It is several months into their first year at UA, and several weeks into Yamada Hizashi's attempts to befriend Aizawa Shouta, who recently won the sports festival and transferred himself into both the hero course and Yamada's heart.
"Where do you live?" Shouta asks. It is one of the first times Aizawa has initiated conversation between the two of them, but it is also one of the first times Aizawa has noticed something strange about Yamada Hizashi. (Stranger than his cheerful personality, loud demeanor, and determination to befriend Shouta, anyway)
"Hmm?" Shouta's new...friend blinks at him. (Friend? Aizawa doesn't think he's ever had one of those before...)
"You've been walking me home straight up to my doorstep every day after school for the last week, but I'm pretty sure you don't live around this neighborhood." Shouta grumbled, tilting his head forward until his hair half covered his face. "It would be illogical to walk me home every day if you don't live around here."
"Oh. Oh, no." Yamada laughs sheepishly and rubs the back of his head. "My father arranges for me to be warped home every day. I can get home instantly from wherever I want."
"Ah." Shouta blinked. "That's a pretty rare quirk." He comments slowly, for lack of anything better to say. He fidgets with the strap of his bag as he walks down the sidewalk. Yamada doesn't seem bothered by the silence, only hums once at the comment and keeps smiling at Shouta as they walk along. Shouta clears his throat. "So I assume your quirk is from your mother's side, then?"
"Ah...ha, I'm adopted, actually." Yamada says, more awkwardly this time, smile dimming a little. Shouta side eyes him wearily from between strands of hair. Yamada renews his smile with genuine warmth and straightens his back. "My adopted father is great though! You should come over and meet him sometime!"
They come to a stop at the gate to Shouta's tiny yard, as they have every day for the last week. And as every day for the last week, Shouta awkwardly fails to invite Hizashi in, and Hizashi is determinedly smiling and determinedly staving off awkwardness. They hover like that, ever on the edge of...something.
Shouta turns to head up the walk and inside without any attempt to make a goodbye, anticipating Hizashi squeaking in outrage and whining about his lack of manners, as has become their custom. Yamada does call out for him to stop, but instead of the half exaggerated lecture on manners, (and manners that require Shouta to interact with Hizashi specifically), the blond instead leads with...
"Wait!" Yamada waves his arms wildly as if to get Shouta's attention, even though Shouta is facing in completely the opposite direction. Luckily for Yamada, Shouta turns at his shout anyway.
"Yes?" Shouta says, deadpan in the face of Hizashi's excited histrionics.
"Do you want to see it?" Hizashi asks, smiling goofily at him from behind his thick, square frame glasses.
Shouta sighs, but decides to take the plunge. "See what?" He dins to ask.
"My warp home!" Hizashi exclaims like it's obvious, bouncing on his toes. "It looks pretty cool from the outside!"
"Hmm." Shouta deliberates, feigning indifference. "I suppose..."
"Cool!" Yamada almost squeals with sparkling eyes, before digging a chain necklace out of his shirt from around his neck, from which hangs a large, plain metal bead with a seam down the middle. Yamada holds the bead between the thumbs and forefingers of both hands poised, he grins and bounces on his toes again. "Are you ready?" He asks, wiggling.
"...I suppose." Shouta replies, gripping the strap of his bag with one hand and eyeing the crazy blond wearily.
There was another moment of anticipation, where Yamada wiggled with his eyes locked on Shouta's face, and Shouta stared. Finally, Shouta stated blandly, "Well?"
"Weeeeeeelllllll..." Yamada drew it out, looking up at the sky thoughtfully, shoulders wilting a little. "I just realized that I won't be able to see your reaction. Because I'll be teleporting."
"How terrible." Shouta deadpanned.
"I know, right?" Yamada lamented, fiddling with his necklace. Another beat of silence passed.
"Well?" Shouta asked, sweatdropping with exasperation. "Are you going to do it?"
"Yes!" Yamada snapped to reassure quickly. "Just give me a moment!"
Yamada continued to grin goofily at Shouta. Shouta continued to stare blankly back with the void vibrating behind him.
Shouta finally raised his eyes to the heavens and exhaled sharply. "Go, loudmouth!" He says exasperatedly.
"Ok!" Yamada says cheerfully. "Goodbye, Shouta!"
"I'll see you in class tomorrow, Yamada san." Shouta stated blandly.
Yamada bounced on his toes and waved one arm quickly.
Shouta sluggishly raised the arm not gripping his bag and waved his fingers slowly up and down twice.
"Alright, for real this time...! Goodbye!" Yamada said, then decisively twisted the two halves of his marble with a click. Instantly, reality twisted and snapped; swirling, warping, shrinking down to a marble point and then disappearing with a sound like a gunshot that echoed through the neighborhood. Instantly, five nearby car alarms began screeching, and a nearby stray cat shot out of some bushes and around the corner with it's ears pinned back. Curtains began twitching. Locks began clicking. In the distance, a police siren began to sound, presumably having been near enough to have heard the gunshot-like sound.
Shouta stared at the place Yamada had disappeared from with a thousand yard stare. Slowly, he raised his hand and slapped his face into his palm. "Goddamn it, Yamada." He muttered.
His palm hid the small smile creeping over his face.
...
They were drinking slushies in a local park, seated across from each other at a picnic table. It was halfway through their second year, and also halfway through their fifth date, (it was also the first date which did not take place in a cat cafe), and Shouta Aizawa was still staunchly denying that it was a date, as he had been doing for the last four dates. Eventually, the playful argument wound down into a comfortable silence, until...
"So if this was a date..." Shouta begins slowly. Hizashi almost spits out his drink at what was almost halfway to an admittance from his...friend. "If this was a date...what would your father think about...us."
"Oh, he's totally cool with it!" Hizashi exclaims, grinning. "You are talking about the gay thing, right?"
Now it is Shouta who almost spits out his drink. "Yes." He coughs, blushing. "The...gay thing."
"Nah, my dad is totally cool with it." Hizashi continued grinning. "I mean, he has some...I guess you'd call them coworkers? Or maybe more like living furniture...but anyway, he has some people around that he can't get rid of that are loudly homophobic, but those guys are basically fossils and my dad has all the power over them. If they get too annoying I have his permission to draw mustaches on their faces and scream until their ears bleed."
Shouta blinks at him, slurping loudly through his straw for maximum awkwardness. "Ok." He finally settles on, choosing to ignore everything he just heard. His brows furrowed and he put his drink down. "I just worry sometimes...I know you always say your dad is great, but you get this look on your face sometimes when your adoption comes up..." Shouta glances away. "I just worry sometimes." He grumbles again.
"Oh. Ha, ha..." Hizashi rubs the back of his neck. "No, my dad is great, like I always say-I should really have nothing to complain about; he gave me a really amazing childhood..." Hizashi trailed off, and rested his arms on the table with a sigh. "It just still makes me sad sometimes, to think about what brought me into his care. Did I ever tell you that I was born with my quirk?" He asked, in a seeming non sequitur. "It didn't come in when I was four, like most non mutant type quirks; I came into this world kicking and screaming!"
Shouta winced.
Hizashi smiled sadly. "Yah, that was a lot of people's reaction. I gave my birth parents and the doctors and nurses permanent hearing loss; blew their eardrums out." He laughed sheepishly. "From what I'm told, my birth parents lasted...something like two weeks? Before they gave me up for adoption."
Shouta winced again. "That's illogical." He muttered, glancing away.
"Aw, Sho..." Hizashi leaned forward and cooed, to Shouta's mortification. "Did you just admit it's illogical to get rid of me? I think that's the nicest thing you've ever said about...anyone! Now I know you really love me." Hizashi grinned sappily at him over the rims of his glasses. Shouta blushed and shoved the straw of his long sense empty drink in his mouth and sucked noisily at the dredges to avoid answering.
After fighting his blush back down, Shouta slammed his drink on the table and blatantly changed the subject back. "So your dad adopted you when you were a baby?" He asked, slightly louder than he would usually speak.
"Ah, no." Hizashi leaned back in his seat, grin returning to that awkward, sad thing. "He actually didn't adopt me until I was around four...I was in foster care until then."
Shouta winced. He found himself doing that a lot in this conversation.
"Ahh, it wasn't that bad..." Hizashi gave another awkward laugh. "Or at least, I don't remember it well. Um...I think I was moved around a lot? I remember being in a lot of stranger's houses for the first time, over and over. And I had a...well, in my file it was called a "quirk suppression device" but they should have had the balls to call it what it was." Shouta accidentally made eye contact with Hizashi in surprise at hearing his...friend swear. Hizashi closed his eyes though and exhaled heavily through his teeth. "It was a muzzle." He stated bluntly.
Shouta jerked his head up and stared, wide eyed.
Hizashi cracked a wan smile. "Making me wear it wasn't considered to be... anything untoward... considering the circumstances. It was recommended by both a doctor and a quirk therapist even, and nobody was afraid to record it in my files, so it wasn't considered to be abuse, and I barely even remember it, so it's not like I'm traumatized or anything, but..." Hizashi let out a sigh, and finally let the smile drop. "Now that I'm older, I just think about...I picture like, say-that kid, over there, being in that situation...wearing a fucking muzzle... and... I don't know. It just makes me angry and sad. Like, on behalf of little me."
Shouta stared at Hizashi across the table, hardly daring to breath. Hizashi only stared off in the direction of the random kid he had pointed out, face propped up by his fist and eyes distant. Shouta stiffly turned to follow his gaze, giving the kid a look longer than a glance this time. He was... maybe three? Four? Chubby cheeked and stumbly legged, playing in the grass while his mom watched from nearby. Shouta stretched a muscle he didn't often use these days-his imagination. He reimagined that little kid with blond hair and green eyes. Then he added a muzzle to the image... what would a human muzzle look like? It would have to be different from the kind for dogs, right? On dogs it was to stop biting; in this case it would be to stop the kid from making sound. It would be leather probably, right? It would have to cover the entire lower half his face and wrap around the back of his head as well. Shouta pictured this on the imaginary child/Hizashi. It would look almost look like a mask, right? But it would be pretty uncomfortable after a while, wouldn't it? How much of the day would Hizashi have been required to wear it? They couldn't have made him sleep in it, right? But then, children were prone to the occasional nightmare, weren't they? Especially children with no stable home, and children who woke from nightmares cried loudly, didn't they?
Quite beyond his control, the imaginary child/Hizashi began silently crying in a manner that was very unlike the way the living, breathing one at his side cried (that is to say, the real one cried loudly, and with great dramatics). Child Hizashi's big, green eyes watered at him, begging for help.
Shouta felt a pain in his palm, and he realized he had been clenching his hands too hard. His jaw as well; Shouta slowly forced himself to relax as his imagination faded and the happy child playing in the sun came back to the forefront. Shouta turned his attention back to his friend across the table to find him still staring dully at the scene of the mother and son across the park. Before he knew it, Shouta was moving, closing the distance and sliding into place on the bench next to Hizashi, who jolted in surprise and turned to look at him with big, green eyes. Shouta refused to meet his gaze, but under the table his leg lined up with Hizashi's as he threw himself down; foot pressed against foot, calve pressed against calve, knee against knee. Shouta lay one arm down on the top of the picnic table and pillowed his head on it, slouching down into the half asleep pose he often adopted in class with half lidded eyes. And with his other hand...
Shouta was not blushing. He was not. He was only hiding his face in his arm because this date was boring him and he was falling asleep. It had nothing whatsoever to do with...
Shouta shook off the thought, then mumbled to address the shocked silence to his right. "I'm the only one allowed to make you shut you up now, ok?" Wait, no; did that come out right? It probably came across as creepy. Shouta was just going to keep his face buried in his arm and his eyes closed forever.
Hizashi, who Shouta had failed to notice was turning a delightful shade of red, was still staring down in shock at where Shouta had boldy wrapped his right pinky finger around Hizashi's left under the table. (or rather, where Shouta had timedly chickened out of going in for a full hand hold)
Hizashi swallowed thickly.
It was then that Yamada Hizashi had an epiphany; this was the second time he he had this particular epiphany, (the first time being when Shouta had stood over him, triumphant at the sports festival in first year, and then reached down and offered him his sweaty hand up), but this epiphany was accompanied by a second one.
First: Hizashi was in so much trouble right now.
Second: Hizashi was going to marry Aizawa Shouta one day, come hell or high water.