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“Tonight I wanna start off the music countdown with a little track I find goes really well with a beer or two at your favorite bar. Whoever you are, out there in the cool breezy evening, enjoying just that? This one's for you.”
Those are the lines that start it.
Shouta always does his best to listen to Hizashi’s radio show. Friday evening is when he grades quizzes, so it’s the perfect background noise anyway. He also knows how important the show is to Hizashi. Of his three jobs, it’s the least paying, given that he only hosts once a week and DJ’s on an event basis by invite—also given that UA has the highest teacher pay rate of almost any school in Japan. But it’s something he’s deeply passionate about.
He loves music. He loves inspiring people. He loves being heard. His radio show is a place where he can have everything that brings him joy all in one place, and it’s a pleasure to hear him having fun each week.
It’s a Friday, about a month after Shouta and Hizashi sat at the bar and Hizashi confessed about his relationship with Shinya Kamihara and asked Shouta for advice. Two weeks later, Hizashi came to his apartment, a giggling, fumbling, overjoyed mess , because he and Kamihara had apparently resolved their problems.
The Lurkers were off on a two weeks mission overseas shortly afterward, and it’s the Friday after their return.
“ I'll be the first to admit I'm not the best at this romance business. Believe it or not, this guy hasn't been in love as often as people think. But someone's reached out through the aether to remind me that ‘romance done properly, is when it works for both you and your partner’, and I gotta say, that much I agree with ."
It doesn’t take expert analysis for Shouta to conclude that Hizashi is vaguely referring to Kamihara on air as he discusses romance. It is surprising, given that he’s never done something of the sort before, but that seems in line with the things he’s told Shouta. This isn’t a fling. He’s trying to make it work. He’s trying to love someone else. Kamihara is his partner, his boyfriend, his exclusive romantic interest, and he may very well be falling in love.
The more he talks about him—carefully at first, and always gauging Shouta’s reactions—the more Shouta believes that this may not be a whim after all.
He’s happy for him. He’s not sure he’s ever seen him this sincerely happy before. Superficially happy, sure. But this joy he’s carrying like a ball of sunshine in his chest exceeds any performative grin.
It’s…a relief. His attention on Kamihara means that there have been no awkward conversations where Hizashi’s resentment and unrequited romantic love hang over them. Nor does Shouta feel the heavy shame of his inability to give Hizashi what he needs, nor the pressure to do so. Kamihara relieves that burden, leaving Hizashi and Shouta the freedom to just…be friends again. Best friends. The way they used to be, the way they should be.
Something is healing. Something he didn’t know was broken. It’s not perfect. They still snap at each other. Hizashi still pushes him into conversations he doesn’t want to have. He still finds him occasionally staring at him with that look of longing, resigned and sorrowful. They miscommunicate. They struggle. But something is healing.
And then. The radio calls.
“Put your hands UP, caller, you are live on air! What can I do ya for?”
There’s a pause, the caller clearly a first timer or starstruck by the fact that their call was selected. As much as Shouta hates the very idea of hearing his voice live on air, he has to admit that getting a call through on Zashi’s show is a big deal. But after a moment, they speak. The voice is level and quiet, composed, but there’s a hint of something that’s almost playful. Shouta isn’t sure how he can tell, perhaps because he himself is so often accused of being monotone when in fact people just don’t know how to listen.
“I have a request,” they say, “for a song I’ve found myself craving for a few weeks now. It isn’t often played on the air, these days.”
“Well, you’ve come to the right place, caller, is it for a special someone?”
“Very special,” the voice agrees. “Ramblin’ Man, by the Allman Brothers, please.”
There’s a silence as Zashi takes the request in, before his breath filters through the microphone and turns into a purring little laugh. Shouta knows that sound, he knows the expression Hizashi wears when he makes it. And he knows that that song was one Hizashi used to hum often when he studied for exams, trained in the ring, prepared for the school festival…
It’s one of his favorite songs, a song that he claims radiates through his bones because he, too, is ‘ramblin’ in all the possible ways the word can be interpreted.
Shouta didn’t recognize the caller’s voice before this. Few likely would. Like Shouta, he’s not a fan of the spotlight, and the mask he wears often muffles his tones when in hero costume. But he knows, as soon as he hears the specific request and Hizashi’s pleased, answering laugh, that the caller is Shinya Kamihara.
“You got it, little listener,” Hizashi says, and his tone is nothing like its usual, loud, radio presence. It more closely resembles his regular speech, but with a tenderness along the edges, soft and affectionate. “A special song for a special listener, comin’ right up.”
Shouta’s lip twitches with the hint of a smirk. So, that’s how it is. The two love-bitten adult men are in the boyish state of teasing and blushes. Enough so to make them deaf to the world around them, like…
Like how Oboro always chose Shouta as his partner for any class activity, unaware and uncaring about classmates' looks or the teacher’s raised brow. School be damned, the fidgety and giddy need to be near each other whenever and however possible always took priority.
He closes his eyes and breathes out a slow sigh before pinching his temples. Suddenly, he feels a headache coming on, and decides to turn off the radio before the song can play.
He’s pleased though. Glad that Hizashi sounds so much softer these days. Glad that he’s having fun with someone—someone who can truly make him happy in a way that Shouta can’t.
Good for him, he thinks. Good for him.
Summer rolls in with the enormous clouds that herald the annual deluge, and Shouta finds himself growing sullen, as usual.
Summer has always been a time of year Shouta hasn’t ever enjoyed. Too hot, too sticky, needing to wear clothes that showed too much skin or too much color or too much in general. He was a kid who wore trousers throughout the year and refused to wear open toed anything even when it was permitted. No, Shouta liked to keep everything quite literally close to the chest, and summer made that difficult.
But after…
After that…
It’s another Friday, his windows are flung open to let in whatever breeze shows mercy enough to stop by. Two cats are lounging on the sills, belly-up, dozing, and Hizashi’s voice is a smooth hum through the speakers at Shouta’s side.
He’s playing old rock classics this evening, a frequently requested segment on his show since most people who listen quite literally grew up with Hizashi on air; many are their friends from school, some are people close in age from different schools… Hizashi has a way about him that makes people want to listen, Shouta isn’t even sure it’s quirk related, it’s just the way he is. Kind, understanding, gentle…
Another call comes in, same low voice, same calm demeanor, and Shouta lowers the volume so as not to hear what he asks for and how happily Hizashi complies.
It isn’t jealousy, Shouta has sat with this feeling a long time trying to parse it out, wondering if something was awakening in him that he didn’t know was there. But no, it isn’t the pang of jealousy he’s felt before, around Oboro. No, this is something else. Something that stirs in the depths of the same ocean he’s too scared to swim in for more than the length of time it takes to hold his breath.
It’s a feeling of a strange sort of inadequacy, a feeling that asks why couldn’t you love him, when he’s kind and understanding and gentle? Why couldn’t you give him that, when he’s everything you enjoy in a person, all wrapped up for you?
He’s answered the question many times before: because it isn’t him.
Because he isn’t Oboro . And that’s not an inadequacy on Hizashi’s part. It’s just that…no matter how amazing Hizashi is, how kind, gentle, funny, objectively attractive, inspiring… No matter how purely lovable he is, Shouta simply… can’t.
If he could, maybe he could be the one calling in regularly now. Maybe he could evoke those tender giggles from Hizashi and that light in his eyes.
But he can’t. And not for lack of trying over more than a decade.
At least he has Kamihara now.
It’s the first time he has this thought when it’s not followed by relief. Instead, something new and acidic bubbles in his stomach. Something he can’t identify. Sharper and more feral than anything like jealousy.
No. I’m happy for him.
He suffocates the gurgling feeling, refuses to acknowledge or name it. Refuses to give it form.
Hizashi finally has what he needs. I’m happy for him.
Hizashi isn’t avoiding him anymore. He does spend a good amount of time on dates with Kamihara. And he does have a tendency to ramble endlessly about the man when they’re together. But he makes an effort to spend time with Shouta, eating lunches with him or showing up unannounced at his apartment. It’s an old, familiar comfort. It eases the weight of depression and soothes the strange bubbling of that unnamed emotion. The one that now seems to writhe and swish whenever he spends too long thinking about Shinya Kamihara.
It’s another Friday. He debates whether he wants to listen to Hizashi’s show tonight. The thought brings him a strange sense of trepidation that he can’t place. But there’s no rational reason not to listen, so he turns on the radio and goes about his normal routine.
The weekend coming is Zashi’s birthday, and while Shouta had initially thought he’d blow off their tradition of celebrating his actual birthday in a quiet get together with the old school crew, Zashi had surprised them by making it clear nothing would change.
Traditions are traditions, yo, come on.
Apparently, a romantic dinner was in the works for later in the week, but… Hizashi’s desire to spend time with his friends did warm something in Shouta he can’t quite place, even still.
As has been another tradition every year, Hizashi opens up his calls on the Friday before his birthday for people to ask him anything on air. It’s been a riot before, never too over the top, and Zashi knows just how to wrangle in the more rowdy of his callers if they start something, so it’s easy listening for Shouta’s grading.
Easy enough listening, anyway. For the most part. Until:
“Mic-san! Don’t think we haven’t noticed how smitten you’ve been lately on air. We can tell! You sound so lovesick and sweet!”
Hizashi’s laugh is light, airy. “Yeah? Well shucks, what can I say?”
“Can you tell us who’s the special someone?”
Another laugh, and Hizashi hums, dragging out what feels like the inevitable bomb drop of this entire scenario. Shouta wonders if Kamihara is aware that his entire life is about to flipped head over ass with this caller, he wonders if maybe that’s something he’s prepared for, something they’ve even talked about—
“Just someone who’s managed to tie a ribbon around my heart,” Hizashi says casually. “That’s all the hints I’ll give ya, caller, what fun would it be if I just gave it away?”
After that, all the calls, in one way or another, ask Hizashi the same thing. Part of Shouta is annoyed on his behalf, but he can hear in Zashi’s voice that he’s enjoying the teasing, the playful banter. Never once does he give more than an inch, and even in that inch he gives the most convoluted clues. Shouta wonders if he’d be able to guess himself, if he didn’t already know.
International man of mystery… think James Bond.
Wit like a papercut.
Samurai standards.
Worth the effort.
In the end, no one manages to guess correctly—though several people suggest Shouta, as they always do—and Hizashi closes out the show at the usual time with another joyful holler of his show name and the last song of the night.
Shouta’s got his head buried in the nest of his arms by then, quizzes making him dizzy and the overwhelming surge of that hateful emotion after the Q+A roiling through his gut like a disease. A message hums through his phone and he slips the thing into his little arm cave and opens one eye to read it.
“Shelter an overworked idiot from the storm?”
Shouta’s lips twitch and he replies that Zashi is welcome to come over any time. This is followed immediately by messages from Nemuri and Tensei asking to do the same, and somehow the venue for Hizashi’s birthday is decided to be Shouta’s apartment. Nothing’s ready, but it doesn’t matter. The best part about birthday traditions is that the people they spend them with don’t need anything prepared, or anything at all.
They stay up way too late, or too early, and drink to Zashi’s health as the dawn rises outside the windows. Then they sleep, all of them, tangled in a nest of pillows and blankets like they’re still sixteen, like nothing else matters.
It’s less than one week before…
It’s never easy, but this year… Maybe because Shouta dared to open the Pandora’s box of memories. Maybe because he’s been thinking of Oboro more than he’s allowed himself to in a long time. Whatever the reason, the yearly dread of the upcoming date feels heavier than it has in a long time.
It’s a bad day. He asked Vlad to cover his classes for him. He can’t bring himself to get out of bed because…because he dreamed of him.
That first kiss. His only first kiss. Rain soaking their hair and clothes. Oboro’s lips smiling against his mouth. Sweet, breathless laughter.
“You’re so cute.”
He doesn’t want to get out of bed. He doesn’t want to wake up. He wants to stay there in that moment for a lifetime. Forever.
But he can’t.
Eventually, the dull, painful throb of depression begins to feel grating. He decides he can’t stay in his own thoughts after all. It’s the lunch hour, and he decides to swallow his pride and find Hizashi. Maybe…he’ll ask him to eat on the roof. They don’t have to talk. He doesn’t think he can. But having the comfort of his best friend might be the only thing that can pull him from this darkness.
He makes his way to campus in a dissociated haze. The sound of the locusts in the trees is all he can hear. It’s the incessant rumble of thunder, too loud, too much.
He feels weak, legs moving through sludge as he walks toward the staff offices. He feels a little stronger, a little faster the closer he gets to his objective. To Hizashi.
Then, he hears it. Hizashi’s loud, overjoyed laughter, coming from a staff lounge up ahead. The door is partially opened, and that’s a relief. Shouta can slip inside and—
“You really come all this way to see lil ol’ me, handsome?” Hizashi asks, his voice delighted and teasing.
Shouta’s steps slow.
“I was in the neighborhood,” comes the response, a quiet voice Shouta now recognizes in an instant. “I can leave, if you’d prefer.”
“Hey, now, no one said I was complainin.’”
He reaches the door, hands stuffed in his pockets and a cold sweat budding beneath the collar of his shirt. Something tells him to turn. To leave. To run.
That’s irrational, though. Hizashi is his friend. He has nothing against Kamihara, either. There’s no reason to flee. No reason for that horrible, bubbling acid to rise in his stomach.
He peeks through, reaching for the handle to walk inside, but then he’s frozen.
Their arms are wrapped around each other. Their eyes locked, barring them from the world, from the entire universe. And they kiss. Slow, sweet, Hizashi smiling against Kamihara’s lips, blushes coloring their cheeks.
Hizashi pulls back, just slightly, his eyes flicking back and forth between Kamihara’s.
“You’re so cute.”
Just like that, something in Shouta breaks. That gurgling emotion ruptures, erupts, and he feels bile rise in his throat. The emotion screaming its name as it scrambles and thrashes in his throat and withers his tongue to ash.
Panic.
He steps back before he can draw attention to himself and blindly just… moves. Down the corridor to the nearest door, pulling it open and shoving himself inside amidst the mops and pails and sundry cleaning equipment. As deep as he can bury himself, as deep as the damn ocean depths want to pull him, because he’s done, he is done. It’s too much.
So Shouta screams, a whispered, choked, wheezed sound that barely registers to the human ear but that feels like shattering splinters in his chest. He screams and he sinks to the floor, hands over his head and teeth gritting so hard his jaw is on fire and he tries to disappear.
Tries to disappear from those smiles, that soft look, from the way their noses brushed together in that intimate little nuzzle. Tries to disappear from the rainy day, and the hot breath of the most beautiful boy in the world against his skin. Tries to disappear from the aching limbs, the smell of dust, the grit of earth between his teeth, the sounds of cracking concrete…
“You’re so cute, Shou,”
He wants to claw at his skin and get to the festering wounds beneath and bleed himself dry. He wants to cease to exist. He wants it to stop, to just stop, stop, stop, stop—
“Stop,” the voice is familiar, and gentle, and soft. “Shou, hey, listen to me, you gotta stop doing that buddy, you’re gonna hurt yourself,”
Warm hands, familiar smooth and elegant hands are wrapped around his wrists and it’s only then that Shouta realizes that he’s been clawing at his scalp, pulling at his hair, so tense his muscles are burning. And he’s still screaming, that terrifying haunting not-sound he can’t quite voice.
His vision is tinted red, and even through that, Hizashi is looking at him with that soft smile of comfort, that familiar gentle gaze.
“Hey, there you are,” Hizashi’s voice sounds raspy, and it occurs to Shouta that it’s because he’s activated his quirk and he’s hurting him. He blinks rapidly, and Hizashi shuffles closer, still holding his wrists, but now in one hand, as the other comes up to soothe his hair off his forehead where it’s stuck down to clammy cold sweat. “There you go, hey Shou, you know who I am yeah?”
Shouta wants to cling to him. He wants to grasp at his only lifeline in the storm. At the same time, he feels sick. He feels worse with Hizashi here. Here? Where is he, even?
“mfine,” he tries. His mouth doesn’t even part with the words. He tries to thrash away. Hizashi gently releases him, but stays close, hands at the ready to touch him again if he needs to. To stop him.
“Shouta, I’m here, okay? Take as long as you need, pal, I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
“You should,” Shouta hisses, something wild and terrified rising in him like the snarling of a feral cat. “Go! I’m fine! Fuck off, Hizashi! Go be with him, leave me alone .”
“Not gonna do that, buddy,” Hizashi says, gently, so gently. “That the problem? You saw Shinya here? He was on his way out, Shou. Already gone when I heard shit falling in here. I’m right here. I’m with you. And I’ll sit here with you in this broom closet for hours if I have to, til you talk to me or you let me get you out of here.”
Shouta shakes, puts his head in his hands, and starts to sob. “Leave,” he commands. “Just leave.”
You’re leaving anyway.
I see it.
One step at a time, leaving me.
For him.
For your Oboro.
And I have nothing.
Not Oboro.
Not you.
“You’re gonna go, you’re just gonna go and you’ll be right to,” Shouta’s voice tastes of pain, just rust and grit and anguish. “You’d be right to, I never gave you anything, I never gave you anything you wanted, why would you stay?”
Hizashi’s brows furrow and he sits closer, ignoring the quite literal angry cat yowling sound Shouta makes at the encroachment on his space.
And then he hugs him.
He hugs him gently enough that Shouta can pull away if he absolutely has to, but still securely enough that Shouta lets his head drop against Hizashi’s shoulder and weeps. Messy, ugly, hiccuping sobs that make his nose run and his eyes tear and his lips stretch in a grimace of agony. He brings his own arms up and he clings to his friend, his best friend, the only one who actually understands, who could even come close to knowing how this feels…
“He’s gone,” he whimpers. “He’s gone, Zashi, he’s gone and I’ll never see him again, I’ll never hold him again, he’s just gone….”
He’s never let himself drop this far, has never let himself open up these floodgates to let the stagnant, reeking waters of his pain free. But now they’re flowing, overflowing, and surging through every atom in Shouta’s being, pulling him this way and that like a raging storm, and he can’t stop crying. He can’t stop sobbing and clinging to Hizashi and Hizashi holds him back, just as tightly, just as desperately, and he lets him cry.
He doesn’t say anything, he just lets Shouta cry. For the first time in as long as he can remember, Shouta does.
And Hizashi… Loud, talkative Hizashi…is mercifully silent. For clusters of minutes. Hours? Until Shouta’s choking sobs are whimpers and his trembling body feels tiny, weak, broken.
“Shou,” he finally murmurs gently, “you think you can walk? I wanna get you somewhere you can lay down and drink some water. I can make you some tea. We can spend the rest of the day together. The night, too. I’m here, Shou. I’m not goin’ anywhere. Let’s get you patched up, buddy.”
Shouta doesn’t have the strength to argue, so he nods. He nods and he lets Hizashi help him up, and he leans most of his weight on him like he’s just come out of a full battle with a whole pack of villains. Maybe he has; he’s hated emotions almost as much as he hates the villains they fight every damn day.
He allows himself to be led into the same room he remembers confronting Hizashi in, weeks—months?—ago now, and sinks into the first chair he feels against the back of his knees. And then he closes his eyes and just… sits.