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It’s just about an hour before UA’s first period when familiar, pale hands slam a paper forward onto his desk.
“Mic,” his hero name is rasped out with something dangerous, “What the hell is this?”
Startled, Hizashi spares a glance from marking Class 2-A’s English assignments to trail upwards. Green eyes meet a black one in a flurry of confusion and subtle anger.
If he were just a passerby, the expression from the other would draw a blank; only if he didn’t know better, and had no 16-year old key to the locked enigma that was Aizawa Shouta.
“I don’t know,” he whistles. Blatantly, he does not give the paper sprawled out to the side of him a glimpse. Nor even a once-over. Hizashi has a horrible feeling he already knows what’s on it. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“Tell you?”
There’s a glare of yellow as one half of Shouta’s hair lifts up, expression deadlocked into something fierce as he stares Hizashi down.
Wow, is all he can think of saying, dumb as he is. You should really sign up for some staring contests. Earn a little yen on the side. Rock someone’s world with that eye of yours.
For obvious reasons, the words don’t form out of his mouth. Instead, what comes out is a simple, albeit choked out “Yeah.”
The desk rattles beneath him as Shouta slides the paper over further with a rough huff, leaning over to grasp at the table to balance himself. Hizashi watches Kaminari’s English paper vanish beneath… a report.
Yeah, he knows exactly what this is.
“Read it,” Shouta barks out.
Bummer; his hands are already mourning the feeling of pink ink. Guess the kid would have to wait up on his 89%.
Not that it matters much in comparison to what is about to Go Down. It’ll be a miracle if he even walks out of here fully intact, all four limbs in tow and all eyes to boot. Or, hell, if he doesn’t earn a one-way trip down to Tartarus once they finish rebuilding. Maybe the rest of the villains could do with some new tracks.
Do they even have music down there?
Hizashi suppresses what would surely be a shudder at the thought, letting the feeling wilt. It’s not everyday that he genuinely contemplates life sentences; not having music while living out said life sentence; or what could very well turn out to be the terrifying reality of being labeled one of them. A villain.
A finger snapping in his face is enough to sober him up. Hizashi watches as black strands fall back to Shouta’s face in crested waves, yellow flitting painfully by. He turns away.
Rifling through the paper with only his eyes and a hand to hold it down to the desk -- lest Shouta snatch it away in his impatience. He knows all too well that the other man’s patience for most situations (most being a kind word) was infinite, particularly for his students, but his friend’s current state doesn’t grant much hope in the grand scope of things.
He quickly makes a move on. Scans the report as it is.
All he thinks as he reads is, “wow, this paper is warm.”
Nothing else.
Whatever catches in his throat comes in lumps.
When he’s finished, he leans back into his chair with a groan, muffling the sound against his palms. His hands drag up his face, bridging the gap between the headache spiking in his temple and the mouth that feels like it hasn’t sucked in air in days. It was only a minute. Had to be.
He can already taste the ink on his palms-- a rather grotesque irony, considering what happens next will likely be much worse than whatever sick disease he’ll probably get from inhaling it.
“Well?”
Hizashi can hear Shouta’s right foot tapping. The prosthetic tucked away inside of the combat boot makes it reverberate even louder. If he weren’t already hard of hearing from the war, and pre-equipped with well-endowed ear protection from the mutations of his quirk, he’d be doing his damn best not to wince.
Extricating his palms is the first step.
“Shouta,” he begins. The second step. Eyeing the ceiling has never seemed better right now. “I can… explain.”
To his disbelief, the tapping quickly falters. Maybe the ceiling’s worse than the alternative.
He looks to his side and immediately regrets it.
“Then explain it. Nice and easy. You do enough of it with your students, shouldn’t be too hard with me, can it?”
“They’re my students,” he says. “You’re different.”
If Shouta heard it, he doesn’t show any signs of such a feat. “Fraternizing with a villain doesn’t seem like your usual scene, does it, Mic?”
“Oh, screw off, Shouta,” Hizashi scoffs. He waves a hand. “You know you don’t have a leg up in that department either. I know about what happened with--”
The grin full of teeth that Shouta flashes to cut him off should’ve been warning enough.
“Well,” he tuts. There’s a mission underlined behind his words. "I do, though.”
“Shouta.”
“Singular,” Shouta shrugs, wry and easily. Hizashi can hear the prosthetic leg tap eagerly. “You know how it is.”
He leans forward threateningly. “Eraser.”
“It’s a rather unpleasant lifestyle, so I’d say I’d understand.”
“God--” and Hizashi eclipses the paper over with his hand, crinkling it slightly as he slides it downward, “I get it, I get it, you muttonhead! Didn’t know Ms Joke finally had her way with you. Jeez.”
…Now that he thinks on it, getting cut off at the start was definitely just a way of deflecting from his question, wasn’t it?
Shouta stiffens.
“Ignoring that,” the other says after a moment, a jaded sigh escaping him as he continues. Hizashi rubs at his temple. “Will that be enough to convince you to answer the goddamn question?
Like any other, clearly innocent man, Hizashi deigns to offer a look of well practiced sincerity.
“What question?” Hizashi blinks, green eyes glinting. The palm quickly flies away from his forehead, hand dropping to plant itself on his desk -- right next to his pens, sprawled out in the same way one would whilst preparing for their burial -- as he mimics the caricature of someone who should know better.
He probably should.
“Will cuffs suffice instead?” Shouta deadpans.
Cold heat rushes to his face as his mouth drops in an ‘O’.
Oh.
Hizashi glances down, fists clenched.
“You don’t have the authority for that,” he blurts. Years of losing sleep peering at UA’s rulebook in the dead of night’s finally earning their keep. Composure? Not so much. “You’d have to bypass Nedzu first if it’s not under official Commission Business.”
Before the other can get another word in, or, god, argue his case, Hizashi adds, “I’m not even doin’ anything nefarious in the first place, man.
“But even if I were,” he rambles on aimlessly. He’s well aware of the image he must be painting now. Good thing he was born an artist. DJS and painters have always been able to chance a glimpse of each other on the same patch of that particular venn diagram. “You wouldn’t have the right! No right at all!”
A pause.
“I was… joking.”
Green eyes veer sideways. They stare up at Shouta in disbelief, who’s now curled in on himself beside him. Like a mollusk.
“High time to break your years-long streak, ” he huffs. “What, two jokes in a row, now? You’ve gotta be pulling my leg.”
“Hizashi. I’m not angry.”
His eyes widen. “Not angry? Not angry? You REEK of it! You were snappin’ away at me the moment you walked into the room, man, what the hell am I ‘sposed to think!”
“I was still running off a high,” Shouta explains quietly. They’re both well aware it’s not an excuse. “I just left the precinct. Tsukauchi printed it out for me earlier.”
“Oh,” is all he says.
Humming, wiry fingers reach back over the expanse of his desk, slip the paper between his index and thumb. Big letters bolded in red loom over the top, unchanged, as he cheeks another peek at it. “That’s why it’s still hot.”
The space between Shouta’s brows flood with a confused crease.
He sighs. Stating the obvious should be a given at this point. “I meant the paper.”
“Right,” Shouta mutters. Hizashi watches as his friend tucks his chin into his capture weapon, stubble disappearing behind the carbon fibers in the same motion one would use to say ‘come-and-get-me’.
There’s something still lingering on his tongue. He just knows it.
“Can we talk about it?” Shouta asks.
Ah, there it is. It only took a few seconds for Shouta to muster the courage.
Not that he needs it-- for a man who favours solitude and being alone, he’s sure great at confrontation.
He looks to the rest of his desk. His monitor had shut itself off in the few minutes that Shouta had spent ‘logical-rusing’ away at him, so there’s no blue light to accompany the artificial warmth poured out from the heat lamp right beside it. It usually turns itself off automatically after 30 minutes. In his ranting, some of his papers had made a trip to the floor -- not a one-way one, thankfully, even if his back makes a creaking protest some days when he bends down too fast at the waist -- and he’d dropped a pen or two.
Kaminari’s paper still lays on top. Untouched. There’s a cat doodle on top of his name, Hizashi notes with a huff-- the kind that Shouta would enjoy. If not for the rather redundant need to remain ‘composed’ in front of his students, Hizashi’s sure Shouta would be positively ecstatic.
Well, he winces, thinking back to grins full of teeth and mute, choked-up laughter. In his own, Shouta-esque way, at least.
“Yeah,” Hizashi says agreeingly. “Why not. Where-to?”
“Conference room?”
He checks his watch. 35 minutes until class. Ample enough time.
“‘Course.”
—
"Rough day?"
"Rough night. Get out."
"Ooh, tough crowd. I hear you, listener. I'll get out of your hair."
"Now."
"I'll be back, you know."
"Just leave."
"Raincheck, then."
—
“Let me get this straight,” Shouta starts.
That’s funny, considering nothing about you is straight, Hizashi wants to say.
It’s rude and off-topic, though, and will be flagged away as him not taking this seriously. He holds his tongue.
“The commission picked you,” Shouta continues, voice hard. Hizashi looks back up at him. “And only you, out of tens of other, perfectly capable heroes who participated in the same war as we did, to talk to a villain.”
True. He nods.
“A villain who,” and the next words are spat out in such a distasteful attempt at reverence that it would make even Present Mic -- on his worst days, at least -- snicker. “is one of the last remaining connections to the LOV.”
Another nod.
“The one from the same exact battle you were stationed at.”
“One and the same, baby,” Hizashi rasps out, flashing Mic’s typical double thumbs up in agreement.
Shouta frowns. Notably, he does not flush at the use of the pet name, this time. His posture doesn’t even slump downwards. “The hospital?”
Hizashi’s hands fall on top of the wood with a thump.
He does not answer.
Which, for Shouta, seems to be answer enough. Present Mic’s silence is unexpected, but Hizashi’s poorly made remix of it isn’t expected, either.
From across the table, Hizashi watches as his friend’s face twists flippantly through various moods; while the usual blank expression he hosts remains steady as it is, an anchor in of itself, years of careful observation have prepared (and his own experience with people) just enough to recognize the catalogue.
Skepticism. Suspicion-- then, stunned. Reluctance. Confusion. Indignation. And…
Lastly, something conflicted and vaguely anguished, Hizashi realizes grimly, simmers beneath Shouta’s expression.
Hizashi’s breath hitches as something makes its way into the crooks between his fingers.
A toss of looking earns him a look at red and crescent etches; enough detail to cheerfully inform that yes, he’d been digging his nails into the cusp of his own palms.
And-- the ‘something’ is Shouta’s own. Hands, that is.
A breath catches in his throat; something warm and fuzzy striking his lungs with a fervour.
“The hospital,” he agrees quietly. He lets a smile slip onto his face. Reassuring at best, cumbersome at worst. “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“Hizashi.”
Again with this ‘Hizashi’ thing, he frowns.
“You’ve read the report,” he continues, whistling out. “You know what’s on it.”
Pointedly, nothing in the report brings up the hour long detours. Nor the many times he’d sidetracked the conversation just long enough for the guards to start nodding off.
It wouldn’t matter to Shouta in the end anyway. What’s done is done, and Hizashi doesn’t want him to worry: fathoming even him conversing with a villain, let alone entertaining the idea of him possibly cozying up would be unspeakable. Whatever’s been left out is not worth enough to dig up again.
He really just wants to get back to grading Shouta’s kids’ work.
The next words that come out of his friend’s mouth hold a familiar cadence to them. This time, Hizashi can’t quite place it. “You know you could’ve come to me.”
Hizashi suppresses a laugh. Now that’s certainly an idea.
“I could’ve,” he agrees, just for the sake of it. There’s no elaboration as he trails off. The concept is abhorrent.
Warmth still tingles over where his and Shouta’s fingers are interlaced; for a second, he could’ve pretended that the idea was in reach.
But then again, they wouldn’t be here: maybe he’d be locked away. Shouta would’ve never been able to follow through with his threat, he realizes now, if it escalated. Hadn’t been fabricated just for the sake of ‘joking’ around.
But he could’ve.
What the Commission had asked Hizashi to do dredged up too much too fast, and the anger he’d held at the start had all but shrouded over, now -- telling Shouta such a thing would be deluding him into thinking better of Hizashi. That he’s all healed up now. That this was his version of ‘fixing’ things, his cover song to define all cover songs.
That he wasn’t still fully, and officially pissed at Shigaraki for all and all of the bullshit he’d pulled and done. To Shouta: USJ, his students, the encampment, his leg, his eye, his quirk. His entire life in Heroics. His life. To Oboro; his life, his liberty, his death. To--
Not to him.
“But you didn’t,” Shouta finishes for him, an outro to his verse. Hizashi sighs softly as his fingers are squeezed tight.
The words he wants to say aren’t fooled out. Nor reeled into the hook of his throat to be spoken forth: they don’t dare make an attempt at leaving him.
But I didn’t, he returns in kind, squeezing even harder.
—
They talk some more.
—
It takes much longer than he expects.
—
Hizashi checks his watch with a frown.
“You missed your Homeroom lesson,” he points out, just as Shouta shuts the door to the conference room closed.
The time had ticked away past the 35 minutes he’d prescribed for them earlier.
In fact, they’d veered an hour past it, to his dismay and Shouta’s frankly exasperated look. He’d had to shoot a message off to Nedzu to inform of the situation, to which the chimaera (rat?) replied with a concerning message of ‘Very well, Mic-Sensei. I believe I should offer thanks for notifying me beforehand, unlike other times. I would never reject the opportunity for staff-bonding. Give Aizawa-sensei my well wishes.”
In all his years of teaching thus far, Shouta had never done his students wrong by turning up late: ‘It would make a bad example. They should rely on their teachers to do them well by doing just the same as they should,’ he’d always gotten in reply, whenever he’d asked. Grumbled out. ‘Punctionality is a must. They’ll wither and die out there without some form of it. ’
It makes Hizashi fidget nervously as he waits for the man to limp over.
There’s a creak of footsteps. Shouta mumbles something inaudible by his side.
While Hizashi can read lips, it’s hard to do so with the man’s capture weapon tucked firmly over his stubble-- being hard-of-hearing nowadays is a horrific vice.
“Pardon? Could ya repeat that?”
Shouta sighs. His friend’s voice is gravelly as he speaks, eye momentarily slipping shut as if the effort of articulating words properly -- something which sounds about right, given that Shouta had talked more in the conference room than he ever had -- is greater than climbing Mt Fuji.
“I said,” he repeats, a little louder, “that my kids are fine. I already anticipated this talk being long, so I left them with Toshinori.”
Hizashi can’t help but raise a brow at the new moniker. “Wait. Yagi?” he laughs, pulling his hands into his pockets.
The new cotton he’d installed within the leather doesn’t itch against his gloves.
“You’re a changed man, Shou,” he gasps out lightly, letting his hand grasp at his chest. Dramatics and all. He doesn’t falter even when Shouta stutters to a stop beside him. “Never thought I’d see the day you’d be chummying with Toshinori all willy-nilly like that! Or should I say, Toshi?”
Aizawa Shouta’s face when he’s flustered might just be one of the greatest things in the whole wide world.
Hizashi tries not to think about what that means.
“Maybe you’ve leveled up,” Hizashi hums, “Gone on to new frontiers. Shame that you didn’t let your bestest friend in the whole wide world of Japan know first, but I can forgive you if ya tell me all the nasty deets from now on.”
Shouta huffs distastefully.
“Shaddap,” he says, but the red flush spanning his face is enough to dissuade any doubt. “Idiot. It’s not what you think it is.”
I know. You would never view anyone in that way.
“Sure it isn’t, ‘yo,” Hizashi teases. He pushes back the tightness in his chest. "Can’t fool the top DJ around.”
—
“It’s not easy,” Mic offers. His voice echoes in the room. “But it’s a start.”
There’s a pause as his hands linger over the restraints, tracing a circle over the other’s hand. “Shigaraki’s death isn’t an end all, be all, you know.”
“No shit,” Spinner hisses out. “Society heard him. We heard him. I heard him.”
The other mutant does not, notably, pry Mic’s hands off his scales.
So Mic thinks. He thinks back to Oboro. Oboro, in that stuffy room, leveled down by drugs and restraints. He thinks about the way he’d pushed air into his own lungs.
How his quirk sought to lash out and kill with the warbled yell of static building up in his throat like dust, begging for the aftereffects of Oboro -- Kurogiri -- caring for Shigaraki to collapse away all over again. Cut Oboro loose all over again.
Lose him under the rubble of another collapsed building. Cork back the good memories they’d all had in UA and let it fester in its fermenting rot once more, because that’s what it was, was supposed to be: buried. At least for him. Shouta still held good memories.
He hadn’t wanted to let them go to waste. Get ruined, like Mic’s already was, for a long while yet. At least one of them should keep the candle lit.
He thinks back to that day. Spins it in his mind much further.
Spinner. The hospital.
If Spinner hadn’t been there, they wouldn’t have lost Oboro the way they did again. Wouldn’t have had to watch him sacrifice himself, as he always had, for the greater good later on.
But then, if Spinner hadn’t intervened, hadn’t placed that hand on his face to wake Kurogiri up, Mic-- Hizashi -- would have had even more blood on his hands than he does now.
They wouldn’t have been able to save Midoriya; and the rest of Japan, of the world, by extension; without Oboro. Kurogiri. He’d relapsed to his senses in the end,
And Mic would’ve killed Oboro back then. It wouldn’t have been for entirely selfless reasons either.
Rationally, it doesn’t make sense. Kurogiri would’ve woken up regardless.
But, still. It doesn’t hurt to owe anyone anything.
Even a villain.
“I heard him too,” Mic agrees. There's a laugh, “Society will be dragged by its heels. Whether it wants to go up or down is up to the rest of humanity to decide.”
It earns him another sound. Different, this time. It sounds... confused.
“Are you sure you’re a hero?" Spinner looks at him suspiciously. "You’re doing an awful lot of meddling for someone you’re supposed to despise.”
No. “Yes,” he grins out. “It’s in the name of the gig. Meddling’s what we do best, yeah?"
He lifts his hands from the other to point right at himself, thumb clasping out of his fist. "Especially me! I like it loud.”
A pause.
It's a very long one.
“I still don't like you," the mutant whispers after a moment, eyeing him warily. "But, you're not exactly what I’d call loud.”
Something indescribable passes over Mic’s face.
—
They’re sitting across from each other in a newly opened cafe -- a product of the population’s insatiable thirst for coffee, and subsequently sore recipe for sleep deprivation, even in the aftermath of war -- when it’s brought up again.
“I’m still mad at you for not telling me about Spinner,” Shouta mutters, sipping away at his black coffee.
“What?” Now it’s Hizashi who break offs to a stop. The table shudders as he slams his latte on top. “Pump the brakes on that note. Hang on, now. Didn’t we hash all the details out earlier?”
“We did,” the other agrees.
It’s said much too hesitantly not to have something lingering behind it.
“So what about it?” Hizashi prods.
“You’re leaving out something.”
Crossing his arms around his chest, there’s a thump as he slumps backwards into his seat. “I’m not,” he insists. “Really, Shou. We went through the report. You saw everything important enough to mention.”
“So there’s--”
For the first time in years, he fully intends on cutting Shouta off. “Nothing.”
—
“Your kids are really something, huh?”
“They are.”
—
“Your kids… they’re not cheating, right?”
“Expel them.”
“Shouta,” he chides.
“Fine. Continue.”
“Thank you,” Hizashi says wryly.
Hizashi takes in a breath.
“Midoriya got a 93% in English,” and Shouta doesn’t utter a word, merely grumbling out an ‘expected’. Not like Hizashi hadn’t anticipated that reaction either. "Bakugou a 96%.”
He lists out the class one by one, analyzing Shouta’s reaction carefully as he recalls the scores.
“--Not only that, Ashido got an 82% in English,” he hums, finally. “Ojirou 92%."
Grinning, he reaches in for the kill. "Last but not least, our resident electrical outlet received a whole whoppin’ 89%.”
Apparently, Kaminari’s score is the straw to break the camel’s back.
Hizashi gets what he wants as his friend’s eye widens, taking the information in.
As best as they can open, anyway, given how reserved his expressions are. To anyone else, the eyelid only lift by a sliver of a fraction.
“Kaminari got an 89%?” Shouta says, disbelieving.
“Well,” he pouts. “He was just about to.”
His friend stares at him. Unabashedly silent.
“Before we got into that whole ‘villain Mic’ fiasco,” Hizashi clarifies.
A pause.
“Just grade his work now, then,” Shouta answers after a minute. “Add the number. I’ll put it into my gradebook.”
He shakes his head wryly. “No can do. I left his exam in my office.”
Shouta blinks. Green eyes linger just enough to recognize the astonishment in the other’s at the fact.
It’s fair: he never usually leaves home without his work. Rain or shine, it’s usually on his person.
Special circumstances call for special occasions, though.
“You know, this is your fault.”
“My fault?” Shouta drawls out, concern shifting to something along the lines of amused. “How so?”
“You dragged me off and held me hostage, you bastard.”
“That was, in no practical matter, ‘my fault’. I had to see it through. If there’s anyone to blame, it’s—”
Second time he’ll cut Shouta off today on purpose. Albeit for a nicer reason this time . Tongue and cheek’s the best game.
“Oh,” he muses, “Throwing poor ‘ol Tsukauchi under the bus again? After all he’s done for Toshi?”
Thump. His heart flutters as something scrapes against the floor, Shouta standing upright to his feet with a hiss. “This conversation’s over.”
It must be a shaky effort -- standing up, that is -- given that Shouta nearly topples over. Probably from standing up too fast. Masochistic bastard.
“Shouta!" he exclaims, panicked. "I was just joking!”
—
Later on that night, after they finally part and take their separate ways, Hizashi will stumble into his apartment.
He’ll peel off his hero costume. Wring his hands through his golden locks. Put his hair down. Take a shower, brush his teeth. Eat dinner. Brush his teeth again. Snag a bottle of water from the fridge. Slip on his PJs -- custom Eraserhead attire, of course -- and crawl onto his soft foam mattress. Remove his hearing aids, place them on the nightstand right next to where his thick red-rimmed glasses have started to collect dust from disuse.
Then he’ll think. He’ll think about what was said beforehand.
““So there’s--” Shouta had said. Before being cut off.
“--Nothing," Hizashi had responded in kind, ending the sonnet.
“There's something,” he’ll whisper into the night.
There’s always something.