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Like so many other Friday nights, it starts with the two of them sitting on a rooftop, legs dangling over the edge, looking down on the city—Aizawa Shōta and Yamada Hizashi, known by their hero names as Eraserhead and Present Mic, out on patrol, waiting for something to happen. It’s the middle of July. Tanabata was last week and everything’s been quiet since then. Tugging his capture weapon away from his neck to try to cool off, Aizawa wonders if it’s quiet because people got what they wished for, or in spite of that. Do villains even bother going to celebrate festivals?
“Hey,” Yamada says, nudging Aizawa’s feet with one of his own. “You’re looking very serious over there. Something wrong?”
Aizawa blinks and turns to his friend. Yamada’s ridiculous hairstyle is drooping a little with the humidity of the night, and he’s unzipped his leather jacket, leaning back with his arms stretched behind him, weight on his palms. “No,” Aizawa says. “Just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Tanabata.”
“Oh yeah?” Yamada asks, and shoots him a grin. “Did your wish come true?”
“I didn’t make one.”
“What? Seriously?” Yamada sits up and twists to look at Aizawa. “Is it because I got too distracted to pester you into doing it?” he asks, lowering his tinted glasses to more properly glare at Aizawa. They’d been together that night—Tanabata, July 7th, was also his birthday, and he’d dragged Aizawa out for drinks and gotten increasingly shit-faced on cheap beer until they ended up sitting underneath a tree in Rikugien Gardens. Looking back on it, Yamada distinctly remembers Aizawa laughing at him for getting so drunk that he couldn’t even make it back to his new studio in Komagome without needing to take a break. He doesn’t mind it so much, really; he’s been in love with the sound of Aizawa’s laughter for years.
“Probably,” Aizawa admits, biting back a smile. Yamada huffs and rolls his eyes.
“Well, come on, then,” he says. “Tell me what you would’ve wished for.”
“I don’t know.” Aizawa thinks about it for a moment. “Sleep, I guess.”
“We’re supposed to be adults. How is it that you’re even more tired now than when we were students?” Yamada asks him. It’s been four years since they graduated from U.A., where Aizawa used to sleep in class on a daily basis. Aizawa’s twenty-one now, Yamada twenty-two as of last week. They’re both newly freed from the world of side-kicking; Aizawa’s given up the public eye to go underground while Yamada threw caution to the wind and struck out on his own as a pro hero, and technically they don’t work together but the long, hot nights of summer patrol are far better with company than without.
“Being an adult is tiring,” Aizawa says. He lies back flat on the warm concrete of the rooftop, hands under his head. It’s a cloudy night, the air around them close and still. Aizawa blows his hair out of his eyes and wonders if this will be the year that he finally gets a haircut.
Yamada laughs and lies back next to Aizawa, their elbows brushing. They’re meant to be looking at the streets, not the sky—though, he supposes, he could scream a villain out of the sky if need be—but there’s something comforting about this, side-by-side above the city, the two of them not even looking at each other, just there, together. Sometimes, Yamada thinks it’s easier to talk to Aizawa when they’re not looking at each other, and then he feels bad about it because for a guy with Aizawa’s quirk, looking at someone is second-nature. Instinctual. Necessary. It’s just that Yamada feels sort of pinned under Aizawa’s gaze sometimes, and then he can never get the words to come out right. Like this, staring up into the city lights reflecting off of low-hanging clouds and the haze of pollution in the air, it’s easier. He wriggles his shoulders into the concrete and sighs.
“What did you wish for?” Aizawa asks, after they’ve spent a minute or two in comfortable silence, listening to the traffic pass down below. His jumpsuit is sticking to his back. He’s taken to wearing it without a t-shirt underneath, anything to get some relief from the summer heat. It’s not working. This is meant to be the rainy season in Japan but it hasn’t rained in weeks, and there is no relief.
“I’m not telling you.”
“You asked me about my wish, so it’s only fair.”
“Because you didn’t make one!” Yamada protests. “If I tell you mine, it won’t come true.”
Aizawa scoffs, but only says, “Fine, have it your way,” and sits up to look out at the city again. It’s not as though he believes in wishes, so it doesn’t really matter.
Yamada stays where he is, breathing out in relief that Aizawa didn’t press for answers. That’s a conversation he’s not ready to have yet, now or possibly ever. He pushes himself up, brushes off the shoulders of his leather jacket, stretches. His hero outfit is definitely a compromise of fashion over function, in these summer months. Still, he can’t help it if he wants to look cool. Which, of course, he does.
Another minute or two passes in silence and Yamada’s just about to turn, to say something to Aizawa, some meaningless conversation-starter to pass the time, when there’s a shout and a scuffle from down below. “Show time,” Yamada says instead, and spins the dial on his directional speaker, raising the frequency. He looks to Aizawa, one eyebrow raised, and pushes off the roof. As he falls he hears Aizawa swear at him, but then there’s the strong jolt of Aizawa’s capture weapon around his waist, the familiar swish of Aizawa’s nylon-blend jumpsuit. They fall together, swinging into an arc when Aizawa throws his capture weapon around a telephone pole to slow their descent. He lets Yamada go first and Yamada hits the ground running, tripping over himself just a little bit before he gets his balance while behind him, Aizawa lands in a crouch.
“Stop being so flashy,” Aizawa says, pulling his weapon back, one still closed around it. He's put his goggles on.
“It’s my brand,” Yamada retorts, under his breath so he doesn’t blow out Aizawa’s hearing. “Ready?”
“Let’s go.”
A fight has broken out ahead of them. They’re in Ueno for the night, not far from the National Museum; police have been reporting heightened crime in the area and requested extra hero patrols, with the promised pay-out slightly higher than your average criminal capture. For Yamada, who’s only recently moved out into a place of his own and has higher utility bills than he knows what to do with, and Aizawa who never makes very much money working the underground, the potential reward was too great to pass up. And now here they are, running into a full-on street fight.
At first it’s just chaos. Aizawa ducks under an outstretched arm, catches a fist in his stomach, kicks someone’s legs out from under them. He can’t even tell who has a quirk, or what it might be. There’s someone crying, so they’re probably not a villain; Aizawa tries not to hit them. He can’t hear Yamada, figures it’s probably too much of a mess for Yamada’s quirk and fighting style which more or less relies on being able to shout at all the enemies at once until they fall over. Aizawa flings out his capture weapon, drops a couple of people to the ground to clear some space so he can see things a little more clearly.
In amongst the crowd there’s a tall man with a slightly manic grin, and four others wearing gas masks. One of them is carrying a sack over his shoulders, another one has what looks like the metal pole from a street-sign in his hands. Aizawa throws his capture weapon forward, yanks him off his feet. The metal pole clatters to the ground but one of the others picks it up and advances on Aizawa. Behind him the grinning man is saying something, words Aizawa doesn’t quite catch—he’s too busy dodging the stop sign being swung at his head. Aizawa ducks and hears Yamada’s voice whistling past his head, loud but not nearly as loud as it must be in the man’s face, focused in tightly by Yamada’s directional speakers. Yamada’s voice stops the attacker in his tracks and Aizawa kicks him for good measure, moving onto the next.
“I’ve got this, get the other one!” Aizawa yells, pointing vaguely in the direction of the grinning man, who seems to be the leader of the group. He sees the bright flash of Yamada’s hair run past as he grapples with one of the men in gas masks, hears the thud of a punch and winces. Yamada’s never been great at hand-to-hand combat. Aizawa gets an arm around the man’s neck, kicks out his knees and holds him for long enough to dig out a roll of capture tape one-handed out of his utility belt and bind the man’s wrists behind his back. Someone grabs his arm and Aizawa twists, feels his shoulder strain as he fights against the third henchman’s grip. The fourth one has dropped his sack in the street—they’ve clearly stolen something, but at least the civilians caught up in the brawl seem to have gotten away—and is advancing on Aizawa, claws pushing forth from his fingers. Finally, a visible quirk. Aizawa glares at him and stops the transformation with Erasure, and then the man twisting his arm pushes him to the ground and he loses eye-contact, the hard plastic of his goggles scraping against the street. He hears Yamada yelling, twice—a high, surprised shout with an edge to it that turns Aizawa’s stomach, and then the more familiar sound of “YEAH!” at top-volume, Present Mic’s signature take-down.
Aizawa wrenches himself out of the man’s grip just it time to avoid getting impaled on the other man’s claws; they catch him on the arm as he rolls out of reach, hands up over his face. Yamada yells again and the two men stagger back, hit by a wall of sound. They go down, and don’t get up.
Yamada dials his speakers back to their normal volume and tries to keep the worry out of his voice as he calls out, “Hey, Eraser! You all right?” He jogs over, reaches out a hand to Aizawa.
“I’m fine, Mic,” Aizawa says, and grits his teeth as he lets Yamada pull him to his feet. His shoulder hurts, his arm burns where the man’s claws grazed him, and his face stings from the asphalt. His ears are ringing a little, too, like they always do when Yamada yells just a bit too closely. But the five villains are all caught, either knocked out or tied up, so any collateral damage to his own skin is negligible. They did the job, and they’ll get paid for it. Aizawa can eat dinner for the week without worrying. He glances at the man with the claws just to make sure the villain’s arms aren’t in a position where he might be able to cut himself free, and then turns back to Yamada. “You all right?”
“Yeah!” Yamada flashes a thumbs-up. He’s breathing hard and his stomach hurts a little where the villain hit him, but he’s more or less fine. More fine than Aizawa, at any rate, except Aizawa’s frowning at him which is never a good sign.
“I heard you shout,” Aizawa says.
Yamada frowns back. “I always shout,” he says.
“Not like that. Did you get hit?”
“Ah, yeah.” Yamada ducks his head, sheepish. “You know how you’re always telling me I should spar with you more? Maybe I’ll finally take you up on that. Learn how to block properly.”
“Hah.” Aizawa pulls his phone out of one of the pouches on his belt and taps in his hero network code. “You should. Not tonight, though. It’s too damn hot. Let’s call this in and go home, I want a shower.”
“Same. That one over there”—Yamada jerks his thumb over his shoulder to where the leader of the villains is unconscious on the street—“threw some kind of powder at me. It’s going to be a pain in the ass to wash out of my clothes, not to mention my hair.”
“Powder?” Aizawa asks.
“Yeah, I guess he thought it would distract me or something. I think he was throwing it at the civilians, too.”
Aizawa lowers his phone. “Those henchmen are wearing gas masks,” he points out. “So whatever that powder was, it’s probably dangerous. We should get you to the hospital.”
“I feel fine!”
“It could be a delayed reaction.”
“No, it smells more like pollen than anything else. He was probably just trying to make me sneeze. Which would have gone badly for him because little does he know, even Present Mic’s sneezes can be a weapon.” Yamada turns back to look at the villain as he speaks. There’s a little cloud of golden dust around the man, and sure enough, some of the onlookers are sneezing. He rubs at his nose, smoothes out his mustache—a recent addition to his look—and turns back to Aizawa. “Seriously, Eraser, don’t worry about it. I’m more concerned about you. Your arm’s bleeding, you know.”
“It’s just a scratch.”
“Yeah, OK, tough guy. But you’re going to let me clean that scratch up, because who knows when that man last washed his hands?”
Aizawa snorts and lifts his phone again, sends out an alert to the local police that the heroes Eraserhead and Present Mic have detained five villains and are requesting a pick-up. “Fine,” he says. “We can go back to my place, it’s closer.”
“Can I use your shower?”
“Only if you clean the drain afterwards.”
Yamada groans and slumps his shoulders, being dramatic and exaggerating it just a little, just enough to see the corners of Aizawa’s mouth tilt up in a smile. “You have long hair too, you know,” he says, pouting.
“Not nearly as long as yours. And I’ve been thinking of cutting mine, anyway.” Aizawa pushes his fingers through his hair, tugs it back from his sweaty forehead. It really is a pain, having it this long in the summer.
“What?” Yamada yelps. “No! You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I—” Yamada bites his tongue, because he can’t say what he wants to say. Can’t even think about it, because with his luck he’ll ruin it and let the words slip out somehow. “Because it would ruin your brand,” he says instead. Aizawa just scoffs at him.
“Yamada, unlike you, I don’t have a brand. Underground heroes don’t have ‘brands,’ ” Aizawa says, making air quotes with his hands.
“You could.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Oh.” Yamada goes quiet then. They drag all the villains into a pile, tying the unconscious ones’ wrists with capture tape just to be safe, and sit down on the curb to wait for the police.
It doesn’t take long. When the officers come, one of them takes their statement while the rest haul the villains into a police van. Aizawa gets his capture weapon back and winds it around his neck again with some reluctance, leaving it looser than usual in a vain effort not to trap heat. Yamada’s always done a better job at talking to people after a villain take-down so he handles most of the questions, brushing off the officer’s concern about the powder even when Aizawa makes him mention it.
“We’ll call you with any developments,” the officer finally says, putting away his notebook.
“And the payment?” Aizawa asks. Yamada elbows him in the side and Aizawa knows it’s not a tactful question, but it’s hot and he’s tired, and broke.
“It will be wired to your accounts,” the officer says. “Tomorrow afternoon, at the latest.”
“Good,” Aizawa says.
“Thank you for your hard work.” The police officer bows and then they’re left alone, watching the tail-lights of the police van disappear around the corner, just two sweaty heroes standing in the street, a little bruised, a little hungry.
“Let’s go,” Aizawa says, and heads off for the metro station without looking over his shoulder to see whether Yamada’s following him or not.
Yamada, of course, follows. His skin itches and he wants to take his jacket off, but then he’d probably get pollen everywhere, so he dusts himself off as best he can before they get onto a train heading north on the Yamanote loop. It’s only two minutes to the stop nearest Aizawa’s apartment and it would almost make more sense to walk—the train is packed, everyone overheated and miserable—but even a little bit more physical exertion than absolutely necessary is too much right now. Neither of them want to walk, and the air quality is terrible anyway. Yamada gets wedged in between Aizawa at his front and some stranger at his back and as much as it puts him on his guard, he knows that it’s better him than Aizawa, who’s never been comfortable with people behind him. Except, apparently, Yamada. Aizawa relaxes back into him a little, shoulders loose with exhaustion, and Yamada swallows at the feeling of Aizawa’s body pressing against his and tries to think about other things.
It’s quieter at Aizawa’s station, the older neighbourhood awash in soft yellow light, the sound of cicadas, fans humming from open windows. Yamada’s mouth is dry as they walk the few blocks to Aizawa’s apartment—a single room on the second floor of an older-style row house that, up until recently, the two of them had shared together. Fanning himself with the collar of his jacket as they walk up the steps, Yamada briefly laments the fact that while his new studio out in Komagome has an air-conditioner, this place does not.
They drop their boots and hero gear in the entryway, and Yamada peels off his leather jacket to hang it off one of the hooks along the wall. It’s a good thing they’re getting paid tomorrow, he thinks, because he’s going to need to get it professionally cleaned. He sort of wants to take off his pants, too—it’s not as if Aizawa’s never seen him without pants before—but it feels different now that this isn’t his apartment anymore. For a moment he wonders why he even moved out, and then reminds himself that he needed space to work on his music, and that he’s closer to the radio station now, and that if he’s never going to work up the courage to ask Aizawa out it’s probably not doing either of them any favours to keep living together. Or to be pantsless around each other. Yamada sighs and steps up into the apartment, follows Aizawa into the kitchen.
Aizawa has no such qualms, apparently, as he’s stripped back the top of his jumpsuit and it’s hanging around his waist, leaving his chest bare. He pulls a pitcher of barley tea out of the fridge and pours them each a glass, pressing his to his forehead for a moment before taking a sip. Yamada watches his throat work, studies the fading bruise over Aizawa’s stomach from a villain take-town a few days ago.
The taste of the tea is sharply cold against his dry throat and Aizawa drains the glass in one go, then pours himself another one.
“You actually made tea?” Yamada asks. “A whole pitcher? Wait, since when do you even own a pitcher? Did you go to the home store without me?”
“No,” Aizawa says. “Nakamura-san from downstairs brought it over the other day. I guess she thought I needed looking after.”
“You do,” Yamada laughs. “I knew it was only a matter of time before the neighbours started trying to feed you once I moved out.”
“I can feed myself.” Aizawa lowers his glass to his chest, holds it there, breathing out in relief at the feeling of cool glass against hot skin.
“Speaking of, do you have anything to eat?” Yamada asks, struggling to look away from where the condensation on the glass has mixed with sweat and is running down Aizawa’s chest. He takes another sip of tea against the sudden flush of heat he feels on his face. “I’m starving.”
“We can order something if you call.”
“Why do I have to call?”
“Because I hate talking on the phone, and you don’t.”
“Fair.” Yamada finishes his tea and takes his phone out of his pocket, trying to ignore how tight his pants suddenly feel. It’s just because of how overheated he is, he reasons, and subtly shifts around so the kitchen counter is between him and Aizawa. Before he can pull up the number for their local take-out place, though, the phone rings. Not Yamada’s, which is silent in his hands, but Aizawa’s, still in one of the pouches on his belt.
Aizawa frowns and makes no move to answer it.
“Aren’t you going to get that?” Yamada asks, gesturing.
“No.”
“What if it’s important?”
“They can leave a message.”
“You never check your messages,” Yamada says, and before he can think better of it he leans across the counter and snags Aizawa’s belt, drags Aizawa closer until he can pull out the phone and pick up the call. “Hello, Present Mic’s answering service!” he greets, as Aizawa blinks at him. Dimly, it registers in Yamada’s mind that in some sense of the word, he’s just put his hand down Aizawa’s pants. He knows he should feel embarrassed about this but mostly he just wants to do it again, which is a problem.
“Ah— Present Mic?” comes the voice on the other end. “This is Officer Tsukauchi, with the Ueno Police Department. I was calling for Eraserhead but if the two of you are together, that actually makes things easier.”
“Yeah! We’re together.” Yamada’s voice is tight when he speaks and he licks his lips, tries to clear his throat. “You’ve got both of us,” he says, switching the phone to speaker mode. “What’s up?”
“We’ve been interrogating the villains you captured earlier tonight.”
“You guys work fast!”
“We’ve learned something about one of their quirks. The leader, the one without the gas mask. It’s, uh, it’s the reason the others all had gas masks, actually.” Tsukauchi’s voice sounds hesitant, and with every word he pauses on Aizawa grows more concerned. They’ve worked together a few times before and Tsukauchi isn’t someone Aizawa would have pegged as overly diplomatic.
“What are you trying to say?” Aizawa asks. “Get to the point. Do we need to get to a hospital, or what?”
“That— That is one option,” Tsukauchi says. “That golden powder you noticed at the scene, the one that Present Mic was hit with? It’s part of the villain’s quirk. He produces it, along with its effects.”
“So it’s not pollen?” Yamada asks.
“You could say it’s a type of pollen,” Tsukauchi says, and they hear him breathe out, harsh and quick, before he continues. “The villain’s quirk releases an aphrodisiac powder through his skin. Once absorbed through the victim’s skin, or inhaled in a large enough dose, it needs about thirty minutes to take full effect. The side-effects are fairly standard and generally pose no long-term threat, but without, uh, assistance . . . It could take up to forty-eight hours before they fully wear off.”
Yamada glances up, startled, and meets Aizawa’s equally wide-eyed gaze. “Are you serious?” he asks.
“Unfortunately, he does appear to be telling the truth,” Tsukauchi says. “We’ve received reports from some of the bystanders caught up in the fight. What they’re saying matches up with everything the villain has confessed to. His quirk was meant to be a distraction during an art heist at the museum.”
“Well, shit,” Yamada says, and drags a hand over his face. That certainly explains things. He looks at Aizawa from behind his fingers. “Sex pollen,” he says. “You’re telling me that sex pollen actually exists, and I got hit with it.”
“That’s . . . not the official term, but roughly speaking,” Tsukauchi says, “yes.”
“Shit,” Yamada says again. He drops his head to the counter and groans.
Aizawa stares at Yamada for a second, and then finally works through his shock enough to process things. “You mentioned something about assistance,” he says. “Explain.”
“Apparently,” Tsukauchi says, “the quirk’s effects are drastically lessened if they are, uh, experienced in the presence of another person.” The officer sounds like he’s trying very hard to maintain his professionalism, but even Aizawa—who has been told numerous times that he’s about as astute as a rock when it comes to social cues—can hear the discomfort in his voice.
“Right,” Aizawa says.
“I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this,” Tsukauchi says. “This isn’t even an official police phone-call, I’m calling from my mobile. I didn’t want you to be caught off-guard when . . . I’m sorry.”
“Right,” Aizawa says again, “OK.” Then he hangs up the phone.
“OK?” Yamada repeats. “That’s all you have to say?” He’s still face-down on the counter.
Aizawa takes a second to save Tsukauchi’s contact information in his phone—it may come in useful in the future—and then he shuts it off and puts it on the counter, and waits until Yamada lifts his head. “I’m assuming you’re feeling the effects?” Aizawa asks.
“I’m fine!” Yamada protests, because the idea of admitting otherwise to Aizawa has implications that he cannot face right now. “I mean, not really, but this is fine. Or, it’s not fine but I can handle it. Forty-eight hours, right?” Yamada tries to grin at Aizawa but he can tell it doesn’t work. His mind is racing, trying to come up with a solution. He was at the top of their graduating class. He should be able to figure this out.
Things might be easier if he could think past the pressure building in his bones, and the little voice in his head saying that the easiest solution is standing right there in the kitchen with him.
Aizawa waits until the strained attempt at a grin disappears from Yamada’s face. “You can’t last forty-eight hours,” he says.
“Sure, I can!” Yamada lies.
“You can’t sit still for two minutes on a normal day. How are you going to last forty-eight hours like this?”
Yamada groans again and then immediately clamps his mouth shut when the sound takes on a rougher edge than he meant for it to have. He blushes and glances at Aizawa, who’s looking at him with something like concern, but also something he can’t quite place. It’s not a look he’s ever seen on his friend’s face. He’s not entirely sure he likes it. “Just trust me, all right?” he says, focusing hard on keeping his voice steady. “I’ll be fine. Though, uh, on second thought, could you maybe get a hotel for the weekend and . . . leave me here? I’ll pay for the room and everything, it’s just that I probably shouldn’t try to get back to my place right now. I don’t think I could make it that far, and it would look pretty bad if Present Mic got arrested for public indecency.”
“You know,” Aizawa says, “if you didn’t wear such tight pants, you wouldn’t have that problem.”
“Aizawa, buddy,” Yamada laughs, the sound coming out a little strangled. “Believe me when I say that is not the problem here.”
“Do you want me to leave?” Aizawa asks. He can see Yamada fidgeting, can hear Yamada’s breathing coming a little quicker.
“No!” Yamada blurts out. “I mean— I just thought—”
“We’ll handle this. I’ll—” Aizawa bites back his words, brings a hand up to rub the back of his neck. His arm twinges where the cuts from the villain’s claws are starting to scab over. “I’ll figure something out. Just go take a shower, all right?”
“That won’t help. I know Tsukauchi said the powder absorbs through the skin, but it’s had plenty of time to sink in already.”
“Do it anyway,” Aizawa says. “Just in case.”
“Right,” Yamada says, and flees the room. If nothing else, showering will at least cool him off, and give him a chance to take a breath that doesn’t immediately make him want to jump his best friend’s bones. He’s always had a bit of a thing for the way Aizawa smells after sparring—the tang of adrenaline, the warmth of skin—and the quirk’s effects are only heightening his senses. Standing under the cold spray of the shower in the tiny bathroom with his eyes closed and his head under the faucet, Yamada can pretend, at least for a minute, that he’s not desperately in love with Aizawa, that he doesn’t want Aizawa to fuck him in the worst kind of way.
In the kitchen, Aizawa hears the water start up and he leans back against the counter, glaring at his phone. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate knowing exactly what they’re dealing with—he’s a tactician, he always likes to know everything—but he could have happily gone his entire life, he thinks, without ever hearing the words “sex pollen” or seeing that stricken look on Yamada’s face. He’s angry with himself for not being better, faster, quick enough to have taken down all the villains without Yamada getting hit. Aizawa picks up his phone and wants to throw it in frustration, but opens up his internet browser instead and starts looking for answers.
With the way quirks have developed, someone else out there must have a similar one. There should be reports, stories, maybe even charts of data points. He doesn’t particularly want to read them but he also knows that going into this without knowing is far worse than any second-hand embarrassment he’s going to feel at reading them. Yamada deserves to have the facts, and Aizawa is going to get them, and then when Yamada’s out of the shower they’ll figure this out together. He’s scrolling through a rather scandalous news feed when he hears a noise from the bathroom, a low groan and a dull thud, like Yamada’s hit the wall. Which, Aizawa realises belatedly, he probably has. Aizawa also realises that his apartment is so small there’s no way he’s going to avoid hearing this, and Yamada must know it, but maybe they’ve passed the point of caring. Or maybe this was what he had in mind, somewhere in the back of his mind, when he told Yamada to go shower.
Under the cool water, one hand fisted against the tile wall, Yamada strokes himself. He’s biting his lip to try to keep quiet but it’s difficult when his fingers feel the way they do around his cock—good, but not quite enough. He tightens his grip, works himself a little faster. If he could just get off, he thinks, maybe it would clear the haze from his head for long enough to think of a solution to this mess that doesn’t end in him admitting to his pathetic crush on Aizawa and ruining everything they’ve built over six and a half years of friendship. He swipes his thumb over the head of his cock and swears when nothing happens beyond a tightening in his stomach and a heat in his veins that even the cold shower can’t wash away. Yamada allows himself a full minute of cursing in English before he’s forced to admit that it’s hopeless, and he gives up trying to get off in favour of washing all the gel out of his hair and just trying to get clean.
It takes him a while, scrubbing Aizawa’s cheap shampoo through his hair, wishing he’d left some of his own behind for times like this. Or, not exactly like this, he thinks, and lets out a laugh. The entire situation is absurd. His legs are starting to shake, his body fighting him on staying upright. Yamada rinses his hair clean, bemoans the fact that he never got around to making Aizawa buy proper conditioner before he moved out, and steps out of the shower. Aizawa is waiting for him when he slides open the bathroom door and he knows the towel around his hips doesn’t conceal anything and even if it did, his face is flushed enough to give it all away, but what else can he do? Stay in the bathroom forever, possibly. Drown himself in the shower, possibly. Yamada clenches his hands at his side to stop from touching himself.
Aizawa watches the water track down Yamada’s shoulders and chest, swallows hard and lifts his gaze before it reaches the towel. Yamada’s hair is messy and damp, pulled to one side and over his shoulder. He looks flustered, and a little angry. He’s still breathing too quickly. Aizawa steps in, catches one of Yamada’s hands in his own, feels Yamada tense under his touch as he checks his pulse at the wrist. “You can’t be like this for two days,” Aizawa says. “Your heart-rate is elevated well above normal limits. It isn’t safe.” Yamada tries to pull away, but Aizawa doesn’t let go. “We have to do something, Yamada.”
“I tried,” Yamada says. “It didn’t work.” His voice sounds breathy and a little high, but there’s nothing he can do about that. His hard-won control is lost—his voice, his quirk, everything he’s built his identity on, it’s all falling away to the searing heat he feels, the strange and not entirely unpleasant lightheadedness.
“I read up on quirks like this while you were in the shower,” Aizawa tells him. “Yours isn’t the first case.”
“Great, that’s comforting,” Yamada jokes. Aizawa is still holding his hand. If he holds it any longer, Yamada is going to be in even more trouble than he’s already in.
“It doesn’t work to try to release the quirk’s effects on your own. You need a partner.”
“And then it works? The quirk’s gone?”
“Yes. That seems to be how it works.”
“OK, cool. So, uh, I can just go pick someone up, right? OK. I can work with this. Give me a minute to put my pants back on and I’ll be out of your way.” Yamada pulls his wrist free but Aizawa steps in front of him, blocking his way.
“I’m not letting you out like this,” Aizawa says. He widens his stance, knowing that he doesn’t have the height to intimidate Yamada—Yamada’s always been, frustratingly, just a little bit taller—but if it comes to it, he’s more than capable of pinning Yamada to the floor if he tries to run away.
“Why not?” Yamada asks, squaring his shoulders, trying to stand up straight. “When you think about it,” he says with a bravado he doesn’t really feel, “this is no different than any other Friday night for me, right? Go out, get drunk, go home with someone? Don’t worry about it!”
“It is different,” Aizawa says. “You’re not drunk, you’re . . . incapacitated.”
“The effect is more or less the same.”
“It’s not,” Aizawa insists.
“Why not?” Yamada presses. Aizawa is still standing very close to him. It’s a little difficult to breathe.
“Say you pick up someone,” Aizawa says. “You go home with them. Would you even be able to say no, if they started to take things too far?”
Yamada laughs, sharp and under his breath, trying to hang onto his quirk control. “Honestly,” he admits, “with the way I feel right now, I don’t think there is any such thing as ‘too far.’ ”
“And that’s exactly why I’m not letting you go pick up some stranger at a club,”Aizawa says. “I don’t trust anyone else with you right now. We don’t know what could happen.”
“Then what do you want me to do?” Yamada asks. “Either you leave, or I leave, or—”
“Or,” Aizawa says, making up his mind, stepping even more into Yamada’s space, “I help you out.” Then he holds his breath, and waits for an answer. If he’s wrong, he’s wrong, and they’re back at square one with this quirk. He hasn’t fully thought out what happens if he’s right, but sometimes even the best tactician has to improvise.
For a moment, it’s all Yamada can do to try not choke. “What?” he asks, finally.
“I can help you out.”
“WHAT?”
“Yamada!” Aizawa claps his hands over his ears, too-late, and glares, red-eyed, shutting off Yamada’s quirk. The room echoes around them. When the sound dies down, Aizawa blinks, dropping his Erasure.
“Sorry, but— What?” Yamada repeats, with his regular voice. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am. If you want me to be.”
“But why would you—”
“You trust me, right?” Aizawa interrupts, and feels unaccountably relieved when Yamada nods, as if he didn’t already know the answer. “So I can help you,” he says. “If that’s what you want.”
And Yamada, overwhelmed, overheated, with his best friend and the guy he’s been hung up on since high school all but propositioning him in the doorway, facing down forty-eight hours of agony if he says no, says the only thing he can say: “Yes.” He nods, too-quick, and says it again, “Yes, OK.”
Aizawa nods back, slower, and takes his hand again, leads him out of the bathroom doorway and over to where the futon is spread out on the floor by the balcony door. Yamada’s hand is hot and a little shaky. Aizawa lets go of it long enough to kick his jumpsuit the rest of the way off and stands there in his underwear, suddenly self-conscious. Technically, he’s not the one that needs to be naked for this. But to put it back on now would look suspicous. “I’m just going to get washed up first,” Aizawa says, to give himself an excuse for undressing.
“Please,” Yamada says, stepping in, hesitating just shy of brushing their hips together. He wants to, badly, but not without Aizawa making the first move. “I can’t— Don’t make me wait anymore. If you’re going to help then can we please just get on with it?”
“I smell.”
“I don’t care,” Yamada says, which is both easier to admit and less truthful than the other option, which is that he does care, and he’s into it. Fortunately, Aizawa seems to take that at face-value and shrugs.
“Fine,” Aizawa says. He digs around in the cardboard box beside the futon until he finds a hair-tie and pulls his hair back into a bun. “Lie down, then.” He pushes Yamada on the shoulder, gently, until Yamada’s flat on his back on the futon and Aizawa is kneeling over him, watching him writhe against the smooth cotton. The towel at Yamada’s waist has come untied. Aizawa puts a hand to it, checks in with Yamada, and moves it away.
It’s not that he’s never seen Yamada naked before. They were roommates, after all, for nearly four years, on top of sharing a locker room at U.A. They’ve gone to the public baths together. This shouldn’t be anything new and yet the way Yamada looks, flushed and spread out beneath him, cock curved up and dripping a little onto his stomach—it makes Aizawa’s mouth go dry.
“You have to talk me through this,” Aizawa says, running a cautious hand up Yamada’s side, feeling out his ribs. Yamada’s always been skinnier than him. “I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
“Not sure how much talking I can handle right now,” Yamada breathes, ticklish under Aizawa’s touch.
“That’s a first,” Aizawa snorts, and then laughs when Yamada knees him in the back. “Tell me what you like.”
“Whatever. Whatever you want, fuck, I don’t care—” Yamada shuts his mouth, sensing that he’s dangerously close to begging. But Aizawa’s touch is light, hesitant. His fingers skim over Yamada’s stomach and send a shiver up his back, and it’s not enough. “Harder,” Yamada says. “More— more pressure.”
“Like this?” Aizawa asks, digging a thumb into the soft skin where Yamada’s narrow hips meet his thighs.
“Shit, yes.” Yamada presses his head back into the pillow, fighting to keep his eyes from closing. He wants to watch this. In case this all ends terribly and he never gets the chance to see Aizawa again, let alone see Aizawa’s hand tantalisingly close to his cock, he wants to remember this.
Aizawa moves his hand up, running the flat of his palm back up over Yamada’s stomach, the smooth planes of his chest, the trembling line of his throat. Aizawa holds his hand there for a moment, adding just a little bit more pressure, feeling Yamada’s pulse jump, breath quicken. The Voice Hero, Present Mic, under his hand.
“Aizawa . . .” Yamada struggles to look up at him, painfully aroused, and then squeezes his eyes shut when Aizawa’s other hand closes around his cock, the grip nice and firm. He could die happy like this, he thinks. That’s probably the quirk’s effects talking but even in his right mind, this position would be doing a lot of things to Yamada.
“Breathe,” Aizawa says. He wants to feel Yamada breathe, feel that powerful throat moving beneath his hand. Yamada breathes, and his hips buck, trying to get more friction but Aizawa has him pinned. With a few more strokes, Yamada comes undone.
Or, he does, and also he doesn’t. Because—Yamada looks down at himself and groans, drops his head back—he’s still hard. He fists the sheets in frustration, trying to rub off against Aizawa’s thigh. “I need more,” he says, and his voice cracks, and there’s nothing he can do about it.
“What do you need?” Aizawa asks. He leans back, drops his hands down to Yamada’s waist, rubbing circles into the hot, damp skin there with his thumbs. Feeling out the sharp line of Yamada’s narrow hips. “Tell me. I’m guessing here.”
“More,” Yamada says, unhelpfully. He’s supposed to be the one who always asks for what he wants, shamelessly, but words are failing him here. He lifts an arm and flails around a little until he catches one of Aizawa’s wrists, then drags it down from his hips to his ass.
Aizawa stiffens when he realises what Yamada’s after. He may not have done this before, not exactly, but he’s read enough about it. “Hang on,” he says, lifting himself up enough to rummage through the box again for a bottle of lube. It’s mostly full—he bought it years ago after a conversation with Kayama that he really doesn’t want to be remembering right now, and then promptly decided he’d wasted his money when he could have just bought energy gels instead. Still, it’s making up for that now. He uncaps it and pours some out into his right hand, spreads it over his fingers. “Lift your legs,” he tells Yamada, moving back.
Yamada groans but lifts his legs, pulling his knees in to his chest until Aizawa kneels back between them. Then he lets go, his thighs falling open around Aizawa. The first cool touch of a fingertip against his rim is enough to make him lose all coordination. Aizawa eases into it, his left hand holding Yamada’s right thigh open as he goes. When the first of Aizawa’s fingers pushes inside, Yamada can’t swallow back a yell. He feels his voice cut off, opens his eyes to see Aizawa’s red and sparking in the dim light of the room. Aizawa’s hair, tied back, is attempting to escape its bun. “Sorry, sorry,” Yamada says, as Aizawa blinks and lets go. “It’s just— a lot.”
“Too much?” Aizawa asks, and Yamada shakes his head, quickly.
“Not enough,” he says. “Keep going.”
Aizawa blinks a few times, just in case he needs to use his quirk again, and continues. He gets a second finger in before Yamada starts talking again and the things he says make Aizawa blush, but he keeps going.
“Shit, that’s so good,” Yamada moans, pushes back against Aizawa’s fingers as they scissor inside of him. “Please, I need more, please.”
So Aizawa works another finger in, stretching Yamada even more. He’s kind of mesmerised, watching his fingers sink into Yamada’s body, watching the muscles in Yamada’s stomach and legs tense with every shift in motion. He brings his other hand back up to Yamada’s cock and Yamada yells loud enough to make the windows rattle before Aizawa cuts him off with Erasure. “Shh,” Aizawa says, thrusting his hand a little, feeling Yamada open up. He’s utterly failing at staying clinical and detached during all of this. He’d thought, for a minute or two, that he could. He could just do this, a friend helping out a friend, but Yamada is warm and pliant beneath him, and Yamada’s breath is hot against Aizawa’s hand when he presses his palm to Yamada’s mouth to shut him up, and Aizawa’s in very far over his head. And if he’s being honest with himself, it’s not as though he minds, so he blinks, and swallows, and leans in close. Says, “You have to keep quiet,” right into Yamada’s ear, and Yamada’s hips jerk and he comes again, spilling all over his stomach. He’s still hard.
When Aizawa starts to take his fingers out, Yamada clenches down on them, shakes his head. He tugs at Aizawa’s hand on his mouth until he can say, “Don’t stop.”
“I can do it again,” Aizawa says. Yamada is sweating beneath him, hair in disarray over the pillow. Making him come again is no hardship—not for Aizawa, at least. Yamada looks almost like he’s in pain, though.
“Fuck, I wish we were at my place,” Yamada says, rocking his hips gently against Aizawa’s body. “I have— things.”
“Things?” Aizawa says, slowly starting to move his fingers again. His underwear have a damp spot at the front; he can feel himself straining at the fly and tries not to think about it. He’s doing this to help Yamada, not himself.
“You know,” Yamada says, fucking himself on Aizawa’s fingers and biting back all the noises he wishes he could make but doesn’t trust his control to hold out, not like this. “Things you could have fucked me with.”
“Would that help?” Aizawa asks, and maybe he’s thinking about himself after all, but maybe there’s also a way for them both to get what they want out of this.
“Shit, yes.”
“Then . . . What if I fucked you?” Aizawa offers, and is treated to a very nice visual of Yamada’s mouth falling open into a perfect “o,” his cheeks flushed and his eyes bright, golden hair framing his head. It’s a good image. He’s going to think about that for a long time, Aizawa decides, just as soon as he can think about anything at all.
“Fucking hell,” Yamada manages. “You can’t just say that to a guy.”
“Can’t I?”
“Don’t look smug about it now, shit. Fuck.” Yamada has to close his eyes for a second, just to catch his breath. When he opens them again, Aizawa is smirking down at him, but it’s a little wider than usual, and he can feel Aizawa hot and hard against his thigh, so he knows Aizawa wants this, too. “Fuck,” he says again. “Go on, then.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Like this. I want to see you.” That’s probably saying much, but Yamada’s well past the point of caring. His skin burns everywhere Aizawa touches him. He can’t even begin to imagine what he’ll feel like with Aizawa inside of him, but he knows he doesn’t want to wait too long to find out.
“One problem,” Aizawa says, frowning. He stills his fingers, pulls them out of Yamada slowly to wipe them on the sheets. “I don’t have any condoms.”
“How do you not have condoms?” Yamada grits out, wincing a little at the loss of Aizawa’s fingers inside him. They’d been so nicely pressed up against his prostate, too.
“I don’t have sex,” Aizawa says, bluntly. “Why would I need them?”
“Wait, what?”
“When I said that I didn’t know what I was doing, did you think I was lying?”
“No, but— It didn’t really register,” Yamada says. “So you’ve never—”
“No.”
There are a lot of thoughts Yamada wants to have at that admission, most of them gleeful, some of them curious, but the only thing he can really focus on at the moment is that he’s aching with how hard he is and he thinks he might vibrate right out of his skin if he doesn’t get something in him soon. “Then I don’t care about a condom,” he says. “I’m clean.”
“So?”
“So if you’ve never been with anyone, you’re clean, too. So just do it.”
Aizawa breathes in, hard and fast. His hands tighten on Yamada’s hips and he nods, and sits back. “Switch places with me,” he says, and Yamada’s more than a little uncoordinated but with a lot of help and more than a few distractions from wandering hands they get themselves situated, Aizawa lying back, propped up on his elbows, Yamada straddling his hips. Aizawa figures that this way, Yamada can control the pace. This way, his own inexperience won’t get in the way. He struggles out of his damp underwear and spreads lube over himself, then makes a noise like the breath’s been punched out of him when Yamada sinks down, fingers clenching in the sheets, every muscle taut.
“Oh, fuck,” Yamada moans, raising himself up, dropping down again. “Fuck, yes, Shōta, you feel so fucking good.”
It takes a lot of effort for Aizawa not to fall apart right there, the sound of his given name on Yamada’s lips, Yamada tight around him and unbelievably hot, hands burning against his chest. But he wants this to last, so he bites his lip and wills his hips to stay still, letting Yamada do what he wants. Yamada’s back is arched, his head thrown back; his hair is bright in the light shining over from the kitchen. Aizawa runs a hand up from Yamada’s hip to his stomach, presses it to his chest just over his heart where Yamada’s pulse is quick and heavy.
“Shōta,” Yamada says again, pleading. “Shōta.” His legs are trembling with the effort of fucking himself on Aizawa’s cock. He can’t keep a rhythm, too exhausted from coming twice and still not being free of the effects of the quirk. His foot slips and he sinks down a little farther, moans a little louder, feeling so full and yet he still can’t get off. “Shōta, please.”
Aizawa hesitates, but not for long. Yamada’s pulse is still too fast, his skin on fire. There are tears in his eyes and his voice keeps cracking. He can’t go on like this, not for much longer. With strength born from years of training, Aizawa flips them, until Yamada’s on his back looking up like he’s had the wind knocked out of him and Aizawa’s on top, still inside. After a second Yamada’s legs come up to lock tight around his hips and Aizawa starts to move—just slow drags of his hips at first, feeling the slide of his cock into Yamada’s body, the impossible heat of it all. He picks up speed when Yamada starts swearing again, thrusting a little faster, putting a hand over Yamada’s mouth again to keep him quiet. Yamada’s heels dig into his back and Aizawa spreads his thighs a little wider, fucks a little deeper. Yamada moans and thrusts back against him, his cock a hot line between their bodies, his mouth falling open when Aizawa hits his prostate again and again.
Aizawa feels Yamada’s head turn, feels his fingers slip over Yamada’s lips, and rather than move his hand to get a better grip he just pushes them into Yamada’s mouth. Yamada chokes a little, his eyebrows drawing together, high on his face, a look that could almost be pain but isn’t. It’s ecstasy. He’s crying. Aizawa keeps fucking him. It’s wet and hot and messy, the two of them sticking together with sweat and Yamada’s earlier release, all harsh breaths and low noises. Yamada’s hands pull Aizawa closer, pressing against his back. Aizawa gets a hand around Yamada’s cock and jerks him off, quick and tight, over and over until Yamada comes with a muffled shout and a full-body jolt, his mouth falling open around Aizawa’s fingers. Aizawa fucks him through his orgasm and then, finally, lets himself come, too, collapsing forward onto Yamada, forehead against his chest.
They stay like that for a few minutes, panting, unable to move. Between their bodies Aizawa can feel that Yamada’s finally coming down. With some effort, and a lot of willpower, Aizawa pulls out and sits back.
Yamada is so worn-out, so relieved at finally finding release, that he can’t bring himself to move. His thighs are sticky with sweat and semen, his stomach a mess, and he’s pretty sure that if he tried talking now, his quirk would bring the roof down. So he just closes his eyes, wondering if there’s any way he can convince himself that this was all an especially good dream and when he opens them, Aizawa won’t be looking at him like they’ve just had sex. Because he might be out of it but as he’s getting his breath back, feeling his heart-beat slow so it’s not thumping in his own ears, he’s realising that there’s no way in hell he’s going to be able to look at Aizawa the same way, after this.
“We should clean up,” Aizawa says after a while.
It’s all Yamada can do to wave a lazy hand at him, and Aizawa makes a soft, fond, exasperated sort of noise and pushes to his feet. Yamada can hear the water running in the bathroom and he keeps his eyes closed, even though it’s hard not to look when Aizawa comes back with a cool washcloth and starts wiping him down. Still, Yamada tells himself, self-preservation; he keeps his eyes shut. If Aizawa doesn’t look as wrecked as he feels, he doesn’t really want to know.
Tracing the washcloth over the flat expanse of Yamada’s stomach, the softness of his inner thighs, Aizawa is working hard towards a realisation of his own. He’s not quite sure what it is, but it started sometime around when he took Yamada’s pulse after the shower and has been building ever since, or maybe even longer—maybe even back to their U.A. days, when he’d wake up from falling asleep in class to see Yamada grinning at him and offering to share his lunch. He’s realising, slowly, that he’s in love with his best friend. The best friend whom he’s just fucked through the effects of an aphrodisiac quirk. For very logical reasons, and possibly for other reasons that are not logical at all.
Aizawa doesn’t know what to do about that, so he just finishes cleaning them up and then goes to the kitchen and pulls a couple of water bottles out of the fridge, finds a container of leftover rice that’s only a day or two old and grabs chopsticks and a spoon. “Sit up,” he says, nudging Yamada with his foot as he sets the water and food down beside the futon and lowers himself, a little stiffly. His thighs are going to be sore for days. He tries not to think about how Yamada will be even sorer.
“Too much effort,” Yamada says, struggling to push himself up. Aizawa helps him get propped up against the wall and hands him a bottle of water. He rubs a hand over his eyes and drinks the water in one go, not even caring when he spills some down his chest. His jaw aches a little, and his throat is sore from the effort of holding his quirk back. When the water bottle is empty, Aizawa takes it, hands him another.
“Drink that one slowly,” Aizawa says. “And eat some rice.” He holds out the container of rice and the spoon.
“Rice?” Yamada says, weakly. “You promised me take-out.”
“Rice now, take-out later. One or both of us has to put on pants first.”
“Definitely too much effort.” Yamada drops his head back against the wall, holds the water bottle to his stomach. The unnatural heat is finally bleeding out of his body; he can feel himself starting to shake a little, like coming down from an adrenaline high.
Aizawa notices, and he reaches out, puts a hand on Yamada’s knee to ground him. They pass the container of rice back and forth until it’s empty. When Yamada’s downed another half of a water bottle, Aizawa takes his pulse again. “Better,” he says. “Your heart-rate’s gone down.”
“Yeah,” Yamada says, and tries not to spill water everywhere as Aizawa’s thumb brushes over the back of his hand.
“I think it worked,” Aizawa says. “The quirk’s effects are gone.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good. That’s— I’m glad you’ll be all right. I know this wasn’t— You’re my best friend, and I just want you to be all right.” Aizawa’s voice is unsteady, the words tripping over each other. He can’t say what he wants to say, and everything else sounds stupid.
Yamada turns their hands, setting his water down so he can do this properly, without making even more of a mess. He’s already messed up enough. “Listen,” he says. “If that’s what you want, to be friends— If that’s all, then I’m fine with that. In the morning we can pretend this never happened. But considering that I’ve just had your dick up my ass, now’s probably as good a time as any to tell you that I’ve been in love with you since we were sixteen.”
Aizawa just stares at him. “What?” he asks, finally.
“You heard me,” Yamada says, and he tugs on Aizawa’s hand, pulls him in close, presses their mouths together in a kiss. If Aizawa wants to hit him for this afterwards, Yamada will gladly let him. He threads his fingers through Aizawa’s hair, their lips moving softly against each other, the bedding tangled beneath their legs. “I’m in love with you,” he says, breathing into Aizawa’s mouth. “I’m sorry if that ruins things.”
When they separate, Yamada looks a little sad, and Aizawa realises that he still hasn’t said anything and now would probably be a good time to change that. But all capacity for coherent thought seems to have left his body, somewhere back with his impulse control and also his anxieties. He’s never done this before but he leans in and kisses Yamada again, brings a hand up to rest on Yamada’s neck, feeling the quick stutter of his pulse speeding up again. “I don’t think I can pretend this never happened,” Aizawa says when he pulls back. “I— I want it to happen again.”
“OK,” Yamada says, slowly. “So . . . you’ve discovered sex. Congratulations.”
“No, you idiot. I mean that I want— I want to be in a relationship with you where we also get to do this again.” Aizawa looks at Yamada, runs his thumb along his jaw, tucks his hair back behind his ear.
“What?”
“I feel like this whole night is just us saying that word to each other,” Aizawa says, as Yamada continues to stare at him, dumbfounded. “Apparently neither of is as smart as our U.A. teachers gave us credit for. Although you’re supposed to be the smarter one, between the two of us. You might have said something sooner.”
“You asshole!” Yamada says, finally snapping out of it enough to smack Aizawa. “You don’t get to turn around and say something like that to me. You’re not the one who’s been pining all these years!” Aizawa raises an eyebrow at him and Yamada stares at him for a second more before remembering how he learned the hard way—all those years ago—not to get into a staring contest with someone whose quirk relies on them not blinking. “What the fuck, Aizawa.” Yamada leans back against the wall. “Seriously?”
“You called me Shōta during sex, you know. Now I’m back to Aizawa?”
“I did? Ah, sorry, I just— It just slipped out.”
“Does that mean I get to call you Hizashi now?” Aizawa asks, and he knows he’s grinning a little too broadly to keep up the ruse but also, that ruse was up a long time ago, with Yamada. With Hizashi. Who’s grinning back at him, and laughing, and kissing him again.
“Yes,” Hizashi says. “Yes, it fucking does.”
They’re still sitting there, naked on the futon, looking stupidly happy with each other, when Hizashi pushes Shōta back just enough to glare at him.
“Hang on,” he says. “If none of this had happened, were you just planning on never telling me?”
“Were you planning on telling me?” Shōta counters.
“. . . No.” Hizashi had made a wish about it, last week. Written it on a tanzaku and hung it from a bamboo stalk and everything. But that didn’t mean he was ever planning on telling Shōta.
“So what are you mad about?”
“I’m mad,” Hizashi says, “about all that wasted time.”
“It wasn’t wasted,” Shōta says. “We got to know each other, didn’t we?”
“I think that’s the sappiest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“Shut up.”
“No, no, say it again. Actually, wait, let me get my phone, I want to record that.”
“Not a chance.”
“Shōta,” Hizashi whines, pulling him close again. “You’re no fun.”
“You knew this already,” Shōta says, “because you’ve known me for six years. And yet, apparently, you still like me.”
“I didn’t say like. I said love. There’s a difference there, you know.”
“Yes. I know.”
Eventually, they do get themselves together enough to order dinner and answer the door when the delivery comes—they both need showers, but also there’s no real point when the night is still so warm, muggy air coming in through the open balcony door, so Hizashi just ties his hair up and borrows a pair of Shōta’s shorts and an old U.A. t-shirt that must be tight on Shōta because it just barely fits him, and Shōta finds a clean pair of underwear and a tank-top because apparently he doesn’t care about scandalising delivery guys. Hizashi can’t quite keep from laughing as he pays for the food. They eat sitting on the balcony, looking out over the street, the lights of the city spreading out into the distance. Then they go back inside. Hizashi bandages the cuts on Shōta’s arm, rubs camphor ointment into his injured shoulder. They put a clean cover on the futon and undress again. Shōta doesn’t even have a fan—tomorrow, Hizashi thinks, they’re going out and buying one. But tonight, despite the heat of summer, they lie down together, Hizashi with an arm thrown over Shōta’s stomach, feeling his breath come deep and slow and even. From far-off, there’s the whistle of a train passing through the station, and then, even farther, the distant rumble of thunder, like it’s finally going to rain.