Chapter Text
“He’s moving — hey, hey. Back up off him. Back up, let him breathe. Eraser, hey, don’t make any sounds, yeah? Hold out two fingers for me if you understand.”
Shouta’s head is swimming, the voice in his ear sounds dull and ragged and far away, like he’s listening to a recording from underwater. His limbs are heavy and overheated. He takes a sluggish breath like there’s not enough air in the world to fill his lungs, eyes squeezed shut, and forces himself to uncurl his fist enough to show two fingers.
“Hey, good. That’s good, man. I need you to stay calm, alright? Seriously, don’t talk. No sighs, none of those trademark nonchalant grunts or anything either, you dig?”
The cadence is familiar, but it doesn’t sound right with that voice. Though the voice is familiar, too. Shouta smothers the petulant desire to do one of those trademark nonchalant grunts anyway, just forces his hand into a thumbs up instead and tries to get his bearings, to remember how he got here.
There’s no dust in the air from a crumbled building, no sounds of panic aside from a far-off ambulance; just idle civilians shuffling and hushed chatter. The sun’s really beating down today, it must be around noon, so he probably hasn’t been out long. That’s good news for his rebooting brain.
“Awesome, very cool. Breathe out slow and keep it up. Nobody’s in danger, okay? First responders are on the way.”
Raising his head up to roll his eye and glower seemed like a Herculean task, anyway. Shouta’s extremely copacetic thumbs up morphs into an irate middle finger and in an instant, he feels two strong hands roughly press his wrist to the pavement to cover the gesture. That was surprisingly quick, given the general vibe of calming reassurance he’s been getting so far, accompanied by a tight and breathless laugh that sounds completely wrong in that voice. And that’s when he recognizes it.
“Aizawa, chill the fuck out,” Shouta’s own voice warns him, low and raspy in his ear. “There’s kids around.”
For a split second he opens his mouth to ask the question swimming in his mind – Yamada? – but that same rough hand clamps over his mouth even before he can even clear his throat.
“I’m dead serious, man. Not a peep out of you. Don’t even exhale too fast, get it?”
Thinking is slow and laborious, but a few things click into place. The phantom limb sensation he’s experiencing right now is just regular sensation in a regular limb. Shouta chances a blink — two entire eyes to see out of and a glorious world of depth perception, what a rush — and everything feels too bright, bathed in deep golds. Ugh.
Shouta shrugs off the hand keeping his wrists pinned and just signs [Mic?] at which point he hears a sigh that’s usually coming out of him. And it is coming out of him, in a way – Eraserhead himself is crouched there on the ground in front of him, leering down at him with his one remaining eye flitting around as if looking for injuries. Really uncomfortable stuff. Eraser — Yamada — removes the hand from Shouta’s mouth, at least.
“Yeah, I’m you. And you’re me. And I’m not trying to be a Debbie downer, but you might have a concussion, so take it slow.” Now that Shouta’s kind of up to speed, those hands are back on him, surprisingly quick as they check for damage at the back of his head, scanning for blood and swelling. It’s unnerving, being manhandled by his own body, but he can’t focus too hard on it while Yamada’s still rambling – because of course he is. “Gotta be careful now that you’re packing a souped-up vocal LRAD courtesy of yours truly. Can’t have you giving an unapproved shoutout to the listeners in the middle of all this picturesque urban sprawl, y’know?”
Yamada seems pretty comfortable in Shouta’s skin given that he effectively just lost an eye and a leg, for all that he’s running his mouth like nothing’s changed. He’s not vamping for the civilians, at least; he probably correctly assessed that the Present Mic star quality shining out of Eraserhead’s body would be more alarming than reassuring.
There’s also the unspoken issue at hand: Yamada doesn’t know if he can reliably activate Erasure, and he has zero confidence that Shouta can control his Voice.
Shouta moves to sit up, silently wincing at the crick in his neck and the creak of the leather in Present Mic’s hero costume — Yamada braces him with a hand, which Shouta silently appreciates. Even more than that, he’s relieved to notice that the directional speaker is already stripped off and set to the side so Shouta can’t accidentally level a city block with one of those world-weary sighs he’s so famous for.
Still bone-tired, Shouta sarcastically signs, [How screwed is the picturesque urban sprawl if I need to cough?] and Yamada’s hoarse bark of a laugh is stabilizing, even if it’s not especially reassuring.
“Sorry,” Yamada frowns, tilting his head. “Could you repeat that?”
“I’m sorry Mr. Er— Present Mic! Sir!” The officer punctuates his misstep and apology with about ten rapid, aborted bows. He barely looks old enough to go out for drinks after work, let alone interview for the job. Just another reminder of how many people they lost during the war.
[Give the kid a break,] Shouta signs blandly, adjusting Mic’s stupid leather jacket over his forearm while the EMT behind him carefully disinfects the lump on the back of his head. Probable concussion, they said. Just his luck. [He’s obviously new, and it’s not his fault.]
“Nah, I get it, I guess I just figured we’d have more surveillance reinstalled after the whole thing with Tartarus puking its guts up last year, but that’s… disappointing.” Yamada whistles long and low, shoving his hands in his pockets and dejectedly kicking a rock. “Not caught on a single camera. Bummer.”
“I know, I’m sorry, sir. The calls we received relayed that the villain had escaped, but we weren’t given details on the direction they fled, we were only dispatched to take statements—
[Suspect,] Shouta signs. Then a second time for emphasis when Yamada doesn’t interpret for him. [The suspect, Mic.]
“Eraser wants to remind you that we don’t have a motive or an ID yet,” Yamada sighs, crossing his arms. “They wouldn’t be classified as a villain unless they’ve intentionally violated the penal code twice with the use of a quirk, or once with both a quirk and support item. So the suspect escaped — the assailant, or even the perp, if you want, but not the villain. Yet.”
The officer seems perplexed by the correction. Shouta racks his brain, but can’t seem to remember the kid’s name. Kind of reminds him of Iida in his first year at UA; that same kind of inflexible, eager to achieve energy, but without the deep, fundamental respect for following the rules he’d started out with.
“With respect, Mr. Present Mic sir, I don’t know if quibbling over definitions is the most productive use of our time—”
“Hey man, look, this is a side gig.” Yamada puts on a grin that would be disarming if he were Present Mic, but he has the misfortune of being Eraserhead at the moment, so he just kind of looks like a serial killer plotting a holiday instead. “I’m an English teacher, y’know? One of those insufferable kinda guys that thinks words mean things. One of the only things I’m a square about.”
“Right, what I meant was–”
Shouta feels itchy the longer they sit here, the longer it’s bright and exposed and the bystanders try sneaking pictures of Present Mic. He actively avoids turning toward the onlookers — he’s not petty enough to give Mic bad press with the travesty of an expression that tends to default across his own face. Yamada, luckily, is mostly obscured from two directions between the ambulance and police car, and at least partially in the shadow of the nearest building.
Shouta snaps his attention back to the conversation when he sees the cop pull out a notepad. Not being able to talk is already starting to take a toll on his patience, he’s liable to bruise Yamada’s arms with his own fingertips if he doesn’t get a grip soon.
“Honestly, I don’t really remember anything,” Yamada admits, rubbing the spot on his forearm where Shouta suddenly – foggily – remembers getting bit. “I was stretching my legs after a public appearance this morning, and then suddenly I was this guy.”
From the way Shouta’s body is aching from the impact of Yamada’s body on the pavement, jumping into the situation was the right choice, even if it put him within the attacker’s effective range. That said, leaving an assailant on the streets with a quirk this disruptive feels careless, in retrospect. Even without the alarming detail of their jumbled minds, a completely unknown threat just neutralized two pro heroes in broad daylight.
Shouta expects better from himself.
[Present Mic wouldn’t have seen anything, he was approached from behind and didn’t have time to respond. The suspect was short,] Shouta signs — Yamada starts interpreting the second he starts, word-for-word this time instead of shooting from the hip like a cowboy. [I’d guess somewhere between 148 and 152 centimeters. They were wearing a gray cloak with a hood over their head. I didn’t see their face, but I thought I saw a snake coming out of the hood when they approached Present Mic, which is when I intervened. If I had to guess, their quirk also has something to do with an affinity for reptiles, or they have some kind of reptile heteromorphism. Could be something subtler, like the Snake Hero: Uwabumi.]
The last thing he remembers before going down was Yamada's hand stretching out in front of him. Shouta peels off one of Mic’s fingerless gloves to reveal a tiny bite mark between his thumb and forefinger — Yamada’s eyes flash with a sudden clarity and he hikes up the sleeve of Eraser’s costume, revealing a second bite mark. Alright, that tracks.
[You’ll want to take pictures and measurements of these bites and send them to a herpetologist to help narrow down any relevant details,] Shouta adds before holding his hand out for the flustered officer to inspect.
“Medical will probably want to take blood samples too, just to be careful,” Yamada muses after interpreting, before emphatically gesturing between the two of them with a nervous smile. “Though I think we have a pretty good idea what the bites did, so maybe we can skip that part?”
“I can administer a polyvalent antivenom after I take swabs and samples,” the other EMT says, already unearthing a collection kit while Yamada goes pale. “After which we should hold you both for observation for— not long at all,” she stutters suddenly.
Shouta briefly glances at her and then to Yamada just in time to see his own black hair tumbling back into place, the hallmark of Erasure’s deactivation.
[Cool it, Mic,] Shouta reprimands him. [She doesn’t control safety regulations. And don’t use Erasure on civilians.]
“Man, I hate to rush you, but I need to get Eraserhead out of here ASAP so we can clear the area,” Yamada emphasizes, having the audacity to sound apologetic while signing by his hip, [You’re a danger to the public, and the press will be here soon.]
Shouta can’t help but crack a smile, even with the lack of faith. At least he’s honest about it. [You could have led with the press. I’m easy.]
“—obviously there’s some safety concerns, but we should have it under control if we can get back to our offices at UA,” Yamada continues, dutifully looking away as one of the paramedics finally finds a good vein. “It’s closer than the Musutafu PD.”
Both EMTs and the cop seem to really hate this suggestion, judging by the way they wrinkle their noses.
“I’m not sure that’s a great idea,” the cop starts slowly, but he doesn’t get much farther than that before his partner exits the patrol car.
Aizawa recognizes this one, at least – the glare on the windshield and his general state of being concussed had stopped him just short of registering the shape of the silhouette in the car. The partner, at least, is pretty unforgettable – a ginger tabby cat heteromorph with a scar over his eye, and a bell around his neck. The forgettable, younger officer seems to stand up just a little straighter – poor kid, what a day. He keeps accidentally embarrassing himself around a pro hero he clearly admires when he’s equally terrified of looking bad in front of an equally-decorated senior officer.
[Tamagawa,] Shouta greets.
“Eraserhead,” Tamagawa acknowledges him first with a nod, then Yamada. “Present Mic. I just got off the phone with the analysts at the quirk registry database. There are no full matches to speak of, but we have some leads to follow up on. As you can imagine, it’s going to take some time to cast a net and interview, and we’ll need to get a quirk factor specialist in to help narrow down the search parameters. It would go faster if we understood how the quirk actually causes this effect, but for now we’ve hit the wall of what we can accomplish from here.”
Tamagawa offers Yamada a neatly ordered clipboard with a thin stack of papers on it and a pen, probably since Shouta’s the one getting blood drawn, now. He dutifully curls his fingers into a fist, watching the process the entire time.
“You can start filling out the incident paperwork,” Tamagawa informs them. “I checked in with Detective Tsukauchi as a courtesy due the high profile nature of the attack, and we happened to get lucky. It seems there have been a few assaults of this nature starting a little over a year ago, but the victims don’t seem to fall into any particular category. Nobody high profile until now, anyway.”
[Crimes of opportunity,] Shouta clarifies. Yamada is dutifully filling out the incident report with a look of determination that Shouta usually only sees when he’s grading English essays in the lounge. [In regards to this incident, at least, nothing was stolen, and the suspect didn’t have any immediate interaction with Mic before the attack that may have incited it. They only reacted when I approached.]
Tamagawa nods curtly and conveys the information to his partner – or is he a trainee? – and Shouta has to make a conscious effort not to be charmed by the little jingle of the bell on his collar. He’s a public servant with deep professionalism who is performing his duty and upholding public safety.
“What we do know is that the effects aren’t permanent, and Tsukauchi couldn’t recall any additional side effects from the previous cases,” Tamagawa continues, keeping his eyes on the other officer’s notepad as he writes. Almost definitely a trainee, then. “And like I said, the pool of quirks this could be is vanishingly small, so we’re extremely confident that it’s the same suspect in Hiyogo. You have clearance to leave once the med techs are finished with their work, Officer Ono will reach out to you later with more details once we’ve had time to investigate the matter further.”
Ahh, Ono. So that was his name.
“Cool,” Yamada says, handing the clipboard back to Tamagawa in record time. “Did Tsukauchi have an ETA on these effects wearing off in under, say, an hour, or am I good to drive?”
“If this is the same villain we think it is, you’ll be fine more than long enough to drive,” Ono pipes up, pen still in his hand. “But, uh... put it this way, there’s a non-zero chance that Mr. Eraserhead might have to host your show on Friday.”
Shouta leans forward, puts his head in his hands and sighs – but he realizes a little too late what he’s done.
The amplified force of the harsh exhale blasts a massive percussive wave down into the asphalt beneath him. The back wheels of the ambulance are sent flying into the air from the force, taking the rear end of the chassis with it. Off-guard and unprepared for the force of the recoil, Shouta’s center of mass pivots backward into the ambulance and slams into the solid metal frame of the gurney at a frightening speed, both shoulders violently crashing into it before the back tires hit the ground again.
Fucking hurts. His ears are absolutely ringing and he feels beyond stupid.
Dazed, Shouta blinks as his hearing fades back in. The squad car’s anti-burglary alarm is going off beside them, though it clicks back off after a few seconds. One of the EMTs cautiously peeks her head around the corner of the back of the ambulance, hands firmly covering her ears. Shouta offers a thumbs up, but he can see how much his arm is shaking from the shock, and if he can see it, she can see it. He puts it away, composes himself, and returns to the mouth of the van.
Yamada’s hands are jammed deep into his pockets, and Shouta knows they’re curled up into tight fists. Tamagawa and the EMTs seem to have composed themselves, the former more so – the trainee is still laid out flat on the ground, staring up at the sky like he doesn’t know which way is up. There’s a solid circle of bare, gray concrete on the ground where the darker asphalt has simply been obliterated, pieces of black composite scattered everywhere. Shouta idly kicks a stray chunk out of the ambulance before he drops down out of the back, smoothly crouching down to pick up the leather jacket he’d accidentally dropped when he made the mistake of breathing a little too enthusiastically.
[My mistake for thinking the shoulderpads were for style,] Shouta signs to break the silence, and Yamada gives a tight grin.
“Alright, listeners, they’re playing my song,” Yamada announces, giving a charismatic salute to the shocked-still first responders as he veers his way around to start pushing Shouta away from the scene of the crime. “Time for this manzai act to split. Call your folks, tip your baristas, bill my agency, and tune in next week to find out what happens next!”
“Mr. Present Mic,” the younger officer – fuck, was it Oro? Onoe? Shouta can’t remember anymore – calls out, scrambling to his feet. Tamagawa is pacing around the squad car, which now has a shattered windshield. Fuck. “Before you go, the trainees had a working codename for the unidentified Hiyogo bodyswap villain–!”
Yamada slams the door behind him and takes a long, deep breath.
“Giving that villain a codename based on a teen comedy is horseshit,” Yamada mutters once Shouta buckles himself into his seat.
[Suspect,] Shouta signs again, tossing Mic’s jacket into the back and dropping his sore body into the passenger seat. It’s not set up for someone with Yamada’s long legs, but Shouta doesn’t bother adjusting it. This is temporary. Take only memories, leave only footprints, or whatever it was that Ragdoll said when they brought the kids down to training camp. [Suspect, Yamada. Words mean things.]
Yamada ignores the correction. “Freaky Friday? What a laugh. It’s Sunday.”
[I’m not sure if you should drive. I don’t have my license on me,] Shouta signs, glancing at Yamada from his peripheral vision. Not that he owns a car to begin with, but he’s been keeping on top of the license since he started working at UA, just in case there was a malfunction on one of the shuttles to the extended campus. He keeps that in the on-site apartment, though; he doesn’t need it on weekends. Logical. [Is that going to be a problem?]
“It’s fine,” Yamada sighs, idly tying Shouta’s short but disastrously tousled hair into a low ponytail and fishing around in Eraserhead’s costume pocket for the emergency eyedrops.
Shouta feels his fingers twitch for a second with the impulse to just administer the drops for him, since it’s never exactly been pleasant to do, but Yamada sanitizes his hands with something from the car door and holds his lid open like he’s practiced it. Two drops, hold, then blink, as if it’s something he does every day. Hell, maybe he does. There’s plenty of things about Yamada that Shouta doesn’t know.
[If this filler episode sideplot bullshit wears off by tomorrow, I don’t want to be in a jail cell when I should be taking attendance,] Shouta signs, and Yamada shoots him a funny smile with a single, watery eye.
“C’mon, man. One, Tamagawa got us special dispensation to use each other’s legal documents for the duration of this shitshow. Two, I’m a good driver, we’re not going to get pulled over. And three–” Yamada emphasizes with three fingers fanned out and wearing the brightest, most unsettling smile ever to grace Shouta’s mouth, “--You’re the decorated war hero Eraserhead. Even if a traffic cop pulls us over and thinks the dispensation is a prank, they’d be a morally bankrupt jackass for not letting you off the hook at least once. Unless they’re missing both legs and eyes or something. In which case, it’s not like they’ll be able to ID us if we just gun it from the cops.”
Shouta grimaces hard to stifle the chuckle he can’t risk, but the panicked expression that flicks across Yamada’s face makes it clear that he realized the potential threat too late — Yamada sees the contortion of his face for what it is. Yamada swiftly adjusts his mirrors – he can’t have to adjust them this much, right? He’s only two centimeters taller, for crying out loud – checks both directions, and glances back to check Shouta’s seatbelt before he swiftly starts the car.
Even after discarding the Present Mic costume jacket in the backseat, the immediate blast of heat from the air conditioning and the blaring stylings of some angry foreign band wrinkle Shouta’s entire face while Yamada trips over himself to turn the dials down.
“Sorry,” Yamada mutters, as if it’s his fault the air conditioning takes a minute to get with the program.
[As is the owner, so is the car,] Shouta retorts, as if the last exchange with a hint of humor hadn’t already been living life on the edge. [Loud as hell and full of hot air.]
“Okay, rude,” Yamada lobbies back, winding the windows down. It’s worse out there if only because it’s humid – Shouta’s hair was sticking to the back of his neck even before he got knocked out – but it’s a small price to pay to jettison all of that hot, dry air out of the sun-baked interior. This spring has felt like summer from the moment it started, and it’s disgusting. “It’s also reliable, stylish, and free.”
Shouta twists his face to avoid a dangerous, derisive snort.
Yamada’s stupid car is a bright blue American-made Ford Mustang in a sea of salarymen’s black and charcoal grey Toyotas and Hondas. A couple years back, Present Mic had made the news because his precious eyesore had been stolen from outside of his agency during a show – he’d moaned about his tragic loss on the radio the following week and it was back in the same spot before he even wrapped in the studio, complete with a tear-blotched apology note and a wad of cash for any damages. All his documents were still in the glovebox, the odometer had barely moved. The whole damn thing was buffed and dusted inside, too. They’d vacuumed the floor mats and had the audacity to request ‘Love Phantom’ by B’z in the next week’s broadcast.
He played the damn song.
Yamada hadn’t even pressed charges, just waxed poetic on his next show about the pile of dirty coins in the passenger seat and the simple joy of inspiring others to acts of goodwill, the daily acts of kindness and restitution that most people don’t see. Not to mention the satisfaction of experiencing delayed gratification.
Grandstanding jackass. He’d been insufferable all week, ranting and raving and spiraling in the staff lounge whenever it was just them or Kayama. His American baby, his darling, his little piece of iconic automotive history.
Two days in, Kayama had made ‘MicStang Breakup Arc’ bingo cards for the two of them to fill out on their phones, just to make the ensuing maelstrom a little more tolerable in between the mood swings. Sue them for having hardened hearts, it’s hard to source ethical schadenfreude when you work in the field of heroics.
[It’s a retrofitted foreign classic car, Yamada,] Shouta reminds him. [It’s a hell of a lot of things, but free is not one of them.]
“Tomato, to-ma-to, it’s free to you, Aizawa. Don’t look a gift ‘Stang in the grill, yeah?” Yamada snorts and flips some of Shouta’s unruly curls away from his cheek, putting the windows back up now that the air is running cool. “Who the hell raised you, anyway? Ungrateful ass.”
[The streets,] Shouta deadpans, resting his head against the window. It’s some kind of devilry that the Present Mic hairdo is somehow still soft when it compresses back against his scalp instead of some kind of crunchy mess. It’s soft, how is it soft? Shouta has never bothered to think too hard about whatever witchcraft keeps it defying gravity like this. Down that path lies madness, he can feel it.
“Hey man, you can relax with me behind the wheel, but don’t fall asleep,” Yamada says, ignoring Shouta’s poor excuse for a joke as he carefully backs his car out of the spot. “You’re still on lookout duty.”
Right. Shouta rests his temple on the window and stares out of it, letting his eyes half-close. He can at least be lazy about it. He’s earned a little of that. His signs are a little looser when he’s not looking at them – not looking at Yamada’s hands doing what his brain tells them to do.
[Even when I’m you, everyone only wants me for my eyes. Unreal.]
Yamada laughs at that, but it’s a single, perfunctory syllable. Ha.
It takes a second to actually turn the oversized American car out of the normal-sized Japanese parking spot, and Yamada circles slowly around the parking lot once. Shouta can’t help but glance over, noticing the way he nervously bounces one knee, and – yeah, that might be a problem. Shouta actually hasn’t had to drive since before Jaku, but there’s no way the running blade prosthetic he uses on patrol is good for hitting the pedals.
Shouta touches Yamada’s arm to get his attention, startling back at the way his body seems to jump from the contact. [Hey. Do you need me to drive?]
“Present Mic is concussed,” Yamada reminds him, but he stills his leg, like he just noticed the bouncing. “Which means no operating heavy machinery for you, buddy.”
[You shouldn’t use that leg for the pedals, Yamada.]
Yamada pulls to a complete and even stop at the stop sign, signals his intent to merge into the afternoon traffic, and then levels a stare at Shouta. Staring back at his own impassive, unimpressed face almost makes Shouta feel a little sympathy for all those students he’s expelled over the years. But only almost.
“Aizawa, do you still use both feet to drive?”
It’s always better to have one foot on each pedal so never loses awareness of which one’s which. Having one leg off to the side doing nothing feels like slacking, somehow. Or unstable.
Shouta doesn’t dignify Yamada’s question with a response, turning to look back out the window again. Lookout duty.
“Oh man. Alright, before this is over you’re getting some remedial driving lessons.”
[You’re not qualified to do that,] Shouta signs back petulantly, before sinking his face further into Yamada’s bizarrely soft palm. Not having his capture weapon to sink into has his hackles raised; he doesn’t even have the directional speaker or the raised collar of the Present Mic costume jacket he so callously abandoned to the back seat.
“Bro, I’ve been driving and teaching way longer than you. I’m pretty sure I’m qualified!” Yamada sounds way too excited about this. “But I can spend some of my precious free time getting a fancy certificate if it’d make you feel better. You can never have too many plaques.”
It would not make Shouta feel better. Yamada puts a hand on his shoulder, but doesn’t take his eye off the traffic as he smoothly turns onto the road.
“Okay, okay, shut up and brood for a little while, I can’t drive and look at your hands at the same time.”
The rest of the drive is uneventful, though Shouta’s the one nervously bouncing his leg by the end of it. He wants to say something, to talk to Yamada – to hum, whistle, sing, mutter, complain under his breath – anything. He feels like he’s going crazy. He doesn’t think of himself as particularly talkative, but the moratorium on napping makes him just slightly too aware with nothing to channel his attention into. Yamada, for his part, is completely focused on the road. He never passes the speed limit, never takes his eye off the road or his mirrors, he doesn’t even turn the radio on.
When they finally roll through UA’s gates and pull up next to the on-site staff apartments, Shouta can’t wait to get moving again. He barely manages to wait until Yamada parks before he unbuckles his belt, bounding out the door before doubling back to retrieve the things he discarded when he got in. Shouta grabs Mic’s jacket from the back and slings it over his arm like a post-work suit jacket rather than backwards over his shoulder like a sweaty post-concert rockstar, because he’s a normal person with healthy levels of shame and not a vainglorious egomaniac. He takes long strides around the front of that eyesore of a Mustang and pauses when Yamada doesn’t kill the engine. They’re home.
Shouta mimes rolling the window down and Yamada obliges, resting his elbow on the door and grinning up at him. With Shouta’s face on, he looks like one of those doctored images kids add to internet horror stories.
“Well hey there, handsome. What can I do for you? Nice duds, by the way.”
Coming from Shouta’s body, Yamada looks and sounds like an HR violation, if not a possible prison sentence. Shouta endures it – this is just how he is.
[You’re not coming?]
“Nah, man. I still have to pick stuff up from my actual place, I wasn’t slated for dorm duty this weekend. Just need the leg if that’s cool? I can be over there and back in a flash.”
Right, Yamada’s crazy expensive high rise apartment penthouse suite, whatever other adjectives describe it. Shouta doesn’t actually know what it looks like, though he’s been invited a few times and had the address for years. He’s found reasons not to be in the neighborhood.
Although…
[Ectoplasm’s watching the kids until half past five.] Premonitions flit through in Shouta’s head — all of the ways Yamada could hurt himself in Shouta’s body with a prosthetic limb and misplaced confidence. [As long as it’s quick, I’ll come with you. Since your depth perception is shot.]
Yamada visibly brightens at the prospect, for some reason.
“Yeahhhhhhhhh! Road trip!”
[Moron,] Shouta chides him, reflexively shoving Yamada’s shoulder back into the vehicle before he can start waving his arm around outside of it like an unruly college kid. It’s not as if many students are just walking around the grounds on a Sunday afternoon, but still, it’s the principle of the thing. [Don’t get excited. It would be irrational to let you drive alone.]
“You can’t harsh my vibe! Hey, here’s some bomb-ass logic for you.” Yamada rolls down the other windows before he kills the engine, fluidly tossing his bundle of keys over to Shouta. There are roughly two hundred keys on this ring, he estimates. Maybe two thousand keys. A religious zealot could feasibly use this to flog heretics in the streets. “Grab the support item off my nightstand, and maybe throw my jacket on the couch while you’re in there?”
At least five of the keys are helpfully labeled with red UA keycaps, so it won’t actually be a chore figuring out the right one.
[Sounds like a pain in my ass,] Shouta complains, with every intention of doing it anyway.
“You’re a hero, right?” Yamada grins at him, but this one crinkles the corners of Shouta’s eye a little. His face isn’t supposed to look like that, whatever ‘that’ is. Yamada brings his knee up under his chin and wiggles it back and forth, the pressure from the heel of the blade creaking against the leather of the seat. “Save me the walk? For old times’ sake?”
[Don’t make me groan at you,] Shouta threatens as he turns his shoulders toward the building, disapproving eyes lingering on Yamada. [I’ll kill us both.]
Shouta returns not ten minutes later with a duffel bag slung over one shoulder and a device that looks almost identical to Present Mic’s directional speaker clutched in a near death grip.
“Welcome back,” Yamada sings out, holding a loose hand up for his wad of keys. Shouta throws it at him more than to him and Yamada winces at the impact, scowling. At least that’s an expression that looks like it belongs on his face.
[Let’s get this over with,] Shouta gestures, his signs coming out sharp and tense with mounting frustration.
“Uh, woah there Shotime. Let me bust out the catcher’s mitt before you throw me another fastball, yeah?” Yamada jams the correct key in the ignition but doesn’t turn it just yet, inspecting his palm with an exaggerated pain on his face. “There’s a legal way to destroy your body, yo, and it’s called cracking open a cold one. I mean, ow!”
Yamada limp-wristedly waves his hand from side to side with a pathetic expression on his mouth, as if stirring up the egregiously humid air with his fingers will soothe the sting.
“You’re lucky this thing comes with callouses on callouses, or that would have hurt like hell. If you’re not gonna be nice to me, at least be nice to yourself, man.”
Shouta impatiently reaches through the open window to flip the manual lock on the door and Yamada startles at the sudden breach of personal space, turning to look at him like Shouta’s an unknown street dog, hurtling toward him.
“Uh– hey, bud, Aizawa, what’s, uh– what’s up–?”
[Put this stupid thing on me,] Shouta signs jaggedly before he pries the door open, stuffing the bag onto the dashboard. He rests his shin against the side of the driver’s seat and uses that to bear his weight as he leans forward, refusing to kneel for this bullshit. [I’ve been trying not to clear my throat or cough for half an hour and I’m about to rip your hair out.]
“Yeah yeah, I gotcha,” Yamada replies amicably, blissfully ignorant to just how dangerously Shouta’s patience sparks and snaps inside his chest like a rabid animal, constantly threatening impulsive movement and unprovoked screams. Yamada nabs the support item from Shouta’s hand, unlocks it and then fastens it behind his neck with a few quiet clicks. Once it’s properly set, Yamada fully rotates it around to bring the release mechanism to the front. Shouta feels a few extremely subtle points of pressure flex and relax against his throat as it comes online.
It’s not that it would have been difficult to put on, but Shouta wasn’t going to chance doing it wrong and accidentally demolishing half the campus when he spoke to test it. It’s oddly plain-looking for something custom made for Yamada, but it fits snugly against his throat without being constricting, even when Shouta reflexively swallows.
“Aaaand…” There’s a quiet beep from the device a moment after the click and Yamada nods to acknowledge the sound. “There we go. It only beeps when it’s working and it has enough juice, so. Keep to your regular volume and you should be good to go.”
After the incident in the back of the ambulance earlier, Shouta doesn’t especially want to take any chances. He turns away from the staff parking area and toward a patch of sparse grass beside some of the sidewalk, letting out a measured hum. As his throat starts to thrum with just the idea of making a sound, he feels thick points of contact flex against his skin through a firm layer of silicone, pressing flat and sending some vibrations that make his teeth chatter. Shouta takes a breath and hums a little louder — the pressure grows more insistent, but nothing bad happens.
“Yo, Aizawa, drink something before you overdo it—”
It’s a little too late: when Shouta tries to kick up the volume another notch, that oppressive itch in his throat can’t take it anymore. In an instant, he devolves into a coughing fit, only made worse by the way his spine goes rigid as he instinctively tries to fight against making sound. He feels Yamada’s firm grip on his shoulder and it grounds him enough to recognize the support item punching mercilessly against his throat. There’s the aborted sound of dry air rasping violently from his mouth, but — mercifully — it doesn’t carry the threat of Present Mic’s voice with it.
By the end of the fit, Shouta is doubled over to catch his breath, bracing palms on his upper legs and trying to inhale without triggering another fit. Just breathing feels alien in Yamada’s body; his chest feels like it could keep expanding indefinitely, and the vast reserves of air coiling into his lungs feel like a cool balm on a burn. Yamada pops into his peripheral vision, crouching in front of him to hold out a condensation-drenched bottle of water.
“Easy, bud. Told you not to overdo it.”
Shouta grabs at it and rights himself to take a long swig, the water cold and soothing on his poor, abused throat. Even the sound of swallowing seems to activate the support item, though the vibrations and pressure are far less obtrusive than they were during the coughing.
Shouta has heard Yamada cough before, though – laugh, hum, sing, all sorts of vocalizations without causing any damage. This is beyond frustrating.
[Thanks,] Shouta gestures one-handed after draining half of the water, tucking the bottle under his arm to free his hands up – he experiments with talking at a normal volume while he does and the support item keeps up with him, fully canceling out any speech that would come out. Useless for actually communicating, but it relieves some of the overwhelming irritation from staying silent. At least now Shouta can fucking sigh, and he does so immediately. Breathing was one thing, but now he finally feels a little more like himself. [That helps a lot.]
“Yeah man, no problem.” Yamada bounces back to his full height with a grin, swinging his shoulders in a loose, noncommittal shrug. “Doubt it’ll come up, but there’s throat spray in the glovebox if it gets sore on the way to my place.”
Shouta grunts at that, and while it doesn’t make a sound, Yamada’s smile gets fractionally wider.
[Quit making that face,] Shouta grouses, standing back up.
“Aw, c’mon! You know I can’t help it, I’m infamously incorrigible.” Yamada presses a finger into his own cheek and smiles even wider, only emphasizing the bloodshot quality of his eye. “Yo, what are the chances your face gets stuck this way? I’ve got loads of determination and moxie and shit, bet I could make it happen.”
[I’ll strangle you. Get back in the car.]
“C’mon, Aizawa, tell me a joke,” Yamada crows, strutting back to his seat with a little more pep in his step. “I’m gonna hook you up with badass laugh lines by the end of this, trust me. Your students are gonna be getting you retinol cream for Christmas for the rest of your life.”
Shouta scowls, tailing behind him.
His tolerance for Yamada’s antics notwithstanding, this is the first time Yamada has actually seemed able to relax since they woke up in the wrong bodies. Sure, he’s been grinning and smiling and making his jokes, ambling off on asides, but he’s seemed tense this whole time – jumpy. It makes sense, given that Shouta’s been a ticking time bomb until now.
Shouta leans against the door while Yamada hops back into the driver’s seat, slinging his bag back over his shoulder and running his hands off.
[So this thing is just going to punch me in the neck so I don’t kill us both, am I understanding that right?]
Just conversation. Anything to keep Yamada from talking more about Shouta’s face.
“Yeah, sorry about that. Gotta kill the sound at the source, you know? It’s custom, obviously.” Yamada does a horrible thing where he runs a hand through Shouta’s sweaty black mess of hair and grins up at him like it’s anywhere in the vicinity of charming, and then he blinks. It’s probably supposed to be a wink, but that’s just one more thing Shouta’s body can’t pull off. Not that it ever could. “I’m way too famous for prêt-à-porter, right?”
Shouta levels a flat look at him and Yamada just grins wider, throwing some radical finger guns into the mix.
[You’re loud,] Shouta observes, unceremoniously grabbing at his knee to pull Yamada around to face him.
“Holy shit, cutting edge stuff, Aizawa.” Yamada rolls the cuff of his pant leg without instruction. “Did you just come up with that?”
[I’ve been known to observe a thing or two,] Shouta deadpans, then prepares for radio silence – unfortunately, needing your hands to perform a task can be counterproductive to signing with them.
Yamada just laughs and hooks both wrists under his knee to give it a little elevation, making it easier for Shouta to deal with the patrol prosthetic.
“Only one or two? Man, concussions are no joke.”
Shouta scoffs and digs a finger in between the flesh of his thigh and the liner, breaking the airtight seal so he can get it off.
Yamada’s phone chooses to go off while Shouta’s rolling the liner down, and he picks it up without looking at the caller ID, transferring the weight of his upper leg to his remaining hand.
“Go for Mic!” A pause as the smile leaves his eye, but not his mouth. “No, I’m not sick, Iwai. Quirk-related incident, I shot you the details less than ten minutes ago.” He glances at his screen. “Seven minutes ago. It was marked read. You replied with a thumbs up, man.”
Yamada starts bouncing his leg again as the voice on the other end of the call seems to get higher and faster, and Shouta bars a forearm across his thigh to hold it down, scowling at him for the interference. Yamada immediately stops bouncing but he turns his head to stare out the windshield, twisting his arm into a loop at the end of Eraser’s capture scarf, over and over and over.
“Man, like I said in my text, I’m indisposed. Not sure for how long. Look–” Yamada cradles his phone in a nest of capture scarf in the crook of his shoulder and kneads the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, sighing heavily without making a sound. “Iwai, look. I’m out of office for another hour or two, I’m still waiting on a followup from the precinct before I can make any concrete plans for the next few days. Can you just figure it out on your own for a few hours? We’re not even on-air until Friday. I’m in the middle of something.”
Shouta pops the blade off with the sleeve folded backwards over the exterior of the socket, setting it aside. He can’t help but wince a little at the state of the rest of his residual limb; the skin isn’t blistered yet, but it’s pretty raw and irritated from overuse. The athletic blade is meant for bursts of major activity on patrol, crouching and springing and occasionally kicking, not ambling around at a leisurely pace or standing up straight for ten minutes talking to cops. He doesn’t wear a sleeve on patrol, either, he needs the gel to suction tight to his skin for the kinds of maneuvers he may need to pull off at a moment’s notice. This has to have been hurting.
The damage isn’t enough that Shouta would personally give up on wearing it for the rest of the day, but he wouldn’t recommend it to someone else. Call him a hypocrite.
Yamada, unfortunately, is just as stubborn as he is. It’s doubtful he’d accept the recommendation.
Shouta checks his residual limb a little more thoroughly for any injury or abrasion that could give him a reasonable excuse to let him put his foot down over the situation, but there’s nothing serious enough to justify being authoritarian about it.
Yamada just wiggles the stump at him when he pulls his hand away, a thin smile flicking onto his mouth before it disappears into more shop talk over the phone. Something about separation of duties.
[I’ll wait for you to finish your call,] Shouta offers, but Yamada just waves the concern away, followed by a very energetic ‘go ahead!’ motion at the bag that contrasts pretty bleakly with the face he’s making. Shouta counteroffers, [--or I could just drive.]
Yamada aggressively signs the letters [T B I] at Shouta, hitting the flat of his fist against the back of his seat after each letter for percussive emphasis. He looks completely exasperated.
“--look, I’ll shoot Kira an email with the details before eight, she can delegate the patrol schedules. That’s her department. I just need you to: A, see if Slipmatt can cover for me at the station on Friday if I can’t go on air myself and B, get me the mockup of absolute events you were supposed to get to me on Saturday.”
A long pause. Yamada near-silently clicks his tongue and his expression oozes frustration, but none of it reaches his voice. Shouta works on steadily rolling a clean liner back onto his leg, keeping his eyes down.
“Iwai, I’m literally in someone else’s body right now. Like I just said. And texted. Hazard of the job, workplace incident. You can hear what I sound like— I can’t just record new pretape, I might as well just go on air like this.” An incredulous pause at what seems to be an extremely stupid question, given how Yamada responds. “No, I’m not asking him to do that. No, I don’t want to use a generative speech model– I– whew. Okay, you know what? We’ll talk about it later. We both have shit to do and we’re burning daylight.”
Another pause. Shouta takes the opportunity to finish rolling the daily use prosthetic’s sleeve over the liner. He grips the carbon fiber socket and firmly budges it to test the hold, watching Yamada grit his teeth at the sensation before he’s satisfied that it won’t slip off, then jams the boot on. Shouta checks one last time that the sleeve is smooth before he rolls the pant leg back down and tucks it in. Yamada is immediately testing the limb out, cautiously rotating the hydraulics in the ankle joint to get a feel for the responsiveness.
“Yeah, kid,” Yamada rasps out. “I’m glad you’re not dead, either. Mic out.”
He kills the call more aggressively than he probably needs to, then chucks his phone blindly into the back seat, groaning loudly and rubbing his hands roughly against his face. Shouta just takes the opportunity to push himself back up to his feet, brushing his shoulder to get eyes back on him.
[It’s barely 1:30. How are you already having such a bad day at work?]
“I really need to fire my Hands Up admin,” Yamada mutters as he spins back around in his seat, slamming his door once Shouta steps wide of it. He checks the mirrors as Shouta navigates back to the passenger seat and starts the engine, and mercifully the air blasting out of the vents isn’t hell itself, this time. “I’ve let a lot of bad work slide because his lil’ bro is sick, and I’ve been able to fix his mistakes in time so far, but sometimes the shit gets too egregious, you know?”
Shouta hums in response, twisting over the back of the console to root around for Yamada’s cell so he doesn’t have to do it later, when it inevitably starts ringing while they’re on the expressway. He’s surprised it took this long for Yamada to get a call, honestly.
“I ended up surprising the kid with flowers and a visit in the hospital last month,” Yamada admits, as if he’s at confessional. “Just to make sure he actually exists. That’s how bad it’s gotten, man. I’m out there committing cynical acts of heroism, like some kinda – I dunno. Misanthropic public servant. That’s not my style.”
Shouta deposits Yamada’s phone in one of the cupholders, shrugging one shoulder as he fastens his seatbelt.
[My judgement isn’t clouded by sentimentality. I could fire him for you.]
Yamada gives a laugh, sharp and bright, but his fingers tense on the steering wheel before he just changes the subject altogether.
“Do you need me to pick up anything from your other place before the school week starts? I should be able to swing through Naruhata real quick if the expressway’s not too jammed.”
[Nah,] Shouta replies after a moment, as if he had to think about it. He doesn’t have much, but what little he has, he keeps at his staff apartment here. He really only keeps the old place around so he has somewhere private to lick his wounds in a pinch — Yamada’s never seen the place, and he never should. [I was planning on heading straight back here after my patrol, anyway.]
“Cool,” Yamada says, and flicks the radio on. “You're in charge of the tunes.”