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"Come drinking with us, Shouta!" There's laughter and shouting in the background of the call; whatever party Kayama is at, it's already in full swing.
"I'm on patrol."
"Oh right, patrol. Is that what they're calling it now? You could just tell me if you've got a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. Or both! That would be a good reason to keep missing out on Friday night fever!"
Shouta rolls his eyes.
"I’m single, Kayama. And I'm on patrol."
"So you, Aizawa Shouta, king of irregular scheduling and being unpredictable, you've just happened to be patrolling at the same time every Friday for the past … wow, probably the past few months now?"
"It hasn't been every Friday," Shouta mutters, but thinking back, it really has been most of them. "But yes, I have been."
"Uh huh," Kayama says, sounding completely unconvinced.
Shouta sighs, knowing that means he'll have to give more details or be doomed to being teased about his secret polygamous love-tangle for the next forever.
"Kouichi's school schedule makes Friday nights most convenient for patrol."
"Oh!” The tone of Kayama’s voice tells him that she really is convinced this time. “If you're out on the town with Kouichi, that’s fine! Enjoy your boys' night! Say hi for me!”
"Yeah. Sure." Shouta manages to end the call quickly enough at that point, which is a relief and a burden all at once. It's almost too easy, how quickly Kayama's suspicion falls away, except that Kouichi does have that effect on people. And that’s the problem here: Shouta doesn't have to deal with Kayama being nosey anymore, but now he has to face the revelation that he's been spending every Friday night for months hanging out with a junior almost-a-hero.
Originally, he had just mentioned to Kouichi that Eraserhead wouldn’t mind checking in now and then, if Kouichi noticed anything on his patrols that needed a hero’s intervention. It’s harder to call the police when your hero identity isn’t exactly street-legal. And Kouichi’s been getting better. His quirk isn’t traditional, but he’s gotten creative with the application of it and he’s got a strong work ethic.
Once he’d started needing Eraserhead’s presence more often than not, it had made more sense to give Shouta a heads up about when The Crawler would be out, so that Eraserhead would actually be available (read: awake) if needed.
Given that Kouichi was and is a student, with all the limited free-time flexibility that entailed, weekend patrols were bound to be more common than not. The fact that Fridays were the nights that Present Mic’s radio show was on and, therefore, the night that Shouta was most likely to be awake to give Kouichi a hand, made them the logical choice for patrol night.
Looking back, Shouta isn’t sure when things became more routine than not, when Fridays became “Kouichi Day”, rather than “My Blessed Day Off”. Like a frog in a pot, he hadn’t noticed the water getting warmer until it had started to boil, and now he’s going to suffer for it. He can’t ignore it now that it’s been pointed out to him: he, Shouta Aizawa, lone wolf and solo hero, has gotten attached.
Ugh. That wasn’t supposed to happen.
The worst thing is that, for all that he’s lackadaisical about some things, when it comes to his work, Eraserhead is a professional. He was already on call for Kouichi’s patrol tonight, and he can’t bail and leave the kid in possible danger. That means that he’s got to talk to the kid about cutting things off tonight.
Or at least, he means to.
It’s hard to figure out a way to slide the conversation in that direction naturally, especially when Kouichi is focussed on talking about legitimate concerns, like the creepy guy he thinks is about to mug the woman taking money out at the ATM, or the car that just ran that red light.
It’s better to wait until after work, Shouta decides. He’ll talk to Kouichi at the end of the night.
But, of course, the night never ends when the patrol does. Kouichi always has some question that he wants to discuss, something interesting enough that Shouta can’t just brush him off. They start talking shop as they walk off the adrenaline of running the streets at night, one thing leads to another, and then Shouta inevitably finds himself hanging out just to chat.
It happens again tonight, actually. As they reach the end of The Crawler’s usual patrol route, Kouichi mentions a strategy that he wants to run by Shouta before enacting it in real life. During their discussion, their feet lead them into a 7-11 out of habit, and eventually they end up sitting on Koichi’s doorstep, munching on cheap onigiri while Kouichi waves his arms and babbles about some new use for his quirk that he’d come up with.
“So what do you think? Is that a good idea?”
Shouta hums and sucks down another gulp of bottled tea to avoid revealing that he hadn’t been paying full attention because his gut has been shouting at him to bite the bullet already.
“Depends on the situation,” he says, instead of “Hey, I can’t make it next week.”, because he’s a coward.
Kouichi nods thoughtfully. “Oh, of course! Everything is situational in heroing.”
As he starts babbling again, Shouta’s thoughts start to wander again
The kid is awkward, but he’s got this familiar energy. There’s something about the way he talks with his hands and the energy of his wide-eyed sincerity that... Honestly, it reminds Shouta of Shirakumo.
Shit.
When that unfortunate epiphany lurches into Shouta’s brain, he can’t unthink it for all that he wishes he could. It hurts to recognize the shine in Kouichi’s eye as the one that he can recall flashing in his friend’s. He’s torn between wanting to keep that light gleaming, and wanting to run away from the day that it inevitably goes out.
No one with that kind of expression manages to survive the world of pro-heroing for long.
“Hey kid,” Shouta says, interrupting Kouichi’s words mid-thought. “What are you planning to do when you graduate?”
Kouichi blinks at the sudden shift in his companion’s demeanour, then coughs and looks down. “Uh, I don’t know, really. Get a job somewhere, I guess? I probably won’t be able to keep doing this when that happens, huh?”
The joy in his expression fades as his thoughts shift from “now” to the future.
“You should think about it more,” Shouta grunts. He stands up and stretches, not making eye contact. He knows that he’s edging very close to being cruel instead of just cold, but with the mood he’s in, he can’t stop himself.
“Oh, okay.” Kouichi trails off. Shouta starts to walk away, making for the fire escape to get back to ground level. As he’s about to step off the roof, a shout makes him pause.
“Hey, Eraserhead?”
When he looks back, Kouichi is waving at him from his doorstep. The primary colours of his All Might hoodie are dulled by the black and grey of the city landscape, but his smile is a bright slash of white in the darkness.
“The forecast said it was going to rain. Did you, um. Did you want an umbrella?”
Shouta experiences a half second of complete insanity. That’s the only reason he can think of for the phantom image of Shirakumo that he swears he can see overlaid in the kid’s place.
“No, uh. It’s okay.” He waves his hand at his goggles. “The goggles. They’ll do… something”
“Um?” Kouichi asks, obviously confused by Shouta’s nonsensical blabbering, but that’s his cue to jump off of the roof and out of the conversation. He needs to get away right the fuck now. There’s a hollowness in his chest and a ringing in his ears that tells him that he’s about half a second away from a panic attack. Kouichi doesn’t need to see that.
It takes him half a block to realize that he’d forgotten to tell the kid that they need to stop doing these patrols. He winces, but doesn’t move to grab his phone. It would be weird to break this thing off over text, and Shouta hates making phone calls when he doesn’t have to.
“Next week,” he mutters to himself as he keeps leaping over the rooftops. “I’ll figure it out next week.”
(He doesn’t.)