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I WANT HAIR LIKE YOURS
He curls 'his' fingers inwards, observing the mauve joints clicking into place with a hushed, horrified fascination. They were - are - long and wiry, their undersides littered with piano callouses from years of playing.
Not calloused from years of brawling with a carbon fiber binding cloth - the very same weapon he now only held the spare for in their shared cabinet, because the original-
HANDS
was gone.
LIKE YOURS
Strands of blond hair cascade to his shoulders, a waterfall of sunlight perched on top of what he’d assumed to now be his collarbone.
He startles when an unexpected - small, but a sound regardless - noise escapes into the periphery. It's unfamiliar, but also familiar all at once.
Green or crimson eyes peek from side to side, concern frosted in their pupils as they examine the surrounding area for the source. Finding nothing, a hum resonates from the throat, only for the yelp of a wince to chime when his fingers accidentally brush past old bruises.
FINGERS THAT CURL
He adjusts the scarlet frames perched on the bridge of his nose.
Grunts as his finger nearly slips and drops them - an expected result of his damaged nerves but annoying nonetheless - but pushes them back.
Vision, he tells himself.
He needs it. He'd always had a problem with his eyes, but not like this. There's no pressure pulsating in his temple this time. No reason to horde bottles of eye drops and stuff them away in a cabinet, anymore. No reason for Hizashi to insist on running to the corner store in the middle of the night to appease him when they'd run out.
He adjusts the frames.
He needs it.
IN THE COLD
A recognizable stranger stares back at him from the foggy glass with viridescent - green eyes, it finally confirmed, not the horizon’s red he’d remembered - eyes.
LIKE YOURS
(He still has his contacts on. He wants so badly to remove them, to tear them off with indignity, but to do so would be ruinous.
The Erasure hero can’t imagine being the last person to take the contacts off. He can't be the second and then become the first and last all over again to put them on, either.
Selfishly enough - not Present Mic's vanity, this time, but for his - he wants to cherish the green that the man had loved for a little longer.
The remaining red will bleed back in anyway, eventually, soon.)
The dyed brows (he’d thought they were pencilled in, once, when they were naive and foolish enough to never take advantage of what they still had) are furrowed into a look he’d managed to only see once, twice, or thrice, during their 15 years together.
I WANT EYES TO STARE
Blinking back liquid, he flutters the droopy eyelids shut.
He doesn’t want to actually see it.
AND TO CRY
It’ll never be easy.
WHEN I'M 'FEELING' SCARED
His eyes remain shut.
He presses two digits to the side of his neck.
LIKE YOU
Warmth floods through them instantly, sun rays to pale - tanned - skin.
LIKE YOU
He waits for the sound. The beat. The melody.
JUST
Thump.
Thump.
LIKE
Thump.
YOU.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
(A heart replaced, it’s his heart that beats but doesn’t beat. A siren it is; it sings a hymn meant to shatter glass, but all it’s done is leave a fracture in another's heart, and that’s all it will do.)
He opens his eyes again. Stifles a sniffle. Peers through the looking glass, and looks back at himself again.
Looks at what he's supposed to be.
(He may remix it, record it, broadcast it, but the cover will never be what it once was, what it was supposed to be.)
Sho-- Hizashi, that’s who he is now, he reminds himself, fingers trembling terribly as they settle around a loose, golden strand.
He has to get used to that.
He… wonders how his best friend would’ve felt about this. How he would've reacted in turn, how he would've handled this.
((Shouta at least has enough awareness to acknowledge that Hizashi would've dealt with this better, even if it's blurry and a teary-eyed thought.))
Well. Guess they’ll never know.
There’s no word or song to describe how He feels.
How do you explain to someone what it feels like to mourn for two of yourself?
Well.
Eraserhead may not have forever to figure that out, but Hizashi Yamada sure does.
It’s like his hair’s been dipped into ink.
Permanent, permanent ink.
In any other circumstances, this would be social suicide for Present Mic, whose whole thing orbits sunlight. Hell, his real name means sunlight. It’s his brand.
While Hizashi imagines he could spin it into gold - spin it as a new fashion he’s trying out, all for the vultures that call themselves the press to comment on - this is a different type of disaster entirely.
And not the 'fun' PR kind his staff can wash away.
1) Hizashi's hair isn't as soft as he'd love to claim, the damn thing more often than not buried under thick coats of gel - slicked up for his usual swoop, of course.
This time, his hair’s much thicker and coarser than his usually thinner, 'softer' hair. The kind he's braided plenty of times before, has tied up after both their late nights grading the poor little listeners' tests; the type framing the lovely, lovely face he sees every day, curtaining the crescent, crimson vista under familiar dry eyes.
Despite everything, it's still not golden.
It's as if it's been bleached with nature's ink twice over. It feels right and it feels wrong. What the hell?
2) The hair and bangs hugging his face and scalp are certainly something he’s familiar with, sure. He recognizes the fading scent of it; that's his conditioner, his shampoo, tugging away and permeating his nostrils.
Still. They’re not his.
And obviously, in recent years, he's not the only one hogging his own hygiene products anymore.
3) For one thing, Present Mic would never have that many split ends.
And for another, he can remember one such person who does have a surplus of those horrifying creatures.
He shudders, fumbling for the yellow hair tie (the one he'd given Shouta as a gag gift just a few months ago, he recalls!) wrapped around his bandaged, grimy wrist, and pulls his hair up.
A familiar, dirty cough leaves his throat - Shouta’s throat? - as debris from the ceiling creaks and shudders its own tune, too.
Shouta should be dead right now, he thinks, blinking back down at the exit wound.
Ergo: he should be dead right now.
But considering the lack of pain, and the fact he really should’ve died hours ago due to blood loss, and the likelihood of Shouta already not having eaten for even a few days before that, despite Hizashi getting on his ass for such a thing- just this week, he'd even pleaded with his stubborn friend to take even just one of those wretched jelly pouches he likes so much as a last resort, but that was definitely to no avail, because--
The growl of Shouta's stomach ringing out pretty much ticked that box off, confirming his second worst fear.
In spite of himself, Hizashi snorts, suppressing a jittery laugh.
At least it's not much of a problem, though. If he's come this far. Maybe it was just not probable: dying.
That’s interesting.
“Man,” he starts to joke, lips curving up despite himself and this really, really precarious situation he’s found himself in. “‘Eraser, you’re really something, huh?”
He ignores the heat that rushes to his face as he speaks, voice gravelly and low-pitched.
Many things are wrong right now. He does not want to dive into what all 'that' might mean and add to that growing list.
—
Hizashi does dive into what all 'that' might mean.
He's twiddling his thumbs and thinking on what to do when the idea occurs to him.
He grins.
If he’s not going to get out of here for a hot second…
Might as well make the most of it, right?
What was that saying again? Two wrongs make a right?
Or was it the other way around?
Oh, whatever!
Just go for it, Hizashi!
“Hizashi Yamada,” he says slowly, trying it out.
Oh.
Hizashi suppresses the manic glee spiraling from his lungs from escaping into his vocal cords.
While sure, he had Erasure right now, and not Voice - meaning there wouldn’t be any issues with potentially collapsing the building any further - he didn’t dare risk it. It’s only logical, and so Shouta of him, that he nearly snorts.
He’s a bit too into this. It’s still weird, but not the worst thing that could’ve happened.
After all, he thinks, as he continues to test it out, he can just go
“I love you, Hizashi Yamada,"
and everything will be fine.
--
"I love you, Hizashi Yamada," Hizashi says quietly.
The clean capture weapon settles around his neck like a noose.
He limps away with the busted metal of the directional speaker still tucked into the crook of his arm, anchoring him.
He imagines he'll float away without it.
--
"And I'll love you in turn, forever, always," Shouta hums the song quietly to himself. The deep voice crescendos to a stop as he stifles a groan, finally managing to pry the last piece of rubble off with just a slight wince.
Sunlight peers between the cracks like water to a dying man, settling their rays on top of his skin, and he all but falls to the ground in relief as fresh air hits him.
He huffs quietly. That was eventful.
But. But.
He can't wait to tell Shouta all about it, and what he's discovered.
Firstly: he'll probably have to apologize for losing most of the man's capture weapon. It's not as though that old dog hadn't needed to be put down, like, yesterday - and besides. It's not like he lost all of it.
Some of it's wrapped around Hizashi's - Shouta's, anyway - torso and his left arm, after all, like a frankensteined set of casts and bandages.
Granted, the strands that are left are disgusting, and will 100% never be used to capture anyone again, but Hizashi has always been the type of guy to look for the light at the end of the tunnel, even if Shouta isn't.
Secondly: he'll probably have to inform the police station first of his presence.
Then his agency.
And then, everyone else that was involved on the rescue mission with them, considering he's been missing for at least a few days at minimum--
--But that can be put on hold, he thinks suddenly, shooting up from the ground, grasping his own hand - Shouta's hand - like a life-line, frantic and panicked, as his mind fully processes the fact that he's been missing for at least a couple days.
A couple days.
Maybe even a week.
In Shouta's body.
Does everyone think he's--?
His jaw drops.
OH SHIT!