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Hizashi is the one to find him.
Oboro is pulled from the rubble with his skin ripped and a concussion to rival all others, but he’s lucid, and he smiles at Hizashi as the rain runs rusty and dusty from blood and rubble down his skin. Paramedics take over almost immediately after his shout – Hizashi trails behind and is joined by Aizawa as soon as he realizes what’s happening. Paramedics assess the situation and strap him to a stretcher and roll him onto an ambulance. Then he’s gone. Hizashi and Aizawa are left in the pouring rain, the streets coating slowly in a soupy dirt-dust paste.
Hizashi’s hair has fallen from its styling almost entirely, drooping wet and messy in front of his face. His hands, already chronically cold, are freezing. His entire body is wracked by a subtle trembling from his core.
“That was really something, eh, Aizawa?” Hizashi prompts, nudging Aizawa’s side with his elbow. Aizawa was worried at first, until Oboro was carted away alive and well enough to recover, but the high of beating a villain like that on his own gives him an uncharacteristically lively aura. Still he squints at Hizashi, and steps away. Hizashi laughs, loud enough to overshadow some of the incessant rain, “Sorry, sorry, I’m sure you’re a little tender after all that fighting!”
Aizawa puffs a breath. “I’m fine.” It rings true, too; if anything, he looks pleased and proud in a soft, quiet way.
Hizashi can’t manage that, though. His stomach is churning with anxiety and directionless energy. This would be the perfect time for a brawl, if there was any fighting to be done now; instead he smiles, and it’s just the wrong side of manic. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because Aizawa isn’t looking at him.
The rain is abruptly cut off, Kayama appearing between them with an umbrella. “C’mon, boys, let’s go,” she grins. Aizawa glances once more at the scene of his first major win and goes easy. Hizashi follows them.
They’re sitting on one side of Oboro’s hospital bed. The right side of his face is taped from hairline to jaw in gauze, his right arm in a sling, the rest of him painted in bruises in various shades of purple and blue or cuts stitched and bandaged. But he’s alive, and awake, and he’s laughing at a joke Hizashi made, and Aizawa is looking at him with a little smile playing there that Oboro can’t see because his eyes are scrunched tight.
“ Oh , my ribs,” Oboro gasps, and Hizashi’s chest feels warm, even as Oboro waves them off and gingerly leans back, pouting all the while.
Sun is streaming through the large windows parallel to the bed. Aizawa is on Hizashi’s left, and therefore closer to Oboro. He sways in his seat as Oboro talks, falling forward a few inches when he smiles or laughs, as if the gravity of his joy in pulling him in. Hizashi is similarly relieved, and he’s filled with a palm-itching desire to touch Oboro; he’s always been very tactile. He holds off.
“Without you, though, it’s all so quiet , you know?” Hizashi slouches forward, dropping his chin in the cup of his palms.
“Quiet!” Oboro guffaws. “Not with you there, I bet!”
Aizawa’s lips twitch, but he stares fixedly at Oboro while Hizashi laughs in assent and Oboro looks overly proud. Hizashi says, “It is, it is! Not like Aizawa is talking much without you around to wrangle it out of him, you know, so I’m all on my own!” He leans forward, into Aizawa’s space and view. “It’s so cruel. Really. Why can’t you spare me a bit of your time?”
Pointedly, no eyes meet his, even as Hizashi stares right at Aizawa. A silence too far from lighthearted is terribly loud, and Hizashi fills it quickly, wrenching the atmosphere back from the awkward tone it was slipping toward with exaggerated despair. “See?” he whines, pulling back and away. Oboro looks between Aizawa and Hiashi. Hizashi hopes for something slightly validating from Oboro, but gets nothing.
“Whatever,” Aizawa sighs. His gaze has drifted, even as Hizashi talks, thoughtfully toward the door. “Do you want something from the vending machine at the entrance?” He asks Oboro, who looks up, thinking, and relays his order to Aizawa, who nods and stands to leave.
Before he’s gone Hizashi calls him back, a little too frantic for the situation – he rifles through his pockets and gives Aizawa some money, and asks for a candy bar. Aizawa takes the money and retreats, saying nothing.
Hizashi watches him leave the room. His smile falters into something ghostly, and drops. He stares at the empty doorway a few moments too long, cheek pressed into his palm, hospital room quiet and still, out of time. Hizashi feels like he could sit here forever, attention nowhere in particular and thoughts distant, the warm presence of Oboro just out of view, the twist of rejection in his chest. And he could float away. It’s not comfortable, but the silence feels very close to a truth just out of reach. It makes him unbearably sad, so he looks at Oboro to avoid it. Eyes on him, especially Oboro’s, make the transition easy.
“Man, you gotta stop doing that.”
Hizashi blinks. “What?”
“All that teasing!” Oboro exclaims. He jerks himself up in bed, winces, and accepts Hizashi’s jump to help easily. It’s only once he’s gained a position more face-to-face that he continues. “It makes him feel weird. Seriously.”
Hizashi’s cheeks flare up, and he laughs. He’s not sure what to say, because he knows this. It doesn’t make them any closer. Aizawa is barely more comfortable around him than when they first met. Oboro teases Aizawa too, but between them, it’s something comfortable that Aizawa returns; somewhere along the way, despite Hizashi’s best efforts, there was a split – to Aizawa, Hizashi is the other, the background, the collateral ‘best friend’.
He breathes forcefully out of his nose and smothers his mouth with his hand, disguising it as the dwindling remnants of his laugh. He allows an instant of letting his eyes relax, tired, and then he snaps up and away, leaning carelessly in the chair. Grins, and says, “Yeah, well, somebody’s gotta make up for it, what with you all mummied up here. What do you even do all day, huh? Now that you get to skip classes?”
Oboro puffs his cheeks and groans dramatically, jumping at the chance to complain. He and Hizashi shoot the shit back and forth until Aizawa comes back to distribute the spoils, and they open the conversation to include him naturally.
The weeks waiting for Oboro to recover are rough ones.
He stays by Aizawa’s side, no matter that Aizawa is less than receptive to his company. Some of the kids around here are like sharks, and Aizawa on his own is blood in the water – Hizashi is an easy blockade, distracting and bright. He can talk circles around most and annoy the rest into leaving if he needs.
They eat lunch together. Hizashi talks a lot, but contrary to popular belief, he’s not allergic to silence.
The closest they ever get to some kind of comradery is silence, in fact. It’s times like that that he wishes he could wear earbuds, so that he could at least share music, but his hearing aids make it impossible.
Sitting quietly with Aizawa stops being awkward after the first week, at least. It’s almost comfortable, even, leaning against a wall on the rooftop, Aizawa’s eyes closed beside him. Hizashi often puts his headphones over his ears and stares into the middle distance, between his knees, or occasionally at Aizawa, when he’s sure the other boy has fallen asleep.
When Aizawa first joined the hero course, partway through their first year, it was Hizashi who had taken the steps to try and befriend him at first. He was insistent. But maybe that’s where he went wrong.
It took a long time before Aizawa finally started accepting any offer to hang out at or outside of school, and it only happened once Aizawa and Oboro had met. Aizawa was comfortable with Oboro immediately in a way he never was with Hizashi.
Hizashi didn’t think he could blame him. A lot of the time Hizashi wasn’t even comfortable in his own skin.
He looks down at his hands and his ruined nails. It’s not like he doesn’t know how to take a hint. And maybe that’s what he needs to do – take a hint. Aizawa and Oboro are friends. Oboro and Hizashi are friends and have been since middle school, when U.A. was a dream and the future was so far away. Aizawa and Hizashi are not; they’re acquaintances, a friend of a friend, no matter how much Hizashi wishes otherwise. That just has to be okay with him. He needs to back off.
The bell rings. Hizashi slips his headphones down around his neck, and the song continues through the speakers softly until he pauses it with a little button on the side of the ear cup. Aizawa comes back alive beside him, eyelids sliding to reveal beady pupils and bloodshot whites.
Hizashi braces his hand on his leg and stands up, offering a hand of help to Aizawa. Aizawa looks at him impassively, and takes his hand. They separate the second Aizawa is standing. Hizashi grins like a cut, teeth revealed sharp and bone-like. Aizawa stares a moment and turns away again, expression odd, and they descend the school’s staircase quick and silent as thieves.
Hizashi comes home everyday to an empty apartment. He’s emancipated, which is good, the best thing that could have happened to him, probably, but lonely.
It’s in a cheap part of town, which means that he needs to get up stupidly early to be ready for school on time, but he doesn’t mind. Most of his things are second or third hand, but he takes care of them, and he has an impressive CD, cassette, and record collection, with well-cared for players for each corresponding media. Technically, in the age of digitized media, it’s entirely obsolete, but Hizashi likes physical copies of things. He’s lost music because the creator deleted it off the internet before. No, thank you. (To avoid this happening again, he downloads every song he likes onto one of the several usbs stored in his desk drawer.)
When he’s not at home, he’s working. He has an agreement with one of the restaurants lining the street below his apartment to be on call on the weekends, but besides that he has steady work as a waiter at the evening shift of a different restaurant in an entirely different part of town. They ask him to keep his hair down and to wear regular glasses rather than his prescription sunglasses. He considers this an odd choice, because his eyes tend to freak people out: they’re big and blood red and the concentric circle outlines make him look like a cartoon villain trying to hypnotize somebody, which is why he opted for mirrored glasses as soon as he could in the first place. But it pays well. So he deals.
Other than that he keeps busy with a myriad of things. Schoolwork, practicing with his beat up old guitar, exercising and training, drawing, reading, his podcast. He’s got a steady stream of listeners now, which is pretty damn neat! They leave comments on YouTube and everything! No income from that, yet, but maybe one day.
All in all, Hizashi keeps pretty busy. More than busy, in fact.
But it will take a very long time before he’s able to get the image of Oboro’s corpse-like face beneath the rubble out of his head.
The days that Oboro is in the hospital are some of the loneliest.
He starts making a playlist for Oboro. As a welcome-back-to-the-real-world gift, maybe. He has no worries putting it on a CD because he knows Oboro has one, after Hizashi bugged him so that he could share some album he couldn’t find online a couple of years ago. He wants to decorate the case, anyway.
The day after Oboro is discharged is a Saturday, so the three of them take the day to go out on the town.
Oboro has a wicked scar now. It trails from his hairline and tapers off near his jaw, and the shiny redness of new skin is vibrant. It makes him look cool, Hizashi thinks, though he looked cool already, and he makes sure to tell Oboro, who seems to appreciate it.
Hizashi had finished the playlist a little while ago, and it’s in his messenger bag now, slung over a shoulder with its bulk at his back. He considers giving it to Oboro right away, but something about having Aizawa with them when he does makes him pause.
They go to the arcade, and spend a while jumping from game to game, splitting into pairs now and then. Hizashi, eventually, ends up at the claw machine as he always does.
“I’ll win you something,” he promises Oboro, who laughs, because Hizashi has said the same thing every time they’ve come together and never once has he managed it. In Hizashi’s defense, usually this is Oboro’s fault – Hizashi is easily distractible and around Oboro is prone to fits of laughter, which is only heightened by any effort to be serious. “No, really, this time! I’ve been practicing.”
There’s a very round bird calling Hizashi’s name. Aizawa lingers behind his left shoulder, and Oboro drifts backward. He nudges Aizawa teasingly, and narrates Hizashi’s movements.
“And the coin goes in,” he whispers, putting on his best announcer voice. It’s not as good as Hizashi’s, but it’s good enough. “Yamada Hizashi, a prolific gamer ,” Hizashi’s face breaks, laughter bursting through his poor poker face, and he swats backward, trying in vain to silent Oboro. Oboro giggles, “Stop, man, stop, I’m narrating!” He clears his throat and valiantly stops the laughter, even though Aizawa is hiding a smile behind his hand. Hizashi doesn’t see, which is good for his concentration. He’s watching Hizashi’s back with a distant fondness that warms Oboro.
Oboro continues, “He’s sure that this time , he’ll get the best of those stuffed animals. And off he goes! Oh my, that claw, such skill. He goes left – no! He goes right – a feint, yes, I see…” Hizashi, applying all of his willpower, manages to keep his focus.
“Then back, right toward a rotund pigeon, wow, what a catch that would be! Overtop… such skill … and he… and he presses it! He presses the button!” Oboro lunges forward, gripping Hizashi’s shoulders and shaking him with excitement. They both bend forward, pressing their faces against the glass. The claw lowers achingly slow, and, surprising all three of them, creates a perfect cage around the bird. It captures the stuffed animal in a hammock carry.
It starts to rise. Hizashi and Oboro exclaim in victory, and Hizashi starts, “Look, see, I told you, aren’t I the best, getting you an out-of-hospital gift-”
And the bird, because of the very roundness that drew Hizashi to it, rolls out of the loose carry it was balanced precariously on. It topples back onto the mound of other stuffed animals. They watch, Oboro in schadenfreude glee and Hizashi in quiet shock, as the claw, mockingly, opens with an empty hand over the retrieval shoot.
“No!” Hizashi yells, forlorn, and Oboro breaks down laughing. Hizashi presses his fists against the glass and folds over, staring at the ground. “I was so close…”
“And in an unforeseeable turn of events, the claw machine bests Yamada Hizashi,” Oboro says. He tries to maintain the announcer voice, but it falls apart in his throat with more laughter. Hizashi grumbles, but the humor hits him quickly, and he joins Oboro in his laughter.
“Yo, I was close, though, wasn’t I,” Hizashi pokes, and Oboro grins.
“Pretty damn close,” he agrees. “Maybe if you didn’t go for the bird.”
Hizashi sighs. He stares at the stuffed animal, now on its side, and squints. “I think I can still get it,” he decides.
Oboro chuckles. “Alright, you do you.”
“I’ll get you that bird,” Hizashi promises, tongue already inching out of the corner of his mouth in concentration.
Oboro’s voice as it retreats to some other area of the arcade floats over his shoulder. “I believe in you! You got this!”
Hizashi smiles affectionately. It’s somewhat quiet now, with the steady flow of chatter and arcade game sound effects the only sound behind him. He painstakingly guides the claw to the bird, and with a flourish, presses the button. It slides uselessly over the body, cinches on a single foot, and drops it after a moment of being airborne.
“Aw, what!” Hizashi pouts. “These things are rigged.”
“Maybe you’re just bad at it,” a voice suggests from his left, and Hizashi only barely resists the defensive scream that threatens in his chest. Aizawa blinks at him. His brow is low and his eyes are intense, but there’s a slight twist of amusement there, Hizashi thinks. It’s not like he can tell.
“Well, yeah, that too,” Hizashi relents breathlessly. He recovers and laughs, self deprecating. “How about you try?”
Aizawa slides to take Hizashi’s place easily. The coins clatter into their storage and the machine comes to life with a series of musical dings and corresponding lights. Hizashi puts his forearm on the glass, resting above shoulder height, and leans forward curiously. Aizawa glances up at him through his fringe, and the look seems angry, to Hizashi. He pulls back, carefully avoiding Aizawa’s personal space, nerves twisting in his stomach. “Sorry.”
Aizawa looks at him, confused, and the whiplash is setting Hizashi on edge. Is he imagining things? “It’s okay,” Aizawa replies doubtfully. His gaze slides easily back through the glass of the machine, but Hizashi has stepped away. His earlier enthusiasm slips out of reach.
It’s not Aizawa’s fault. There’s just something about Aizawa that makes him self conscious in a way he usually isn’t. He wants Aizawa to like him, and Aizawa… doesn’t. That’s all there is to it.
Aizawa, as it turns out, is unfairly good at claw machines. He gets the pigeon easily, and Hizashi watches him crouch and rummage around the retrieval slot. He presents it to Hizashi with a flat look on his face. “For Oboro.”
Hizashi accepts it. Human interaction sends all of his thoughts to the back burner, and he grins. “You’re so good at that!” He praises, and Aizawa ducks his head, scratching at his jaw almost nervously. The gesture strikes Hizashi, and he smiles in a way that’s a little more real.
“Wait here,” Aizawa orders, as if Hizashi would go anywhere and leave him on his own. He turns back to the claw machine and goes through the motions another time, guiding the claw effortlessly. It picks up a slightly lopsided dinosaur colored in pale baby pinks and blues. Aizawa grabs it once the claw drops it, the congratulatory jingle lighting up the machine.
“This is for you,” he says, holding the dino in one hand. Hizashi doesn’t know how to react.
“Oh,” he says softly. Aizawa frowns.
“You don’t have to take it.” He starts retracting, and Hizashi jumps to stop him, too eager. He’s overbalancing for the lull, when his brain was lagging, trying to understand why Aizawa acts the way he does.
“No! No, I want it!” The dino exchanges hands, Aizawa watching him with a weird, nervous look on his face. “Thanks.”
Aizawa nods, but doesn’t answer. Hizashi is even more unsure of himself than before. Aizawa scuffles hesitantly past him, and Hizashi realizes that he’s just standing in Aizawa’s way – he steps back, clearing a path, and Aizawa goes onward, shooting a conflicted glimpse over his shoulder. He’s heading straight for Oboro, Hizashi realizes. He holds out the pigeon.
“Here. Since you won it,” he explains. Aizawa looks at it, then Hizashi, then nods. He makes his way to Oboro across the room.
Hizashi lingers behind. His heart isn’t in it now. He slips out of view, behind the height of a different game, and swings the strap of his bag around so that the bulk is at the front instead of behind him. Flipping open the top reveals a few essentials – an extra jacket, his wallet, keys and phone in a tighter pocket on the inside, and – Oboro’s playlist.
Staring at it now, with Aizawa handing over the stupid plush he’d won in Hizashi’s place, Hizashi only feels vulnerable. It’s difficult to make sense of, in his own head. He peeks his head around the corner and watches Oboro’s bright laugh at something Aizawa said.
Is this jealousy? Hizashi wonders, shrinking back into his hiding place. Am I jealous? It feels a lot like jealousy. God, what kind of friend am I?
He wonders which one of them he’s jealous of.
Instead of trying to take apart that train of thought, he places the dinosaur lovingly in his bag, sucks a breath, and gives up the safety of invisibility. All through the day, Oboro’s playlist stays ungiven, covered with the cushiony blanket of a gift he doesn’t understand the weight of.
At school on Monday Oboro is greeted with much love. It leaves him flushed and pleased by lunch time, a bashful smile on his face, but tired and worn by the time the day is over. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate it – quite the opposite, in fact – but it’s difficult to return to interacting with so many people at once after the previous weeks have been filled with almost exclusively talking to Hizashi, Aizawa, and his parents, with text conversations with other friends and the occasional visit from Kayama.
Hizashi recognizes it and takes peoples’ attention just as he did for Aizawa. Oboro relaxes and settles into watching Hizashi do his thing; people have a lot of questions about where he was and how it happened, and the stories he spins paint Oboro and Aizawa in an extremely heroic light. His classmates go to Hizashi for details and he gets to sit back and listen to Hizashi talk. It’s not a bad deal, Oboro thinks.
They part with Aizawa in front of the school and walk down to the bus station. Their commutes line up with one another, Oboro about fifteen minutes away and Hizashi a solid forty minutes.
Oboro invites Hizashi to hang out after school, and Hizashi accepts. He worries shortly about missing the last bus, since that’s happened before, losing track of time when they hang out. But it’s happened enough times by now that he has a change of clothes and plenty of toiletries at Oboro’s house, so he doesn’t linger on the thought.
Oboro lives in a two storey, two bedroom house. To make the most of the semi-city setting, the buildings are packed together with barely an alley between each lot. The front yard is bordered by a stone wall that comes up to Hizashi’s chest, most of the ground populated by cobblestone but for the planters. They border the front wall and the open space to the left, where they’re filled with flowers, shrubbery, and, notably, a well-loved bonsai. Overhead the front door are a few hanging plants, with little tiny leaves that spill over the sides smooth and waterlike.
Hizashi likes Oboro’s home.
Oboro unlocks the door and makes a general ruckus with his arrival. To the right of the entrance are stairs to the second storey. His dad often isn’t home until later, when they start cooking dinner, but his step mom is. Hizashi has known her as long as Oboro has. They both started off calling her “Kei-san”, but as of late, it’s shifted firmly to “Kei-chan”.
“Kei-chan!” Oboro calls, shucking his backpack at the door and toeing off his shoes. “We’re home!”
“We?” Kei echoes. She wanders out of the living room with bare feet padding on the wood, dressed in jeans and a band t-shirt. She’s slight and boyish in frame, with long, sleek black hair pulled into two low buns on either side of her head. She’s young, but so are both of Oboro’s biological parents, so she’s very firmly within Oboro’s dad’s acceptable dating pool. Her quirk is something benign like night vision, which only sounds boring until you’re fifteen on a sleepover and get caught in the kitchen looking for snacks in the dead of night. Hizashi had woken the entire house, and the neighbors, with his scream that night. “Oh, Hizashi!”
“Hiiiii, Kei,” he greets. Points a finger gun at her shirt, as Oboro wraps a warm hand over his wrist and tugs him gently forward, up the first steps. “Hey, nice taste!”
“You know it, kid!” she laughs. “I went to a concert back when they were touring!”
“No way,” Hizashi breathes. Oboro, feeling the oncoming nerd-out and dreading trying to pull Hizashi away from it once they really get going, creates a cloud behind Hizashi and floats him jarringly up the stairs in a rush. “Oboro!”
Kei’s full-chested laughter, a little odd and bird-like in its twittering, but endearing all the same, follows them up. Oboro’s exaggerated shout of goodbye is left behind like a puff of smoke.
Oboro deposits Hizashi on his bed in a tussle of unmade sheets. While he’s getting his bearings after being hurled up the stairs, Oboro closes his bedroom door and pounces on the bed next to him. The recoil sends Hizashi sprawling and a fit of giggles bursts from his chest.
“Ugh, I missed this,” Oboro groans. He grabs either end of his puffy, temperature cool comforter and wraps it around himself in a burrito. “Hello, bed, my darling.”
“You’ve been home a few days,” Hizashi points out.
“It’s different though,” protests Oboro. He rolls over, head and hair peeking out from the swaddle he’s made around himself. “Coming home after school is different. I’ve been home, but it’s been way too long since I’ve come home after school, or come home with you. It’s better.”
Hizashi’s chest twists. He tries to smile, but the comment only makes him uneasy. The budding revelation from Saturday wouldn’t leave his head, no matter how much he tried to fill it with other things over the weekend. Hizashi had never thought of himself as the jealous type, but he is afraid of change, a leftover from an unstable… everything during his childhood. That, he could admit, and the only thing that’s happened in the past year is change. Another person joins their group, they have their first internships (solidifying for the first time for Hizashi that he could be a hero, something he didn’t dare believe in, doubts following even after his acceptance into U.A.), Oboro and Aizawa are getting closer, and then Oboro nearly – and then Oboro went to the hospital. Sometimes it feels like the world is turning under his feet while Hizashi hovers an inch above, never grounded.
“Hey, what’s up?” Oboro asks, and Hizashi shakes his head.
“Just thinking about some of the units Spark-sensei said we’ll be covering soon,” he lies. Spark-sensei is their homeroom and practical heroics teacher. The ease with which it falls off his tongue makes him guilty, but Oboro buys it, because he trusts Hizashi. Why does he trust Hizashi?
He hums absently, sitting up, letting the rumpled comforter fall off his shoulders and bunch around his waist. “Yeah, I get that. It all sounded pretty intense.”
Coming up in the next month they’ll start covering one of the more dreaded parts of the second year hero course. Kayama had constantly complained about it last year. By name, it’s ‘spatial awareness’ – being aware when and where you should use your quirk during a battle, if at all, as well as protocol surrounding sweeping an area and bystanders. It’s a useful lesson, and most of it is relatively unremarkable, except the last few weeks, which contain several practical lessons and fights of brutal hand-to-hand. With no quirks allowed.
Most, if not all, other practical training instead teaches the students how to use their quirk. It’s not always possible to do so safely, though, especially in cases like Hizashi’s, where the quirk can be extremely dangerous and destructive if not properly controlled and contained. Hizashi’s learned this lesson several times over. Including the most recent, where thievery of his quirk resulted in Oboro’s hospitalization.
After a less than impressive performance on his part against Aizawa at last year’s sports festival, he’s been training himself and his body on proper hand-to-hand, anyway. So he’s not really bothered, but he knows that it’s a reasonable excuse for his strange, sullen mood, so he takes it.
“Shōta’s gonna be great at it, though,” Oboro mentions offhandedly. Hizashi stands up and wanders to Oboro’s closet, where he keeps the duffle of his things, instead of replying.
“I’m changing,” he says, and it comes out too harsh. He softens it by adding, “Then I’m gonna kick your ass in Smash.”
Oboro, taking the challenge, barks a laugh. “Yeah, right!” Scrambles off the bed to find a change of clothes of his own. They change in the same room, because they’ve seen one another in all manner of undress in locker rooms and general time spent together, and then they both drop onto the round floor cushions in front of Oboro’s television.
Hizashi has switched out his sunglasses for the regular ones he keeps in his school backpack. With most people, having his eyes fully on view may bother him, but the Shirakumo family is different.
While the console boots up, Oboro asks, “Why are you wearing socks?”
“My feet are cold,” Hizashi answers.
“Man, you’re always cold.” Hizashi accepts the controller held out to him.
Mischief is what prompts him to, instead of replying, reach out a hand and put it palm flat on the side of Oboro’s warm neck. He squeals and jolts back from Hizashi, nearly tumbling over, and Hizashi cackles.
The laughing and playful arguing that follows makes Kei smile downstairs.
Oboro’s dad, whom Hizashi simply calls “Kumo”, short for “Shirakumo”, or “Kumo-san”, when he’s feeling polite, comes home sometime around five. He has the same light tawny skin as Oboro and wild, jet black hair he tames only by cutting it within a few inches of his head. He’s not especially tall, but holds muscle well and has an athletic frame like Oboro. His quirk lets him concentrate little gusts of air within a twenty foot radius of himself, which he mostly uses to bother his son when he deems he’s being annoying, according to Oboro.
They eat dinner together. Kumo brings home takeout that is deliciously bad for them, and they gather around the living room casually, food spread over the coffee table. There’s a lot of laughter, and a lot of chatter, and Oboro laugh-chokes while eating at some point, sending a noodle through his nose, which looks painful but shocks Hizashi so much that he only barely resists a spit take by sending water spurting out of his own nose and down his front. It’s disgusting. Kei says so, Kumo is in near hysterics, laughing in the soundless otter clap way he does, and Oboro is shaking with mirth against his shoulder, and Hizashi loves them. The absence, that endless loneliness and longing, is smothered in the cavern of his heart that they will leave when this moment ends.
Hizashi and Oboro sleep as they always do, in Oboro’s bed. Oboro sleeps with his head at the headboard and Hizashi sleeps the other way around, with his head at the foot of the bed.
They wake up in the morning, Hizashi much earlier than anyone else, by habit. They dress in their U.A. uniforms and eat breakfast and Hizashi artfully teases his air into his preferred style
Then they ride the bus, and the school day starts, and when Hizashi looks at Oboro with Aizawa, or sits with them at lunch, he wants so desperately to be included in whatever that nameless thing is, that he’s felt with Oboro since the day they met, that he aches for it.
It happens slowly.
One day, on a whim, he sits with Tensei and a few of the other kids from class 2-B instead of Oboro and Aizawa. He texts,
sitting with tensei today dw ヽ(‘ ∇‘ )ノ <
> Abandoning us???? Hizashi!!!! :(
he offered also he’s cool and i wanna be his friend <
> He is cool. You make a good case for yourself
> Put in a good word for Shō and me
u know i will!!!!! <
Tensei is, in fact, pretty cool. His quirk is neat, and he’s got the easygoing heart-of-gold personality down to a T. But Hizashi gets through lunch feeling a bit sick to his stomach and joins back up with Aizawa and Oboro only to find them deep in conversation with one another. He watches them from afar, voyeuristically.
Hizashi sits in the very back corner, next to the window, and Oboro sits in front of him. Aizawa sits next to Oboro. Hizashi inches into the room, uncharacteristically quiet, and slides into his seat. There’s a lull in the conversation as Aizawa catches sight of him and diverts his attention, which Oboro catches onto.
“There you are!” Oboro grins. Hizashi feels vaguely sick, but returns it. And the day continues forward, and in the evening Hizashi goes to work, changing clothes with his work uniform stored in the duffle in the break room. He washes his hair in the bathroom sink, brushing it through with a comb stored in the same duffle, and stares at his wide, red eyes behind their clear lenses in the mirror.
He clutches the edge of the sink. The dinner rush will start soon. He twists his hair into a bun and gets to work.
Once his shift is over and the restaurant is closing, he keeps his manager back. He asks her if it’s possible for him to take extra hours during the same times as before. She looks at him oddly, but says that she will. Then he leaves.
He tells himself that he’s taking extra hours for extra cash. It’s just believable enough that he doesn’t feel too guilty the next time he ‘needs’ to shoot down an invitation from Oboro to hang out because of work conflicts.
He starts sitting with Tensei more often. First it was now and then, then it was barely a third, and then it grew slowly to about half the time. He becomes a ghostly figure in Oboro and Aizawa’s life, and tries not to let it bother him.
One day, a Thursday, the week before the beginning of the hand-to-hand spatial awareness lessons, Hizashi wakes up feeling like absolute shit. He curls on his side and tries not to start crying.
Going through the motions of getting ready is muscle memory more than anything. When he leaves his apartment he immediately puts his headphones over his ears for the walk, and keeps them on for the bus ride. He holds his bag to his chest and closes his eyes. When Oboro joins him, he nudges Hizashi, smiles in greeting, and accepts the flash of teeth Hizashi replies with.
The day inches achingly slow. At lunch Hizashi sits with Aizawa and Oboro, but brushes off any and all efforts to gouge what’s wrong. The last few classes of the day are torture.
He bounces his leg in a jittery vibration, so forcefully it shakes his desk, and only stops when Spark-sensei tells him, “Sit still, Yamada.” Oboro glances back at him teasingly, and Hizashi sticks out his tongue. Then, when Oboro is no longer looking at him, he turns his attention to his fingernails, which he picks and chews, keeping them mostly under his desk, until the hangnail on his thumb is reduced to bleeding skin and the nail is jagged and thin at the end.
When finally, blessedly, the bell signaling the end of the day rings, Hizashi bolts from the classroom in one smooth motion, grabbing his backpack by its shoulder strap when he slips from his desk chair and slinging it over his shoulder when he passes through the door at the back of the classroom. He’s the first one out, having packed up two minutes earlier despite the unimpressed look that had earned him, and spent the last of class absently watching the clock crawl toward leaving time.
Hizashi slips his headphones over his ears and presses the little button on the side. Instead of music, though, there’s nothing. He takes them off again, and the pinpoint light flashes red: he’s out of battery. The headphones are turned off and left like a collar around his neck. His own fault for leaving them on, anyway. He hunches and tries to look uninviting and weaves through the crowd with a one-track mind.
Oboro calls out to him in the hall soon after. It’s distant enough that Hizashi could pretend he didn’t hear, but he dismisses the thought guiltily the second it crosses his mind. He slows to a stop, off to the side and away from the flow of traffic of students going to clubs or home, and Oboro emerges from the crowd like a beacon with his misty white-blue hair. Trailing behind him, looking vaguely bored, is Aizawa, with his hands shoved in his pockets. Hizashi smiles automatically. It never feels natural to look at somebody without one.
“Man,” Oboro puffs, dramatic, “where are you going? You left so fast! I can never catch you, these past few weeks.”
Aizawa pins him with an oddly intent stare. Hizashi laughs like something Oboro said was funny. Mostly, he just wants to go home and lay in bed and let the tears finally unfurl from that terrible knot in his chest.
“Nowhere,” Hizashi replies. “I’m just tired, you know, I’ve been busy.”
Oboro shoots back, “Hey, now, that’s Shōta’s line,” and Hizashi laughs again. Aizawa huffs and kicks Oboro lightly in the calf, who flinches and says, “Rude! You know it’s true!” and Aizawa just huffs again, rolling his eyes.
“ Any way,” Oboro continues, shooting a playful I’m watching you glare at Aizawa before he brings his attention back to Hizashi, “Shōta and I were going to his place to study for English. We could order pizza. Wanna come?”
No. No, he really doesn’t. He wants to go home and curl up and cry and not watch them talk and steal his answers and smile at one another secretly. He does not want to do that. “Eh, man, I don’t know about today,” he answers vaguely, lightly.
“What! Oh, come on! ” Oboro sounds genuinely distressed, and it earns them a few glances as the hallway thins and it becomes easier to hear over the chatter as groups dissipate. “You’re, like, so good at English. The best! I- Tell him, Shōta, convince him!”
Aizawa is still looking at him. It’s more of a glare, really, and Hizashi wishes he would just stop. He’s pretty sure that it’s just Aizawa’s resting face, but that’s only because it’s how he looks at everybody else, except for Oboro. So maybe it’s not a resting face. If anybody knows, it’s not Hizashi.
“Oboro is failing,” Aizawa says succinctly, and Oboro looks betrayed briefly, but sighs in defeat rather quickly.
“Yeah…” Oboro rubs behind his head and laughs, bashful, eyes pinching into little crescent moons. “I could really use the extra help, ‘Zashi.”
“Oh.” Hizashi stares at him. Usually he would say yes. He’s never said no, in fact, to helping out a friend, and rarely ever to hanging out. It’s always because he has other plans to hang out or because he needs to work in the evening. He’s a bit of a pushover. “Okay. Well, I can help you out during lunch tomorrow, maybe. But not tonight.”
Oboro blinks twice, but takes it in stride. “Oh, alright. You busy?”
“No,” Hizashi answers honestly. Then, “Well – not big plans, yo, but –” he gives up trying to justify himself. He just can’t deal tonight. “You get it.”
“Right. I get it.” Oboro nods, then stops, and shakes his head sideways instead. “Well, not really, but you don’t have to come if you don’t want to. Still though, we need to hang out soon!” He takes a step, and Hizashi receives the cue smoothly; they start walking down the hallway, Aizawa on Oboro’s other side. “It’s like I never see you anymore.”
Hizashi feels a pang of guilt, but wasn’t it their fault? Even when he made the effort, he was always playing second fiddle in either of their eyes. To Aizawa, he’s Oboro’s friend first and a person second. To Oboro, he’s an old presence, easily ignored, easily forgotten. If they wanted to spend time together, they would try.
Which – Hizashi realizes all at once, an epiphany – is what Oboro is doing. The vindictiveness flows away from him all at once, and in its place that overbearing, nameless grief washes over him. He feels desperately heavy, and the commute back to his empty apartment seems like days of travel. Gaze turned downward, he forgets to give an answer.
Oboro leans into his space after his worry overrides his patience and catches Hizashi’s eyes. Hizashi blinks, realizing his silence, and smiles again. “Sorry, what?”
Oboro stops walking. Hizashi lets his momentum carry him a few extra steps and faces longingly down the hall, but the presence of his best friends hovering behind him is too insistent to ignore. Bracing himself with an instinctual grin, he twirls on his feet to look at them.
“Yeah?” Hizashi prompts lightly, feigning bemusement.
“Are you okay, Hizashi?” asks Oboro, after a second. “I mean, just, you’ve been distant. And you’re allowed your own space, of course, but I never see you anymore except in class, and I worry about you, and I just- I want you to know you can talk to me.”
Hizashi can feel his pulse bursting in his neck, his heart slamming against his ribcage. Says, “Yeah, I know,” but thinks, you don’t really mean that. I’m losing you.
They stare at one another. The tension in the air is palpable, all three waiting for something, some sign from the other, for where this will go.
Oboro is not a liar. This, Hizashi knows for a fact – he’s honest and blunt, and, while this would look rude on other people, on Oboro it’s sincere, and kind, and makes Hizashi laugh when they’re playfully smack-talking the teachers or bullies or each other. It’s not that he doesn’t believe Oboro. It’s that he doesn’t trust himself not to change Oboro’s mind, if he accepted the hand reached out to him.
They’ve been by each others’ sides for years, but a single moment can define a person’s entire life. Time doesn’t mean a thing. This could all change in an instant. They’ve known Aizawa for barely a portion that they’ve known each other and already Hizashi sees the undeniable rift. When will Oboro see it? How long until he decides that Hizashi’s loudmouth, his spiteful envy, his absolute incapability to say the right thing, aren’t worth it anymore? How long until Oboro makes the choice and Aizawa is the first pick?
Aizawa has already made it. Hizashi tried his damndest to make a friend out of him, devoted himself to it, would still be if Oboro hadn’t made it out of the rubble. He would’ve killed himself over it, this desperation to be friends, to make something of himself in Aizawa’s eyes. But Aizawa has Oboro. What does anybody need Hizashi for? What does anybody want Hizashi for?
“Don’t worry,” Hizashi tells Oboro, even as his own anxiety crawls through him in shivers. “It’s nothing, Oboro. I’m just being dramatic. I’ve got a flair for it, after all!” He strikes a pose, tries to be funny, to get him off his back. Oboro is worried, though, and the determined attitude he applies to hero work extends to this, too. Hizashi awkwardly settles back with a wooden laugh.
“If it’s nothing, can’t you tell me?” Oboro argues.
“Well,” Hizashi laughs again. Stops. Oboro looks at him expectantly.
Hizashi inhales. His frenzied heart screams at him.
“It’s just, it’s this,” he breathes. “You two. And not…” He waves his hand inarticulately, motioning at them when he speaks and himself in the silence. He tries to make them understand where the break is, tries to make them see, but Aizawa and Oboro glance at one another with this look on their face like he’s crazy, and he’s not .
“Hizashi,” Oboro starts, like he’s approaching something wild, hand subconsciously outstretched. Aizawa hovers uncomfortably behind, similarly at the ready. He looks at Hizashi like he’s a stranger – it’s the same expression he’s given him everyday since they’ve met.
Hizashi is humiliated. Suddenly, forcefully, his eyes burn with tears, and he steps back and away. Oboro frowns, eyes open and vulnerable, pleading. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong…” Hizashi mumbles, and he shoves his hand under his sunglasses, setting them askew on his brow. He presses his fist into his eyes and hopes the wetness will subside. “Nothing. Nothing. Forget I even – it’s nothing.”
“Hizashi,” Oboro says again, and Hizashi snaps his face into a grin pulled too wide. It’s unnerving, and Oboro sways away, onto his heels.
“What!” He exclaims, all of his energy filtering into this simulation of happiness that is far from the mark. It’s too loud, may even have a bit of his quirk in it. Oboro and Aizawa both flinch away. They stare at him. “What! It’s nothing. Let’s get out there before we miss the bus. I hate having to wait for the other one.”
A twist on his heel, soles hitting the floor too harsh. It’s too loud. Too loud. There are a couple of students doing extracurricular who poke their heads from their classrooms to see what the racket is about, and their whispering, muttering voices are so loud it’s painful, an incessant scratch on his eardrums. He rips his hearing aids off – there’s a soft pop as they’re released from their spot nestled shallowly in the ear canal, and then the sound around him distorts and quietens, like he’s dropped underwater.
He feels rather than hears his feet pounding down the stairs, the pressure springing through his legs. He can hear his own breathing in his head, a frantic, depthless whoosh of air, in and out. It’s only when he’s made it all the way to the bus stop that he realizes they’re going to Aizawa’s house, not Oboro’s, and that it’s within walking distance in the opposite direction from Hizashi and Oboro’s route. He doesn’t see either of them again that day.
When Hizashi gets the texts it’s somewhere around nine pm, and he’s curled in bed with his eyes wide open and music playing softly from a CD player. They come in quick succession, back to back.
> You okay?
> I don’t wanna bother you if you need space but I’m worried
> Shōta ’ s gone home btw
> You might be asleep
> I’ll stop texting now but I’ll be awake. We can talk if you want
Hizashi keeps read receipts on, so instead of opening them he reads their contents from the notifications on his lock screen. He considers his options, gazing at the messages, and wonders how things could have gone so wrong. His phone goes dim and then dark on its own – he leaves it on his bedside table, turns over, and returns to staring at the wall.
In the morning, he responds,
sorry yeah i went to bed early <
It’s a lie. Hizashi was never above a little white lie. For social harmony.
> No worries
> How are you feeling?
hahaha im good!!! i dont know what yesterday was about really <
just havent been sleeping well i think <
A few, Hizashi amends to himself. A few white lies. His hair is still down around his shoulders, and the time is inching dangerously close to when he needs to leave, but instead of getting ready he sits and tugs apart his untoasted bread, eating the pieces slowly and methodically. He’ll just go to school with his hair not done like he likes it. It’ll be fine, and it won’t bother him, and nobody will notice that he’s falling apart at the edges so much he can’t even keep up appearances.
He wants to move. He really, desperately, wants to move out of the kitchen and do his hair and wash his face and brush his teeth so that he doesn’t go to school smelling and looking like he just woke up. He wants to stop eating because he’s had half a loaf worth of bread this morning and he’s been full since the third slice, and he doesn’t want to have to go to the store again before the weekend.
His phone alarm rings. It’s time to leave. He’s dressed, at least, because he does that first, and his shoes are waiting right by the door with his backpack. He drags himself out of his little apartment, grabbing a water bottle on the way – he drinks a good bit of it to clear his mouth and pops two mints on his way out of the door. It’ll have to do. His phone buzzes in his pocket as he’s walking to the bus stop.
> Yeah you’ve been looking kind of tired lately
wow thanks <
> Shut up you know I’m just agreeing with you!!!
Hizashi smiles a little.
> Anyway
> I know you’re playing it off and all and if it’s REALLY nothing I’ll drop it
> But I’m serious about worrying about you and all that
> Like
> I don’t know, I just don’t really see you around anymore?
> We talk at school and hang out and all that like usual
> But it’s felt different and sometimes you kind of disappear during lunch and stuff without telling me where you’re going, which you’ve only really started doing recently
> And now you don’t hang out with us outside of school either?
> I just care about you, man
> And maybe I’m wrong but it feels like something is hurting you and you’re not telling me what
> Like of course you don’t HAVE to
> But if it would help then you should I think. I wouldn’t mind, at least
There’s a lull. Hizashi stares at his phone, at the three little dots that pop up and retreat. He’s been waiting for the bus for the past couple of minutes – it pulls up just on time, and he climbs in. His apartment is far enough away from U.A. that the bus is still fairly free from commuters. He picks a seat and watches to see if Oboro will say anything else.
> Are you coming to school today?
Hizashi blinks.
yeah <
why? <
> I don’t want things to be weird when I see you
> Am I being weird
The bus jerks awake, and they all sway with the momentum. Hizashi raises his head to watch the buildings move out of view and give himself a second to think. His backpack populates the seat beside him, waiting for Oboro to take its place.
no <
im the one being weird about things <
im sorry <
> It’s okay
> I don’t know what’s going on but I hope you know that it’s okay
> And I’ll be here for you
i know <
thank you <
I know. Thank you. I’ll be here for you. I’m here. I’m here. It’s okay, Hizashi, it’s okay that you’re selfish and a liar and that you have the unique ability to suck the life and enthusiasm from a room just by existing in it. It’s all fine!
White lies. A thousand little white lies for the sake of Hizashi, ones Oboro doesn’t even realize he’s telling – what else could Oboro say, anyhow?
Oboro, just as he does every other school day, steps onto the bus at the second stop from the school. Hizashi’s chest tightens at the sight of him, and Oboro finds him easily. Hizashi drags his backpack from the seat, and Oboro sits.
“Your hair’s down,” he points out. Hizashi smiles a bit self consciously.
“I woke up late,” Hizashi explains. Oboro nods.
They’re both quiet. Hizashi’s stomach twists. “Did you still want help on that English test?” he offers.
“Nah, man, it’s alright. Shōta was just as lost as I was but I think we figured it out.”
“Ah.”
“You…” Oboro frowns, nose twitching and scrunching the ever-present nasal strip. Hizashi looks at him behind the rims of his tinted glasses. “I know I told you this, already,” he grins, self deprecating, “but you know you can talk to me?”
“Yeah,” Hizashi answers, “I know,” but even as he says it it rings falsely. It’s muscle memory at this point, because there’s nothing else for him to say.
“Right,” nods Oboro, and he lets it drop. The bus rocks beneath them, brakes squealing as it rolls to a stop at a red light. “You look pretty good with your hair down, you know. You should switch it up more often.”
Hizashi blinks at him and runs his hand down the back of his head, through the smooth, straight golden strands. They fall just below his shoulders. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s almost girlish, though.” He tilts his head, assessing, and Hizashi raises an eyebrow, unbothered.
“I’d be a beautiful girl,” he replies confidently, and Oboro snorts.
“Yeah, you wish.”
“No, I would!” Hizashi insists, gaining steam with this lighthearted topic to focus on. They fall into the banter with something akin to relief. It’s nothing real, nothing substantial, but it’s a distraction. Hizashi can pretend, for a little.
At the end of that day, Oboro asks him if he’d like to hang out over the weekend. The response is vague.
“I might be busy. I’ll text you?”
Oboro stares at him. He sniffs and looks away. “Yeah,” he replies.
Something feels notably different. Hizashi goes home and cries.
Hizashi spends that Saturday morning on his side, ignoring his phone buzzing on the table at his back. He drags himself out of bed at some point and spends the rest of the day snacking and staring out of the window, at the sliver of busy sidewalk he can see beyond the wall of the building one over.
At night he finally opens Oboro’s texts.
>That new sci fi movie you talked about a while ago opened last weekend
>Wanna see it together tomorrow? My treat :D
He has another text from a different number. It’s from the restaurant on his street that he’s on call for occasionally.
>Yamada, are you free to work tomorrow? From the afternoon to evening shift.
Hizashi’s heart jumps.
He wonders how much he can really fix things, now that he’s fucked them up so thoroughly. He opens his chat with Oboro again and hovers over the keyboard indecisively.
Finally, he responds.
sorry i missed this! i slept in a bunch and then caught up on some chores and homework<
i cant tomorrow though (◕︵◕) boss needs me to work<
>What for real?? You’re always working though
>Can’t he cut you some slack? Give you a day off?
Hizashi doubles down. He’s not sure why. He thinks he hates himself.
different job, that one i work on the weekends<
i need the access to the extra income<
i’m high maintenance u know!!!<
>Haha yeah
>Well that’s okay. Some other time then
yeah<
He gives himself another minute to take it back. To say, actually, no, let’s hang out, fuck it. I’m sorry I’ve been a terrible friend to you.
He opens the chat with his boss.
Yeah, I’m free. I’ll show up around 12?<
> 👍
Monday is bad.
He can’t manage to do his hair again.
Oboro sits next to him on the bus like he always does, but his smile is unsure, and the ride is silent. Neither of them know what to say to the other.
Hizashi goes through the day in a daze.
He doesn’t sit with Tensei. He doesn’t sit with Oboro or Aizawa, either. He finds a stairwell long forgotten in the far corner of the school, where nobody ever goes, sits around a bend where people can’t see him openly, and cries. Cold water from the bathroom sink washes away some of the heat, but the telltale red blotches remain. The sunglasses do wonders to keep it hidden.
At the end of the day, Spark-sensei returns to their class and debriefs them properly on tomorrow. Combat training, without quirks, will begin. Groans ripple through the classroom. Conspicuously, drawing the eye of the vigilant few, including Aizawa, the two loudest in the class say nothing on the matter.
They walk out of school together, as they always do. Hizashi puts his headphones on and plays his music. Oboro tilts his head away and watches the world slip away beneath their feet, out of their grasps, their lives together falling apart. Confusion turns to anger in his heart.
Tuesday comes after.
He sleeps in too late. The mirror is a person he doesn’t recognize, their eyes shadowed, their hair straight down their shoulders. Hizashi leaves his apartment only through obligation.
They sit next to one another on the bus. They say nothing. Oboro looks at him with searching, pleading eyes, and Hizashi stares at the space between his feet like he doesn’t notice. He hates himself.
The entire first half of the next day is set aside for practical training. Oboro and Aizawa stand next to one another, and Hizashi stands at the other end of the class. Since the training is entirely absent of quirk usage, they’re all simply dressed in U.A.’s gym outfits. Hizashi fiddles nervously with his glasses. It was highly suggested that he take them off, but they were still needed for him to see properly. He’s not blind without them, but he really prefers to have them.
Weapons are allowed at first, such as Aizawa’s capture weapon, or Oboro’s staff. Later on in the week and the following one the focus will be shifted to exclusively barehanded, but for now, the exercise is mostly to see where the group is at in terms of skill level and how they would fare in a proper fight with their hero gear.
The class is split into pairs selected at random. Hizashi spaces out most of it, so he doesn’t hear who Aizawa gets sent with.
Hizashi is paired with Oboro.
They catch eyes across the dusty ground, instinctively, and then fall away, the shame of a friend failed. The pairs are sent off to designated areas, with plenty of space between each one.
This won’t be the first time Hizashi and Oboro have sparred. Not even close, in fact – they practice together often, as far back to middle school.
Practiced, Hizashi corrects himself. He braces his feet into the dirt, as does Oboro, and they start the slow, intent circling of animals. Hizashi’s brow is furrowed, studying Oboro’s face, his fist twitching around the long wooden handle of his staff.
No, this won’t be the first time they’ve sparred. But it may be the first time they’ve fought .
Oboro lunges at him, staff swinging out, and Hizashi drops into a low crouch, but the staff comes at him again, pointed down like a sword. Hizashi jerks back, stretching with his long limbs, putting distance between them.
Oboro is frustrated, clearly. He throws himself at Hizashi, staff wide, and yells, an inarticulate scream that pins Hizashi in place, his chest seizing with the desperate anger on his best friend’s face. Hizashi blocks the wide arc headed straight at his face with his forearm just in time, the slap of wood on skin ringing in their ears. Oboro’s bottom lip trembles. Hizashi knows that he could put up one hell of a fight against Oboro, could probably win, depending on the day, but he doesn’t have it in himself to fight back.
Oboro’s staff swings out, around the back of Hizashi’s neck, and in a move that sends Hizashi’s head spinning, trying to catch up, slams his face into Oboro’s knee. Hizashi gasps at the crunch of his nose, punching instinctively at Oboro’s ribs, who instantly loses grip on the staff.
Hizashi goes stumbling back. Blood spews from his nose, into the dirt, becoming a dirty, rusty mixture of wet sand. His glasses are askew and cracked. He presses the back of his hand to his face, feeling the warm wet red run down his aching forearm.
Oboro, his hand retreating from his ribs and a fortifying breath filling his lungs, launches forward again. Hizashi, seeing a clear opening, dodges to the side, and Oboro is sent tumbling forward into a roll. He rises easily, but the lack of coordination scares him. Oboro isn’t like that.
Hizashi breathes, “Oboro,” and Oboro comes for him like a demon, teeth bared, eyes wet, hair less like the cold mist puff he’s used to and seeming, to Hizashi, like a blue flame.
This time, Oboro smashes into him head on. They fall in a tumble to the ground, sliding over it, and the dust and pebbles find their home in Hizashi’s skin, the friction scraping away the soft top layer and revealing the fragile flesh beneath.
Oboro’s staff is beside them, and Oboro throws a punch, landing across Hizashi’s face, jostling his nose, bleeding sluggishly. Hizashi throws a protective arm over his face and reaches blindly with the other for the staff. He fumbles with it, fingers grasping while Oboro tries to wrestle his arm away.
When his hand grasps around the sturdy wood, he swings it out awkwardly, unpracticed, and it jams forcefully into Oboro’s side, catching his arm in a glancing blow that scrapes an open wound in the skin and ending with a hit to the ribs that sends him sprawling off of Hizashi.
Hizashi scuttles away, struggling on shaky legs to his feet, and Oboro stays hunched over, his staff abandoned by his side. Hizashi, shellshocked and in pain, only waits for Oboro to get his bearings and stand.
“Oboro,” he gasps, “why are you-” so angry, he could say. Hurting me, maybe. He knows the answer.
Or, he thinks he does, because as Oboro whips his head up, his response to the unanswered question is a scream as such:
“Because I’m losing you! ” It’s loud, and raw, and Hizashi can feel the earth stop beneath his feet, a collective intake as the wind slows to a suppressive stillness, and the clouds suspend above them, threatening to fall from the sky.
“You’re my best friend ,” says Oboro, and he says it in a way that Hizashi knows to mean: I love you. Through a voice choked by the lump in his throat, the rest of what he says is, “but you never hang out with me anymore. And I never see you. And what hurts the worst is that I don’t even know why.”
The wave of guilt that slams into him steals his breath more than any fight ever could.
He’s hurting Oboro. He’s hurting Oboro , has been, for however long, in his backwards attempts to make what he believes to be an obvious progression easier. But – he knew that, even subconsciously, because he knows Oboro as well as someone could know another. And it’s for the best.
Isn’t it?
Isn’t Oboro happier by Aizawa’s side? If Oboro wants to spend time with him, all he has to do is ask.
Except – except he does ask, Hizashi realizes. He asks and prompts and prods in a thousand subtle and less-than-subtle ways like he has for their entire friendship, like Hizashi always did, too, until he decided for some reason that it would be better for both of them if they stopped.
Why does he think that, really? The longer the thought lingers the more misguided it seems. If anybody he knew was thinking like this, he would emphatically tell them otherwise. He struggles to reconcile this new line of thinking with his old one.
“I thought,” Hizashi struggles to say, a whisper, “I thought – maybe –”
“What?” Oboro prompts weakly, through his tears.
He’s shaking now. A tremble from his core, like that day when he pulled Oboro from the rubble, bleeding and dirty like a corpse. “I thought you, um,” his voice wavers into a second octave. He’s dangling on the edge of crying, where it seeps into his voice and expression but his eyes stay glossy and his cheeks dry. Oboro approaches him, staff dragging along the dusty ground and leaving a line in the sand behind him. Hizashi watches his feet, starts picking his nails, and slams his hands together in a death grip in front of himself to stop. “I thought you didn’t like me, anymore, or something, I don’t know. Or that you like Aizawa more?”
Oboro stills. He sniffs harshly before he speaks. “You – what?”
“I mean, just because you guys are always together now?” He whispers. “And I’m pretty sure Aizawa hates me. Which is fine, because not everybody has to like me. But it still hurts? Because I wanted to be his friend even before you two were, and I tried really hard.” Finally the thread holding him up snaps, and he tumbles downward into a precipice of tears. He squeezes his hands together hard. “And after you got hurt, you seemed happiest when Aizawa was around. Aizawa was right back to how he was before, too, at school. I just make things awkward. So I thought…”
He trails off, throat clicking, but he can’t talk anymore. Oboro’s face is open and grieved, his staff hanging limply from his loose fist. They make eye contact briefly through the cracked lenses of Hizashi’s glasses, and Hizashi coughs out a sob, presses his palms into his face, and weeps like a child.
Oboro’s staff clatters harmlessly to the ground. They’re both crying, and Oboro tugs him into a hug that Hizashi melts into. He sobs into Oboro’s shirt and Oboro’s hand tangles into his hair. Neither of them realize the crowd they’ve collected, that when Hizashi felt the world freeze, the rest of the class did, too, if at a lesser degree.
Spark-sensei approaches them, and they only part when a hand is placed on both of their shoulders, respectively. Hizashi takes one look at the expression on his face and ducks his head from the sympathy there. His ears burn with heat, and he wishes he could hide in the safety of Oboro’s arms, again.
Just as he thinks that, the back of Oboro’s hand presses against his, tentatively.
“Boys, go to Recover Girl,” he tells them, leaving no room for argument, as if either of them would bother with it in the first place. Then, he turns to the class at large, and yells, “And all of you! Get to work!”
Hizashi, with the attention lobbied away from them, glides his hands along Oboro’s and twists it outward. He rests their fingertips together, and Oboro takes the final step, intertwining their fingers. He tugs Hizashi away from the dusty field.
As the distance between them and the field grows, Hizashi’s tears spring up again, full force. He slows to a stop and Oboro turns to look at him.
“I cracked your glasses,” Oboro says softly, apologetically.
Hizashi takes them off and wipes his forearm over his eyes, hiccuping, “Fuck the stupid glasses,” and Oboro’s chin dimples as he falls into the grief, too.
They hug again. This time, they’re not split apart, and the surreal silence of the hallway while classes are happening leaves them floaty, separate from the rest of the world.
Once they’ve quieted into soft, tired breaths, Hizashi rests his freezing hand against the back of Oboro’s neck. He inhales sharply, and then relaxes – his face always burns up when he cries.
“That feels nice,” he whispers.
“I’m sorry,” Hizashi tells him, before he forgets to. Oboro shifts his head slightly where it’s resting on Hizashi’s shoulder, and Hizashi takes it as a signal to continue. “You’re my best friend, too,” and what he means is, I love you. Just to be safe, though, for once in his life, he says what he means. “I love you, man. And I just – I want you to be happy, and –” his voice tapers off, the threat of tears rising again.
Oboro untangles them so he can look at Hizashi properly. Hizashi’s hands fall away, seeing what Oboro will do. He grips one shoulder and uses his other hand to rest against Hizashi’s cheek, supporting the weight of his tired head. With eyes bloodshot and puffy, snot threatening to dribble from his nose, he tells Hizashi a truth that Hizashi has always wanted to hear and that Oboro knows more than he knows anything, “I am always, always , happiest with you.”
Hizashi lets out a wail that shocks a wet laugh from Oboro, and they gravitate together into another embrace, swaying on their feet, rocking each other like babies in a cradle.
Recovery Girl fixes them up easily.
Oboro decides that going home early would be a best bet, though. He calls Kei, since her work is known to be more flexible than Kumo’s, and she comes to get him.
It’s more complicated for Hizashi, though. Yes, he’s on his own, but through technicality he’s the responsibility of the state at least during school hours, meaning that they can’t just let him leave. Kei doesn’t have legal jurisdiction, either, so he’s out of luck.
Oboro asks him to come to his house after school. Hizashi promises.
They wait together for Kei to arrive. When she sees them, she’s surprised for only an instant, and then it smooths into something understanding and fond.
Hizashi and Oboro hug once more in goodbye, squeezing tightly, and he retreats to the car. Hizashi has to squint a little at the distance because his glasses are in his pocket, but he catches the wave sent his way, and he returns it easily.
After that, he makes his way slowly back to 2-A’s classroom. Technically, he was supposed to be waiting there instead of out front, but he’s pretty sure Recovery Girl will let this little discrepancy slide.
He takes a detour to the bathroom. There’s a first year at the sink who takes one look at him and bolts. It’s not hard to see why.
He’s covered in blood. He’d gotten tissues and wipes from Recovery Girl, but they can only do so much for him. He’ll have to get a new gym uniform.
He hasn’t looked this tired in a while. Hizashi is lucky in that, instead of getting bags, he develops purple rings. Those, at least, can be hidden with a bit of makeup – as long as Hizashi gets up early enough to apply it, which he most certainly has not been doing.
He washes his face and looks up again. The spirals of his eyes stare back at him, and it makes him a little dizzy. He sighs and leaves, taking another detour to the changing rooms, which he realizes now he probably should have done first.
Once he’s back in his regular U.A. uniform, a fresh coat of deodorant on and wearing his plain frame, clear lens backups, he makes his ways back to 2-A’s classroom. He feels ghostly, wandering through the empty halls, sunlight falling against the floor in blocks from the tall windows.
He closes the door once he enters. Alone in the space, the silence of it swaddles him. He considers putting his headphones on and listening to music – he’s taken his backpack with him from the changing rooms – but decides against it. All he’s done these past days is listen to music. The silence feels nice.
He sits at his desk in the far corner. The sunlight from the window is warm; he presses the knuckles of his hands against it from a moment, like a lizard on hot stone, and pulls back with a soft smile. The clouds inch across the sky, and he lets his sleepiness consume him, folding his forearms into a pillow and putting his head down.
He doesn’t know how long it is until he hears the door slide smoothly open. Usually, something as small as that probably wouldn’t wake him, but he wasn’t fully asleep. He’d been hovering in a doze aided by the gentle heat and light from the window. He raises his head.
“Hi,” Hizashi says softly. Aizawa presses his lips thin, and glances away, looking through the window at the afternoon sunlight. It slips into the empty classroom in a dreamy haze.
Without saying anything, he walks down the row, passing barren desk after barren desk, and finally stops beside Hizashi’s. Hizashi watches raptly as he sets his bag down and takes the only seat next to him, to his right.
Aizawa answers gruffly, “Hi.” They both fall silent, and Hizashi looks down at the grooves in his own desk to avoid eye contact. He loosens the folded pillow of his arms to free a hand, and he traces down the faint lines.
“Shouldn’t you be training right now?” Hizashi asks.
“I went to the bathroom,” is the response. Hizashi replies with a quiet ‘ah’ of understanding, and then silence falls again.
“I-” Aizawa starts. Hizashi glances up, and Aizawa’s mouth is closed. He swallows and meets Hizashi’s gaze, bracing himself. The entire situation is ripe with tension. “I heard what you said. Some of it, at least. About me.”
Hizashi smiles a little awkwardly, but it falls away almost instantly, without anything to buoy it. “Right.”
“I don’t,” Aizawa rushes to say, “hate you. I don’t.”
“Right,” Hizashi echoes, but it comes out harsher this time, almost mean. Aizawa’s face twists with frustration, but Hizashi doesn’t see it, turning his attention back to the table. He picks at a rough fingernail edge. “Look, man, it’s okay. You’re friends with Oboro, and that’s cool. Oboro’s cool. You don’t have to – pretend. You’re allowed to not like me.” He chuckles wryly, to himself more than Aizawa. “I’ll live.”
“Except I do,” spits Aizawa, and the vigor with which he says it surprises Hizashi into looking up again. Aizawa is pinning him with that severe, pinpoint stare, and Hizashi freezes under its intensity. He slowly lowers his hands to his laps and tries not to fidget. “I do like you. You’re just – a lot.”
“A lot,” parrots Hizashi. It makes his lips twitch. “Understatement of the century,” he jokes, and to his surprise Aizawa reacts. His stare softens and he looks away, pulling back, seeming almost embarrassed, and Hizashi wonders for the first time if he even realizes that he looks at Hizashi so intensely. It could be unintentional, a terrible case of resting bitch face, for all he knows. The thought leaves him breathless, hope suddenly fluttering in his chest.
“Give me a break,” he breathes, but it’s airy, inching tentatively toward lighthearted. “This is hard.”
“Tell me about it,” Hizashi mumbles. That earns him a curve in Aizawa’s lips; almost a smile, but not quite.
It’s silent for a few moments, the two of them basking in this careful reach, the shaky foundations building bridges over a gap they’ve never managed to cross. Aizawa breaks it, bluntly. “You’re loud.”
“Oboro’s loud,” Hizashi huffs, smiling. It’s a knee-jerk protest to Aizawa’s logic, because all this talk about himself is a bit unnerving.
“It’s different with you,” argues Aizawa.
Hizashi replies easily, “I know,” because he does. Both of them are loud and extroverted, but there’s something inherently personable about Oboro that Hizashi lacks. Hizashi is an entertainer and a people pleaser. Oboro just loves, and he loves so much it makes people love him – it makes Hizashi love him, and it makes Aizawa love him, too. It’s no wonder that Aizawa was pulled toward him, given-
“No.” Aizawa shocks him from his thoughts. “You don’t. I don’t mean different as in worse. You’re – you’re larger than life. And everybody is drawn to you. And I think that scares me.” Hizashi is gawking, close-mouthed but wide-eyed, at the side of Aizawa’s face. He’s looking down and away, and what he says next seems to embarrass him further. “I only want you to like me. But I’m not the kind of person people like. I don’t really know – how to be somebody’s friend.” He’s blushing furiously now, but treks onward. “So I’ve been a really bad one to you, even though you’ve been a good one to me, especially when Oboro was recovering after – after. So. I’m sorry. For that.”
“Oh,” Hizashi says dumbly. “It’s okay.”
How much of this was him? Pushing people away, with some backwards excuse that it would be better this way, some idea that Aizawa was only bothering with him because of Oboro. He thinks back to the silent rooftop lunches while Oboro was getting better, remembers the pale dinosaur that guards over his room from his top shelf. It’s true that Aizawa hasn’t been a great friend; he’s often rude and standoffish and doesn’t know how to express himself. But he tried. And Hizashi – Hizashi was so caught up in his own head he couldn’t even see it.
Aizawa, having apparently said all he meant to, loses his frozen calm. He tucks some hair behind his ear and peeks at Hizashi from the corner of his eye – it’s terribly endearing. Hizashi’s heart is soaring, and finally his face catches up. It splits with a smile so strong his cheeks squish and distort his vision, but if he doesn’t smile he thinks that his chest will burst.
Aizawa chances another glimpse of him. The sight of Hizashi’s plain joy and relief is infectious and, without thinking about it, a matching goofy smile creeps up his face. He presses his lips tightly and ducks his head on instinct, trying to suppress it, but there’s no point. Aizawa had forgotten, with Hizashi’s inner turmoil as of late, how wonderful it is to be around Hizashi when he is happy. The world has never seemed so simple and bright.
“I feel silly now,” Hizashi laughs.
“It’s not your fault,” replies Aizawa.
“Not all of it,” Hizashi agrees. “But I wasn’t the best, either.”
Aizawa accedes, “Maybe.” They’re both quiet again, going over the last months thoughtfully in their own heads. Aizawa starts haltingly, “We can – fix it? Start over. If…” he stares over at Hizashi, uncertainty twisting his mouth.
“Yeah.” Hizashi nods eagerly, looking into the middle distance, thoughtful. “Yeah, we can. I’d like that.”
He gathers his courage and in a split second, whips around in his chair to face Aizawa head-on. His legs swing into the aisle and the sun blankets over his back, framing his silhouette with a halo. Sticking out a hand and dipping his head, eyes peeking over the rim of his glasses, he grins. “Hi. I’m Yamada Hizashi, but…” breathe in, take the plunge. “But… you can call me Hizashi, if you want. Friends?”
Aizawa studies him. The remnants of his smile, a soft, gentle thing, now, play in the glint of his eyes. They join hands in a clumsy gesture almost like a handshake, but more than that it’s the bridge of that gap. They have a long way to go, but it’s a start. Aizawa’s hand is raw with developing calluses and they fit strangely, proportions entirely different, but it’s good. It’s nice.
“Friends,” mirrors Aizawa sincerely. “It’s good to know you, Hizashi. You can call me Shōta.” Then, quieter, “Your hands are really cold.”
Hizashi laughs, because he’s numb to it and to him, Shōta’s hands are a furnace.