A Hairdresser's Life [Completed]

Chapter 25

The day of the meeting was gloomy, the air almost unbreathable. Todoroki felt the air leaving his lungs the moment his pupils saw the man patiently waiting in front of the bar's front door.

A man so thin Todoroki worried the wind would flew him away. Yet he did not seem delicate nor fragile, his stance was fierce and his eyes grazed his figure with a shocking intensity.

There was only a nod from Izuku's head, not a hug or a smile neither. There was a thin wall of ice between them, Todoroki could feel it and it was his own fault. He unconsciously touched a bracelet he was wearing: Kaminari gifted it as a goodbye gift. He saw what was under those sweet eyes: honey filled love for another man.

"It has been a year..." Todoroki said as he finally got a full view of that man he no longer knew.

Izuku was the same except for a thinner face and his brown short hair, which was what hit him the most: he changed the cut Todoroki made him.

"You look good...," he whispered hoping to be heard as he pointed to his hair. Izuku smiled, the angles of his mouth arched with a fatigue he was not used to.

"Thank you" He answered as he entered the bar letting Todoroki in first.

Izuku nimbly asked for a table for two and they both followed the waiter to their table.

"Maybe somewhere in the corner where it's just us." Todoroki said all of a sudden, as Izuku turned his gaze towards him.

The waiter led them to another table, and brought them two coffees.

Todoroki looked over Izuku: his faltered smile, his tired eyes and his funny, funny hair.

Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?

We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence?

We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?

The wall behind Izuku framed his body; the brickwork hugged his solid and aloof figure; Todoroki could have stared for hours to this masterpiece God created.

Funny how only now he came to this realization.

"I don't know what I want" Izuku said as if reading the questions filling Todoroki's mind.

"No, I just wanted to recapture the incredibly vivid love we'd had at first- the love I'd shared with the man standing in front of me, with the man I adored" Todoroki said as he tried to reach Izuku's hand and when the tips of their fingers touched it felt like the beginning.

It felt intimate; it tasted of life and love. Todoroki leaned closer towards it, looking down at his glass. He wanted to thrust the table aside and spring into his arms, to bury his nose in the green shirt that he was wearing.

Once, their hands brushed on the table, and Todoroki's skin there felt separately alive now, and rather burning.

"I guess you just lacked the courage, the guts to strike out on your own. And so when it all came to an end, you were still living that way, a life you never meant to be anything more than a stopgap, filling in for the real thing." Izuku left his hand where it was and Todoroki filled the gap between them, heat spreading over his warm hand.

A hand in unlovable hand: Todoroki felt this unwillingness to let himself go. Too afraid to break something so fragile.

"We live like the lowliest worms. Always defeated – defeated we make dinner, we eat, and we sleep. We love" Izuku said the last words by finally looking him into his eyes.

"I still love you," Todoroki answered with a trembling voice, with shaking eyes and feverish body. Again, his lips arched almost unseen.

"Are you really capable of love?"

The room was so unearthly quiet; Todoroki lost all sense of time being divided into seconds. He felt that he was the only person alive and moving in a world brought to a stop.

"There must be another life, here and now", he repeated. "This is too short, too broken. We know nothing, even about ourselves"

"What are you talking about?" Todoroki said as Izuku removed his hand.

"What if I told you I'm incapable of tolerating my own heart? I keep saying to myself to let you go, to erase you from my life... I cannot do it. I crave for you touch, for you smile upon your face as I wake up in the morning. I crave for everything you gave me"

"What are you waiting for? I am right here, Izuku. I love you"

He said.

"I am not as good with words as you are but...," he said as he got up, only to kneel in front of him.

"Marry me; make me the happiest man alive." He said as he opened a crumpled box with a fixed ring. Izuku sighed and looked down, a tear streamed over his face as he hiccupped remembering the ring he bought for him a year ago.

"I think my hatred is almost indistinguishable from my love for you. However... do you ask the moon to shine of its own light? Yes, I loved you one year ago. However, time, though it makes animals and vegetables bloom and fade with amazing punctuality, has no such simple effect upon the mind of man. The mind of man, moreover, works with equal strangeness upon the body of time. An hour, once it lodges in the element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length; on the other hand, an hour may be accurately represented on the timepiece of the mind by one second."

Izuku cupped Todoroki's hand and closed the box, the ring disappearing form his gaze as Todoroki's smile did. Hot tears now forming into those cerulean and amber-colored eyes.

"We will just burn again," he said as he got up and kissed his lips, feeling his skin for the last time. Tears traced burning patterns from a face to the other.

"Do people always fall in love with things they can't have?" Todoroki asked as his voice tried to rest in his mouth.

"Always," Izuku said, smiling, too.

He walked away as if he was going to disappear.

I wonder if I will ever see him again. – Todoroki thought as he turned around and saw his brown hair receding into the distance as he walked along the busy street.

He looked like a balloon someone had let loose in the sky.

He watched him go. 

The ring on the table taunting him.

NOTES

What can I say? What am I allowed to say? There is going to be one more chapter, the Epilogue.

Most of my stories do not have a happy ending and I do not know why. However, I think this time they will find their own happiness; it does not have to be in the form of each other. They will be happy, I am sure about it.

Not together.

It makes me sad how far this story has gone, how these characters had their own life and escaped my hands.

They are two world that accidently collided and then went on separate ways. However, each of them has a piece of the other's world. And that's enough to be happy, or at least to feel a hint of happiness in their dreams.

We will see each other tomorrow, with the last chapter.

I just want to anticipate that I will take requests  for oneshots, if you want me to write something with bnha characters tell me! I will write everything you want. Just to keep practicing until my next story.