Tenya’s best friend can float. (Both of his best friends can float. No, he’s not jealous, he can float too, if a particular one of those best friends taps him with all five fingers.) Tenya feels, in this moment, like he may float as well, just leave the ground and disappear into the atmosphere, shooting off into the sky like a bottle rocket.
His chest is filled with helium and a spring is in his step as he returns to Mina and Yuuga’s studio.
“Wow, someone’s excited!” Mina chirps, turning away from the very energetic debate about nail colors she had been having with Yuuga. “What has you all bouncy, Class Rep?”
Yes, a decade after graduation, there are certain classmates who still call him Class Rep. The only people who know about the way that fills him with warmth and affection are his aforementioned best friends (plus Tensei).
“Well,” Tenya begins, and then pauses. Blurting out “my best friend almost killed himself but didn’t” is not a good idea. Not only is it almost a non-sequitur, but Izuku should be the one to have the choice of when and who to tell about that.
He won’t betray his trust, not now, not ever.
“I just had a phone conversation,” he says, and stops there, unsure how to continue. Mina eggs him on, wiggling her eyebrows and making a go on motion with her hand. “A two-hour-long phone conversation.”
“Oh, is love in the air?” Yuuga’s involved now, swanning over with his all-knowing smile painted across his lips. A romantic of unparalleled whimsy, Yuuga’s first thought is almost always something about romantic love, even when that’s highly unlikely, as is the case with Iida “I will put all my feelings here and then one day, I’ll die” Tenya.
“A two-hour-long phone conversation with Izuku,” Tenya corrects, and Yuuga looks even more interested, if possible, his eyes widening just a smidge.
Mina chimes in before Yuuga has a chance to say anything. “With Izuku?” she exclaims. “Two hours? Since when has he done two-hour-long phone calls?”
“Since today,” Tenya replies.
The truth is, Izuku has done two-hour-long phone calls… in the past. As in, this is the longest sustained phone conversation Tenya has had with Izuku in… well over six months, at least. He hadn’t wanted it to end, selfishly wanted to keep talking with Izuku for hours more, but, well, it’s almost midnight—is midnight?—in Japan, and he won’t cost his friend any more precious sleep. Izuku probably barely gets enough, anyways.
“Wow.” Mina raises her eyebrows. “I wonder what made today special.”
Tenya hums, noncommittally, and walks over to join the Great Nail Polish Debate. Yuuga and Mina, pushy, nosy gossip-mongers they are, read the room and return to the Great Nail Polish Debate.
While Tenya would like to say he was fully invested in the color of nail polish, he is not, his mind drifting back again and again to his conversation with Izuku.
He should have seen the warning signs. They’re so obvious, in hindsight, glowing neon signs pointing at Izuku, saying he’s not okay, and Tenya… hadn’t seen them. No one had, evidently, not even Izuku’s purported best friend.
Although… He should be more gracious to himself. They were buried under ten million other warning signs and red flags, just another indicator light flipping on, pointing out one more catastrophic failure in a system already catastrophically failing. But weren’t those earlier lights warning in themselves? Had he missed it because he did not want to see it?
So many questions, and no way to answer them. Life, he’s learned, is not made of hard-cut lines, easy, definite answers. Life is amorphous. It’s built of shades of grey and malleable truths, subjectivity and different viewpoints.
Still, soon he’ll be back in Japan, able to hunt down Izuku and give him the hug he so desperately desired to give during the phone conversation.
He counts down the hours leading up to his flight as they pass, packing and going on one last whirlwind tour of the town with Mina and Yuuga. They hug him, make him promise to let them know as soon as he touches down in Japan, and cry all over his shirt.
One twelve-hour flight later, and he’s stumbling down the steps and onto solid ground. True to his promise, he texts Mina and Yuuga, and on a whim, opens the group chat.
[Class Hella Gay!!!]
Please Stop Changing My Nickname To Sonic
I am back in Japan.
is there water on the moon?
Yay!!!
spear and shield but lovingly
Yeah!!!! That’s so good to hear!!! Good to have you back!!
Mom
We’ll have to arrange some time to meet up and have tea. It will be nice to see you again.
Please Stop Changing My Nickname To Sonic
I’ll have to arrange times to see all of you. It’s been too long.
spear and shield but lovingly
@cryptid !!!!!
hammock-maker
Class rep!! yo!!!
chestburster Full Of Love!!
[sob] [sob] [sob] we miss you already!!!!
hammock-maker
Then come back to Japan already!!!
chestburster Full Of Love!!
WE’RE WORKING ON ITTTTTTT
hammock-maker
Well work FASTER
Tenya’s heart fills with warmth as he watches the conversation pass by on the screen. He does love his friends, truly, every single one of them, even when they’re being idiots and assholes and running around with their heads up their asses. They’re his second family, and he’s… honestly not sure where he would be without them.
Much worse off, probably.
His first family is waiting for him outside the gate, both his mothers and his brother there. Even his grandmother, in her mid-nineties, is there, sitting in her wheelchair. Tensei is standing, leaning against one of their mothers, braces shining bright against the dark material of his pants.
A couple years ago, the same team in charge of Izuku’s prosthetic had approached Tensei, telling him about the possibility of a surgery to install technology that would fully reconnect his spinal column. He had turned them down, citing the fact that he was well and truly retired, and could manage civilian life just fine without that adaptive technology.
Sometimes, Tenya wishes he had agreed, but… that’s not his choice to make. Tensei made his decision, and it’s up to the rest of them to support him.
Approaching his family, he hugs his mothers first, then his grandmother, and finally Tensei, who slings an arm around Tenya and uses him to stabilize himself as they walk out of the airport. Tensei carries his cane, but why use that when there are perfectly fine little brothers around to tease and irritate?
He goes home with his family, eats lunch with them, drinks coffee, and checks in with his employer. He’s been overseas for quite a while, completing work remotely, and now that he’s back, he can fall back into the swing of things and charge full-steam-ahead in studying for the bar exam.
It surprises him, sometimes, how many of them have made activism their full-time focus. Well, it’s only three of them, but that’s still more than one would think, and that still includes him.
Yeah, it still startles him, sometimes, that he’s looking at a future suing the Commission and hero agencies. Someone has to stand up against the system, and if not him, then who? He spent his whole life benefiting from it, reaping the rewards of an unjust society, spent too long as another cog in the machine.
No more.
He makes the decision daily, each time he chooses to keep going, to look at the industry he had been a part of and make changes to it.
Perhaps, now, if he talks to—
No, no, he can’t do that, especially not now. His best friend has always looked at heroics with stars in his eyes, and while he’s an example of the kind of person heroes should strive to be…
He especially can’t do that now. Izuku is… undoubtedly fragile, right now, and talking about the kind of terrible things the industry he sacrificed so much to is complicit in…
No. He won’t do that to his friend.
But, well, thinking about his friend… It is Saturday, isn’t it, and he knows where Izuku has been staying…
He pulls a light blazer on as he leaves, saying a quick good-bye to his mothers as he walks out the door. The trip to Aizawa and Yamada’s house takes an hour and a half, but he can’t bring himself to regret the travel time as he walks through their quiet neighborhood and approaches the front door. Birds chatter overhead, and one of their neighbors is working on their garden as he knocks on the front door.
“Coming!” he hears someone yell from inside, and moments later, Yamada opens the door. “Oh! Hey! What can we do for you?”
“Izuku told me he was staying here?”
“Oh, yeah, you here to see him?” Yamada raises his eyebrows, and at Tenya’s nod, steps aside to let him in. “He and Eri are in the backyard, I think, something about getting mud on their hands? Come on.”
He follows Yamada through the house, exchanging small talk with him, and is led through the back door onto the porch. Aizawa is laying down on a blanket in the middle of the lawn, sunglasses on his face, hair strewn everywhere. Eri and Izuku are, as Yamada said, getting mud on their hands in the garden. Izuku’s hair, pulled back from his face with a white headband, gleams under the sun, and when he glances up, his eyes catch the light as they widen in surprise.
“Ten… Tenya?” he asks, eyebrows raising towards his hairline.
Tenya smiles back, warmth flooding his limbs, pouring into his heart and overflowing. “Hello, Izuku. I figured, since I’m back in Japan and I know where to find you, I would drop by.”
“U-uh, yeah,” Izuku stands, holding his hands out in front of himself. His right arm is covered by an elbow-length glove, protecting it from the dirt, while his left hand is caked with mud, so thick he can’t see Izuku’s skin. “Um, it’s really good to see you, just… let me wash up? I wouldn’t want to get mud stains on your clothes.” He chuckles at that, brushing past Eri to grab the garden hose, shucking the glove on his right arm as he goes.
“It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve stained my clothes with weird substances,” Tenya replies, taking off his blazer and draping it over the handrail. The amount of times they’ve gotten food, blood, and other kinds of muck on each other… uncountable.
“Yeah, but I prefer not to do it on purpose.” The mud washes off easily with the hose, although he has to scrub at some stubborn spots, and once he’s done, he glances down at his metal hand and sighs. “Shit. I always do this. Hang on, I need to grab—”
A white towel, thrown by Aizawa, hits him in the face. Izuku splutters as he catches it, wrinkling his nose at Aizawa, who just snorts and goes back to pretending to be asleep. Sighing, Izuku wipes off his metal hand, carefully swiping the towel over the joints and gaps in the metal, and walks towards Tenya.
“Sorry, I’m a bit—scattered, at the moment,” Izuku says, stepping up onto the porch and setting the towel down on the table there.
“That’s perfectly okay and completely understandable,” Tenya replies, taking a moment to look Izuku up and down. He looks… good. Better than Tenya’s seen him in ages, really, a bit more life in his skin, a bit more fire in his eyes.
Unable to help himself, Tenya reaches out and settles his hands on Izuku’s shoulders, careful to rest his hand over Izuku’s trapezius instead of his right shoulder proper, to avoid putting any more strain on the port there. The swelling is down, from the last time he caught a glimpse of it, some of the angry red inflammation retreated.
Izuku twitches at the contact, eyes widening incrementally as they make skin-to-skin contact where Tenya’s left hand rests next to his neck. He shivers underneath Tenya’s hands, and Tenya, before he knows it, is pulling Izuku in close and wrapping his arms around him, holding on like he’s never letting go.
For a moment, Izuku remains stiff as a board, before melting into Tenya’s arms, reaching up with his own hands to return the hug. They stand there, a light spring breeze twining past them, breathing in each other, leaning on each other. Tenya’s eyes water, tears spilling over and trailing down his cheeks as he buries his face in Izuku’s hair. It smells like conditioner, and the oil used on the joints of his arm, and dirt and mud and green growing things. He is alive, and warm, between Tenya’s arms, chest rising and falling with each breath, and—
Oh, oh god, he—
He almost—
He almost lost him. He holds him tighter, presses his cheek into Izuku’s hair, feels the way Izuku’s arms tighten around him. He is… so incredibly lucky to still have him, to still be able to bring him into his arms feel his presence…
Izuku cries, too, his face pressed into Tenya’s shoulder, a damp spot growing where his tears soak into the fabric of Tenya’s shirt.