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It was a lonely night when Denki got called out for the emergency.
He thought he would finally succeed in finding sleep despite the emptiness beside him, but his phone buzzed loudly in his ear, the emergency alert playing so loud to the point of blaring. His eyes shot open, body jumping from the bed, throwing sheets away carelessly as he rushed to answer the line while changing from pajamas into his hero costume as quickly as humanly possible.
A few seconds later, as he's speaking with the emergency correspondent, he hears the same blaring alarm through the closed door, rushed bare footsteps hurrying up the stairs, the door slams open when Denki is pulling his shirt down, grabbing his jacket and his sharpshooting gear.
Hitoshi is shirtless, phone pressed to ear using his shoulder for support, he tries to avoid Denki's gaze, and Denki does the same. He kicks his shoes on as quickly as he can, trying to make mental notes of the situation, mumbling to himself, the words villains, destroying, and city replay in his mind. He's shaking from the adrenaline, gripping cables that plug into a generator and turning the lever on with his shoe.
It shocks him, and he feels alive again.
Hitoshi is tying the laces of his combat boots, watching Denki while he charges up, thinking he doesn't notice.
They're outside within minutes, a truck full of exhausted pros pulls up and they're hauled inside, driven off just as quickly.
Hitoshi made it a point to not sit next to his boyfriend.
Apparently he's still mad, and that pisses Denki off more than it should. The truck is speeding, alarm blaring as it runs red lights through the empty roads.
The speed makes Denki's head spin a little, his entire body sways with forceful turns and makes him a little queasy. The heroes inside become more and more grim as they look outside the windows to see the total destruction fade in gradients as they grow closer to their destination.
They arrive in ten, maybe fifteen minutes, when the drive should have otherwise been at least half an hour. Destroyed homes and rubble and— Denki can hear explosions— Screaming, too. He jumps off the truck once the back doors are opened, glancing back at Hitoshi one last time. Hitoshi stays in the truck, hauled off to another district.
He's told a jailbreak caused hundreds of villains to run rampant, Denki can see corpses the second he's outside. It's nauseating. Crushed under rubble, slumped over destroyed homes. The city is engulfed in total darkness as electricians scramble to start up the backup generators.
It's a hellscape of abandonment and chaos where heroes are trying to get things under control. People are running in the streets and it's by no means orderly. It overwhelms him.
He forces himself to stop dissociating. "Focus," He mutters to himself under his breath as he's approached by a police officer who instructs him to go round up one of the villains who escaped into the underground subway.
Alone.
Denki doesn't give it a second thought. Underground and alone is how he preforms best, since he can let his loose with his quirk without the fear of hurting those around him.
"Good luck, Charge." The officer says, and in an attempt to dissipate some of the tension in the woman's shoulders, Denki winks and chuckles,
"I won't need it," He says lightly, waving his hand flippantly as he turns to leave.
"You will."
That causes Denki to shudder, trying to shake the anxiety of the bone chilling tone in her voice away. It doesn't work.
From the corner of his eyes, he sees the truck start driving again.
He bolts in the direction he's pointed to before he can even think of backing out, runs down escalators that are no longer functional and avoids the pile of rubble blocking half the entrance.
He doesn't get any debriefing, any information regarding the villain he's after, but they must be pretty damn strong if they're making catching them a priority.
Denki's running comes to a speed walk as he looks around. There is rubble blocking the other platforms and bathrooms, and his eyes land on the one viable place for escape.
The train tunnel.
Denki jumps down from the platform, landing on train tracks. This station is a last stop, meaning there's only one way, and that's forward.
He looks around, though it isn't like he'd be able to see much in the darkness. As he strays farther and farther from the station, he is engulfed in darkness and in silence. The only sound he hears is the eerie clank of his shoes on the gravel between each track.
He surrounds himself with a gentle buzz of electricity, making him glow, he was trying to conserve his energy, so he kept the output at a steady pace, a practice that took way more training than he'd ever want to admit to.
Cupping his hands around his mouth, he inhaled deeply and shouted;
"Heyyy! Villain!" He waited. Total silence. Looking around, he stopped walking, ear twitching with effort as he tried to listen for a sound— Any sound, but there was absolutely nothing.
He sighed, exasperated, running along the edge of the tracks for better footing.
Now, Denki had another issue, because if the villain wasn't in the tunnel, that meant they were in the next station over, and that meant more destruction in a whole new area.
He stopped outputting electricity, deciding that it was better to conserve it so it could be put to use whenever he finds the villain, because clearly, they weren't here. He continued running, keeping his pace for a few more minutes before he heard something.
It sounded like someone had landed on the gravel— Behind him. He turned around and immediately started outputting again, using his electricity as a light source. There's someone right in front of him, already running towards him with a knife in hand.
It startles him so bad he steps back without even thinking about it. The man is large, riddled with scars, and his grip on the knife is ironclad. Denki stumbles back with a yelp, nearly falling on the edge of the train track, getting ready to use his quirk.
But he falls back into someone, and his shoulder is suddenly bleeding. He sees the blood splatter even in the dark, before he even registers the pain or the fact that there is more than one person in this tunnel.
He feels the warm liquid slip down his arm, the knife inside his his shoulder, cutting through his flesh and coming out the front. Denki jumps forward and ducks, pulling himself off the knife in the process.
The darkness is disorienting now, he's on his knees, scrambling to get up with a spinning world around him. It's terrifying, the silence with which the villains are fighting, without so much as a grunt.
He runs forward and lunges at the man with a grunt, outputting just below enough volts to kill, but the attack never lands. The man disappears, making Denki fall onto the train tracks, and before he can get up, a knife is stabbed straight into his back. His scream sounds more like a garbled noise, his body reacts without him telling it to, energy spiking with a burst of lightning jumping wildly off of him.
"F-Fuck!" He screams, clenching his fists. He hears the crack of his spine when the knife collides with it, it tears at his skin when it's torn out. He scrambles to his feet, looking around in the darkness.
It's empty, suddenly. He doesn't know where he is, and more importantly, he doesn't know where his opponents are. His breathing is ragged, costume stained with blood, his shirt clings to his back as a bloodstain forms. Denki hears something again, the slightest shift of fabric— The large man's pants catching on the edge of the wooden tracks, and he lunges forward with a conviction he didn't know he had, already charging up before he makes contact.
But again, the man disappears, appears behind him, stabs.
This time its his shoulder again, the same one that got stabbed only a moment ago. His vision goes white from the pain, which he didn't even think could get any worse.
His breath hitches and he stands up once the knife is out. He whips around, the man is there, but he's smaller now. Then theres a burning pain in his back again,
"When will you learn to stop turning your back to me?" The villain taunts, slashing the palm of Denki's hand, and he turns around again, wincing from the burn, glowing dimly in the darkness of the train tunnel.
"Wh—"
The thing in front of him is the same man, but child-sized. He does not look like a child, rather like a middle aged man sized down. It's unsettling, and he's gripping a bloody knife in his hands. Stained in Denki's own blood.
Denki thinks he understands now. He's not fighting multiple people, rather one man who can split himself into multiple.
He reaches for the knife in the hand of the smaller version, trying to pry it out while keeping the bigger version of the man at bay with his quirk. Both versions have knives, and Denki can hear metal clanking inside the black backpack hanging loosely on the shoulders of the smaller.
The only thing keeping Denki going is the adrenaline coursing through his veins, and the fact that he needs to pry it out of his tiny hands or he will die, since using his quirk is a no-go. He'll just split and avoid it anyways. Denki manages, miraculously, and immediately the bigger man grunts, outreaching his hand to the smaller, absorbing him.
His natural size is overwhelming, he towered over Denki with ease. Hell, he could tower over Hitoshi with ease, too.
He backs Denki into the wall of the tunnel and his back arches into the curve of it as if trying to create as much distance as possible between them. The man has his own knife, though, and he's equipped with the backpack likely chock-full of them now. He doesn't reach for it, though.
He throws his knife to the side, the backpack too.
"I don't even need them," He brags, and Denki would cringe at the dialogue if it didn't force him to panic.
"You look like a wild fucking animal." He laughs, the echo is so intense that it makes Denki's ear rings, his head spins. "Like a bunny." He chuckles confidently. The comparison is meant to make the blond feel small-- And it works. He hates that it works.
A bout of silence follows as Denki tries not to double over, he grips his stomach as if it will ease the pain in his back, hunched over and wheezing.
"Do you know how long I've been stuck in that god damn jailcell? Listening to my cellmate babble on and on, fuck, it was so annoying! I thought I'd go fucking crazy in there with that wacko!" His voice raises, Denki winces and looks down at the knife in his shaking hands.
Get a fucking grip, he thinks to himself.
He can't die here. He won't die here.
He looks from the knife to the man, over and over again, trying to gain enough courage to attack. The villain seems to have gone into a tangent, Denki uses the time to try to collect himself.
Taking a deep breath, he forces himself to attack, despite his brain screaming for him to stop.
The man appears almost unbothered, and laughs like he's impressed. He grabs Denki's wrist before he can make contact, contorting it to twist to face himself.
His bones break, he knows it. The weapon is driven into his own stomach, and he screams, coughing up blood. The man controls his hand, and as quickly as the knife enters his stomach, it’s getting torn out.
His hand immediately lets go of the knife, going limp at his side, because anything other than immobility would be agonizing.
"You heroes.. Always try to get in the way of my fun." The man huffs. The man kept yammering on, but Denki's ears rang so loudly it muted anything he had to say. He collapses, sliding down the wall of the tunnel.
Denki is losing so much blood, it makes his head spin. It pools at his legs, he feels terrifyingly cold. He slumps over. He's going to die. his eyes flutter shut.
He'll never-- He'll never see Hitoshi again. He can't die. They just argued. Hitoshi wouldn't survive the amount of guilt. Misplaced guilt, but still guilt. His eyes shoot open.
He can't die. He can't.
With a force he didn't know he had, he forces himself to stand, pounce forward with speed that is nothing short of superhuman.
The man dodges, says something, but all Denki can see is his mouth moving. He looks impressed. The only words he can make out from lipreading him are "Impressed", "Bunny", and "Lose".
He doesn't care what he's saying anymore. The sensation of blood rapidly leaving his body is mortifying, unfamiliar. His brain is screaming, head pounding, limbs shaking, ears ringing, eyes focusing in on his target and only his target. He doesn't have the logic nor the time necessary to try and use his sharpshooting gear, and he does the one thing he has been avoiding doing for years. Letting go. All at once. Going stupid. It's bad. His entire third year at U.A was dedicated to training control instead of pushing limits. But he loses it.
The output is so large that even as the villain splits into two, three, four, to attempt to escape it, he can't escape from his lightning.
The fragments all convulse, glowing yellow in the dark as Denki's quirk forces it's way into their bodies, frying them from the inside like molten lava. All the fragments dissolve, merging back into his original form. He stays on the floor, entire body seizing up, making disgusting noises of sheer white-hot agony as the electricity rattles his brain.
Denki shocks him again, again, again, until he passes out, if not dies. The tunnel is silent once again, and Denki puts a quirk disabling collar onto him along with handcuffs.
He tries to drag him back to the station, but, fuck, he's so heavy. He crouches down, the pain in his torso searing and burning into his brain like a branding iron. His nerves are on fire. He ignores it, gripping the collar of the villain's tank top. It stains red with his own blood, and Denki starts dragging.
The backup generators have finally been fixed, and the emergency lights in the tunnel turn on. They're dim green lights, pointing to exits, and Denki follows them. His hand drags against the tunnel walls, eyes fluttering shut before shooting open with a determination he has never felt.
As Denki limps, he feels himself grow weaker. He continues like this for a few more minutes until he can't anymore, until the adrenaline finally starts to wear off, his hand goes slack. He can't drag the villain any farther, he needs an ambulance, and he needs it now.
He leans back on the wall of the tunnel, panting, whimpering from the pain. Fuck, it hurts, his blood is spurting out his wounds like water from a hose even now. His world spins and he feels drunk, lightheaded.
He can't see anything, but even in the barely-lit tunnel he knows black dots dance in his peripherals.
He grunts, using his cut hand to force himself to his feet, stumbling.
It doesn't work the first time. Or the second time. He tries, again and again, and eventually, he forces himself up.
He has to grip the wall for support, and he stumbles over tracks, but he never falls.
Because he knows. Denki knows that if he falls again, he will not have the strength to force himself back up, and he will bleed out and die in this tunnel, alone and cold and full of regrets.
His breathing has gone from a wild hyperventilating to a slow intermittent thing where he can barely suck air through his teeth. He can feel how slowly his heart beats in his chest, the trail of blood following him on the floor and as he drags his hand on the wall. It's sickening.
Denki finds the exit door, he has to exert real effort to open it, crying out from the pain of it. He's in another tunnel now, this time it's well lit, and it looks similar to the actual station, with white tiled floors and walls lined with green ceramic.
Only when Denki steps into the light of the exit tunnel does he realize how dizzy he is, because he almost immediately collapses onto the floor, holding himself up by gripping the doorframe.
The black spots in his peripherals are so much bigger than he remembers, and his vision is blurred. There's still a while until he can reach the exit. He manages to make his way to the wall, gripping it like a person learning to ice skate for the first time.
Denki looks back, and the trail of blood on the floor-- Or rather, pool of blood on the floor from where he stood in the frame-- Is so vivid-- It makes his head hurt. It's so much blood. Denki instinctively tries to grip his stomach, to stop the hemorrhaging, but the blood slips through his fingers like water, and a gasp leaves his throat, knees almost buckling, shoulder pressed to the wall, spurting crimson red all the same. He yelps, vision blurring.
"N-No--" He uses one leg to shove himself back up against the wall, sliding back up. He's barely standing anymore, but the thought of Hitoshi in his mind is enough for his brain to force himself to continue moving.
He has to. He has to get back to Hitoshi, to their kitty named Princess, to their shitty studio apartment that Denki can never seem to keep clean no matter how hard he tries, to the domestic mornings where Denki begs Hitoshi for "five more minutes", falling asleep with his head in his hands on the table while the smell of coffee floods his senses and lulls him back to sleep and Hitoshi cooks them breakfast. Back to the stupid arguments they have, back to the nights where they’d talk about getting married soon, the happy days full of laughter and the days where neither of them can get out of bed because it seems like too much of an endeavor, Denki wants it all.
The days full of passionate sex and nights at the bar shared with their friends, the phone calls they make to each other while Hitoshi is on a mission overseas or the letters sent to each other as if they were back in the days when humans were still quirkless.
He can't die, he can't lose his life, not after he's won, not after he's there-- Almost there-- So close to the finish line, to the exit.
If he fails now, he dies.
Denki can cope with dying, but not if it's alone. Not if he's going to bleed out, so close to finding help.
He starts to think about everything, life flashing before his eyes, and now he really stumbles, his brain can't hold on, can't keep up.
He forces himself to stand with a noise, it's a weak little thing, barely a grunt or even a whimper.
He thinks back to when his quirk manifested, when he got struck by lightning and his hair turned blond and eyes a beautiful shade of amber, when he had to sit in the corner at preschool because nobody wanted to play with the weird kid, when he got thrown into a fountain during middle school by some jackasses, the training for the entrance exam, the acceptance letter, Aizawa-- Thinking he would hate him by the end of the year because he seemed so cold, realizing he was completely wrong way back at USJ. Izuku, Katsuki, Kyouka, Mina, Eijiro, everyone. The school festival, his guitar-- Hitoshi, the joint training sessions,p>
"You're a proper hero hopeful, just like the rest of us!" It echoed in his head, rattled in his brain.
The war, the pain, the sleepless nights in medical tents and the celebration when it was over, hugging Katsuki when he woke up from his coma.
2A, sitting next to Hitoshi, sparring with him, Hitoshi, Hitoshi, Hitoshi-- Their first kiss, first fuck-- Hitoshi crying to him, late night cuddles, movie nights spent holding hands.
Hugging everybody on graduation day, crying because he couldn't believe he actually did it.
Opening his agency next to his best friend, moving in with Hitoshi, adopting their cat.
Fuck, he was just standing there-- If it could even be considered standing.
He was in a pool of his own blood again, he was shaking, so cold, so fucking cold.
His life was flashing before his eyes, and he was desperate to make it stop. He tried to take a step forward, but slipped on his own blood. It was grotesque. He braced for the impact, for the darkness overtaking his vision, for death. His ears rang. Terror washed over him, eyes glassy with tears, fluttering shut. He was going to fall. He was going to die. He was going to--
Somebody caught him.
Strong and familiar arms, holding him. It made him recoil. His head spun, brain rattled, so confused as to where the impact it was so prepared for went.
"..Ki! Denki!" A voice forced it's way into his mind, but he couldn't make out who it was. He was flipped over, gently lowered into the person's lap. His eyes fluttered shut, the voice faded, "..Enki! Please--" The person cursed, pressing on his stomach, tight enough to make his nerves come alight again. His eyes shot open.
Denki screamed from the agony, but he couldn't hear himself. He could vaguely see a black figure, with grey around the neck-- Purple.. Purple hair, Hitoshi.
"..Toshi--" His voice was broken, so hoarse.
He sobbed. Hitoshi looked around and shouted something as he pressed the communication device in his ear, Denki couldn't see the expression on his face. Hitoshi looks back down at his boyfriend, whispering reassurances, but Denki can't hear them. He sighs shakily, while Hitoshi continues muttering. He tries to read his lips, but he can't.
"It's gonna be okay, you're gonna be okay--" Hitoshi is frantic, his pants stain with Denki's blood, the smell so overwhelming he has to suppress a gag.
He's instructed to bring Denki out as quickly and as gently as possible.
Denki feels so light in his arms when he lifts him up, and not in the usual way that makes his heart pound.
He feels at least 2kg lighter, and Hitoshi's stomach flips as he realizes it's from blood loss. So much. Too much.
Denki is so pale, shaking. His eyes keep fluttering, or losing focus. Hitoshi is already sprinting down the exit tunnel at this point, begging him to stay awake. Denki's life still flashes before his eyes.
He tries to hold on, but his mind feels like it's swimming through molasses. His attempt to stay conscious is doomed from the start, and those black dots come back again until his eyes flutter shut.
He can hear Hitoshi now, begging him to open his eyes, biting back sobs so that his pleads can at least sound coherent.
"We're almost there Denks, almost there- I've got you, fuck- Please baby, wake up, please wake up- You can't leave me! You can't!" He cries, and Denki wishes he had the willpower to open his eyes, if only to show him that it's going to be okay. But he doesn't. Opening them feels like a challenge he can't even fathom facing.
"Please, Denki, no no no!, come on, keep breathing--" Hitoshi is panting at this point, he's been sprinting for five minutes straight. His gaze shifts from Denki to look in front of him, and he spots it-- The exit door-- It should lead right outside-- He bolts.
He doesn't think he's ever run this fast in his life. He doesn't think he will ever run this fast in his life again either.
He forces the door open with his shoulder and it slams open. Hitoshi stumbles, but he refuses to fall, not when he's so close-- Paramedics meet him outside, and Hitosh instinctively tries to keep his grip on Denki, they almost have to pry him away from his arms.
Hitoshi stands there. He's bloodstained. He feels sick. He can't focus, hell, he doesn't even remember telling the paramedics where to meet him or sending them his location. His stomach is flipping, face wet with tearstains.
He rushes into the ambulance. He doesn't care about anything anymore, world closing in on his dumb blond as he's hooked up to a non-rebreather mask, paramedics surround him on the stupid stretcher, the ambulance is speeding, more than the truck was on it's way here. Emergency responders bark orders to each other-- One tries to stop the bleeding- The other grabs celox gauze, another works on getting his jacket and shirt off, cutting through them with scissors. the scene is so chaotic, so loud, Hitoshi just closes in on himself.
He can't bring himself to look at Denki's peaceful expression. If he dies, then the last thing Hitoshi would have said to him would have been something during their stupid argument, about how he needs space, how he's gonna sleep on the couch for tonight.
He would kill someone in cold blood right now if it would change past-Hitoshi's mind and have him sleep in bed, cuddled up to Denki, murmuring apologies into his nape, pressing kisses into his clavicle.
The ride to the pro hero hospital is shockingly short, or maybe Hitoshi just zoned out the entire time, he isn't sure. Either way, Denki is hauled out as quickly as possible, hurried to the operating room, and Hitoshi is running to keep pace with the paramedics.
They tell him things, about how he's lost too much blood and the wounds are too deep and he needs surgery and stitches and Hitoshi's brain feels like it's melting. He is forced to the waiting room. He's shaking, bloodstained.
The hospital is packed full of heroes coming from the scene, but the dark pools on his clothes that are sticking to his skin and the scent of iron emanating from him makes him stand out regardless. He instinctively grips his capture scarf, a feeble attempt to soothe himself, but the typically-grey cloth is now stained too. He lets it go. His hands are red and trembling. He lets out a shaky sigh of absolute horror as his eyes crinkle. He starts praying to any and every god he knows of. He hunches down, his head on his knees as he hugs them. He's crumpled over. Nobody stares, nobody talks to him. Hitoshi is so uncomfortable like this, but he stays that way for hours, replaying the scene in his mind.
The order to search for Chargebolt, seeing the trail of blood in the tunnel, he came from the opposite direction, from the next station over. He saw the villain, but once he saw the trail of blood, he stopped caring about anything other than making sure Denki was alright. And he wasn't. Alright, that is, by any means. He was shaking, mumbling to himself, clutching his stomach and standing still, not realizing he was making the bleeding worse by digging into the wound as it continued spilling out.
Hitoshi could hear his heart pounding in his chest, his combat boots hitting the tile floor, shouting Denki's name, but he couldn't hear him. He watched him stumble, forced his legs to run faster, and as Denki was about to hit the floor-- He caught him.
The relief was only momentary, because the amount of blood, the fact that he couldn't keep his eyes open, the slow, shallow breathing-- It all pointed to one thing-- Death. Denki was dying.
That realization knocked his whole world off center, like the Earth suddenly started rotating in the opposite direction. He doesn't think he's ever been that frantic in his life. His forearms now ached from carrying him down the tunnel. Hitoshi doesn't remember them aching in the moment.
He's staring off into nowhere now.
At some point, he's approached by a nurse. He only knows because he can vaguely make out the blinding white of his scrubs, the sickening blue shade of his shoes. The nurse is about to touch Hitoshi's shoulder, but he sits upright, looking at him with an expression that must be more than unsettling judging by his reaction.
He stumbles back, clearing his throat.
"Uh, ahem.. You came in with Denki, right?" He asks to confirm. Hitoshi nods and stares blankly. The nurse seems unnerved, looking off to the side.
"He's out of surgery." Hitoshi takes a moment to look past the nurse's shoulder at the clock mounted on the wall. It's six AM. And he can tell the sun is rising, the waiting room is empty now, quiet and barely lit. The florescent lights buzzing above his head have been turned off in favor of the sunlight, Hitoshi now realizes.
"He's.. Stable, for now." The relief that washes over Hitoshi makes him feel like a whole new person. He lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
He takes a breath through his nose, and only now realizes his head is pounding and his back is aching.
"Can I see him?" He asks, and the nurse nods, leading him to his room.
Days go by. Visitors come and go. Denki wakes up. Hitoshi apologizes-- Or, at least he tries to, because Denki beats him to it, sobbing about how stupid their argument was and how terrified he was that he'd be leaving Hitoshi and Princess, all hiked up on pain meds. They hug so tight, Hitoshi's heart pounds against Denki's, he can feel Denki's own beat too. It fills him with a feeling that is comparable to nirvana. It's so simple, but it reminds him that Denki's actually alive.
Nights are spent in the hospital until the horrible smell of sterile and bleach fills their senses and neither can imagine a world without it, and then Denki is released.
He's told to rest for another month at the minimum before going back to work, change his bandages every day or two at least, and take it easy.
Finally, after endless suffering, Denki's home, and they spend their first night in bed together, under the sheets with Hitoshi's lips pressed to Denki's temple, his jaw, his cheek, his lips, anywhere they can find to kiss.
They sleep peacefully for the first time in weeks, comfortably pressed together, limbs intertwined with Princess lying on the empty space beside them, purring quietly in her sleep.