#like. aside from the obvious physical changes he's just more...tired. and subdued

[darth-sonny]

So, I see in some of your art Leo stiil have red "Prime" eyes in post-prime and healing arcs. I can bet it another good angst material. Does he hates this new part of himself like the arm? He looks real cool, but it hirts how Prime took even that from Leo. He and Dony nolonger have this cute matching Heterochromia :(

yeah, Leo gets stuck with red Kraang eyes. his eyes, arm, and scars are the three most obvious changes Prime did to his physiology

(if you think about it, Leo's pretty much part-Kraang because of that, which yaaaaaaayy.....)

and yes. Leo does hate his eyes as much as he hates his arm, even more so. at least the arm he could get rid of, but he can't get rid of his eyes, sooo....*shrugs*

no more fun and cute twin mirrored heterochromia, which sucks

[ill-go-with-that-then]

Another Soulmate AU because I guess that’s who I am now

Aizawa grows up hearing from every reliable source that someday he’s going to meet his soulmate - the perfect person for him, someone who will understand him completely, be perfect for him, etc etc. It’s supposed to be a happy thought, but it’s really not - Shouta had a difficult home life, anyone who can understand that perfectly is going to be as messed up as him. And Shouta doesn’t know if he’s in a good enough place himself to help. He wants to focus on becoming a hero, on getting out of his shitty home and not looking back. Hizashi Yamada is the name on his wrist, and whoever that is, Shouta is scared of the responsibility he has to him. 

So Shouta starts working twice as hard, three times as hard. He was already planning to save himself, he can save his soulmate too. That’s fine. He works hard in school, he gets into UA, he fights his way into the hero course. 

Where he meets Hizashi Yamada, and all his plans and assumptions shake apart. This is his soulmate? This is the person who’s supposed to understand Shouta, this smiling, friendly genius who makes everything seem so effortless? How can he possibly understand anything? What has he ever worked for? Who’s ever told him he can’t do something? Even now, after a lifetime of work, Shouta is still behind the other students, physically and academically. But Yamada is at the top of the class, he takes down his classmates with ease during quirk training, and he still has time to chat about his friends and hobbies. His future is bright. He couldn’t be more different from Shouta. This is clearly some kind of cosmic joke.

Yamada is, of course, thrilled to meet his soulmate. He’s nothing but excitement, wanting to learn everything about Shouta on the first day, offering to meet up after school to train or study or just ‘hang out.’ He talks about how great it is that they’re both going to be heroes, as if that weren’t far from guaranteed in Shouta’s case. Shouta learns Yamada speaks English fluently and is learning Mandarin, that he plays three instruments and has his own podcast, that he has an internship lined up at a radio station, because he wants to be a DJ as well as a hero.

How can Shouta tell him about himself? How his own dad goes weeks without speaking to him, how every adult in his life has told him that with a quirk like his, he’s not going to make it as a hero. How his grades are middling because half the time when he gets home he’s too exhausted to study. He looks into Yamada’s beautiful smiling eyes and knows he’s going to drag this boy down like an anchor. That somehow, some way, this has all gone wrong, and it’s probably Shouta’s fault like everything else. 

“This isn’t right,” he says abruptly, in the middle of Yamada’s story about his summer abroad. 

Yamada pauses mid-sentence, brows furrowed. “Do you not like your drink?”

“It’s fine,�� Shouta shoves away the overpriced coffee Yamada had bought him on the latest of their outings. “But this-” he gestures between himself and Yamada. “This is a mistake.”

Yamada blinks. “Your name is on my arm,” he says slowly, like he’s trying to understand. “My name is on your arm. That’s a pretty big coincidence.”

“It must be,” Shouta tries hard to keep his voice even, calm. Certain. He doesn’t want to string Yamada along. “Or the universe was wrong.”

“Oh.” Is the only thing Yamada says. The friendly light is gone from his eyes, replaced by blankness, and Shouta hates it, but knows this was inevitable. Better now than in the future, when he’s made things even worse. 

“We’re not soulmates,” he says as he stands up, wanting to be completely clear. “I’m sorry.”

He leaves without letting Yamada get another word in. He doesn’t want to hear any arguments - this was hard enough. The latest in a long line of cruelties from the universe,  a perfect soulmate dangled in front of him as if it could actually be his. He doesn’t sleep that night. It’s hard for him to cry, but a few tears manage to escape, and it makes him even angrier. He should be used to disappointments like this. He’s an idiot to have hoped for something different. 

He slinks into class the next morning, praying Yamada won’t say anything to him. His hopes are dashed immediately as Yamada stands before his desk, expectantly. “I didn’t change my mind,” Shouta says, tiredly. 

“I know,” Yamada says. Shouta doesn’t think he’s ever heard him sound that subdued. “And I - I understand.” Good. Shouta hoped Yamada would get it, would see that they’re just too different, that he could do so much better. “But I’d like to still be friends. Even if you don’t want to be soulmates.”

Shouta opens his mouth to correct him. It’s not that he doesn’t want to - who wouldn’t want to be Yamada’s soulmate? Yamada is bright and beautiful and warm, admirable in every way. If Shouta really was his soulmate, he’d be over the moon. But he gets stuck on Yamada’s request. “You want to be friends?” Yamada nods, and Shouta considers. He can’t see the harm in it, aside from the inevitable pain he’ll feel when Yamada wises up and realizes that Shouta brings nothing to the table here. But that’s bearable, surely, a fair price for getting to stay in Yamada’s orbit, to spend time with him once in a while. It will hurt when Yamada moves on, but everything worthwhile Shouta’s ever had has hurt. “Okay.”

Yamada smiles, nothing like the big grins he usually flashes at Shouta, but an improvement over the solemn look he’s been wearing since yesterday, and Shouta can’t help echoing it, just a little. 

Being Yamada’s friend is unlike anything Shouta has experienced before. Yamada - Hizashi - is thoughtful and kind, always looking for ways to make Shouta’s life easier and more fun. At his insistence, they visit arcades and cat cafes, they study together for exams and train together after school. It’s good practice for Shouta, working against an opponent with a powerful quirk, and Hizashi seems to appreciate the opportunity to refine his technique. Shouta starts spending most days at Hizashi’s, and a lot of nights too, and it’s so different, not spending all his free time alone in an empty house. Some afternoons he falls into a nap while Hizashi practices his guitar, and it’s the most at peace he’s ever been. 

Sometimes people ask Hizashi if he’s found his soulmate, and the first few times he glanced at Shouta out of the corner of his eye before shaking his head. But as time goes on his answer comes quicker and more firmly, that he hasn’t, but it’s no big deal. It hurts, though Shouta doesn’t know quite why. They’re not soulmates, Shouta knows that, would say so himself if he were asked. But hearing it makes Shouta’s chest burn, puts him out of sorts for the rest of the day, even though it’s irrational and unfair. 

He thinks it will get easier as they get older, but it doesn’t. They move in together after graduation - it’s only logical, when they get along so well - and Shouta can’t imagine life without Hizashi. In his darkest moments, he wonders what it would have been like if he hadn’t told Hizashi the truth, if he’d simply carried on as if they were soulmates. Would they still get along so well? Would they be even closer, would Hizashi let Shouta kiss him in the mornings, when his eyes were half-shut with tiredness and his hair still messy with sleep? Or would it be obvious something was wrong, that Shouta was a jagged, misfit puzzle-piece? Would the wrongness of it have driven Hizashi away, would Shouta be more alone than ever? 

Years go by, and slowly, Shouta stops waiting for Hizashi to drop him. He was an idiot to think that, he realizes now. Hizashi isn’t that type of person. He’s too kind for that, too loyal, and every day Shouta gets some new reminder of how important he is too Hizashi. Hizashi makes him real meals to eat, finishes his paperwork half the time when Shouta is so tired he can’t read the pages, and when Shouta just can’t face going out, Hizashi will run interference for him with their friends, cancelling their plans and setting up a quiet evening at home with takeout and a movie. He seems to have a sixth sense for what Shouta needs, and never begrudges him anything.

Shouta tries to do the same for Hizashi, as best he can. He’s learned a lot about his friend over the years, things he never would have imagined when they first met. Like how Hizashi’s happy home life was a relatively new thing for him, that before he started at UA he’d been passed from home to home, returned by otherwise well-meaning parents when his quirk became too unmanageable. Hizashi calls his foster mother every Saturday, and after they talk he always smiles at Shouta and says “Guess she didn’t forget about me yet.” And it’s a joke but it also isn’t, and that’s Shouta’s cue to make him his favorite tea and put on that awful singing show he likes. 

He also learns that even though Hizashi makes it all look easy, he works harder than anyone else Shouta knows. He’s up every day before the sun, working on his radio show or filling out police reports, cleaning or repairing his hero gear, getting his chores done. And he falls into bed well into the night, after a long day of patrol and radio work and practicing and training. Sometimes Shouta has to lay across Hizashi’s lap just to pin him to the couch for a few extra minutes. He doesn’t mind, it always makes Hizashi laugh. 

Hizashi gets asked about his soulmate a lot now, almost every day it seems like, either on the radio or when he’s being interviewed or by his fans. He doesn’t even blink before answering, distracting his audience with a wide grin as he tells them no, he hasn’t met his soulmate yet, as if Shouta weren’t listening, as if that brief window of might have been had never happened. Shouta doesn’t know if he thinks about it, if he ever looks up the other Shouta Aizawas to see if one of them is his real match. (There are 34 in Japan, 7 are the right age for Hizashi, and exactly 0 are good enough, in Shouta’s personal opinion.) Shouta wishes Hizashi would tell them yes, that he has met his soulmate, if only so that they’d stop asking and Shouta wouldn’t have to listen to Hizashi say no again and again and again.

“Why don’t you lie,” Shouta asks one night, while they’re making dinner and listening to Hizashi’s latest interview.

“Hmm?” Hizashi doesn’t look up from the vegetables he’s chopping. 

“About your soulmate. It must get annoying that people keep asking whether or not you’ve met them. If you said you had, they’d stop. So why not lie?”

“I do lie,” Hizashi says calmly, sliding the diced carrots into the pot.

“What?” Shouta says, tone and mind completely blank. 

Hizashi sighs. He puts the cutting board down, wipes the knife with a dishcloth before laying it safely on the counter. “Let’s not talk about it, all right?”

“I want to talk about it,” Shouta says instantly, even if he isn’t quite sure that’s true. Hizashi has met his soulmate? When? Whey didn’t he tell him? Why aren’t they together? Why is Hizashi still here, with him. Why why why-

“Why?” Hizashi asks. “I’ve - you made yourself clear, years ago, and I’ve tried really hard to be respectful of that. Your friendship means so much to me - it’s enough, really. I know you don’t want to be soulmates, and that’s fine. And it’s kind of you to try to spare my feelings. But you really don’t have to pretend this is some random coincidence, or whatever. I’m an adult and I can handle the truth.”

“The truth?” Shouta asks, because he genuinely has no idea what Hizashi is saying. 

Hizashi presses his lips together, clearly frustrated that Shouta is making him say it. “That you want us not to be soulmates. I tell people I haven’t met my soulmate yet because that’s what you want. Can we go back to just never talking about this please?”

“You think we’re soulmates?” Shouta says, dumbly. He doesn’t mean to say it. He doesn’t know what he means to say, his thoughts feel too heavy to sort through.

“Dammit!” Hizashi slams the wooden spoon he’d been stirring with against the counter. He turns towards Shouta, shoving his sleeve messily up to his elbow. “Look!” He says, pointing to the mark on his arm. “That is your name! You expect me to believe that’s some coincidence? That you’re not the first one I want to see in the morning, and the last person I want to see at night? When you’re the only one who can cheer me up when I’m sad, or calm me down when I’m anxious? Last year, when I got my big promotion, all I could fucking think was how I couldn’t wait to tell you, how I hoped you’d be proud of me. I’ve loved you since I was fifteen fucking years old, Shouta! And I get that I’m not what you wanted and I’m sorry for that, but let’s not fucking pretend, all right?”

“You’re… not what I wanted?” Shouta echoes, too stunned to do anything else.

“I know,” Hizashi leans tiredly against the counter. “It wasn’t a shock, you know. I was used to people not staying. It meant a lot to me that you were willing to try to be friends. It still does. I’m not going to make it weird, we didn’t open Pandora’s box just now or anything. Nothing’s gonna change. But it’s easier for me if we don’t talk about it, okay?”

“No,” Shouta says instantly. He’s not sure what’s going on, what else to say, how everything has changed so much in just a few minutes, but he knows that what happens next matters. “This is a mistake.”

Hizashi flinches, apparently those words still sting. “Shouta-”

“My mistake,” Shouta corrects. “I - you should never have thought that. That you weren’t what I wanted. That’s not what I meant at all. You’re - you’re perfect. You were perfect. And I’m just - me and it had to be a mistake, do you understand? I don’t get perfect things. It had to be a mistake.”

“You,” Hizashi swallows. “You thought I was perfect? Back then? Not… not annoying or too loud?”

 Shouta shakes his head. “Not annoying or loud. You were perfect. You’re still perfect.”

There’s a long moment of silence. Shouta has no idea what Hizashi is going to say next, if he’ll be angry Shouta put him through years of self-doubt, if he’ll be sad, if he even still wants to be soulmates. His hands are trembling, he wishes he had his scarf to hide in, that Hizashi would just say something and end his suffering. 

“You deserve perfect things,” is what Hizashi finally says, in the end. He sounds hesitant, but not uncertain. Shouta reaches for him, half-expecting Hizashi to shatter apart like everything he touches, but Hizashi’s arm is warm and solid under his hand. Steady. “Nothing has to change.” Hizashi’s voice wavers on his promise, like he’s trying to stay calm for Shouta’s sake. 

But Shouta doesn’t need that, has never needed Hizashi to be anything but entirely himself. “Can it though?”

He’s prepared for hesitation. He’s prepared for a kind no or, at most, a wary, conditional yes. He is not prepared for Hizashi’s arms to wrap around him, to feel Hizashi sigh against his neck like he’s finally able to rest after a long, long day. “Whatever you want,” Hizashi murmurs. 

Slowly, slowly, Shouta brings his arms up to return the embrace. Hizashi feels so right in his arms, perfect as always, and Shouta trembles at the thought of being able to hold him like this for as long as he wants. Hizashi leans into him, but that’s all right, Shouta is steady enough for the both of them, can prop Hizashi up if he needs it. He understands now, that’s what they’ve been doing for each other all along.