roomy.
Hitoshi’s first instinct is to leave. Where, exactly, he doesn’t know. Maybe his parents’. Maybe Aizawa’s. Maybe back to the airport—Antarctica after all. Find somewhere to lay low until he feels more like a person and less like a problem—a wannabe pro with no idea what he’s doing. An imposter.
But his Hero Course cohort has never let him feel like an imposter for long, so his second instinct is to climb the stairs, one painstaking step at a time, and follow the familiar path home.
As he nears the door, he can hear the muffled sounds of the party carrying on inside. There’s Bakugou, who shouts something Jirou shouts back to, almost drowning out Midoriya’s stuttered reply. Four years out of UA, and the cacophony is still somehow comforting. Based on the volume, the place is probably packed—it’s not as bad as it could be, all things considered, but he and Monoma might still have to do something nice for any neighbors spending the evening at home as an apology for the commotion.
Maybe the apartment just seems noisier in comparison to the still, cold night. Beyond the walkway railing, insubstantial flurries of snow continue to drift from the dark sky. The din of traffic from the main road seems impossibly faint, the lights in other windows strangely distant.
It would be easy to open the door, see his friends, forget his failed mission for just long enough to carry him into the new year. End this one on a high note. Try again tomorrow.
All he has to do is go inside.
He goes to the railing instead. The snow swirls silently down to the street. His fingers itch for the capture cloth.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been standing there before the door eases open behind him. The noise from the party pours out onto the walkway for just a moment before it shuts equally softly.
“In my defense,” Monoma says, “I only invited about half the people in there. The rest of those mannerless cretins just showed up when they heard you were coming back to town.”
“Or when they heard there would be free food.”
Monoma tsks at him, coming to stand beside him at the railing. Those are two other reasons they make good roommates—Hitoshi doesn’t take his theatrics personally, and Monoma doesn’t stare him down when he knows Hitoshi is fighting the instinct to hide. He takes a page out of Hitoshi’s book and looks out into the darkness, his profile a blur in Hitoshi's periphery. “Ever the cynic. Is it really so hard to believe your friends are here to see you?”
Hitoshi… doesn’t answer that. It has not been a resoundingly good week for his self-esteem.
Monoma hums as though he’d replied anyway. “I heard about what happened.”
“How?” He doesn’t know why he bothers asking. There’s really only one person who could have told Monoma anything, unless he’s become besties with the HPSC president while Hitoshi was away.
“I have my sources.” He can see Monoma’s shrug out of the corner of his eye, which means Aizawa really is turning into a damn snitch in his old age. “I know you think it’s totally your fault, but it’s really, really not. Trust me, I would leap at the opportunity to tell you if it was. You’re still a Class A traitor, after all.”
“The more time goes by, the more pathetic that gets.”
He can see Monoma’s smirk out of the corner of his eye, too. “I’ll give it up next year.”
Hitoshi huffs, trying for a laugh. It comes out more like a sigh. Monoma brushes some of the scarce snow from the handrail, then shakes his fingers as the cold stings his bare skin and tucks his hand into his pocket. “I don’t suppose you want to talk about it.”
“Why not?”
“Because you never want to talk about your feelings. You should give that up next year.”
“Pot, kettle,” Hitoshi says.
“Touché.”
They go back to watching the snow. There’s a distant crash from the apartment behind them. Hitoshi doesn’t have to look to know Monoma is grimacing, but he doesn’t charge back inside to confront the Class A hooligans who may or may not be destroying their home.
He probably wants to. He’s probably cold.
He’s probably a better friend than Hitoshi deserves, and Hitoshi should probably try to meet him halfway.
He clears his throat. The words stick anyway, but he forces them out one at a time. Step by step. “I always thought that messing up when everyone already assumed you were some kind of failure was the worst feeling in the world. You know. Proving them right about you. But it turns out that it sucks way more to mess up when everyone trusted you not to.”
Monoma finally turns to look directly at him. “Does it suck less to know that a top ten hero would have done the same thing you did?”
The calm certainty of his tone catches Hitoshi off guard. He reaches reflexively for something more familiar and snarks, “Did Shouji say that?”
“Ha ha,” Monoma says dryly. “No. But he probably would, if you asked. He’s inside. He brought hors d'oeuvres. There should still be some left, emphasis on the should. Honestly, your friends eat like they’re preparing to hibernate.”
“Doesn’t sound like a half-bad idea right about now.”
“It’s very sad to watch someone your age transform into a boring, crotchety old man so long before their time,” Monoma sighs. “But alas, I seem to have found myself a front-row seat.”
“Living together was your idea,” Hitoshi reminds him.
“You work nights and leave the country for weeks at a time. I assumed I’d never have to see you.”
He pauses, now peering at Hitoshi with his usual level of undisguised intensity. “If you really want to be left alone, Aizawa said he’d be asleep by nine.” This time, Hitoshi manages something closer to a laugh. That does sound like Aizawa’s ideal way to ring in the new year. “You can let yourself in and crash in the guest room. But—” and here, Monoma steps forward and flicks him very deliberately on the forehead—“if you want to practice moving on in the spirit of the holiday, and hang out with your friends who haven’t seen you in months, then you should stop sulking out here in the snow and come inside.” He shrugs again. Theatrics. “I know what I think you should do, but it’s your call.”
Hitoshi shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “I haven’t been making a lot of good ones, lately.”
“I don’t know,” Monoma says. “You flew back on the thirty-first, which was probably a good call. Beat the holiday crowds—no one wants to travel the day of New Year’s Eve. You pick pretty good friends. And you follow the right advice, most of the time, so I don’t think you’re doing too bad.”
This is why Hitoshi never wants to talk about his feelings. It makes him feel precarious and out of his depth. The impulse to jump the railing and take to the rooftops has never been stronger.
But he can still feel the faint sting of Monoma’s fingers against his forehead. Bridging the distance in the most obnoxious way possible.
“Just to clarify,” Hitoshi says, “‘The right advice’ would be to ditch your lame New Year’s party and go get some sleep, right?”
“It’s funny how you expect me to believe that you of all people just sat on a plane for twelve hours and didn’t sleep the whole time.”
“Not the whole time,” he protests.
“Shinsou,” Monoma says flatly. “Come hang out with your rude, hungry friends before I use your own quirk on you.” He waves with the hand he’d just used to flick him, that bastard, and spins back toward their door.
With one last backward glance, Hitoshi follows him.