Work Text:
gelastic
noun -
pertaining to laughter
**
“Why don’t you ever laugh?”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
Emi looks outright offended at that. Of course she does. “What do you mean, not relevant? It’s always relevant!”
“It’s about as relevant as asking me why I don’t cry more often. Why would I know?” Shouta blows a stray piece of hair out of his face, only for it to flop back down over his eyes after about two seconds. Typical. So very typical. “Why would I need to know?”
Emi, trying not to look like she’s scanning the surrounding area even though she obviously is, pops a gum bubble, then licks it off the tip of her nose. Shouta observes this with disgust bordering on fascination.
“You know,” she says, gum bubble safely managed, “there’s probably a lot to unpack there-“
“I really don’t care.”
He hates that he knows she’s paying attention to their surroundings - if she wasn’t, he could reprimand her, remind her they have a job to do. This is a patrol, not a date (no matter what she says) or a social call or whatever Emi would call it if she were asked, and she’s too new at this to be risking her reputation by slacking off. But she isn’t. They’re sent out together more often than Shouta would like, and he’s never failed to notice how effortlessly she divides her attention between conversation and observation - it’s an enviable skill. She can psychoanalyze and patrol at once if she feels like it.
That doesn’t mean she should, though. And the fact that she knows how to multitask, even if it means that a professional objection is out of the question, isn’t going to make him fall for her usual tricks.
“You really should be,” she says, crossing her arms and tapping the fingers of her right hand against her left forearm as if she couldn’t care less what’s going on around her. Another trick of hers, that feigned casualness. Almost nothing could escape her notice when she starts to pretend that anything could. “You don’t laugh enough. Can’t be healthy.”
“Has it never occurred to you that you might just laugh too much?”
Fittingly, she laughs at that - bright, ebullient, and entirely fake. Shouta doesn’t think he would mind his on-again, off-again partner’s constant laughter if it were real. Honestly, it’d be fascinating to know someone who truly saw the need to laugh as often as Emi claims to. But she’s faking it. She’s always faking it.
“No,” she giggles, too bright, too loud. “Not possible.”
He gives her one of his ‘I’m running out of patience’ stares, which loses most of its punch in the near-darkness. Shouta trusts that Emi will feel it anyway. It’s a very potent look. She ought to.
“I don’t see the point,” he finally says, knowing she’ll keep demanding an answer until she gets one.
“Don’t see the point of what, laughing?”
“Forcing yourself to laugh when there’s nothing to laugh at.”
“You don’t have to,” Emi protests, but she seems unsure of herself. Hard as she tries never to come off that way, she’s still so young that it’s almost inevitable it’ll come out sometimes. If Aizawa Shouta were a more honest man, he’d own that nothing makes him feel more protective of anyone, possibly, than the way Emi’s voice shrinks and wavers when she’s uncertain. But he’s not. He’s rather grateful for that.
The last thing he needs is a wholly illogical soft spot for a fresh-out-of-school sidekick who’d talk his ear off if she let him. Multiple times. And keep talking into it.
He’d rather stop talking now, actually, but he’s feeling indulgent, or maybe just interested to hear what she has to say for herself. “You kind of do.”
“Nah, funny stuff’s everywhere. Literally just go on the internet.” Emi pretends to examine her cuticles, innocently distracted enough to let passersby forget who she is - that’s one of her tricks. Shouta’s never met another hero who goes so far out of their way to seem harmless. He figures it has something to do with the element of surprise, lulling people who might pose a threat into a false sense of security, but he hasn’t asked. Hasn’t needed to, really. There’s an elegant simplicity to most of Emi’s tactics, and he doesn’t usually have to ask her to figure out their logic. She’s a smarter hero than she’s given credit for and he can admire that. But her personality…
“And besides, who needs cat videos when they work with someone like you, amirite?”
To say that it could use work would be a grievous understatement.
“You’re very irritating,” he informs her.
“See?” she forces out a giggle like toothpaste from a near-empty tube. Why? He has to wonder. Why bother? “You’re hilarious!”
“I’m really not,” he sighs. “And has it ever occurred to you that you don’t have to laugh at everything?”
She looks at him like she thinks he’s crazy, or at least wants him to believe she does. Emi’s like that. She either wears her heart on her sleeve or wants people to think she does, and even Shouta can rarely tell which it is. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“You can’t possibly think anyone believes that you laugh that much just because.”
Emi folds her arms protectively across her chest and looks at the ground. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you shouldn’t force yourself to fake it.” He nudges her arm. “Pay attention.”
“I am paying attention.”
“You can’t look at the ground and pay attention, Joke.”
“Maybe you can’t,” she teases, sounding…hurt, defensive, something, but not really teasing. Apparently he’s struck a nerve.
“I don’t laugh because there’s nothing to laugh about. That’s all.” He shrugs. “Waste of energy.”
“Must be a pretty miserable way to live.”
She’s not wrong, though he doesn’t think fake-laughing at every bad joke and viral video and coincidence he encounters is going to fix it. “It’s logical.”
“Like I said.” There’s a strange vindictive edge to Emi’s voice that Shouta isn’t used to. “Must be pretty miserable.”
“I made you mad,” he observes, because it’s not unclear enough to warrant a question.
“You get on my nerves, you know that?”
Shouta would let out an appropriately muted chuckle at that if he weren’t trying to prove a point. “Isn’t that my line?”
“You’re so…you’re so meh all the time,” she stammers, vitriol turning to sputtering annoyance because Fukukado Emi has always been too softhearted to keep up a facade as ugly as spite. If he was the worrying type, that would scare him - she’s nice. Reminds him of things he doesn’t want to think about. Even when she’s insulting him, it’s painfully clear that she doesn’t know what she’s doing. “Why…why are you so bland and serious and sulky?”
“Joke, I know you know the answer to that.”
She pouts. Joke never pouts.
“And you need to pay attention.”
“I am paying attention,” she mutters under her breath.
She’s so composed most of the time, so smart in ways it takes most heroes years to learn to be - it’s easy to forget that Fukukado Emi, for all her childishness, really is barely more than one. Just six months ago, she’d thrown open the doors and sauntered into his agency’s lobby demanding to know where he was because ‘he promised he’d buy me a beer as soon as it was legal,’ which he hadn’t. And he forgets that, for most people not named Aizawa Shouta, twenty is still young enough to sulk, pout, poke the bear - illogical, childish things he’s never seen the need for but which others seem to find so hard to resist. Emi’s no exception.
“Everything’s not funny,” he tells her, changing the subject again once he’s sure she’s focused again. It’s so odd to see Emi so flustered that he almost wants to know what nerve he struck. (And when was the last time he’d felt curious about somebody like that? He can’t remember.) “No one’s making you act like you have to think it is.”
“It’s my thing,” she says, still a little defensive. “That’s all. I’m the funny one. It’s in the name. Why wouldn’t I laugh at everything?”
Great. She’s having an existential crisis.
“Because ninety percent of the time there’s nothing to laugh at.”
“Naturally, no. That’s why we make jokes and bad buddy cop movies and, like, stupid YouTube videos and stuff.” She offers him a watery smile. “If there’s nothing funny there, we make it so something is, right?”
Shouta briefly allows himself not to think about what would happen if they witnessed a crime in the middle of this conversation. It’s such a quiet night, unbearably muggy after a sudden shower, that it seems deceptively safe to let his guard down. “But why?”
“Spoken like someone who doesn’t get comedy,” she scoffs.
“There’s a difference between watching viral videos and going around acting like it’s a crime not to laugh at everything,” Shouta argues.
“Says you?” She pokes his bicep. “Person who never laughs?”
“I’d laugh if I had a reason to.”
“Don’t you ever want to go out and find one?”
He gives her a narrow-eyed look. “Not really, no.”
“Why not?”
“No point.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that laughing might actually feel good?”
He gives her that same narrow-eyed look again, since she obviously didn’t get the point the first time. “Sleeping feels good.”
“Yeah, but what does that have to do with laughing?” Emi challenges. “More than one thing can feel good, right?”
“You realize that we’re in no position to do anything if somebody were to need our help right now, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but I’m with you, and you’d just give me that ‘I hate your guts and wish I’d never met you’ look if you actually thought that something was gonna happen and I was distracting you, so I think I’m good.” She smiles a little too brightly. “Anyways, have you ever thought about that?”
“I don’t wish I’d never met you.”
Emi’s cheeks flush. “Huh?”
“I said I don’t wish I’d never met you.”
“I mean…thanks, but where’d that come from?”
“You said you thought I wished I’d never met you. Just correcting you.” A fat droplet falling from the awnings above hits Shouta’s cheekbone and he smudges it off with the thumb of his glove. “And I really don’t care if it feels good when it’s a waste of energy and there’s really nothing worth laughing at in the first place.”
“Thanks,” Emi says, uncharacteristically quiet, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She looks like one of those girls from the General Studies course who’d flutter their eyelashes at him back in high school. It’s a strange thought.
He clears his throat. Best not to dwell on that.
“Anyways,” he continues. “It really doesn’t matter what feels good if there’s no net gain.”
“Don’t you ever get sick of that?”
He glances over, but his eyes turn lazily, like they’re not in any rush to get where they’re headed. She’s hard to read right now, and somehow easy, too - a little embarrassed, a little shy, a little angry, a little hurt, but mostly utterly convinced that she’s right. She has such an open face - it’s why her efforts to pretend she thinks something is funny always fall so flat. Emi’s only a good actress when it comes to hero business. Right now she couldn’t be failing more spectacularly.
There’s something oddly endearing about that, and if nothing else, it’s relatable. Shouta’s not exactly a skilled actor, either.
“Not really,” he tells her. Maybe she would hurt for the lack of joy in her life if they switched places, but he’s used to it. It’s only her screaming color that makes his dull-gray world seem so dreary; it’s not so bad, really. He’s sure of it. Other people, the kind who chase happiness above all else, expect more than life is likely to give them. Maybe Emi does too.
“You’re pretty depressing, Eraser,” she concludes.
Shouta almost smiles. It’s a strange feeling. “I’ve been told.”
He could ask her something in return - what she’s trying to hide behind that happy-go-lucky comedienne’s facade, why she looks so hurt when it seems like someone sees through it. But he’s not in the mood. Emi is a straightforward type and there isn’t much about her that can’t be gleaned from observation if one waits long enough. She’s a puzzle with a solution that becomes obvious given enough time.
“Well, it’s true. You’re depressing.” She pokes his arm again. “Real depressing. I could fix that, ya know.”
“You could,” he says drily, half-questioning.
“I’ll getcha one of these days, Eraser.” She giggles - small, furtive, real - and rams her elbow up into his. She’s too forceful, and it hurts more than he wants to admit, but he smiles. “Just you wait.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Will too.”
“Go ahead and try.”
He’d never say so, but he hopes she will.