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The thought comes to him out of the blue, as many things do.
'Why hadn’t I been hurt more,' Hizashi wonders absentmindedly, hand stilling in place from where he’d just been brushing his teeth.
The sight of Present Mic staring back in the mirror mimicking his stance tugs at his chest hard, stirring something dark within his ribs. There’s a thump as he watches the blue toothbrush clatter to the ground, and definitely a concerning amount of bacteria gathering on the bristles, but he just can’t bring himself to care, care enough to connect back to the moment to pick it up and dust it off. It’s replaceable.
All he can think is, it’s true.
Why hadn’t he been hurt more?
Why had he gotten away with it?
It crawls back into his mind as green eyes watch Shouta limp gauntly toward his classes. Now that he thinks harder on it, his friend had taken a long time to adjust to the awkward drop in his leg. From the new prosthesis.
From when he’d cut it off during the war. Because the man had been so deadset on protecting his students that he’d been okay with slicing--killing, if Hizashi really thought about it too hard, too long-- a part of him off.
As if his body a vessel; something mundane, a tree with browning leaves you cut to keep it healthy, secure.
And Shouta had done it so easily. Not a second thought.
That was Shigaraki’s doing, though. Shouta is logical. He wouldn’t do things heeding no reason, no purpose. He’d done it in the moment because he’d truly thought there was no other choice. There likely hadn’t been. It’s all or nothing.
Hizashi hadn’t been hurt back then. The only thing he’d been left with from the war was red crescent marks. Then the bruises from where he’d dug the heels of his palms too intensely as that revolting doctor had dutifully, unbiddenly informed they’d ‘wanted Erasure instead’,
And that was all his doing.
Not a single scratch had gotten on him beyond that. Nothing other than self-inflicted embarrassments, from when he couldn’t control his own damn emotions while he’d been gleefully told that someone else, his dearest friend, for one, should’ve been the one to die instead of their other friend Oboro. Still not him.
His chest keeps pulsing. Meddling in places that are really none of his business, tugging at his chest like the spotlight is on him.
Present Mic is greedy, is all he thinks.
He leans down.
The toothbrush lands in the trash bin with a laughing thump as he makes his way out.
To his dismay, the line of thinking begins to derail his every thought. Interrupts him in the middle of English classes when they start up again months later, when he speaks on sentence diagramming and present tense and past tense; forces the tenseness in his lungs to excavate roughly against flesh as the sudden use of the phrase of ‘she lived--’ startles him.
It brings him back to Nemuri. Of all things.
There’s a lump in his throat. Hizashi doesn’t know why he’s so affected by this. No shovel is big enough to dig and bury everything back down, though, he knows, but he doesn’t even have a flashlight to peer down at what his body’s just inconveniently uncovered beneath.
It’s his sentence. He’d written this weeks ago for the lesson plan, when the staff were cheerfully informed by Nezu that now that construction was over, the students could move back into the dorms, and life at UA could continue just as it had prior. Alongside the other teachers in their respective departments, he’d pumped a passionate fist up to lift the mood, even as some of the other departments laughed and protested about having to deal with their rowdy students again. It was in the name of jokes, though. They loved the students.
Shouta loved the students. He was willing to sacrifice everything he had for them, going to sacrifice for them.
Shouta had murmured something soft behind him. It sounded off. “I see tears,” he commented, holding Hizashi back.
“Boys don’t cry,” Hizashi hissed out. His hand had trembled from where it’d been winded up, years of shuddering fury and mourning poured into one bowl of skin and muscle and bone as he’d readied himself to simply hurt. He’d hated Kurogiri. He’d wanted him gone. He’d tried to kill Shouta. He’d practically killed Oboro, was Oboro.
Shouta was still holding him back. Why was he holding him back?
“Not you,” Shouta had replied easily, and Hizashi swore he felt the world stop around him, the ocean’s waves furl and unfurl in foamy place. His heart stuttered from where it’d been beating rapidly. The tension he’d expected to seep out from hearing his friend’s words -- the kind he’d expected to be blunt but comforting nonetheless, but had let him down all over again -- had all but picked up in its pace, squeezing Hizashi whole from where he stood in a fighting stance.
Not you.
Not you.
Not you.
I see tears.
Boys don’t cry, he sniffles. His other hand wipes the betrayal of his body from the corner of his eyes. It gathers in warm lumps.
I see tears.
Not you.
Why hadn’t it been you?
Why hadn’t it been him, Hizashi wonders. He wipes a tear from where it’d fallen, the traitor too obvious not to name by now.
Nemuri would’ve laughed something fierce at him for this. Would’ve shook him by the shoulders, screamed a passionate cry of “You’re too young to be feeling so blue, Yamada! Get out there! Let’s live our youthful, dazzling lives while we can! Come drinking with me!” as she tackled an arm around his neck, and he’d almost always listen.
She lived a good life while she had. She got her wish.
Forever youthful, was it? Yeah.
Oboro used to comment on Hizashi’s steady hands before he died.
“You know, man,” the blue-haired teen had whistled one day, making Hizashi’s head tilt up.
The blond suppressed a snort when he saw the sight before him; Shouta slumped out against Oboro like a light switched off, the latter sat slouched awkwardly against the wall due to the extra weight on his shoulders.
He reckoned it wasn’t much of an issue anyway. Shouta wasn’t too heavy, if what they’d learned over the past few weeks as they’d peeled away at the walls separating them all had proven anything.
Shouta hadn’t been eating well. That was for certain.
And for that, Hizashi had been bringing in extra bentos to keep him steady, Oboro the energy drinks. An equitable trade to keep Shouta’s spirits up. Even if he’d protested about it often, as they’d always barked back with a sighing comment on needing their observer healthy for their future agency, and Shouta had almost always snapped his mouth shut and continued eating.
(It didn’t matter that Hizashi often had to cook the food quietly, metal mouthed and all, digging into his skin.
If it helped Shouta, it helped him.)
It was a good system, the three of them all.
Right. Oboro had said something.
“Yeah?” He cocked a head.
“You have steady hands. Your handwriting’s amazing, you know? You’ve gotta teach me and Shouta someday. His chicken scratch’s barely understandable, dude. A genuine crime.”
A soft clack resounded from where his pencil had peered off from his hand onto the floor.
Oboro raised a brow.
Hizashi stammered, recovered from it quickly, clearing his throat. He doesn’t comment on the soft snore escaping from Shouta in the silence. “Sure, and the sky’s orange.”
The blue haired boy’s lips pulled into a tight line. He pointed with his head up to the sky in question. Hizashi looked up, not noticing as Oboro reached out of the corner of his vision for the fallen pencil.
Oh.
“Oh,” he gulped. Then shook his head. The sky was orange. How dumb.
He didn’t know why his chest had fluttered then at the comment. “Thanks.”
Blue eyes fell into a grin. He feels something being pressed into his hands. “Of course, Hizashi.”
He looks down, and as he recognizes the outline, Hizashi’s lips curve up for the first time in days. He doesn’t even care about the bruises hidden under the concealer, now.
If they asked him to become a pilot now -- if he weren’t killed first in the resulting crash, he’d lose his license and end up jailed.
The bridge of his sunglasses is littered with scratches. They make him bleed often.
He’s too tired to get it checked out. He waves off any concerned looks with his classic Mic grin and a huff of ‘This was all from a villain, baby!’ or ‘What about you? Don’t you go thinking it’d be fine hiding that wound of yours now, listener, ‘cause that can’t be happenin’, alright? Why don’t ya let good’ol Recovery Girl take a look at it? We can pass by her office,’ , or even ‘This? This is nothing!’ because that’s all there is to it.
It’s nothing.
He blinks.
Why can’t he hurt the way they so clearly did?
The curriculum. The lesson planning. It was weeks ago. Why does his mind stammer, go off-kilter, shudder to a stop every time he comes to think on things like it? Why does he falter on something as simple as that, when he knows Shouta suffers horrid night terrors, ones that force him to suck up his pride and call out for Hizashi in the dark of their shared apartment, thrashing against silk sheets clung with sweat and tears?
Hell, the man’s legs and eye still ache constantly. Twitch in stifled scream hurt. His leg hurts the most, the right one, seizing up in unbearable pain that had once forced Hizashi to run to Recovery Girl (‘Chiyo,’ he recalls her chiding him relentlessly, ‘We’re coworkers, Yamada, you can call me Chiyo. You and Shouta both have bled over me enough for me to earn that right,’ in the middle of the night.)
Hizashi has become uncomfortably familiar with it. Now, he knows it not just as Shouta’s ‘regular pain’ anymore (especially after USJ) but, phantom pain.
The limb isn’t even there anymore. Yet it’s still clinging to Shouta like a weed. Not a distant stranger anymore. It’s invaded their lives.
Hizashi can’t even say theirs, he realizes in a huff of a laugh, staring back into the mirror all over again-- it’s not Mic who stares back at this time, the man had left a while ago once he’d worked up the nerve and finally cracked a bottle open, one of the ones he’d hidden in his 20s-- because it’s Shouta who’s dealing with it, really. He’s forced to startle and hiss and moan over the pain, try to pretend he doesn’t need the medication that Hizashi nags him on, and even then, even as he finally relents-- he’s still in pain.
He shouldn’t be in pain.
Hizashi wants to laugh. Let the force of his quirk flow into his voice until it crackles like the static of a microphone dropped wrong. Let the world peer into the fucked up cesspool that is Present Mic split in half, to reveal the horrors that remain Hizashi Yamada underneath. Peel the hero right open like a boiled egg. Let the yolk drip. Watch as ears bleed, prove him right, because nobody wants Hizashi Yamada at his worst.
Not even Present Mic; he retreats like an infant into the feeling of the membrane being spooned off instead.
Hizashi doesn’t blame him. Hizashi doesn’t want Hizashi.
Shouta wouldn’t want him like this.
(He tells himself it doesn’t matter.
Shouta’s never wanted him in the way it matters, anyhow.)
A few days pass.
His hair’s more down than up nowadays.
Shouta would usually help him with it. When Hizashi had been injured--it feels like a lifetime ago, now, so much so that it feels like him waking up to the bleary sight of hospital lights and Shouta’s brow furrowed in sleep is all but a distant thing of the past, and maybe Shouta would bluntly declare him being missing from hospital beds a good thing, but Hizashi knows better-- his friend would often pick up the torch and hair spray (or gel, depending on the day) it up for him.
He’d complain, drag his feet around, but Hizashi always knew the man didn’t do anything he didn’t want to.
However, Shouta’s been busy lately. He has his own things to worry about. That, and Shouta shouldn’t have to worry about something as silly as Present Mic’s ‘cockatiel’ hair, the kind he often complained about. If Hizashi thinks too hard on it, Shouta, really, should be happy about it. He’s always declared how much hatred he had for the look.
To Hizashi’s behest, though, the students and staff take notice of this rather quickly.
Not of Shouta’s absence; hell, no one besides the staff know the extent of their friendship, and even then it’s a gamble of ‘together or not?’, to which Hizashi always has to dutifully correct them with a red-faced grin on how it’s the latter; but no, of his new look.
He supposes it’s only fair. He’d find it strange too. Him. His hair. Imagine if Shouta were to show up to school with all his hair chopped off; it’d be a travesty, a total detriment. Something that’s certainly likely to happen within the next few years, if Hizashi’s still got his schedule down to a tee, but he finds that he doesn’t know much nowadays, so maybe that’s wrong, too.
He just doesn’t know why they all seem to take offense at the sight of Hizashi Yamada. Does he really look so wrong?
They love Present Mic, he reminds himself dizzily.
No.
They know Present Mic, Hizashi corrects.
“It’s okay, Yamada.”
“Mic.”
“Yamada.”
“It’s Mic, Midnight.”
It’s years ago when it happens. How a kettle hisses, whiny and pitched, into the quiet of Hizashi’s barren apartment. Everyone had voted Shouta as the one most likely to adorn the minimalist style, and-- maybe he did, now. Hizashi wouldn’t know, given Shouta had clearly made up his mind with a silent goodbye. Right when he’d up and left graduation after erasing Hizashi’s voice, and, sure, that had hurt-- but not as much as how breathless he’d been right after it, how weak in the knees he’d been, red-faced and embarrassed at losing one of his only friends yet again.
It doesn’t hurt now, though, now that he’s reconciled with Shouta. Made up his peace.
No. He thinks back to how empty his apartment had been before then. Before Nemuri.
The kettle hisses. Midnight crosses her arms, huffs a laugh as she just as quickly uncrosses them. She rolls them backward, settling them behind her, lifting herself up. “So this is where you’ve been all cozied up, huh, Yamada?”
“If you’re so eager to stay,” Hizashi mutters. He stares at anywhere that isn’t her. It’s difficult, given that he’s still an up-and-coming Pro Hero with a debatably questionable salary, his apartment is small, and her hair certainly doesn’t share the title. “At least call me Mic, yeah?”
“Okay,” she says. His heart twists in some form of relief. He doesn’t understand why his chest suddenly feels weighed down. He doesn’t remember it going like this. She agrees so easily. Agreed too easily. “Mic, you--”
She’d replied with a Yamada before.
And just like that, it’s feathers all over again.
He wheezes, splutters out into a cough, and blinks rapidly as the whine of the kettle pitches higher, higher, higher.
And he's gone.
Great.
Hizashi wakes up with a burn in his chest and a lump in his throat. Cold air greets his skin, viscerally reminding him of the fact that there’s no dip in the mattress from where his friend should be curled up beside him. Shouta probably slept in the dorms again. Concerned for his students.
He pushes back against the wriggling thought burrowing in his mind, wondering ‘could you be concerned for me, too?’ because there’s--
It’s fine.
Though, he has a sinking feeling he won’t be able to put on the speaker today. It pools down his chest in what he suspects to be dry tears. It’ll be the second time this week, he realizes, that he won’t have his collarbone bruised by the end of the day.
Nor will he be able to put up his hair. It’ll be the third time this week.
A pulsing reverberates from his head as fingernails dig into his scalp, tug at the blond strands in a harrowed breath.
He’d planned for Present Mic to show up more often. Not the other way around.
His plans keep falling out of place. Why does nothing he does work? Is everything fruitless?
Why does he still have to hurt while not being hurt?
He's sick of this.
It takes a few more weeks of no hair up, no speaker, and no leather jacket to truly push him over the edge.
When even his mustache is burned off during a patrol -- he'd been clumsy, drunkenly stumbling on his punches due to getting absolutely wasted, something Shouta had glared at him for just a few hours before, a clear warning -- it's the last straw.
He goes to the cemetery on Sunday. Says hello to Oboro, Nemuri.
Says goodbye to the man who's existed since U.A.
The sunglasses don't return with him.
He goes home. No orange tint this time to boot.
A hand reaches for his throat. He’s unsure who reaches first.
Him, or Present Mic?
The headphones clatter to the floor in a pyrrhic cry.
Eraserhead gawps at Present Mic, eyes wide and filled with utter disbelief. He doesn’t have anything on his person.
Present Mic, that is. Eraserhead has his hero costume on. He always has his hero costume on. Hizashi has always admired him for that, despite the lying protests of stable-work-life-balance.
(His prosthetic leg stays on most of the time, too.
No admiration remained there, though.
And if there is, it clings to both of them like second-hand smoke, the type you’d hold your breath for as you passed on by. The carbon monoxide’s all but dug into Hizashi’s lungs and torn him from the inside out by now.)
No signs of Present Mic himself (leather jacket, sunglasses, headphones, not even his boots) exist on the pages of the book that make up the hero anymore.
“I fucked up,” is the only thing he rasps.
Shouta stares at what remains of Hizashi Yamada.
Shouta shakes his head.
“Maybe,” Eraserhead breathes out. “Maybe you did. But we can fix it.”
Hizashi looks up at him like he’s just hung up the stars across the sky. A rare smile crosses his face.
“We probably can’t,” the blond says, breaking through the spell. Shouta clenches his fists tighter in shock. He hadn’t been expecting it. His friend’s face is still scattered into the grin.
“I’m broken.”
Shouta huffs a stuttered laugh. Something uncharacteristic of him, he knows. He knows it from the way Hizashi’s brows furrow in disbelief.
He doesn’t know how it’d gotten this bad. When it’d gotten this bad.
“We can sure as hell try anyway,” Shouta assures, unclenching his fists that have all but turned white now. He rests a hand on Hizashi’s shoulder. Squeezes it tight. The palm is still red. “Let it not get worse. I--
He pauses. “I don’t want you to hurt anymore.”