Work Text:
Shota’s work phone going off unexpectedly in the middle of an off-evening was never a good sign.
Hizashi was going to be so pissed if he got called in to something, even though he’d never actually try to prevent him from going. Still, he hated it when they both managed to scrape out enough time for a date and then life happened.
If Shota was getting called in, the dinner they had planned in three hours was absolutely not going to happen.
“Eraser Head,” he answered, trying to keep his tone professional while also conveying how much he did not want to be answering the call.
“Hey Eraser, sorry to get you on your day off,” Tsukauchi said, his voice very carefully cheerful in a way that spoke of managing emotions. “We’ve got a bit of a situation.”
Shota sighed and massaged at his temples, but before he could ask for more information, Tsukauchi continued.
“I’m calling about Present Mic—”
Any trace of annoyance disappeared immediately to be replaced by concern.
“Which hospital is he at?” he demanded, getting up immediately to go put his shoes on.
“He’s not at a hospital, he’s at the precinct. He’s not injured, not really. There’s been a quirk incident and he needs someone to come get him—“
“I’ll be there in twenty,” he said, hanging up the phone so he could focus on lacing his boots.
Relief rushed through him. Hizashi wasn’t hurt. A quirk accident could mean anything, but if he wasn’t at the hospital then it probably wasn’t harmful. It was probably something like his vestibular system had been reversed, or his skin had turned purple and he didn’t want anyone to see him.
Whatever the case was, it was bad enough that he didn’t mind Shota driving his baby, but not so bad that he had to be held for observation. Tsukauchi probably would have told him, if he’d asked. But he’d already hung up, and calling back would just take more time.
The precinct was in its usual buzz when he arrived. No one was acting like there was anything particularly interesting, which either meant they’d all already gotten a look and gossiped about it, or that Tsukauchi was keeping it under wraps. He was directed back toward Tsukauchi’s office, where the man himself met him right outside the door.
“Like I said, he’s not injured,” Tsukauchi started, “He’s just…from what we gathered from witnesses, he was taking a picture with a young fan and the fan got so excited she accidentally touched him with all her fingers. Which activated her quirk, which is called Regression.”
“Okay,” Shota said, a little impatiently. Tsukauchi, bless him, knew him well enough by now to press on quickly.
“According to the child’s mother, it takes a person and ages them physically to a previous time in their life when their emotions were particularly powerful. So if they had a really good or bad thing happen to them--”
“So he’s seventeen?” Shota interrupted. He wasn’t stupid, he could connect the dots.
“He’s seventeen,” Tsukauchi agreed. He didn’t ask how Shota knew what age he had returned to, because Tsukauchi was smart and had a sense of self-preservation. “To be clear, it’s not time travel. Our version of Mic hasn’t gone somewhere else while a younger one is in his place. He’s just been physically and mentally regressed, temporarily.”
“How long is ‘temporarily’?” Shota asked.
“24 to 48 hours, on average. I know he’s 17, but legally he is still a kid, so…”
“I’ll take responsibility for him,” Shota agreed. “It’s what I agreed to, even though I didn’t imagine this.”
“Right,” Tsukauchi agreed with a little smirk. “You ready to see him?”
Shota took a breath and let it out, and then nodded.
Inside, Hizashi was both devastatingly familiar and so very foreign all at the same time. He’d draped his gangly teenage body over a chair, one knee pulled up to his chest and the other foot planted on the edge of Tsukauchi’s desk as he rocked himself back and forth on two of the chair’s four legs.
His hair was shorter than it had been in over a decade, spiked up at the front in a style that reminded Shota alarmingly of a duck’s tail. He’d thought it was so cute, when he’d been a delusional teenager wrapped up in the throes of a gigantic embarrassing crush. Now it just looked silly. He probably still thought a lot of the things about Hizashi that were objectively silly were cute, though, so he chose not to comment on it.
He looked so horribly, shockingly young sitting there in Mic’s slightly-too-large hero costume. The shoulders sagged a bit and the usually-tight fitting leather was a bit baggy on him. It was hard to imagine Hizashi as skinnier than he already was, but as a teenager he’d always given the impression that someone had grabbed him at either end and stretched him like taffy. Shota had forgotten about that.
His face was young too, barely more than a child. His cheeks were still slightly rounded, and there wasn’t a threat of a wrinkle to be found anywhere, though he did have a rather large acne spot on his chin. He looked like he could be in Shota’s class, because he could be. It was jarring to see how young they’d been when Shirakumo died.
He opened his mouth to say something, anything, and what came out was,
“Put your feet on the floor, show some respect.”
Oh man, Hizashi--his Hizashi--would laugh if he knew.
The current, young Hizashi scrambled to follow his instructions, standing up in a flail of gangly limbs and bowing apologetically.
“Sorry, Detective,” he said, but Tsukauchi waved the apology away as he went around the desk to sit down.
Hizashi raised his head and looked Shota in the face. He was a couple of inches shorter than usual, and it was startling to realize that for the first time ever, Shota had to look down to meet his gaze. For a moment, his expression was blank and without recognition, and then his eyes bugged comically and he shrieked, “Aizawa?!”, so loudly that Shota and Tsukauchi covered their ears reflexively.
“Sorry!” Hizashi squeaked, slapping a hand over his mouth as his cheeks went pink.
That was another thing that Aizawa had forgotten, a tic that Hizashi had had when he was still mastering control over his quirk. Something he hadn’t done in over a decade.
“It’s just--” Hizashi continued, ever the chatterbox, “you’re so old.”
Ouch.
“And you’re taller than me! What happened to your eye?”
Shota considered how to answer that for a moment. It wasn’t as if telling this Hizashi anything would cause a butterfly effect. This wasn’t time travel. Still, it felt a little awful to tell a kid about how a madman had tried to claw his eye out of his head.
“Hero work can be rough on the body,” he settled on, and Hizashi’s brows pinched together in concern.
“I mean…okay?? Any other missing pieces I should know about?”
This time, Shota didn’t hesitate before yanking up his pant leg to show off his prosthetic. Hizashi had asked, after all.
“Holy shit,” he breathed softly, his eyes going even wider at the sight. “Uh…I mean…”
“It’s fine,” Shota waved away his concerns.
He watched in silence for a moment as Hizashi looked him over, the gaze going from analytical to heated in a way that was viscerally uncomfortable on the face of a teenager. He probably thought he was being subtle about it, but Shota knew exactly what Hizashi looked like when he was attracted to someone.
“Anyway,” he said, clearing his throat. Hizashi’s face went pink and he looked away toward the wall, the ceiling, and then seemed to decide that staring directly at the center of Shota’s chest was the way to go. “I’m here to take you home.”
“Right,” Hizashi said. “And not my parents, because I’m old, too. So they’re…still alive, right?”
Shota cracked a grin at that, unable to help it. Hizashi would hate to know he’d called himself old.
“Your parents are fine,” he said. “They retired to California a few years ago, like your mom was always talking about.”
“Oh!” Hizashi said brightly. “That’s so cool, I’ve always wanted to go to California!”
He’d been there several times, though Shota wasn’t sure that actually made a difference to this version of him.
“Maybe you should video call them later,” he suggested. “Your mom will get a kick out of your baby face.”
Said baby face flushed pink again.
“I’m practically a man by now!” he protested, in the way that only teenagers could. Tsukauchi’s grin was getting bigger by the second, so Shota decided to spare Hizashi some dignity.
“Come on, let’s go home.”
Hizashi was weirdly quiet as they walked through the precinct, but once they were outside, he cleared his throat.
“So…how old are you? We?”
“Thirty-two,” Shota said. “Not as ancient as you clearly think.”
Hizashi didn’t rise to the bait, just chewed on his lip for a second.
“So I mean…you and me…you’re still my friend?”
The question was almost enough to break his heart in his chest, but Shota knew where it was coming from. He hadn’t been kind to Hizashi, after Shirakumo died. He hadn’t been kind to anyone, least of all himself, but Hizashi he’d had to actively push away over and over again. It had never quite taken, fortunately.
But this Hizashi was from that time, where he’d lost one friend to death and the other to grief. Shota knew how lonely he’d felt, because adult-Hizashi had told him about it.
“I will always be your friend,” Shota said firmly. “I know it doesn’t seem like it to you, when everything is so--”
He trailed off, and then sighed.
“I’m not always a good friend. But I am always your friend.”
“Okay,” Hizashi said quietly, and then a moment later he grinned widely.
“So, go on, tell me how cool I am. Am I high in the rankings? I know this happened to me when I was taking a picture with a fan, which is so cool. Did the DJ thing work out? Holy shit look at this car! This is totally my car, right, there’s no way you’re cool enough for this car.”
The babble was a little faster than Shota had gotten used to over the years, but overall it was the same. Just an endless stream of thought with nary a pause to wait for actual answers to his questions. But Shota knew how to butt in when needed, so he just started talking and Hizashi fell quiet to listen.
“It’s your car, but I’m driving; adult-you would never forgive me. You’re in the top 40 in rankings, which you seem to be pretty happy about. You own your own agency which is also a radio station, and you host your own late-night show once a week. And you do contract DJ and MC work sometimes, when you have the time.”
Hizashi was practically bouncing with excitement as they pulled out of the parking lot, his head darting around to look around the interior of the car but also outside at the street as they drove along. Musutafu hadn’t changed that much in the last fifteen years, but he supposed even small differences would seem astronomical if they happened overnight.
“How come I only do one broadcast a week if I own the station?” Hizashi asked. “Surely hero work doesn’t keep me that busy.”
“You might be surprised,” Shota snorted. “But you also teach at UA. We both do. You barely have the time to sleep most days, let alone add another show to your schedule.”
“God, I’m so cool,” Hizashi breathed, and Shota suppressed another smile. “What do I teach? Media?”
“English,” Shota said and Hizashi nodded like that made sense.
“I bet the kids think I’m the coolest ever.”
Shota didn’t know how to break it to him that there were very few teenagers who thought any of their teachers were genuinely cool, so he said nothing. Hizashi didn’t seem to notice.
“So like…you’re my best friend,” Hizashi said.
“I am,” Shota agreed.
“So then, you’d know…I mean. Do I have a wife? Or a--” he trailed off uncertainly.
“You have a husband,” Shota said, amused, and Hizashi let out a breath and then grinned hugely at him.
“I…that’s awesome. That’s so awesome, seriously? What’s his name, is he super hot? Why couldn’t he come pick me up?”
Shota snorted. “He did.”
It took a second for the dots to connect, and then Hizashi let out a noise that could only be described as an ear-piercing squeal. Only years of exposure kept Shota from jerking the steering wheel in shock.
“Are you serious?” Hizashi demanded. “You’re not messing with me, right? Because that would be really fucked up, Aizawa, seriously fucked up--”
“I’m not messing with you,” Shota assured him. “We got married when we were twenty-five.”
“What the fuck,” Hizashi said, with feeling. He dropped his head into his hands and stared at the floor.
Shota glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, wondering if he should pull over. Maybe it was too much to know, when his own version of Shota was doing his best to be a one-man army with no emotional attachments. Maybe Hizashi hadn’t liked him yet, at this age, and was disturbed at the idea. Which would mean that his Hizashi had lied to him when he said it was love at first sight, but Shota didn’t really believe in love at first sight anyway.
“I got almost everything I ever wanted,” Hizashi said, his tone disbelieving.
Something warmed in Shota’s core at that. He knew Hizashi loved him, of course. There was probably no one more demonstrative on the planet. But hearing it stated in such a plain, simple way…he had to admit it touched his heart.
“Me too,” Shota told him, because how could he not?
He watched long enough to see the sweet smile spread over Hizashi’s face before he returned his focus entirely to the road.
Hizashi spent the rest of the car ride flipping through radio stations and chattering about anything and everything that came to his head. Shota had kind of forgotten how much he’d mellowed as he aged. Most people probably wouldn’t believe it, because Hizashi was anything but mellow, but he’d really been at his peak as a teenager before the confidence of adulthood had helped to settle some of his attention-seeking ways.
As a teenager, he was pretty annoying, if Shota was being entirely honest. He could also be pretty annoying as an adult, too, sometimes. But Shota found himself fond of it anyway, because he was Hizashi. He was loud and boisterous and he used every inch of his body to talk, but he was passionate and kind, and Shota had always loved that about him.
“I can’t believe we live on campus,” Hizashi said, once they had parked and were making their way into the back entrance of Heights Alliance that went directly up to their apartment. “I can’t believe UA is a boarding school now. That would be way easier than the apartment I live in down the hill. No cramming onto the train with every person in Musutafu, no having to worry about being late because you missed it.”
“It’s convenient,” Shota said. “Annoying to have to be responsible for kids all hours of the night, honestly, but it’s safer this way.”
“How’d you become a teacher, anyway? You barely like interacting with our classmates.”
In the genkan, Hizashi kicked off his boots in the exact same way he always did, leaving them in a messy pile on the floor. Shota absently straightened them out before placing his own boots right next to them.
“Kayama engaged in a war of attrition,” Shota said darkly, because it was easier than explaining the truth. And it wasn’t exactly untrue, anyway.
Hizashi perked up again, and Shota realized his mistake immediately.
“Kayama’s here too? Can I see her?”
Kayama would have loved to see baby Hizashi again. She would have squeezed his cheeks and cooed about his youthful vigor and done a bunch of inappropriate things that would later have Shota reminding her she couldn’t talk to kids that way, while she soundly ignored him.
“She’s not here anymore,” Shota said. He didn’t offer any other explanation. He didn’t want to have to tell this young version of Hizashi that she was dead.
“Oh,” Hizashi said, “Bummer. Hey, how do I get this thing off? It’s heavy.”
He tugged at his directional speaker, making exaggerated sounds as if it were choking him. Shota rolled his eyes but moved in close to help him with the latch, handling the system carefully as he set it aside somewhere it wouldn’t be at risk of getting damaged.
“Around the neck is smart, I guess,” Hizashi said, stripping off his jacket and gloves next and draping them over the back of the couch. “Frees my hands up. But I hate having stuff around my throat.”
“It protects your throat,” Shota pointed out. “No one gets the clever idea to try and sever your vocal chords if they see they have to go through a large guard to get there.”
Hizashi blanched at that, raising a hand to rub at the front of his throat thoughtfully. Shota grimaced at himself, wondering if he should apologize, but Hizashi was already turning his attention to flipping through the collection of vinyl records he kept in their living room.
He glanced over at Shota with a huge, excited grin. “Man, these are all mine, right? Some of these things are rare! I'm mega-rich, aren’t I?”
“You do a lot of advertising deals, and also have three jobs and some freelancing,” Shota said, rolling his eye. “You’re not hurting for money, and you’re not against spending what you have on things that make you happy.”
“Awesome,” Hizashi grinned, and then his eyes landed on the framed photo on the shelf above him.
It was Shota’s favorite from their wedding day, the two of them with their foreheads pressed together, their noses just barely touching. Hizashi’s eyes open and adoring, a huge grin on his face, Shota’s closed, wearing the tiniest and truest of smiles. Having other people look at it usually embarrassed him. It was just so intimate and open, it made him feel exposed.
But teenager though he was, it was still Hizashi, so no sense of discomfort thrummed through him.
“Oh wow,” Hizashi said, so very softly. He reached out and touched the glass, right over Shota’s cheek. “It…we really…you do really love me.”
“I do,” Shota said, because he never denied it, not even as a joke. He’d playfully threaten divorce, he’d refuse pouty kisses, he’d duck out from under Hizashi’s arm, but he would never, ever tell Hizashi he didn’t love him. It was too far and they both knew it.
Hizashi turned from the photo and took a few steps closer toward him, his face going red.
“Can I…I mean…would you kiss me? I just want to know what it’s like.”
Shota grimaced involuntarily, and Hizashi’s face went even redder, dropping with embarrassment at the unstated rejection.
“Oh…sorry, I just…”
“No, I’m sorry,” Shota sighed. “Usually, sure, but right now…I’ll be honest, you’re a child to me. And I loved you like this when I was your age, and I love you like this now. But I’m just not comfortable kissing someone who looks like one of my students.”
He wasn’t sure he’d even be comfortable with it if it were adult-Hizashi’s mind in a baby-faced body. He was just so young.
“Right,” Hizashi said, still sounding horribly dejected. “I get it, it was stupid to ask.”
There were a million different things Shota could say to that, but instead he said,
“I’m happy to give you a hug. If that’s not a lame alternative.”
It felt lame, but Hizashi clearly disagreed because he perked up.
“No,” Hizashi said immediately, “Not lame at all.”
He hesitated for a moment, like he wasn’t sure what a hug was or how it worked, but the moment Shota spread his arms to welcome him in, he rushed forward and almost slammed into him, his arms locking tight around Shota’s waist like he was afraid Shota would change his mind and push him away.
He was shorter than Shota was used to, just about the perfect height to tuck his face into Shota’s neck, and his arms were noticeably more slender, though just as strong. Maybe even stronger.
Shota held him, stroking one hand up and down his spine in the way he knew would make Hizashi fall asleep if they were any kind of seated or horizontal position. Hizashi shuddered harshly and clutched him tighter. Shota politely didn’t mention it when he felt hot tears soak through his shirt, but he rocked them side to side, just a little bit.
He realized as they stood there that he absolutely could not be the one to let go first. This Hizashi was so young, and still so fragile. So he held on, until Hizashi’s grip turned from an iron-barred cage into something more of a full body cuddle, his mass melting against Shota’s in a way that forced him to carry most of his weight.
It made his bad knee twinge a bit with discomfort, but the swaying helped him keep his balance so he didn’t complain.
“You smell like him,” Hizashi said, after several minutes of quiet clinging. “Which, you know, makes sense I guess. Because you are him. But…it’s nice.”
“You always make fun of me for using unscented products,” Shota said. “You’re really giving me artillery against your older self.”
Hizashi huffed a laugh, and then slowly, reluctantly let him go. He cleared his throat a little, his face pink again.
“Well…I’m starving,” he said brightly. “Is the good ramen place still open?”
Shota realized suddenly that he’d forgotten to cancel their dinner reservation. Hizashi was definitely going to get charged a penalty for it.
“It is, and they deliver. Menu is on the fridge, go grab it.”
They stuck to lighter topics for the rest of the evening while Hizashi ate his way through a truly horrifying amount of food and then watched a movie. When it was time for bed, Shota had him take the bedroom, where he seemed to get a special kind of delight about seeing their pajamas in the same dresser and their toothbrushes together in the bathroom.
All in all, he thought as he drifted to sleep on the couch, this quirk accident wouldn’t be so hard. It was almost like a nice little walk down memory lane, really.
Shota got ready for class the next morning with all of the stealth training he had at his disposal. Hizashi was dead asleep, starfished and face-down in the pillows. If memory served, he’d remain that way until at least 10 am unless something woke him up. He’d already sent the messages he needed to to Nezu and Hizashi’s agency to excuse his absence, so there really was no reason not to let him sleep for once. Maybe the excess rest would carry over when he was back to normal.
He paused to watch him sleep for a moment, a strange mix of emotions in his chest that he couldn’t quite name. He was just so young, and he was as much Shota’s Hizashi as he wasn’t. There were so many things about him that Hizashi had grown out of over the years, and so many things that he hadn’t. But he still seemed, at his core, to be just the same. Quick to smile, adaptable, and almost annoyingly perceptive.
It was strange, how that thought soothed him. Even after everything, Hizashi was indomitable.
He watched as Hizashi shuddered suddenly, his body twisting around until he was bunched into a ball on his side, his once-peaceful face scrunching up into a twisted expression. Shota froze like a prey animal, not wanting to wake him, until he was sure that he was still soundly asleep. Then he left the room quickly, wrote a note to let Hizashi know where he’d be, and then left for class.
2-A was in their usual form: loud, rambunctious, and ready to live up to his every expectation while also getting on his last nerve. He assigned them a study hour to fill their usual English class and spent the period catching up on some grading he was behind on.
Or, at least, that was his intention. But halfway through the quiet period, the door to his classroom slid open, and framed in it was a familiar figure dressed in his husband’s favorite “artfully distressed” (see: riddled with holes) jeans and a red tshirt, both of which were just a bit baggier on him than they were supposed to be. He’d helped himself to Hizashi’s jewelry box too, which was fair because he was Hizashi. His wrists were littered with jangly bracelets and he’d picked out three different necklaces. He was also, notably, wearing his wedding band but no other rings. He looked so much like himself, and yet not at the same time. After a moment, Shota realized he wasn’t wearing his glasses, and that the ones at home were probably too strong a prescription for his teenaged eyes.
“Hizashi,” he said, long-suffering.
Hizashi looked at him and grinned widely, his cheeks a bit pink.
“Shota! I got bored so I thought I’d come see you teach!”
It had definitely been foolish to use his first name in the classroom, but he was a little off his game. He couldn’t exactly insist that Hizashi call him by his surname in the classroom when he’d started the familiarity. And anyway, now his entire class was staring at Hizashi, and then at Shota, and then at Hizashi again.
“Kinda quiet for a classroom,” Hizashi continued, letting himself in and glancing around. “Looks the same as I remember it, though!”
“Um…Mr. Aizawa…” Midoriya started, but Shota pinned him with a glare that had him snapping his mouth shut immediately.
“Hizashi, you can stay, but it’s a study period right now. The English teacher is out today. Don’t be disruptive or I’ll kick you out.”
Hizashi barked a laugh at that, and then let out a long, obnoxious, terribly obvious “Yeah!!”
Shota sighed.
“Mr. Aizawa, is that Present Mic’s son?” Todoroki asked, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.
Hizashi laughed again at that, even louder, and Shota scrubbed his hands over his face.
“No, he isn’t.”
Todoroki didn’t look convinced.
“Okay, fine. I didn’t want to get into this with you all, since it’s none of your business. But since he showed up uninvited--” he shot a glare at Hizashi, which had him shrugging with a nervous laugh, “I suppose it’s relevant. This is Present Mic. There was a quirk incident, he’s been temporarily de-aged to seventeen years old. That is why he wasn’t available to teach today.”
“I don’t know, man, I could probably still slam out a pretty killer lesson!” Hizashi insisted with a wide grin. “I’m great at English, yo.”
“Oh yeah, that’s definitely him,” Jiro snickered.
“No,” Shota said flatly. “You’re not qualified to teach, you haven’t even finished high school.”
“Rude,” Hizashi huffed.
“Present Mic!” Midoriya spoke up again, his hand thrust into the air as he practically vibrated in his seat.
Hizashi looked delighted at being called his hero name outside of the field.
“Yeah, what’s up my guy?”
If Midoriya was startled by the address, he didn’t show it.
“Mr. Aizawa said you had a quirk accident. How did it work? How was it triggered? Do you remember your adult memories? Did you experience the transformation into your younger self, or did you just wake up that way--”
“Uh,” Hizashi interrupted him, looking amused but a little overwhelmed by the rapid-fire grilling. Clearly he wasn’t used to being on the other side of it. “Activated by touch. I don’t remember anything about being older. I just kinda…woke up this way? I don’t remember what I was doing before it happened.”
“And why seventeen?” Midoriya followed up. “Is that significant in some way?”
Hizashi’s smile slipped, so minutely that anyone but Shota probably wouldn’t have caught it. But just for a split second he looked heart broken before his grin got bigger again. Shota hadn’t known he’d known how to do that at that age; he’d assumed it was something he’d learned later. But then, Shota had been a lot less observant back then, especially about Hizashi.
“Midoriya, enough,” he interrupted, flashing his quirk at the class. “This is a quiet period. I know you have tactics plans due before we go to USJ at the end of the week. Are you telling me that you’re completely done and satisfied with those?”
“No, sir!” Midoriya squeaked. “Sorry, sir!”
He had to admit, it was nice to know he could still intimidate the brakes off the kid who’d saved all their sorry lives.
“So how about you focus on that instead of interrogating Present Mic?”
Appropriately cowed, they all returned to the various assignments, except of course for Hizashi who came over to sit on the edge of his desk like a little delinquent.
“Ah man, you’ve got them all terrified of you,” he cackled, far too loudly. “I knew you’d be a hardass.”
“Hizashi,” he said warningly. “Keep it down. If you’re going to be disruptive you’re going to have to leave.”
“Right, right, sorry,” Hizashi said, waving his words away. “I just still can’t believe you’re a teacher. I never would’ve expected it from you. Do you even like kids?”
“I like kids fine,” Shota sighed, and then, a little tentatively, he added, “Shirakumo told me I’d be good with them. And weirdly, he was kind of right.”
Hizashi’s smile slipped again, another split second of weakness, before he locked it down tight.
“Oh man, that’s crazy,” he said. “I’m uh…I’m gonna go grab a drink from the vending machine. You want something? Coffee?”
“Coffee,” Shota agreed. “You have cash?”
Hizashi waved him off and made a beeline for the door. When he returned almost twenty minutes later, he didn’t have any drinks.
Though Shota had had to cut back quite a lot on day-to-day hero work since receiving two almost-career ending injuries at the same time, he still insisted on a biweekly patrol schedule. In the time since the end of the war--once he’d taken some leave to fully recover at Hizashi’s insistence--he’d learned to think about his quirk differently. The natural instinct, as it always had been, was to activate his quirk in his eyes. Which made things difficult when there was only one eye. It caused his quirk to flicker and falter, failing when he needed it the most.
But over time and a vast amount of stubbornness, he’d learned to activate it in just one eye. If he wasn’t trying to force a connection that was no longer there, his quirk was much more stable and dependable and didn’t flicker out even if he hadn’t blinked. He was still less than he had been, of course. His field of vision was cut in half, and even the adaptation of moving his head more to make up for his lack of peripherals would never be the same as two fully functional eyes. He got tired easier, blinked faster. He was well past his prime. But he could still do the work and not be a hindrance to himself or others, and so he did.
The leg was a whole other ballgame. It had taken him a lot longer to learn to compensate for that, even in simple tasks. For a man who had spent his whole life honing his body to do exactly what he wanted it to do when he needed it to, it had been demoralizing to try and train a hunk of metal in the same way that he had trained his real flesh and bone. Even if the hunk of metal was top-of-the-line and designed specifically to allow him to be as acrobatic as possible.
Over time he’d learned his new limits. Yeah, he could kick someone in the head with his prosthetic. He could lean his weight on it and pivot it without overbalancing. He could run and jump and even still do most of the parkour he’d learned in his life. Sadly, running on telephone wires was a skill he no longer had, but he had to admit to himself that mostly he just did that to scare the people he was pursuing.
Ultimately, he hadn’t been forced to retire from his life’s ambition before 35 due to injuries that certainly would have knocked plenty of other people out of the game. He was proud of himself for that. But also, sometimes at the end of his patrol when he was tired after a day of teaching and his residual limb was aching and the adhesive around his eyepatch was starting to give and irritating the skin, he wondered if it would be so bad to just be a kept house husband who lazed around all day in his sleeping bag. Hizashi certainly made enough money to support them both.
Realistically he’d go berserk inside a week, but it was nice to have dreams.
So when he got home, the very first thing he did before he even removed his boots, was yank off his eyepatch and then rub intensely at the skin where it had sat to try and relieve the irritation. After a moment where he felt a little less like he was about to climb out of his own skin, he removed his boots and set them next to Hizashi’s, which were still arranged neatly from the night before. Then, he straightened out the fashionable sneakers which had been left in a heap with a sigh.
When he stepped through the open doorway into the living room, he found Hizashi on the couch, sitting quietly. It was unusual enough to make him pause. Hizashi thrived on background noise. He always had the tv or a playlist going, and if those weren’t available to him he tended to talk to himself out loud.
The longer he watched, the more he realized that Hizashi wasn’t just sitting there. He was shaking, his arms wrapped tightly around his own middle, as if he were holding himself together. And he was doing it completely silently.
Shota stepped closer, and the loose floorboard he kept meaning to get fixed creaked loudly under his weight. Hizashi straightened up immediately and loosened his arms. The shaking stopped, and after a moment he turned to look at Shota with a huge grin on his face.
“Hey!” he said cheerfully, standing up and then waffling awkwardly like he realized he’d had no reason to. “Welcome home!”
“Thanks,” Shota said slowly, moving over to sit on the couch.
“How was your patrol? Fight any cool villains?”
“It was…quiet,” Shota said, a little shaken by the abrupt shift in attitude.
He’d seen Hizashi do it before, of course. He was a master of hiding his emotions behind a big smile, and he’d only seen the mask truly slip a few times when Hizashi was too angry to keep it contained.
But it had been a long time since he’d worked to try and hide his emotions from Shota, especially when they were home and it was just the two of them. And that hadn’t been anger, there on the couch. Hizashi wasn’t usually quiet when he was angry, or still.
“How was your afternoon?” he responded, probing carefully, but Hizashi just grinned.
“Oh, great! I called my mom, she cried when she saw me. Took like a thousand screenshots, how embarrassing. And I went through the record collection, that thing really is locked and loaded.”
“Hizashi--” he started slowly.
He hated having to be the one to start the emotional conversations. They were both, quite frankly, terrible about it. Hizashi pretended he didn’t have them at all, and Shota tended to channel his into self-destructive behavior. He was getting better about it, they both were. But it still sucked, and he had to be the adult in this situation.
But Hizashi was staring at him with wide eyes, looking shocked and a little pale, and it took him a moment to realize that was because he was seeing his missing eye for the first time. It wasn’t pretty. He’d already had the scar from the orbital fracture the nomu had given him, but then Shigaraki had given him another one with his scratches that went right down the center of his eyelid.
The surgeon had, of course, placed an orbital implant to fill the space left behind so it wasn’t collapsing in on itself or anything, but he knew looking directly at the pink tissue inside his eye when one expected to see an eyeball was kind of disturbing, and sometimes even gross.
Hizashi had always, always been very firm that it didn’t bother him and that Shota should go however he was comfortable. It had still taken him months before he’d been okay going without the patch at home. Now he felt a bit embarrassed about it, and it took a lot of effort not to cover his eye with his hand.
“Did it hurt?” Hizashi asked, his voice uncharacteristically soft.
Shota raised his eyebrows at that. No one had ever asked him that before.
“Losing my eye? Kinda.”
At that, Hizashi barked a laugh.
“Only kinda? No way you’re that tough, Eraser.”
Shota sighed at that, because of course it would sound like he was trying to be tough.
“I mean, I’m sure it hurt a lot. But I was already bleeding out from cutting my leg off, which is the most painful thing I’ve ever done, so in my memory it wasn’t that bad.”
“They happened at the same time? Holy shit, Shota, how are you alive?”
Hizashi grabbed onto him then, his fingers tight around Shota’s forearm. It was the same way he’d grabbed on so often right after it had all gone down, when Shota was still on heavy drugs, and when he was learning how to walk and still mostly depending on crutches. Like he thought if he just held tightly enough, Shota wouldn’t slip away from him and die.
“Priority evacuation to a hospital,” Shota said. “Very good surgeons. A doting husband who forced me not to push myself too hard for as long as he could.”
Hizashi’s face went pink.
“Ha!” he said. “I can’t make you do anything, are you kidding?”
“You’d be surprised,” Shota said. “I do listen to you, now. Sometimes.”
Hizashi barked another laugh and looked away. He shifted a little, glancing around the room like he was trying to find something appropriate to fix his eyes on. It was clear he had something to say and he was embarrassed about it. Teenage Hizashi’s body language gave away a lot more than he probably thought it did.
“How long does it take?” he finally asked. “I know I’m not like…going back in time when this quirk ends so this all already happened and it doesn’t really matter. But how long does it take?”
“What, healing?” Shota asked.
“For you to stop pushing me away?”
Guilt gnawed at him once again, but he pushed it firmly aside. They’d had these conversations before. They’d forgiven each other for all the hurt and the pain, they’d committed to doing better together. Just because this version of Hizashi hadn’t experienced all that didn’t make it untrue.
“We were 21,” Shota said.
“Wow,” Hizashi said, his shoulders slumping. “That…that’s a long time.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Shota assured him, resting a hand carefully on Hizashi’s back. “I was not in a good place. I blamed myself for not saving him. For not being good enough or fast enough, even though there was nothing I could have done. I couldn’t believe that, and I convinced myself that if I just didn’t do anything but work and train, then next time I would be fast enough. But it just made me weak.”
“No way,” Hizashi denied, shaking his head. “You’re not weak, are you crazy? You took Garvey down all by yourself! You do that thing where you climb all the way to the ceiling with just your hands all the time, it’s insane. I could never do that.”
Shota rubbed his back soothingly. He was glad he’d had this conversation before. It was easier to get out this time, easier to say in a way that made sense out loud. Hizashi, this Hizashi, needed him to be coherent and unemotional in a way that Shota’s husband Hizashi hadn’t.
“You might surprise yourself. But I don’t mean physically weak. I was objectively the strongest I’d ever been, physically. But I was an emotional minefield; I was making rash decisions and putting myself and the people I was trying to save in danger, because I was exhausted and hurt all the time. And then you called me out of the blue one day because you needed my help, and so I came. And I realized then that I was fine with hurting myself, but that I was also hurting you, and that wasn’t okay with me.”
“I’m fine,” Hizashi said immediately. “Everyone grieves in different ways, right? I’m totally fine. I knew if I just kept sticking to you, you’d--”
“You aren’t,” Shota said firmly. “You weren’t then, and you aren’t right now. But you will be. What I learned, what we learned together but you don’t remember right now, is that we’re stronger together. Not just you and me, but people. Heroes. When we go it alone, when we refuse to depend on anyone else because we don’t want them to get hurt, or we don’t want to bother them, or we don’t want to admit we can’t handle it, there’s nothing there to pick us up when we break.”
“But I am alone right now,” Hizashi admitted, his voice quiet. “I’m trying to stick to him, I’m trying but he won’t let me…”
“I know,” Shota sighed, wrapping his arm around Hizashi’s shoulder and pulling him into a side hug. “I know, and I’m sorry. And I hate that I put you through that for so long. And I’m so selfishly grateful that you never gave up on me. But we do come back together, Hizashi, and we’re stronger for it.
“When all this happened to me, you were there every second, even when I was being an asshole because I was in pain and I was frustrated. And then when I was finally okay, it was your turn to fall apart because I didn’t need you to hold it together anymore. So then that’s when I picked you back up. It's okay to be sad, Hizashi. And it’s okay to be so angry that you can barely stand it, too. It’s even okay to cry. I know you hate that, but it’s true.”
Hizashi wrapped his arms tightly around Shota’s middle and pressed his face into his chest, curling in on himself to make him smaller. Shota wrapped around him and held on and hoped that it was enough.
“You’re kind of freakishly self-actualized now,” Hizashi said into his chest, and Shota laughed.
“I’m really not. I am still curmudgeonly and stubborn as they come. This is just one topic I’m uniquely equipped to deal with because we’ve already unpacked it together. I already know exactly where your head is at. I’m cheating, I have the answer book.”
“I…” Hizashi stopped, dropping his head low as he cut himself off.
“Go on,” Shota encouraged him.
“I love you,” Hizashi said quietly. “I know it’s weird, when I’m like this and you’re like that. But I’ve always loved you.”
“I know,” Shota said, a little surprised to find it wasn’t as uncomfortable as he might have expected. “I’ve always loved you, too.”
Hizashi sniffled a little, but it was clear that Shota’s assurance that he was allowed to cry was going ignored.
“I wish my Shota was like you. That feels mean, but…”
And if he’d heard that a few years ago, it probably would have cut him deep. But now, he got it. He wished he’d managed to pull himself out of his own misery a lot sooner than he had. But things came in their own time, as annoying as that was.
“He will be,” Shota said. “I know it doesn’t feel like it right this second, because of the quirk, but I already am. You’ve already got me like this. We’ve already done all that work to get here.”
“I want to be him again,” Hizashi said. “Adult me. This sucks.”
Shota laughed again, and continued to hold on.
“I know. You couldn’t pay me to be a teenager again.”
They fell quiet then, holding on to each other for a long while before Hizashi started to make soft, snuffling noises that indicated he was on the verge of falling asleep. Normally Shota would be all for a couch nap, but it was getting to be dinner time and his leg was starting to hurt.
“Hey, why don’t you go check out the take out menus,” he said, giving Hizashi a gentle shake. “I’m starving.”
Hizashi grumbled and yawned, but he rolled off the couch and to his feet. He took three steps before suddenly he was engulfed in a bright-white light that had Shota shooting to his feet in a protective surge he couldn’t do anything with.
He blinked hard three times, involuntarily, and the light died away and Shota’s husband was left standing there. He was taller and more filled out, and his clothes fit properly again. His hair hung to his waist in a loose golden sheet. There were just barely visible little crows feet at the corners of his eyes. Even his stupid little mustache--that Shota secretly thought was very cute on him--was back.
Hizashi blinked hard and swayed on his feet before Shota grabbed him and guided him back to sit on the couch.
“Wow,” he said as he collapsed against the cushions. “Major headrush.”
“Are you okay?” Shota asked, hands hovering over him cautiously, unsure of if there was anything he needed to do to help.
“Yeah, I’m okay, that was just…weird. Made me kind of dizzy.” He brought a hand to his eyes and rubbed them a bit.
“Do you remember what happened?” Shota asked, taking a hold of his knee in hopes of being comforting.
“Oh yeah,” Hizashi said, blowing out a big breath. “Every second of it. Man, I used to have no back pain at all, can you believe it? Those knees were fresh as hell.”
Shota snorted involuntarily, and then pressed his face into Hizashi’s shoulder in relief.
“I missed you,” he admitted. Seeing Hizashi young again had been entertaining, but the shift in their dynamic had been a little exhausting. It was hard having to be the one with it together, the one who could handle the emotional stuff, when he was so used to them propping each other up.
Hizashi shifted to hold him, pressing kisses into his hair with loud, exaggerated “mwah!” sounds.
“I missed kissing you, even if I didn’t know what I was missing,” he teased.
“Was it okay?” Shota asked. “I know it must have been really weird, but I tried to protect you from what I could.”
Hizashi’s face softened at that, and he pressed another kiss sweetly to Shota’s forehead, sans obnoxious noise.
“Aw, baby, you did great,” Hizashi cooed. “You were so sweet to me. You told me what I needed to know without breaking my damn heart. You made me feel really loved and cared about at a time in my life when I felt utterly alone. There was a reason I wanted to be myself again at the end there. I just wanted back my life with you, even though I didn’t know what it was like. I knew it had to be good, though, because you were showing me that it was.”
He tapped Shota gently under the chin until he raised his face so Hizashi could kiss him properly. It was sweet and strangely emotional, and Shota was so, so glad to have his husband back. When they finally pulled away from each other, he couldn’t help but smile.
Hizashi smiled back, and then groaned loudly, slapping a hand to his forehead.
“What?” Shota asked, alarmed.
“Oh man your whole class saw me, they’re gonna roast me so hard.”
And at that, Shota started laughing, and he wasn’t sure he would ever stop.