A 24-Pack of Band-Aids

A Boku no Hero Academia oneshot.

A sharp kick to his thigh from his friend was all it took to wake up his black-haired counterpart. It was a Saturday, and Aizawa knew he could not avoid it any longer. He had to return to his own bedroom.

Wiggling his way out of his cocoon, he rubbed the throbbing in his thigh lightly. Hizashi had twisted himself halfway onto his stomach, leaving his legs sprawled and stretched across the bed. Aizawa felt that rationally, payback was warranted.

So he shoved him off the bed.

He landed partially on the wooden floor and abandoned futon with a muffled thunk; he and his coveted blond hair sprouted up so fast, he nearly caught Aizawa in a snort. Hizashi stared incredulously, wide awake, his mouth hanging open in shock.

"What happened?" He asked, patting his chest to make sure he was still in the same clothes and in the same room as before. Aizawa shrugged and kicked himself free of the blankets.

"I don't know, guess you just fell."

Hizashi groaned and flopped onto his back. "What a dream I guess."

His black-haired friend hummed but said nothing. He slid out of bed, his feet making no sound as he located his socks wadded up in his bag he left by the door. He slipped them on. He could feel the eyes watching him as he put on his school jacket and tossed his bag over his shoulder.

"Shouta…"

Aizawa glanced back at him. He was perched up on his elbows, his hair drooping in his face to match the sad expression in his eyes.

"What…" he asked softly, tightening his grip on his bag.

Hizashi responded at the same volume. "Why don't you stay…? For a few hours... Another day... Forever."

He quirked an eyebrow. "Forever. Really?"

His friend bounced forward onto his butt, leaning over his knees. He looked more desperate now, his face pleading, but Aizawa would not crumble. Not this time.

"I'm sure my mom wouldn't mind it," he said, "And you like staying here, I know you do. We can play all the video games, have my dad's cooking—"

"I can't," Aizawa cut him off. It sounded too good to be nothing more than a fantasy. He didn't belong there with them, encroaching on their family as he felt living in the second-floor apartment, encroaching on a bachelor's life by his very existence. He dug his fingernails into the fabric strap and turned towards the door. "I'll see you Monday."

They didn't exchange anymore after that—Aizawa didn't give time for it, slipping out the door before his friend could even get up. He retrieved his shoes at the front, shoving his feet into them and waiting for his heel to sink into it. He heard Hizashi follow him, but he didn't say a word when his black-haired friend walked out into the warm morning air. His eyes followed him from the window by the door as he pushed open the gate and turned down the street, the bruises on his face looking like smeared putty in the infant sunlight. There were many, many things Hizashi wanted to say. But he swallowed them all painfully.

He didn't want to push his only friend away.

Aizawa was home in thirty minutes.

He never had money for the train on the weekends, so walking home from his friend's was the only viable option. He didn't mind it though. He worked the stiffness out of his knees, and when he reached the familiar tree standing firm beside his window, he climbed his way to his floor and dropped back onto the ledge.

The suction on the door was tight. Someone must have turned on the air conditioner, whether that was the monster or anyone he brought to the apartment since the front door had become a revolving one.

He retrieved a small metal rod that had fallen from the ledge above him (to what, he didn't know, and didn't really want to know either) and wedged it carefully until he heard the soft hiccup and the door yielded to the bar. He pushed it to the maximum width he would allow and slid his bag inside.

That's when he heard it. The snoring.

His eyes had to adjust to the darkness, but when they did, he saw a man draped on his sheets, his face smushed against the pillow. Aizawa silently cursed himself and tried to slip back outside, but the metal rod tapped the glass and the man resurrected himself from his sleep. Aizawa stayed absolutely still, his hand pressed to the sliding door heavy against his chest, counting his breathing and waiting for something to happen, any reason for his flight or fight instincts to kick in.

The man rolled over, and his snores persisted on.

Aizawa stayed wedged in the doorway, one foot in the dark lion's den, the other in the light, breathing through his nose and trying to get the rapid pattering of his heart to a reasonable level, so, in case the man moved again, he could hear him over the loud heartbeat muting his hearing.

Aizawa still had his forehead pushed against the seal on the door when he heard a voice, accentuated by a quirk.

"Shouta!"

No.

He quickly glanced at the lion curled up on his bed, one fisted wadded in the blankets. He couldn't leave the screen door open.

He couldn't let him hear.

He carefully passed the metal bar in-between the thin space of his legs, tilting it to lean against the privacy screen blocking the neighbor's view. He shuffled out of the space and onto the concrete landing and held his breath as he slid the door shut, pausing hard when he heard the familiar suction.

With his forehead pressed against the door, he could barely discern the darkness, but the glob on his sheets had not moved.

"Shouta!"

He shook his head and leaned over the iron bars, searching for the cockatoo colored hair. He could never judge the distance with his voice quirk—and since he couldn't see him, he could only assume he wasn't as close as he thought he was until he saw him passing the gap in between the buildings, preparing to shout his name again.

Shouta had never jumped on the tree from the ledge. For one, the branch was taller than him, and the iron bars that would serve as his jumping off point were barely as wide as a water bottle cap. He would get enough balance to make the jump, and besides—the end of the branch might snap from the sudden momentum. He had no place to run. He curled his fingers around the bar and held on tightly, hoping he wouldn't get blown away by the nonexistent winds he felt howling around him.

Hizashi spotted him within minutes.

"Shouta!" He called again, quirk still fizzling. Aizawa flinched and checked towards the screen door again. It didn't move.

His friend trotted over quickly, craning his head to look up at him from the ground level.

His black-haired friend hissed, "What are you doing here Hizashi?"

The sun, wobbling towards the center of the sky, hardened his lens and made it impossible to see his eyes. A ray refracted off it and landed like a speck of yellow on the end of Aizawa's shoes.

"Looking for you, of course."

Aizawa sighed. "How did you even find me."

He was afraid to speak too loud. Afraid of waking up the monster. But Hizashi didn't have that same fear. He didn't know. He spoke so loudly his friend still thought he was using his quirk.

"I guess. Shouta, we have to talk. About all this, please! Someone is hurting you, and I want to help!"

His black hair shot up, and his eyes went red, and he ran a finger over his throat threateningly. His friend took a step back.

"There's nothing to talk about," he said. "So go home."

He assumed that was it. His hair flopped back in his face, and he turned back towards the sliding door. He would talk again to his friend on Monday. For now, he would have to wait for the lion to crawl out of his room. He slid to the ground, pressing his back against the bars.

He heard a branch snap.

He moved to his knees, staring through the slats in the metal fence. Hizashi had grabbed onto a branch and yanked it off into his hands. He was trying to climb the tree.

It was one of the few times Aizawa would ever admit he screamed.

"Hizashi! Leave me alone!"

His friend froze, his hand full of leaves. Their eyes never met as he lowered his head towards the ground. They never truly disagreed about anything but this, and he knew it. But Aizawa wanted to go through this alone. He didn't want to drag someone into this, an outsider who wouldn't understand nor deserved to be subjected to it.

The sliding door opened. Aizawa felt his heart stop beating.

Hizashi didn't hear it, he didn't know. He turned on his heels and started to walk away, his shoulders slumped, those words still ringing in his ears. Never has Aizawa wanted to contradict himself more as he clutched the metal bars of his prison tightly, watching his best friend walk off.

"I remember you said don't leave me here alone."

A hand rested on his shoulder. He bit his lip hard and shut his eyes.

"But all that's dead and gone and passed tonight."

The logic in his brain told him this was what he deserved. He was the one who pushed his friend away. If he wanted anything to change, he would have to rebuild the bridges he burned, swallow his damn pride and hope tomorrow would be different.

But right now, he couldn't think about tomorrow. He could only think about today.

They lived on another year with the abuse, and the rift Aizawa predicted was growing between them suddenly evaporated in one afternoon. Hizashi waited until the day before their second year at UA to confess that he liked his best friend—or loved, he couldn't tell, through all the stuttering and handwaving. Aizawa hid a smile behind his scarf and didn't say anything until the end of the day, so he could watch his friend turn cherry red every time he looked his way.

Hizashi waited until the day of the Sports Festival to kiss him. It had caught him off guard—he was only describing the various ways he could die depending on how sadistic the referees planned on getting when the blond suddenly seized him by his face and kissed him. He spent the rest of the day apologizing, and his friend never let on that he liked it until he suddenly captured him by his tie after the event was over and returned the favor. Hizashi's eyes soon turned to hearts after that.

They both waited until one month shy of the end of the school year to try something different. They had discussed it for months, Hizashi always prompting for validity and asking him if it was truly okay, to which Aizawa would sigh and say of course. They picked a date, when Hizashi's folks would be out of town, and quietly his black-haired friend followed him home from the train station, their pinkies looped together.

They talked very little about the day Aizawa yelled at him from his balcony. Hizashi found the uncrossable line and respectfully kept his distance from it—but still, his heart ached when he glanced over at his friend-turned-boyfriend, wondering how much has happened in the silence of the past year.

Hizashi's house was as empty as he predicted—but still, they preemptively locked all the necessary doors, just in case. They would start with a movie in Hizashi's room, sitting on his bed with Aizawa's head on his shoulder as neither one of them paid attention to whatever the blonds nervous finger pressed.

And then it became more. Aizawa tilted his head up to look up into his boyfriend's eyes—he had forced him to take off his glasses—when his lips were met by a tender kiss. One lapsed into another, and soon, Aizawa was carefully looping his arms around his neck and twisting his body to better accommodate the position.

He felt like he was breathing when his body was not, every time he reached for the sweet nectar and felt the tender love that came with it. Hizashi carefully combed his bangs from his eyes. He kissed him again, and Aizawa's heart fluttered. He was afraid to admit it, but he was in love.

The movie credits rolled, and adolescent hands started to wander elsewhere. Hizashi paused smothering his face with kisses so he could flip on some music while Aizawa's nervous fingers fumbled to slip buttons from their holes.

This was crazy, ridiculous even—but somehow it felt right as Hizashi gently took his hands and helped him open his button-up shirts.

The momentum stopped.

Hizashi stared at him, wide-eyed as a piano thundered in the background. And Aizawa descended from his happy place and wrapped his shirt over his skin to hide the scars and the bruises he had long since stopped counting.

"Shouta…" Hizashi's voice wavered, and he reached up to cup his face, but he pushed his hand away and started to rebutton his shirt. "Please, Shouta…"

"I don't want to do this anymore," he said suddenly. He didn't really feel it in his heart, but he was frustrated, and the damn button still wasn't cooperating. It took a little force for Hizashi to pry his hand away.

"Shouta, please, listen to me," he said, squeezing his hand softly.

His boyfriend sighed and glanced at him. Hizashi lifted his palm and kissed it lightly, his lips brushing a scar he had gotten during training, and they both knew what he was going to say before he even said it. The music in the background crescendoed into silence.

"I think you're beautiful, in every way." Aizawa averted his eyes, but he gently nudged his head, and he turned and returned his gaze, as uncomfortable as it made him feel. "Scars and stuff, that doesn't change it. I love you just the way you are."

Aizawa paused. Love. It was the first time he had said that to him (that he could be sure of anyway.)

"But I don't like the idea of someone hurting you, laying their hands on you and leaving those scars and bruises…" Hizashi carefully tucked a piece of hair behind his ear, catching the faint powder of a blush on his cheeks. "I want to protect you... Keep you safe… Please, let me do that for you."

A guitar radiated in the silence between them, and Aizawa, in his half-buttoned shirt and his boyfriend cradling his hand to his heart, realized how truly profound the melody was.

"I remember tears streaming down your face when I said I'll never let you go. When all those shadows almost killed your light."

He studied Hizashi's eyes quietly. He saw the music in his face, in his eyes. He felt it in his warmth, and for a moment, the words quivered on the tip of his tongue.

"I remember you said don't leave me here alone. But all that's dead and gone and passed tonight…"

He remembered the day under the tree, falling asleep to the melody. Of all the times Hizashi chased him to his house and forced him to go to all the events he didn't care for but only went because his only friend asked him too. He thought about the day he screamed from his balcony—and before he could close in on himself, to shut the door his boyfriend had finally pried open, Hizashi grabbed his other hand and started to sing in tune with the lyrics.

"Just close your eyes, the sun is going down,"he echoed, his voice always beautiful and in tune and whispering "please trust me" in his ears.

"You'll be alright, no one can hurt you now." Let me protect you Shouta.

Hizashi pressed his forehead to his, and he knew he would break, that any resolve he had formed would crumble.

He loved him.

"Come morning light, you and I'll be safe and sound…" Stay with me.

He felt like he was drowning; he sucked in a hard breath, squeezed his eyes shut, and whispered, hoping that he wouldn't sink too far before he was saved. His boyfriend quickly clicked the music off.

"What was that Shouta…?" He asked softly. And Aizawa opened his eyes and stared deep into his. Hizashi squeezed the frozen fingertips again, and quietly, he repeated what he said.

"Soon…"

It was enough. Hizashi wrapped him up in his arms, and he absorbed all the warmth his body craved to have. Maybe part of him was lying, for the sake of keeping Hizashi satisfied—but the other part of him knew it wasn't true. He would do something about his situation soon.

It was only rational to take his life, this life he has constructed with Yamada Hizashi tightly woven in it, into his own hands.

Time to end the abuse.

Abuse

verb

əˈbyo͞oz/

treat (a person or an animal) with cruelty or violence, especially regularly or repeatedly.

"riders who abuse their horses should be prosecuted"

Synonyms: mistreat, harm, damage.

Aizawa's eyes wavered over the definitions he wrote his first year before he quickly shoved the stack of papers in his bag. He didn't have much in terms of possessions, but now hastily recollecting him was driving him down a memory lane he didn't have the time for. He checked the door again. Closed. He had fixed the door as much as he could since the night it was destroyed, but still he wondered if it would give way easily to the man on the other side.

He hoisted the gym bag over his shoulder and crammed it through the small opening, following closely behind it. Hizashi was waiting on the ground, hands outstretched, and he tossed the bag over the metal slats into his arms.

Aizawa Shouta was seventeen, and he was running away from home.

Hizashi balanced the bag on the stack of others. Most of it was clothes or school supplies, things he couldn't rationalize forcing Hizashi's family to buy if he already owned it. Very little remained in the room, but he knew they couldn't make one trip with all the bags.

"Take some to your house," Aizawa spoke softly, nodding towards the small pyramid of his life. Hizashi gave him a quick thumb up and picked up two of the bags and hurried back down the familiar path. If he took the train, it probably would be another ten minutes before he saw him again.

It was finally happening. He was escaping. He treaded carefully back to the doorway and slid in. He was taller now, his shoulders bumping unscuffed places on the white trim. It wouldn't be much longer before he finally hit his remaining growth spurt and become unable to get through the doorway without cracking it open further. Timing was everything, he supposed.

He collected the last remaining uniforms from his closet, folding them up and stuffing them in a bag on loan from Hizashi. Empty hangers clanged solemnly against each other as he eased the closet door shut again. There was something to be said about that moment, but he didn't have the time.

All that remained now was his scarf, bundled up on his bed. It was soft when his fingers wove into, and he carefully stuffed it with the rest of his possessions.

This was it. There was nothing left. He nudged the bag out the door with his foot.

"You bastard!"

He forced himself through the sliding door when the door to his room erupted, smashing so hard against the wall he was sure the handle was stuck inside the wall. He had been so quiet, he didn't know how he would have noticed him—he could basically see the alcohol dripping from his mouth, he was drunk, he was in a rage, and he was looking for something to beat on.

It wouldn't be him.

He smashed his shoulder into the sliding door and forced it shut before he chunked his bag off the side. The privacy walls were too tall to scale, even at his height, and he could hear his fingers scratching the finger holds to open the door again.

"You son of a bitch, you get back here!" He screamed.

Aizawa didn't want to look at him, to see his face and see himself contained in the genetics. He gripped the iron bars of the railing tightly and lifted himself onto it, standing to his full height. His head was at level with the branch. The lion pried the sliding door open, and it screeched like gunshots in his ears when he pushed against his heels and jumped.

He didn't know if a two-story fall would hurt, if he would break his legs and be dragged back inside his cage. No, he wouldn't, he refused to accept this fate any longer—

His fingers snagged the branch.

He quickly looped his arms around it and kicked up his legs, but even then, hanging upside down and looking at the man genetically cursed to be his father panting with the pent-up rage of an alcoholic, he heard the branch crackle.

He scrambled to get right side up and crawl to the end of the branch as it cracked and popped, the angle of it from the sky rapidly increasing. His leg slipped off, and he tried to brace against other branches as his one and only bridge collapsed, barely clinging to the tree with a thin piece of bark that caused it to waver in the wind.

He inhaled hard. He was lucky. He's always just been lucky.

"So what now, bastard?" It was the first time the lion had ever tried to have a conversation. If he could feel his limbs, he would just leave—but adrenaline seeped into numbness, and he realized with a swallow that there was terror after jumping from his balcony. His limbs were like the branches, broken and barely clinging to the commands of his mind. In the face of his greatest villain, he could not move; and he felt ashamed to say he wanted to be a hero.

"You just going to go back to UA? You? A hero? Don't make me laugh."

He knew exactly what was on his mind, and he hated it. He grasped the branches around him tightly, feeling the limbs beneath him waver from his weight and hoping that Hizashi would come back soon.

Only he knew this time, Hizashi would not save him. He would have to save him himself.

The man leaned against the railing, his face dissolving into a lopsided, drunken grin.

"You'd be useless as a fighter. You're too scrawny. No potential." His face dropped, and he scratched his nose. "Not to mention that worthless bastard quirk."

Fight back. A small voice said, and he stood more firm on shaky ground, looking at the man with his dark black eyes, seeing only the reflection of his own soul. Emotional ineptitude. A habit of sleeping anywhere at any time. Containing problems in small bottles.

But Aizawa was not his father.

He was a hero. He didn't hate kids. And he could feel warmth and love and power from another individual and not a bottle of alcohol.

"If you hate your quirk so much…" Aizawa said, the hair raising from the back of his neck, red washing out the genetic color from his eyes. "Then you only have yourself to blame for bad genetics."

He waved meat in front of the beast until he provoked it. The sudden calm was followed by the raging storm.

There wasn't much on the balcony. Broken pottery, the metal rod; but all of it became baseballs as he picked them up and chunked them at him. Aizawa's hair dropped as quickly as he did and feeling returned to his limbs. He slipped down to the next level on the tree, the branches scratching and tearing his face. He heard the metal rod clang above him and he quickly slid down further on the tree, his hands gripping the bark so hard he could feel it bleeding.

When the crashes went silent, he could only assume he was heading for the staircase to take him outside. He jumped the last yard, rolling to avoid hurting himself before he scooped up his last remaining bags and took off running.

He didn't turn around. He didn't want to see him again, whether he was following him or not, and he didn't give him a chance to catch up either. He crashed into Hizashi at the entrance to the train station, panting hard and feeling like he had just fought a thousand villains at once.

"Shouta?" Hizashi caught him by the shoulder when he tried to dive down the stairs. "Shouta what happened?"

Aizawa checked over his shoulder. Only the regular traffic browsed around them. No lion. No man who had lost all the humanity inside himself. He let his bags slip from his shoulder, and he slowly sank to his knees. It was over. It was finally over.

"Nothing…" He breathed out, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment and feeling a throb in the palms of his hands. And then he opened them and looked at his boyfriend, who looked startled and scared and relieved to see him all at once. "Let's just… go home…"

Aizawa Shouta wouldn't be defined by the abuse. He would rewrite his own defintions, of the terms attributed to his life and who he was, and it would be nowhere on the list.

Hizashi never asked him about his home life. Not when their two years of being together turned into ten, not when they moved into their own place together or started working together at UA while occasionally teaming up on the side. They were pros now, with teaching jobs and long nights of sleeping curled up next to each other. The only negative thing was the way Hizashi decided to wear his hair up as Present Mic, but Aizawa decided he would let it happen as long as he got to wipe out all the hair gel and make him whine and cry that his hair was messed up.

Life was okay. Aizawa napped when he wanted and sucked down juice pouches like mana as his boyfriend watched from afar, his face wrinkled in disgust.

"Shouta," He spoke, after a particularly loud slurp. "Are you five?"

Aizawa looked him dead in the eye, sucking down another mouthful of his juice before he said. "Only in my heart."

Hizashi snorted, caught off-guard, and grinned him. "Really?"

"Really."
The blond's laughter dissolved beneath the growing concord of slurps, his black-haired boyfriend doing it now just to annoy the hell out of him. It was working, because now he couldn't focus on anything other than payback. He set his pen down over the papers he was grading and pulled out his phone, grinning wickedly at him before he clicked on the loudest music he owned. An electric guitar blared through the phone, and Aizawa covered his ears, flicking the cap of the juice pouch to the side of his mouth in order to speak.

"Turn that damn thing off Hizashi!" He warned, but his boyfriend wouldn't listen, pretending to use his phone as a guitar to strum to the beat while he used his quirk to match the screaming of the main vocalist.

Aizawa activated his quirk and grabbed a handful of his scarf. Hizashi went quiet with a yelp as the scarf wrapped around his mouth and his hands and forced him to drop the stupid phone on the floor. Even with a muffled voice, he could hear him whining "Shoutaaaa."

"Next time, I kill you. Got it?" Hizashi nodded quickly, and he released him, letting his hair relax back in place.

His boyfriend was still grinning like an idiot as he scooped up his phone, and he stared at him suspiciously as he selected another song and placed the phone on the table. A guitar.

"Hey… Shouta…" He said, his smile unwavering as he looked fondly at the name on the screen. "Do you remember this..?"

"I remember tears streaming down your face when I said I'll never let you go."

Ten years. It had been ten years since he had heard this song, and it took him back instantly, to the tree outside of UA where they spent so many days together.

"You still have that?" He mumbled, leaning back on the couch.

"Of course my listener!" He bobbed his head to the music, humming under his breath as to not annoy him again. They both listened as the guitar strummed on, his heart echoing the final words.

"Come morning light, you and I'll be safe and sound…"

But the guitar kept playing. He flashed a look at Hizashi, who quirked an eyebrow and asked "what?"

Aizawa shrugged. "I didn't know there was more to the song."

"Of course there was. You just were never awake long enough to hear it!"

"Don't you dare look out your window, darling everything's on fire. The war outside our door keeps raging on."

His black-haired boyfriend frowned. Well, doesn't that sound wonderful? It reminded him of their hero work, a work that would never end when people became so easily corrupted.

"Hold onto this lullaby even when the music's gone, gone…"

Aizawa snorted, "This is depressing."

Hizashi smiled softly at him, tapping his pen now to match the melody.

"Just close your eyes, the sun is going down. You'll be alright, no one can hurt you now…"

"Or hopeful," he said suddenly, "Depending on what part you listen to."

"Come morning light, you and I'll be safe and sound…"

And Aizawa chuckled; Hizashi always understood the music better than he did, but it was the language they spoke between each other, the voice they had given for a little thing called love.

love

Noun

ləv/

an intense feeling of deep affection.

"babies fill parents with intense feelings of love"

synonyms:

Devotion, tenderness, warmth

Aizawa said softly, "I guess you might be right. It's not a bad song."

This is my 100th fanfic posted on this site. I wanted to do something special, so I hope I delivered. Thanks to Saru for once again being my Present Mic interpreter.

Thanks for reading.

Soul Spirit