Work Text:
LOCKDOWN
The mail courier every day, without fail, drops by around 5:32 PM.
Very precise he is, that man, average height and looks, with his trimmed black hair and clean-shaven face, to come and go and not speak a singular syllable nor mime much of a greeting. Pursue a ping-pong like conversation; what Hizashi considered his way of getting his foot in the social door and what others faulted as just a mundanity called small-talk. His remix of small-talk included an all-exclusive rundown on other’s day-to-day, interest piqued much more by the actual person at his front door than the few passerby he could spot downstairs from his living room window.
Not that sightseeing was boring; the problem lay in the material, the content. The strangers whose faces blurred in place by the hour through the mesh screen windows, features he could make out through the little holes smudging into ones he’d already recognised in his friends long ago, but weren’t Tensei, Nemuri or Shouta walking down the brick-red pavement. Next to where the flies were tangled up with the black fabric, wings caught up. Eyes lured into grimacing at the little nasty critters scuttling, teeny legs curling uselessly. Shouta and Nemuri remain little blips on his phone screen, notifications beeping away, humidity sinking into his greasy fingers tip-tapping away at the bluelight. A permanent fingerprint with his exact skin-patterns rests on the bar to click towards emojis. On the mantle of his digital fireplace, there's a trophy of world's worst texter with his name engraved in it; Shouta only beats him out by responding erratically, and using emoticons such as "^_^" or "o_o" horribly wrong. On account of Nemuri's influence and her claiming they were code for 'busy' or 'working'.
Hizashi doesn't think Shouta actually believes in it. Like Hizashi, he's likely doing it for the bit. Which makes the ensuing laughter tearing out of Hizashi's throat uncontrollable and impossible to have waver, leading to his phone falling prey to the floor on a constant basis. All because Shouta typed out ()_() in response to Tensei's ever-enlightening reports on the seriousness of Hizashi's 'situation'. Oblivion isn't Shouta's middle name, so in no way, shape or form could his whole thing with the emoticons be real.
Enough about them. (Or Shouta's weirdness.)
The real curiosity of the month is the mailman; the only man who shows up at his door, now, with all the chaos running about.
All the man does when Hizashi runs to take the mail from him is bow his head. Press the engraved paper with all those stamps and oddities and shove it into the warmth of Hizashi’s now-muscly chest -- another result of having too much time on his hands, a body he could once owe only to his diet and lifestyle choices now in debt to another lifestyle choice brought about from boredom, from refusing to stay still even in the confines of his own comfortable dig -- before running off himself. That was about the extent to which Hizashi got his fix of social interaction.
Being in quarantine is maddening. Waiting until 5:32 PM just to talk to a person who doesn't even look at him, might be the next penultimate step in Hizashi booking a visit with a therapist.
Speaking without speaking is arguably worse than the time he got his shit rocked in front of Shouta.
(Who brings a kitchen knife to a wedding reception anyway?)
Shouta would, and does, call the quarantine a lucky intervention; life's best attempt at giving Hizashi an opportunity to train more, to train harder, to learn what it's like to live as everyone else regular does. To see and do. Do and see.
As the public so ostensibly does.
Hizashi would, and does, call it just another setback to his need for speed. A kick in his usually steady-going tempo. Something he’ll eventually get over once his quarantine ends by day 48, hour 22.
The critics say cause and correlation isn't a thing.
He's inclined to disagree. Too much time on his hands will lead to a breaking point where, point-blank, Hizashi will find himself sniffing one of those rejuvenating, healing oils you'd find on the internet sold by those over-eager American mothers just to get out of this.
Why'd he have to go and get hit with a chemical bomb? Jeez. It isn't like he even got affected all that much. Just a few rashes on his waist and thighs, give or take, and whether it was all cured by the subsequent hangover or his own overdose on mango yogurt, well, remains to be seen. All that matters is the fact that it's gone, which means he should be free to let bygones be bygones and not have the whole incident still hang over his head like a noose.
Hizashi firmly believes he'll go crazy if he has to watch those little dots file out onto his phone and be met with another one of Shouta's visual ruses one more time.
Visuals are his whole scheme. His ride-or-die. Where books won't be, TV will, because they'll be in his mind's eye and not just something he'll have to cook up in the kitchens of his head. Not like romance-readers (IE: Nemuri, Tensei, Kan) or non-fiction ones (IE: Shouta, Nedzu), or, hell, even readers in general, have to do.
All in all, he wants something other than a phone that'll slip from his fingers to touch him. Even a pat on the shoulder will do. Or one of those reassuring presses into muscle; the kind that Shouta does to calm others down, the kind Hizashi refuses to be let done to him if it's not Shouta or Nemuri on the other end. He wants surface-level care, the type he usually cares not for at all and won't offer up himself, but the type he has the opportunity to refuse without words, to even have an option to say no to.
Hizashi misses talking to them face-to-face.
According to his phone, they're doing well-off for themselves. Without him.
Loneliness is a construct made by lying liars who lie, Hizashi decides, emphatically not a man with a dry mouth. On the wall of his living room, hung over his bed, there's a corkboard he can already envision (without the help of a book, thank you very much) with red string strung across it saying "I AM HERE". Much like All Might's catchphrase, but instead of it being the result of their No.1 heroically dashing into the frontlines of a truly-wrought out and glorious battle, all of them point exactly where Hizashi's sanity still lies. His consensus? The HPSC would conduct an investigation and come away with their asses fully and utterly charmed.
If only they would only see through the haze of their own self-imposed insanity and reinstate him back into the ever-loving clutches of society. In just a few days, at 11:40 AM, they'd send a representative over to check on him again; maybe they'd see reason then. Shouta had confirmed he'd done his own due diligence when it came down to the trials and tribulations of persuasion (Hizashi's own words; Shouta had described it more along the lines of 'I went to one of their offices and arranged an appointment. Had a strong word with one of them.'), but Hizashi didn't buy it.
A 'strong word' from Shouta entails just about the same level of critical detail as tea-time with Nedzu does.
And behind Nedzu is a terrifying storm to behold.
Still, his chances for getting out before Day 48 are slim to none. Hizashi should just cut his losses already and get over himself; the fact his friends, busy schedules and all (much akin to his before this whole fiasco), still bother to text him on a constant? It's enough to make a man cry.
(Which he wouldn't. Never. Not in a million years. No man in the Yamada family would shed a tear, especially not for a stupid reason like this one.
Still, the sentiment remains.
Did he mention he misses them? Because he does.
Even more so than PYHU, Put Your Hands Up, because at least HERO FM is willing to be put on hold and wait up for their best host.)
Oh. Hizashi startles when the time 5:30 PM sounds out on his watch, the movements of his pen twirling between his fingers faltering. Best get a move on with bothering his new favourite person, he supposes.