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By the time the prison parking lot had emptied, warmth left in snowed-in breaths and snowflakes fell on cheeks too cold, scarf nowhere to be seen. Hari got to keep his uniform — from before it all went down, not the prison one — and his hands were buried in the raincoat pockets that missed the weight of a gun when he let out a sob.
Ten years was the time he had gotten to spend in that hell for the sin of having loved a man too much to tell him to give up on his dreams. Ten years of longing, desperate for the day he'd get to see Kai again, knowing he would have to finally breathe out every single thought, every emotion, every wretched feeling.
Seven years is as far as he got. On the eighth, the news hit him like a stray dog being kicked on the street. Overhaul — Kai, his best friend, the love of his life — had died. Natural causes, the medics said. His heart had given up.
Birds mate for life, and the death of a partner is soon to be followed by the death of oneself. Hari was not surprised when his cellmate died. Birds choose a partner only once, and Hari had lost on technicalities. He never resented Nemoto for it, but it hurt when he was left alone for the last two years of their sentences. A sin they were supposed to bear the weight of together.
And now, here he is. Out. With nowhere in the world to go, even though it has just stretched itself so wide for him. Hunger drags him along to a ramen stand, but he doesn't eat. He hasn't got a dime on him, and even if he did, he thinks he would probably throw it in a fountain and wish for Kai back.
It hurt like he was being torn apart. He drifted aimlessly, a cloud too close to the ground, hair long to the point there's no short hand anymore and the longest of them can earn him up to a month of quiet. He tried it out on a man who tried to fuck him in the backroom; it earned him solitary, but it was a smudge of ink along other infractions. Hari didn't follow their rules — never would. He followed Kai and Kai only, like the Sun, and now that he's gone, the only thing Hari really has is this winter that doesn't seem like it ever plans to end.
He goes nowhere and everywhere all at once. The ramen stand blurs into the main avenue. He sits at the railing of a bridge, a tripping hazard, and wishes the waves would take him down. Instead, a scandalized old man helps him down and presses a still-warm package of convenience store onigiri in his palm. Hari eats like a man starved — like the thing he is — and then gets so sick he wants to throw up. He doesn't, because kindness is a rare condition and he wishes he could have experimented more with it.
By the time he makes it to the riverside, the night has already fallen. He has nowhere to go still, so he lies on the grass and sighs out his whole lungs. He thinks, maybe this is it. Maybe he can be a bird, too, even if he doesn't have a mate. Maybe then he could go anywhere, go back to Kai, and find his best friend again.
It's an irrational wish. Whatever happens after he dies, it'll probably be just a black void. Even then, even then...
The cold bites at his fingertips as he stills for his final rest. He wonders what Kai felt; how his heart had suddenly given up even though he still had so much to live for. Wonders if Nemoto's death was more like his own, a sentimental decision made for the self, or if he had gone with his love like his life had withered at the lack of his match. Either way, Hari knows he's not part of that — he's two years too late — but he can pretend.
Frosted-over lashes close for the last time as he empties out the last of his lungs. He focuses on nothing at all and lets it take him, falling deeper and deeper into nothingness.
And then he's hauled up, shoved out of the way of death. His eyes don't manage to open in time, but he recognizes the person by voice and the texture of his capture weapon alone.
“Chronostasis,” a gruff man says, because of course, of fucking course— “Wasn't expecting to meet you again like this.”
“Eraserhead,” he bites out, opens his eyes to find snow falling into them. He blinks through angry tears and tries to slide out of the gray fabric that doesn't give him an inch of breathing room. “Don't you have something better to do?”
“You're not killing yourself while I'm on duty,” the hero determines, unyielding. Hari wishes he could just snap at him with the longest hand of his hair, shut him up for good, but Erasure — single eyed, there's an eyepatch on the right one — is active the moment his hair hardens just the tiniest bit, making it flop down into softer strands. “Not killing me, either.”
“You're awfully chatty this time,” Hari grunts, well aware of why they never held a proper conversation. “Do you make a habit of rescuing everyone whose life you ruined to have a clean conscience?”
“I never thought I'd be saving someone who put their hair through me,” Eraserhead admits, and perhaps a younger Hari would have been proud to be remembered for piercing through the hero, but not the current him. The current him wants to be remembered by nobody — wants to drift by and out like everyone else has done his whole life. “You're not leaving my sight until I'm sure you're not a danger.”
“Oh, I'm sure I'm awfully dangerous right now, Eraser. I might just sneak into UA and kill Eri.”
Vindictive anger is what has held him together his entire life, even through the hard hits. He knows he has no chance of beating Eraserhead like this, when he's malnourished and half-dead, but he can't help but try to be beaten.
But Eraserhead doesn't beat him. He just sighs. “She's not there.”
Like that's the kind of information he should openly offer to her previous caretaker who had experimented on her and watched her die and be brought back time and time again — and then he grabs Hari tighter by his capture weapon.
“You're not a danger to anyone but yourself right now, Chronostasis. I'm eliminating that variable too.”
Hari wants to laugh, wants to cry, wants to throw up — and he lets out a broken noise that's a mix of all three as he coughs his lungs out. Blood stains his hands and the gray scarf covering his clothes, and he grins wickedly because at least that's one use he can get out of Eraserhead. At least the last shred he has of his decency, of the place he used to belong to, isn't stained. He can at least afford to die clean.
“Let me go,” he demands, voice barely above a whisper, blood staining between his sharp teeth. “Eraser. I won't cause any problems if you just let me—”
He pulls Hari closer, until they're nose to nose, eye yellowed with his quirk staring at Hari the same way Kai's once did. It's annoying how it raises a shiver down his spine. “I have a ‘no deaths on the job’ policy,” he grunts, tips his head forward, “Not even villain deaths.”
There's no room for a smirk or attitude, no matter how much Hari might want to push forward with those. Instead, he thinks he understands, or at least he sees Kai in the color of that eye and changes his mind on the matter — or perhaps he simply, truly doesn't want to die. Either way, he sighs out, breath stupidly mingling with Eraserhead's.
“What are you going to do about it?”
His eye softens a fraction, just enough for Hari to know there's pity for him behind that gaze, and that the pity won't be enough to hold the hero back if he tries anything funny. Then,
“My patrol's over. I'm taking you to the hospital.”
The snow crunches beneath their feet as they walk away. Hari doesn't sass him, doesn't try to start anything, and he realizes with a deep breath that he probably understands. He sees Kai in any pair of yellow eyes, and doesn't want to die. Not yet.
One day, he'll throw a dime in a fountain and meet Kai again. Today, he lets the hero warm him in the weapon that pretends to be a scarf and drag him to the nearest hospital.
It's not a long walk away. Hari chose a perfectly convenient place to die — for the hero stupid enough to do him the favor of saving him, at least. There's no escape routes he can see along the way, none that are worth the effort at least. He prefers to be dragged by Eraserhead than spend his last minutes alive trying to run from a hero. Especially since getting caught would result in him being alive the next day.
Before they walk through the door, Eraserhead loosens the weapon and stretches his hands towards Hari. “Make them think it's an emergency. I hate waiting.”
A stupid idea blooms and dies; he understands the price of being saved and stores it deep in his chest as he lets Eraserhead carry him. He makes himself weigh as much as possible, but he's nowhere near his peak, and Eraserhead just looks at him in a way that seems to ask him to try that again and see if he likes what happens next. He doesn't try, even though he should, for science.
Eraserhead drags him inside like Hari is still dying. His heart and breath are slower than normal, but he doesn't think he's that fucked up to need a hospital visit. A long bout of coughs and a physician proves him wrong.
An intake nurse sees him first, of course, and looks at Eraserhead as though he was the one who caused it all. Hari laughs, finds that it aches, and doesn't stop doing so until she silences him with questions that hurt more because of how kind they are. He almost wishes Eraserhead was the abusive boyfriend the nurse thinks he is — bites back the idea like it was spewed onto his tongue.
She starts with basic things: name, next of kin, address. His tongue keeps being bitten down as he thinks of the only names that come to mind when he thinks of family, and he tries his luck.
That's how he finds out the old boss is dead, too.
After that, everything is fluorescent noise. He wants to cry, but finds he doesn't have enough tears left to do so. A hand squeezes his for a while, then leaves — nurses never have pity to spare, and she needs to keep some for her next patient. Soon enough, his entire world is the stillness of the words, “He passed away.”
He wonders if some birds follow their father like others follow their mate. He wakes up in coughing fits and hears words thrown askew, enough to know he's not going to go wherever Kai and Pops are, because life would never be that kind to him. He feels the sharp sting of an IV and a pulse oximeter on his finger. There's a warm blanket on his body and something covering his neck that feels faintly like being ensnared.
At that point, in-between dreams and reality, he wakes with his head turned to the left where a man with a single half-closed eye is looking at him. Eraserhead briefs him on what happened while he was out: a caseworker tried to materialize into the room at some point, offering a shelter to stay, and he, half-delirious, only turned around and curled into himself, muttering names in his sleep.
Eraserhead looked into them, but Hari asked him not to share the results — he doesn't expect any of them to be alive, because the less he expects the less he gets hurt. The caseworker vanished when Eraserhead called him a liability on my paperwork, which happened to be true, and showed that he had the means of keeping a high-risk individual safe.
A doctor and some nurses come and go. Eventually, he hears the words home discharge said like a bad joke. He didn't even get to tell the nurse his address, and even if he had, it would probably have been seized property. The Hassaikai went well and fully under, after all.
His last bout of hospital sleep concludes when Eraserhead hauls him up again, takes him in his arms, and carries him out the room. Hari insists on being let down, and the hero doesn't fight him on it. They walk out the hospital and into the main street, where Eraserhead gets them a cab “to UA”. It's at that point that it dawns on Hari what home meant for him now. Not the place or people it's always been — the base, Kai, Pops, Nemoto — but rather Eraserhead's apartment at UA. A risk that's not really a risk because Eri isn't there. He can't kill her out of anger.
He wishes he could.
The driver is glared into not asking questions; Hari threatens himself not to cry. When they arrive at the school and in front of the teacher's rooms, they descend the car. They step into the building and then on the elevator for the second floor.
Hari understands the price of being saved and the price of being wanted, and he knows nobody ever shies from those. He passes the threshold into Eraserhead's apartment with his head bowed down to himself — finds a pair of green eyes staring at him from under the hallway table, a gray cat — and waits until the weapon loosens and the hero turns around in fake modesty to find the zipper of his raincoat and lower it.
When he's pulling his shirt over his head, his hands are caught at the wrist.
“What are you doing?”
He blinks, with snow still stuck to his eyelashes, and looks at the hero. His shoulders are set tense, his eye yellow and unblinking like he's expecting Hari to snap at him with his quirk at any moment. His lashes are short and nothing like Kai's, his hair is too dark and too long. That doesn't make him any less attractive, but Hari doesn't think it matters either way.
“You rescued me. You took me to the hospital,” he says, slowly, like he's testing the facts to see how they stick in his tongue. They're honey-warm and just as sticky. “You brought me to your home. You want to have sex with me.”
Eraserhead frowns at him like he just told an unfounded lie, his eye even heavier than the bags under it, like he's carrying the weight of the world there. “Chronostasis,” he calls, the furthest he could get from sexy, “I don't—” He interrupts himself with a deep sigh, then starts again. “Why do you assume kindness means I want to have sex with you? It's my job.”
“Your job is to arrest me,” Hari says, not missing a single beat, but his heart slows like he's still serving a sentence deep in his bones. Perhaps he is. “Eraserhead.”
The name tastes like lead.
“My job,” he drags the words in a way that says do you even know what it's about, villain? with less heat, “Is to save lives. You're fresh out of prison; you haven't committed any crimes you should be arrested for.”
“Not yet,” Hari agrees slowly, and he thinks in a way he's losing even by giving just that tiny bit of himself up.
“Never again,” Eraserhead corrects, “For now, you're under my watch. Until you're able to stand without shaking. And by that time, you'll learn what it's like to lead an honest life.”
Hari scoffs, throws his shirt back down, laughs, coughs, and is stopped just short of redoing his raincoat zipper.
“You're not payment for anything,” the hero offers, like his words mean anything, “Go shower. You stink of the river and hospital. Bathroom's down that door, towels are in the cabinet. Don't lock the door.”
“Because you don't trust me?” Hari can't help but smirk as he leans a half-step closer, blowing a kiss to the air. “Thanks for saving me, hero.”
Cheap verbal traps like that hardly work anymore, and Eraserhead isn't a man who would fluster that easily. All he says is, “Because I don't trust you.”
Something sits heavy between Hari's bones as he lets the man watch him go, as he closes the door to the bathroom without locking it and steps out of his clothes only to fold them neatly on top of the counter. Eraserhead's bathroom is clean in the way the rest of the house is: artificial. It must not see much use, or he must have hired a maid — it's nowhere near the standard Kai has enforced all throughout Hari's life. It's much worse.
After prison, it feels like a miracle that has decided to crawl into his lap.Not having to worry about being seen, being caught with his guard down, or being sneaked up on. Even though he's in a hero's apartment and therefore should not be letting his guard down, he unconsciously does so for the warm spray of water that is just the right pressure to soothe old and new aches. It's, in a terrible way, wonderful.
When he steps out of the shower, he does so with renewed vitality. Even the hypothermia seems far away now, and the snow has finally melted off his eyelashes under the strong warm water. He grabs a towel from the cabinet and wraps it around his chest, then thinks better of it and slides it until it's settled at his hips. He doesn't need to cover his body that much anymore, and his hair falls just right to cover his nipples away.
Let the hero stare at the scars if he wants; he's got one in his palm that fits the precise shape of his defeat.
At the very least, the apartment has a HVAC that has warmed it into a livable space over the time he was in the shower. He steps back into the hallway and living room after he dries himself, and finds a fresh change of clothes waiting for him on top of the table. The simmering from the kitchen calls for his attention first, though, and so he leans against the frame and watches in half-amazement at the rice like it's some sort of magical artifact.
It's not, but the fact that the hands that made it are Eraserhead's is enough to shock him into spurting out the first thing that comes to mind: “You cook?”
“I feed myself,” comes the deadpan answer, “And you, now. Change and sit down.”
Hari obeys. He was trained to obey orders, after all, even though he rarely did so for anyone other than Kai — he remembers the heat he'll never hold again of a bunk bed that remained empty for two years and a deep yet sweet voice saying “Come here” like he knew Hari needed it. He thinks of being held in strong arms and staring into purple eyes and thinking maybe he'd have a place to belong in this world once they all got out. Of course, those were all fantasies that never got anywhere, and he'll never know if Kai would have ever accepted something like that.
He dresses in an UA-gray sweatshirt and black pants, ignores the pang of ache that comes with being dressed by the enemy in their own colors, misses the white raincoat even though he just took it off, misses the sterile white of the compound's walls. Eraserhead's apartment is light yellow, too different from what he's used to, even after ten years. He would have preferred the gray prison walls to this.
The kitchen tile is ugly everywhere, walls and floor, though at least the marble of the counters is nice to look at. Hari sits himself down on a stool and watches Eraserhead cook like he knows what he's doing — he's surprised the man even knows how to heat water for the rice instead of using a cooker, but he's not going to look a gift horse in the mouth unless it kicks him. The plates are served without flourish; miso, rice, pickled plum, and a glass of water, room temperature.
“Eat,” Eraserhead orders, and Hari obeys his stomach when it groans that if the food is poisoned it might as well be the last thing he eats.
It's not surprisingly good, except for the fact that decent is surprising enough coming from a man like Eraserhead.
“Not poisoned,” he remarks like it's a wonder, knows the taste of poison because he's taken it from food served for Kai and tried by him first.
“If I wanted you dead, I would have left you at the river.”
There's no helping it: Hari laughs, small and private, and he sees a black eye lighten a fraction in a way that he probably wasn't meant to. He thinks he wants to see it become yellow again.
If he can have Kai's gaze back on him for a moment, he'd take it, no matter who it comes from, no matter what it does to him.
“Your eye,” he decides to dig into a wound instead, the way he was taught and borrowed from a man with an ability to pick at scabs so uncanny that it could make a man made entirely of muscle cry, “Was it the war?”
Eraserhead doesn't seem to care too much that Hari is sticking his beak in what doesn't concern him, though. “The war. My leg, too. Your friend Shigaraki.”
“I wish I'd been the one to kill him,” Hari admits, just to make it obvious that he's not a trained mutt after a shower and food, “Maybe you should have asked for my help, hero.”
“Maybe,” Eraserhead agrees, like it doesn't sway him one way or the other, “Either way, what's done is done. He's gone.”
It really is that way, isn't it? Shigaraki's gone. Kai and Pops, even Nemoto and probably some more of his old gang, are gone too. He wonders if someone as frail as Setsuno would have survived jail. Hopes Hojo protected him and Tabe. Knows Rappa and Tengai must have stuck together. Rikiya and Joi are doubts he needs to solve. There's not really anybody in this world that he can count on to check in on them, except...
“If I teach Eri how to use Rewind,” he suggests, slowly, “And recover your eye and leg. Would you help me find my co-workers?”
“What do you know about Rewind that we haven't figured out already?” Eraserhead quirks his brow, like he's expecting Hari to reveal some world-shaking information or the most mundane shit ever. He's right on both. “She offered already. It was too dangerous.”
“I can reduce the risk factor,” Hari says, matter-of-fact, “Chronostasis slows Rewind. Besides, I've used it before — I know what it's like.”
“Our Copy Hero couldn't use it. How could you?”
“Pops' quirk lets his family borrow each other's quirks. I've used Overhaul and Rewind both. I can't use them now that he's dead, but I can teach Eri.”
There's a long moment in which Eraserhead feigns thinking while the choice is already made for him, before he shakes his head no and looks Hari in the eye. “She doesn't want to be a medic or a hero. I respect her wishes.”
“You took care of her,” Hari notes, not unkindly, from the register of the man's voice, “And you think I'm dangerous, even though I can offer you power.”
“And you want to revive the Hassaikai,” Eraserhead counters, “That, I can't let you do.”
“It's not like I can manage the gang from house arrest, Eraser,” Hari shrugs his shoulders, taking a bite of the plum, sweetness flooding his mouth, “You want to keep your eye on me, don't you? I'm yours for the keeping, since you're a hero. You can do whatever you want to me.”
“Want things for yourself, not for the benefits,” Eraserhead grunts, rice sticking to the corner of his mouth that he wipes with his sleeve when Hari stares for a moment too long to be polite, “I'll ask Eri what she thinks. If she agrees, I'll let you meet one of your guys, under my terms.”
“Five-star treatment, I don't deserve it,” Hari feigns humility, “Irinaka Joi. If he's alive,” he adds after a beat.
“We'll see,” Eraserhead offers as an ultimatum, and they spend the rest of their meal in resolute silence from both parties.
The plum is overripe, the rice is overcooked, and the miso is too salty. Hari devours it all like hunger has taken over his body in its entirety, even though it couldn't be the furthest thing from the truth. He wants to throw up — he doesn't. He's trained himself to be clean, for Kai's sake, hasn't thrown up since the last time he's had alcohol down his throat.
Since Eraserhead cooked, Hari takes to washing the dishes. It's the bare minimum he can do while the other man sets a futon on the living room floor that is too small to house two bodies and probably will do so anyways. He's good at begging for closeness. Good at pretending he doesn't need the things he asks for.
When he sets everything down to dry and turns back to the man making a neat mess of his living space to make room for the futon, Hari's hands itch for a cigarette he doesn't have the money for. He considers taking money from Eraserhead without telling him, then decides to ask politely. “Do you smoke?”
“After you're better,” he answers, like he can tell Hari's intentions from just that. “Only on the balcony. Don't stink up the house.”
Another question pops up like a bubble in his brain, but he doesn't voice it out. He waits for Eraserhead to set the futon and then obediently lies down when ordered to, almost as obedient as when Kai would ask something out of him. He wouldn't admit to it, but he does need to sleep right now. The food, even though it wasn't anything to write home about, settled on his belly and raised the need for rest.
Eraserhead settles on the couch with a stack of what looks like papers to grade, and Hari suddenly remembers that the man is as much a teacher as he is a hero. It was truly a matter of luck that the man found him when he did, and Hari can only wonder whether he truly wishes he hadn't.
Being found by another hero certainly would have been worse, and, honestly, he has to wonder, “Did you save me because I stabbed you?”
“You think I enjoy being stabbed?” Eraserhead throws back immediately, like he isn't busy with his students and their stupidity. “My job is to rescue victims. You're one, whether you like it or not, whether you killed people or not.”
“Could've fooled me,” Hari shrugs, turning on his side. The cat suddenly decides that he's a heater and curls up next to his tummy. A yawn is taken from his lips, “Maybe you're a masochist, Eraser.”
“Go to sleep.”
Hari obeys, and he doesn't really mind the smile on his face as he does so.
When he wakes, the space next to him is filled by more than just a cat. A hand across his waist, force of habit, and he wonders if Eraserhead too had someone he kept coming back home to. Decides that he doesn't really care, that it's none of his business, and that he really needs a smoke now.
He's still not better, per se. His lungs are unsteady, breath shaky in a way that says he exerted himself and should enjoy the warmth while he has it, but the warmth makes his bones crawl and his spine complain about the heat on it. The cat snuggled between the both of them like they're the kind of couple to own a cat, and this is the closest Hari has been to another human being ever since Nemoto died. It's awful. It settles heavy on his chest in a way that chokes him. He can't run away from it. He melts back into Eraserhead's embrace.
The next time he wakes up, the heat is still there, but he's awake and staring at Hari like a regret. He almost asks for a good morning kiss. Instead, he says, “Are you going to let me stay?”
“Rules,” Eraserhead's voice is sleep-heavy, and Hari finds that he likes that, “You help around the house. Clean the dishes, scoop the litter boxes, cook if you can make something edible. You don't disrespect the cat — she'll bite if you do, and I'll know it.”
“That's all?” Hari can't help but ask, half giddy, half disbelieving. There's no way staying with a hero is as simple as—
“And you don't offer your body as rent,” Eraserhead adds, “That's all.”
“Alright,” he resolutely does not add the and what if I want you? that his mouth insists he should say, mostly because he has yet to find out if he likes Eraserhead or the idea of being with someone who won't treat him like he's made of glass yet won't treat him like a cheap whore either, “I'll stay, then.”
“Sleep again. It's still early.”
“Yes, sir.”
Days pass by in cleaning and cooking, because Hari is much better at it than Eraserhead will ever be. He makes grocery lists and the hero buys everything when he goes out — Hari spends more time alone with the cat than the alternative. Her name is Jade, and she's got a hallway romance going on with the second year's homeroom teacher. Hari can't quite believe he's allowed into a building full of heroes, but alas, here he is, apparently redeeming himself more than he did in all those years in jail.
It's on a windy morning in late January that Eraserhead first offers the most stupid idea he's seemingly ever had: to go out on patrol together. He says Hari hasn't seen the sun in too long — it's been two weeks since he got out, and there's no sun to speak of — and that he needs vitamins. Hari calls bullshit, then indulgently calls it a date. Eraserhead doesn't correct him, which would be a win if Hari ever wanted it to be. It doesn't exactly feel that way, so he's not sure what it really is.
“Stay close to me, don't use your quirk unless absolutely necessary, don't kill or maim anyone.”
He lists off the rules like Hari is some sort of kid that needs reminders set for him for the most basic stuff, and he rolls his eyes with a “Yes, sir,” that tastes like the shortcake they had earlier.
At the very least, he gets fresh air from somewhere that's not the balcony. Fresher air, since the balcony smells like the smoke he keeps inhaling even though it's killing him slowly. Eraserhead doesn't correct him on it, and sometimes he even smokes with him.
Cigarettes last much longer without Nemoto to share them with or Kai to put them out with a tsk. Hari wants to think he'll be able to go back to them someday, but at this point he's also wondering whether he should find a necromancer who can bring them back. Any price would be too cheap for the chance to be with them again.
He's become tragically sentimental over the years, and it has only doubled in these past two.
Following Eraserhead around the whole day isn't exactly his cup of tea, and there's not many villains this close to UA. Hari almost asks him if they can just take a train to Osaka and patrol there, where he knows every last corner someone might be hiding in, but he knows hero jurisdictions are a bit more complicated than that.
He does have to wonder who took over Nighteye's patrol routes after his death — probably his sidekick or Fatgum. There are many more gangs than just the Hassaikai, and surely some of them are still active, even if they've gone down the villain route rather than remaining purely as yakuza.
Purity is a matter of principle, after all. The times have changed too much to consider simply remaining still against the waves of heroes rising up and trying to fight back against them.
“Someone's on the rooftop of that hairdresser,” Hari points out, voice deadpan, “I think they're pulling a Setsuno.”
“Pulling a what?” Eraserhead frowns at him first, then turns to the rooftop where someone is standing near the edge in a way that clearly screams suicide attempt. “Fuck.”
“You're a rescue hero now,” Hari claps his back as Eraserhead unwinds his capture weapon and sends it to latch across the person and pull them towards safety. He has no remorse forcing someone else to go through what he did. “Are you going to house this stray too?”
“I only house stray cats that bite me,” Eraserhead says, matter-of-fact, and Hari can't keep the grin to himself as the Setsuno clone — blonde, bright and doe eyed, suicidal — crashes into Eraserhead's chest.
“Fuck off—” He tries to say, though it comes off as a sob instead, and Hari has to really, really take a good look at the man, and, like a real twist of fate, he realizes that this is not a Setsuno clone, this is Setsuno himself.
“Holy shit,” Hari mutters, and he peels Setsuno off Eraserhead to properly look at him. “You're— You're alive.”
“Chrono!” He recognizes him immediately, or as immediately as he can, and his doe eyes widen then fill with brand new tears, “Chrono! You're— Master Overhaul, he—”
“I know,” Hari says, and because he needs to rip the bandage off sooner rather than later, “Nemoto too.”
He doesn't like watching Setsuno's gaze darken, but it was a necessary evil. There is no way that he can keep this from him, especially if he made it out alive after all this time and even made it to Musutafu. Either he has something to do here — family, revenge, sightseeing — or he just got out of a prison near here too.
“What happened to Tabe and Hojo?” He dares ask, even though he doesn't expect the answer to be any good. There must be a reason Setsuno is trying to kill himself again, and it certainly cannot be because his friends are alive and well.
“Got transferred somewhere else,” Setsuno mumbles, head hung low. Eraserhead remains at Hari's side like a judge of character, like he's trying to discern whether Setsuno is to be trusted or not. “I haven't heard from them. I fear…”
“We'll find them,” Hari assures him suddenly, and even though he has no authority over the decision, he glares at Eraserhead like he does. Fake it until you make it, he tells himself.
“Alright,” Eraserhead sighs, like he's willing to indulge Hari in just this one thing, and he almost cheers to himself, “I'll ask detective Naomasa about their whereabouts. What did you say their names are?”
“Hojo Yu and Tabe Soramitsu,” Setsuno is quick to say, and Eraserhead nods like he's noting it down in his head, “Please…”
“Do you have somewhere to stay?” Hari switches the topic before Setsuno can activate his pathetic on command mode, because the last thing they need right now is that.
“I'm... Yeah. I'm living somewhere,” he says, cryptic like he never is, and Hari suddenly wishes he had a different quirk. How come Setsuno is suddenly secretive about where he's staying?
God, he better not have gone back to his ex like a crawling dog.
“Well,” Hari tries to bat the idea away with his words, because he refuses to believe Setsuno is still that pathetic after ten years being roughened up in jail, “I'm... temporarily staying at UA,” he lies, and Eraserhead gives him a quirked eyebrow for it, “Er, I don't know if you can get through.”
“I'll have it arranged,” Eraserhead says, and it seems like he just decreed it and gave it a seal of approval, “Meanwhile, here's my number. I'll let Chronostasis take my phone if you need him.”
“Alright,” Setsuno offers his own trembling hands, then grabs Eraserhead's with Larceny and types his own number and full name, “Please let me know if— when I can visit.”
“I will,” Eraserhead promises, giving Setsuno a shallow nod that hopefully means he's telling the truth, and he takes a step to the left that probably means he's done here, “We'll continue with patrol. Please don't make an attempt on your life while we're gone. He'd be devastated.” He nods to Hari, and he is, for once, entirely correct.
“Call often,” he tells Setsuno, “Even if you think it's a bother.”
They part with that agreement and after Hari squeezes Setsuno's hand between both of his own. He needs to make sure at least one of them remains alive, and the worst part is that he's not even sure it's for the revival of the Hassaikai so much as it is for having someone he can actually talk to that isn't the hero he's not-so-reluctantly rooming with.
With that, he and Eraserhead drift through alleys looking for troublemakers or people in need of rescue — they find one old lady trying to get her cat down from a tree and one armed robber that thinks a gun is stronger than anything in this world. Hari disarms him easily, because he's allowed that much autonomy, and Eraserhead handles the arrest like he's close friends with the police officers. Hari would've believed it from any other hero, but with Eraserhead's lovely personality, they probably are considered frequent bothers instead.
Their route leads them to the police station when patrol ends, and Eraserhead is quick to recall that they have a deal.
“You'll do my paperwork,” he says out of nowhere, “That's the one condition for me to look for your friends.”
“You really trust me with that?” Hari raises an eyebrow, “I'll do it if you want me to, but isn't it meant to be classified information? I'm still a villain, even if you're housing me.”
“You're not a villain anymore,” Eraserhead says, not unkindly, not kindly either, “Either way, it's that or grading essays. Mh, maybe I should make you help me with classes instead.”
“Are you sure you don't just want to fuck me?”
“No.”
That is how Hari becomes a slave to paperwork and class schedules that he hates. He gets introduced to UA's headmaster, a little rat of the likes of Joi's plushie form, who excitedly accepts Eraserhead's idea of making Hari his assistant. According to him, having an ex-villain would benefit the school to know how to combat others. Hari is inclined to disagree and say that he'll rot this school from the inside out, but he prefers to keep his head.
Setsuno calls often, at least, and Eraserhead gave in and bought Hari a phone so he wouldn't borrow his for hours on end. It turns out that they have plenty to catch up on, especially after Hari finds Hojo and Tabe and they join the small group they called Precepts: The Sequel because they're corny to a spectacular degree. Kai would hate it. That's kind of the point.
The real problem that shows up is that Hari goes to sleep every night with Eraserhead heating up his back, wakes up to the man gone and a glass of water on the table, and he hates himself for missing the heat. Hates himself for having recurring dreams that melt away the last of winter off the defrosting season.
They share cigarettes by the balcony and Hari wishes he could taste the burning mint on Eraserhead's lips. They sleep together and he misses the lack of a boner against his backside. Sometimes they even cook together, and Hari misses arms wrapping around his waist even though he's never experienced it in anything but dreams. He's in a melancholic mood by the time February is reaching that point where it isn't yet spring but it doesn't feel like winter either, and it reflects on the fact that he even starts enjoying teaching classes, which he reasonably thought would be the bane of his existence until death.
He misses Kai, that much is still true, but at the very least he has some of the old group back, even though they're much closer to each other than they are to him. He can't wait for Joi to be back so at least he has his best friend, even if prison must have definitely changed him for the worse. Hell, he doesn't even want to think about how many times Joi must have wound up in solitary — Hari himself spent long nights reflecting on the fact that stabbing someone with your hair is impolite and not appropriate for places where cameras never sleep. Of course, he got away with it plenty of times after a certain point in time, but the first stretch was rough.
“You're enjoying this,” Eraserhead tells him one day, when Hari is humming away a lullaby Nemoto used to hum him to sleep as he does away with piles of paperwork so tall no human being should ever be forced to witness them, “You look better, too.”
“I found my calling in life,” Hari shrugs, lies, and pretends the word doesn't hurt. His calling in life is six feet under, if he was even buried. “Do you need me to grade something?”
“Let's go out,” Eraserhead says, instead of dumping another big stack of papers on the low table next to the futon that's become Hari's desk, “You're rotting away inside here.”
“A date?” Hari can't help but tease, rising from his seat and making every last bone in his body crack. Almost-fourties is not for the weak. “You are such a hopeless romantic, Eraser.”
“Call it whatever you want,” the hero shrugs, “And call me Aizawa. The kids say it's weird you call me by my hero name.”
“You started it,” Hari grabs his phone as he speaks, checking how much it charged. 74% — it'll have to do. “Calling me Chronostasis all the time. Don't you get tired? It's such a mouthful.”
“Kurono,” Eraserhead says, voice softer as he tries the name, “Is that better?”
The words nearly get stuck on Hari's throat. “I almost prefer ‘liability’, but that works too. Where are we going?”
Aizawa puts on his boots before answering Hari, who does the same with his own. It feels like routine. It is routine, in a way, except—
“A bakery,” Aizawa responds, and there it is, the small crack in the façade that he's doing this simply because Hari is a flight risk, “When was the last time you had anything sweet?”
“Cigarettes,” Hari answers, showing his box of strawberry-flavoured death, “And candy. Tabe loves fruit candy, so we keep buying it.”
“Doing good things with your salary,” Aizawa denotes, like he's trying and failing to call Hari a good person, “You're changing.”
“I always did this for them before,” Hari rolls his eyes, tries to ignore how the praise crushes his heart, fails and decides that he will accept it even though it burns, “This is not a new advancement, Era— Aizawa.”
“Good,” he hums, and Hari decides to be very focused on the wall and not on the way that word sends shivers down his spine, “Would you rather go somewhere else, then?”
“Bakery's fine,” Hari ends up saying, because the cheap sweetness from nicotine and candy is not enough for him when he has the chance to get that sweetness directly from Aizawa.
So they go to a bakery that's hidden in a neat corner tucked away from view. It's almost empty, which seems like a miracle considering how the ambiance of the place makes it look like the most wondrous place on Earth, and maybe it's perfect precisely because of that.
They buy a coffee cake to share and a guy who is all smiles calls Aizawa "teacher" and picks the very best cake in their stock for them. It must be a retired hero who studied under him, though he looks young for that — the war has made many people retire, though. The League really did a number on the morale of the heroes, and it didn't help that Tartarus was broken into.
Hari wishes he could have seen Kai one last time, but of course that would never happen. People like him don't get to have their wishes come true.
“Friend of yours?” The baker digs, “I never saw you with anyone other than All Might and Mr. Yamada!”
Something darkens in Aizawa's eyes at those names, and Hari comes to an unlikely conclusion that seems quite likely at the moment: one of those two must have been the person who got him used to holding someone in his sleep. He doesn't think All Might would be a small spoon, but seeing how frail he looked after he lost all muscle, who knows? It's up in the air.
And if he makes a mental note of the fact that Aizawa's into men, that's neither here nor there. Kai would say that it's good to keep notes on the people around you, and he was always right.
“He's my roommate,” Aizawa finally answers, “It's nice to see you're doing well, Sato.”
Sato doesn't hold them up much longer, even though it looks like he wants to chat Aizawa's ear off, and they go sit at a table on the second floor that gives them a perfect view of the avenue. Clearly Aizawa is still trying to watch out for anything that might happen on the streets, and Hari decides to keep an eye out too. He's got a wider and sharper sight than the hero, after all.
Which reminds him,
“Did you talk with Eri? About me teaching her how to use Rewind,” he clarifies, like he would ever care about the kid past that. They're family, but she would never see him that way, and he swore himself out of pitying her for the sake of protecting Kai. “You really can't be a hero with a fucked eye and a half-gone leg.”
“I'm managing just fine, aren't I?” Aizawa gruffs out, tightening his scarf around his neck, and that sneaks a smile out of Hari. He likes how rough Aizawa is around the edges, likes his stupid stubble because he sucks ass at shaving consistently and his messy hair falling over his shoulders. “You're staring.”
“You're handsome,” Hari throws back, unashamed of his flirting by now, and Aizawa rolls his eye like he's the biggest bother that has graced his presence before opening the box and letting Hari have the first bite.
Small victories.
“I talked to her, yes,” Aizawa eventually admits after they've had some small bites each, “She said she would like to learn how to use it.”
“I'll teach her, then,” Hari shrugs like it's no big deal, “We'll get you back in tip-top shape, hero.”
After that, they eat in a silence so thin you could slice it in half with a butter knife. Nobody says anything, and maybe that's the beauty of it — they don't need to talk to fill the space. It's just them, in a bakery that hums quietly and doesn't make any noise that it wasn't paid to, with the smell of sweets wafting through the air and the dessert on their table slowly filling their hunger.
Once they're done with their cake, they leave the bakery with a last goodbye to Sato and a promise to come back that Hari is for once sure that he'll fulfill. He's been more and more sure of things lately, now that living actually seems like something he could do instead of a slow march towards death.
He doesn't regret having been found by Aizawa that night, maybe. Who knows if Setsuno would have found Hojo and Tabe otherwise, or if Aizawa would have noticed him in time on that rooftop? Maybe those things all happened because Hari was still there to take care of them.
And sure, he'll drift by one day and go back to Kai and Pops because their family is the place he belongs to, but for now—
Well. He's got things to do before he sees himself as good enough to have Kai back.
So for now he'll have longer cigarettes on the balcony of an apartment too small for two grown men, and they'll last longer without Nemoto, but not long enough for him to regret living. He's going to miss them, and he's going to try and fill his heart with the friends he still has alive. He's going to train a kid he never thought he would, and he'll teach other brats to be calm and not disturb the class. He'll teach them to capture villains because Aizawa asked him to, and he'll roll his eyes and act like he doesn't want to be there, but really, he thinks he can live like this longer.
Maybe one day he'll even like the life he's leading.