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murder-raven13 · 2 years

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Ghosts are not people [until you remember they are]

Present Mic x Reader

Synopsis: In a world where almost everyone had a quirk, those without them were widely regarded as unlucky, a minority most would have given anything not to be a part of. You, on the other hand, would give anything to be quirkless.

Warning(s): Death, mentions/light descriptions of torture, cursing, quirk slander, a lil bit of self-hate [to make it spicy], fear of touch, angst with a happy ending, no explicit character death, reader’s quirk isn’t ambiguous, they/them pronouns used for reader, spoilers, 2nd POV [I can’t do the y/n thing], suicide mention, Asexual lesbian Midnight, [it’s not explicitly mentioned, but] Present Mic is Pan, kinda open ending??, Colorblind Present Mic

This is on the long side and if anyone actually reads it, I’ll break it up into smaller sections, with a masterlist.

Word Count: 9.6k

Your quirk manifested while your mother held you. It was instantaneous, your body tensing up, your eyes glazing over. At four, there was nothing you could do but cry, and scream, completely unable to explain what had happened.

Your mother wrote it off as a tantrum, a waking nightmare, but it happened again, with your father, and again, with your brother.

At four, you couldn’t explain what had happened because you didn’t understand it. They touched you, and you saw them, differently, in another time. They were older, and scared, and everything around them was burning.

You could hear yourself, muted, as if very far away, screaming. Over and over, you called their names, voice raw and different, like you were older too. It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense to you, but you carried that knowledge with you, saw glimpses of what you’d seen every time you looked at them for the next 6 years.

By the time you turned 7, you knew what you had seen, and you understood it.

At 10, knowing wasn’t enough. You still watched them burn.

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Hosu was a large city, full of people always in a hurry, completely unaware of how often they accidently touched a stranger. You knew, though, were aware of the statistics, of the places contact was most likely. And you prepared accordingly.

Gloves, long-sleeves, tall socks and long pants, turtlenecks and long, loose hair. A mask over the bottom half of your face. The only part of you people could see were your eyes, accompanied by the occasional, barely there flash of pale skin.

It became normal and, after so many years of dressing like this, you didn’t get hot anymore, even during the summer while everyone else wore their tank tops and shorts and sandals.

At 28, you didn’t notice the odd looks anymore, the same way you didn’t notice the whispers from those in your workplace, on the rare days you were required to actually come in. You worked as an editor, and you worked from the safety of your own home, and that was best.

Today, you had to go to work, to deal with the bitching from a writer who disagreed with your critique. Sighing, you made your way upstairs, climbing stairs steadily. You walked with your shoulders drawn in, years of trying to make yourself as small as possible ingrained in your posture.

You’d barely made it out of the stairwell when the building shook, an explosion sounding much too close for your liking. People scrambled, already talking too loudly, and you barely had time to press yourself against the wall before people were rushing toward the stairs, alarms blaring.

Fire glinted outside the windows, and you froze, staring at it as it licked across the sky, terrible and terrible. The windows burst, inward and outward, and loud, and the fire was there, lapping at layers of clothes that had become your safety, after so many years.

You didn’t have time to scream, not about fire or glass shards or anything it made you remember, before the world shattered underneath you, concrete and metal and glass falling to bury you.

It was hard to breathe, laying in the dark, dust thick in your mouth, with rubble pressing down on you from above, like revelation or retribution, like some kind of misbegotten peace. But it was quiet and dark, and you thought you might sleep there, or die. Really, you wondered if there was much of a difference.

When the first piece of rubble moved, deliberate and then gone, noise came flowing in with fresh air. You dragged in a heavy breath, coughing dryly, listening to the shouting coming from above you. And then, the rubble on top of you moved, a piece being taken away as another fell more tightly on top of you. You groaned. A scream caught in your too dry throat.

“Fear not, dear citizen,” a voice, familiar in a way that was strange, to you, came down, “For I am here.”

All Might, you thought, blearily, in Hosu?

“Are you hurt?” A different voice called down, and this one you didn’t know.

You grunted a small no, all you could manage, just before the rubble crushing your ribs was lifted. A large hand, a large bare hand, reached down at grasp you, and you realized in the split second before it touched you that your clothes were burned away in too many places.

You realized too late, and even so, you couldn’t move. All you could do was whimper, just before All Might’s hand reached you, skin-on-skin, and you were taken, quirk activating and blurring your eyes over with death.

The All Might you saw was frail and small, drooping hair and saggy clothes, broad smile nowhere to be seen in his sleep. Blood bubbled and seeped through his lips, and he was gasping for breath, shirt riding up to expose a terrible wound across his abdomen.

You didn’t notice the two heroes gasp when they say your face, nor did you see the flash of the paparazzi camera, capturing the image of All Might’s skin on yours to plaster across every newspaper the very next day.

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Three weeks after the collapse and your ribs still ached with every breath, but it wasn’t a bad ache, necessarily. Certainly, it wasn’t as bad as it had been. Your ribs were, however, a hindrance on occasion. Running, for example, was nearly impossible considering you couldn’t take a deep enough breath to stop yourself from falling into dizziness.

So, when they came for you, there was really nothing you could do to stop them.

“C’mon, doll,” Dabi mocked, scarred face twisted and ugly in the dark, “you could at least make this a little difficult.”

Shigaraki, disgusting and infantile, ignored Dabi in favor of training one red eye on you, muttering, ”Very nice, very nice. Tell me, what is your quirk?”

You spat at him from over Dabi’s shoulder, ribs screaming at you, and didn’t answer. This, it seemed, pissed him off.

A steady hand came up to wipe the spit off the grotesque hand covering his face, and he swore, “You’ll regret that.”

“Will I?” you asked, quiet and already entirely unhappy with where you were. You knew who these people were, not by name or association, but because the League of Villains had been a hot topic for the past while.

They secured a bag over your head, and for the next while your world was darkness and the gentle pain of your ribs.

When the bag came back off, you were chained to a chair with the league standing before you. Shigaraki regarded you still with that one red eye, “How does All Might die?”

You forced yourself not to tense, doing everything in your power to keep your face carefully blank, and you had years of practice. They knew about your quirk, but maybe they didn’t know everything, so all you said was, “What makes you think I know that?”

“Cut the bullshit, doll,” Dabi drawled, blue eyes glinting from among the purple scars marring his pretty face, “we know about Deathwatch.”

“We’re not unreasonable people,” Shigaraki professed, “just tell us what we want to know.”

“I-” you met Shigaraki’s eye, “-don’t know how All Might dies.”

Shigaraki held your gaze, sighing and mumbling, “Dabi.”

And Dabi smirked, started like this is what he’d been waiting for, and he burned you, right over the scars from your family’s fire so long ago.

It was, strangely, easier to deal with Dabi’s fire than with others. His flame burned blue and unfamiliar. It still burned, though, and you felt your already stolen fingertips melt away.

Shigaraki raised a hand, a malicious gleam in his gaze, “How does All Might die?”

“I don’t know,” you ground out, all gritted teeth and spittle.

Twice came forward this time and, unlike Dabi, he used his fists, talking to himself as if he were to split in two at any moment.

Again, Shigaraki called him off after a while, and asked, “How does All Might die?”

“Is that your goal here?” you asked, panting and in pain, “To kill All Might? Because if that’s the case, you don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

“That’s for me to decide,” from someone else, it would have sounded threatening, joking even, but from Shigaraki those words sounded the those of a child who didn’t believe the stove was hot when told.

So, you smiled, and leant forward as much as you could, blood on your teeth and torso screaming at you, no longer any kind of gentle ache, “All Might dies-” Shigaraki leaned forward, excited and waiting impatiently, “-on June 13th, 2351, of old age.”

Immediately, Shigaraki snarled, “That’s impossible!”

And then, with one move of Shigaraki’s hand, your world really did become just pain.

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Really, you weren’t sure how long the League had you. It had seemed a long time, but you had nothing to base your sense of time on. The entire ordeal was a blur of pain, and, at some point, you had stopped paying attention.

When heroes arrived and took you away from the League, it took a while for you to realize what that meant. They rushed you to a hospital, where people muttered things about internal bleeding and trauma, but you weren’t really listening.

You weren’t really sure how long it took for that to end, either.

The first thing you do remember, is a man with long black hair and tired, bloodshot eyes, and All Might, standing with police around your hospital bed.

“I didn’t tell them,” You mumbled, voice hoarse from disuse. You looked at All Might, “They don’t know how you die.”

The room collectively relaxed. You almost laughed.

“Three of them...three of them touched me; I know how they die.”

“Which three?” Aizawa asked, voice oddly severe for how detached you felt from everything.

“Dabi, Toga,” you took a deep breath, “and Shigaraki.”

They all looked at you, then, and you knew they realized exactly what this all meant for you. You knew it too. So, when they stepped into the hall, you weren’t surprised to hear Aizawa say, “The League will never leave them alone; they’ll be hunted the rest of their life.”

“We’ll put them in witness protection,” a police officer declared, “change their identity and keep them protected.”

“You want me to be babysat the rest of my life?” You asked, startling the police and All Might, but not Aizawa.

All Might laid a hand on your shoulder, and he was so large it almost made you doubt your own vision, the small and scrawny version of him you’d seen, “Just until we beat the League of Villains.”

You glanced at the floor, eyes catching for a moment on your burnt fingertips, your lack of identity, before you heaved a heavy sigh, “Okay.”

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On the official record, you had been killed by the League, and you, to the world, ceased to exist. The process made you realize how truly little you had already been existing in it before.

They gave you a counselor, who was meant to walk you through the process of missing loved ones who believed you were dead.

“I don’t have anyone to miss,” you had said and were surprised at how much you meant it. You supposed it was better that way, given everything. It made this easier, if anything, because you were a thread with no loose ends.

You could see on the counselor’s face that they thought this was a problem of its own, but they weren’t paid to fix you. So, they reported that counseling needs were met, and they left.

A part of changing your identity, apparently, is also changing your appearance. They brought you to a specialist with a quirk that allowed for minor appearance alterations, who changed the color of your hair, the texture of it. They reached for your face, and you drew back, glaring. But they only hovered their hand over your skin, never touching you.

Looking in the mirror after, you still looked like you, but only because you knew what to look for. Your nose curved just slightly more upward, and your eyebrows slanted in a way they hadn’t before, and your eyes were an entirely different color. It was jarring, but you didn’t much care.

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When they sat you down to go over your backstory, they brought the four heroes who would be guarding you most: Easerhead, All Might, Midnight, and Present Mic. Based on disposition alone, Aizawa was your favorite. He didn’t seem the friendly type, where All Might and Present Mic both seemed overly earnest friendly types and Midnight seemed like a flirt. All three seemed to lack a true idea of personal space.

It wasn’t a trait you favored in those around you.

The file they handed you was very in-depth, containing all of your legal documents, and the officer in charge began to explain as the five of you looked the file over, “It said in your file that you spoke Greek, so we decided to make you a Greek citizen by birth that recently moved to Japan.”

“You speak Greek?” Present Mic exclaimed, turning to look at you with wide eyes.

You simply nodded.

For a moment, he just blinked at you while Aizawa quietly snickered, but then exclaimed, louder than last time, “That’s awesome!”

The officer decided to continue, “Your mother is a now-deceased woman who died during childbirth in the year you were born, and no father is listed on your birth certificate; your birthday is July 8th. You’re in Japan to teach language at UA as part of a new course program, since you speak four languages besides Japanese, it shouldn’t be much of an issue.”

Present Mic opened his mouth, but Aizawa pushed his mouth closed, sighing.

“You want me to teach at UA?”

“Yes,” the officer nodded, tapping his fingers on the table, “as long as you’re on campus grounds, you’re surrounded by security throughout the day, meaning you only need a guard outside of school hours.”

“I don’t have a license,” you said.

Reaching over, he pulled a copy from the papers in front of you, “Yes you do.”

“I may have a piece of paper,” you countered, “but that doesn’t mean I know how to be a teacher.”

“We’ll help you,” Aizawa wasn’t fast enough to stop Present Mic this time, “we’re all teachers, so we can show you the ropes before you start.”

“The last big thing is your quirk, and, on paper, you don’t have one.”

You nodded again, returning your attention to your file. Present Mic seemed to sigh softly, but you ignored it.

“Any questions?”

You shook your head and the officer rose to his feet, “Alright then, we’ll see you tomorrow to quiz you on the information, so make sure you read it all before then.”

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UA teachers, apparently, lived on campus, something they’d always done, even before the student dorms were implemented. Realistically, though, you could understand why that wasn’t information the school wanted to be common knowledge.

You were placed in the apartment beside Present Mic’s, who had introduced himself as Yamada Hizashi. In the short time you’d known him, he had been nothing but loud energy and perpetual grins. It was, honestly, a little unnerving. You can’t remember ever having interacted with anyone remotely like Yamada before.

The first time he worked the night shift, he surprised you. He was still a smile personified, but he was quieter, softer, with his long blond hair thrown back into a loose bun while a too-big sweater threatened to slide off his shoulders.

There was no leather or spikes or directional speakers, just Yamada, big glasses perched on his nose, and he seemed entirely different to you then, compared to the costumed hero you’d met days ago.

His shift in countenance was the only one to shock you, just a bit. Aizawa had been much the same: tired and serious and somewhat grumpy. Midnight hadn’t lost any of her boldness when out of costume. And All Might, for all his hero presence took over everything, was still overly earnest, if only slightly sadder and slightly awkward.

You supposed you shouldn’t have been surprised, considering what people said about such overly-happy performative personalities being either fake or just that: performative.

Of course, you didn’t much mind the change. Quieter, simply put, made you more comfortable.

That didn’t, however, make you any better at interacting with him.

Aizawa, bluntly, had said that you were bad at social interaction, and you had told you had never imagined you would be good at it. Yamada made it very hard to feel as okay with that fact as Aizawa had.

For one, he liked to talk, and tried his hand at no less than five different failed conversations within the first ten minutes of his arrival.

His sixth attempted conversation started with this, “Do you like music?”

And that wasn’t a topic doomed to fail, so you said, “Of course.”

“Yeah?!” Yamada’s eyebrows crept up, and his posture straightened at the first actual response he’d gotten from you, “What do you listen to?”

You hummed, “I’m not picky.”

“You have a favorite genre, right?” Yamada asked, head cocked slightly to the side, eyes narrowed in consideration.

You hummed again, nodding this time, “I like lo-fi and orchestral music best, I suppose; they’re more versatile than other genres.”

And Yamada seemed to understand what you meant, because he grinned-when had he stopped- and nodded enthusiastically. You found yourself glad he didn’t ask what you meant.

“I get that,” Yamada said, grin softening into a smile, “they go with the most moods. I like pop best, myself.”

At this, you raised your eyebrows, blinking at him, which he understood, because he replied, “Everyone guesses rock or alternative because of my costume, but I like pop because it’s catchy.”

“Thats makes sense,” you said, not really thinking much about it, “pop’s a happy genre, mostly; it suits you.”

Yamada chuckled after a second, and you missed the way he physically responded to your statement, like someone had pulled him taut and released him in an instant, because your back was toward him.

You didn’t miss the grin on his face when you turned back around. You blinked at him, half tempted to stick a brightness warning on his forehead before you dismissed the thought, asking, “Do you want tea?”

Yamada’s grin grew, “Yes, please, with honey.”

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Yamada taught English, so the other heroes left most of your teaching questions to him. You were sure it was exhausting, having to teach students, run his patrols, host his Friday-night radio show, guard you, and teach you all at once. But he never complained and never looked tired.

You were beginning to think it was a trick of the light. He had to be exhausted. But you never brought it up because it didn’t seem something he wanted to acknowledge.

Not talking about it didn’t stop you from letting him sleep on the rare occasion he fell asleep while he worked. Instead, you carefully and meticulously packed his supplies away and threw a throw, a ratty yellow blanket that you’d clearly had for years, over his shoulders.

He always whined when he woke up, often to the unkind prodding of Aizawa the next day, but he never asked you to stop. So, you didn’t.

By the time your first month at UA ended, you’d become fairly well acquainted with Yamada’s sleeping habits. He didn’t snore because he didn’t have nostrils, you discovered, and he mumbled while he slept. His fingers curled in toward his palm and, if his hands were close enough, he would clasp them in his sleep, almost as if holding his own hand.

Oddest of all, to you, was that Yamada always managed to shift toward you in his sleep. It made you nervous, that habit, and it didn’t make sense either, until you realized that he was shifting toward warmth. After that, you started setting a small heater next to him, and you no longer had to fear him accidently touching you while he slept.

Subconsciously, you started to think that Yamada just ran cold, so you would ask, always without much thought, “Are you cold?”

And Yamada would blink at you, with big orange-red eyes, “I’m alright.”

Always, “I’m alright,” even if you could see goosebumps along the bits of his forearm after the ends of his sweater.

And, each time, you would hum as if you believed him, before turning the heat up the next time you left your spot.

He never said anything about that, either.

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After two months, it became normal to have people in your home. When you realized this, you were humming over the stove while Yamada chopped vegetables behind you.

When you realized this, it gave you pause. How could two months undo 18 years of habit?

You’d stopped humming, and Yamada glanced over his shoulder before coming to stand next to you, head tilted in a way that was so familiar to you now that it made you dizzy.

He didn’t even have to say anything. You knew what he wanted to ask by that head tilt alone, by the way he held his eyes. It made you want to run. But running isn’t an option for you; you’re stuck here. Because of your stupid fucking quirk.

“I’m alright,” you said, taking a large, obvious step away from him. His eyes flashed with something, in response, and you told yourself it wasn’t hurt.

Yamada smiled, small and wrong, and quietly murmured, “Okay.”

Later, after you’d eaten dinner, you found goosebumps on Yamada’s arms as he settled down in the living room. You retreated to your room without a word, leaving the temperature alone as you passed.

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It takes a week for you to warm back up to Yamada, after a number of sleepless nights that you fill with thoughts of what it means to have people in your life.

It is a strange idea to wrap your head around.

By the time you had wrapped your head around it, though, you had already managed to overhear Yamada complaining about your distance, wondering what he’d done.

So, when you were ready, you sighed, unsure of how to begin, unsure of if you would be able to explain, even if you wanted to.

You weren’t sure, so you went with what seemed best. Music, since he had first brought it up, had been a safe topic because it was something you shared. It seemed a good idea, so you painstakingly picked out songs to make a playlist, all pop, from cultures all over the world.

It took another week to finish it; you nitpicked it often.

But the day you did finish it, Yamada arrived to find you already at the kitchen table, plate of cinnamon rolls in the middle of the table, with tea and an old-fashioned tape sitting ready for him.

“Cinnamon buns?” Yamada tilted his head, watching as you ate more animatedly than he’d ever seen you eat before.

You nodded, pushing the plate toward him, softly, and awkwardly, mumbling, “They’re my favorite.”

And Yamada answered with a grin, as he was in the habit of doing, and sat himself down, noticing then the tape waiting for him. With gentle fingers he picked it up, turning to examine it carefully, finding your careful, though messy, handwriting detailing a song list.

“What’s this?” His voice was odd, but not bad, and his gaze on you felt heavy.

You ducked your head down, nibbling on your cinnamon bun, pointedly not looking at him, “A playlist.”

Yamada grinned so hard for the rest of the evening you were sure his face would cramp.

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The first time you had two heroes with you at once, it was Aizawa and Toshinori. Watching them through the evening, you began to realize a few things.

“You two aren’t together?” You hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but filtering your thoughts at home was still new, even if having people there with you was not anymore.

Toshinori spluttered, face turning such a bright red you were vaguely concerned, while Aizawa’s eyes flashed before he sank more into the safety of his capture weapon.

Flashes, prudent and vivid and completely against your will, pushed themselves into the forefront of your mind. Visions of Toshinori’s mouth stained red, gasping in his sleep, as the pressure of his own blood in his throat woke him. Of scarred, rough, hands coming to hold Toshinori’s face. Of a now familiar voice, softer and sadder than you’d ever heard it, but familiar still, whispering comforts as Toshinori’s life faded away.

“I just...” you murmured, attempting to blink the ghosts away, “I thought ...”

“Excuse me,” Toshinori stammered, standing too quickly to scurry to your bathroom, still alarmingly red.

You and Aizawa watched him go, while discomfort twisted in your stomach.

“Why?” Aizawa asked, lowly, slowly, like part of him didn’t want you to answer, “Why did you think we were...together?”

The way he said it, muttered the words together, made you realize something else, “You want to be.”

The breath Aizawa sucked in then sounded tortured and harsh and red began to creep across the slight parts of his cheeks still exposed to you.

Your thoughts were difficult then, because you knew that Toshinori only had a little while left, but you also knew what you had seen. So, with great hesitance and a good deal of struggle, you tried to explain, “I thought...from the beginning...that you two were together.”

Aizawa’s eyebrows twitched, like he realized where that idea might have come from.

“You know what my quirk is,” you said, fiddling with you thumbs, gloves making the movement much less smooth than it would have been otherwise, “and Toshinori-san-”

“I don’t...” Aizawa cut you off, voice gruff with strain, “I don’t want to know.”

“I think you need to.”

He didn’t say anything in reply, so you continued, still stumbling because having your visions, knowing them was one thing, talking of them was something else entirely, “He dies in his sleep, in the early hours of the morning...because of...an old wound to his torso.”

You pause and Aizawa shutters, staring at you with eyes filled with grief he shouldn’t yet feel, and you force yourself onward because this is the easy part to tell, “But Toshinori-san doesn’t die alone.” You look at Aizawa then, making eye contact with him in a way you have scarcely made with anyone for as long as you can remember, “You’re with him, Aizawa-san.”

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If there was one thing all of them had come to know about you in the four months you’d been with them, it was that you hated your quirk; that a part of you feared it. Yamada knew it, and he didn’t like it.

“You know,” Yamada starts one day, randomly, in the middle of dinner, “Deathwatch could actually be kind of useful, couldn’t it?”

Your entire body, from your toes to your teeth, goes completely rigid, and you shake your head, “Don’t.”

“But couldn’t you use it to save people?” Yamada presses on, ever optimistic and entirely terrible to you right now, “You would know where to be, when to be there, and what kind of emergency it would be; there would be a lot less casualties with that kind of preparation!”

“No,” you snapped, anger a front to a great sadness, “that’s not how it works.”

Yamada’s head cocks to the side, blond hair falling across his forehead as it escapes the bun atop his head, and in a brief moment, all at once, the optimism leaves him. He still presses, though, because that’s who he is, “You tried to save someone.”

Your answering sigh was heavy and shaking, leaving you curled in on yourself, eyes closed, “As a child,” you began, half-whispered, all very tired, “who do you touch most?”

At this point, four months into your new life, you had abandoned any hope of keeping your heroes at a distance; you had particularly abandoned any notion of pushing Yamada’s happy acquaintanceship away.

His responding, “Oh,” didn’t sound very happy, though.

Like a dam breaking, your tiredness faded, fell away under the kind of anger that ate people alive, and seeing it in you made Yamada want to reach out and hold you, cradle you, but he knew that would only make this worse.

“Yeah, ‘oh’,” your lips curled, face and eyes dark, bitter rage coloring you entirely, “trying to use Deathwatch to save people-” Yamada shivered, watching you, and your hands pressed meanly into the table, “-just means that you get to watch them die twice; how fucking useful.”

A spiral, long coming, pulled you in then and Yamada, watching and aching, knew without doubt in that moment that these thoughts weren’t new. But he didn’t know what to say, what to do, when he couldn’t touch you, when there was nothing he could say.

“It’s a fucking joke,” you spat, but your voice was thick with tears, “it’s a stupid fucking joke and the universe decided to play it on me. This quirk is something I wouldn’t wish on the worst person alive, not for anything; it’s a nasty fucking curse. Because it should work like that, it should, but of course it doesn’t! Because the death I see is the death you die when I know.”

You start to laugh, and Yamada nearly crumbles at the tears in your eyes, but you’re not done, “What a joke, right? That if I know how you die, everything I do or don’t do to change it just ensures my vision comes true.”

“I...” Yamada starts, feeling like his heart is on the brink of a great collapse inside his chest, “I’m sorry.”

You chuckle, hysteric laughter dying in the back of your throat, swallowed back to rest with the hundreds of ghosts you’d kept in your ribcage all this time, “Everybody’s sorry.” A strange expression quirks your lips, and Yamada can’t read your eyes, and it scares him, “How useful it is.”

For the rest of the evening, he swallows the urge to pull you into him, to offer comfort in the only way he could, if only he could touch you.

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“They really hate their quirk, Sho,” Yamada sighs, eyes downcast, fingers running absentmindedly over his tea mug, “and I... I can’t think of a reason for them not to.”

Aizawa quirks one dark eyebrow at him, face otherwise unmoving, “You, ridiculously optimistic as you are, can’t think of a single reason?”

“They tried to save their family and had to watch them die twice.”

“That does suck,” Aizawa agrees after a moment.

“You should’ve seen their face, Sho; it was terrible.” Yamada sighs and then his demeanor shifts, leaving Aizawa to watch as some realization or another comes over his friend, “They can’t ever be with anyone.”

Aizawa sat up, now suspicious and watching Yamada with carefully narrowed, observant eyes, “What do you mean?”

“Think about it,” Yamada’s voice falls flat, and this is all the indication Aizawa needs that this is very, very bad, “a relationship requires physical touch, if not while awake, then while you sleep. But they can’t touch anyone without seeing how they die, and they won’t do that. They’ll never let anyone close enough to even risk touching; they’ll be alone for the rest of their life.” Yamada takes a barely there breath, “And I... I can’t really blame them; I don’t think I could handle knowing how someone I loved died.”

When Yamada looked toward Aizawa again, he was met with the kind of seriousness Aizawa saved for delicate situations where it was needed, a kind of seriousness Aizawa almost never took with him. Aizawa watched him, dark eyes and serious face and serious voice, “When did this start?”

“When did what start?”

“Your feelings for them.”

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“Your...vision,” Aizawa began slowly, calculated in the way he always was, and you looked at him expectantly, “you really saw me there?”

“Yes.”

Aizawa’s breath shuddered in his chest, and you only noticed because you’d trained yourself to notice. You decided not to mention it, instead saying, “My visions are never wrong, and I wouldn’t lie about that.”

“I didn’t think you would,” he said.

“Why are you asking?” You said, standing to go and make tea, a ploy to relax Aizawa by making your attention seem split.

Even without looking at him, you could feel the glare he sent your way, the way he prickled. Aizawa’s gaze, you’d come to realize, was something entirely too powerful, even without the weight of his quirk.

“No reason,” he tried, “I was just...thinking about things.”

You hummed, making tea for the two of you, having memorized the way Aizawa takes his, and didn’t say anything. He knew you knew, and that was enough.

Two days later, Aizawa and Toshinori both stood before you, sheepish and beaming, respectively, to tell you thank you.

You smiled for the rest of the day.

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“They were almost less insufferable when they were pining,” Yamada whined, though the effect was lost at the fondness in his eyes, “I mean, this is a bit much, being right in front of my tea and everything.”

You snorted, looking from Yamada to Aizawa and Toshinori. Admittedly, it was a bit strange to see such blatant emotion, especially one that could only be described as lovesick, on Aizawa’s face. But it was also, undeniably, wonderful.

“No,” you murmured, “I’m glad they get this.”

Humming, Yamada turned his head to look up at you, cheek smushed against his arm. You kept your eyes on the couple across from you, slowly lowering your own chin onto your hands.

“To be honest, I never thought they’d actually do anything.” Yamada sighed, “I figured they would pine for the rest of eternity.”

Huffing a laugh through your nose, you didn’t answer him right away, watching as Aizawa and Toshinori finished their paperwork and stood to leave, the gentle sound of teasing banter and fondness fading with them.

From the doorway, they called, “See you tomorrow.”

Yamada called back to them, and you watched them leave, murmuring softly, so they couldn’t hear you, but Yamada could, “I did this.”

Slowly, Yamada turned back to you, but you kept your eyes on the door as it closed, tears shining on your lash line, “Deathwatch did this.”

“Yeah,” Yamada smiled, a soft one he rarely gave, even though you weren’t looking at him to see it, “you did.”

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You were happy for Aizawa, and Toshinori, really you were. But a large part of you didn’t understand it. How could Aizawa be with Toshinori, how could he let himself have Toshinori, knowing that it would be taken away? That Toshinori would die, long before he would?

It kept you up at night, wondering, running through all it took to know when loved ones were going to die. Aizawa had shouldered that weight willingly and seemed happy to bear it now. It didn’t make sense to you.

It took Aizawa three days to notice something was bothering you. And he wasn’t the type to beat around the bush, so he asked, “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“You aren’t sleeping,” Aizawa answered, eyes narrowed at you, “I know the look. And you’re looking at me weirdly. What’s going on?”

You sucked in a sharp breath, looking from Aizawa to the floor, before deciding honesty was best, with him, “I don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“How you can be with Toshinori,” you said, brows deeply furrowed, hands clenched, “knowing when he’ll die. You only have a couple years; that’s not long.”

“Oh,” Aizawa sat back, sighing, “you’re wondering why I’m not running, like you would.”

Inhaling sharply, you snapped your gaze to him.

“Your quirk is unfortunate,” Aizawa continued, “and I can’t imagine what it’s like to know how everyone you touch dies. If I were you, I probably wouldn’t let myself close to anyone else either. If I knew when Eri died and I could do nothing, I wouldn’t be able to bear it.”

He leaned forward with intense eyes and an aura of seriousness, “But it’s different with heroes, with people like me and Toshinori and Yamada.”

“What do you mean?”

“Heroics is a dangerous job,” Aizawa explains, “everyone knows that. But it is also a very uncertain one. Any of us could go on a mission, on a patrol, to a single fight, and not make it out alive. Heroes’ lives are always in danger; survival is never certain.

“Knowing when Toshinori dies, means that I don’t have to spend every day wondering if he’ll come back to me, because I already know when he won’t; I also know that I’ll be there.” Aizawa closed his eyes, breathing deeply, before looking at you again, “That certainty is more than any hero’s partner can ask for.”

“I-” you blinked, sitting back, eyes wide, “I never thought of it that way.”

“You’ve locked yourself in a box,” Aizawa said, “where Deathwatch can do no good; but nothing’s that black and white.”

Your eyes drifted to the ratty yellow blanket thrown over the arm of your couch, and you murmured, “I suppose not.”

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“Can I ask you a question,” Yamada asked, soft and hesitant in a way he wasn’t, “...about your quirk?”

You looked over at him, letting your book rest half closed around your thumb on your lap, “Sure.”

His eyebrows raised, liked he had expected you to say no, before he stumbled, “Do you...?”

Taking a deep breath, he started again, “Do you know how you...?” His question choked off, sudden and vivid distress clear in his eyes, even past the glasses.

So, you asked it for him, “Do I know how I die?”

His inhale was sharp and cracked, but he nodded.

You hummed, looking away from and toward the titled cover of your book. The book had been written in Greek and, for a moment, the letters meant nothing. They stole your focus, your brain running through itself, and you blinked them into meaning.

Reading through the title, again and again, you answered, softly, “I don’t.”

Yamada didn’t say anything back, but you could hear him breathing.

“I used to think it was odd,” you were practically whispering, “not knowing how I’m going to die. I thought it was cruel, to be tormented but every death but my own; that the least the universe could have done was let me know when this would be over, when I would be free from my curse.” Yamada stopped breathing next to you, strung as tight as wire, which you knew without looking.

“Did you know that people with quirks like mine are almost 94% more likely than any other part of the population to commit suicide before they turn 30?” Somehow, you thought you could hear the sound of something breaking in the air, before you realized that you’d heard Yamada. “It wasn’t hard for that statistic to make sense to me, but after I learned it, part of me realized why I couldn’t see my own death. The timelines leading up to suicides are messy. The two that I’ve seen were both... different, than the others. I saw more than one death for them both; one where they went through with it and one where they didn’t.”

You finally looked back at Yamada, meeting his sad eyes with your own, “I cannot see my own death because I can choose to take my life.”

Yamada jerked, like a puppet on a string, and opened his mouth to say something, though you could already see the plea of a hero in his eyes, but you spoke first, “It had never occurred to me before I read that statistic because taking my own life had never been an option in my mind.”

All at once Yamada relaxed, like a building settling back into place, and you, because you had been around him long enough to know when he wanted contact, slowly hooked his ankle with yours. Again, his eyebrows shot up and his eyes locked on the place where the two of you touched, his neon socks against your own dull ones.

“Death isn’t something we’re meant to control,” you said, opening your book back up in your lap, eyes drifting back to Greek letters, though this time they had meaning without you giving it, “I learned that well enough trying to change fates that cannot be changed. I never thought of myself as an exception to that, no matter how tired I became.”

Yamada hummed, softly, and reached his other leg over so that yours was wrapped up in both of his, and he murmured, “Read to me?”

“It’s in Greek.”

“I don’t care.”

For a moment, you kept my eyes on him, before you looked back to your open book and resumed reading. Aloud this time.

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When you opened the door to find Midnight waiting for you, your guard immediately raised, “Where’s Yamada?”

“You don’t have to pretend to be so disappointed to see me, baby,” she purred, teasing.

You didn’t laugh, “I mean it.”

Her face sobered and she sighed, “They got caught up in a situation downtown.”

“All of them?”

“Eraserhead and Present Mic, yeah.”

“What kind of situation?”

Midnight sighed again, and though her mouth was still curved teasingly, you could see something hard and weary in the lines of her eyes, “Building collapse.”

Your eyebrows furrowed, “Then why’s Yamada there? His quirk would be the opposite of helpful for search and rescue in unstable debris.”

Midnight’s posture tightened, and you watched as the aura heroes wore like cloaks came down around her, “Hizashi was...there...when the building collapsed.”

“Oh...” you drew back, making yourself small in a way that made you feel most comfortable, “well...okay.”

Midnight said your name, but you had already stepped aside, gesturing her inside after you. She didn’t question it when you sat, grabbing a book and settling into your chair, the same way you always did. Despite her silence, you could feel that she wanted to say more, had expected more from you.

After a while, Midnight began, somewhat hesitantly, hopefully, “You don’t seem worried...does that mean that he...” she cut off, taking a deep breath, and you remembered that Yamada was one of her closest friends.

So, you cut her off before she could finish, “I’ve never touched Present Mic.”

She deflated and fell into silence again.

“How bad was the collapse?”

“Whole building, about 15 stories.”

You licked your lips, staring at the floor, “Was he...was he in the building?”

Nemuri shook her head a little, “Shouldn’t have been; he walks past it on the way back from patrol.”

“Okay.”

Slowly, you walked into the kitchen, beginning to make tea as a reflex before you realized you couldn’t drink it. So, you offered it to Nemuri and retreated to your room.

For the first time in a long time, your home was silent.

And for the first time in your life, that silence was not a comfort; you thought it felt an awful lot like a noose, instead.

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You didn’t sleep the night Yamada was gone. Nemuri paced in the living room, filling the terrible silence with gentle steps and the vague sounds of a news channel. It wasn’t enough. Silence still pressed down on you like the sky upon Atlas.

When dawn began to approach and pale, grey light began to file through the slots of your blinds, heavy knocks sounded from your apartment door. Nemuri flung the door open so harshly that it thudded against the wall.

Immediately, you identified Aizawa’s voice, muffled but steady, the way it always was, and Nemuri’s, high pitched and strange, gravelly after a night of quiet. You creep out of your room, hovering in the shadows to listen, heart racing uncomfortably in your chest.

When you press your hand to the wall, you realize you’re shaking.

“Hizashi’s alright, just a few minor lacerations and a mild concussion.” Aizawa reassures Nemuri. He continues talking, but you can’t hear it over the rushing in your ears. Trembling, you collapse gently against the wall, leaning into it with your eyes squeezed shut.

It feels as if you take a breath for the first time since Nemuri arrived.

You do not think about this.

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When Yamada returns, completely free of even the remnants of injuries, you cannot look at him. Despite this, he acts the same: happy and calm and comfortable, with his ridiculous grin flashing constantly in the corners of your vision.

He acts like his death wasn’t a quite tangible thing, just a slight step behind him, just a couple days ago.

At some point through the evening, Yamada’s smiles get smaller and smaller, flashing less often, until he finally asks you, “Is something wrong?”

Your back tenses, but you hum and shake your head, “No.”

“Really?” he asks and the agitation in his voice surprises you, “Because you haven’t looked at me once since I got here.”

Slowly, so very, very slowly, you force your eyes to him. And just as you’d feared, the sight of him was enough to send your eyes flitting over every inch of him, a lump beginning to collect in the back of your throat.

You didn’t notice, but your eyes must have watered, because Yamada was immediately on his feet with wide eyes, coming to kneel in front of you, placing a careful hand on your clothed knee.

“Hey, hey,” his voice is unbearably soft, and you have to close your eyes, “come on, talk to me.”

You shake your head again, pouting like a child, and trying desperately not to cry.

The pressure from Yamada’s fingertips increases, his hold on your knee tightening, and he speaks, somehow even softer than before, “Do you want to get one of the others?”

Your breath whistles through your teeth slightly, but you manage to whisper, “Ai-Aizawa.”

Yamada’s hand falls from you knee and you hear his sharp inhale, but you miss the hurt that takes over his face as he whispers, “Alright.”

Twenty minutes late, Aizawa is sitting across from you, grumpy and tired as always. He doesn’t say anything for a long while and you know him well enough to know that he’ll make you start this conversation, so you murmur an inadequate, “Hello.”

“Don’t ‘hello’ me,” Aizawa says, “Hizashi said you were going to cry.”

Your eyes burn and your hands shake, and it surprises you how weak your voice is when you speak, “I...I don’t know why.”

“Yes, you do.”

Inhaling sharply, you shake your head, “What?”

“You were scared, “Aizawa begins, settling that much too heavy gaze on you, “when you weren’t sure whether he was alive or not.”

The burning in your eyes capsizes and spills over as tears while you choke, “I don’t-” your own breathing cuts you off with how jagged it’s become, “I’ve ne-never felt like that be-before.”

“It’s just fear.”

You shake your head, “N-no,” your hand curls into your chest, shaking still, “it was like-like I cou-couldn’t bre-breathe.”

“Yeah,” Aizawa says, ever calm, “that’s fear.”

“Well, it sucks!”

“That it does.”

For the next few moments, you chase your breath, attempting to get it under control, before you look at Aizawa with solemn eyes, “Is this...is this what you feel all the time? In the field?”

His answer is as solemn as your eyes, “Always.”

“How do you do this?” your voice is pitching weirdly, but you can’t stop it, “This sucks.”

“I imagine this is hitting you much harder than most people.”

“What?”

“For most of us, we spend out entire lives-” Aizawa leans forward, eyes heavy with truth, “-not knowing whether the people we care about will come back to us.”

A bitter, bitter laugh bubbles past your lips, wet and sarcastic and an awful lot like a sob, “So, these are the choices?” your voice is pitching low, angry and so, so bitter; it’s like you’ve become something acidic, hollow and sour, “Constantly living in fear or being tormented by ghosts?”

By the time you finish, your voice is no longer angry, but rather very profoundly sad.

“In many ways,” Aizawa begins, and his voice is oddly pensive, even for him, and somewhat wistful, in the way people get over things they’ve learned to except, “death is the one thing that torments us all.”

For whatever reason, his words feel a lot like a punch to the gut, or a knife scraping down the vertebrae of your spine. It is, in many ways, very uncomfortable. In others, however, it begins to feel a lot like waking up.

Slowly, but with a certainty you haven’t felt since you were a child, small and cradled in the hands of your mother, you extend a hand to Aizawa.

Just as slowly, he reaches out and takes it.

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Once all is said and done, Aizawa comments on your eyes, your dead eyes, when your quirk activates. He does not ask how he dies. You do not tell him.

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The next day, during lunch, you pull Nemuri aside, into a classroom that’s empty, and, just as you had with Aizawa, you reach out to her, skin bare.

She takes longer to reach back, and she cannot look at you after.

You do not regret it.

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By the time Nemuri approaches you again, another day has passed. She looks at you, something odd in her eyes, and says, “I didn’t realize that your quirk...”

She trails off, looking at you, and she swallows something very thick in her throat, “I’ve seen too many eyes like that; I didn’t like seeing them in you.”

You hum, “I suppose no one would.” A small smile twists your lips, and there’s something ironic to it, like you know a joke no one else does, “Someone once told me that I had the eyes of death. I’ve never seen them, but I can imagine it’s nothing pleasant to see.”

“Why the sudden desire to touch?” Nemuri’s voice is imploring, but hesitant, and it strikes you how used to seeing her flirtatiousness stripped away you’ve become, “You were adamant about avoiding it just a few days ago.”

Your shoulders shift and your eye drift to the window, tracking listless clouds across a sky that’s beginning to gray with winter, and you say something you never have, “I’ve spent my life tormented by the ghosts of people I do not know, of people I’ve only seen once.” Your smile is wry, “I’ve spent quite a long time being tormented by the ghosts of people who are still alive.”

There’s an air about you, a calmness, that has silence settling when you don’t speak, “And I’ve spent even longer tormented by the deaths that I couldn’t stop or change, no matter how much I loved them.” When your eyes flick up, across the window and across the sky, Nemuri is surprised to note they’re dry, “I spent so long afraid of collecting more ghosts that I forgot they’re people, too.”

Finally, you turn, pale sky casting over your face, as if casting you in marble, and look to Nemuri, and beyond her, to Aizawa and Yamada, hovering by the door. And, like it is very simple, you tell them, “I am tired of ghosts, but I am ready for people.”

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It takes you three days.

Three whole days, to finally approach Yamada, holding out a cup of tea, the same way he always takes it, and your hand. He takes the tea and puts it aside, carefully on a coaster.

And then, Hizashi takes your hand like he is grabbing something lost, and fragile, and important. And, unlike the others, Hizashi does not look away from you, or your eyes, until they have cleared of death and filled with tears.

And, for the first time, Hizashi finally, finally, pulls you into his chest, cheek mushed against your shoulder and fingers in your hair.

You cry, for a long while, because you love him.

Even choking on it, on all the things you’ve long felt and denied, it is hard to believe, but you do.

You do not know how to say such things.

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Over the next four months, you learn a lot of things, about yourself and others.

Hizashi is colorblind and despises the color purple in spite of it.

Nemuri is asexual and a lesbian, and smiles very, very small whenever she wants to cry.

Aizawa is, perhaps, the most anxious man you have ever met, and spends much of his time fussing: over cats, children, friends, and Toshinori, who bears it with a grin and a blush that tells you it is not a burden at all.

Toshinori, despite everything, is scared of dying, and regrets much of what his legacy has left in the hands of children who should not have to carry it yet.

You, after a lifetime of hidden skin and statistics on avoidance, adore hugs, and holding hands, and spend much of your time now leaning against and tangled with your friends.

After four months, you think, you have finally remembered what it is like not to think in terms of ghosts.

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You still do not know how to say I love you, but you don’t think of it often. Instead, you spend every Friday night sitting in a radio production booth, listening to Hizashi’s show while he grins at you.

Your apartment fills with Hizashi’s presence, from the coaster’s dedicated to his favorite show to the ratty yellow blanket he had adamantly insisted you never throw away. His favorite candles littered your tables and his teaching notes often sat in your kitchen, always near some now-empty mug of tea.

You aren’t sure if Hizashi notices these things, but they’re enough for you, for now.

As always, on Tuesdays, all of you, your heroes and you, gather in your living room and sit around your table, playing terrible games and talking and eating. It is habit to sit Hizashi’s heater next to him, and he does not blink at this, but Aizawa does, something smug in the set of his mouth.

You’ve grown to adore these Tuesdays, of having a home full of people, and lacking the breathless existence of ghosts.

But, every Wednesday, without fail, Hizashi arrives at your place, after most reasonable people are asleep, carrying mix tapes and cinnamon buns and books, and you’ll spend the night tangled with him far more than is necessary, listening to music and reading aloud to each other until you inevitably fall asleep, together, tangled on a couch that shouldn’t be as comfortable as it has become.

You grow so used to him that you start to believe his smile is what makes this place your home.

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Exactly a year after you met him, you tell Hizashi you love him, and you say it first in every language you can that he does not know: Korean, Cantonese, Thai, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Greek, and on and on you go until there are only two ways left you can say I love you.

In English first, “I love you.” And then in Japanese, which bears the weight of every language you’ve said it in before, and somehow means much, much more than any of the others, because this is the language you and Hizashi will always share, have always shared, “I love you.”

Hizashi’s face splits into a grin so brilliantly bright that you suddenly think you will never be able to settle for anything less than this again, and his eyes well with tears that quickly fall to streak across his cheeks.

Quickly and without hesitation, you wipe the tears from his cheeks, and he falls into you, crying, and repeating, again and again, “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

Love is not something you’d seen for yourself. In any version of your life, imagined by yourself or theorized by others, love has never been a part of it.

In this moment, curled around Hizashi, playing with his fingers while he traces your face with a touch that is gentler than anything you had ever known, you cannot imagine that life. There is not an existence for you, in any universe, down any path, where you can imagine not loving Yamada Hizashi.

Belatedly, you realize that your own eyes have filled with tears. Hizashi, as gentle as only he can be, rests his thumbs beneath your eyes, and smiles at you.

You were wrong, a moment ago, every smile of his is something bright and marvelous, no matter how small.

Raising your own hands, you mimic his hold, resting your thumbs beneath his eyes, and you lean forward until your forehead is touching his, and you whisper, softly, a confession, “You were my first person.”

Hizashi’s smile is not on his face, then, but in his eyes, and he shifts to press his lips against the corner of yours, and you know that he understands.

You press your own lips to corner of his, and stay there, breathing with him, for a very long time.

#present mic #present mic x reader #bnha fic #yamada hizashi #yamada hizashi x reader #no smut #mentions of death #mentions of tortue #self-hate #apparently ive decided to do things on this site now #the number of fics i have planned and havent done anything with is honestly sinful #this shit hit 2k before they even met #suicide mention

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