Chapter Text
A Living Room, 11 Years Ago
“Weekend at Han’s, gonna have a weekend at Han’s, dun dun dun, weekend at Han’s-” is what they sing as they putter around the living room. Denki’s backpack is half opened by the door, jacket and PSP hanging half out as he grabs up his games and charger to shove them in the front pocket. His dad is behind him, keeping time with his steps as they do their improv and taking stock of the living room to make sure his son hasn’t left anything lying around that he’ll need driven to him later.
“You have your wallet, phone and house keys?” he checks, just as a beat up old Buick pulls up in front of the house that’s nearly shaking from the force of the tejano coming over its speakers.
“Wallet, phone, house keys,” Denki parrots, producing each from his pockets as he says so and then zipping up his backpack. He can hardly contain himself, abuzz with energy as he wrenches the front door open and waves. Ms. Sero turns down the passenger side window, leaning over to wave and call out, “Hi, boys!”.
Denki’s father calls a greeting and gives him a hefty pat on the shoulder. “Alright, have fun. I’ll see you on Monday?”
Denki looks up at him. His dad is tall, tall and lanky like Sero with small, dark eyes that sit behind thick rimmed glasses. Everything about his face is quiet, reassuring and comforting. He presses his lips together, one foot off the step and already on the walkway but he can’t help asking, “Are…you gonna be okay?”
A line appears between his brows, and he leans down so that they’re eye to eye. “Don’t worry about me, bug. Go on, have fun. Love you.”
He lets a quick kiss be pressed into his hair, and then he’s running down the driveway to the door Hanta’s kicked open, waving to his dad and then high fiving his best friend as the door closes and the car pulls off. There’s a blanket molded flush to the back seat because Ms. Sero hates crumbs and dust, and a new air freshener sways to the pulses of the AC.
He likes her car. Likes what it represents. Sero’s half singing along to the radio and half chattering about their plans for the weekend, and when the song switches to the doleful intro of ‘Como la Flor’, they all stop in their tracks to sing along.
He holds Hanta’s arm like a lovelorn Juliet, trying to keep his composure but failing the moment he screams “AY, COMO ME DUELE!” at the top of his lungs, beating at his chest with enough force to stop and restart his own heart. His mother laughs, calls him ‘drama queen’ as she pulls onto the highway, and things are good .
An Arena, Now
There’s three fluorescent lights on the ceiling, like the kinds in classrooms. Makeup’s strewn across the table and costumes from shows past, present and future are on a rack pressed up against the wall behind him. The lady doing Denki’s face is quiet and professional, swiping on eyeliner and shadow, pressing rhinestones onto his face with a steady hand while he talks about nothing because he couldn’t make himself shut up right now if his life depended on it. He doesn’t even know what he’s talking about, maybe the show or his nerves.
(should he even be talking about his nerves? Should he acknowledge them, or is that some kind of bad juju?)
She lets him talk, because she gets paid to do his face, and to let him talk. He tap-tap-taps his fingers on his thighs, fiddles with his rings until they leave red indentations in his fingers from all the twisting.
“Look up,” she says to dam the stream of words, and he does. Always looking up, past the ceiling and the sky and the clouds to the space above it.
He steals a glance at the mirror while she gets more glue and hardly recognizes himself. The hefty amount of red makes his eyes pop, and rhinestones curve down his cheeks like tears. It isn’t a look he thinks he would’ve ever chosen for himself, but it’s…nice. More than nice, even. Loud. Ostentatious. It’s not The look, but it’s his look.
The dressing room door creaks open. She kisses her teeth when he nearly breaks his neck to see who it is, if it’s Shinsou. They haven’t seen each other since this morning, wrapped up in preparations as they are. His heart thunders, then quiets when he realizes it’s Midoriya.
“Hey Denki, just wanted to check- whew. You look good,” he says, sweet to a fault. Denki smiles as the last few rhinestones are put in place, and after a layer of setting spray the makeup artist packs her things and heads off to her next client. Chatter streams in through his ear piece, things about lights and cameras and action that make his stomach do backflips.
“Thanks,” he says. Then, “Midoriya?”
“Hmm?”
“You’ve been doing this a while, right? The whole music thing?”
His whole face draws in, nose bunched and freckles overlapping. “I’d say so, yeah. How come?”
He breathes in through his nose, deep and deep and deep until his chest feels full to bursting. On the rushed exhale, he says, “How over is my life if I fuck up out there tonight?”
Green eyes go wide, but where he half expects basic reassurances, he gets instead, “I wouldn’t know, cuz you’re not going to.”
And okay, fine, maybe he did need to hear that but no anxiety attack he’s ever had was assuaged with one sentence.
“I’m serious!”
“And I’m not???”
He throws his head back, makes to cover his eyes but then remembers his makeup.
“Midoriya!
“Denki!”
“Uuugghhh!” He leans over instead, staring at his feet and his arms braced on his thighs. This is hell. Hell hell hell, the deepest darkest pit of icy, icy Hell with only the suggestion of an escape to the surface. “I’m terrified.”
“I know,” says Midoriya. He comes over, leaning on the makeup table and crossing his arms. “Shinsou was too, years ago. He was just like this.” He makes a sour face. “He puked.”
“Yeah, he mentioned,” says Denki. His head feels hot and pressure builds behind his eyes. Fuck, he can’t cry. Not now.
He blinks it away, clenching his hands until his nails leave red crescents in his palms. “I hate this. I hate being so scared. I’ve wanted this for years and now I have it and I wanna fucking run , how bullshit is that?!”
He raises his head, and Midoriya’s looking at him with the kind of patience that a saint would envy. He puts one of those big hands on Denki’s knee, and it’s so strange how quickly that calms the rising tide.
“I can’t give you some big speech about how well you’re gonna do out there, but believe me when I say that all the eyes that have been on you are admiring ones.”
He sniffs hard, pressing the heel of his hand against his nose for a moment. Eyes. So many of them, seeing and seeing and seeing. Pictures of him cropping up on gossip sites are one thing, strangely enough, but the thought of people, masses of real people, looking at him and in him and judging him on the only art he can create makes him want to fly out of his own skin.
“Fuck, how does he do it?” he says, shaking his head. Midoriya raises a brow, and he says, “Shinsou. How the fuck does he do it, christ.”
Midoriya goes still. He looks like he wants to answer, is considering his words and how he’ll say what he knows to be true, but ultimately he just pats Denki’s shoulder and says, “That’s something you’ll have to ask him. Now come on, you gotta make your way up.”
“Fuuuucckkkk,” he breathes, hefting himself from the chair and brushing imaginary dust off of his jumpsuit. “Okay, which way?”
“Left, down the hall and up the stairs. I’ll be there, and so will Shinsou. We’ve got you, and you’ve got this.”
“Right,” he says, because he has to make himself believe it. “Right, yeah. Thanks, Midoriya.”
“Anytime.”
They separate outside the dressing room, Denki jogging down the hallway and sidestepping people as he goes. There are more rooms down here, the whole place buzzing and turning with the urgency of an ant colony. Deals made, struck and broken, people going up, down, left and right to make things happen.
One of the rooms he passes has a door slightly ajar. There’s laughter pouring out, and voices too, somehow distinct over the din around him. He slows in passing, sees a few people gathered around a table with drinks in their hands. One of them, a man with a face like Midoriya’s but none of his kindness, looks up as he looks in. His hair is black and wild, eyes shifty as he tilts his head in silent greeting and smiles.
Denki nods in acknowledgement, and then goes on his way.
He’s halfway up the steps when Shinsou comes down, the two of them meeting in the middle with locked eyes and smiles of relief. The world goes on around them while he crowds Denki up against the railing and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth.
“Missed you,” he murmurs. “How do you feel? Still nervous?”
An understatement. To Hitoshi’s mind, he’s been plagued with nerves ever since the day Sero showed up. Only, he hasn’t exactly mentioned it, and has been attributing his foul mood in the days since to performance anxiety.
He doesn’t need to worry himself about Denki’s friendship woes, or the words that were said.
“Peachy,” he says, smile drawn and tight even as he goes in for another kiss. Shinsou grants it readily, runs his hands down Denki’s arms and laces their fingers.
“Yeah, I know,” he says. “But you practiced. I’ve heard you sing your own songs before, and you’re—”
He shakes his head, as though word after word present themselves and none of them cut it. Finally, he just kisses Denki’s knuckles. “The world won’t know what to do with you.”
“Toshi—”
“I mean it. It’s your night, Sunshine, fuck everyone else.” He takes a moment to drink Denki in, his pretty jumpsuit and jewelry and the way he does his hair.
The tips of his ears grow hot, and he lightly shoves Shinsou’s chest. “You don’t look too bad yourself.”
He’s more done up than Denki’s ever seen him, even if it’s just a few more rings and a red jacket cut perfectly to the proportions of his body. If his earpiece wasn’t buzzing with the chatter of preparation and orders for people to find their places, he knows he’d pull Shinsou back into his dressing room in an instant.
But, they have work to do. Sordid affairs will have to come later.
“I should…probably go on up,” he murmurs. Shinsou takes his arm as he moves to leave, holds it like a promise and presses a kiss to the crook of his elbow.
“I’ll be right behind you,” he says, and then looks at him with eyes full of the whole world. “Denki, I…”
It hangs between them, this thing that wants so badly to be said. Their earpieces buzz again, and this time Shinsou lets him go.
“I’m right behind you,” he says again, voice gone quiet. “Go on.”
Again, that heat and tightness behind his eyes as he leaves Shinsou with a squeeze to the wrist and heads up to side stage.
It’s something out of his childhood dreams, the air thick with the muttering of spectators. There are A and B stages, connected by a short walk swarmed with people behind barricades and security there to enforce them. There’s a screen behind the band, and two more on either side.
From across the way he sees Shinsou, now with a guitar strapped across his front. There are people on him, around him, talking to him and in Denki’s ear, everything goes quiet.
He takes his cue seamlessly, entering with a wave to thunderous applause as something shifts in his face. It turns him from Toshi into Hitoshi Shinsou, whose name is probably known in corners of the world he can’t even recall. He waves and smiles his smile through several rounds of applause before he’s even fucking done anything.
Denki ignores the twist in his stomach. He knows who he’s with, and what that entails.
When the noise goes on a moment too long, Shinsou raises one hand and like a band director, closes his fingers. The noise dies.
“A while ago,” he says with little preamble, “I introduced a friend of mine and asked people to trust me.” On the screens, his eyes pan from left, to right, then left again. “They did, and that trust has gone far. Tonight, I wanna take it farther. Denki?”
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck, okay.
The breath he takes rattles his lungs, and when he steps out into the light, he’s met with courteous applause. Not as loud as Shinsou’s, but then why would it be?
He takes up in front of the mic, and wonders if he should say something. He’s never been low on quips and smart remarks, but this, he feels, isn’t for it. His mind rolls, lurches this way and that but the first notes play and he needs to focus .
It’s the arrangement he was working on when Sero came, when Sero stood there and looked at him and asked him what he was doing here, back on the west coast, in Shinsou’s house of all places.
Fate sits heavy on his shoulders. He takes the mic, and breathes.
“In an age of darkness, light appears! And it wards away the ancient fears! March to the anthem of the heart! To a brand new day, a brand new start!”
Behind him, the drums. To his right, Shinsou nods at him as he plays counts of one-two-three , one-two-three .
In. Count through it, Denki. Out.
The music falls in, and he has to be or be swallowed.
Count through it. one-twothree-fourfive-sixseven-eightnineten.
He nods his head, takes the mic into both his hands and tries to fall into music instead of memory. What he felt when he put the words to paper, and nothing else besides.
“To wander lands of ice and snow! To a desert heat where nothing grows! A tree of life in rain and sun! To reach the sky, it’s just begun!”
One-two-three.
in the back alleys of his mind, hanta asks, ‘what are you doing here?’
One-two-three.
in the back alleys, he says ‘doing something with my life.’
He holds the mic like a lifeline, raises his free hand and hums.
“And as we came into the clear! Find ourselves where we are here! Who is the wiser to help us steer! And will we know when the end is near?”
There’s a sea of lights, of cameras, of eyes. He looks at himself on the screens, the red on his eyes and the sweat on his neck. He’s himself, now and what he will be and what he once was, learning by his father’s side and hoping one day to be somebody real.
‘breathe through it, bug. always breathe through it. count your chords, hold your hands like that, you’ve got this.’
“A beauty lives in every soul! The more you love, the more you know! They pass the torch and it still burns! Once children then, it’s now our turn!”
Beside him, Shinsou plays. Like that first night of them making something together, leaned back with eyes lidded and fingers making metallic strings wail. It’s magic. It’s beautiful.
“he’s not good for you, denki, trust me!”
“and you are?! fuck off!”
“fine! be fucking stubborn, see if i care.”
“i know you don’t! you haven’t for a while, don’t start now.”
Whatever.
“And as we came into the clear! Find ourselves where we are here! Who is the wiser to help us steer! And will we know when the end is near?”
He takes the mic from its stand, leaves the A stage with bare feet padding and nonsense vocalizations into his mic. Hands and hands and hands stretch towards him. He reaches back, to them, to something higher than himself that inhabits his body and moves him like he’s gone possessed. It all comes out in one long, rough wail. The fear, the nerves and the anger. The jealousy and hope and sadness for things gone by.
At the edge of the B stage he slides to his knees, bending and bending until his back is to the floor and he stares right out of that skylight to the stars above.
“And as we came into the clear! Find ourselves where we are here! Who is the wiser to help us steer! And will we know when the end is near?”
He sings like that, on his knees in supplication. He sings and beats his chest to soothe the raging of his heart. It’s like he’s gone outside of himself. In the crowd with the rest of them, arms outstretched. Behind him, Shinsou is playing. Behind him, Shinsou is smiling.
He sings and sings until the music’s gone out of him with a crash, strings cut and body sagged.
In front of them, and on the screens and around the country, he pants. Sweat rolls down his neck, and lights glint off of the rhinestones on his cheeks. Around him, people stand. They stand and stand in waves until they’re all standing, standing and clapping and screaming.
God, but he can’t help it.
He cries.
There’s a crush of people around as the lights dim and he exits the stage, chattering and chattering and Shinsou isn’t here yet because he’s presenting after that and he’s never cursed someone’s scheduling decision more. His own name comes from all directions, hands on his own and on his shoulders. Distantly, he realizes his makeup is running. Christ, where’s Shinsou, where’s Midoriya, where’s anybody-
“Denki Kaminari?”
Amid all of them is the man he saw earlier, the one with the sly eyes and wild, black hair. He invites himself into Denki’s space, shoving himself between his body and some of the cameras and talkers. “Can we talk?”
“Can’t right now,” he says, trying to be polite but oh god, he needs to get back to his dressing room.
The man raises his hands, pulls a card out of his jacket pocket and presses it into the curve of Denki’s fingers.
“Call me, then. Ask for Yo, I have a proposal for you.”
He slows this time, and really looks at him. The designer suit he wears and the thin shades perched on his nose. There’s a lanyard around his neck, and swaying against his chest is a clearance badge with a name and picture.
Yo Shindou. Fukkukado Records.
His entire body lurches on the inside, and he might be smiling, might be nodding and promising to call and then, somewhere in the wildness of it all, he finds the door to his dressing room and slips in. His ears ring in the quiet, and he pulls out his ear piece with shaking hands.
He’s still holding the card, and tucks it into the pocket of his jumpsuit.
The door opens, closes, and arms wrap around his middle. There are kisses in his hair and he sags into Hitoshi’s body with a contented sigh.
“Oh my god,” is all he can say, and Hitoshi laughs.
“You did it. Christ, you did it, I knew you could!”
There’s nowhere else to sit beside the one chair at his makeup table, so they press their backs to the wall and slide down. He wraps his arms around Shinsou, presses his cheek to his chest and sighs through aching vocal chords.
“I wanna ask,” he says, “what comes next. I feel like the road’s so big.”
Hitoshi hums low in his throat. “There’s probably a lot of answers. What do you wanna do?”
He considers it for a while, sinking into the tired void that adrenaline leaves behind. With a heavy hand, he reaches into his jumpsuit and pulls out the card. It’s a little crumpled, but the clean black text is still perfectly readable.
“A guy gave me this, as I was walking back. It doesn’t feel real. I’ll call him tomorrow, though.”
Shinsou takes the card, looks it over and Denki can see the dip appear between his brows.
“This guy, was he tall? Black hair, wears sunglasses indoors?”
Something about it is absurd. Maybe the recognition, or just the indoor shades being an identifying feature, but he’s laughing. He’s laughing and laughing until his nose runs and he has a headache.
“There’s no fucking way! I…yeah, yes, that was him. Who is he?”
Shinsou hands the card back, sighing through his nose. “I don’t know him that well. He started at Fukkukado around the time I left.”
Denki wipes his eye, reads the number over a few times in his head before tucking it away again.
“What’d you leave for?” he says. Hitoshi moves a hand up to his hair, idly petting it and rubbing some of the strands between his fingers.
“Creative differences,” he says, in that way that begs more questions.
“You don’t think I should do it?”
“Well I didn’t say that .”
“Then what are you saying?”
Shinsou goes real still, in worry or contemplation or some other third thing. He shuffles til he’s facing Denki, and presses their foreheads together.
“I’m saying, I want you to do what feels right. I want you to feel good, and to grow, and I wanna be there while you do. The whole time, for all of it.”
His heart beats in his throat. “For all of it?” he parrots.
“Every last thing.”
And Denki’s hugging him, arms thrown around those slim shoulders and cheek pressed into the head of Shinsou’s neck.
“Iloveyou,” he says there, barely a ripple of breath. “I think I have since we met. Or at least, I knew I could. And you’ve been so good and I don’t know how I can ever—”
Shinsou kisses him to quiet it all, holding his face with thumbs pressed into the curve of his cheekbones. He cups a hand over one of Shinsou’s, lets himself be kissed with all the love they were holding back. Out of fear, maybe, or some misplaced sense of impermanence.
“You don’t have to,” says Shinsou. “You don’t have to do anything, repay anything. Be happy. That’s all I want.”
Fuck, he is. So happy he might die. Knowing that no matter what becomes of his life, they’re with each other. Denki couldn’t let him go if he tried, and he can’t imagine ever trying.