Chapter Text
Hizashi isn’t jealous. Really, he’s not.
He’s not that kind of guy. He’s the kind of guy who appreciates his friends. He wants them to be happy. And if that means that Hizashi gets lumped with a bunch of complicated feelings? Well, he just has to suck it up.
In his first year at UA, he’d been oblivious to his own feelings. Looking back on it years later, he’ll wonder how the hell he didn’t notice, but at the time he’d been focused on other things. And in the midst of starting a podcast, and hero training, and the sport’s festival, and everything in between, he made some amazing friends. Shouta and Oboro. And when he looks at them, he feels warm, feels complete, feels fuzzy and happy. Nobody else makes him feel like that.
“Hey,” Oboro taps on his shoulder, at the start of the lunch hour. They’re only a few days into their life at UA. Hizashi hadn’t made many friends at his last school - lots of people found him irritating. Which is whatever, really. They just can’t understand his genius!
Hizashi glances up at the other student and cocks his head. “Yeah, man?”
“I heard you singing in the changing room yesterday!” The taller teen grins. Hizashi’s cheeks go red. How embarrassing. He’s about to apologise, but Oboro speaks first. “You sounded great! Can you sing for me sometime? I’d love to listen!”
Hizashi gapes.
That’s the first time. The first time he gets that feeling.
The second time is a week later.
It’s the middle of class, and they’re supposed to be having a discussion amongst themselves about why they want to be heroes.
Hizashi is talking to the guy sitting next to him, Aizawa Shouta. Actually, he’s been talking for some time. When he looks up at the clock, he realises he’s been gushing for five minutes straight about how cool it would be to save people and protect those he loves. Shouta is probably bored to death.
“Ah, sorry, dude!” Hizashi holds up his hands. “I’ve been talking for so long!”
Shouta, instead of rolling his eyes or complaining or snickering, just blinks at him. All long eyelashes and deadpan stare. His skin is so smooth...
“It’s fine,” he says. “I like the way you sound.”
Hizashi’s cheeks flush red.
“Oh. Right. Well. Tell me why you want to be a hero, then!” Hizashi says. He’s got butterflies in his stomach.
“...I just want to help people. I don’t need to be thanked for it.”
And that’s the second time. Shouta’s expression is so sincere, so kind. Something stirs in Hizashi’s heart.
It’s not until second year that he recognises the feeling. And it’s only because the trio’s friendship takes a turn. One he hasn’t been expecting at all. And somehow, he’d never seen the signs. He’s arguably the most personable of the three, and still he hadn’t seen it.
Hizashi heads into school that day the same as any other day. It’s just after the school festival, and he’s excited to talk to his friends about their performances. It’s an overcast day, cloudy and dark, threatening rain. A day of foreboding.
They’d all done really fucking awful at the sport’s festival. So they can commiserate together! Lick their wounds together! Hizashi’s arm is in a sling, Oboro has an extra plaster on his face, and Shouta is sporting a set of crutches. A trio of losers. But it’s not going to bring Hizashi down. He’ll use this failure to propel himself to new heights!
He slams the door to the classroom open with his uninjured arm. The room is already half full.
“Good morning listeners!” Nothing like a bit of screaming to properly jolt his classmates awake. Most of them grumble, and there’s a halfhearted ‘shut up, Yamada’ coming from somewhere near the front. Hizashi’s eyes, however, stray towards the back of the classroom, where his friends sit.
He freezes.
Oboro and Shouta are already here. That’s not unusual, they both usually arrive before him. But they’re sitting awfully close to each other. So close. Too close. Oboro is sitting on Shouta’s desk, facing him, his legs either side of Shouta’s body. And as Hizashi watches, frozen, Oboro leans down to kiss their dark haired friend.
It’s like the world has just ended. Hizashi’s breath gets caught in his throat, and he stares. He feels like he’s watching the whole thing from outside his body. Like he’s floating away, and he’s not really here at all, and this whole thing is a film, a dream. He’s going to wake up tomorrow and it won’t be true. He won’t have these horrible feelings suddenly twisting in his gut. His chest feels hollow, like he’s an empty matryoshka doll.
He can’t identify the feelings. He’s never felt like this before.
He lets out a quiet squeak as another classmate pushes past him into the room. Some of the other teenagers snicker. Oboro looks over, and his smile is bright and wide. Hizashi moves towards him and Shouta, like a moth to a flame.
“Hizashi! Dude! I didn’t tell you the good news!” Oboro pats Shouta’s head, and Shouta looks distinctly annoyed. “I finally confessed!”
“...Confessed?” Hizashi blinks. He’s having some trouble absorbing all of this.
“Yeah,” Oboro rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “Nemuri said my crush on Shouta was really obvious. You noticed, right?”
Hizashi hasn’t noticed. They’re his best friends, and he never noticed.
“Of course he did,” Shouta interrupts before Hizashi can utterly embarrass himself with a reply. “Hizashi knows these things.”
Hizashi doesn’t know these things. He had no idea, and now there are some really ugly feelings churning inside him.
He’s not jealous. Really. He’s not. He’s happy for them.
Maybe if he thinks it enough, it’ll come true. He really wants to be happy for them.
Oboro must notice his hesitation, because his smile drops a bit.
“What’s the matter, Zashi? You’re not… y’know…” He trails off. For a moment, Hizashi is oblivious to what he means, and then it occurs to him that Oboro is worried he’s homophobic. Hizashi shakes his head quickly and puts on his best Present Mic smile. He squashes the nasty feelings down, because he wants them to be happy. They deserve it.
“What? No! ‘Course not, bro! I have two mums, remember? It’s just a surprise. I thought you’d never get the balls to do it, and Shouta’s way too shy with feelings to confess first!” He laughs, pretending he knew all along that his two best friends were falling for each other. “I'm happy for you two.”
He manages to say it convincingly enough. Shouta’s expression softens, and it makes something terrible twist in Hizashi’s gut again.
“Thank you, Hizashi,” he says. Hizashi does fingerguns. He’s the cool friend, and he’s totally cool and chill with this. No problems.
Although, maybe now he’s more of a third wheel than a friend.
He settles in his seat. He tries to be as loud and enthusiastic as possible, even whilst he’s feeling down. It’s not Shouta and Oboro’s fault that Hizashi feels this way. He just has to get a hold of himself.
At lunch time, he blabs an excuse and heads to the bathroom, locking himself in a stall. He needs time to think this through. To examine his feelings and categorise them, like a librarian carefully filing through a mountain of books. Except the librarian is trying to follow the Dewey Decimal system, and they don’t understand the language the books are in.
Hizashi just has to translate them. That’s all.
He leans against the wall of the toilet stall and slides down until he’s crouching. He runs his hand through his hair, making it even more wild than it usually is.
And it's there that he starts to put names to what he’s feeling.
The burning, fiery feeling - it’s not anger, but it is similar. He feels it when Shouta and Oboro kiss, when they look at each other, when their fingers brush tenderly.
It’s jealousy.
There’s no point in denying it any further. It’s burning, consuming, numbing jealousy. It takes his breath away, how strong the feeling is. But it’s also confusing - he can’t figure out who the jealousy is towards. Is he jealous of Shouta, who has Oboro? Wonderful Oboro, so tall and handsome and kind and energetic. Or is he jealous of Oboro, who has Shouta? Shouta, the adorable sleepy boy with a heart of gold, ready to throw himself into any fight for the sake of his friends.
A dreadful, terrible thought starts to creep up on Hizashi as he crouches in the bathroom stall. There’s a dripping tap in here somewhere, and it drips steadily as the realisation drips into his head.
Drip. It’s not just Shouta. Drip. It’s not just Oboro. Drip.
He’s jealous of them both.
He puts a hand over his mouth to stop the audible gasp that comes with this revelation. Fuck. He’s jealous of both of them, which means…
That warm, fuzzy feeling he gets when he sees them. When he feels complete around them. The fluttering in his heart when Oboro laughs, when Shouta does that little smile.
It’s love. He’s in love with them. Both of them.
He feels wrong. Like he suddenly has this dirty secret, like they’d be disgusted with him if they knew. They probably wouldn’t be. They’d probably pity him, but life would be too awkward after that. It would ruin their friendship to tell them. They’re so happy together.
He takes his hand away from his face when he realises his cheeks are wet with tears.
He can’t tell them.
It would ruin everything. He would ruin everything. He cares too much about his friends for that. What’s a little jealousy when compared to losing the two people he cares about the most?
No, he’ll have to keep it inside. How hard can it be? He’ll get used to it, and then it’ll be easy.
A few weeks pass. It doesn’t get any easier.
He fakes his smiles and laughs through the weird hollow feeling in his chest. He ignores the burning pain when he looks at Shouta and Oboro kissing. For their sakes, he’s not going to express himself. He’s not going to give even a single hint that he isn’t okay.
This is made easier by the hero work studies. Hizashi is with Sensoji, paired with the Buster Union. Shouta and Oboro are paired together, with His Purple Highness. Hizashi shouldn’t be relieved that he doesn’t have to see his friends, but he is. He misses seeing them every day, but it’s a relief not to have the constant reminder of what he can never have.
They still have a few days at school, even during hero work study. So it’s not like he never sees them. He sees them just the right amount. Maybe this is fine. Maybe he can squash his crushes down until he just doesn’t feel that way about them anymore.
One Monday, at the end of the day, Shouta and Oboro catch up with him as they start to walk out of the school. Usually, Oboro and Shouta would turn left, and Hizashi would turn right.
“Hizashi! Hold up!” Oboro waves, running up to him, with Shouta trailing. Oboro catches Hizashi’s wrist. Hizashi’s heart does a somersault. Just that little contact is enough to make him flustered. Oboro’s grip is strong, but his hand is soft.
“Yeah, bro?” Hizashi smiles widely. He’s getting good at this. Pretending.
“Me and Shouta wanted to ask you something,” Oboro goes on. There’s an odd little shake to his voice, but Hizashi can’t discern why. It’s really not like Oboro to be nervous about anything, let alone talking to one of his best friends. Hizashi turns and smiles, giving the two other boys his full attention. There’s an awkward pause, and then Oboro opens his mouth to speak. But Shouta gets there quicker, stepping in front of Oboro.
“It can wait until the weekend,” he mutters. He looks… nervous. And that’s really strange for Shouta, too, who always puts up a front. It makes Hizashi want to hug him. Oboro pouts (and fuck, it’s really cute when he does that-) but then nods. He shoots Shouta a meaningful look.
“...Yeah. We’ll ask at the weekend,” he decides. He pats Hizashi’s shoulder. “See you soon, Zashi!”
Shouta and Oboro exit stage left, holding hands. Hizashi watches them go, blinking, wondering what the hell they might want to ask about.
Well, whatever it is, he’ll find out at the weekend. He shrugs it off and heads home to listen to some sad teen music. Perfect atmosphere for all this teen angst.
He never finds out what his friends wanted to ask.
On Thursday, things go terribly, horribly wrong.
It starts out like any other day. He and Sensoji are out with the Buster Union. So far, they haven’t faced any serious villains. When he was a little kid and first decided he wanted to be a hero, he thought it would be all action, all the time. Instead, he’s been spending most of today arguing with Sensoji. He’s almost bored.
And then it all goes wrong.
It’s a blur.
There’s a villain, a creature, nobody knows what or who it is, but nothing they do has any effect. Any attack they hit it with does no damage and hits right back at them, they’re going nowhere fast with this fight, stuck in the proverbial mud, watching helplessly, doing all they can to protect the civilians but with no plan, no way to stop it. Their own quirks are thrown back at them and they can’t do anything about it. Useless. Hizashi feels useless. He’s one of the smartest young heroes in his class, but he can’t think of a way to defeat the villain. Useless. Idiot. Weak.
And then Oboro and Shouta are there. Hizashi can’t keep track, it’s happening so fast, his head hurts, he has to think.
It’s over. Fast as that, it’s over.
And as the dust settles over the battlefield, the information trickles through. First to his ears, which are aching, his hearing dulled and echoing, and then into his brain. He can’t understand the words. They don’t make sense, because it’s just not possible.
Shouta. The hero. The one that brings down the villain.
Oboro. The victim. The one whose life is cut too short, too soon.
Hizashi. The perpetrator. It’s his quirk that kills Oboro.
His finger on the trigger.
If he had only been smarter, faster, come up with a solution, been better. It’s his fault. How can Shouta ever forgive him?
Hizashi finds Shouta, standing at the taped off area, staring at where the boy they love lies crushed under rubble. Hizashi puts a hand on Shouta’s shoulder.
Shouta pulls away.
“Don’t,” he says, softly.
It’s enough. Hizashi’s chest aches. He swears it’s the feeling of his broken heart, the jagged pieces sticking into his lungs. It’s hard to breathe.
They stand there in silence. Staring. Contemplating what was.
What could have been.
Hizashi is terrified Shouta won’t want anything to do with him anymore.
But Shouta is… Shouta. He’s not occupied by thoughts of Hizashi’s fault. He’s occupied, instead, in getting stronger. He trains, and trains, and trains, and Hizashi watches silently because it’s all he can do, it’s his penance, his duty to support Shouta however he can, because Shouta wouldn’t be feeling this way if Hizashi had just been smarter.
It never occurs to Hizashi that maybe they ought to talk about it. Or maybe, he thinks, if they did, Shouta would realise it’s Hizashi’s fault, and they wouldn’t be friends. Hizashi instead takes any punishment the universe sees fit to dish out to him. Any bump in the road, any broken bone, all the bruises he gets in his hero work - they’re nothing compared to what he did to Oboro. He deserves it.
He never thinks about that moment after school. He never wonders what Shouta and Oboro had intended to ask him. Everything from before is a blurry mess. The here and now - that’s all that matters. He’ll support Shouta, and he’ll serve the sentence he’s given himself for his self-convicted crimes.
He never gives himself time to process what happened. Come to terms with it. Forgive himself. He never even tries. He goes home and locks himself in his room each night and stares at the jacket Oboro left there by accident the last time they met up to play video games. He doesn’t cry anymore. He’s numb.
And the way his heart still flutters when he looks at Shouta? His feelings? The burning jealousy, the warm affection? They don’t matter.
Maybe they never did.