“Well, I’ll cut to the chase," the doctor says, voice flat. "Your career as a hero is, effectively, over."

Shouta stares straight ahead.

From beside him, he can feel Hizashi shift uneasily. “Do you have to be that direct about it? Jeez, read the room here.”

The window’s quite dusty.

“For Eraserhead’s sake, I was only trying to be blunt. From his past history at the hospital, from what I’d heard, he’s not fond of small talk. I figured he would appreciate it.”

When was the last time they cleaned it? Do they even have janitors here?

“Well,” he can hear Hizashi hiss, “From what you’re saying, he’s not exactly Eraserhead at the moment, is he?”

‘You can do this, Shouta! Come on, Shouta!’

Hizashi continues, scowling. “And who cares ‘bout ‘past history’? Is it that hard to be kind about it? Not to toot our own horns, but we fought in the war! He fought in the war!”

“I apologize,” the man in front offers, not sounding apologetic in the slightest as he twirls the medical sheet away from them to fold back onto his desk. “I knew that. Thank you for your service, you two. Though, I did see you on the news that day, Present Mic. Never knew your voice could be that powerful.”

He doesn’t realize he’s covered his mouth until Hizashi’s own gently pries his hand away, joining their fingers together. Shouta has his legs clammed together, the other hand fisting the leg of his pants.

What is he supposed to say?

“That’s mostly thanks to my intern, but-- whatever. You better be,” Hizashi mutters, though he doesn’t miss the worried glance that his partner sends him before flicking distrustful eyes back to the doctor.

There’s a sucking of breath. “Are you entirely sure that it’s just--?

“Hizashi,” Shouta finds himself saying.

The artificial light on the ceiling flickers faintly. The broken air conditioner the blond had been whining about in the waiting room stutters in the quiet, painting the stale air an image of warmth instead of something he’d curl up in his sleeping bag to fight against, during the nights when he knew nothing but the next mission.

Hizashi turns before Shouta sees him, blind spot and all. “What’s up?”

He turns to the doctor. “When can we get the results for the clearance test I took the other week back?”

The doctor wrinkles his nose questioningly. “The certification for active duty?”

His hand falls from Hizashi’s grasp, hold loosening as he wrenches his fingers off. He’s not sure if he can handle comfort right now.

Folding his arms across his chest -- not embracing himself -- Shouta looks straight into the other man’s disbelieving eyes. “That one, yes.”

“But I just… alright,” the doctor trails off, wisely not making the choice to pursue that particular path. Rubbing the back of his neck, the man’s mouth opens, then closes. Then opens. “Well, we don’t have the results yet.”

The only reason he sees Hizashi point a finger is because his partner takes it upon himself to shoot forward, bun falling out of place from where Hizashi had lazily put it up with chopsticks before they’d gotten the call and rushed over to get the prognosis in person, and grin accusingly. “See! You don’t know yet!”

Shouta watches the doctor shrug a shoulder. “Most cases of career-ending injuries like these end up like the name.”

Career-ending, he doesn’t say. He doesn’t have to.

Not betting any money in the fountain of hope seems worse.

There’s nothing crueler than letting a dream end mid-way.

—

“Sheesh,” Hizashi whistles, just as the passenger door slams shut. Clambering into his seat without losing his dignity or accidentally catching his foot on the scrubbed down floor mats without tracking mud isn’t as easy as one would think it is. It’s much more difficult when even your skin is seething. “The doc was a jerk! Man, how can you stand him?!”

From beside him, there’s a grunt. “He’s not my usual.”

His hand stutters on top of the wheel. “Not your usual?”

Normally, Shouta doesn’t even slide down a window for the people closest to him, let alone a door. When’d he decide to just give a key for strangers to do away with as they wished?

Why does he make it sound like a coffee order?

A seatbelt clicks, the symbol for all occupied seats in the car flaring up with an approving green. “Can we go home?”

Ah.

Lips thinning, he keeps his gaze planted forward, twirling a finger around the gear shift. It rises quickly as he turns the knob for the radio, an obnoxious pop-song he’s sure Shouta detests filing into the car before he flicks to another frequency. It’s a rock song they danced to in school. “Sure can do, listener.”

Can teeth fall off if they’re clenched too hard? Maybe his dentist can confirm.

(Dialing his tooth doctor’s not the only number he plans on putting into his phone tonight.)

—

They had many dreams when they were kids.

Hizashi and Oboro had met first, before they’d latched onto him. They had many dreams before him. Then many more when he’d been spun into their chaos, dreams made during stolen lunch breaks and empty rooftops, promises to take care of a cat Shouta couldn’t even be enough of a hero to care for.

A cat in wet cardboard.

All he could do was give up an umbrella. Give up an umbrella and run along back to UA.

Soak up the rain.

To continue participating in a lie, in the delusion he’d let his nails bleed for in his climb, let it drip drip drip into the class as he stalked on towards his seat to shake away the dream.

(Oboro clambered into the classroom window so easily with the kitten in hand, grin bright on his face as he shook away water droplets. They soaked into the clump of his clouds. Later, he’ll hand the umbrella discreetly over to Shouta, and Shouta will feel nothing.)

“While I draw breath, my quirk, my life, has one purpose… I will not let you lay a finger on my students!”

They had many dreams when they were kids. Kids were all they could be.

Nightmares only trail after you like a rite when you’re older, a coming-of-age movie for someone whose age in the hourglass wouldn’t tick past midnight, sand still. Tug at you when you’re a kid in the same way a boy tugs at a girl’s pigtails when he doesn’t know right from wrong, chase like a dog told to play fetch with no ball thrown.

But the wolf’s snarling teeth knows bark from bite when your bones have aged, and it will never choose the former when it knows you’d rather be mauled.

Shouta had always assumed he’d die someday. Death was a guarantee in his line of work. Whether in an alley alone or in a deal gone wrong, it always lurked around the corner. A gift.

A clean break. The gruesome body he would’ve left behind less so, but a clean break nonetheless.

No one would’ve missed him back then.

Now that he has something, has students to name and friends to care for and people to care, in turn, for him, it just as readily slips through the cracks of his fingers like boiling water.

His eye twitches.

He cannot care for them back anymore; cannot protect them the same way he used to, in the past.

A hand reaches to gnaw at his leg. Steel greets his skin when he pulls the fabric of his pink sweatpants back, fingers clasping for the latch tying the joint together to his leg. Low snores rumble through the dark of their bedroom as he pulls it off, Hizashi’s slender frame sprawled out onto his expanse of their bed, red glasses tucked onto their nightstand.

A Present Mic pillow had crawled up to Shouta’s side while he’d slept. Vanity’s not something Hizashi partakes in, certain members of the public -- very rare and very few in between -- sometimes accusing him of narcissism for the amped-up persona’s confidence, and maybe the pillow they have in their bedroom isn’t the best example to bring up, but Shouta had found it funny when he’d brought the prototype home.

He’ll have to wash it, the pillowcase wet with something he won’t name.

—

“How’s Shouta?”

Hizashi looks up. Nemuri’s wry smile enters his vision like a lighthouse.

Not being one to lie, especially not to the dead, of all things, it’s easy to talk.

“He’s been better,” he admits.

His hands still in place, dish left held up in the air from where his pruny fingers are gripping them tight. Deigning to set it aside, continue later, it’s quickly placed on a rack and left to dry.

The bandages around his throat begin to itch a bit when he pokes his head out the doorway of the kitchen, then steps out. Maybe he’ll ask Shouta to lend a hand before he redoes them. When he comes home from that UA meeting.

Lips pressing together, he almost laughs.

He can’t ask that of Shouta. He’ll just do it himself.

Nemuri steps into place beside him. “And you?” she demands, and he doesn’t miss out on how her heel accidentally shifts through his slippers.

“Just jazzy,” he answers immediately, not raising his head up.

Guess some things never change, he snorts. She’s still as nosey as ever.

“You’re not.”

Argumentative, too.

“I love you, Nem,” Hizashi sighs, footsteps thudding against the corridor floor as he nearly slips on a rug when the soft fuzz of his feet hook onto the corner, gritting his teeth when he manages to stabilize himself in time, “But buzz off, won’t ya?”

There’s just enough of a crickety silence to sway him into thinking the stage has fallen back to a one man show, but actors are anything if not a bug in his side. Ugh, bugs.

But also, ugh, Nemuri.

“You’ve become a bad liar,” and for a second, he swears long fingers hook below his chin and pull up, green eyes meeting a faint blue. “When’d that happen?”

Maybe when you dying meant I no longer had to keep up the act around you.

Like a mad man, he suppresses a giggle. “Shouta’s even worse than I am,” Hizashi argues. For a split second, he swears he sees a shade of red form within the other’s pupil.

“He still thinks I haven’t noticed him slipping medication off into the bin whenever I try ‘n’ give him some. I mean, c’mon. I know he’s in pain. He knows he’s in pain. Who’s he tryna lie to here? Why’s that man so stubborn?”

He doesn’t like the look she flashes him.

—

Postage day arrives much later than expected. And for what?

The clearance letter is crinkled beyond recognition before it makes its way into the bin.

—

The staff room’s not a place Shouta Aizawa particularly wants to call a place he’s staked his claim on when it comes to anger, but, well, it comes close.

Rising to his feet, Shouta slams his hand down on the table, adrenaline enough to tide away the sting that rushes through him from the contact. “I am a fucking hero.”

Nedzu raises a placating paw. It does nothing but make him feel worse.

“Snipe’s not saying you aren’t, Shouta-san,” the chimaera says, not unkindly.

Shouta doesn’t fall for it. “What’s he saying, then?” he accuses.

Before Snipe even opens his mouth to intrude, to give his real thoughts, Present Mic takes the stage.

“Yo,” Hizashi chimes in, voice oddly jittery as he barks a laugh. From what he can tell, it’s not with much humor. “Could we pump the brakes here and take a… what would ya call it? A recess?”

Goddamnit. 

His jaw clenches.

“A recess, you say?” Nedzu’s eyes glint with something unrecognizable.

A nod.

“I just don’t think we’re grooving too good at the moment,” Hizashi says, palms laced together, “And it’d probably be better if we could, you know, pull our asses together before we jump to conclusions? What do we think?”

The Erasure hero bites back a retort.

“That seems best,” Yagi agrees from beside him. Ishiyama and Kan share a look, nodding. Shouta doesn’t even look at Snipe.

Nedzu claps his paws together. They don’t do much else but collide with an ironic thump.

“Well, that seems to be all settled, then! A recess we shall have.” He turns his head from where he’s crouched on Yagi’s shoulder. “Shouta-san?”

Breathing in an exhale, Shouta pulls himself away from his seat. “Agreeable,” he spits out.

It’s a miracle he doesn’t all but stomp out of the room once given the chance, Hizashi hot on his heels once the latter offers a curt bow to the rest of the staff room and bolts on after him.

He doesn’t understand what they hold all these meetings for anymore. The whole point’s null.

Despite knowing who it is behind him, a hand on his shoulder clasping around his shoulder is enough for him to hiss, twist his head around, and activate his quirk in a matter of seconds. He can only feel half of his hair lift up as he stares back at Hizashi. Shouta shudders a wince at already wanting to close his eye, unsure of what that really means in the long run.

He thinks he already knows. “What do you want,” he growls out, eye still wide.

To his surprise, it's not met with the usual Mic smile.

“What do you want?” Hizashi bounces the question back at him, words dragged out with flared nostrils.

Stunned at Hizashi’s open fury, the shock manages to deceive him into blinking, motion coaxing his hair to cascade back onto his shoulders and for the yellow glare to dissipate, as if it were never there at all.

The UA’s corridors are empty this time of day. And day in general, considering the construction’s still going on. With his one eye, he thinks he can see an open brick plan a mid way’s away from behind Hizashi.

Almost, at least. With his partner all up in his space like this, it makes it plenty difficult to see.

He elects to point out the elephant in the room. “It’s obvious what I want,” he snarls, “isn’t it?”

Hizashi takes the hint rather quickly. He steps back, fury on his face fading into disbelief as his lip trembles.

For a second, Shouta wants to reach back, tell him he was right. For what, he doesn’t know. If it would comfort his best friend, his partner, he’d agree and admit to anything.

He doesn’t expect the next few words out of Hizashi’s mouth.

“We can’t help you if we don’t know,” he says, helpless.

Asking who ‘we’ is reads rather meaningless -- and somewhat careless -- in the grand scheme of things.

“I can’t help you much if I don’t know,” the blond continues, frowning. “‘N I’m doin’ my best here, Shouta. I got you out of that meeting, didn’t I? I’m trying, here.”

His mouth juts open.

“Real good that did,” Shouta mumbles after a moment, not snarkily. Reconvening any real anger is wasteful.

He holds a breath. “You’ve done a lot more than just that. You don’t need to do… more,” he mutters, almost sheepishly.

The spirals in Hizashi's eyes have never looked so hypnotizing. The red is mesmerizing in the sea of green.

“I love you,” Hizashi suddenly blurts out, fully serious. Shouta stiffens.

Determination settles into the other’s brows just as his own raise, not comprehending it as his mouth flutters uselessly shut, unable to say it back.

You’re not even a good hero. Let alone a hero at all. And now you can’t say ‘I love you’ back to your partner? Pathetic.

Shouta shivers as the other steps forward, fists clenched at his sides before he unwraps them to fold around Shouta’s hips. Sparing a glance, his eyes jolt off to the side in alarm, assessing their surroundings in not-panic.

A nip at his earlobe as Hizashi leans forward. “There aren’t any students roamin’ round, don’t you worry,” he reassures.

Then the other thinks, for a moment. “Maybe the staff,” he squints, “But they’re in the other direction, yanno? Don’t worry. If their feet even so much as tip tap down the hall, I’ll know.” He taps an ear hard, before yelping at making contact with his headphones.

He stifles a snort.

“I know,” he offers, quietly. Hearing a hum, he sighs.“I know.”

Shouta pauses. Hizashi doesn’t let up on his ministrations.

A kiss to his cheek. One to his upper eyelid, his left. Warmth blooming on the lower. His thumb, brushing gently to the right, running over the eyepatch covering Shouta’s greatest failure. Trailing off to the scar under it, remnants of the original from USJ mixed in with the new, the visible killer of his quirk.

All he’s known them for are failures. Maybe Hizashi can see peace in places Shouta can only see war.

He can feel his leg creak as Hizashi tests the boundaries of gravity and leans forward, thus pushing him backward. It's only years of working with a capture scarf that allow him to wrap a ribbon or two around Hizashi’s waist and a panel in the ceiling before they both tip over, drawing a yelp of surprise from the other.

It fades quickly into bemusement once he realizes what Shouta’s done.

His cheeks do not flush at the attention.

“You don’t have to be the same kind of hero for me to love you,” Hizashi murmurs dreamily, after a moment, staring right through him. “You don’t even have to be a hero at all.”

“You know,” Oboro beams, legs outstretched, “Since there are three of us, even if someone makes a mistake, the other two can cover for him! Like I said before, Shota pays attention to details. So, why not? Let’s start one.”

“But--” he frowns, cutting himself off at the hopeful look on Hizashi’s face. The creases in his expression scream ‘trust-me’.

Shouta pauses. “Nevermind. I…”

(Love you.)

He swallows. “…want to get takeout when we get home," he finishes, rather lamely.

Hizashi pumps a fist.

“Sure,” he whistles. They both know that's not what he meant. “But not until after the meeting, ya’dig? Can’t let Nedzu think I asked to hold a break so you can skulk home.”

He grunts, having expected that. Shouta tilts his head lazily. "We can get fried chicken, if you want."

To his credit, he doesn't make a single sound as another kiss is pressed to his temple, drawn out and undeserved as it is reverent. "My hero."