Chapter Text
Aizawa Shota doesn’t take time off.
He’d love to say that there are more and more prospective heros that want to take on the Underground and all the filthy lack of glory it has to offer. But, he can’t.
The dark underbelly of Japan has never been so hungry. It’s an animal, winding itself tighter and tighter, just waiting for him or any one of the small handful of Underground agents to slip even a step. And so Shota makes sure to respond in kind, mirror the writhing beast restless night for restless night.
The only exception to ‘no days off’ was for post-undercover work. It’d been learned the hard way time and time again that after going under—abandoning your life and morals, your name and quirk, home and comfort for an undetermined amount of time—a break is crucial. Crucial enough to be a non-negotiable mandate by any and all hero agencies that works with that kind of thing.
Shota has more or less done his time in undercover work. Too many of the big fish know his face, his quirk; but the belly of the beast grows and new fish are spawned and so it does happen time and time again. Which is why he is home instead of on patrol. Shota sits on his couch, a fierce winter wind beating against the window, heart pattering steadily away in his chest, and the tv on too low to hear—the background noise gets under his skin but is still better than the silence. For now.
He normally doesn’t mind the quiet, but it didn’t really matter how many dozens of times he’s been under, that needle thin layer of grime just beneath his skin, under his fingernails and between his molars, is relentless; an invader that won’t come free no matter how hard he scrubs.
He has gotten used to it over the years though, and it’s gotten something like easier, but not quite. He’s found his anchors; keeps them small and hard to lose: Tofu, the most companionable of the cats, purring against his thigh and the other two lounging pointedly out of reach are soft and familiar on his senses. The smell of dark tea and cream wafting from the stupid mug Mic got him almost a decade ago now—its faded pink lettering at one point had said ‘No one gives head like Eraserhead!’ but now just reads ‘gives head’—always manages to spark some cross between endeared, amused, and annoyed in his chest. The tea is strong and bright on his tongue and the mug holds heat well and doesn’t burn his fingertips even when he wants it to. The brush of warm, well-loved blankets and pillows and throws against his skin is miles better than his sleeping bag—he has tons, silky and fuzzy, faux fur and wool, enough to effectively drown himself and his cats.
He burrows deeper and takes a small scalding sip of his tea.
He’d only been under for three weeks—a short time compared to three months, six months, the year he’d known before—posing as a prospective ‘buyer’. Somewhere down the line trafficking rings became his specialty (he’s not sure how he got so lucky), but it’s only in recent years that he’s reached the age to pose as the sick, twisted scum that sought to purchase humans, teenagers, children. He burrows his fingers into the blankets, takes another sip and pulls his mind from cages, the smell of days old waste, wide eyes and ribs and hollow cheeks.
On and off undercover for three weeks has allotted him five days off. It is day one and he feels just about ready to rip the hair from his scalp he’s so restless. It will eventually ebb, give way to the exhaustion that always lingers just beneath the surface, but he’s still on edge.
He toys with the idea of calling Mic, just to hear Eri’s voice and listen to them laugh and talk about nothing at all. But the clock is quickly approaching one and he wouldn’t grow any line of communication with her right now even if it had been a reasonable hour. He wouldn’t dare lest the stench of those cages—and any lingering echoes of who he’d pretended to be to see them— somehow crawled through that invisible line, slithered from the receiver into her ear. He will not dirty her.
His work phone rings, too loud through the room and he has it pressed to his ear before it can a second time.
“Eraserhead.” He greets.
“Ah, sorry to bother you so late Eraser, and on leave too.” Kairo sighs and Shota can practically taste the exhaustion through the receiver, the stale tight air of his office. Kairo graduated the year before him from Shiketsu and they have been neck deep in the Underground mess together for over a decade now.
The Underground still has agencies on paper, but in reality there were so few hero’s that the lines between cases can’t help but blur, especially with how often those lines overlap. So instead they have handlers. No one underground pro is tied to one agency, the handlers simply stay in contact and the hero’s go where they are best suited. It’s a chaotic system, but it is an effective one. Kairo became a handler a few years ago, so it’s no surprise that he knows about his most recent mission and his leave, but he hadn’t been involved in Shota’s mission. So, this call is strange to say the least.
“What is it?”
There is a hitch of silence on the other end that has Aizawa siting up a little straighter.
“Well, there’s no easy way to say this. Siren is back.”
A tremor, barely there, starts in Shota’s fingertips as he sets the mug down with a click, pushes the blankets off of himself and plants his feet.
“He’s…okay.” Kairo says with a sigh.
“You don’t sound so sure.”
“He is. He managed to get good and deep in that drug ring in the southeastern sect. Kid, brought it down nice and tight, but…” Kairo sighed again, and Shota hears him rub a hand across his face. “…he didn’t get out clean.”
Shota’s heart goes still in his chest for a split second. The air goes thick and won’t pull to his lungs without effort. He’s at the door half a second later, Tofu meowing at him in betrayal.
“As you know, aftercare for these situations is always sticky but I thought—“
“What’s he on.” He demands, slipping on his boots, shoving himself inside a massive black coat and grabbing another from the ganken closet.
That same hitch of a beat rings through to him. It’s unlike Kairo to hesitate, especially with him, but Shota’s…connection to Hitoshi is not a secret in the slightest.
“Heroin.”
Shota slams the closet harder than he intends to. “I’ve got him. Where is he?”
Kairo sighs. “You are supposed to be on leave. It seemed right to let you know but we can set him up in a room, get someone to supervise—“
“Fuck that.” He keeps the bite out of his voice, but just imaging Hitoshi in one of those horrible little florescent rooms has his teeth clenching tight enough to crack. He blows through the door, bracing against the wind and doesn’t even feel the cold. “I’ve got him.” He slides into the drivers seat of the car he rarely uses, tossing the coat into the passenger seat. “Where is he?” He asks, patience fraying to a charcoaled end.
“It’s not protocol, Shota.”
He squeezes the steering wheel tight, feels the cold leather give beneath his hands. “We made the fucking protocol, Kai.”
Kairo knew Shota was gonna take Hitoshi. It’s the only real reason he called. They’ve both been right where Hitoshi is now and know first hand that the last thing he needs is some cold-handed Commission lackey who only knows about addiction and withdraw from what they’ve read online. There’s nothing worse.
A resigned sigh rings in his ear. “HQ. He’s in the infirmary.”
<~>
Shota pulls right up to the curb outside Headquarters. From the outside the building looks like nothing more than a raggedy old apartment complex, but it has a sprawling undocumented basement that serves their operation well.
He takes the stairs two at a time, hood pulled up over his head in a sorry makeup for his lack of uniform. A lot of underground hero’s develop a keen dislike for elevators or other enclosed spaces, and in a building this old, the stairs are faster anyway.
Kairo, unsurprisingly, is waiting for him outside the infirmary doors, the dark hero suit is rumpled and has seen better days but his long blond hair is braided neatly down his shoulder. Shota’s eyes land on the small stack of papers hooked under his arm. “Nice sweatpants.” Kairo says, eyeing his blatant lack of uniform and all the implications that come with the fact that he hadn’t taken the time to follow that piece of protocol either. It wasn’t a reprimand, more like making a subtle point that Hitoshi clearly means more to Shota than any ex-student should.
“Like you said, I’m on leave.”
There’s a lot of speculation about his and Hitoshi's dynamic among the underground network. News travels fast in such a tight nit group but there isn’t really room for judgment in their world, where loss of love and life is all too common. Shota’s people like to observe, not judge; like to leave the criticism and blatant lack of privacy to the above-ground game with their tabloids and garish absence of respect. Everyone down here knows that things need to stay loose and undefined. Life moves too inconsistently, too brutally Underground for judgement.
You care for what you dare to, and learn to accept the probability that you’ll see it hurt. It’s bleak and shitty, but it’s true.
Shota grunts, shifts the spare coat over his arm to grab the papers from Kairo’s hand and pushes past him into the too familiar room. He digs through his pocket for a pen but his eyes hook sharp and critical on that slightly hunched spine. He can see the top vertebrae where he hadn’t been able to a few months ago. Even though his lilac hair is muddled with grime and something darker, it is still the brightest thing in the wide, depressingly sterile room.
Orin—the sweet medical genius that has somehow managed to both keep them all alive and retain an honest to god smile for the last eight years—looks up at him briefly with a knowing grin before threading the final stitches on the long nasty gash across Hitoshi’s shoulder.
Shota’s fingers finally close around the pen, a bit too tight.
He circles the table, pushes the hood back off his head and sets the papers down beside Hitoshi with a gentle hand.
Heavy lids peel open to reveal even heavier eyes but when they meet his own they spark almost instantly, silvery and shocked. A million and one things pass between them in that second and Shota tries not to expose what it does to him when the tension bleeds right out of Hitoshi’s shoulders.
This first moment, facing someone after they’ve been under for a while, is always hard. The split second where he has to see just how far gone they are, gauge just how much damage that time under did and how irreparable it might be.
Too many times Shota has looked into the eyes of colleagues, friends, lovers, and seen next to no recognition, no solace; only suspicion, anger, a special variety of hopelessness that most therapists only read about.
So when Hitoshi offers him that slightly hitched breath he’s known since the boy was in high school, and a shaky little sigh of relief, Shota tries not to echo it and knows by the twitch of Hitoshi’s chapped lips that he failed.
He takes in the dark bruised color beneath his eyes, the smear of dried blood and dirt over his arms and neck and hairline, a blotchy smatter of bruises at the ribs; and there, at the crook of his left elbow, a few irritated looking scars, streaked blue and small. Hitoshi covers them with his hand and Shota can see in the hazy edge to his eyes that the motion is self-conscious. He tries to give him a reassuring look.
“Hey, kid.” He puts a cold hand on his bare shoulder, and feels more of the bone there than he remembers. Hitoshi had been undercover for a little over three months and had retained most of his muscle, but the healthy fat and fullness to him had been pulled right out, his skin stretching a little too thin and loose over bone and sinew. Shota tries to pipe down the sudden desperate need to buy all of the boys favorite foods, feed him, hoard him under a mountain of blankets.
Hitoshi leans into the touch as best he can without pulling out of Orin’s hold. “Nice pants, old man.” He grins, but his teeth are clenched and there is a tightness to his voice that Shota knows well.
“That’s what I said.” Kairo murmurs, leaning against a nearby wall, far enough to not crowd them.
“Yes but you didn’t mean it.” Shota retorts.
“I did too. Pink is a good color on you.” One thing about Kairo and Shota both is that they joke in a way that people can rarely tell is serious or not. His tone is flat as a desert but Shota knows when he’s being made fun of.
He just grunts, pulling his hand away from Hitoshi to leaf through the standard six pages of the release form and add his signature beside Kairo’s. Hitoshi’s fingers curl into the thick fabric of his coat instead, and Shota can feel how badly he wants to get out of here in that grip alone; as clear as if Hitoshi had screamed it at him.
“I agree, Eraser! I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in anything other than black.” Orin giggles lightly, snipping the threat and dabbing around the wound with an alcohol pad.
“You should see his pajama drawer.” Hitoshi murmurs, tries to make it sound light but Shota narrows in on the barely there tremor stemming from the fingers in his coat. Hitoshi is trying to keep whatever he’s feeling under wraps. He’s still new enough to undercover work that he wants to seem un-compromised in front of his seniors, his colleagues. But he’s fading, exhaustion seeping in fast, his eyes going distant and half-lidded. It’s strange to see Hitoshi so out of it. It’s wrong.
He signs off on the final paper before trying to catch Hitoshi’s eyes again, narrowed and hazy like he can barely keep them open. “Your coming home with me, okay?” He says, brushing Hitoshi’s clenched fingers with his own, working them free from the fabric. Hitoshi’s eyes focus where their hands meet, but he doesn’t really react to Shota’s words. “Toshi?” He whispers, low enough to not get a dirty look from Kairo for not using code names. He squeezes his hand, dips his head to put himself directly in Hitoshi’s line of sight.
That same little spark of recognition is back and Hitoshi squeezes back. “Hm?” he hums.
Shota has the all too familiar urge to break something fragile.
“Siren, let me just have a word with you and then you can go home with Eraser.” Kairo says, approaching slow. His voice is always low and gentle for the most part but somehow it seems even more so. Kairo knows better than all of them what Hitoshi is feeling.
Hitoshi seems to come back to himself a bit, the exhaustion not really ebbing but shifting to the side a bit in his eyes. “Yes sir.” He says, voice all business but it has an edge and he doesn’t let go of his hand.
Shota gives him one more subtle squeeze before shifting, pulling the soft heavy spare coat around his shoulders. It’s so big it swallows his frame, makes Hitoshi seem small and even more pale. His eyelids dip and so does his head, sighing relief into the collar.
“You talk to Chestra. I’ll be right outside when you’re finished.” He says, giving Orin a motion to follow on his way to the door.
The infirmary clicks fully shut before Shota says a word. “Anything I need to know?” He asks.
Orin sighs, leaning heavy against the wall and pulling off her bloody gloves. Shota doesn’t think about who’s blood. “Nothing you aren’t already familiar with.” She says, and Shota can see a bit of that cheery demeanor slip. “He’s got some bruised ribs, the shoulder wound isn’t so bad, it can get its stitches out in a couple weeks. He certainly hasn’t been eating or sleeping properly but I don’t even know why I bother mentioning that bit to you lot anymore.” She taunts gently, trying to lighten the blow of her next words, but Shota doesn’t smile back.
Orin shakes her head. “He said the last time he used was approximately sixteen hours ago and his bloodwork lines up. Toxicity is…well, not as bad as yours in the past so that’s a relief, but he took enough in the last month or so that he’ll almost definitely experience some withdrawal symptoms. If they haven’t started already, they will soon.” She says, but Shota can see it in her eyes. She had felt the way Hitoshi had been quivering too, had seen too many shades of pain and dealt with them all brushing off mortal wounds time and time again to be deceived.
Shota nods, crossing his arms across his chest tight. Orin’s hand moves to rest on his arm and he resists the urge step back. He doesn’t have to resist long. She lowers it almost immediately. She can probably read the body language of every hero in this sect to a T by now. “Just keep him warm. He’ll probably get a fever, chills, he’ll be nauseous for a good few days and might not want to eat or drink, the usual. But just try to keep him hydrated and comfortable.”
Shota nods again tightly. He feels Orin shift more than sees it. “Eraser. It won’t be like last time. Your boy worked hard to keep his dosages low and as sporadic as possible. His come down will be a lot easier than that was.” She looks up at him with wide earnest eyes, not a shadow of doubt in them and Shota feels something loosen just the barest bit in his chest. “I’ll call and check in in a couple days. Call me if you need anything."
They hear Kairo’s voice closer, fabric shifting behind the door. Shota nods moving to open it but Orin stops him with a hand to the metal. “And one more thing.” She says, low and grave. “Try to remember that you’re on mandatory leave too. There is a reason for that and technically this is a big no-no. So see that you take care of yourself too.”
The door cracks open and Hitoshi and Kairo walk through. Well, Kairo walks, Hitoshi kind of shuffles. His feet don’t leave the floor fully with every step, like there’s led weights strapped to his ankles.
Hitoshi barely manages to lift his head, and Shota resists the urge to just carry him. He leans forward, brushes Hitoshi’s cheek lightly before pulling the big hood over his head. Hitoshi shifts , tries to nuzzle against Shota’s wrist but it’s weak and shaky.
“Ready?” He asks.
This time Hitoshi only blinks at him, so Shota just pulls his own hood up, loops his arm around his waist and leads them toward the exit.
Neither Kairo nor Orin say a word, but Shota can feel their eyes.
They take the damned elevator. It’s cramped and dusty and Shota has never been more grateful for it. But as soon as the doors slip shut and they are out of their co-hero’s sight, Hitoshi starts to shake, his breath coming a little more ragged and sharp. Shota can’t see his face beneath the hood but he can feel the strong body pressed against him go brittle; the body he had trained himself, go raw as a third degree burn; and for what feels like the hundredth time since Hitoshi joined this fight five short years ago, Shota swallows thick around his guilt.