BNHA : Gay Ass One Shots

Remember? - Kamisero

Includes:
- Angst.
- Fluff.
- But mostly angst.
- This was inspired by a story I've read a few months ago.

(3rd Person)

Sero knocks on the door, a couple of short raps before entering the room – a sub-area of the extensive care institution for mostly elderly people or adults with disabilities.

Sero has worked there since graduating high school, first apprenticing under his mother, and then taking over her duties after she grew too old for the job, and he knows most of his patients well, is friends with many, and is hit with the same agony every time he walks into someone's room to find them having passed away peacefully in their sleep.

The occupant of this room is different, though. He isn't old, nor infirm, and has what Sero believes to be a higher level of intelligence and mental ability than the average adult, having a keen affinity for classical literature and writing.

Kaminari Denki is here because one day his bullies went too far, and slammed his head into a wall so violently his prefrontal lobe swelled, the cells stretched beyond the capacity, and he suffered severe, permanent damage to the area. So while he can recount extensive accounts of his childhood favourite, Anne of Green Gables, he writes the same first chapter of his own work again and again, with no recollection of having write the thing before. His short term memory was destroyed. Every day is the same day Kaminari Denki lives on repeat, since the age of seventeen.

Sero has looked after him for four years since his arrival. Every time he suppresses his sadness at such a wasted life.

Denki's first chapter is always beautifully written.

"Oh, hello?" His patient looks up, "are you new?"

Sero paints on a smile, "I'm your carer; are you doing well?"

Denki sits by the window, staring wistfully outside, a wan smile on his lips, "sure I am. Why did they change my nurse?"

Sero ignores the question. He walks to his patient, putting a heavy novel into his lap. Denki could read the same book over and over, but Sero can help but feel that somewhere, deep in the man's subconscious, a part of him must grow weary of the same words. Denki runs his hand over the cover, with a beautifully engraved title 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles'. It is far from new, but Denki seems to appreciate old books a little more when Sero gifts him them. The man smiles up at him, his eyes closing and the golden lashes fanning over lightly freckled cheeks. Not many people would ever notice those freckles.

"Thank you – ah, what's your name?"

"Hanta Sero, but you can call me Sero."

"Heh, like the tape?" Denki chuckled lightly. He finds it amusing every time. "I'm Kaminari Denki, but call me Denki. You probably already knew that."

'I've known it for years,' Sero thinks, with a jab of pain, but his smile remains immobile.

"Sero, why am I here again? Was the accident really that bad? Where's my Mum?"

Denki's eyes dart round the room, and Sero is prepared for it. Some days, the man can work himself into a frenzy, with the sense of intrinsic wrongness panicking him, working him into a state. Sero has dealt with it countless times. He crouches down, placing a hand on Denki's knee, keeping firm eye contact the way the young man finds assuring. "You hit your head, Denki. You have to be here for a while. You're Mother's – she's at home right now. She'll see you soon."

She wouldn't. She'd stopped visiting before Denki's nineteenth birthday, unable to cope with the unbreakable cycle of questions.

"Oh..." Denki frowns. Sero squeezes his knee, and Denki surprises him by putting a hand over his, squeezing it in return. His face is plastered with concern suddenly, "are you okay, Sero?"

Sero is mute for a moment, before stuttering, "why do you ask?"

"You don't usually... don't usually..." Denki struggles, clutching at words in frustration, clutching at Sero's hand as if falling. "I picture you smiling more."

Sero hadn't even realised his rehearsed smile had fallen, but somehow the muscles had tired of straining until he'd started frowning, gritting his teeth, felt tears in his eyes as if in empathy of Denki's struggle. His heart stutters, his hand tingling under the warmth of Denki's. His patient of still staring at him, confusion at a thousand concepts veiled in golden eyes. When his voice comes, it's raspy, strained. "How do you know that, Denki?"

"I don't know. I've met you before. But I don't know when."

Suddenly, Sero's hand moves on its own, and he takes Denki's hand in both of his, bringing it to his face as tears fall. Denki's worry is muffled under the weight of Sero's emotions – a mix of joy at Denki's poor, broken, fragmented memory having retained something of the familiarity of his carer, of Sero, a mix of pain as he imagines what more they could be if the mere ghost of a memory wasn't monuments.

He knows it'll distress his patient, and goes against every agreement he'd signed at working here, but he can't help sobbing, "I love you, Kaminari Denki," and burying his face in his patient's lap, the young man's hands the only thing that keeps him with reality.

Denki doesn't understand, but somehow he knows he never does. He puts his other hand on the man's black hair, carding his fingers through it. This isn't familiar, but it's nice. He feels something blooming in his chest, a new love that feels very, very old. A love the surpasses the limit of time. "Thank you for taking care of me, Sero," he whispers out the window, as the man remains immobile in his lap. The copy of Tess of the D'Urbervilles is placed on the windowsill, and Denki knows he's never read it, not like the editions of Kristin Lavransdattir, and Pride and Prejudice, and Anne Frank's diary whose dog-eared pages don't feel like they've know any other fingers but his.

Today is new. But for Denki, it's the same day all over again.

Sero doesn't look up for an eternity. When he does, he hopes to see recognition in the reciprocated gaze, when he meets eyes for Denki yet again.

But Denki is shy as their lips meet, and Sero knows that for him, it's their hundredth first kiss.