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True to his nature, his quirk, Yamada hated silence. Hated it since he entered this cruel world and promptly blasted it with his newborn vocal cords the second he was born. He simply cannot focus in a room filled with eerie silence, always having music playing or someone by his side to fill the silence with. Although, he's typically the one to fill said silence.
Aizawa was a stubborn guy, merely speaking up whenever he felt the need to. Never speaking as a means to perform or entertain like Yamada, only doing so when it's “logical”. Necessary. But Aizawa was never silent per se. Yamada would always be able to hear his quiet humming in the corner of his room, the shuffling of his jacket whenever he'd move, or his even breaths when walking right beside him. And occasionally, the oh so very light sigh of amusement that'll leave his mouth whenever he finds Yamada rather amusing at some times. So, no, Aizawa was never silent. Just quiet.
But Aizawa definitely did not completely fill the air with his own soft quiet tunes alone. Luckily Yamada had Shirakumo to share the “noise stick” with, the two of them always having each other to be loud with. Whether it be in someone's bedroom, at an arcade, the two of them would make up for the one quiet voice. Kayama would be a surprise third in the conversation making, although she mostly snickers and makes playful jabs at the two's yapping mouths. Sushi too would also chime in as a fourth “voice” filling their space, his cute mews of happiness a welcoming presence.
No matter who was with who, there was always noise to fill the emptiness within their shared spaces. It's something Yamada had grown used to and craved. Hearing his friends own separate sounds meant they were here. No matter what sort of pitch they were making that day. Quiet or loud, sad or happy, they were here.
He would have never expected Shirakumo's tune to turn silent so suddenly. There was no satisfying fade out, no change in key. Just pure unfiltered silence. Like someone took his record and snapped it even when it was playing just fine hours ago.
Arriving at the scene had shattered almost everything in his chest. Seeing–no–hearing Aizawa's panicked puffs of air heaving out his chest as he stood beside him looking at Shirakumo's silence did something irreversible to his brain.
The pitchy cries of Kayama, who was a few feet away from them, tore into his eardrums leaving them ringing. All of this, this noise, paired with the heavy rain cascading down on the bloodied rubble sang Yamada a melody he had never wanted to hear ever again.
Perhaps he should've spoken more clearly on never wanting to hear it ever again, because he hadn't expected the rest of his daily tunes to go almost silent as well. Kayama was busy with her work study and couldn't spend much time with the broken pair as before. Of course Sushi's mewls had gone along with her notes.
Aizawa though? He's been avoiding him like the plague.
The only sounds he hears from him are footsteps in the halls or the zipper of his sleeping bag opening during class for another one of his school naps.
It hurts, you know, to basically have your best friend look at you as if you're a sour note. It pains him in the middle of the night while lying awake in bed with his crappy headphones on his head. The silence in his room is so deafening he cannot escape the murmurs in his head no matter how loudly he turns up his music. He'll inevitably throw his headphones across the room in a fit of anger, breaking them, and fall asleep with his hands fisted in his hair with silent tears rolling down his face. Pathetic, he knows. No one's really allowed to tune in on this particular song of his, no matter how much it repeats itself night after night.
He thought he'd never hear anything from his friend ever again, yet the pained grunts and moans of Aizawa tiredly, stupidly, climbing up his capture weapon in the late afternoon lull him back to the present.
He's propped up against the wall in a bit of a blind spot in the gym with his still broken headphones looped around his neck. He's been staring at the same stained spot on the wall for the last thirty minutes listening to Aizawa practically destroy himself.
It's been like this for weeks, Hizashi following his stupid dumb friend out to the gym to then hide in the corner for three hour training session that Aizawa puts himself through.
He pouts lightly to himself and reaches his arm out to start lightly picking at the chipped paint. Possibly with a high level of annoyance and anger the wall hadn't deserved.
"Sho's being pretty stubborn, isn't he Shirakumo?" he whispers lightly to himself, narrowing his eyes lower towards the ground. He flicks the dried paint of his fingers in the generally direction of Aizawa and rests his head on his arms, folding into himself.
He's tired, he notes. His body aches every time he moves to get comfortable. His eyes are practically bloodshot from the very little hours he's been getting. The pain could potentially rival that of Shouta's dry-eye. He huffs in amusement at the thought, though it's short lived as another one of Aizawa's pained, muted cries echo the room.
Yamada can hear the sliding of his bare hands against his capture cloth and for a second, for a split second, he wants to jump out of his spot and drag him off himself. But that's not what he came here to do.
He's just supervising him, without Aizawa knowing.
Even if he insists on pushing him away, practically spitting in Yamada's face, he still has a duty as a friend to watch out for the dumb guy as he works himself to death. He vowed to only step in if the pained grunts turned to cries of agony and despair.
Saying that to himself causes his chest to uncomfortably tighten in emotions. Hes so fucking angry he could scream. At this point he can feel it bubbling deep within his chest.
As if on que, a loud thump and a shocked yelp alerts Yamada's attention. He takes a breath.
Alright, well, he shouldn't exactly sit here and twiddle his thumbs right?
He shakily stands and peers out towards the gym. There's a pile of the uncoiled cloth along with a pissed off looking Aizawa, cradling his left arm against his chest. Yamada seizes this moment to make his grand entrance. He steps forward and lightly calls out,
"YOYO AIZAWA! I heard your uhm-- tumble outside the halls. Hope you won't mind me coming to check ya-"
"I'm fine, Yamada." a gruff, tired voice mumbles.
Barely audible but Yamada is glad he has quite the knack for hearing quiet tunes.
Upon getting a closer look at him, he notes the very unkept hair his friend has on his head along with the eyebags he sports on his face that appear more sunken in since this morning. He looked straight up sick when he walked in this morning, his body visibly shaking when he shuffled to his seat. Yamada remembers cringing at the sight of the erasure user smacking his forehead against his desk.
God he was so pale. His eyes were staring daggers into his eyes as if daring him to speak any longer.
Hizashi isn't no fool, the wrath of this Aizawa is no match he can face right now. Allthough that doesn't exactly matter when he catches the red growing blood stain on his friend's sleeve.
He quickly crouches down at his level, hesitantly putting his hands in the air in the injured arms directions.
"Ah shit Sho, didn't realize how hard you fell."
Aizawa looks at him in confusion until a drop of blood lands directly in the middle of the pair. As quickly as the confusion came, panic settled comfortably on his face as he shuffled away, hiding the injured arm close to his chest.
"It's from training, idiot. Go and bother someone else okay??" he exclaims, quick to stand up from his crouched position.
“Training or not you're still hurt, dumbass.” he taunts back, going to stand along with him. Aizawa continues to step back with a death grip on the stained part of his sleeve. The soaked up blood dribbled slowly onto the ground
He steps forward, hands coming up in defense. "Jeez man I get it. You don't want me around. Don't wanna see me at all. But just let me help–" he starts walking towards Aizawa, arm reaching out to touch his now very bloodied arm. A hand grasps tightly against his wrist and tugs hard.
There's words leaving Aizawa's mouth as he fights to get Yamada off his arm, pained gasps of pleas as they both tussle for control. It weirdly reminds Yamada of the training they used to do as a group. Their quirkless sparring that had always brought tears to his eyes with how much he'd laugh everytime. The three of them always had a good time no matter what they'd be doing.
This though? It turns nasty fast;arms stretching out to tug on one's shirt. A hand desperately clawing at the other's skin, trying to push them away. Another to grasp hard at a shoulder and shove it down.The both of them were very pathetically reaching out towards each other. One aiming to pull closer the other away, it goes on until Aizawa trips and falls backwards, Yamada landing on his body, right arm holding tightly against Aizawa's upper arm.
"Get off Yamada!!" he barks nastily in his ear, flailing against Yamada's more weighted body. His eyebrows are furrowed in concentration trying to keep Aizawa still, teeth gritting in annoyance.
"Stop fucking squirmin man I'm tryna help ya!" he says all unkindly. He has him somewhat successfully pinned, which would almost always happen during their sparring, down on the ground as he goes to inspect the cause of the injury.
Even though he'd prefer it if Aizawa was calm, the sudden stillness of the body below him had him startled. Before going to look at his arm, he looks at Aizawa hiding in the crook of his own neck with eyes screwed shut as if in pain. His face was bright red in almost embarrassment?
Yamada looks back towards his arm assuming the pain of the injury had caused such an action when he sees it.
During their light tussle the sleeve of Aizawa's shirt slowly kept riding up his forearm.
In all the glory for Yamada to see, the cause of the blood had not been a new injury but one old and reopened. About a dozen or so jagged, angry cuts littered his arm in varying length. Some superficial. Some alarmingly deep. All in rows.
The tone of the room shifted almost drastically, it made Yamada's head spin. Again, he hated silence. Everything in his being rejected the very concept.
This was pure deafening quietness filling the room.
He thought maybe he'd been seeing it wrong. The lack of oxygen in his head at the moment might be prohibitating his ability to think straight let alone see straight. Even so, the blood steadily flowing from the worst of cuts didn't look fake enough for his mind to trick himself out.
He'd seen blood before of course. He had seen it when his younger sister fell off her bike outside. Seen it drip slowly from Shirakumo's nose after his fourth nose bleed of the day. Had even seen it decorate said boy's entire body.
He didn't know why this time though it made him so fucking nauseous.
He tried to remember how to breathe but he instead went completely limp, his grasp on his upper arm loosening.
Shouta took that moment to shove him hard on the ground, stand to get above him, and as Hizashi went to face his friend's horribly wet face, Shouta punched him hard. Right across the cheek.
He forgot how hard he packed a punch...
Hot pain flared his cheek yet he couldn't find it in himself to care. It couldn't amount to the hurt in his chest. He was seeing double by the time the slaps noise finally left the room. He couldn't find it in himself to care about anything other than the fact that...
His friend had been hurting himself like this without him knowing.
How could he not know? It made sense, the signs were there. He just didn't look hard enough. Didn't try hard enough. They had a whole class on this sort of thing. He's a hero for fucks sake and he couldn't pick up on this until it had clearly spiraled out of control.
Before he knew it he mumbled out a pained, “Sho?”, from his lips.
Aizawa flinched. Something snapped in his brain. Like he realized what he did. He started to step further back like prey whos caught sight of their predator.
“O-okay. It's o-okay–”
“No. Stop–” he sounded so god damn scared.
“Listen it's…” Yamada paused thinking of what he could possibly say. He can't make this any better. Not really. He didn't know how to approach this sort of thing, what to say, what to do. Before he could even make up his mind, his body moved on its own. He stood, swaying a bit trying to recover from the punch.
“Please g-go away. I-I cant–” Aizawa shakily inhales before exhaling too quickly. “G-go home. Go!” he brings his hands up towards his face in a pitiful attempt of coverage. His face was all scrunched up, painfully so.
Yamada keeps walking until he rests his hand on his friend's shoulder. His eyes dart across his face, to his sleeve, back towards his face before he forces Aizawa to lean forward. When his forehead bumps against his shoulder he's quick to wrap his arms around his own shoulders bringing him close to his chest.
There's a sudden intake of breath below him.
“It'll be okay Sho. I'm not mad at ya. Could never be mad.” he whispers into his ear, now slowly tangling his hand within Shouta's hair. It rests there as his thumb draws mindless circles into his scalp. Moments ago yeah he was mad. Mad at his friend ignoring him, practically acting like he didn't exist. He knew though deep down his friend was hurting and didn't know how to cope, pushing everyone away to try to protect himself. Even if he knew why, he was still mad. But slowly the hurt had started to fizzle away. What was left was a desire to not let his friend suffer like this. Alone. Not ever again. Because no matter how much Yamada wanted to yell at this boy, he knew Aizawa was clearly punishing himself enough on his own.
A dam breaks and Aizawa all but starts to wail into his shoulder. It had started small with a few tears rolling down his cheek, but it quickly turned into a quick stream of unfiltered guilt and hurt. Still new, fresh grief rolled out of Shouta's body in heavy waves, making him shake and stutter with weak apologies.
“I'm so sorry Hiz-God I-Im so f-fucking–” he heaves as he whispers his words out in a small broken voice.
“It's okay. I'm not leavin ya.” Yamada shushes, still combing sweetly into his hair.
It feels like the right move as Aizawa burrows deeper into his neck trying to hide away. To pretend this isn't currently happening. He hadn't been found out by the last person he'd expect. He's not standing here sobbing pitifully into his friends(?) shoulder while blood continued to stain his jumper. He did not fall from his capture weapon, leading him to fall painfully wrong on the ground , opening wounds he had dug himself nights before.
His friend was not dead.
The radiating pain of his arm that had once given him sick comfort becomes suffocating making him cry harder. He holds onto Yamada's shirt tighter. If he had claws, it would've tore right through the material.
Even though he's being rough, Yamada still tenderly holds him like he's someone special. Like he didn't just punch the shit out of him out of pure fear. Like he hasn't been ignoring him for weeks because the hurt was too much to handle.
He feels like a sick, disgusting human being. Sucking the life out of Hizasbi like a leech. Just using him to cry, cry, and bleed everywhere on him. What a shameful sight. By now, the sobbing had turned into painful heaving, his body forgetting how to breathe all together. He shook and whined, desperate to stop panting into his friends neck.
“Ookaay come on Sho, you gotta breathe. Take a deep breath, follow me, okay?”
Yamada starts to exaggerate his own breaths, trying to keep his own pounding heart steady for Aizawa to follow. He fails, coughs grossly over his own gasps of air. His face is still squished between Yamada's neck.
“Look at me Shouta.” he coaxes his friend's head out from his damp neck, holding him with his hand wrapped around his cheeks.
“In and out dude. Remember how Kumo would calm you down? Same technique. You know it by heart with how much you hyperventilate."
He laughs lightly at the comment and it pulls something rough from Shouta's chest. He starts to breathe easier by Yamada's instructions and once he's done having the peak of his breakdown, he drops his face back into the crook of his neck.
Yamada wraps his arm back around him again and says nothing for a moment.
…
“We're gonna have to patch that up.” he hears a low whine come from his shoulder. Even at the protest, he keeps going.
“Im not gonna…make you talk about it but I think we should..talk. Ya know about things just..the stuff that's happened.” he states awkwardly, putting his chin on top of Aizawa's head.
“We should just clean that up soon, okay?” he then concludes. Aizawa below gives out a sort of tired hum, an almost defeated look settles upon his frame.
Despite the circumstances, the relaxed sort of form reminds him of what Aizawa was before everything had happened. A soft sort of presence, a quiet presence. Never silent. His song would be all mellow to Yamada's ears and listening now to the soft, slightly shaky, breaths of his friend makes him glad to hear his quiet song once more, again.
Even if his friend just cried his heart out. Even if his friend had just punched the daylights out of him. Quiet or loud, sad or happy, he was here.
He smiles sadly at the thought.
Broken. Bloodied. But here.