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1
None of them were old enough to drink yet, and they didn’t question where Nemuri had scored all the alcohol from.
Hizashi eyed the beers between them, sat in a circle on Nemuri’s living room floor because it felt more adventurous on her rug than the couch. She was the first to take one too, the rest of them nervous in a way they wouldn’t admit to. The clasp on the top of her can broke and she smiled at them over it at the sizzle that followed.
Hizashi made a face at the taste, but the more he sipped it, the easier it became to bear. By the time half of his second can was gone, he felt looser. Like this, it was easy to bump into Shouta, and he didn’t have to pretend like every brush of their arms together was an accident. Shouta, for all his usual grumbling, didn’t seem to mind it. In fact, he seemed to become handsier too, his usually carefully constructed words less thought about. Oboro keeps flirting with Nemuri, and they stand up to put on some old-school pop music at a volume that Nemuri’s neighbours won’t appreciate.
Oboro starts to dance, and it’s as bad as it is hilarious. Hizashi laughs, and it’s loud, and then the rest of them are laughing at the stupid face he makes when Shouta shuffles closer and links their hands together.
There’s a magnetism there – Hizashi feels it too – and he doesn’t know if it’s the beer or just the good time they’re having that’s making Shouta act so forward. They haven’t been dating for long, and the shift over into boyfriends still feels so new to them both.
Shouta turns from where Oboro is failing to shove two slices of pizza into his mouth at once. He stares at Hizashi like he can’t look away, his hair all fallen over his eyes.
Hizashi giggles drunkenly and moves it either side, tucks the longer strands behind Shouta’s ears. “Hi,” he says when he can see him again.
“Hi.”
“This is fun,” he grins, and Shouta agrees, doesn’t know if he’s smiling because he’s not in full control of himself, or if Hizashi’s smile is just that contagious. “Are you? Having fun?”
Hizashi’s biting his lip. Shouta seems to be enjoying himself, but he knows he’s always had a problem with invading Shouta’s personal space. He hopes he isn’t doing that here, hopes that Shouta isn’t tolerating him for the sake of their new relationship.
Shouta thinks he nods, but he isn’t too sure at this point. The floor has made his ass numb, and his eyes are more sluggish than usual, his limbs akin to heavy weights. He tastes malt at the back of his throat and it makes his tongue feel staticky.
“Is he gonna be sick?” Nemuri asks, but she doesn’t sound too worried about it. They both hear a smirk behind her voice, more fond than concerned, and Shouta knows that if he does get sick, she’ll definitely use it to blackmail him later. “Think you can help him to the bathroom, Zashi? My parents’ll kill me if any vomit gets on the carpet.”
“I got it.” Hizashi lifts Shouta with a little effort, and together they slink down Nemuri’s hallway towards the bathroom. Her house is homey, and Shouta regards her family portraits as his wobbly walk careens him to the nearest wall like some type of drunkard. Hizashi laughs at him like it’s hilarious and Nemuri yells at them to keep it down.
Shouta slides down the bathroom wall when they arrive. He doesn’t feel sick – just tired – but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Hizashi sits opposite him. The music sounds muted to them now, though they hear Nemuri and Oboro duetting as if they’re in a concert. Hizashi nudges Shouta’s foot with his own, smiles widely.
“Hi,” he says again.
“Hello.” Shouta rests his head back on the bathroom wall, thinks he might fall asleep. It sucks that he’s the first of them out of commission, but he isn’t as insecure about it as he thought he might be. For as much as they tease him, Shouta has never felt so welcomed into a group of friends before. He doesn’t worry that they’ll judge him, doesn’t care that Hizashi is stuck across from him with no one to talk to – the only thing he ever seems to do.
“Sho? Hey Sho? Do you still feel sick?”
Shouta shakes his head, though it takes effort. He knows he’s only got minutes until he falls asleep.
“That’s good.” His foot taps Shouta’s over and over, no doubt to the tune of something inside his own head. “Hey Sho? I’m really glad you transferred into the hero course. I know Sensoji gives you shit sometimes, but you’re definitely one of the best in the class.” Shouta scoffs mentally, knows logically that Hizashi is rambling because he’s never been drunk before. Still, they say that drunk words are sober thoughts, and it’s nice to hear so blatantly what Hizashi really thinks about him.
“Man, I feel like we can do anything!” Hizashi laughs, and the magnetism’s back, tenfold. Shouta peeks an eye open, taps his foot back, and the smile he gets is like sunshine personified.
2
Someone’s knocking on his door.
Hizashi ignores it. He’s laying with his face pressed into the back of the couch cushions and the room is spinning, though he hasn’t moved in almost an hour. Empty bottles take up most of the space on his coffee table, a few on the floor just within reach. They’re not all from today. He hopes that whoever it is will take a hint and leave him alone.
“Hizashi.” It’s Nemuri. Of course it is, and he’ll hardly be surprised if Tensei is with her. He contemplates letting her in, but he doesn’t want to move, hasn’t even to readjust the drunken position he’s collapsed into. His glasses have been pressed uncomfortably into the bridge of his nose for the last half an hour and he’s just been dealing with it.
“Open up.” She’s relentless. “Yamada.” He counts to three and shifts and the whole room shifts with him. He pauses for a minute with his face in his hands, waits for the floor to level out again, and trips over the leg of the coffee table on the way towards the door. He staggers but doesn’t fall, which is good because Nemuri’s pounding on the door is growing frantic. He worries that if he had fallen over, he wouldn’t have been able to get up. Then he’d be stuck with another noise complaint in the aftermath of her breaking her way inside.
“I’m coming,” he calls out to appease her, to let her know he’s alive in here. It comes out quieter than he was aiming for.
Her banging stops, but it echoes inside his mind. His head is throbbing now, and he peers through his little peep hole just to check who he’s about to be smiling for. Nemuri’s alone, donned in full Midnight get up. As if Hizashi needs saving. He’s glad it’s only her, but his heart aches with disappointment anyway. Subconsciously maybe, he had hoped.
But that would have been stupid. Illogical.
He opens the door and plasters on a smile, the best one he can manage right now. If she’s coming as Midnight, then he’s answering as Present Mic. He can’t keep it straight with his head like this – he feels like he’s walking around underwater, pressure pushing down on him from all sides – and Nemuri clearly isn’t buying it.
“Oh, Hizashi.”
“Nem, don’t.” He retreats back into his apartment, leaves his door open, and Nemuri shuts it behind her with a soft click. He knows she’s taking in the state of it – the cluttered space, the empty take out containers from earlier today and the pristine sink in his kitchen, unused for the past week – he hopes she doesn’t push him about it.
Unfortunately for Hizashi, leaving things unsaid has never been much of Nemuri’s style.
“So,” she follows him back to the couch, sits on the edge of it close enough to him that he can smell her perfume, “we’ve missed you at school.”
It’s only been two days, he thinks, since the last time they all saw him. Sure his spiel had started earlier in the week, and it came and went in waves that varied in their ways of dealing with them, but Hizashi had gone longer alone before.
“You know,” she bumps his arm with her own, teasing, “if you were just gonna stay in and drink, you might as well have come out with us. Tensei got totally hammered and started flirting with the waitress, and Shouta passed out before we could get him in his taxi.”
Hizashi chuckles a little, not entirely forced. “That sounds like it was fun,” he says. “I would have liked to have seen that.”
“It was,” Nemuri agrees, and she nudges one of the empty bottles with the toe of her heeled boots. It clinks against a second one, the smell of beer permeating the room so strongly she can almost taste it. She chooses her next words carefully. “…He’s worried too, you know.”
“Aizawa, worried?” Hizashi rubs at the nape of his neck, laughs like it’s the single most ridiculous idea he’s ever heard. “I think you’ve got your wires crossed there, Nem.”
Hizashi keeps his eyes on his coffee table, on the wet ring marks there that are ruining the wood. He pretends he doesn’t feel Nemuri’s eyes burning into the side of his face like some kind of secondary quirk.
“Don’t play dumb, Hizashi,” she says. “It doesn’t work on me and it doesn’t suit you. What you’re doing isn’t healthy.”
“But pushing everyone away is?”
“I never said that.” She sighs, runs a perfectly manicured hand through her dark hair. He feels bad for worrying her, but he’s touched that she noticed his absence, that she even showed up. “I’m not stupid either, you know. I know that Shouta shut you out when you needed him the most, and I’m not saying that this excuses that, but he was hurting too, Hizashi. It’s been years since… it happened. I think you should talk to him.”
Maybe, if they were the same as they were back then, before Oboro was ripped away from them. But they weren’t the same. Distance had been wedged between them in the shape of their missing friend and their relationship was different now. Sometimes, Hizashi wondered whether Shouta even liked him at all.
“I can’t.”
“This,” Nemuri gestured to his table, “is too much, Hizashi. You need to talk to him.”
“I can’t,” he says, a gasp, his hand gripping the back of his neck in hopes that he might ground himself. “He’s only just come back, Nemuri. He never wanted to talk about what happened, dealt with it by moving on, so how can I bring it up with him again now? What if he leaves again?” He’s practically whispering, a subconscious response to keep a hold over his quirk. He’s always held it in, too afraid of how he might hurt others, and this here and now is no different.
“I don’t want to lose him again, Nem,” he confesses. “It’s like losing both of them, you know?”
She doesn’t rebut him, doesn’t push him in the way she’s so accustomed to, poking and prodding until she gets her way. She smiles at him sadly and stands from the couch, takes as many of the empty bottles as she can carry at once to his kitchen. He hears the trash rustling, hears her rummaging through his cupboards. He’s been living off cheap takeout for the last week, so anything she finds won’t be any good.
Hizashi folds back into his twisted position on his couch and after a few minutes, the spinning in his head stops. Nemuri hasn’t left yet. She sits by his legs, and he feels her slide his glasses off his face. She thinks he’s asleep again.
“Oboro wouldn’t want this,” she says, and it’s true, but he knows he was not supposed to hear it.
3
“Shouta, hey Shouta!”
Hizashi’s leaning halfway over the table, completely oblivious to the puddle of spilled beer soaking into the elbow of his nice shirt. Shouta, for as long as they’ve been sat at the bar, isn’t as drunk as the flush in his cheeks makes him look.
“He’s wasted.”
“Yeah,” Shouta has to agree, glancing over at the mess that is Hizashi. He’s drunk enough that it’s a wonder he hasn’t collapsed yet, though a closer look tells Shouta that his eyes aren’t far off closing for the night. He hopes he’ll have gotten him home by the time that it happens.
“You sure you’ll be alright getting him home by yourself, Aizawa?”
Vlad King seems to have read his mind. Shouta nods at him, his face too serious for the situation, though he’s always had a problem with appearing positive. As much as Hizashi had dragged him here tonight, Shouta’s had a good time.
“We’ll be fine,” he says, then, because it seems like the appropriate thing to say, “thanks.”
Vlad King, now satisfied that Hizashi’s been left in good hands, bids them goodnight and leaves the dingy bar. It’s around the corner from Yuuei and frankly, Shouta’s just glad that he hasn’t made an ass of himself before the teaching aspect of his new job has begun. The other teachers had all been very accepting, if not eager for something to celebrate, and while Shouta’s still overwhelmed that he had been the cause for it, he’s grateful that they were all so welcoming.
Hizashi’s smiling at him like a dope, a big grin on his face to rival even All Might. He’s gotten all dressed up for their night out – more so than this bar calls for – and Shouta tears his eyes away. A flush rises in his cheeks unrelated to the empty pints of beer he’s left behind him. He looks good.
“Shoutaaaa~” Hizashi drawls, like he knows. Shouta coughs and looks back at him, levels his eyes like he’s unimpressed. Hizashi pouts over dramatically. “What? Come on, Sho, let’s stay for another round on me.”
“We’re the last ones here, Hizashi,” Shouta tells him, which isn’t entirely true. Nemuri’s left them to go the bathroom, but Shouta’s said goodnight to her for the both of them already and even on one of HIzashi’s best nights, Shouta knows she would drink him under the table. “It’s time to go.”
“Mean, Sho,” Hizashi grumbles, but he lets Shouta lift him off the sticky tabletop anyway. He just stands there when he’s on his feet, and it’s not until he fails to follow Shouta out that he realises it’s because he can’t. As Shouta comes back for him, Hizashi grins as if they’re on their way to the next bar, as if his next stop is anywhere but straight to bed. “Where we goin’ now?”
“Outside.” Shouta gets an arm around him, helps him stumble the short walk to the bar’s exit. He gets the door open with one hand, and outside it’s cold and smells of cigarettes. Hizashi is leaning most of his weight against him now. “Hizashi, stop slouching on me like that.”
“Like what?” Hizashi grins again, pretends to be oblivious to what he’s doing. He leans further into Shouta’s space, wraps his arms around him. “Like this?”
He’s always been taller than Shouta and supporting all of Hizashi like this makes it very hard for Shouta to walk them even to the curb side. He huffs like he’s annoyed and Hizashi laughs, still enjoying himself even though he’s way too drunk to stand by himself. Shouta lowers them to the ground and sits beside him, his legs outstretched in too tight jeans that he wouldn’t normally wear for the life of him. The ground is freezing under his ass. Hizashi lets his head drop to Shouta’s shoulder, content.
“Thanks for coming, Sho.”
“It was my party,” Shouta quips. Hizashi snorts his amusement.
“Still,” he’s starting to sound as drunk as he looks now, his words slurring around the edges. “I’m happy you came along, that you’re coming back to Yuuei with me.”
Technically, Nemuri is the reason that Shouta accepted the teaching job, but he’s not going to remind Hizashi of that. He appreciates the sentiment, and the idea of returning to Yuuei as a teacher does not fill him with the same consuming remorse as it did when he was still a student.
“What’s it like?”
Hizashi hums a question. This is the closest they have been in a while, and Hizashi’s body heat against him does not offend Shouta the way it would had Hizashi been anybody else. He feels familiar in an old-fashioned way, like he is supposed to be there.
“Being back at Yuuei,” Shouta clarifies. “What’s it like?”
“They closed off the rooftop,” Hizashi says. “It’s off limits for real now. The school looks the same though, down to the chewing gum under 1-A's desks. Being a teacher kicks ass though, man. You’ll love it, knowing you’re raising the future generations of pro heroes!”
This time, Shouta snorts. “Don’t you teach English?”
He thinks Hizashi’s too drunk to rib him back, but he manages to shove him nearly all the way to the concrete with a half-joking, “Shut up,” and Shouta chuckles.
“English is a universal language, ya dig? It’s totally an important subject!”
“How much have you had to drink?”
“Just enough.” Hizashi leans against him again, lets his eyes fall closed while they wait for the taxi to arrive. Shouta smells nice, like he’s made more of an effort than just dressing up. He’s wearing cologne, and some of his hair is tickling Hizashi’s ear where he’s cosied in his personal space. “I’ve missed this.”
Shouta freezes slightly. For as sharp as he is, Hizashi doesn’t notice.
“What?” Shouta feels warm now, hopes Hizashi doesn’t feel the way his heart rate has picked up. “You go out drinking all the time, Hizashi.”
“S’not that,” he slurs. “I’ve missed this. When’s the last time we hung out, just the two of us, ya know?”
Shouta pulls away a little, enough to leave Hizashi unsupported. He sighs and pulls his knees up to wrap his arms around them, holds himself upright as much as he holds himself together.
“You’re drunk,” Shouta tells him, though he’s justifying to himself just as much. Hizashi had been drunk by the time Shouta arrived at the bar, has probably downed his own weight in beer. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
Hizashi’s dropped his chin to his knees, is looking into the empty road rather than at Shouta. “You always do this,” he says, and he regrets it instantly when Shouta flinches in his peripheral vision. It’s not fair, none of this is fair, but then again, nothing good in life ever is.
The taxi pulls up and Shouta stands, looks down at where Hizashi is sat on the floor, unable to get up by himself, the tension that had been missing from the evening driven back between them. He offers his hands to haul him up, and Hizashi might as well be deadweight for all the help he gives him.
He slumps into the backseat while Shouta pays the driver. His cheek is smushed against the window, slow breaths fogging over the glass. This should be the end of it. The taxi will take him home and Shouta will go home as well. They’ll see each other in school on Monday. Hizashi won’t remember what he’s told him.
His words echo in Shouta’s mind as he stands there with the car door under his hand, about to slam it shut. You always do this.
How did it get to this point between them?
Hizashi is looking out the window, the light from the streetlamps reflecting off his glasses. He seems so much further away from him now.
I’ve missed this.
And Shouta makes up his mind, climbs into the backseat, and sits beside him.
4
When Shouta woke in the hospital with only one foot and his husband camped out at his bedside, he had not been hopeful. He had lost his leg and possibly still his quirk, but the grim expression Hizashi couldn’t hide told Shouta it was more than that. He hadn’t been ready for what Hizashi had told him.
They had lost Nemuri. Knowing it was a fact did not make it feel less true. It was a bad dream that neither of them could wake up from, and he still felt as though she would walk through their apartment at any minute.
Nemuri had always been the one who was good at this. Even with his own husband, Shouta struggled with what to say.
He knows what he’s going to find inside his apartment, but not how to deal with it. Hizashi is slumped over their dining table, one arm stretched across it and the other held up like he had been leaning on it. He clearly didn’t mean to fall asleep here, and the beer that’s grown warm in his hand tells Shouta he has been here for a while.
It’s how he deals with things, Shouta knows that now; while he would rather block out the painful things, deal with them by pushing them deep down, Hizashi copes with excessive drinking and throwing himself into his work. They’re partners now, officially, and Shouta can’t quash his own emotions anymore if it means leaving Hizashi to deal with his on his own. He recognizes what Hizashi had told him all those years ago, knows how he abandoned him to deal with his own grief.
He refuses to do that anymore.
“Zashi,” he rests his hand on Hizashi’s head, ruffles his hair slightly. Hizashi stirs to get comfortable, hardly notices him. “Hizashi. Wake up please.”
“Shouta?” Hizashi lifts his head, blinks himself awake. His eyes are glazed over as if he’s still asleep, but Shouta knows it’s just that he’s trashed. He smiles at him anyway. “Sho, you’re home.”
“Cut the bullshit.” Shouta can’t be bothered for niceties, knows Hizashi isn’t expecting them anyway. “How much have you had to drink?”
Hizashi’s smile drops. “You don’t get to police my habits, mummy man,” he says, which Shouta thinks is fair enough. He sits across from him and eyes the beer that Hizashi is still holding like a lifeline. There’s a dribble left in the bottom, and while he would prefer Hizashi not to finish it, he doubts it would make much of a difference.
“You can’t keep doing this, Hizashi.”
He’s heard that before, echoed in the past by a voice he’ll never hear again. You need to talk to him, she had said, and now here he is, facing off the one conversation he’s been putting off for years. Ironic, how it all comes around in the end.
Even gone, Nemuri finds a way to say I told you so.
“Please just, don’t, Shouta.” Hizashi sits up, finishes his drink with one more swig. “This is so not what matters right now, okay?”
“I think it matters if my husband is drinking himself into an early grave,” Shouta deadpans. Hizashi scoffs and turns away from him, his fingers tapping a tune nervously up and down the empty bottle. Shouta wants to snatch it from his hand and hurl it at the wall if it will make Hizashi look at him. “You’re shutting me out, Hizashi,” he realises how hypocritical that sounds when he says it, “pretending that you’re okay when you’re not is not the way to deal with this.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Hizashi tells him, gets up from the table and turns away. He sways a little when he walks, but he’s seasoned now at getting around when he’s in this state and doesn’t worry about tripping over how he used to. “There’s nothing wrong with me, yeah? Please, leave it alone.”
“You’re mourning, we all are.” Shouta follows right behind him, undeterred even though he walks with a cane now. “Of course there’s something wrong with you.”
“You don’t get it,” Hizashi says, and now Shouta’s pissed off, his eyes flashing red for a moment as he stares at Hizashi’s back.
“Excuse me?” Hizashi stills, and Shouta’s glad that he did because he really doesn’t want to chase him through their apartment. “I don’t get it? What, you think I didn’t lose her too?”
Hizashi leans against the wall, stopped in the doorway to their bedroom. He says nothing and it concerns Shouta enough that his anger sobers. Hizashi’s shoulders are shaking, his hand held up around his throat, and Shouta moves towards him as quickly as he can, squeezes his body through the narrow space left between Hizashi and the doorframe.
His face has crumpled, streaked with tears, but completely silent.
“Hizashi.” Shouta reaches out, to hold him or steady him, he isn’t entirely sure at first. Hizashi decides for him, pushes himself into Shouta’s space, cries into the collar of his shirt until it’s completely soaked through. Shouta holds him close, his hand firm over the back of Hizashi’s head. This is exactly why they need to talk about things.
“How could- how could you think that?” Hizashi hiccups wetly, and it’s as heart wrenching for Shouta as it is confusing. “I know you get that, of course I know you get it. That’s not what I was talking about.”
“Okay, Zashi.” Shouta wants him to calm down before he explains himself, but Hizashi shakes his head, pushes Shouta’s chest so he can pull back and look at him.
“First it was Oboro.” He sniffs. Even now, fifteen years later, Shouta feels a pang in his chest when he hears his name. “Then Tensei got injured badly, like, life-changingly. Now Nemuri’s gone too, and you-“ he shakes his head again, “I’m the only who- there’s nothing wrong with me.”
“That’s not something you need to feel guilty about.” Shouta holds him tighter, and it anchors him as much as it does Hizashi, who is doing a better job at smearing his tears around his face than wiping them off. “This isn’t your fault. You know that, right?”
“I know, I know it’s not.” His hands are tight around Shouta’s back, like he’s scared he might float away. “I can’t help but think I’m doing something wrong here.”
“Hizashi, I’m so glad that you’re okay, and I know that Nem would be too. There’s nothing you could have done to change what happened, and I know there’s nothing you wouldn’t do to try and make it better.” He pulls back, looks into his glassy eyes that are slowly coming back into focus. “I’m not good at this, and I’m sorry I wasn’t always there.”
Hizashi gives him a wobbly smile and folds back into his embrace.
“You’re here now.”
5
They stumble into their apartment with smiling mouths pressed together.
Shouta’s all hands as they back up through the hallway, and Hizashi kicks the front door closed without taking his own from either side of his husbands flushed face. They’re both warm from the wine they drank with dinner, and Shouta’s tongue tastes like liquorice, a remnant from the ice cream they picked up on their way back from the restaurant. Hitoshi and Eri are staying at the dorms tonight – Toshinori is watching over them – so neither of them worry about being spotted so full of each other in the kitchen doorway.
Tuna has come to greet them, meowing loudly, and Shouta almost trips over her back where she brushes up behind his legs. He steadies himself quickly, and Hizashi can’t help but tighten his grip on him. Shouta pulls away from Hizashi to shoot the cat a look that’s equal parts loving and apologetic.
“Tonight was fun,” Hizashi says. His thumb ghosts over the scar beneath Shouta’s permanently closed eye. What with the kids and the ever rising crime rate, they don’t get to do this as often as they used to. With Shouta playing babysitter in the dorms every other night and Hizashi’s frankly ridiculous radio hours, date night has become another fond memory rather than a weekly occurrence. They understand why it isn’t possible now, but they take what they can get.
“It was,” Shouta agrees. They had booked a table at a restaurant far fancier than either of them were used to, and Shouta had laughed as Hizashi confessed he didn’t recognise a single item on the menu. “The restaurant was nice.”
“Obviously.” Hizashi looks Shouta up and down, a devious smirk forming. “I have good taste.”
Shouta drops his mouth back over Hizashi’s, who laughs into it and kisses him back just as passionately. It’s messier than before, and they back up through the kitchen like they have a million times. Shouta doesn’t move as surely as he used to even with his new prosthetic, and he’s very aware of how close he came to losing this, how if the circumstances had been slightly altered, he would have. He doesn’t want to think about that now, refuses to spoil Hizashi’s evening with it. Shouta’s so distracted by him that he’s still clutching the keys in his hand. He has to tear himself away to toss them in the bowl by the door and toe his shoes off.
Hizashi whines and follows him. They shrug off their jackets and hang them on the coatrack, and Hizashi glues himself to Shouta’s back, noses behind his ear as they shuffle into the kitchen to make tea. Hizashi’s hands don’t know where to rest. They start on Shouta’s shoulders before sliding down to trace over the swell of his biceps beneath his white shirt. Shouta doesn’t dress up for anything unimportant, and Hizashi’s heart grows ten sizes at the thought that Shouta thinks so highly of him, of their spending time together. Objectively, he knows this already, and the gold band on his wedding finger proves it, but he always feels like the same sappy, love-struck teenager when it comes to his feelings for Shouta Aizawa.
Shouta pours the tea. Hizashi thinks they must be getting old, how if they were younger, the combination of wine drunk and an empty house would have led them straight to the bedroom. He’s not sure they won’t end up there by the end of the night – he can’t keep his hands to himself, fuelled by the magnetism that’s grown as familiar to them as the sight of each other.
“For you.” Shouta reaches back, hands Hizashi his cup. Hizashi thanks him with another short kiss and takes it from him, his eyes landing on the picture they have stuck to the front of their fridge when he takes a sip.
It’s one of Eri’s finest works, if he does say so himself, but then again, he’s a fan of all that she does. This particular piece features the whole family, with a colourfully scribbled Hizashi on one side and a plainer, black and white scrawled Shouta on the other. Eri’s drawn herself between them, a hand in Hizashi’s and the other in Hitoshi’s, who has been drawn as mostly purple. She’d even added two circular shapes near the bottom to represent Tuna and Mochi, whiskers and all. Hizashi had declared it his favourite thing ever when she handed it to him, and it had been displayed proudly in their kitchen ever since. It’s a little curled around the edges now, but Hizashi looks at it every day.
The best thing about it is the huge, beaming smiles she’s drawn on each of them.
“I’m so lucky,” he says, filled with warmth, and he knows he’s about to start rambling as he tends to when he’s drunk enough, but he feels like the warmth is spilling out of him. “I have the best family in the whole world.”
“It’s just tea,” Shouta jests, but he knows what Hizashi really means. He thinks it too. He turns at the sink and kisses him again, and this one is so much softer than the one they shared before. Hizashi’s never alone anymore, how could he be when their home is so filled with love, and he spies the golden glint on the ring Shouta wears around his neck and knows that they really can do anything so long as they’re together.