Chapter Text
“Are you sure?” Toshi asked, for the millionth time. Scissors held in a nervous grip with one hand while the other held a big chunk of Miu’s hair on the back of her head.
They’re in Miu’s bathroom, the harsh lighting making the teens look more pale than they normally would. Toshi’s phone is propped up against the mirror, a picture on the screen displays the look that the winged girl is going for while Ado’s ‘Crime and Punishment’ plays through the phone’s tiny speakers— echoing off of the tiled walls. A pre-quirk singer that both teens are obsessed with.
In the days following Miu getting out of the hospital, she had found herself more and more disgusted with the feeling of her long hair brushing her neck. The sensation reminded the healer of her uncomfortable near kidnapping encounter. Her hair had now become something she despised. Hair that she had loved and preened over nearly as much as her wings.
She would braid it, brush it, curl it, straighten it, and play with it nearly every day. It was one of the many joys she had in life. She loved waking up in the morning and brushing it before she did anything else.
But, now? Now, she wanted it gone. As soon as possible. If Toshi would get over his weenie nerves and hack it already.
“YES! Just cut it already!”
There's the sound of a grinding snip while Toshi struggles to cut through the thick strand of hair in his hand, he works while the next song in the teen’s shared playlist comes on. Miu’s neck suddenly feels cold, and her head feels lighter.
She snatches the hand held mirror from its face down position on the countertop, holding it behind her head so she can see the results in the bathroom mirror.
“Oh, fuck.” The teens curse in unison. One in horror and the other in anguish.
Oh fuck is right. Toshi never claimed to be a hair stylist but this is even worse than she imagined. The hair on the back of her head looks choppy, slightly too long in some places and much too short in others.
She wanted to go for a short wolf cut type of look. Short enough to be off of her neck but still long enough to style and play with. She was not going for an escaped mental asylum patient look .
She drops the mirror onto the bathroom rug, bracing her hands against the countertop as she represses sobs. Shoulders shaking and voice thick, she mumbles miserably into the sink. “This was a horrible idea…”
“Fuck, don’t cry- shit- we can fix it- just-!” Toshi panics, hands hovering over her shoulders.
Miu pays him no mind, emotions finally bubbling up and out of the box she had shoved them in, as she sobs over into the sink. Tears plop down onto the ceramic as she shivers. She’s actually wailing , open mouthed and unrestrained, she can’t seem to get it under control. Everything she had brushed aside for the past couple of days is overflowing and she can’t stop it.
Toshi starts sniffling too, gripping the back of her tanktop as tears begin to slip down his cheeks as well.
Toshi was definitely not one to cry just because someone else was crying, even if that person was his best friend. Miu didn’t know if it was because he was just as emotionally constipated about the whole ‘attempted kidnapping’ situation as she was, or if it was some weird empathy side effect of him practicing his quirk on her so much for the past few days.
She didn’t know and didn’t have the brain power to think about it. The teens sank into the floor together, a tangle of limbs and tears as they cried.
Miu rubbed her snotty nose against the front of his shirt as their sobs gradually petered out into sniffles and tears. She rested her temple against the taller teen’s collar bone.
“Why are you crying too?” Her voice was thick and nasally.
“I dunno.” Toshi’s own voice wasn’t much better.
Neither one of them really knew how to approach talking about their feelings about what happened. Their apologies and scoldings to each other in the hospital were about as close as they got. They couldn’t talk about serious things or emotions without at least a level 10 amount of sarcasm— and neither one of them had enough energy to come up with something witty to say to even begin to broach the subject of their trauma. No matter how close the two were, neither one of them did ‘emotions’.
Miu tried to remember the exact moment that Toshi became her best friend. They were really close even before Miu had saved him from bullies and opened up about her quirk. They were best friends pretty much right off the bat, after the initial hostility and awkwardness. They just… clicked. Miu couldn’t really explain it.
That first day on the roof they kind of just, latched onto each other. She remembered riding the train home with him after classes that day, and something weird and anxious had bubbled up in her chest. She didn’t want him to leave, and from the way the lavender haired boy had been shifting from foot to foot and looking at the train doors anxiously and then back at her with this lost look in his eyes— she's pretty sure he felt the same.
So she decided that they didn’t have to go their separate ways, at least not that day.
“You wanna go play video games at my house?” And that’s all she wrote.
When the sun was nearly setting that first day after a whole afternoon of goofing off on her PlayStation, it only made sense for him to spend the night so he didn’t have to make his way home in the dark.
Miu had clocked him as batting for the same team pretty much the second she saw him, so she wasn’t really uncomfortable with having sleepovers with the boy. Her parents were pretty easy to convince, all things considered, they simply called the Shinsou residence to make sure it was okay with them.
With the open permission to have sleepovers, the living in one another’s pockets began in ernest.
They had bounced between each other's houses for a good few weeks before her mom decided enough was enough and mandated the ‘days off’ rule. Which sucked, because it was two days every other week where they couldn’t contact or see each other at all except at school. And sometimes the days fell on weekends which sucked even more! No texting, no calling, no contact whatsoever. Crappy, miserable, mandatory induced separation anxiety.
Miu could kind of see the point in it, though. It had gotten to the point where she was sitting outside the bathroom with the door open while Toshi showered (and vice versa) so that they didn’t have to stop talking.
Don’t even get her started on public bathrooms. Those things were only tolerable if you could go in with someone else, the fact that she and Toshi were different genders just added more stress when they were out and about and couldn’t follow each other into the gender separated spaces. Not that she had any desire to watch her friend pee, gross. It’s just that they both got a little anxious when the other was out of sight.
Some days were easier than others, and they had been getting better about it— until recent events that is. Her mom had put a temporary hold on the ‘days off’ rule, to give the teens some time to heal from what had happened.
Miu didn’t understand how she ended up this way with another person, considering how averse she was to certain displays of affection (her bouts of ‘ew gross’ were fairly random, and usually only triggered when the affection was obvious or being blatantly acknowledged.) She really didn’t wanna think too hard about it, years of a therapist digging through her brain would probably be the only way to uncover the reason for it.
After her rambling thought spiral, her tears had finally calmed down. Toshi was still blinking back his own tears when she lifted her head from his chest and gave him a blank stare with red rimmed eyes.
“I think we need some adult intervention.” She tugged on her long front pieces of hair, loath to touch the mess that was the back of her head.
“Agreed.” Toshi huffed as he rubbed his eyes.