"y/n!"

you look at him, and you smile as best as you can. he feels his chest jump even faster.

"shoto," you weakly call out as he closes the gap between you as quickly as his legs can take him. you look tired. he wants to take you in his arms where he can protect you and retreat into the most private, secluded corners of the world; where he can look after you.

"you're okay."

todoroki's voice fails to address how relieved he truly is.

"used my quirk just in time. we're okay aren't we, little guy?" you look at the small boy in your arms who was holding on to your neck for dear life. his face was full of snot and tears as he shouts out his 'thank you's and cries for his parents. you hand the boy to todoroki who takes him without thought. "here, can you take him to the medical staff?"

"what about you?"

"i'm okay. i just... need to sit down. there's no more people left in the building by the way, you can report that back for me," you mutter, squatting down with the help of a large boulder, collapsing on the uncomfortable debris.

todoroki doesn't want to leave your side, especially in this vulnerable state of yours, but he listens to you regardless, skating away on a solid ice path. it's not even been a minute later and he returns, melting the crystallised path behind him.

he stumbles off the ice and collapses in front of you, ignoring the pain of the rock digging into his left knee.

"are you okay?" he whispers. the air around you is quiet, timid, soft, vulnerable.

you nod feebly, "i'm so tired."

he extends his arms for a hug and you gladly fold into him as todoroki envelops you with his frame.

"y'know the boy we rescued? i think he was braver than me in the moment, was telling me to keep fighting and all that-"

"save your voice, you can tell me about it later."

you sigh, nodding, "thanks for coming back."

"thank you for staying," he pauses, trying to find the right words, "i- i was terrified when i saw the building collapse. i do not think i can do this without you-"

"-well don't talk about me like i'm gone-"

"-no, you don't understand-" he ripples out a frantic, uneven breath, paired with a humourless chuckle. "i love you."

the air around you freezes. todoroki hugs you a little tighter as his shoulders begin to shake, tear drops landing on the neck of your tattered hero uniform.

the world around you feels too delicate in this moment and if your perception of reality was not rocked before by the collapse, it certainly was now in todoroki's careful hold. you feel it tilt a little more when he continues:

"i absolutely adore you, want to stay by your side for as long as you'll let me. please, do not go off running like that again, i beg of you."

a beat of silence passes by.

todoroki feels his world cave in, taking your unresponsiveness as a premature rejection.

then you utter the most ridiculous statement ever: "you tell me you love me when i'm looking like this?"

todoroki takes his head out of your neck and you see the tear streaks rolling down his beautiful face. he's so pretty it almost hurts, in fact, it hurts so much that you can taste a little blood in your mouth.

"seriously, out of all times to confess your undying love for me, you had to choose the moment that i'm all bruised and battered," you joke lightheartedly, unable to contain your smile, "i feel the same about you, shouto."

he's even prettier when he smiles, cradling the hand that you brought up to cup his face, "i think you owe me after the heart attack you gave me."

you laugh breathlessly, "will a date suffice?"

you stand awkwardly in front of him, your own arms wrapped around your body in an attempt to shield yourself from the cold air of the rink. despite sero reminding you to bundle up before picking you up, you’d opted for less clothing, not wanting to look like a marshmallow or something like the sort on your first actual date with the guy you had somewhat of a crush on.

instead, you opted for a pair of simple black leggings, probably not thick enough to shield you from the chilling temperature of the air, a fleece jacket with a little bulk to it, and nice thick socks, not only to help a little with the cold but also with the tightness of the skates.

when you arrived at the rink, he sat you down on a nearby bench to help lace your skates. you tried to keep your shivering to a minimum, hoping he wouldn't notice how your body shook, not only because of the cold but also in an attempt to physically curb your nervousness.

“cold?” sero asks kneeling low to the ground seemingly reading your mind, grabbing one of your legs to hike up your foot onto his knee, loosening the strings of the skate before tugging quickly, tightening the skate snug against your foot.

“a little,” you lie, taking your hands from the heated air of your mouth and placing them underneath your thighs.

“i told you to bundle up,” he smiles, repeating his action, lacing up your other skate. “i can lend you my jacke—“

“no!” you interrupted, jutting your hands up, “that's okay. ill uh,” you stutter, “i'll get used to it.”

it had come out of nowhere, the jock's sudden and random attraction to you. your roommate mina had been bored and whenever she was bored, she dragged you along with her to engage in whatever shenanigans she thought would stifle the boredom.

on this specific escapade, she’d dragged to your university’s athletic center for a hockey game. “it’s free with our student ID and they give out free t-shirts!” she’d tried to rationalize when you gave her a flat look, wanting to commit your free time to study or maybe a girls night in would have been nice.

the two of you sat in the audience of your university’s nearly empty hockey rink, in the row nearest the ice and besides what was known as the penalty box, witnessing possibly the most boring game of hockey ever (according to mina even though this was her idea.) while she stayed locked into her phone, you’d tried to grasp whatever knowledge of hockey you’d ever come across and apply it to the display in front of you.

there had been a bunch of repetitive passing back and forth between both of the teams, some vulgarities being thrown around, mostly by a crimson-eyed blonde on your college's team, and a shitty halftime performance by the band. the game was pretty meek but otherwise enjoyable.

as the game neared its end, the visiting team up one and mina fighting her sleep, a spat broke out and you gathered your attention quickly to see what was wrong.

before fully comprehending what was going on, a body was thrown right at you and your sleeping friend. you were thankful for the plexiglass that stopped it from likely killing mina and yourself. you let out a yelp and covered your mouth in shock, the loud impact knocking mina from her pattern of dozing off into full-blown alertness, a confused “what the fuck” falling from her lips. the body rose, jersey donning the name ‘sero’ and two double zeros. they threw off their helmet and gloves revealing a shaggy black mullet and red-faced man, face bloodied likely from the blow his body took.

he holds his hands up and cages them strategically in front of his body, ready to face whoever launched him halfway across the ice. his opponent mirrors sero, the two circling about the ice, sizing up each other before sero quickly steps forward and juts his fist out, clocking the other guy square in the mouth.

you keep your mouth covered as mina hits your arm repeatedly, mouth hung in shock, before whipping out her phone to capture the scene.

the two scuffled for a little while, what crowd was still there, now fully engaged, cheering and chanting at the violent exchange. blood painted the ice, it seeping in and changing its color from snowy white to a cherry red.

after what felt like a lifetime, the officiators finally broke up the players, careful to not get hit in the crossfire, and threw them into their respective penalty boxes, one of which was right next to your seat.

you watched as the boy dropped in the seat next to you, only being separated by a small wall of glass and painted brick, with his head hung low. your hands remained stuck to your face, unable to process how that had all happened right in front of you after there was no action for most of the game.

you weren’t sure who won due to you covering your eyes for most of it, or even if anybody could technically win in a fight like that, dirty from the start and also possibly very illegal.

his face was even bloodier now, some of it clotting up on his lip on a path from his nose, other bits of it mixing with the sweat on his ear and matting his hair near it up.

it's only then you realize you’re being rude and staring at a stranger that just got beat up in front of at least a hundred people, probably a little more with it being broadcast on the local nearby stations. you also realize that he’s been staring right back at you.

your eyes widen in surprise, averting your gaze and turning your body into your roommate's space, her already posting the video to her snapchat and saying, “well that certainly made the end of my night.” heat washes over you and you start to get a little itchy, but curiosity gets to you nonetheless and despite the little person in your head telling you not to, you turn your head back towards the box.

you meet his gaze once again and before you can shyly turn your head back around in instant and immediate regret, he gives you a small smile and throws up a hand.

the heat moves fast to your stomach, embarrassment turning into butterflies. you also throw up your hand, waving it gently in his direction.

the game ends soon after the altercation, the visiting team scoring once more, leaving your school's team scoreless and you could feel the morale of the team depleted.

the athletic center nearly empty, you’re on your way back to your shared dorm when mina suddenly excuses herself to the restroom, leaving you alone at the front entrance of the rink. a voice you vaguely recognize rings from around the corner.

“i know ma, i should have waited for him to throw the first punch, but he kept messin’ with kaminari the whole game and you know i can’t stand there and watch that happen,” the voice said, getting closer.

you stand and fidget with your fingers, looking at your feet in anticipation.

“yeah, i know. i know. i will ma. okay, ma. okay ma, i will, i promise.” the voice stops.

you look up and see the guy from earlier, bandaged up and noticeably cleaner, standing at the end of the hallway a few meters away from you. again, you mirror each other, gazes locked.

“alright ma, i gotta go. love you more.”

he hangs up the phone and shifts the bag hanging on his shoulder before dropping his phone into his pocket, making his way down the hall in your direction. you avert your eyes back down toward your feet and drop your head, hoping the universe would grant you with the gift of invisibility.

his sliding steps eventually come to a halt and you feel a warm presence beside you, not quite breaking the plane of personal space, but enough to make you hyper-aware to wonder if your outfit was okay. or if your hair looked wild. or if you smelled bad.

“was i that pretty for you to be staring at me like that?” he jokes, breaking the awkward silence and it makes your body get hot and itchy again.

“im sorry, i know i was being rude,” you apologize sincerely, picking at the threads of your newly acquired red and blue colored t-shirt, it donning the school's 'plus ultra' slogan on it. “it was my first hockey game and i didn’t know things like that could happen in sports or were even allowed to happen in sports.”

you look up at him, “i guess i was staring because i was wondering if you were alright is all.”

“hockey is different from other sports,” he says softly, eyes moving downcast, “but you’re right, it's definitely not allowed, at least not like that. sometimes i don’t know comes over me.” disappointment sounds in his voice and it makes your heart hurt a little for him.

he shakes his head before picking it up to look at you and throws his hands in his pockets, “but i’m glad i had someone watching over us. over me. even if it was your first game. i hope i didn't scare you.”

after a name and number exchange, a few facetimes, and walks to class, he’d finally asked you to hang out, albeit doing something outside of your comfort zone, but you couldn’t complain. a date was a date. if you could call it that.

and now you’re here, still shivering but no longer from the cold in front of the incredibly cute and sweet guy trying to teach you how to skate.

“i'm sorry," you apologize, eyes flickering up quickly to glance at him and back down to the ice, “i've never done this before. and i really don’t want to fall.”

“i won't let you fall,” he promises, very slowly sliding backward, the weight and inertia of his body shifting him around on the ice. “i'll hold your hands the whole time. it’s not as difficult as you think.”

you roll your eyes and whine, “easy for you to say mr.hockey man. you do this, like, professionally, and i'm just,” you sigh, letting your shoulders fall, “i'm just me. scared of falling.”

“just try, for me. and if you fall and bust your ass so bad that the embarrassment leaves you unable to ever recover, i'll never make you look at the ice again, let alone try to skate on it.”

you laugh and shake your head, trying to listen to his words.

“it's just me and you and all these empty seats,” he drags on the ‘L’ in ‘All’, “i won't let you fall. even if you did fall, i wouldn’t laugh at you or point or anything mean like that. i'd just help you up and we’d keep trying until you get it. come on,” he tries again, gesturing for you to grab his hands.

you finally release your body from your hold and take a few deep breaths, mentally hyping yourself up to trust him. you grab one of his hands and he grabs onto your forearm, helping you steady yourself. you place a foot onto the ice and wobble a little, letting out a yelp.

“you’re okay,” he reassures you, “just keep your knees bent. now push off a little with your other foot. yeah. now try to walk normally.” “please don’t let me fall hanta” you screech, gripping his arm with all the strength you can muster.

he laughs, “i won’t, i won’t .” the two of you glide carefully across the ice, close to the wall for a little extra caution in case you were to fall. “see, you’re doing so well. keep your knees bent,” you bend your knees a little more, “good, yeah, just like that.”

“morning,” he mumbles back, glancing up briefly as you lean against the counter.

“what am i to you?” shit, how did that slip out? you could’ve sworn you asked how he slept.

“a fuckin’ headache,” he replies, sliding two glasses out of the cupboard and onto the counter. he opens the fridge, grabbing the carton of apple juice, and the carton of orange juice.

date three, part one—you had a heated debate over which is better, apple or orange. katsuki told you he doesn’t like to chew his damn beverages, and you told him that, believe it or not, they make orange juice without pulp. still, he went on about the bitterness, the acidity, and the horrid oj and toothpaste combo—yet here he is having both in his refrigerator—how odd.

“c’mon, i’m serious,” you urge, watching the liquids cascade into their respective cups.

“so ‘m i.” he nudges your glass towards you, bringing his own up to his lips and chugging it.

“but, i’m in your apartment,” you pause, noticing the way his face contorts into a full on sentence—one that reads yeah, no shit. “i slept in your bed with you, i’m wearing your shirt,” you continue, gesturing to the long sleeve currently swallowing you whole.

“you’re talkin’ my damn ear off too,” he breathes, wiping an arm over his mouth.

by date five, it was obvious that katsuki’s actions spoke louder than his words—which is impressive considering just how loud his words are. puddles lined the streets that evening, courtesy of the afternoon downpour. it was busy, drivers lost in their own little worlds as they drove past—and each and every time, katsuki would angle his body to the right just a bit. he cursed every last one of them who sped by, and he was absolutely miserable by the time you made it off the main roads but, at least you were dry.

“nevermind,” you say, sliding into a chair at the dining table. you’ve decided that, whatever this is—it’s good enough for you.

but it was on date one part two that katsuki knew you were it for him. after running out on you just three nights prior, he was glad you even showed up—but you went one step further. you sat there with that pretty smile on your face. no eye rolls, no guilt trips, and not a single snide remark or complaint. you even offered to pay for the meal—as if he would ever let you do such a thing, but he found it cute nonetheless. so, he owes you this.

“hey,” he barks, causing your head to snap up. the two plates he had set on the counter are full now, he must be done. “you’re mine.”

the look on your face must’ve said it all, because he’s choking back a laugh as he carries your plates over. you’re his? why did he blurt it out so casually? are you missing something?

“oh c’mon,” he huffs, plopping down in the seat next to you. he turns, trailing his eyes up and down your figure. “you slept on my damn side of the bed, in my fuckin’ shirt.”

he gave you this shirt—right before he told you to go wait in bed while he tidied up—how the hell were you supposed to know he has a specific side?

“don’t play dumb,” he pauses, scowl growing as he watches you reach for a piece of food with your bare hands. he grabs your wrist, ushering for you to let him roll your sleeves up—like hell he’s gonna sit back and watch you get his shirt dirty.

he folds the fabric with precision, biting the inside of his cheek in an attempt to hide his smile—but he just can’t.

“don’t call me to pick you up when he starts being a fucking creep,” he stretches his tattoo’d arms, not bothering to look back at you. “i’m having bitch over, so i’ll be busy.”

“because it’s so hard for you to get up from a blowjob?” you say nonchalantly, slipping your jacket off the hook and onto your body.

“exactly.” he glances up at you again when you reach for the door, only making eye contact for a second, that permanently bored look etched on his face as his eyes drag down your body, more than likely judging your outfit choice, before he snaps his head back to his phone. “now fuck off, she’ll be here soon.”

you can only sigh before securing your shoes on your feet and leaving out the door, being met with the bright smile and even brighter red car that both belong to keigo takami. you watch as he pushes himself off his car, phone shoved into his pocket, freeing both of his hands to rest at your waist.

“you look..” he starts, eyes dragging down between the two of you before meeting yours again, that pretty grin never once leaving his face. “god, do i feel underdressed.”

“stop it.” you shake your head, resting your hands against his chest that’s adorned with a tight black t-shirt, fingers playing with the gold chain that rests on top of it. “i think you look great how you are.”

“oh, you think?” he asks, eyebrows raised.

“i think.” you confirm, letting go of the pendant and tapping his chest. “you ready to go?”

“i thought we could just stand here for the rest of the night.”

playfully, you swat at his chest, laughing when he lets out the fakest of groans, clutching his chest dramatically. once he finally ‘recovers’, he opens the passenger door of his car for you, letting you settle inside before closing it behind you and jogging over to the driver's side.

the rest of the night seems to go just as good. with him as chivalrous, just as sweet; he lets you play whatever you want on the aux, even nodding along with it, though there’s no way in hell he’s ever actually heard half of the songs that you play. he’d opened all your doors for you, pulled out your chair at the restaurant, and of course paid for your food despite the way you insisted you could pay for it on your own.

“everything tonight is my treat,” he smiled for the umpteenth time, something that you’ve found to be progressively harder to deny; something so sweet that it distracts you from the possible venom behind the next words that fall from his mouth. “you can always pay me back another time.”

it’s fine after that even, or it seems to be. after dinner, he insists on ice cream. the desert menu at the restaurant was just a bit too pricey for either of your liking, so the local mom and pop’s shop would suffice, if not exceed the fifteen dollar small plate of chocolate cake that you could’ve had.

“it feels so good out tonight.” you hear him say, one arm resting around your frame. “we should drive around and eat.”

the breeze does have plenty of warmth to it, so much that you actually ditched your jacket. you agree without much thought, smiling and leaning into his sturdy frame. as the line moves up. he starts chatting you up about one of the bands you played on the ride over, going on about how every other song seemed to be by them. the two of you talk music until you’re back in his car, then you’re having to struggle to eat because he just won't stop making you laugh.

you’re so caught up in the charm that you don't even notice whenever he pulls into the empty parking lot and rolls the windows down before he kills the engine.

“you’re so easy to talk to.” he rests his head back on the seat, before rolling it over to look at you. “thanks for hanging out with me.”

you can feel warmth creep on your cheeks as you play in the last bits of your now melted ice cream.

“why wouldn’t i?”

he laughs, raising an eyebrow. “i don't really see you hanging out with anyone.” he shrugs, glancing down to the cold cup that’s still nearly full in his hand.

“well, i’ll have you know,” you furrow your eyebrows playfully. “i hang out with my roommate whenever we’re in the living room at the same time, and that’s at least twice a week.”

you can feel yourself soften into the seat at the sound of his soft laugh, warmth blooming in your chest when his deep dimples show in the dim light from the parking lot.

he stares at you for just a moment, golden eyes glancing down to your lips back up to meet yours again. he leans in without another word, meeting your lips with his own and you can taste the vanilla ice cream on his tongue before he even slides it into your mouth.

his free hand comes up to cup your nape, fingers digging into your skin to pull you deeper into the kiss,

“d’you wanna get in the back seat?” he nods behind him as if you needed to know where it was.

“actually, keigo.. i don’t want-”

“fuck!” he jumps back, pulling at the crotch of his pants to keep the now spilled cold and runny ice cream from touching his skin.

“holy shit how did you-”

“is- i gotta- fuck, it’s gonna stain.”

you can’t help but laugh at the whine in his voice at the idea of his precious khaki pants staining with white, his head snaps over to you struggling to hide the sound.

“you think this is funny?” his eyes widen, as he looks back down to the mess in his lap. “i gotta go change.”

he starts the car again, one hand still holding the material off his skin the best he can manage as he maneuvers his way back to the big blue house with unreadable greek letters on the front. you find that it’s quiet, light chatting coming from the living room, and some gun fire playing off the tv, but not much other than that.

“you can come and wait in my room if you’d like, i’m just gonna shower.” he motions his free hand up the stairs, smiling when you start padding behind him.

another thing that catches you off guard is how clean his room is. not that he comes off as a dirty kind of guy, and it’s not like any of the rumours about him ever included his decor choices, but it was just so neat. no clutter, no cups, not even a sock hanging out of his laundry basket.

letting yourself fall onto his perfectly made bed, and almost instantly regretting it when the comforter wrinkles underneath you, you finally check your phone, finding messages from your roommate you must've missed the vibrations from over twenty minutes ago.

stinky bastard: | hows it going? |

stinky bastard: | not that i give a shit |

you nearly snort at the time stamps, how they were sent within the same minute and all you can think about is how fast he tried to recover from showing that he does in fact give a shit.

sent: | thought you were busy? |

after you press send, you lock your phone. it had been nearly half an hour ago since he sent that, so if he wasn’t then, he most likely is now. you’re most likely not going to get another reply for another thirty min- ding.

stinky bastard: | dont avoid my fuckin question |

stinky bastard: | but i’m getting my dick sucked as we speak |

sent: | make sure you clean the couch this time when you’re done |

stinky bastard: | spit that has been on my balls is an upgrade for this couch |

you audibly laugh at that, remembering all the times he’d be in his boxers, and you’d catch him walking from the bathroom with a wet rag about to wipe up the mess left on the couch seat, mumbling about how he should just ‘throw the fuckin’ thing out.’ as if the two of you could afford a new one.

sent: | what do you have against the poor couch? |

stinky bastard: | a lot, actually. |

you hover your thumbs over the keyboard, shaking your head at your roommate and his imaginary beef with the inanimate object before the sound of the shower turning off catches your attention, but another buzz brings you back to your phone.

stinky bastard: | he being a creep yet? |

sent: | touya, no |

you stand, though you’re not really sure why. tapping the corners of your phone, you walk mindlessly over to the dresser, glancing up at your reflection before turning to lean against it.

stinky bastard: | she’s not too good so i could come get you if you needed |

sent: | i’m fine, touya |

“sorry,“ you hear keigo apologize as he enters the room. “i forgot to grab some clothes.”

you look up to see him draped only in a white towel, one that’s tied loosely around his waist, looking like it’s going to fall any second as he closes the door behind him. heat creeps it’s way back up into your cheeks and you’re sure you look insane with how wide your eyes have gotten.

“don’t worry, i’ll go get dressed in the bathroom.” he laughs, no doubt trying to put your crazy expression at ease.

“right, yeah.” you mumbled, nodding, trying to look anywhere but at his toned chest, or at the way the water was still dripping from his hair down to the dips of his sculpted stomach, or even at the line of dirty blonde hair that leads below the towel to only god- and twenty something girls on campus- know what.

you feel him before you realize that he’s actually there. standing in front of you smirking as he looks down at you, and you can feel the heat off of his body, for a second you just stand there wondering if he’s always that warm or if the warmth of the shower is still sticking to him.

“you know,” his hands find themselves on your waist once again, his head tilted down as he leans his lips to brush against yours. “if you didn’t want me to put any clothes on, you could’ve said that.”

you gasp when you realise where you’ve come to stand and that you’re quite literally blocking the man from putting anything on.

“i’m sorry, i-”

he shushes you, nudging you to look up at him with his nose.

“it’s okay,” his voice is soft, then same as his lips as they press against yours once again. slowly, you ease into it, just like you did before. but the weight of his hands feel heavy, like sandpaper against your skin as they dip under your clothes and drag against your skin

his mouth makes it’s way from your own down to your chin, where he leaves open kisses against your neck. “i’d just end up taking them back off anyways.”

you feel him part your legs with his knee, hands gripping into your softness to pull you closer to him, to control your movements as he tries to get you to grind down against him.

“keigo, i don’t-” a sound escapes you at the worst possible moment when he starts to suck on the sensitive spot at the base of your neck. and the sound of his voice, soft and condensing in your ear makes you want the floor to swallow you whole.

“sounds like you do to me.”

you push at his chest to no avail, his sturdy body locking you into his own.

“keigo-” you groan as the uncomfortable feeling of him sucking your skin between his teeth. “please,” you plead, though you’re not even sure he’s listening. “stop.”

“i’m sorry,” he pulls back finally, leaning his forehead against your own, one of his hands coming to tilt your chin up, forcing you to look into his eyes. “you’re just so pretty.”

“thank you, keigo, i’m just-” you can feel the shake in your voice as you speak and your face grows hotter when you know he can hear it.

“what’s wrong, dove?”

you’re sure if the situation wasn’t what it was, that pet name would make your heart soar.

“i’m not comfortable.” you admit, hoping he would drop all of it so that you could go back to the light hearted conversations that started the night.

“right.” he nods, pulling back slowly. “the bed’s probably better anyways.” that smile plasters itself back on his face and you feel your heart sink into your stomach when he tugs you by your wrist with him.

you thank whatever deity is out there watching over you when a crash downstairs stops him in his tracks. though the feeling of relief is quickly washed away with the grip he still holds on you and look on his face as snaps his head over to the door with naked anger, the cracks of his nice guy facade stripping down.

“you can’t fucking go up there!”

a slam follows the shout, and another after that.

“watch me.”

there’s heavy steps up the stairs, sounds that echo through the otherwise quiet house. just as keigo begins to let go of you, to approach the door to his room, it swings open and your roommate stands at the entryway staring back at you.

“can i help you?” keigo chimes in, stepping in front of you, trying to break eye contact between you two.

“nah, piss stain, you can’t.” touya quickly retorts, not sparing him a look, still eyeing you over the shorter man’s shoulder.

“what are you doing here?” you blink, words barely above a whisper but you know they both hear you.

“you didn’t text me back.” he shrugs.

“we’re busy.” keigo makes it a point to adjust his towel slightly before looking back over his shoulder with a smirk. “isn’t that right?”

you can’t miss how touya’s lip ring twitches, a habit he’s picked up when he’s trying to bite his tongue.

“no,” you let out meekly, bumping shoulders with the blonde as you walked past him, hoping touya’s presence would spare you from another bruising grab at your wrist, and lucky you, it does. “we weren’t.”

you miss the deathly glare they give one another, but you do turn around in time to catch a glimpse of keigo’s back tattoo as he throws his phone into the mattress. you think about how all the other girls described the wings to be so beautiful, how his muscles flexing only added to the serene scene, and now you start to wonder if any other part of their stories were just as fabricated.

“thank you.” you sigh as you lean your head against his back, hands wrapped firmly around his waist as he moves to start the bike’s engine.

“i wasn’t doing anything anyways.” you feel him shrug before he hits the kickstand with this boot and heads out onto the street.

there’s something comforting about being this close to touya, despite how just minutes ago you felt like you needed to scrub your body clean and you never wanted to be less than two feet away from anyone ever again. the way touya relaxes under you, how he breathes calmly despite being on a two wheel death machine, the smell of his three in one clinging to his skin, it makes you want to fall asleep right there. and you almost do, if not for the, again, two wheeled death machine.

he doesn’t say anything when the two of you make it back to the apartment, or whenever you get out of the shower, he leaves your favorite snacks on the counter without even asking if you wanted them. and when you come into the living room, you find him in his spot on the corner of the couch with the fuzzy blanket of his that you always threaten to steal right next to him.

you sit down, taking the blanket and wrapping yourself in it. two of you sit in silence for a while, save the sound of you digging into the plastic that holds your snacks and the show that play quietly on the tv. but there’s not much that you can really find the energy to say. slowly, you start to lean into his warmth, thankfully humming whenever he drops his arm around your shoulder to pull you into his chest.

“i’ll kick his teeth in if you want me to.” he whispers against the crown of your head.

you breathe a laugh out, shaking your head.

“or i could get some money off my old man and pay someone else to do it.” he rubs your arm slowly, his warm hands, as callous as they are, feel like silk as they brush against you. “since you care too much about me getting into trouble.”

you let out a small giggle out that time, a weak smile creeping up on your face.

“and why would you think that?”

you know your voice sounds broken, that all the crying you did in the shower took its toll and that it would be obvious now, but with touya, you can’t find a reason to care.

“because i know you.” he leans his cheek against your head, pulling you a little closer to his side. “you care too much about everything.”

you sigh, relaxing further into his hold.

“you think that’s why i wanted to go with him?” you ask, not really expecting an answer. “‘cause if everything he said was true, if he really meant all the sweet things he said to me-”

“you thought it would hurt his feelings.” you feel touya’s head shake slowly. “guys like that don’t even have feelings.”

“you don’t have feelings either though.” you joke, looking up at him whenever you feel his weight lift off of you.

you’re met with those bright blue eyes looking back into yours.

“and what makes you think that?”

your breath catches in your throat when you realise how close the two of you are, how much different it all is with him compared to the piece of shit you’d been with earlier.

“all the girls you have over..” you start but the sight of him twitching his lip ring catches your train of thought and you can’t find any words to finish the sentence.

“they come willingly.” he states, brows furrowing like he’s thinking over his words. “but i guess i don’t feel anything with them,” he rolls his head back towards the tv, lip rings swinging back and forth before he speaks again. “not unless i picture them as you.”

your mind swims with too many thoughts to even begin to process what he could mean by that.

“i’m not some kind of fucking creep, and i wouldn’t try anything after the shit you’ve been through tonight, i just,” he throws his head back on the couch staring up at he ceiling as he sighs. “i don’t know why the fuck i opened my mouth.”

“touya,” you squeeze your eyes closed, letting out a deep breath before you move, pushing yourself up to straddle his lap. he doesn’t move an inch, not even to pick his head up to look at you when you settle there. and he probably would just stay like that if you didn’t physically pick up his head and force him to look at you. “what the fuck are you saying?”

he just blinks at you for a moment, those pretty eyes searching for something in yours. you can feel his pulse under your fingertips, his soft, warm skin thumping slightly under your touch.

“i don’t have feelings,” he sighs, leaning his cheek into your palm, eyes still focused on you. “not until it comes to you.”

you open your mouth to speak, but the words leak out of your brain before you can form any kind of sentence with them.

“i can’t say sweet shit to make you like me, or take you to nice ass resturants with those fancy fucking forks,” you start to panic when your heart beats against your chest, afraid that he’ll be able to feel it aswell. “but i sit on this stupid ass couch all fucking day, waiting for you to come in here and talk to me because you’re the only person who makes me feel anything.”

“touya..”

“and i let you go on that date with that fucker knowing damn well how fucking sick he is-”

“touya.” you interrupt, thumbs running over the highs of his cheeks.

he closes his mouth, blinking at you, waiting for whatever else you wanted to say, though he’d be fine if you just said his name again and again until time ended.

“kiss me.”

and he listens, slowly he leans down, giving you every chance to push him away, to tell him nevermind, that you didn’t actually want him to. but it never comes, instead you lean forward, still cradling his face in your hands as your lips mesh with his. it’s soft, slow, each move of your lips against his feels so full of purpose, so full of feeling.

cautiously, like you’re a wild bunny going to jump from his lap at any second, he rests his hands at your sides, just feeling your body above him. only resting the weight of them fully when you start humming happily into his mouth at the contact.

his hands feel warm and light against your skin, setting your ablaze under every inch that they trail over. you melt into him, you go to move your hands from his face, to find perch in his hair or on his shoulders to pull yourself closer to him, but they don’t get far off his cheeks before he’s capturing your wrists and keeping them there.

“don’t,” he warns when you pull back to speak. “just don’t.”

you laugh, leaning back in only to be stopped.

“not here,” he shakes his head, still keeping your hands attached to his face. “not on this stupid fucking couch.”

you lean your head back in laughter, something that brings a small smile onto touya’s face, something only you can do. a moment later, he’s dragging you to the door of his room and leading you in. the hold he has on you is loose, giving you every chance to pull away but you continue to follow him.

he walks over to change the color of his led lights, letting you linger behind him and take in the sight of his room. it’s a little messy, with things thrown here and there, but not too bad where you can’t walk or see his floor. surprisingly enough it smells good, like pine and a campfire.

“stop looking at my mess.” he mumbles coming back to you, pulling your hands back up to his face.

“but, i like your mess.” you say back, watching as his white teeth peek from behind his lips, reflecting the dark blue light in a way that makes your heart skip a few beats.

“you’re crazy, you know that?” he shakes his head, ducking down to pull you into another kiss, the two of you stumbling blindly until the back of your legs meet his bed and you fall out of his hold and on your back.

“then what does that make you?” you breath as you prop yourself up on your elbows, watching him as he picks up your thighs and shoves you farther on his bed.

“if you’re crazy, i’m in-fucking-sane.”

he peels his shirt off by the bottom hem, exposing his tattooed stomach that you can’t remember if you’ve ever paid attention to before. his hands fall just above your shoulders as he leans down over you, nudging you chin with his nose in a way that sends a shiver down your spine. the feeling of his lips dragging up the column of your neck making heat start to pool in your stomach. you whine out something adjacent to his name as he starts to pepper kisses along your collarbone, and you can feel the comforter underneath you tighten with his fist.

a shaky breath is let out against your skin before he pulls himself back up to look into your eyes, resting his against yours and you can’t help but press your lips against his again despite that he definitely was about to say something. when you pull back, his eyes are closed and he’s nearly panting against your lips.

“you sure about this?” his eyes flutter open to look for your response, one that comes in a nod.

“say it for me.” he whispers, so softly that you’re sure if your bodies weren’t pressed together you wouldn’t have been able to hear it.

“i want you, touya.”

and his lips are on yours again, soft and sweet in a way that is anything but touya, but just like him all the same. the kiss is passionate, deep enough to pull sounds from your throat and make you completely dizzy. so much so that you wouldn’t even have noticed when he has started to pull your shirt off if he didn’t ask for permission before he did it, same with your shorts, and every other piece of clothing that you had left.

with each one he strips off of you, he presses kisses to the spot that the fabric had left bare for him, first your stomach, then the top of your thigh, followed by your sternum, then your hips. each press of his lips against your sensitive skin leaves you more eager, fills your stomach with want, and no doubt is leaving you with a mess of arousal between your thighs, waiting for him to finally touch you where you wanted him most.

you groan at the thought of his fingers, the silver that is somehow cold against his burning skin as they graze down your sides, and squeeze at the soft of your thighs. and gasp at the feeling of his lips, soft and also adored with cool metal as he kisses from your navel up to your throat.

“what is it?” he mumbles into your skin. “hm, baby?” his lips find their way to your ear, words hot against the shell of it.

“i wanna feel you, touya.” you whisper, hands reaching around his shoulder to hold him against you.

“but i’m all over you, doll.” he tsk’s back, obviously wanting you to be more clear with what you’re asking for.

“i want to feel you inside of me, touya.” you can feel your cheeks heat with the blunt words but you can’t find a reason to care, not if it’ll lead you to finally seeing how far his fingers can reach.

“oh, is that all?” he lets out a shaky laugh, fake confidence starting to crack as he shifts his weight onto one of his forearms, looking between your face and his hand that traces down the curves of your body until it meets with the apex of your thighs.

“you just tell me when to stop.” he whispers before kissing you, leaving himself hovering just above your lips.

his middle finger comes to slide along your slit, up to meet your clit with a few experimental circles around it. it draws a gasp from your lips, the feeling of the tip of it prodding at your entrance enough to force another out of you.

“did you hear me?” he asks, voice still soft.

you nod in response, not trusting your voice when you’re so doped out on the promise of ecstasy. but, clearly that wasn’t the right answer, you notice as he pulls his hand from your heat to rub at your thigh.

“i heard you, touya.” you whine out. “i’ll tell you when i want you to stop, i swear, please just fucking touch me.”

and again, he listening to your plead, fingers instantly finding their way back to your cunt. the tip of his middle finger starting to prod against your entrance, his lips making their way to your jaw as he starts to press in, his ear as close to your mouth as he could get it without being completely obvious.

pretty little gasps tumble from your lips as he starts a rhythm with it, pushing it all the way into the knuckle, letting you feel the cool metal against your cunt before he pulls back out, turning his wrist as he does so. you have his finger completely soaked by the second time he does this, which only motivates him to give you-

“more.” you whimper desperately.

he adds another, turning his wrist so he can press his fingertips up against that soft wall that has you letting out even sweeter, louder sounds. each flick of his hand has you seeing stars, the knot of pleasure in your stomach starting to fray away already, and each sound you tumble out, each pulse of your walls around his digits, has him grinding harder into the mattress below you.

“wait, wait, wait-” you say with no real urgency, cursing yourself of shaving off your high.

he retreats from your body immediately, leaning up on his knees so that he wasn’t touching you at all.

“you okay? did i hurt you?” he puts his hands up, making it easy for you to grab them and pull him back on top of you before he tries to slip off the bed completely.

you shake your head to answer his question as he eases himself back over you.

“i said i wanted to feel you, touya.”

you can see even in the dim blue light how his eyes widen the slightest bit, the way his mouth parts and you can feel the way his hands twitch again into the blanket by your head.

“yeah?” his voice is shaky, breathier than before. “is that really what you want?”

“mhm,” you hum back, feeling secure with him, knowing that with touya, this was safe, you were safe. “i want you, touya.”

“fuck,” he pulls himself from you, reaching over and digging through his nightsand drawer for god knows what before returning back to you with a shiny package that he bites and tears with his teeth. “you just tell me-”

“when to stop;” you finish for him. “i know, i will.”

he smirks down at you as he tugs the top of his boxers down, not missing the way your eyes dart down to catch sight of the size of him. and god does he revel in the way you lick your lips at the way his cock slaps up against his stomach. your eyes flutter between his face and the way he slowly unrolls the condom down the length of him.

“can i?” you ask, not expecting to hear the groan that’s only muffled by the way he bites his lip.

after he nods, hand retreating from his cock, letting it slap back up against his belly button, you lean up on your forearm, reaching to wrap around it and work the condom down just the tiniest bit faster. you can’t help but try to savour the sweet seconds that his hips jump forward towards your fist, or the way the curve of it feels against your palm. you regret not dragging it out longer because the second it seems to be completely unrolled, he’s pushing your shoulder back into the bed.

“such a tease.” you hum against his lips, one arm coming to rub his shoulders, the other cradling the back of his head. you mimic the feeling of his smile against your mouth, but it only lasts for a moment. the feeling of him rubbing the tip of his cock along your slit enough to make your face drop with pleasure. he takes his time, circling your clit with it before sliding it down to your entrance to push in the smallest bit before pulling his hips back again and repeating the motion all over.

“‘nd i’m the te-” you try to huff, only to be cut off by touya finally pushing past the head into your warmth. even with just a few shallow strokes, you can feel him pressing up against your most sensitive spots.

“were you saying somethin’?” he laughs above you, watching your face in awe as your eyes roll back with each cant forward of his hips. “c’mon,” you hear his voice become breathy once again. “let me hear you.”

and without a second thought, you let your lips part, each sound falling from your throat without a care. you mind too focus on the way his cock stretches you, how the tip of him presses so perfectly against your g-spot, how full he makes you feel and he hasn’t even fully bottomed out.

“‘so good” you whimper out as he drags his hips back once again, the slow, sensual pace making it even harder to work your brain.

he drops down closer to you, lips against your own like he wanted to taste every moan you made.

“‘s good, baby?” he asks softly, hips stuttering for a second but never once losing their gentle pace.

“mhm,” you attempt to hum, a moan making you drag out the ‘m’ longer than you intended. “feel so good, touya.”

his head drops to your shoulder where he leaves open mouth kisses that only make the feeling in your stomach ten times hotter. it makes you roll your hips up into his desperately, trying to get some friction against your clit, wanting just to get over the edge.

“slow down,” he warns, grabbing your hip with one of his big palms. “if you- fuck-” his hips fall flush with your own when your walls start to grip around him, which makes both of you let out ugly noises simountaliously. “tell me what you need.”

“my clit, i just-” you pant, trying again to roll your hips without any luck. “please, please, i need it.”

not a second later is his hand off your waist and his thumb is stuck to your clit, rubbing perfect circles against it that send warmth spilling out of your cheeks and sending it all down to your cunt. he starts his hips again, the extra stimulation almost sending you over already if your throbbing walls and shaking thighs were anything to go by.

“gonna cum with me?” he asks, knowing your far too gone to answer. “we’re almost there, baby.”

his pace becomes sloppier, faster, but never rougher, the sound of his balls sticking against your ass with each deep thrust he gives mixes with the desperate, pathetically needy sounds fill the room as you both start to feel the static spread through your veins, white and blue heat shooting into your vision and making your body spasm together.

it takes both of you a minute to move, to do anything other than hold one another and try to calm your breathing. but once you both finally come down, touya is pulling himself from you with a groan, face full of disgust as he pulls off the condom and ties it. squeezing it just the slightest bit in front of you so that you both could be sure there were no complications with the rubber. you throw your arm over your eyes as touya walks out to the room and flicks on the light to what has to be the bathroom. you don’t even move when he returns, just letting him take the warm wash cloth and clean you up before he retreats out of the room once again.

“aht aht.” he shakes your leg when he returns, sweats hanging low on his hips. “like hell we’re sleeping in here.”

you would laugh at him were it not for how sleepy you actually were.

“but ‘m tired.” you mumble, rolling over into his pillow.

“it smells like balls in here. lets go to your room.” he offers, gently pulling you up off his mattress.

“so your room can’t smell like balls, but the living room can?” you roll your head against him, letting him hold the majority of your weight as he leads you to your room.

“exactly.”

“gross.” you retort as he sits you on the edge of your bed. “hey, touya.”

“hey, baby.” he responds back, pulling someone’s shirt over your head.

“why did you bring all those girls over here if you liked me?”

the shirt smells like him, you decide.

“because i’m an idiot.”

you nod, not paying any mind to the way he scoffs at the action.

“and why did you always do stuff with them on the couch?”

“because that’s where i always see you,” his hands come to lay on your shoulders as he pulls you back off the mattress. “it was easiest to picture you when we were out there.”

he pulls down your comforter and helps you ease back into the bed, handling you like glass the entire time.

“i guess that makes sense.” you sigh into the pillow, eyes still closed as he lets himself into your bed.

“it doesn’t.”

you don’t waste a second before laying on his chest, not that he doesn’t welcome you by wrapping his arms around you immediately.

“oh and touya,” you start again, making his heart race. thinking it'd be another question about the girls he continued to bring over like an idiot.

“you think we can get rid of the couch now?”

you can feel the vibration of his laugh from where you lay, and sleepily, you half smile at it.

“where am i gonna sit to talk to you then?” he answers with a question of his own.

“right here.” you pat his bare abdomen, fingers moving on their own the moment after to trace the dips of his muscle.

“i dunno,” he sucks in a breath. “we had our first kiss there, it has sentimental value now.”

you raise up quickly from where you lay to snap your head up at him, though it’s probably less intimidating because it takes you a moment to actually open up your eyes.

“kidding.” he assures, pulling you back onto him by your shoulder. “i can always steal some money from my old man for a new one.”

“and we can pick the new one together?” you ask with a yawn.

“whatever you want, angel.” he hums, kissing the crown of your head. “just, no more leather cushions.”

it smells—good. you realize it delayed, but once your mind catches up with the sound of a sizzling pan and the sight of him in a pair of soft sweatpants and the garlic fragrance in the air, you smile so hard that your cheeks hurt. bakugou squeezes a fist at his side, but drops it just as quickly.

you dump your bag on the ground and shuffle out of your shoes, moseying up to him to plant a fat kiss on his cheek, that he accepts with little reluctance. he runs a palm down your back firmly, quickly, before pressing his mouth against your hairline as a silent greeting. so close to him, you can peer over the curve of his shoulder to see the plates that are already made and waiting on the counter, and when you step back, he turns before you can ask any questions.

the few veggies he'd been finishing get served into the second plate and he makes you sit at the shoddy dining table before placing the food in front of you, without a word. he still hasn't really said anything, and so you ask, "is this for me?" and it's not about the food. it's about the act, whatever this is. him, being here unannounced. waiting for you after work, looking soft and cuddly and kissable.

bakugou grumbles, "who else?" before shoving a steamy carrot into his mouth and any leftover fear about getting dumped is tossed out the window. he still doesn't say much, but he listens to you prattle on about work, shakes his head when you recount the ugly thing a customer said to you—trying to hide his smile when you tell him how you clapped back at the dirtbag—and he asks you, once, if the food is any good.

"of course," you smile and it drops his eyes back to his plate. "always is. thank you for doing this, by the way, it's—i'm so touched. seriously. thank you."

you two haven't been dating all that long, a couple of months maybe. four or five; it's hard to say exactly when you crossed into this territory, going from texting every other week to getting drinks on his off days to sleeping at his house more than you probably should. nothing really official happened, just one day you decided to visit him at work and when the receptionist asked who you were to him before buzzing you in, you'd said,

"i guess i'm—we're sort of, uh, seeing each other, maybe. i guess."

and she'd called his office and told him, "dynamight, sir, your girlfriend is here to see you."

and he'd come down, looking more surprised than you'd ever seen him, and he said, "yeah. she's—let her in, or whatever. she's—my girlfriend. yeah."

and that was it.

now he's in your apartment, unannounced, cozy and sweet, shooing you away so he can do the dishes.

"'s my damn mess, so get out and lemme clean it."

when he finishes, he comes to sit on the couch at the opposite end, snorting when you bounce your way into his lap, back against the arm so that you can lay your legs across him, and he pretends not to notice all the attention you're giving him. you think it makes him uncomfortable, something that always surprises you, but he's been like this before. unable to look at you, stiffening almost imperceptibly every time you touch him.

you run a hand through his hair, pinching at the thin skin of his ear until it makes him flinch, and then you whisper, "hey," for him to finally look back at you.

he's frowning, and he doesn't say anything.

which makes you frown, has that worry coming back. "everything okay?"

bakugou huffs. "somethin' gotta be wrong in order for me to come see you?"

you press your lips together, because you don't want to rile him up. you're learning that it's easier to do when he's soft like this. as if he's exposed and expecting a fight. he must realize what he's doing, the defensive act, and he sighs, returning his gaze to the tv as he squeezes your thigh.

"'m fine."

doesn't sound like it, but maybe that's just him. it feels like there's so much you know about bakugou, and yet as if there's still much to learn. it excites you in a girly, giddy way, getting to meet all his different sides. "hey," you grab his cheeks in your hand tightly so that his lips pucker, turning him to you again. his eyebrows pull down hard and you can tell he's getting ready to thrash out of your grip, so you give him a quick kiss that turns him red when you pull away.

you tuck into the curve of his neck, kissing the thick vein there, and you laugh when he squirms. bakugou squeezes you again in quick succession until you're squirming, and you aren't looking at him, but you think he might be smiling. playful.

the tv plays on for a while before he finally clears his throat. "case lasted three weeks, or whatever." you hum in acknowledgement and nestle further into him, into his warmth. "felt like for-fuckin'-ever."

"i bet, you're probably worn out, huh?"

tch. "no, 'm fine. just sayin'. it's—been a while."

you sit up to look at him, though he's purposely keeping his eyes elsewhere. anywhere that's not you, as the heat on his face burns to the tips of his ears. he must be able to feel how intently you're watching him, because the longer you look, the deeper his frown gets.

the bigger your smile gets. "what, d'you miss me or something?" he scoffs, but doesn't say anything. doesn't disagree. against your leg you feel him again, making that fist just to drop it. your smile melts down into something real. soft. "bakugou," you poke at his cheek until he jerks his face away, scowling. it makes you laugh and he tries to disentangle himself from you, but you just wrap your arms around his neck to hug him tighter, pressing your lips to his hair. "i missed you, too. i was so excited to see you here, i love having you over."

One little rumour from a patient in your clinic, an unsure whisper of I heard they’re moving that Dabi kid from the ICU to villain corrections had led you here. It’d been two long, devastating weeks since the final battle. Two weeks with no word from him, two weeks of reading every article you could find about the ‘elusive first son of Endeavor’ and learning nothing. 

The media blackout that came thereafter was the only thing that kept you hoping that he was okay. The Todoroki family, though disastrous and complicated, held some influence in Japan. And though Touya would vehemently try to reject it, they could not allow their surviving first son to be fed to the wolves. 

And wolves they were; yelling obscenities and insults with spitting anger. Legal justice was one thing, but the court of public opinion was another thing in its entirety, a fragile and fickle thing that held the power to sway even government policy. 

Kaiyo stirs in your arms at the noise and you soothe him, rubbing your hand along his back until he quietens, then you tuck away the stray red hair that has fallen loose from beneath his hat. Truthfully you never intended to bring him here, but given recent events it has been hard for him to separate from you, cheeks still slightly pink from his earlier tantrum. 

It’d been damn near impossible to prevent the four year old from learning about the broadcast a few months prior, paired with the sudden less than frequent visits from his father, he knew something was deeply wrong and he didn’t understand it. 

Touya is scanning the crowds lazily, expression impassive to everyone but you. You could see he was exhausted, more gaunt than you last remember, but his disinterest only fed into everyone’s fury. 

“Villain!” they’re bellowing at him, fingers pointed and words sharp, “don’t you care about the suffering you’ve caused?” 

He cares, you think, more than anyone could ever understand. 

You cannot look away as Shouto lingers by his brother, the other sidekicks giving them a wide berth. Endeavor is tucked away beside the van speaking with an armed officer, his shoulders hunched forwards in an uncharacteristic manner. He appeared to be ashamed. 

Good, the thought bitter and weighing heavily in your chest. 

Touya shuffles along obediently, wrists out and pressed together against his pelvis. Quirk suppressing cuffs, you assumed. They were bulky, and no doubt uncomfortable. You hold Kaiyo a little closer as you ache, distantly wondering if he’s cold without his quirk. 

After today it was entirely possible you’d never see him again, that your son would grow up without his father.

Nobody knew of your connection to him, something both of you doubled down on after your pregnancy came to light. There would be no way for you to visit or contact him now without suspicion being cast upon your little family. Law enforcement will without a doubt assume you were aware of his intentions, and worst case they would believe you to have played a part in them yourself. 

He couldn’t allow that to happen. And yet, here you were. 

You just needed one last look at him to know he was breathing, living flesh and blood, to know that the only thing you would have to mourn was your relationship. More than anything you needed him to be ok. And he does look different – better, in some ways. The new skin grafts hug his jawbone comfortably, and the rings that once kept him together are gone. 

Being alive meant he still had a chance. 

Touya tilts his chin up, squinting against the flare of the sun, and the corner of his mouth crooks into a smile. It’s the irony, you think, as your own lips twitch. The heavens should have opened by now, rain should be soaking your clothes to your skin, influenced by the utter misery flooding throughout your body. Instead, the day is bright.

As if he can feel it, he turns, and his gaze immediately falls on your figure in the distance. You’re close enough to see the abject fury flit across his features, eyes wide and unblinking as they stare back into your own. 

The hand you have rested against Kaiyo’s back slides up over his hat to cradle his head, his small fingers curled tightly into the fabric of your shirt, drawing Touya’s attention to the boy. 

To his son. 

The anger dissolves like sea foam, it washes away to give space for his grief. This was it, the final goodbye. You couldn’t find it in yourself to hate him for his choices, because it was something he had told you he’d do from the start. 

In hindsight, you can only curse your naivety. 

You’d met Touya a few months after your eighteenth birthday while shadowing one of the senior nurses in the clinic. The place was small, run down and barely funded, but it was valuable work and they were kind enough to give you the extra experience.

He’d been brought in unconscious by a concerned passerby. The skin of his arms has been rough, raised and pale pink, inflamed where they’d been burnt. Barely nineteen at the time, it was nothing compared to what he would do to himself years later. 

“Watch him until he wakes up,” they’d told you, and you did so dutifully until his eyes flew open in alarm. 

Back then his identity as Dabi was makeshift, fresh and unrefined. With the glue still wet between the cracks it was unsurprising that he would slip. Touya. That was how he introduced himself to you on that first day, under the hazy influence of painkillers.

The memory stuck with you throughout your relationship. You’d see it now and then — you’d see Touya plainly behind the veil. Sometimes you said his name as if it was a dare, and he’d hated it so much that he loved you. With you there was no need to exert effort in maintaining his bravado, he could just be. And that was dangerous, or so he’d insisted.

He would disappear for weeks at a time. He always had a myriad of excuses, from expressing concern for your safety to spitting that you were nothing but a good fuck. You could no longer count on one hand the amount of times you’d heard the ‘I’m a villain, you shouldn’t be with me’ speech. 

Touya would leave, and yet you’d still come home to a receipt on the counter, or to your clean sheets unmade. It was laughable, and you loved him. 

The pregnancy was… unexpected. Difficult. If his emotions were a switch on the wall, your growing baby was a finger flicking it up and down incessantly. Mornings full of nausea and nights full of reassurance. You offered him an out, a door that would always be left open, and he refused it. 

Stay and be a bad father. Leave and be a bad father. Those were the only options he thought existed for him. And maybe you should’ve believed him when he told you Kaiyo’s birth wouldn’t change a thing about the path he’d set for himself. 

But you couldn’t accept it. Not as he’d held your boy in his arms, not as the apprehension and fear in his eyes softened into love. Not as he’d laughed and told you, “guess I needed to give one good thing to the world before I die”. 

Sometimes the adoration would become overcast with anguish. There were days he couldn’t even look at Kaiyo because of how much he loved him, reminded only of how little he had been loved by his own family — but he never let Kaiyo see it. 

“Just because he’s too young to understand now doesn’t mean he won’t later”.

The only small mercy is that your son remains asleep, blissfully unaware of what he is losing, and unperturbed by the noise around him. His light, shallow breaths against the skin of your neck are a warm comfort. 

Touya can’t say anything for fear it will draw attention to you both, and you think that alone is punishment enough. 

Shouto stands beside him in silence, surveying the surroundings and eventually following Touya’s line of sight to you. Instinctively you step backwards into the soft soil of the flowerbed, your thoughts offering an apology to the hyacinth flattened beneath your shoe. 

With the realisation that his youngest brother has noticed you, Touya turns and lunges in Shouto’s direction with his teeth bared. It could almost be comical if not for the unpleasant murmurings of the crowd. In the short moment that Shouto is distracted, you jump down from the brick wall and slip away. 

You don’t look back. 

A small part of you had hoped your role in the story had ended, that you now might just move forward as best you can. Instead, you were shadowed by an overwhelming sense of dread everywhere you went. There was little to do besides work and walk, yet you couldn’t help but feel watched. The cashier at your local market, your neighbour, Kaiyo’s teacher, the food vendor on the corner; with just one look you can’t help but to think that they must know, that any day now this false peace will collapse onto you like a tonne of bricks. 

The anxiety keeps you up at night, counting the glowing stars stuck to the bedroom ceiling to pass the hours, tension threading itself into your muscle fibres. Kaiyo was warm where he laid curled at your side, but the loneliness — in all its violent emptiness — made the night colder. Despite it all, you missed Touya, your eyes still searching for him across the futon. 

Remnants of him are still scattered throughout the apartment. Should anyone come looking, there would be plenty of him to find. He’d hated having his picture taken, yet always gave in to you quickly, and you never needed to ask him for anything twice. There were photographs of his lips pressed to your hair, of his smile tucked against your neck, of his arms holding the baby; hand cradled around the crown of his head, his purpled scars a stark contrast to Kaiyo’s soft skin. 

He had treated fatherhood like he was a dying man, a clear red flag that you can only now see with hindsight. He had spoiled the two of you with his time and effort, no matter how uncomfortable it made him, because he knew any day might be his last. Touya was born with inherited wounds that were left to fester. To him, his failure was terminal, and no amount of love would undo that. 

The wood panels are cool beneath the soles of your feet as you pad your way through to the bedroom, bending at your knees to pick up stray toys and socks left throughout the hallway. There’s still an ache in your cheeks, the strain of smiling too long through all the tears and questions from your son that morning before school. You wish you had answers. 

Your shared room looks much emptier with the large futon hung over the balcony to dry. You find a small star in the centre of the room that has fallen from the ceiling. Held between your fingers in the daylight it is dull, a pale yellow, much different to the green glow it emits at night. Touya had bought them for Kaiyo after a series of bad dreams, lifting the boy onto his shoulders and letting him stick them wherever he pleased. 

Another piece of him. As you are slipping the star into your pant pocket, you hear a knock on the front door. You weren’t expecting anyone — rent had been paid, Kaiyo was with his sitter and your neighbours were at work. It sounds again, reverberating throughout the apartment, and the soft hair on your arm lifts in anticipation. 

There is a sense of embarrassment somewhere within you as you creep towards the entryway, keeping your body low and your steps light. You can hear muted, muffled voices through the cheap wood, fingertips carefully lifting the peep hole cover to look through. 

You hold your breath, stunned. There are two women just an arms length from you, both of them beautiful and horrifyingly familiar to you. Rei, Touya’s mother, stands with her head held high despite the nervous fiddling of her hands. Fuyumi, his sister, is clasping the strap of her shoulder bag with a white knuckled grip. 

“Mother, are you sure this is the place?” she asks, her eyes darting anxiously over the surroundings, “maybe Shouto made the wrong assumption”.

Rei is lovely, you think, even with the air of sadness  Her smile is gentle, and her expression softly determined. “The worst outcome to this is that he misunderstood the situation,” she replies, “but if this person is important to Touya then they’re important to me”. 

Fuyumi nods, shifting her weight between each foot. You inhale shakily through your nose, blinking back the dryness in your eye as you continue to watch through the lense. 

“He said… there was a child”. 

Your forehead bumps against the door as you startle, cursing under your breath, lungs tightening as the dread floods your system. The two women freeze alongside you, observing the door cautiously, glancing at one another in silent conversation. 

“If you’re there, we aren’t here to hurt you,” Rei lifts her hand, and rests it against the door in a show of reassurance, “I believe you know my eldest son. We only want to talk”. 

The push and pull of guilt, relief and fear forces the weight of your body to sink forward, drawn to the sincerity in her voice. There is no amount of time or distance that would dilute the loyalty you felt towards Touya. Letting them in would be a betrayal. 

“Please,” Fuyumi’s voice is wet, thickening with tears, “he’s my older brother. He’s refusing to talk about you or— or anything! We just want to—”

Rei turns to soothe her, and you’re reminded of your own parenthood. If something ever happened to Kaiyo you might just scorch the earth in your attempts to find him. It’s hard to swallow the swell in your throat as you watch his sister turn into the touch, seeking that comfort. 

Touya had loved his mother, a difficult thing for him to stomach but true all the same. He’d grieved the attention he never received from her, but you knew he didn’t blame her, and it is that which leads your hand to the door handle. 

Time feels like it’s in suspension. To see them standing so clearly before you without the film of dirt from the glass is still a shock to process. Behind you is a home filled to the brim with evidence of your own criminal involvement, the first photograph they’ll see hung in the hallway is of their grandson.

Kaiyo deserved his chance at having a family. 

“Please come in,” your fingers are trembling where they sit in your pocket, curled around the divots in the star. Please forgive me, you think. 

You step backwards to allow them through, both accepting with a short bow and a quiet thank you. It’s unnerving and tense, their stares lingering along the walls and shelves, the mother and daughter now hand in hand as they take a seat on your couch. 

“Would…” a blunt point of the star sinks into the thickest part of your palm, the sensation acting as your tether, “…can I get you anything to drink?” 

“Some tea would be wonderful,” Rei concedes, her voice full of earnest and so light it’s almost wistful. As you steep the leaves you can’t help but get the feeling she knew you needed more time.

The ceramic cups are old, stained with time and well loved. You fill them with hot water, tendrils of steam billowing warmth across your face, and place them atop the coffee table before kneeling onto the floor. 

Beneath your mug is a clumsily drawn cat, the marker permanently stained into the wood. There are others, too, little marks left by mistake. Faint lines of kanji where the ink had seeped through the paper, hearts and stick figures and stars. Rei reaches her hand out to trace a finger along them, lips pressed thinly in a sad smile. 

“I apologise for our unexpected intrusion,” she tells you, “I’m Himura Rei and this is my daughter, Todoroki Fuyumi".

“Believe it or not I’ve been waiting for someone to find us,” your hands wrap tightly around the hot cup, incognisant of the sting to your skin, “it was beginning to eat away at me a little bit”.

“Then Shouto was right,” Fuyumi mirrors you, keeping her voice soothing and calm as she speaks even as her eyes are tearful. You recall Touya telling you she was a teacher, and you can see why. 

“You did know him,” she says, “it looks like he spent… a lot of time here”.

You hear yourself laugh breathlessly at her tiptoeing of the subject, “he practically lived here until he decided to join the league. After that he stayed away for our safety, I suppose”. 

She nods, seeming to accept your answer, glancing then to her mother in a silent plea for assistance. “Could you tell us what he was like?” there’s a mellow, apologetic tone in Rei’s words, but to whom she was apologising you didn’t know.

“Could you tell us all the things we missed?”

So you sip your drink to smooth the dryness in your throat and it’s scalding against the roof of your tongue, and you tell them everything you know. 

After your first meeting you’d thought about him every day for a week, haunted by the intensity in his eyes and the marks on his skin. You had talked and talked and he had done nothing but listen. While you thought you'd never see him again it wasn’t long at all until he came back to your dingy clinic, this time of his own accord, in need of painkillers and suturing. 

He’d gone straight to you, rudely bypassing the doctors with any qualification in the ward, and shoved some money into the palm of your hand. He was still young, his attempts at carrying himself like a man seemed more like puppetry to you, but even so you entertained it and attended to his wounds. 

“Since I’m still not fully trained you’ll need to sign this”. You remember holding out the clipboard to him, your supervisor lingering by the curtains, the impatient tap of her foot echoing in your ears. 

“Touya—” 

Back then his aversion to hearing that name was much greater. Every time it’d passed through your lips was as if you had pressed your thumb on a fresh bruise, and he’d lash out in kind. 

“Don’t call me that here!” 

“Why? Are you running from something?” 

He’d laughed at you with eyes that glittered like he was about to cry, but the tears never came, they never could. “Running implies that someone is looking for me,” his skin pulled uncomfortably taut as he smiled, “there’s no one to run from”.

“He dyed his hair black soon after that,” the mug held between your trembling hands grows cold, your tea mostly untouched and leaving a faint brown ring around the ceramic, “sometimes he would visit me all soaked with rain, and the colour would run down the back of his neck”. 

You pause every so often to offer them a chance to ask questions, but the two women remain quiet, listening raptly to your story. Their genuine trust and willingness to believe you bore a sense of unease, or perhaps guilt that you’d had him to yourself while they’d been in mourning. 

“Then things eventually progressed to… more,” even with the air of melancholy, you couldn’t help but take refuge in the normalcy of being timid around your partner's family, sheepish as you recount your relationship. 

“Did you love him?” Rei asks, and though not unkind, her question makes you feel unspeakably lonely. 

Loving Touya had felt nothing like a free fall, there was no moment in which you woke up and realised your feelings. It’d been no great feat to love him, no grand prize or climax at the end of a long battle; you saw all the worst parts of him and it didn’t change a thing. Even with all his flaws your feelings only deepened until they hollowed you out. 

Despite it all, you had walked into it knowingly, each step forward towards him a purposeful choice. 

You have only your own hunger to thank. Your eighteen year old self had been fiercely persistent, and however much he denied it, you knew he was drawn to your sympathy. Even though he was never entirely honest you pursued him with the small truths he did offer, motivated by the selfish wish to see him happy. 

“Yes,” in sickness and violence, in struggle and fear; you’d loved him through holidays and birthdays, through time spent apart and nights spent alone, “I love him”. 

“And the little boy, is he your son?”

Kaiyo. An unexpected yet happy accident. Named after forgiveness and the spitting image of his father, a red haired cherub, you both already knew the answer. “You can say it, Ms. Himura,” your smile strained as you run your thumb along the handle of your mug, “he’s our son. Mine and his”. 

Fuyumi exhales shakily, slumping forward like the fight left her body along with it. You can see the moment your confession truly registers, misty eyed and sparing a glance between one another. Turning on your knees, you reach into the shelves of the TV cabinet, grasping the framed photo of your son as an infant. 

Rei takes it from you delicately as you offer it to her with an outstretched hand and traces her fingers across the glass pane, circling the swell of Kaiyo’s pink cheek. It’s a personal favourite of yours — his arms are held above his head in triumph, the lower half slightly blurred from the excited kick of his feet. He’s grinning widely, so much so his eyes are squinted. 

Touya had been the one to take that photo, making ridiculous noises from behind the camera, the ghost of their intermingling laughter still ringing in your ears. 

“His name is Kaiyo and he’ll be turning four soon,” you watch warmly as Fuyumi leans over her mothers shoulder to get a better look, hand clutching at the fabric of her knit sweater, “the pregnancy was unexpected. We didn’t… I told Touya I would raise him myself, but he insisted on taking responsibility”. 

As you recall, the very notion that he wouldn’t stick around had offended him. He loved his son. He’d even cried over the baby scans, dry blood still smeared across black and white where they sit in your bedroom drawer. But you could see how the fear had eaten away at him throughout those nine months, restlessly doting on you and bringing home stolen things for the baby every few days but never being able to touch your growing bump. 

“Then, why did he join the league?” Fuyumi asks, but you were intuitive enough to see the real question between the lines. Why wasn’t any of this enough? Why did he leave this behind, too? 

You’d guessed from the beginning that his relationship with his family was, at best, a strained one. In reality it was worse than you could’ve imagined. The small pieces to his past that he let slip every now and then would always fill you with distress, at a loss for words. 

The reveal of who his father had been all you needed to understand the secrecy, of both his identity and of your relationship. 

“In the end it was Stain,” you cross your arms over the surface of the coffee table, knees folded beneath it, and resist the urge to hide your face, “he continued to use his quirk so his condition was worsening, and his anger towards Endeavor had been festering for years”.

You ignore their plaintive wince at the mention of the Pro Hero, blunt nails curling into your inner wrists as you continue. “Touya felt his death didn’t matter. It didn’t change a thing,” and he had to watch his world move on without acknowledging it, “everything Endeavor did made him susceptible to Stain’s cause”.

Stain’s temporary reign of terror over Japan was the first time he’d ever heard anyone criticise hero society so blatantly. You remember the vengeful kindling in his eyes as he recited the vigilante’s words, your son sound asleep in his arms and none the wiser. 

It was that night, and every night that followed, that the stress had started to gnaw at your chest until you felt your lungs collapse under the weight. Panic gripped you each time he returned home with a new injury, the smell of smoke suffocating and clinging to the futon covers no matter how much you washed them. He carried a feral sense of excitement and restlessness that left you helpless — something had breathed new life into him, and it had not been you. 

Fighting had been pointless, your pleas like water to a ducks back. He loved you, he loved his son, but somehow he had rationalised that burning himself and the world would give rise to a better place.

“He already died once,” your smile is tight but not as tight as your throat,  “and it did nothing. So this time he’d do it where it couldn’t be hidden, where everyone would have to look right at his self immolation and know their part in causing it”. 

It's then that Rei carefully places the photograph on the table as she lowers herself onto her knees, the frame remaining upright with the support of its stand. With her hands resting one atop the other, she leans forward into a full bow in front of you. 

You’re stunned with arms suspended in the air as you hesitate to reach for her, a swell of tears lining your eyes at her softly spoken apology. Your son watches over the exchange, his presence poignant even through an image. 

“Ms. Himura, please lift your head,” you shift towards her, close enough to thread your fingers over her own, feeling the peaks of her knuckles against your palm. 

“I failed him as his mother,” she says, overturning her hand to hold yours and squeezing, “it was those failures that led to your own suffering. I’m sorry”. 

In your peripheral you see Fuyumi as she moves to mirror her mother, sitting close beside you, fingers ghosting a chill along your forearm where she comes to entangle with the two of you. 

“Please don’t take responsibility for my pain. Besides, it wasn’t always terrible,” you stare at the knot of limbs, comforted by the gentle warmth of their touch, “I don’t think… I’ve ever met anyone who loves as much as your son does”. 

Rei’s eyes fall shut, a faint pinch between her brows, sorrowful as she replies: “I know”.  

Her expression is so full of regret it’s almost contagious, drawing you in and reminding you of your own mistakes. There’d been so many opportunities that you could’ve fought him, could’ve said something, but didn’t for fear of pushing him further away. 

“How did you find me?” 

Your voice cuts through the plaintive silence and you shrink under their gaze as their eyes lift. Fuyumi speaks in place of her mother, her thumb rubbing back and forth over your wrist. 

“Shouto saw you as Touya was being transferred, and in all honesty he didn’t think anything of it until Touya attacked him to keep the attention on himself,” she explains with an amused lilt, “he appeared to be very protective of you”.

Idiot, you think fondly. 

“I assure you he only told my mother,” Fuyumi squeezes your forearm once again as if to comfort you, “he was concerned and wasn’t sure if he just misunderstood. But we wanted to look for you to make sure”. 

“Then, the authorities aren’t aware?” 

“No,” Rei murmurs. 

You’re surprised by just how much you were being upheld by stress, shoulders sagging forward in relief, sinking your teeth into the soft inside of your cheek to withhold a whimper. 

“Thank you,” you say hoarsely, and you repeat it again and again until the two women have swaddled you in their arms, surrounded by the gentle scent of lavender and detergent. 

“You’re family to Touya, therefore you’re family to us,” Fuyumi reassures you, “you don’t have to do this alone anymore if you don’t want to”. 

Family. The prospect almost seemed too good to be true, an enticing offer laid out only to trap you at the end. You couldn’t risk Kaiyo’s safety or wellbeing, but their sincerity is so palpable it’s stifling. 

“How is he?” you ask instead, “is he safe?” 

“This knowledge isn’t available to the public, but he has been moved into a private villain corrections centre,” Rei looks at Kaiyo’s picture as she speaks, and you wonder if she sees Touya looking back.

“He will be undergoing rehabilitation with the hopes of one day joining us for a period of probation,” she continues, turning to you with a soft smile, “rest assured we have no intention of removing his autonomy. Touya consciously chose to carry out his actions and he should take responsibility for it…”

Her voice breaks, “… but we had our own part to play in his creation, and believe he deserves a second chance”. 

It’d sound like a perfect dream if you did not know Touya as intimately as you do. You’re unable to repress the grimace that crosses your expression. 

“He won’t be happy about that,” your eyes fall closed momentarily as you exhale, “he won’t see it your way. You already took his autonomy by removing his choice to die, that’s what he’ll think”. 

“You really do understand him, don’t you?” Fuyumi laughs mournfully, “he’s refusing to cooperate. He was relatively fine in police custody but since the transfer he’s become more hostile”.

The room grows a little smaller with every word. “Do you think it’s because I was there?” 

“Shouto asked twice who you were and Touya attacked him both times. It’s a big part of why he came to me about it, and why we knew we had to find you,” Rei says. 

It would make sense. Touya always smothered his anxiety with anger, a response that allowed him some control or imitation of power, and power meant safety. You knew he found common ground with his youngest brother, that being the reason he ultimately lost to him, but that didn’t mean he trusted Shouto. The thought of him restlessly wondering if you and Kaiyo were in danger causes your chest to tighten. 

“Maybe if you’re able to tell him we’re okay, he’ll start responding to treatment?” 

“Maybe,” Rei nods and then the apartment is veiled in heavy silence. It wasn’t unlike sitting at his wake. You wished he could bear witness to how much love you all felt for him. 

Suddenly, a muted beeping sounds from the thin, mint coloured watch clasped around Rei’s wrist. She sighs and pressed her lips into a thin, displeased line. “I’m sorry but we can’t stay longer. They still get a little nervous if I’m out too long,” she says. 

Right. She too had spent time locked away in a hospital. It must be difficult, you think, to have a mistake follow you wherever you went. A perfect recovery did not mean other people would forgive, or forget. 

Maybe one day, Touya would see that he and his mother are more similar than he realises. 

“That’s fine, Ms. Himura,” you bow forward towards her, and then again while addressing Fuyumi, “I’m grateful to you both for finding us”. 

“And we’re grateful you gave us a chance,” Fuyumi lifts her arms in an aborted motion as if to hug you, but decides against it, “we’d like to leave you with our contact information. If there’s anything you need or… if you’d like Kaiyo to visit, please don’t hesitate to call”. 

Their touch lingers long after they leave. The evening moves on, sun dipping below the seam of the horizon as it always does as if nothing had changed, an unintended reminder of how minuscule your problems really were. Kaiyo is returned home by his sitter, excitedly babbling about his day, rushing throughout the apartment with bare feet padding over the spot where his grandmother had been seated only hours before. 

You’re reminded of how intuitive he is when he curls himself around your thigh, asking you if you’re okay, if you were feeling sick or sad. There’s a guilt there that can only come with parenthood, your depression smothered like a wet blanket as you pull forward a smiling mask to wear, hoping it will placate his worry. 

“I’m okay baby,” you tell him with fingers combing through unkempt red hair, his eyes wide and bright and distinctly your own, “I’m just a little tired”.  

There is an anger that accompanies the insurmountable love you feel when you look at your son. It is difficult to accept his abandonment, to know you will one day have to be the one imparting that pain into him. So gentle, excitable and considerate of those around him, qualities taught to him by his supposedly villainous parents.

Despite his mistakes and doubts, Touya tried to be a good father, he’d wanted to be one. You suspected a lot of it came from a place of wishfulness, parenting his child in a way he’d wanted for himself, as painful as it might’ve been to realise just how little he’d mattered to his own. And you can see it now — Touya’s inherited wounds are steadily present on Kaiyo, a passing of the torch, and all you can do is try to stop the bleeding.

If you truly thought about it, you could say your whole relationship had carried a disquieting dark shadow beneath its skin, something of a spreading blood wheel. You overlooked it anytime he was callous and unruly, you’d cry and ache but it pleased you to know he still cared enough about himself to be angry. 

Soon after joining the league he’d gradually plateaued, urges satisfied, and you should’ve noticed. 

“Mama, look,” Kaiyo appears and lifts a thin sheet towards you, paper wrinkling under his chubby fingers, “I drawed dad!”

“Drew,” you warmly correct, cradling his cheeks as you duck to press a kiss to his forehead. The drawing is that of three stick figures, each one distinct with features. Touya’s figure has his black spiked hair, and across the lower half of its face is a purple shadow. His scars, you assume. 

It was all perfectly normal to Kaiyo; the sutures and rings, the burns, the ever present smell of smoke. From the moment he could open his eyes, they would follow his father with love and excitement. The admiration would sometimes unsettle Touya, too familiar, too much like looking into a reflection. 

“It’s brilliant, baby,” you tell him, gentle as you take it from his grasp, “shall we put it on the pinboard along with the others?”

He huffs, incensed by your request, “but I want to show my friends!”

Therein lies the dilemma. You wonder how often this problem will crop up in the years to come, how quickly you might run out of acceptable excuses as he becomes old enough to understand. Dabi was too easily recognised, even in your son's amateur rendition of him. 

“I really love this one though Kai, it has all of us,” you twist your lips into a cartoonish pout, pulling the sweet sound of a laugh from him, “please can I keep it?”

His childish glare withers as he fights a smile, the restrained happiness plain on his face and entirely contagious. “Ok mama, I guess,” he relents, innocent and forgiving, head tilted and cheeks pink under your praise. In moments like this, you can truly understand a parent's wish to freeze time. 

You recall Touya’s claim of putting good into the world before his death. You too could hardly believe that you’d raised such an unequivocally good little boy. But as you watch your son appraise his art with an excited wiggle, you’re reminded that children are not a tool for redemption. 

“I love you,” I promise I’ll be better for you, “and dad loves you too. How about we draw him another picture? I’ll do one aswell". 

“Okay!” he takes your hand and begins to pull you along the hallway towards his room, your back bent uncomfortably to lessen his reach. Halfway to his destination, Kaiyo pauses, pulling anxiously at the hem of his metallica shirt. 

“When… When is dad coming back from work?” 

That’s right. Work in Okinawa, you’d told him. A terribly flimsy excuse given in a moment of panic. At the time you just wanted him to have a reason to hold onto, to reassure himself with, but it was slowly coming back to bite you. 

“He still has a lot to do baby,” an understatement if you’d ever heard one, “it’ll be a little while. But we can be patient, can’t we?”

His lips purse into a pout, eyes shimmering with unshed tears as he bravely nods, and the thought of Rei’s phone number waiting in your contacts lingers in the forefront of your mind. 

Truthfully it haunts you throughout the rest of your week, stomach lined thickly with guilt. You eat, you work, you walk Kaiyo to school with eyes on every corner. You sleep in Touya’s most recently worn hoodie and pretend it’s his skin, his hands, too attached to his scent to wash it. 

Kaiyo continues to draw, to write and create. He brings graded homework back from school to keep in one of your old folders along with his other keepsakes; just in case Touya comes back, just so he can show him. 

You were looking over some of the old home made cards the night you finally called Rei, reliving another time and wondering if it ever really had been better, or if it’d just been a figment of your imagination. 

It can be difficult to know when a memory has been altered by nostalgia. 

“What’s this?” Touya had said as Kaiyo handed him a Father’s Day card, the inside lined with confetti and star sequins that toppled into his lap when opened. 

“I— I made it for you,” Kaiyo had explained nervously with eyes wide, hands flexing at his sides, “see… that’s you and— and me!” 

“Those potato shaped things are us?” Kaiyo had visibly deflated even with Touya’s playful tone, “this is pretty fuckin’ cool if you ask me”. 

“Freakin’,” you’d gently chided, lacking any heat for it to sound truly scolding at the time, too pleased by Kaiyo’s excited dancing. You recall the relaxed smirk on Touya’s lips and how he’d pressed a kiss to your shoulder, a rare moment of him being truly at ease and present. 

“And the heart, why s’it blue and not red?” 

“Because of your fire, dad!” Kaiyo grinned as he lifted his arms, mimicking the pose of a hero, “I hope I have blue flames, just like you”. 

Fragile. You'd watched on as Touya’s expression became strained, closing the card and setting it on the table, “I guess we better keep it somewhere safe since you worked so hard on it”. 

Into the folder it went. 

You decide to make the leap the following morning, allowing Kaiyo to sleep a little longer while you sift through your shared wardrobe for a suitable outfit. Work had happily allowed you a day off — even though they were chronically short staffed, you didn’t often call in sick so they were glad to give it to you. 

Usually Kaiyo would be dropped off with his sitter, an older woman known in the neighbourhood for fostering children. She’d been around for a long time, had seen and worked with many a criminal, and she understood young people more than you could comprehend. You trusted her with your son, trusted that even if he unknowingly slipped up she wouldn’t say a thing. 

But today that wasn’t necessary. You feel the fabric of the small knitted sweater between your fingers, frowning at the aggravating itch. He wouldn’t wear this, too scratchy, but it was also the closest to nice clothing he had. 

It isn’t like you’re living in poverty, but one mistake and it could very well be a truth for you. Clothes were fine as long as they fit — Kaiyo loved the little band tees his father would bring him more than anything, he didn’t care much for formal wear. 

The unbidden image of Touya’s displeased scowl flashing through your thoughts is enough for you to put the sweater back. Forcing Kaiyo to conform for the sake of his wealthier relatives, indicating that your own reality was something lesser, is something you wouldn’t do. Something Touya would hate you for. 

A small lump curled up beneath the futon covers begins to move. Kaiyo stirs, almost as if he can feel your turmoil, sleep lined eyes searching for you. 

“Ma?” 

“Mornin’, handsome,” a smile pulls naturally at your lips and warmth unfurls in your chest when he reaches for you. Half of his hair is pressed flat to the side of his head where he’d laid. 

He blinks slowly from your lap, his fathers nose wrinkling as he surveys the clothes you’d been mulling over. It’s an unspoken question. 

“I have a surprise for you so I wanted to find something nice for you to wear,” you tell him, hand rubbing along the length of his back. He perks up noticeably, foot kicking out against the sweater you’d just been holding. 

“Don’t like that one,” he says. You laugh, eyes closing for a moment to silently send thanks to Touya, even if he had just been a fleeting piece of your imagination. 

“Thought so,” you murmur, leaning forward to move it aside, “pick something for yourself, then. Make sure it’s something you’ll feel good in, because we’re going to meet some new people today”. 

“Who?” he asks, mouth wet and shaped into an ‘o’ as he fists his hands into another one of his dark coloured t-shirts. 

“You know how a lot of your friends have more than just a mother and father?”

He mumbles a dejected ‘yes’. 

“Well, I know you’ve been missing dad so I thought we might be able to connect with him in a different way,” you explain, helping him lift his pyjama shirt over his head and refraining from pinching his belly. 

“What would you say if I told you… I was going to take you to see your grandma right now?” 

“Grandma?!” he squeaks from behind the clean shirt you loop over his head, frowning then as you help him push his arms through the sleeves, releasing a small noise of complaint. 

“That’s right, your dad's mother,” — your smile dims slightly while he insists on dressing himself, reminded of how quickly the time has passed, how much he was growing — “I guess he didn’t talk about his family a lot did he?”

Kaiyo shakes his head excitedly, bouncing on his toes as he struggles to tug his pants over his clean underwear. He relents and allows you to do up the fiddly top button of his trousers. 

“That’s not all…” 

“More?!”

“You have an auntie and two uncles,” you tell him, and his hands fly to cover his mouth as he begins to dance with excitement. His joy is contagious, you feel it fill you and spill over as you pull him back into your lap, holding him tightly. 

Rei and the siblings, that had been the deal. No Endeavor. Touya may forgive the former, but never the latter. You wouldn’t do that to him.

It isn’t strenuous getting him out the door, but it is taxing to get him to the station, hair once again tucked under a knitted beanie despite the day's warmth. He jumps over the cracks in the pavement, follows the pattern with his feet, stops to greet every stray he sees. 

And you let him. Because his happiness is your own, and you dread to imagine him without it. Maybe it was selfish for you to cover his ears to the cruelty around him. He knew of fear, pain and crime, he knew that people sometimes did bad things to others. But it had never been personal to him, not yet. 

Perhaps the biggest question as a parent was just that — at what point do you expose your children to what may hurt them? 

You had told Rei the cover story ahead of time, embarrassed by your own lies, but she’d been understanding. Gentle. Somehow it only left you more ashamed. 

You wanted to preserve the innocent lense in which he viewed the world, wanted to encase the image he held of his father in amber. Because the power of those traumas stay with you, chemically alter you; they become the epicentre of your nightmares, they shape your convictions and morals, they fuel your will. Especially as a child. Touya knew that more than anyone. 

You observe Kaiyo while he watches the surroundings change, clutching the backrest of his seat as he looks out the train window, propped up on his knees and ignorant of the glare from the elderly woman beside him. Folded on her lap is the morning newspaper, a grainy black and white photo of flames and the words ‘Where is Endeavor’s Villainous Son?’ printed across the front. 

You adjust the hat, his eyes fixed on the moving landscape. He’d never been this far out of the Kanagawa prefecture, Touya’s unease with regards to your safety always taking precedence over the freedom to explore, so you let him press his nose to the glass and laugh as his voice begins to vibrate with the train. 

“Do you remember the names I told you?”

“Yumi!”

“Fuyumi,” you emphasise, tucking the tag by his neck back into the confines of his shirt, “who else?”

He holds out his fist, fingers unfurling one by one as he counts, seeking your praises as he goes. “Fuyumi… Shouto… Natsu…o… Natsuo!”

The two hour journey passes in what feels like a minute. With one blink the train arrives in Shizuoka, slow as it pulls up to the second platform, the anticipation knotting thickly like yarn in your gut. Kaiyo, as perceptive as he can be, is bubbling with too much enthusiasm to notice your inner turmoil. 

You hold him on your hip, arms pressing him close into your chest as the sliding doors part, and step into the throngs of people waiting to board the train. As if you’d been in a soundproof bubble the noise of the city amplifies, a cacophony of voices and cries and whistles echoing uncomfortably in your ears. There are suits everywhere, hats tipped over eyes, too many unknowns in such a crowded space. 

The relief of stepping out onto the clear street almost buckles you. Kaiyo is squirming in complaint, wanting to be put back on the pavement but you hike him up a little higher. You couldn’t let him down, couldn’t let him out of reach, couldn’t let anyone take him. 

“Sorry baby, you can walk soon. I just need to find the car first—”

You’re interrupted then by a low, nasal voice, startling you to pivot on your feet. Behind you stands a large figure, bowler hat held politely to his chest as he bows forward. Kaiyo shrinks into the crook of your neck at the sight of a stranger, sensing your unease. The man repeats your name, the well groomed moustache sitting on his top lip moving as he speaks, curled into spirals at either end. He’s formally dressed, wearing a three piece suit and a large black topcoat. 

“That is you, correct?”

Grappling at your thoughts, you recall the riddle that you had given to Rei after her suggestion of having you picked up. She hadn’t wanted you to make your own way there, adamant that the family staff would drive the two of you to her home, and you gave in only at the promise of a safeword.

You inhale to steady yourself. “What is it that, given one, you’ll have either two or none?”

His eyes soften considerably but it does nothing to soothe the tension, only when he gives you the answer do you let yourself relax. “A choice,” he says, “my apologies. I should have been more considerate of your circumstances”. 

Circumstances. What a kind understatement. 

“My name is Ono Hiroki, I’m under the service of Ms. Himura and will be your driver,” he continues with a well meaning tilt to his head as he leans towards Kaiyo in greeting, “and what is the young master's name?”

You feel your son shift beneath your chin, presumably to look up at Hiroki, but he remains stubbornly quiet. “This is Kaiyo,” the grip he has on your shirt lessens at the sound of your voice, “we appreciate you coming out here to meet us but… please don’t refer to him with that title”. 

Touya would turn his nose up if he heard. You can almost imagine the shiver that may have run down his back just now, wherever he may be, and the thought forces you to hide a smile into Kaiyo’s knitted hat. 

“Of course,” Hiroki assents, and he begins to lead you towards the car. You cringe at how obviously it stands out amongst the more common models, clearly something owned by someone with great wealth and status. Even with having chosen your best outfit, the clothes on your back suddenly felt like straw, cheap and unfit for the occasion. 

The drive is smooth, though your sense of time becomes warped — had someone asked you how long it took to arrive, you wouldn’t have an answer for them. Kaiyo, just as he had done on the train, pressed his nose and fingers to the window; leaving behind murky smudges against the glass. 

As the car pulls to the curb you’re left feeling alienated by the neighbourhood. Worse, Hiroki steps out and speeds around to your door, opening it for you with a reflexive bow. 

It feels… uncomfortable. 

The property itself is walled off from the street and the building is large, though you’re sure that’s only in comparison to your own homes. You’re drawn in by the greenery that surrounds it, though the trees were likely put there for the sake of privacy the garden was clearly a labour of love. 

It appears to be a single story house, the roofs tiled dark brown with broad waves and an exterior hallway that frames around each room. You could picture Rei tending to her garden while her children sat on the veranda in the summer months. 

It was beautiful. 

Hiroki slowly leads you up the path, the gravel between each step crunching beneath your shoes. The pace can be attributed to Kaiyo’s adamance in standing on each individual stone, which the man kindly indulges. 

The entrance is made up of a large sliding door with plaster slitted windows. Hiroki pushes it across and moves aside to allow you into the house. You murmur in wonderment at the width of the genkan, the wall above the shoe cupboard  lined with traditional calligraphy. 

“Yes— it’s fine! I’ll bring them through…”

A sweet, familiar voice echoes throughout the entryway. Kaiyo tucks himself against the back of your knees as Fuyumi rounds the corner, socked feet slipping slightly on the wooden flooring in her excitement. 

Her lips part to greet you, the words caught in her throat as her gaze is drawn to the movement behind your legs. Typically Kaiyo could be quite rambunctious around others, loud and eager to befriend others. Here you can feel his anxiety, how small he must feel in this large, unfamiliar place. 

Fuyumi, too, is at a loss for words. A little pale, teary eyed as she blinks, visibly composing herself in front of you both.  “It’s good to see you again, Fuyumi,” you say as the silence stretches on, taking pity on her. 

Her demeanour lightens, and she appears grateful. Somehow her awkward loss of words and your son's hesitance lent you courage even if you, too, did not have your footing. 

“How about we take off our shoes and make proper introductions?” the question ends with a soft hum, a gentle verbal push, reaching back to pluck the hat from Kaiyo’s head. 

His hair is mussed, cowlicks pointed in all directions after being pressed beneath the yarn. You run your hand through it, wetting the pads of your fingers to flatten some of the more unruly curls down until they’re neat. The red is brighter in the sunlit genkan, and Fuyumi does well to conceal her sharp inhale. 

Kaiyo steps forward, nervously wringing out the material of his t-shirt, and Fuyumi lowers herself to his height as if approaching a cornered animal. Tender with her motions, she reaches out to still his anxious tic, ducking her head to smile where he can see it. A teacher, you remember. 

“It’s so wonderful to meet you Kaiyo. I’m your aunt Fuyumi,” she says. He turns over his wrist and takes three of her fingers into his fist, head nodding forward in what you know to be a bow. 

“Nice to meet you, aunt Fuyumi,” he replies. 

“Don’t worry about formalities, sweetheart,” she uses her free hand to straighten out the hem of the shirt, her eyes flickering over the logo with some recognition, “you can call me ‘Yumi. You are my nephew, after all”. 

Kaiyo straightens his back, overjoyed by the privilege, and looks up to share the feeling with you. If you could read his thoughts you’d guess it was something along the lines of told you her name was ‘Yumi, mama. 

“Natsuo isn’t here yet as he stayed overnight at his girlfriend's dorm,” Fuyumi continues as she rises to her feet, still keeping a firm hold of Kaiyo’s hand, “but mother and Shouto are in the tatami room. She likes having all the doors open on a day like this while we sit together, would you like to meet them?”

“Yes!”. In his excitement he pushes up onto the tip of his toes, shedding his timid attitude and grinning so wide his cheeks begin to pinken. It’s infectious, Fuyumi brightening considerably at his sudden comfort in her presence, and she begins to guide you both through the house. 

Soft spoken murmurings become louder as you approach the open sliding door into what you presume is the tatami room. Kaiyo pauses a few steps before, hidden behind the panel, waiting until you’re close enough for him to wrap an arm around your thigh. 

“You’re ok, baby,” you whisper warmly, “let’s go in together”. 

You enter the room with an awkward gait, slowed by the weight of your son against your leg, the matts firm beneath your feet. Immediately you are embraced by the scent of earth and autumn bellflower. Rei is seated on a pale green cushion across from Shouto, cross legged and holding a steaming cup of tea with both hands, on the table between them is a vase blooming purples and blues. You garner their attention, self-consciousness twisting uncomfortably in your chest as they appraise you and Kaiyo, a part of you always ready to jump to his defences. 

But the two, despite the cool air and unreadable expressions, only seem to thaw as their eyes fall to your son. 

The light knock of Shouto’s mug levelling atop the table surface brings you above water. “Greet your grandmother properly, sweetheart,” you step further into the space and lower to your knees, Kaiyo mirroring your actions with caution, facing Rei with his hands resting politely on his knees. 

You bow forward, thank you for having us Ms. Himura, and watch with fond exasperation as Kaiyo leans until his forehead is touching the tatami in your peripheral. “It’s nice to meet you, grandmother. It’s— it’s nice to meet you, uncle Shouto,” he recites, “my name is Kaiyo!”

You smile at the force behind the words, as if he’d practised them in his mind repeatedly before arriving. Rei appears to come to the same conclusion, returning the words and beckoning him to sit beside her, and Fuyumi ushers you to take a seat by Shouto.

In closing the distance Rei appears mystified, eyeline wet as she blinks back the tears, hands lifting to cradle your son's face in her palms. Kaiyo tenses for a moment on contact, shoulders relaxing as her thumbs graze over the swell of his cheeks. You wonder who she was truly seeing as she looked at Kaiyo, a little boy almost identical to her own. “My hands are a little cold, aren’t they?” her voice is soft, weak. There’s an intonation of grief, of regret, and an apology in her eyes. 

And your son, ever loving and perceptive, covers them with his own as if to tell her it doesn’t bother him in the slightest. Then he shifts closer on his knees until he’s tucked against her chest, her chilled touch running along the length of his back as she holds him. At your side you feel Shouto exhale a short, hot breath of emotion. 

“Tea?”

You look to see Fuyumi has set out more cups, now with a pale cream teapot in her grip, unphased by the temperature as tendrils of steam wisp and dance from the spout. Along the curve of her jaw is a single tear, and she tilts to wipe it on her shoulder with a weak sniffle. You feel it too, pulling the sleeves of your shirt over your wrists to conceal the trembling, lifting your chin to keep the emotions behind your eyelids.

“That’d be great,” you nod, accepting the cup that Shouto slides towards you, “thank you”. 

You’re tempted to thank Fuyumi again as you bring the ceramic to your lips, a slight sting to the skin of your palms and your lower lip, breathing in the potent scent of green tea. This family must enjoy it a little stronger, steeping the leaves for longer, the bitterness heavy on your tongue. There is at least some respite in the distraction it provides — you could not talk if your mouth was busy. 

Kaiyo ignores the silences, leaving his grandmother's lap to squeeze himself next to Shouto. You try not to laugh, the youngest at a loss for what to do as your son looks up at him in wonderment and admiration, though it is hard to restrain yourself at the barrage of questions Kaiyo targets him with. 

“Are you really going to be a pro hero, uncle Shouto?”

“I am,” he replies solemnly, “I’ll be a hero that my family can rely on. Do you want to be a hero?”

“Hell no!” 

“Kaiyo—”

“I’m going to go to space,” he barrels on without a care, too wrapped up in his own passion to recognise the informality, but with Rei’s quiet laugh you realise there was no need to worry. As Kaiyo stumbles over his words about asteroids and comets, about how the sunset on mars is blue and isn’t that so cool, Shouto seems to relax even further. 

“He doesn’t think he’s good at talking to children,” Fuyumi whispers at your side, “believe me, Kaiyo is doing him a favour”. 

Even as the time passes Shouto’s tea remains steaming in his left hand while yours begins to cool, and Rei observes their back and forth with an autumn bellflower petal between her fingers, gently as she handles it like it were something precious. There’s no tension, any growing pains soothed as Kaiyo soaks up the attention, the beating heart of the room. 

“I’m gonna go to space an’ clean up all the junk,” he announces. A goal that you’d heard many a time, manifested in his fathers arms one evening as they’d sat together watching a pre-quirk era documentary about space travel. 

“Pro heroes came along and suddenly we forgot everything that used to be important to us,” Touya muttered, “going to space is—”

“—a hero's job in its own right,” Shouto says. 

You do well not to drop your drink as Kaiyo launches himself into Shouto’s lap, one of his arms outstretched to not spill his own while the other steadies the boy to his chest. Gleeful, childish laughter wells throughout the room, paired with the balmy sun and the whistle of a Japanese tit flitting through the gardens. 

“Dad told me that too,” you feel as the mother, the sister and the brother all hold their breath at the mention of Touya, the one topic they weren’t sure if they could even touch upon, “do you really think so, uncle Shouto?” 

“I do…” he shifts, hugging Kaiyo only after glancing at you for permission, “...and you don’t need to prefix my name with ‘uncle’ every time. You can be casual”. 

“Prefix?” 

“A word that comes before another,” you interject gently, “he means you can just call him Shouto, baby”. 

In that instance your back straightens at the sound of another voice ringing throughout the house, low and distant. “I’m home,” they shout with familiarity, “sorry I’m late!”.

Fuyumi jumps to her feet, leaving to meet the new arrival, and Kaiyo watches her go with a chubby fist curled into Shouto’s sweater. He pats his hand awkwardly to Kaiyo’s thigh in reassurance, “don’t worry, it’s just Natsuo. He’s my other older brother”. 

Kaiyo lessens his grip, tentative as he watches the open doorway, and you can’t help but to reflexively reach out to pinch his cheek. “It’ll be fine,” you murmur. 

Your first impression of Natsuo is that he’s much bigger than his siblings. He must’ve inherited his build from his father and his demeanour in spite of him, because even with the chill that he brings, his grin is refreshing. The type of person that sets you at ease and wordlessly invites you in, that actively wants you to feel welcomed. 

“Wow, you’re really here. You’re really…” Natsuo's throat bobs as he swallows his next words, silenced by Fuyumi’s encouraging touch. Rather, he hastily greets his mother with a kiss to the cheek, and then he settles down at the table facing Kaiyo. 

A litany of emotions flicker through his face, like he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel. Even so, his smile doesn’t waver as he introduces himself to you, nervously rubbing his neck as he bows. 

“And you must be Kaiyo. I’m Natsuo, I guess that makes me your uncle,” he inhales deeply, chest expanding and falling, “you… you really do look like your dad”. 

He sounds mournful. Kaiyo senses the change in atmosphere, though he doesn’t understand it, and the anxiety settles into his restless fingers as they pick a thread loose from Shouto’s sweater. 

Fuyumi lightly swats at him: “Natsuo, you’re freaking them out!” 

He gives a wounded complaint, dramatic only in a way you can find with siblings as he clutches at his bicep, and Kaiyo laughs. Like it was called upon, the sun moves from behind a cloud and brightens the room. 

“Sorry, buddy. I didn’t mean to be awkward, I was just surprised,” he says. 

Kaiyo slides down from Shouto’s lap, the youngest briefly forlorn at the loss before schooling his expression once more. “It’s ok, mama said I look like dad too. That’s why I’m so handsome,” he grins triumphantly. 

Your chest knots tightly at the spotlight it shines on your relationship with Touya, thoughts running amok with assumptions of what they must think of you, whether they approve of how you have raised Kaiyo. But despite your inner conflict the family don’t flinch, in fact — they smile with him. 

“Touya was indeed a beautiful little boy,” Rei briefly looks at the purple petal still held between her fingers, “I have a lot of pictures here. Would you like to see?” 

Kaiyo scrambles, almost knocking the table as he stands, “yes please, grandmother!”

There’s an air of nostalgia as she leans down to take his smaller hand into her own, in the way he looks up with love, height falling just short of her hip. The last time she had seen her children this size had been before she was sent away. You can’t even begin to comprehend such a loss.

“Just 'grandma' is fine,” she assures, and Kaiyo bounces with each step as they leave to find the photographs. 

You realise, then, that you are left alone with the siblings. Fuyumi pours more tea, the sound of running water loud in your ears, Natsuo’s words barely audible to you. 

“I wanted to thank you,” he says, cup in hand with his thumb anxiously tapping the rim, “for being there for Touya when we couldn’t be. For bringing Kaiyo here even when you have every right to distrust us”. 

The words pick away at the composure you’d maintained throughout the morning, their gratitude, while completely genuine, feels undeserved. In the grand scheme of things your relationship to Touya had not changed much at all, perhaps he’d staved off his mission for a while to play house with you, but the outcome was the same. 

“It isn’t you that I distrust,” the ‘Endeavor’ goes unspoken, “I wanted Kaiyo to keep his connection to his father. And you don’t need to thank me, I didn’t…”

Didn’t help him. Didn’t save him. Didn’t stop him. You only loved him. You laid with him in darkness and thought if you held him tight enough that something might crack, that the light might get in. 

“What I did wasn’t enough,” you tell them, the words broken with your wet exhale, “it was your actions, your dedication to understanding him. It’s… it’s you I should thank, Shouto”.

“Still,” Fuyumi is tender as she speaks, her hand resting between your shoulder blades, “knowing that all that time he wasn’t alone, knowing that he had you, it means a great deal to us all”. 

Even if he hadn’t been alone for those few years, there was still a rotten past from before he met you that he wouldn’t touch. Touya, stone faced and eyes narrowed, watching you from beneath the sheets of his hospital bed as if he were a wounded animal. Your slow, telegraphed actions, promising respite. That’s why despite wanting to stay away from you, he couldn’t — because you saw who he was, and you still loved him. The burning flesh, the distended skin, the smoke and the blood. You saw the bodies on the news, you saw the flames across the city, and you still loved him. 

Maybe that was the only thing you got right; because there isn’t much else worse than someone loving the potential of who you could be, or loving someone you’re not. In the end, you think, we all want to be seen first and loved second. 

“I do think he’s worried about you,” Shouto interjects plainly, “ he’s not directly asking about your wellbeing because he doesn’t want to reveal your identity, but the staff say he’s restless”. 

“You can be quite perceptive, Shouto,” Fuyumi says. 

“A friend of mine has told me that before,” there’s a flicker of a smile pulling at his lips and it warms his expression. If you needed to attach a word to it you’d pick fond. 

“Though he also said I make all the wrong assumptions about what I’m seeing,” he exhales through his nose in what you think might be a laugh, “that’s why I went to my mother first. This seemed… too important to be wrong about”.

“I’m truly grateful for your discretion,” you wipe a tear along the heel of your hand, ignoring the sting in your sinuses, “and for your acceptance of us”.

“You’re our family now,” Natsuo’s grin widens, “and I can’t say I wasn’t curious ‘bout the kind of person my brother fell in love with”.

You knew what Touya would say to that. You're too good for me, I don’t want to hurt you. You should’ve seen through it then, with every premature apology. People only say those things when they know they’re going to hurt you. 

Over your thoughts you hear the siblings begin to talk again with affection, your eyes drawn to the empty end of the table. You should be here, you think, I wish you were here. 

Kaiyo returns excitedly with a large picture frame held to his chest, the paint worn and flaking, encasing an old school photograph of Touya. His uniform is buttoned to the top, face youthful and pale, not a scar to be seen. You recall his discomfort with high collared clothing, always irritable against his sutures. 

Following behind is Rei with an album of family pictures. Some of them have been awkwardly cut, some burnt along the edges, some faces notably scribbled over with a pen almost out of ink.

“Mama look, he really does look like me. And dad’s hair was white! Did he colour it like that, too?”

“No sweetheart,” you murmur with gaze fixed to the page as it turns in Rei’s lap, the siblings all gathered around to look, “remember, he told you he had red hair like yours, but it changed like magic”. 

“So cool,” he mumbles in awe under his breath, “dad is so cool”. 

Rei stiffens minutely. Maybe that, too, was uncomfortably familiar. 

The conversation continues into the late afternoon, moving only to sit beneath the clear skies and stretch your legs, Rei guiding you along her well loved flowerbeds. They tell Kaiyo stories of his father, diluted but true for the most part, their smiles tightening with the memories. It feels odd, wrong, mourning a man that is very much alive. You give them a piece of him and in exchange, they offer one back as the hours pass. You come to know another Touya — their Touya — and when you line him up aside your own you find that they aren’t all that different.  

As Kaiyo’s confidence grows with his newfound family he begins to wander. Natsuo lifts him into the air and he laughs joyfully, a sound you wish you could solidify and keep by your breast, and they take off to hide in the house with Fuyumi close behind. 

“Are you sure it’s ok for him to play indoors? I’d hate to leave any mess—”

Rei smiles. The light reflects against the crown of her head forming something of a white halo and Shouto is at her side, eyes softening at his mothers happiness. 

“I assure you it’s alright,” she says, “truthfully I think I’ve missed the mess”. 

You think of toys left astray, crayon smudging cheap wallpaper, juice rings staining the coffee table. Marks of your little boy left all around the apartment. Touya cursing as he steps on a building block, hopping on one leg theatrically to make Kaiyo laugh. Touya spilling the warm bottle of milk as he falls asleep and Kaiyo on his chest, exhausted from a day without rest. 

“I know what you mean,” you reply. 

Shouto only blinks. You couldn’t imagine that he was allowed to make much of a mess at all, and that thought alone makes you ache. His brow furrows then, and anticipation settles in your gut. 

“There was something we wanted to ask of you now Kaiyo is distracted,” he seeks Rei’s support as he talks, and she nods gently before turning to face you. 

“As we’ve told you… Touya is not being cooperative to treatment. In all honesty, we are getting anxious that he will be removed from the programme,” she says with regret, “you are free to refuse. But as you suggested when we first met, I thought he might benefit from knowing you’re safe”.

It feels as if the ground beneath your feet has steepened, a weightlessness flooding through your chest, and you reach for the closest pillar on the veranda to steady yourself. 

“You’ll let me visit him?” 

“Strings can be pulled to get you a visitor's pass,” Shouto confirms sagely, “typically it is for professionals or family. Which you now are”.

You hadn’t even let yourself entertain the idea of being able to see him again. The possibility of hearing his voice, of holding him again, felt too good to be true. 

“And Kaiyo? Where will he stay?” you ask, “I can’t take him with me, I don’t want him to see his father like that—” 

Approaching you from the house is the soft, pitter patter of socked feet. You feel a weight fall on your back, Kaiyo interrupting to wrap his limbs around your waist and neck, giggling into your nape. Natsuo lands unceremoniously on the tatami matts, leaning himself against the inside of the sliding door panels with pink blossoming on his cheeks, “damn, kid. You’ve got too much energy”.

“Your house is so big, grandma,” the words carrying a little embarrassment as Kaiyo says “ours is a lot smaller”.

“Sometimes houses are too big,” Natsuo reassures as he slumps forward to rest his chin against his fist, “you can get lost and feel lonely in a big house. I bet at your place, you can always find your mama, huh?” 

He nods, bouncing on the balls of his feet and rocking your body forward with the motions, “does that mean dad was lonely in the big house?” 

Rei’s hands wring tightly in her lap, the question pulling a forlorn atmosphere over the three, and you’re quick to try and rectify it. “Even if he was, he won’t be anymore because he has you,” you say as you twist your body to pull him into your arms, squirming as your touch curls against his ticklish stomach, “isn’t that right?” 

“Yes,” he stammers between deep inhales, giggles tumbling from his lips and ringing across the garden. Rei reaches to thread her fingers through his hair, the red stark against her skin.

“You are both free to sleep in my guestroom tonight,” she offers warmly in response to your earlier concern, “we will watch him while you’re busy tomorrow”. 

“We can have a sleepover!” Natsuo shouts, the excitement forcing him to sit straight and eyes gleaming. Kaiyo gasps, mirroring his uncles enthusiasm as he clings to your shoulders. Shouto, however, remains plain faced as his gaze flickers between the two. 

“Is it really that fun?” he asks. You hide your abrupt laugh into Kaiyo’s hair as Natsuo’s expression settles into disbelief. 

“What? You’ve never had a sleepover in the dorms?”

“We have a curfew,” Shouto shrugs, and Natsuo guffaws.

“What the f… heck is wrong with your school—”

As they bicker you observe contentment settle around Rei. A gentle breeze passes through the shrubbery and you hear the leaves rustling, light breaking through the canopy above and dancing along the grass. Fuyumi calls everyone back into the house as the scent of curry is coaxed out into the open, and you all make your way to the dining area. 

The night comes sooner than you expect. Kaiyo whines at the full feeling in his stomach, cheeks orange and smattered in sauce. Apparently Rei brought over all the childrens things during her move — everything, from toys to certificates to baby clothes, and you’re offered the hand me downs with a wistful smile. 

Aside from the red sleeves the shirt is white, a flame embroidered into the centre and the word fire written below it. Then you’re given an old blanket, slightly thread bare and clearly well loved. It is a light purple, faded after years of being washed, and dotted with stars. It’d belonged to Touya, she’d said, he always loved stars. Kaiyo clutches it tightly to his chest where he lay across from you on the guest futon. 

“Did you have fun today?”

The covers shift, a tell tale sign that he’s kicking his feet. “Yes mama,” he mumbles, nose wrinkling as he fights to keep his eyes open, “I feel really happy”. 

“I love you baby,” you hum fondly, leaning over to needlessly readjust the covers once more, if only for an excuse to kiss his forehead again, “are you sure you’ll be alright while I’m gone tomorrow?” 

Kaiyo nods, cheek turned against his pillow, jaw already slackening as he succumbs to sleep. It isn’t home, there’s no glowing iridescence on your bedroom ceiling tonight, but the space across from you feels empty as it always does. 

“Watching you two sleep soundly together was the happiest I’d ever been,” he’d said. You have no doubt in your mind that he had been telling you the truth. 

When you're pulled into consciousness it happens gently, the house so quiet that it’s unsettling. You were used to rousing with voices in the streets, car engines spluttering as they passed, thuds from the apartment above your own. Here it’s peaceful, a reality that you never thought you’d come close to, and for a moment you can hardly believe you’re awake. 

The staff offer to make the two of you breakfast but you politely refuse, a possessive twist in your stomach. Accepting help never came easily to you, a deeply buried seed of insecurity in your heart that first leapt to defensiveness. You could feed your son just fine on your own. 

Rei joins you soon after tending to her potted plants, Kaiyo pushing up onto the tip of his toes to kiss her cheek as she holds her dirtied hands away from his clean clothes, passing by you to wash the soil from between her fingers. “Grandma, will you have breakfast with us?”

“Of course,” she smiles. 

The rest of the family slowly trickles into the dining room with slow, sleep leaden movements. A full table, a full heart, a full stomach. Breakfast tastes all the better in their company, even Kaiyo seems to have soaked up the serene atmosphere as he quietly recounts a strange memory he had to Fuyumi. 

Still, the dread begins to settle, your knee bouncing restlessly and concealed by the table cloth. Hiroki enters the house with a deep bow and a lanyard around his wrist, your ID badge clipped securely to the end. “It’s best we leave now to avoid any run-ins with the press,” he tells you apologetically, “the likelihood is low. But I’d like to completely mitigate the chance, if possible”. 

Kaiyo lingers in the genkan, shifting on either foot, fiddling with the strings on his sleep shorts. “I’ll be back later, baby,” you hook your pinky around his and squeeze, “I promise”.

He presses a wet kiss to your cheek and you do not wipe it away, the morning air cooler on the skin where the imprint is left. An off duty officer waits by the curb to follow behind Hiroki’s vehicle — another safety precaution, they say — and he opens the side door on your behalf. 

“What will happen once we get there?” you ask, stare fixed on the streets as they speed past, flocks of people continuing with their days as normal. The thin, plastic card in your hands feels like lead. 

“Upon arrival the officer will escort you to the reception as I am not permitted to enter the building,” he explains while subtly adjusting the rear view mirror to watch you, “you will sign yourself in and then you’ll just have to wait. I’m afraid Master Touya isn’t aware that you are his visitor, so it’s entirely possible he’ll refuse to see you…”

Eventually the words become muffled, a disjointed hum in your ears, and your fingers tighten around the lanyard. You play out every hypothetical in your head, try to script questions in preparation, explanations and excuses. But you come up empty. 

Anything that you think of would be rendered useless as soon as you laid eyes on him. 

Pulling in, you survey the land. The facility is double fenced, double gated, and for all intents and purposes it looks to be a prison. There are patients spread out across the grounds, some lounging in the shade while others gathered under staff supervision. 

Surprisingly you are hesitant to part ways with Hiroki, the man bidding you goodbye with a bow and with promise to pick you up as soon as you’re done. The click of your shoes echoes throughout the building as you walk, the accompanying officer striding ahead of you and silent, beckoning you hastily through the security scanners.

A man stands incredibly tall behind the desktop screen situated atop the main desk, large auburn jackrabbit ears protruding from the crown of his head, paired with two large antlers. As you approach his nose wrinkles. 

“Pass?” he asks, interrupting any chance of you greeting him. You swallow the agitation in your chest and show him the ID card, to which he scans with a handheld device and waits until it beeps. Satisfied, he hands you a clipboard detailing a list of names and tells you to find yours. 

“Write your signature in the arrival slot, and when you leave write it in the departure slot. Wait to be called upon in the seating area”. 

You exhale shakily as you sink into your chair, taking in the room, unable to describe it as anything other than impersonal. You had spent a good deal of adulthood working in a clinical setting, and yet this place only seems to make you uneasy. No colourful posters, no informative leaflets, no magazines for people to read. No stickers by the doors, no colour in the staff uniform, guards posted at every entrance. 

Eventually a red light above the doors to the wards flashes red, a loud buzz cutting through the silence and startling you so harshly your chair scrapes against the tile. A doctor calls your name from the doorway, all eight of her beady eyes observing closely as you get to your feet. 

“The patient is being given forty milligrams of quirk suppressant every four hours while he acclimates to his skin grafts. So rest assured he will not burn you,” — you quickly smother your anger at her insinuation — “since you have a high ranking family pass, contact has been allowed, but if anything goes awry there are guards posted at the door”. 

You’re barely given time to process her explanation or the new information as she abruptly comes to a halt, almost stumbling into her back. All eight of her eyes blink at you expectantly as the door clicks open, inclining you to enter. 

“Thank you,” you mutter as you pass, flinching when the door once again clicks shut. You steel yourself with a deep inhale, lungs ballooning to expend the anxiety spiking throughout your chest, and lift your head. 

The air remains there, held in your mouth so as not to make a sound. Touya stands across the threshold with his back to you, facing the wide barred up windows and observing the other patients. He’s in a loose fitting t–shirt and pants, all white and blending into the rest of the room. Where the collar dips below his nape you can see pink, inflamed skin, and for a moment you are reminded of your first meeting. 

“Finally decided to come look your failure in the eye, did you?” his voice is harsh, like talking through gritted teeth and lilted with sarcasm. You’re frozen in place, muscles tensed as if you were bracing for impact, throat swelling just from hearing him speak again. 

“Hate to say it but there’s no cameras here,” he laughs, a hollow and dry sound as he begins to turn, “so you can drop the fuckin’ act—”

The anger dissipates as soon as he meets your gaze, his seething grin slipping until his jaw slacks in surprise. Even as your eyes sting you cannot blink for fear that he’ll disappear, a wishful figment of your imagination. He’s really here, a few feet from you, flesh and blood and breath. 

Closer now, you can clearly see there are lines of scarring where his previous body had been sutured together. No longer held by staples and rings, the patchwork skin fitting the curve of his cheeks without pulling taut and tearing. He doesn’t wince in discomfort as his expression contorts into disbelief, as his brows pinch and he starts toward you. 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?” 

Even with the obvious ire behind his words you aren’t frightened by him. Your legs carry you to meet him halfway, reflexively reaching out for him in all the ways you had longed to over the past few months, only for him to catch you by your wrists. His grip tightens in warning, answer me he snaps, but his demand goes ignored. You’re focused entirely on how cold he feels, sharp around your forearms, just like his tongue. 

“You’re freezing,” you whisper.

He huffs in exasperation, a sound you never knew you could miss. “I know,” he says, dropping your arms as his hold loosens and you silently mourn the loss, “it’s like this all the fuckin’ time now”. 

“Because you don’t have your quirk?” 

He nods curtly, lips twisting in disdain, the confusion in his eyes sinking through realisation and settling on betrayal. “You’ve been getting cosy with my family, haven't you? It’s the only way you would’ve been able to get in here,” he sneers.

You rub away the chill from your inner wrist, following him further into the room as he walks away from you, pleading with him to listen before he makes any assumptions. “Touya, it isn’t what you’re thinking—”

“Don’t call me that!”

Your own anger steers you then, frustrated by his refusal to hear you.  “Touya. Touya. Touya. Touya,” you repeat childishly until he spins on his heel to glare at you. I’m going to keep your name in my mouth until my last breath, you think.  Arguing, scowling, you’ll take anything in this moment as long as he keeps looking at you. 

“Your mother and sister tracked me down, I didn’t go looking for them—” your own fault, you shouldn’t have been there “—they wanted to help me. They wanted to look out for your son!”

He hums like he doesn't believe it, and the forced amusement in his smirk irritates you, crawling hot through your chest. “I bet you’ve been enjoying all that bastard's money, right? He’s got plenty to throw at you and keep you quiet”.

You almost forget to breathe with how his accusation takes you by the throat, the regret crossing his features being the only thing keeping you in the room. It’s hard to handle his vitriol when it is directed at you, hard to see him like this, so wounded and cornered. In his mind you have gone behind his back, you have sought help from the people who hurt him the most, and you are only here on their orders. 

It’s a cycle he cannot break from. He’s gone again, tethered still to the world, but they are all moving on without him. He’s gone again, tucked away where no one needs to look at him, and they are all better for it. 

“I have not met Endeavor and I have made it clear that Kaiyo will not meet him either,” you tell him firmly, “I have not, and will not, accept financial help from that man. You… I’d never do that to you”. 

He wilts then, partially limbless as he sinks back against the hospital bed frame tucked beneath the barred window, covers still spotless and unused. As you glance up at the star-less ceiling, you wonder if he manages to get any sleep at all. 

“Why are you here?” he asks again, no fight left in his words. Without the bravado to keep him up he looks exhausted, torpid. You join him cautiously, settling yourself on the edge of the mattress. 

“To reassure you that we’re okay. That we aren’t in any danger,” you murmur, splaying your hand out in the space between your bodies, “we’re worried about you, Touya. Why aren’t you talking to them?”

He rests his hand beside yours, stretching out his pinky to hook over your own; the one you’d linked with Kaiyo only two hours before. “What good would that do?” he says, “I’m defective and this is just a waste of taxpayers money. Why let me live in the first place?”

The worst part of it all is the grating monotony in his tone, the total disregard for his own life and wellbeing. “Don’t say things like that,” you rasp, “it isn’t true. You have a real chance to do better now”.

“Fuck you,” he snorts without malice, giving a light shake of his head as he continues, “I was always going to end up here. You knew the path I was going to take from the start”. 

“And so did you, Touya!” 

The words come hoarse as they catch in your throat, heavy where they press against your nerves. Around you the room becomes smaller, stifling, and yet he is still miles from your reach. You’d do anything if only it meant wiping that look of indifference from his face. 

“You knew, and you could have made the effort to change. Don’t act as if this was predestined for you, it was your own choices that led you here—” 

“This wouldn’t be happening if you just hadn’t come looking for me!”

“Of course I looked for you,” you pleaded with him, “what would you have had me tell Kaiyo?”

“That I was dead,” he replies plainly, “he would’ve been better off”.

“You…” fatigue floods your system and you feel yourself sink back against the bed frame “…you truly believe that”. 

You don't sob, don't let yourself whimper, you simply let the salty burn overtake your vision and clog your throat, thick and cloying. “Don’t cry,” he murmurs, “you know I’m bad with crying”. 

“You’re crying too,” and he laughs humourlessly, eyes still dry. Amongst the quiet you can hear people outside talking, the window panel slightly ajar to let in a continuous breeze, carrying in the scent of spring. You shiver, and when his icy touch begins to move away you upturn your hand, interlocking your fingers together to keep him there. 

You can feel him watching you as you appraise his belongings. No character, no personality, everything looks brand new and unused. Compared to your stingy one bedroom apartment tucked away in the sparse Yokohama neighbourhoods, this place was completely lifeless. He must hate it here, waking up in yet another unfamiliar place against his will, treated as if he were something to fix.

Though after everything he’s been through, it must be a relief to do something bad and be punished for it, rather than to be punished for all the things you couldn’t do. 

“How is he?” he asks, ending the drawn out silence. 

“He knows something isn’t right,” you say, feeling the chill along your wet cheeks, “he wants to see you”.

He makes a sound of acknowledgement as he strokes his thumb along the back of your hand. You tighten your grip, still habitually cautious of the sutures that are no longer embedded into his skin. “What a kid wants isn’t always what’s good for them”.

“That’s priceless coming from you,” you huff, and he knocks his shoulder against yours in response. Bittersweet, you recall how you sat beside him on a hospital bed just like this five years ago, IV hooked into his veins to ward off infection. Hair white, skin mottled, growing accustomed to your freely given affections. 

You breathe, the exhale long, and lean your weight into his side. Your hands, still interwoven, rest together in your lap. “We just wanted to be closer to you,” you tell him, your apology unspoken, “Kaiyo misses you. I miss you. Even if I’m angry with you, don’t ever believe that we aren’t thinking of you”. 

The word sorry does not come naturally to Touya, it never has. Remorse was best shown through action, overbearing attention and unnecessary gift giving that only ever left you wondering who he’d stolen from. When he rests his cheek atop your head, nuzzling softly into your hair, you know he’s trying to apologise as well. 

So you recount everything that happened over the past two weeks. Of nightmares and paranoia, of old photographs and starless ceilings, of autumn bellflowers and cultural dissonance. You rush each story, unsure of how much time you would be allowed in this place, nor how often you would be able to visit. And he listens, slowly sagging against you the more you speak, your bodies two beams upheld by the other. 

“Oh, and the driver called him ‘young master’ at first,” a small grin pulls at your lips at his amused snort, the only sign that he was still awake, “I know. I told him right away not… not to call him that. I knew you’d hate that”.

His muscles tense then as an intrusive knock reverberates throughout the room, a white knuckled grip on your hand at the interruption. The doctor from before steps into the threshold and is followed closely by one of the guards, eight eyes blinking simultaneously as she takes in the scene, her expression unreadable. 

“Your allotted time for visitation is up,” she says, her voice softer than before and perhaps even tinted with regret, “I’ll give you a few moments to say goodbye and notify your driver”. 

A part of you wishes that the wordless goodbye you gave back at the hospital by the hyacinth beds had been your last, because this time around it is impossibly harder. If his expression is anything to go by you think, if he could, Touya would freeze your hands together in an eternal block of ice. 

“Touya,” he begrudgingly meets your gaze, “what happened to you was undoubtedly a tragedy. Still you— you hurt people, and you need to accept that. I’m not going to tell you to forgive anyone, you don’t have to, but…”

You lean forward, pressing your forehead to his “…even if others can’t, I want you to forgive yourself”.

“For who I was or for who I wasn’t?” he mutters, so close you can see the stray white stripes in his eyelashes. The doctor clears her throat quietly where she lingers by the door, and so you get to your feet. His throat bobs as he swallows, expression suddenly pleading as you let him go, and you take his face between your hands. 

His cheeks are rough, the sore skin raised under the pads of your thumb. “For all of it,” you say. 

You’d always thought that love didn’t need to be so complicated. Sometimes it was as simple as I see you, and I understand you. Sometimes it was dirtying your hands to make their life a little easier. Sometimes it simply took the form of an illusion, and all you needed was for someone to point out the tangled lines, the true image irreversibly seen. 

“We love you. If that means anything to you, then take advantage of this second chance and let yourself be better”. 

Afraid of testing their patience, you step away from the bed, heading towards the door where your guide awaits. While only four strides, it feels like a lifetime, and you find yourself dragging your feet to stall for time. The thought of leaving him here made your stomach sink, an invisible magnetism tied to your spine and begging you to turn around. 

You startle as the guard suddenly steps forward, recounting Touya’s patient number with warning, but the doctor holds her hand out to settle him. You’re tugged back against a firm chest, familiar if not for the deathly temperature, arms circling firmly around your waist. 

Their presence falls away as he kisses you, and the sensation is new. No awkward angle, no need to be aware of his sutures, no copper tang left on your tongue as you pull back. Once, twice, and thrice — Touya kisses you without regard for time he was wasting, for the people who were waiting to take you home, and you give him every extra second you have. 

“Tell Kaiyo I’ll be out by the time he starts his training at JAXA,” he murmurs. You laugh wetly, finally forced to take your leave. 

“Better make that ten years sooner, you hear me?” 

The door begins to shut behind you and he’s crying again, eyes dry as he calls out to you.

“No promises!”