The sound of your actions.


The covers felt too heavy on your aches and pains. For a moment you were confused, sure that last night you were curled up on top of the bed. Cautiously pushing yourself up, you saw the soft floral blanket that came from your apartment. Looking around, you also noticed a familiar bag on the table.

"Mic must have come back last night." Your cell was broken, but the clock on the wall said it was three in the morning.

The first thing was to go to the bathroom. It was an arduous task, even rising from the couch had you wincing in pain. The reflection staring back at you was pitiful. It was a good thing you were asleep, the tears would be have been harder to notice then. After a quick rinse of your face, you heard the front door open.

"Aizawa? G-good morning."

"What is he doing up?" You kept your face down, hoping to god he wouldn't notice how puffed and red your eyes were. He was more focused on his own exhaustion, making a strange sound in greeting rather than an actual response. Instead he opened the parcel he was carrying and searched the contents.

"Take these now, and these after you eat." He pressed a variety of medicine into your palm, and placed a plate of food on the table. "They said you'll sleep heavily. One of the others will be here to take you to Recovery Girl this afternoon." His tone was strangely professional, too impersonal for your liking.

You flinched when he reached toward your bandages, an act that didn't go unnoticed by him.

"You've bled through them already." Sure enough almost every bit of white gauze was soaked in blood. You were afraid to look at the state of the couch, although the rest of your arm seemed clean enough. He carefully unwrapped the bindings from your shoulder, focusing on the damage. While he worked, you took your first set of pills.

There was an awkward silence as he finished. He wasn't talking to you at all unless it was instructions on where to move. You weren't about to interrupt him, either. Kneeling down he surveyed the wound on your leg. His hair was noticeably damp, like he just finished with a bath. "Did he just now get home?", you wondered.

The food he brought was a simple, healthy meal. You picked at it to distract yourself from light touch of Aizawa's fingers resting on your thigh as he applied the various medicines to your wound. Breathing in slowly, you thought it might be a good time to talk to him.

"Your back now." He worked too fast. The sudden motion to stand made the words die in your throat, and you decided to stay silent. If you had more energy, you might have been embarrassed as you struggled to lift up your shirt. The sharp intake of breath was one indication of how it must have looked. As his fingertips swept the length of spine, the pain made you pull away.

"Is it bad?"

"Scratches. Bruising. It will heal in time." He didn't say any more, and you didn't realize he left until the sound of his bedroom door clicked shut. Your heart hurt with the brevity.

xXx

A paltry two hours of sleep later Aizawa found himself awake again. This was nothing new, he was used to bouts of insomnia from his terrible sleep schedule. But he wasn't used to the guest that was passed out in the front room.

The snippets of whimpering from the other room caused him to get up from bed with a groan.

His jaw set tightly when he laid eyes on the ragged form of his friend. She clutched at her shoulder in pain, half asleep and shaking slightly. Guilt. Aizawa felt so much guilt about this situation. It was because of his actions that she felt the need to run away. And from the small amount that Midnight would reveal, the attack only happened because of him as well.

He found himself brushing the hair away from her forehead. Sleeping eyes fluttered open for a moment, an apology on her lips before succumbing back into sleep. Aizawa cringed.

They were the same words as when he found her slipping away at the scene, repeated over and over. The broken hero wasn't even lucid enough to know he erased her quirk, or that help had come. The only thing he could think of was his harsh words from their last conversation. "Did you expect me to be around..."

He hadn't meant it that way. She was normally so careful about surpassing her quirk limits. He was frustrated at himself for being the cause of that change, and any of his previous 'coaching' on how to improve suddenly seemed ill advised. The self-imposed role as caretaker was his way of apologizing for everything.

Aizawa sat down next to the makeshift bed, closing his eyes. He just wanted everything to go back to normal. If his strange displays of emotion were making things worse, then he resolved to disregard them. It would be safer for the both of them that way.

xXx

[Knock, knock] The sound of the door woke you up from a medicated unconsciousness. You inched your way to it, still dressed in the clothes from the day prior. Rubbing the sleep from your eye, you opened the door to Toshinori's bright face.

"Ah, good. Are you ready to see Recovery Girl?" His words were clear, but your brain was too fuzzy to register what he was talking about. Holding out his hand, he guided you out of the room.

It was a slow trip to the infirmary. Not only was your body sluggish, but you had to stop and catch your breath every few meters.

"I'm sorry. You have better things to do than this, I'm sure."

"Nonsense." He wasn't having your self-deprecation. "You are my friend, of course I would do this."

"Still?" You mumbled the word with some skepticism. Toshinori furrowed his eyebrows together, not hearing your discontent but worried over the way you grimaced at the word 'friend'. As the both of you reached your destination, he didn't ask what was wrong.

After the healing session, you were surprised at how much pain you had been in. Of course, everything still hurt. But the dizzying feeling you felt had lessened, and you could keep up with Toshinori better on the way back. The second time you needed to catch your breath, it was almost halfway through the walk.

"Would you like to accompany me a while longer? You probably need to eat."

The offer brought you out of your thoughts. How funny the man who barely remembered to eat was the one fussing over you. Your eyes flickered from the spot on the ground you were staring at blankly to the Toshinori's determined smile. For just a second, you thought of declining. But there was nothing besides the company of your own thoughts back in that empty, borrowed room.

"I have nothing else planned."


As things are winding down, I have a question for the readers.

One of the first people to check out this story asked if there would be... intimate relations between the characters. I was pretty much writing toward that goal, but I wondered if it would be good to keep a fluffier ending, and then a racier afterward.

Opinions would be lovely! (Though I can't promise it will be any good. Bwahaha!)