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❝It just made me wonder just how much we're all connected, how we touch each other without even knowing it. And when we're lucky, we do.❞
Bird Crystal Chan
***
Hanta has been leaving his door unlocked.
While it isn’t unusual for Hanta’s friends to come and go like worker bees flying in and out of the hive, they don’t barge straight in. Usually. Nowadays they come bearing bags and plates of food before leaving with spirits… dampened. He overhears Mina bargaining with Aizawa about leaving campus when he goes down into the kitchen to get a snack. She tells him “I’ll buy you those spicy prawn crackers you like, I promise” and then she’s dashing off in a flurry and Aizawa just stares at her back, that unique mixture of fondness and exasperation plastered on his face. He turns back to the open pantry. An hour later, he can hear her shuffling through the corridor and up to the next door. She knocks once on Hanta’s door before she lets herself in, the door closing firmly behind her but he doesn’t hear the resounding click of the lock. It’s peculiar. He’s shuffling out of his room as she leaves Hanta’s, her smile perhaps a little toned down than usual, a little sadder, but she isn’t crying so he doesn’t try to talk to her about it. He has a list of assumptions, a gut feeling that Hanta isn’t feeling great but that’s all he has.
It doesn’t clear up the Hanta situation. Bags filled with knick-knacks and hand delivered food, downturned lips and furrowed brows, it could mean anything.
The weekend passes in large chunks; it’s a blur of studying for final exams, eating, sleeping and thinking — he doesn’t see Hanta, doesn’t want to bother him, but it’s fine. He called Fuyumi sometime on Saturday night and she told him that “distance is good sometimes” and that “you don’t have to be with him all the time, Sho.” Maybe she tells him this because she thinks it’ll hurt his feelings less if his anxiety-fueled thoughts do come true — he doesn’t talk about many people, she’s met even fewer of these people and he understands where she’s coming from, a little bit. Maybe she tells him this because it’s the truth. He wouldn’t know because he’s never had to deal with distance in these types of relationships. Either way, it soothes the frayed nerves enough for him to sit down and focus again. In amongst the ambience, he can hear Hanta’s door slam shut, once in the morning, once around noon and once closer to dinner time. He can hear muffled conversation through their shared wall, can recognise Kaminari’s loud and excitable voice, Bakugou’s explosive shouting and Kirishima’s declaration of something as manly. It’s all familiar, perhaps not soothing but comforting nonetheless.
He hasn’t heard Hanta yet, not above the noise of the others. He usually can; Hanta laughs alongside Kaminari, eggs on Bakugou or joins Kirishima in his lifelong mission of spreading positive masculinity. He remembers Fuyumi’s words and puts his head down, focusing on the mess he’s made of the maths question he’s attempting. An aggravated sigh fights it’s way past his lips. He’s never wanted to slam his head down on the desk more.
He’s going to be a hero, why does he need to be able to integrate and differentiate?
He sleeps through his alarm on Monday, the hours having crept past him, moving slowly like sludge down a brick wall, as he laid in bed, mentally exhausted from the hours spent focusing intently at his desk the two days prior. Energy, the urge to jump up and exercise, to spar, to exert himself, bounds about his body and he’s restless in the worst way; it reminds him of ants crawling atop his skin but this time their underneath his skin and it’s not the type of itch he can scratch away and his brain won’t let him do anything more than toss and turn on his futon. He’s half-tempted to get back out of bed and do something more productive; more study, perhaps, or a quick workout. He doesn’t do that. Midnight slips past him and soon one and two do too and the last thing he remembers is being in the guilty embrace of three and then he’s presented with the warmth of eight and his eyelids are determined to glue themselves back together when he manages to crack them open but he knows if he doesn’t get up now, he’s never going to make it to class on time. The idea sits on his tongue, syrupy sweet. It’d be easy to go back to sleep, to fall back into the dreary haze of slumber, to reclaim the hours he lost to the restless itch beneath his skin. He spits the temptation from his mouth and grinds it to a fine powder under his heel for good measure. After exams. A week of classes, the weekend, then a week of exams. It’s fine. He’ll make it.
He barely makes it to class. He sloppily marches to his seat, sedately meandering down the isles, when Aizawa slouches into the classroom. There’s one empty seat — Aizawa stares at it from behind the lectern but doesn’t comment on it. Yet. Homeroom passes in it’s usual haze of steady chatter. Nothing out of the ordinary, just boring, typical high school events and notices; it’s a blessing in comparison to first year but it doesn’t help the electricity raging through him. He idly wonders if this is how Kaminari feels sitting in class. Or maybe he should ask Bakugou or Izuku to spar…
Aizawa approaches Mina’s desk, bends down to converse quietly with her. He can’t hear what they’re saying from his desk, not with Izuku and Ochako and Tsuyu talking around him. He sees Mina shake her head and Aizawa nods, mouth moving before he returns to the front of the classroom. He gets into his sleeping bag and that’s the end of the interaction. Mina joins her friends and he knows he should turn back to his own friends but they haven’t engaged with him yet. Maybe they can see the fatigue settling into his face like agitated mud and sand settling in murky water. He doesn’t turn back to his friends. Instead he pulls his phone out. He places his thumb against the home button and it unlocks. He stares down at the bright screen — he needs to turn the brightness down, he thinks — and his thumb hovers above the screen. He’s torn. Conflicted. If Hanta is sick, he doesn’t want to accidentally wake him, doesn’t want to disturb him, but the caring — perhaps selfish — part of him wants to talk to him. Make sure he’s really okay. Wants to take care of him, let him complain about how shit it is to be sick, how he wants to be back in heroics class; he wants to sit in his room again, just the two of them, listening to music and working through classwork and reading manga together on his bed. He wants that.
He wants that.
So he taps his thumb against the screen, pulls up his messages with Hanta and composes a message. “Are you feeling alright?” he asks. Hanta isn’t online, hasn’t been online since two in the morning. “I’ll bring you the notes and worksheets from class later,” he adds because exams are next week and he would be stressed about that right? “I hope you feel better soon.” His message is perfectly polite, maybe a bit too polite but it doesn’t feel right to project his feelings through a screen, with words stitched together and sent across the internet. Not when he can say these things, show these things, to Hanta later this afternoon. There’s no indication Hanta has read his messages; his status remains grey, the ‘last seen at 2:17am’ doesn’t change to ‘online’ no matter how much he wills it. He’s probably asleep. He stares down at the bright screen for a moment longer before he turns the screen off, slips it back into his bag.
His friends are still chattering around him, seemingly content to give him space and fill his gaps with mindless chatter about this and that, as if they don’t see each other at almost every hour of the day. It’s nice. But it isn’t what he wants right now. He sits and listens to them — for some reason they’re discussing this thing called ‘real person fanfiction’? He’ll have to ask Hanta about that later, he’d probably know something about it… — before the bell rings and Aizawa barks at them to get into their seats. He leaves the classroom and Ectoplasm walks in. Aizawa exchanges some words with him briefly just beyond the door frame before continuing on to wherever he’s going. He lets the frustration of integration and differentiation consume him, bathe him in crystal clear and frigid water, lest he hand himself over to distraction about overly polite messages and confusing feelings. He can’t let a failed test hold him back. He’s so close now.
So close.
***
A routine is established — he prints copies of his notes and brings Hanta’s copies of worksheets they chug through in class, bundled together in a folder each day. On Monday, it’s red; Tuesday, green; Wednesday, a bright yellow one. By Wednesday, the worry is gnawing horridly at his insides and he wants to barge into Hanta’s room, wants to smother him in his concern and force him to satiate, extinguish the burning anxiety flooding his veins — about their relationship, their friendship, Hanta’s health, exams. The list has sat crumpled at the bottom of his chest for days, months, maybe years at this point. It’s nothing like the sickening rush as he runs into chaos-stricken battles and heart-aching rescues, it’s sickening in a different way, an unfamiliar way. He wants to scrub himself clean of the sensation, burn it with fire, burn it with ice. The feeling sits in his stomach like a stone; pins him to the bed, burdens his limbs with the extra weight. He can’t sleep. Eating is just another task he has to remember to complete.
After another night of failed sleeping attempts, he decides to burn some items off the list. And so he thinks — because the early hours of the morning are for sleeping and thinking exclusively. He’s off in space as the arms that wrap around his frame change from two to three to four and he’s come to a decision but he doubts the quality of his decisions. Oh well.
That brings him to now. His watch tells him it’s four twenty-eight in the afternoon and the corridors are empty. Everyone usually continues training straight after class, or stays outside while they still can, before they have to retreat back to the dorms as the sun slides below the horizon. Face the music. Study. Instead he’s here — in front of Hanta’s door. This isn’t any different from their little routine, but the thoughts waging war inside his head are different. He needs to talk to him.
His fist comes into view and he’s knocking on the door, counting to seven in his head after his fist moves out of view. He hears a noise, muffled by the layers in between; it sounds vaguely like “who’s there?” so he responds accordingly. “It’s Shouto; could I come in?” He hears another noise; it sounds like a “yes” so he turns the knob and pushes his way in. Just as he planned. Hanta is buried under his blankets; the curtains are loosely drawn shut, as if they were in a rush or couldn’t be bothered to close them fully. The room is washed in soft, deep shadows and sharp, cutting rays of light.
“Hanta,” he breathes out softly. The room smells — as if the room had been locked up for a while, left to fester and settle, stuck in time. There’s something odd about seeing the quaint little room cluttered and messier than usual; the desk is piled high with notes and textbooks, Hanta’s laptop screen is dark and he can see a half scratched out calendar tacked onto the wall behind the desk. The last day crossed out was last Thursday. Hanta is just staring at him, eyes dark and half open and he’s never looked more exhausted despite, presumably, being in bed for multiple days. “Do you… want a hug?”
“... I don’t know.”
Shouto doesn’t know how to respond to that. So he doesn’t. He takes a couple more steps into the room, starts to shove empty food packets into the half-full bin, stacks plates on the one free spot on Hanta’s desk before reaching out to fully open the curtains and the window. He hears a soft moan from behind him but he pays it no mind. “You’ve got until I finish cleaning your room to stay in bed,” he turns around. “Then we’re going to freshen up and go to the library.” The figure turned away from him doesn’t so much as breathe so he sneaks closer. “Do you agree to this, Hanta?”
The non-committal hum is good enough for him.
***
They never make it to the library. Hanta doesn’t beg , per say, but it’s a near enough thing. Shouto still drags him out of the dorms — he’s fairly certain he spots Mina smiling at them as he pretty much pulls him along out the dorm front door. They dawdle along the exposed footpaths and Shouto watches as Hanta slouches in on himself. He doesn’t like it one bit.
So no, Hanta doesn’t beg to go someplace else, not in the strictest sense, but Shouto hears him loud and clear anyways.
They abruptly change directions, straying further away from the large crowds of students and the more popular spots for studying, instead opting for an abandoned picnic table in the far corner of the campus. The sun is past the apex of it’s journey, partially hidden by one of the many buildings on campus. It’s cold, the wind being tunnelled by the daunting walls of the fence and the aforementioned building. Shouto’s glad he sporadically decided to bring an extra jacket for Hanta.
Hanta still looks a bit waifish, pale and coming off the ends of being ill, under eye bags just that little bit darker than usual. He doesn’t want to force him to do school work but it’s close enough to dinner that Shouto doesn’t want to risk Hanta missing meals (anymore than he has already). So, he does the next best thing to help him; confront the mass of missing work together.
Maybe it isn’t the right thing to do — maybe he should’ve let Hanta rest some more, maybe he should’ve done more when he first got sick, maybe he should’ve-
All the maybe ’s and what if ’s don’t matter right now. Because Hanta is his friend, perhaps something more, has been a resounding pillar of stability to their classmates, to his friends, to him ; it’s about time he be there for Hanta, to bring him out of the slump, raise him up onto his feet and let him know that he’s here, that they’re all here for him. But he also needs to take the first step, lift his heavy feet and move them forward, one in front of the other.
“Are you… alright, Hanta?”
“... No, I don’t think I am.” His face scrunches up and he swallows, chewing over the words for a moment before spitting them onto the table between them. “I just feel- like I’m not enough anymore; what am I even doing here?” Shouto stays silent. “I’m tired and I can’t bring myself to care about this stupid course work or studying or finals,” he pauses, as if contemplating his next words. “Sometimes it scares me, not caring.” He whispers this, a secret between Shouto, Hanta and the wind. “What if I suddenly stop caring about being a hero, stop thinking about the people and focus only on capturing the villains?” He finally looks up at Shouto, heterochromatic eyes meeting dark brown eyes for the first time in days.
“I’m not a monster, Shouto, but I can’t help but think about it.” He’s near tears now, lips twitching as he tries to keep them at bay, and Shouto knows . He knows.
He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t think that Hanta wants him to say something but rather do something. With Shouto, actions speak louder than words anyways. Hanta has his eyes covered, palms pressing against his closed eyelids, when he envelops him in his arms and perhaps that was enough for the dam to break. Perhaps it was inevitable for the dam to break.
Shouto wishes for a lot of things. Among other things, he wishes he’d grown the courage to check up on his Hanta sooner. Wishes he could be content with just this one hug, this one moment of support, this one moment of connection, but he knows he won’t be. He’s greedy. Flawed. Exhausted. Wanting comfort.
Maybe this hug was also for him.
They’d be okay. Finals felt inconsequential in comparison to the rest of their high school experience — standardised testing was nothing in the face of death and violence. It’s okay that they’re not okay. It’s okay that they’re exhausted. It means they’re present and experiencing and it’ll turn into a time they can look back on and laugh about, a means of connecting to others. He tells Hanta as much and the hug gets awkward when Hanta squeezes him all the more, sobs and weeps and rants about their coursework. It was always bound to get at least a little awkward, what with so many limbs trying to find a comfortable position on the wooden bench but they made it work.
He’ll be there for Hanta, even if it isn’t in the way that he fully intends to be, Shouto swears it, maybe aloud, maybe in his head. It doesn’t really matter all that much. He’ll see it through to the end. He tucks his chin over Hanta’s shoulder, relaxing into the embrace, content for the moment.