toriii 💞🐌

The sun had only barely poked between the buildings to the East by the time Katsuki shuffled into a crowded train car, along with a swarm of strangers trying to silently do the same. He let out a yawn he didn’t bother to hide, and he amused himself watching the chain reaction spark throughout their temporary pack, vacuum sealed to each other’s shoulders. The automated voice buzzing from the overhead speakers told Katsuki that the next stop would be for Fuchu, which was three stops before the one he would need to disembark at. He glanced at his phone and clicked on the screen—06:18—and put his earbuds in one at a time.

He acknowledged he was one of the lucky ones. U.A. was a highly prodigious school, which meant his classmates must have commuted from cities much further away than his own. He would have found a way if he lived three hours away, and though he was sure no one cared more about attending All Might’s alma mater than himself, the other snot-nosed kids who’d managed to squeeze their way in would probably find a way too.

Katsuki tugged at his collar, loosening it further than its already relaxed state with the top button undone. He’d never bothered with the ties. He felt better without one, and any teacher who tried forcing him to wear it got a well-deserved threat for their audacity. His mother would explain away his anxiety or whatever it was on his medical chart to say he couldn’t keep things tight around his neck, and they’d forgive him, begrudgingly and with cruel eyes trained on his exposed clavicles. He didn’t care. He had more important things to worry about than dress codes.

As though to mock him, the echoes of his mother’s unimportant nagging circled his thoughts, trapping them. She berated him in that awful raspy voice while he swayed with the momentum of the train car, one blade in the sea of grass waving in the breeze. Though he clicked the volume up on his music, he couldn’t seem to drown her out, every word enunciated with the sleek edge of a scalpel to his brain. “You embarrassed us on live television! You ought to have been taught a lesson where you stood, gotten roughed up a little for your idiocy. To think you barely needed the hospital, when you should’ve been beat to hell for your mistakes! You’re lucky I don’t do that, Katsuki, you’re so damn lucky I haven’t put my hands on you-”

But that only made him laugh, and he was struck in the back of the head anyway, thus proving the irony. She was crazy, Katsuki was convinced. He could think of no other explanation for how she could say that she didn’t beat him on one hand, then smack him upside the head with the other. It was how all mothers scolded their children though, so he supposed he had to live with it regardless.

One day, once he was old enough to get his hero license, Katsuki was going to take off and leave all of it behind him. He’d leave every morsel which might identify him in his bedroom, taking only the essentials. He’d have to work his ass off to pay the bills, but he’d be away, fresh, a brand new person. He’d leave behind his body too if he could, but Katsuki knew that was the one thing he’d never be able to escape.

Every time he looked in a mirror, or a window, or the warped metal surrounding him in the train car, he would see his mother in his own features, would hear her voice echo again and again. He’d run, but she’d always catch up the moment he glanced at his reflection.

He tore his gaze from the window pane and rubbed his cheeks and eyes red, and for a moment he escaped her. But when he clasped the handle above him to take the edge off a harsh stop, the light glinted off a ragged edge healed poorly into old skin.

Katsuki had a very small scar, right between his right thumb and pointer finger. It was so small that he doubted anyone but himself ever noticed it, including his parents. He’d gotten it after stumbling in the driveway, a lousy little moment, hardly worthy of a bandage. But for some reason, that seemingly insignificant scratch resulted in a mark which would conceivably never leave him, would always shine silver when the light hit it just right.

Would always remind him of the hand with nails painted like drops of blood that had shoved him toward the pavement in the first place.

The door to the train popped open and he surged forward, stomping toward U.A. for the first time on his own.

He’d make a new self, there. He’d make a name ten times larger than his parents’, and he’d show them all what it meant to be number one, once and for all. His mother would fall so deep into obscurity no one could ever trace their lineage just by looking at them.

“This feels a little too easy,” Eijirou said with a frown.

“Maybe we’re too used to the big-shots,” Katsuki argued.

Then a third woman appeared. She had a duffle bag full of cash slung around her shoulder. All she said was a very emphatic, exhausted, “Shit.”

“Shit is right,” Eijirou laughed. “We won’t hurt you if you come quietly and give us that,” he said, pointing to the bag.

Katsuki huffed. Sometimes his husband’s nice guy shtick got on his nerves. She was already a criminal, so what was the point? He would rather punch her lights out for causing them trouble at the end of their shift.

“I’ll use my quirk on you,” she threatened, but her voice was shaky, like she was too frightened to use it at all.

Eijirou took a step forward, and she stepped back. “Do you know mine? Hardening, see?” He sharpened his arm into a blade, held in front of his chest. “You probably can’t hurt me.”

Her eyes widened, and her head twisted just slightly. Katsuki knew that look; there was backup behind them.

“Daisuke!” She cried, and before Katsuki and Eijirou could move, another plume of fog flooded their senses, shoving them into the dark.

“Shit!” Eijirou said, and half a second later, Katsuki felt a hand on his arm- one that was definitely not Eijirou’s.

The fog began to fade a few minutes after the villains escaped, revealing Eijirou on his ass in the dirt. He looked up at him sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head. “She knocked me over,” he said.

Katsuki rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Get up.”

He extended a hand for Eijirou to take, but the second they made contact, a sharp pain pierced the center of Katsuki’s brain. His vision went white; he lost the feeling of his own body, surrounded by the sound of a thousand ticking clocks. Then all he heard was television static.

Then, silence.

.

.

..

..

...What was that?

Katsuki shook his head, an attempt in vain to get the ringing out of his ears and the clocks out of his head. Something was wrong. He didn’t even have the presence of mind to worry about the villains he’d been apprehending. Somehow, he only remembered about half of the apprehension in the first place.

Something moved, right against his palm. Katsuki panicked, shooting off an explosion. When the smoke cleared, he found a hand completely unharmed clasped against his own.

He was holding somebody’s hand.

A man was sitting on the ground, staring up at him with huge crimson eyes. His mouth was parted, and Katsuki could see the tiny points of sharp teeth peeking behind his lips. He had brilliant red hair and no shirt on, donned in a hero costume Katsuki didn’t recognize.

His hand felt familiar, but Katsuki had never met him in his life.

“Who the hell are you?” he snapped, recoiling and retracting his hand.

The building had long ago been claimed by the ambient noise of faintly running appliances and ticking clocks. The energy of a lazy Saturday was sapped from the air like a tap to the syrupy sweetness of late summer, and even the flies buzzed slower in the sky, made drowsy by the heat. Though he wouldn’t admit it out loud, Katsuki found the low hum of the tired outdoors soothing, and ordinarily, it would be the sole soundtrack to his entire night’s sleep.

The distinct clatter of glass in the kitchen tore Katsuki straight out of it.

He wrenched his eyes open and waited for his heartbeat to mellow itself out enough to hear past the roar of blood pumping through his ears. He cursed his weakness, his irrational and inappropriate calls to battle whenever something banged a little too loudly. While he began to get his bearings, he shoved a hand into his hair, and tugged on the roots with his face scrunched up in a suppressed groan. Frustration had his temperature rising, which he could not afford to happen when it was already so sticky that time of year. He let out a quick sigh, hot on his teeth. He’d been so close to sleep, too.

Just when he started considering ignoring the incident altogether, he heard another quieter clink, followed by a flat thump. It was the last straw he needed to fling his thin sheet off of him and shove his feet on the ground.

The contact was surprisingly cold and meshed poorly with the dizziness of his sudden jump from supine to stomping. As much as he’d prefer to bang the door down and fly in hot, fists sparking, he knew better than to risk something in a house full of superpowered teenagers. He stopped just short of turning his door’s handle, and pressed his ear against the cheap wood.

No overt noise could be distinguished from the other side, and it seemed as though his unwanted visitor had wisened up from their first attempt at stealth and quieted down. Briefly, he entertained the thought that it was something entirely unremarkable, like a bathroom break or a trick of his mind. After nearly thirty seconds of nothing, he grew too impatient to keep trying to listen blindly, and he clicked his door open.

The common area directly across from him looked no different from usual, bathed in the same deep blues and purples as his room had been and just as soundly asleep. His target had made a commotion in the kitchen, though, and so he had to crane his neck a little further to peek in.

On the countertop next to the refrigerator sat Kirishima, as calm and oblivious as could be.

He seemed to be alone with his phone the only light in the room, face-down with the camera flash on beside him. It illuminated only the very edges of Kirishima’s face and bare shoulder, carving little white moons into the curves of his skin. He was kicking his feet out from the cupboards, out of sync; it was probably at least one of the sounds that had alerted Katsuki to his presence. In his hand was the core of a nearly-finished apple, picked over with his razor-sharp teeth that were somehow still gentle enough not to bite it cleanly in half.

Katsuki had half a mind to jump out from his hiding place and confront him right then and there, pissed off that his sleep had been so carelessly interrupted. The other half, however, was intrigued. He’d leaned in closer.

If he heard right—and he always did—Kirishima was humming.

He strained to hear him over the din of electronic standbys, but even his best focus could only reveal a handful of barely plucked notes. He looked a bit like he was dancing, too, with how he wiggled back and forth. It caused the shadows on his face to roll back and forth over his skin, periwinkle blues cast over navy. He stopped his fidgeting to take the last bite of his apple, and then he set its remains on the counter between his thigh and his phone, leaving it behind while he finished chewing with a little smile on his lips.

It was so quiet that he was sure Kirishima didn’t intend to be heard, and probably hadn’t meant to bother him. The insects croaking from his open window were now much louder than Kirishima was being, after all. But there was something about it, something ethereal and strange, that Katsuki couldn’t quite place at first. Then he realized—

Kirishima wasn’t acting like the boisterous and sometimes exhausting classmate he was used to. Here, he was muted, tired, but just as kind. It was in the softness of his expression that had nothing to prove, in the notes hummed between closed lips that were barely there. For this moment, Kirishima only took up exactly as much cosmic space as he needed to, and no part of him reached further into the depths of late night for more. He was content, in a way Katsuki was unfamiliar.

Katsuki was broken from his trance by the sound of the apple core slipping into the garbage can with a muted thunk, and he realized almost too late that Kirishima couldn’t have been far behind. He swung the door back shut in front of him as quickly and as discreetly possible, and when he released the door handle without another sound, he breathed the tension out of his shoulders in relief. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if Kirishima caught him, knowing him, but Katsuki wanted to keep this moment his. This Kirishima fit best as the centerpiece to a candid photograph, one that he didn’t want to forget.