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"You'd make a good husband to someone, one day," Shouta tells him suddenly.
So sudden it feels as though Hizashi's heart throbs with the syllables in the words husband, one day.
Even his lungs ache with each breath robbed from him every passing moment, diaphragm thrumming like a steel drum every time he forgets to steal back another.
Shouta brings the rims of his cup, still lukewarm, to his mouth. "You have the heart for it. The soul."
Over a coffee long-since forgotten at the counter, as cool as the frost clouding the windows, Aizawa Shouta ruins him once again with just a few words.
That tentative smile, the furrowed brow. The black hair left untucked and messy all around his shoulders, swallowing them like waterfalls at night, ready for him to brush away from Shouta's chipped ear-- chipped as a result of him pushing Hizashi out of the way in a mission one night ago, desperate to take a blow Hizashi wouldn't have even noticed.
Hizashi doesn't get his hopes up by asking something stupid. Something dumb. Asking if Shouta's answer to a question left unasked could mean something.
The heart.
The soul, Hizashi thinks.
Instead, he says, "I know," catches his breath with a sip of his coffee-- and ignores the plaintive look Shouta fixes him with when he spits it right back into the cup, coughing.
Then Hizashi quickly changes the topic by pestering Shouta about the new opening at UA, teases him about Nemuri's interference. Shouta blindsides him with a crude joke on traffic signals, so he riffs off of that. Makes another joke.
Present Mic style and all; he even makes a pun out of spotlight and stoplight.
Doesn't mention how he'd never use the word 'stoplight' if it meant a ring would find itself shining on his finger, because the glow from its stainless steel would shine so bright Hizashi would ultimately have his own spotlight anyway.
They don't bring the other thing up again.