#fireproof au

But Touya is approaching five and nothing remarkable has happened yet. She herself was already summoning ice at two years old, and Enji wasn't much older when his flames first started appearing. Early bloomers, both of them.

She doesn't dare glance over at her husband after asking the question. Doesn't want to see the anger and disappointment there. It's not that Enji doesn't adore Touya, who takes after him with every fiber of his being, but she hates that she isn't sure she can trust his reaction here. Touya being quirkless would mean he's far from what Enji hoped for with this union. And Fuyumi only has Rei's ice, too weak a copy to make for the kind of hero Enji imagines.

And Rei knows well enough that her husband has quite the temper on him. He's never raised his hand against her, has always been civil and sometimes even kind, especially during her pregnancies and immediately after, but sometimes his voice rises and so does the heat in the room and it's enough to make Rei uncomfortable, when heat is already so difficult for her to deal with.

What if Touya turns out a disappointment? Will Enji drop him for the pursuit of another child who might fit the bill? Rei would give it to him. Hope they're as enthusiastic as Touya about becoming a hero. But their eldest would be heartbroken.

Rei can feel him glaring up at her now, with the same intensity in his gaze that makes villains quiver from his father, but with a childish indignance to it.

"I'm not quirkless! I'm not! I could totally tell if I was, right, Dad?"

Enji rests a hand on top of Touya's head, to silence him, but doesn't reassure him. Instead, he looks to the doctor.

"Is he?"

The man shakes his head with a slight smile. "Not to worry. Your son seems to be developing just fine. There are no signs hinting at quirklessness that we could find, and those are always rather obvious. My best guess would be, he has the kind of invisible quirk that won't be noticeable until certain conditions are met. It could have something to do with either of your quirks, or it could be something new entirely..."

Rei tunes him out and watches Touya, who is skeptically looking down at his hands. But he seems relieved, if confused. Most of this must be going far over his tiny head.

Rei, for her part, understands enough. Whatever quirk Touya has, it's not flashy and heroic like Enji had anticipated. That means he's not going to surpass All Might, most likely. But his quirk could still be heroic. His dreams don't have to be squashed before he could even properly grasp their meaning.

Rei leans down to whisper to Touya as her husband is distracted. "Do you think you can convince your dad to stop for ice cream on the way home?"

__

The way they find out what Touya's quirk is could have been a lot less terrifying.

Rei is still looking his hand over for any damage when Enji sticks his head into the kitchen, Fuyumi tugging at his pant leg. She must have run to get him.

"Dad, make her stop fussing," Touya demands immediately with a pout.

But Enji takes in Rei's expression, and whatever he finds in it makes his brows crease. "What did you do, Touya?"

Their son shrugs a shoulder. "It just looked pretty and I know 's dangerous but I just wanted to really see..."

Rei only turned her back to him for a moment. Both her children are old enough to know what not to touch in the kitchen, and old enough to follow those rules. Especially when it comes to the old gas stove. Rei really should have insisted on replacing it with something more child friendly, but it's what she's used to from home, and the same goes for Enji so they just brushed it off. They managed to make it four and a half years without incident.

Though... through pure luck, this wasn't really an incident, either.

"He reached right into the gas flame." Rei presses a kiss to Touya's hand, who grimaces and pulls it away, wiping it on his pants.

"He reached right into it and held his hand there and it's like he didn't even feel it."

Enji is frowning at her, and then at Touya, who looks back at him from under his bangs and shrugs again.

"So, he's resistant to heat?" Enji questions.

"It didn't feel hot!" Touya protests, "It felt like your fire!"

Enji blinks. "... that doesn't feel hot to you, either?"

Touya shakes his head. "No," he says in that tone that signals that that should have been obvious. Stupid adults they are. "It feels like... like..." His finger wanders towards his nose as he thinks, and Rei gently tugs his wrist back down. "Taking a shower?" Touya settles on, "Or like... like when it's really hot out and the wind just makes it hotter? Or, or, when Mom makes cookies and there's warm air coming off them!" He nods, apparently satisfied with his explanation.

Enji seems thoughtful. Rei can make a guess or two as to what he's thinking.

A quirk like this could certainly come in handy for rescues. It could be useful at the Endeavor Agency, where it's overcrowded with fire-based heroes. It's nothing flashy or destructive, nothing that would help take down a villain, but it's strong nonetheless. A resistance. If this is what Touya's quirk is, then it's quite the blessing. Even if he'll be so disappointed he won't be able to shoot flames around.

"I'm going to make an appointment for testing," Enji says, and Rei nods.

They've already looked up a place that specializes in figuring out the workings of more subtle quirks. Passive ones. They'll figure out what Touya can and can't do.

__

Touya's quirk gets the name 'Fireproof', and that doesn't sound nearly as cool as 'Hellflame'. Dad insists that it's a good, easy to understand quirk name, but Touya is still not happy about it.

It sucks that he's not getting flames, even if his parents have been talking a lot about rescue heroes, and Dad promised that Touya would have a spot at his agency once he's grown up.

It's still just kind of... boring. At least Fuyumi can show off her little snowflakes and make their drinks cool in a second. Touya's quirk is invisible. He stares at his hands on the drive back from the testing place and tries to see any change. But they're just still the same old hands.

They didn't even test him much, they just poked him with a needle and then rolled a cotton swab around in his mouth. Dad says it's because they wanted to test his cells without putting him in danger, but they still made him stand in a room that kept getting warmer and made him promise to say stop if it got too hot. Touya never said stop. It just felt like a warm day in summer, that's all. They didn't really do anything exciting at all.

"Can we train with my quirk, Dad?" he asks, leaning forward in his car seat.

Dad glances back at him in the mirror. "It's a dangerous quirk to train, Touya. And not the kind I'm an expert in. I'll look into finding quirk trainers for you."

Touya pouts. He wants to train with Dad! If he's supposed to be fireproof, then why can't they use Dad's flames?

"... we can do non-quirk related training together if you like," Dad offers after a moment.

Touya has no idea what else kind of training a hero needs that doesn't have to do with their quirk, but he nods anyway, smiling bright.

__

Soon after that, Touya's hair starts coming in white. It doesn't affect his quirk, but he stops being overly affected by the cold all the time, so Rei and Enji see it as another benefit. Touya is upset about it, but they're not about to allow him to dye his hair back to red. He can do that when he's older.

Luckily, less than a year after discovering Touya's quirk, Natsuo is born and soon enough sports his first tufts of white hair. Touya stops complaining after that and lets them cut out the last remaining bits of red to get some order back into the unruly mess.

He generally quiets down a bit once he starts school, and works with his quirk trainer twice a week, along with a fighting instructor that Enji hired because he realized that Touya won't benefit from being taught a fighting style that relies on a bulk that he might never develop, in combination with a powerful quirk he doesn't have.

Rei sits on the steps to their courtyard with Natsuo playing in the grass nearby, and Fuyumi with her head buried in her book.

Their father stands, dressed down in exercise clothes, opposite Touya who sports a similar outfit. He's still so tiny next to Enji, but he might always be.

He dives into an attack, and Enji blocks him with his arms. Touya whirls around without hesitation to land a punch. There's not a lot of force behind it, because he's still just a child, but Enji still makes a noise of approval at what Rei assumes is the placement of the blow.

Touya is amazing at this, they all know it. He can't exactly do tournaments because this style of fighting is taught specifically with heroism and real fights in mind, but they're still thinking of maybe signing him up for another martial art, just so he can let that competitive spirit shine.

He needs to be this good, too. When he's a hero, he won't have his quirk as a safety net in most situations. He'll be essentially fighting quirkless, though Rei hopes he'll choose some support items to make up for the lack of attack power.

Because watching Touya fight, it's painfully obvious that he won't ever be satisfied with just rescue work. Even if that's more than enough, in her mind.

"I wonder if you'll have this much drive," Rei says to the baby growing inside her, gently running her hand over the bump. "Any more ambition in this household, and we might need to build an entirely new room for all the trophies."  The baby shifts, and Rei laughs. "I hope that wasn't agreement."

__

Touya is absolutely not jealous of Baby Shouto. That would be ridiculous. His brother has barely learned to crawl, it's not like he's competition yet.

It's not as if this is a competition.

But Shouto's quirk is already here, and it's half fire and half ice, just like their dad always wanted.

Their parents are both happy. Mom in the quiet, smiling way, humming as she cooks elaborate meals - and Dad, asking Fuyumi about her books and letting Natsuo sit on his lap and teaching Touya some hero things that have nothing to do with fighting. Strategy lessons, he says.

It's nice.

But Touya still doesn't like that Shouto is gonna be the one who finally beats All Might. Who gets to be what Dad wants. Touya always tried so hard, but his quirk just wasn't enough.

He knows he'll be a good hero. But he still wishes he had Shouto's quirk instead.

__

They're out in the park when it happens. Shouto has turned two last January and is almost old enough to actually play with, and Touya is ten, basically a teenager already, which means he's pretty much an adult!

Mom still insisted on coming with though.

She's sitting on their picnic blanket under a tree and wearing a big hat because the sun always gives her a bit of trouble. Fuyumi and Natsuo played soccer with him a bit, but they got hot, too, so they moved to sit by Mom and Shouto and eat orange slices.

Touya doesn't feel the heat so he kicks the ball some more until he gets bored and starts on his stretches.

He likes going through the exercise motions. His brain sometimes gets too loud with school and his siblings and hero stuff he's studying for, so this is what makes it quiet down.

Once his stretches are done with, he waves at Mom and breaks into a slow jog around the pond. There aren't that many people in the park today, probably because it's hot. But their family wanted to make use of the day off school, and Mom says it's good for Shouto to see new things.

It is nice to get out of the house sometimes. Touya doesn't really have friends in school. Not people he wants to hang out with anyway. Some of them still do want to become heroes, but they're mean about his quirk and he avoids them. The ones that don't want to become heroes don't understand the stuff Touya's interested in - like strategy and understanding villains' movements and rescue procedures and such. So he's mostly alone.

At home, he has his siblings and that's fine, but it's boring always playing the same games in the same spots. There's a jungle gym here that Touya made himself conqueror of years ago. And Fuyumi likes watching the ducks.

Touya wishes Dad had the free time to come with them for once. He has no idea what he'd even do. Read a book? Maybe. But something on hero work. Or he'd bring reports to file while they play. He doesn't seem to ever stop working, even over dinner. He's always at least thinking  about work.

That's what it takes to be the number two hero. Touya knows he can't be what Shouto is going to be, but he knows that he can be someone who takes some of Dad's workload to give him some room to breathe. That's what he wants to do. To have his back, balance out his weaknesses... they can be a team. Touya won't mind terribly if that means he has to be a sidekick for a while. He thinks he'll like understanding everything that Dad is always thinking about. Maybe if he just has someone to talk to, he won't be so stressed all the time.

Yeah.

Touya rounds the pond and his feet hit the bridge across at the same moment that a gust of wind almost makes him stumble. He turns around to look, but before he can make out what happened, he already has a rough arm wrapped around his middle, and now he can't feel the ground underneath his feet anymore, and he's being lifted...

Mighty wings are beating in the air to his left and right, and he freezes, the ground far enough away that falling would hurt so bad.

"You're a quaint li'l coincidence, ain't'cha?" murmurs a raspy voice into his ear. It sounds excited. Stubble scratches at Touya's cheek when he tries to turn his head.

"Ah-ah," the man says, and then something cold and sharp is being pushed against his throat. "Eyes forward, tiny 'roki. Hold still or you're dead 'fore you can even hit the ground."

Touya can see Mom down there, can hear her calling his name. His siblings are... there they are. Being held back by a few familiar figures in hero costumes. Touya knows them, they're Dad's sidekicks.

"Dad," he manages to whimper. Coward. He's supposed to be a hero. He knows how to fight. But he still got swept up, and now he can't do anything... if only he had flames, he could burn this villain and then keep himself from falling the way that Dad can do.

"Takami!" The furious roar is the best sound Touya has ever heard. Better than Baby Shouto laughing or Mom's singing. It's Endeavor.

The villain turns in the air, so Touya can also see where Dad is hovering on steady flames a little ways away. He looks a bit beat up. There must have already been a fight.

The villain smells like sweat and burning, too.

"Got a bit slow there, Endeavor," he crows, wings beating lazily to keep them aloft. Too high. They're too high up... if they were a little further to the left, they would be above the pond. It would still hurt to fall, but it wouldn't be as dangerous.

Dad seems to be having a similar line of thought, because he slowly starts to drift to one side in the air, not closer, just to a better position.

"Let the boy go, Takami," he demands. His voice is steady. Touya hopes it's because he's not worried at all that this could go badly.

The villain, Takami, actually does flap his wings to carry them further away, and now they're almost properly above the pond. "Nah, I don't think I will. Good insurance, hero brats are. Especially yours. Be glad I didn't grab the baby, I ain't that kinda guy."

Touya feels a spark of fury at the thought of him hurting Shouto. He tries to elbow the villain, but Takami just laughs.

"Ooh, he's got your fire this one. 'cept he doesn't, right? Word on the street has it you got yourself a quirkless son."

He doesn't know. Touya tries to catch Dad's eye, but he isn't close enough yet. If he comes any closer, that knife is going to... Touya swallows against the blade.

"I'm not playing games here," Dad says, "Put him down and we can negotiate."

Takami laughs again. Touya can smell his breath, and he doesn't know what it is but it turns his stomach, that bitter, sharp scent. "I put him down, you burn me. I know how this goes. Think I'll keep 'im around, show your rich brat what real life's like."

Touya very much doesn't want to know. He dares to glance down. Water below them.

He looks back up to Dad. Raises an arm to Takami's hand that's holding the knife, and the other into a 'go ahead' sign in hero code. Good thing Dad's been teaching him these things.

The fire comes for them in an instant, and Takami screeches. He doesn't let go right away, like he expected Dad to be bluffing or pulling his punches, but Touya only feels flames warm like a hug around him. A very warm hug, yeah, but they still don't burn.

And then he's falling. He curls into himself in the air so he won't hit the water flat, and when he goes in, it hurts enough to make him shout.

He swallows a lungful of water, and cries out again when he hits the shallow bottom of the pond. Something cracks. He can't see around him, it's all muddy water, and he can't breathe, and he doesn't know where up is and- there's a pair of arms around him. Pulling him, lifting him out of the water.

Touya coughs and shivers as he's set down at the shore. There's so much water that has to come out of his lungs. But Mom's rubbing his back and talking softly to him, and when he's done coughing, he just sobs into her chest. His arm hurts a lot, and he can't really move it, but he doesn't say yet because he can't say anything. He just needs to cry the fear away first.

__

At thirteen, Touya is already thinking about UA almost nonstop. He's amassed a bunch of facts about the school and is following all the pro-hero teachers' hero careers with rapt attention.

His parents both roll their eyes at him every time he tries to tell them another interesting thing, and Fuyumi and Natsuo don't care about hero stuff a whole lot, so there's only one person who listens. Shouto.

His little brother soaks up every word Touya says about heroes like a sponge. He loves watching hero cartoons with them on weekends when the tutors have the day off and Dad is catching up on paperwork in his study, or doing patrols because it's not like crime cares it's a Sunday.

"Did you know Recovery Girl used to work with almost every active hero in the country?" Touya asks as Shouto snuggles into him on the couch, wrapped in a soft blanket so that only his little head pokes out. He shakes it dutifully.

"Yeah! Everyone wanted to work with her, so if they were doing a mission where a bunch of people might get hurt, they'd call her and wait for her to get there. She's been part of some of the biggest hero operations ever!" He grins. "She's awesome."

Shouto nods. "Yeah... awesome," he repeats. He doesn't sound as excitable as usual.

Touya frowns at him. He's been quiet lately, anyway.

"Hey, Sho? You... okay?" He doesn't know how to do this stuff. Fuyumi is better at it. Or Mom. But they're out shopping right now and left Touya in charge of his baby brother. Well, and there's Dad, in his study, in an emergency. But Dad is even worse at feelings than Touya is.

"Touya-nii, do heroes really gotta train 'til it hurts every day?" Shouto asks after a few moments of silence.

Touya's chest tightens.

He doesn't train like that, never has, and he always enjoyed pushing himself... but Dad never trained him personally all that much, and quirk training is a whole different story.

Shouto is very, very small.

"No," he replies, shaking his head. "Sometimes you get sore muscles or you hurt yourself on accident... but that's about it. What's it like for you?"

Shouto sticks a hand out of his blanket cocoon. It's coated with ice in an instant as he looks it over. "Dad says I gotta get stronger. So I keep pushing and it's hard and it hurts. I can't do it like him. I wanna be a good hero, I swear, but I dunno if I can." He curls tighter in on himself. "Dad thinks I'm not good enough. He said you should've had my quirk, you'd have been better with it."

Touya, who has had that thought many times out of stupid jealousy, now only feels protective anger at the thought. Dad saying things like that to tiny, sweet Shouto who is going to be an amazing hero one day, who tries so hard...

"He's wrong," he manages to get out. He pokes at Shouto's chest through the blanket. "That's your awesome quirk and it was meant to be yours and you'll learn to be the best with it. Dad wasn't perfect when he was a kid, either. And I'll be a good hero even though I can't train my quirk like that. And you know what, Sho?" He leans in close and lowers his voice to a whisper. "It doesn't even matter if you beat All Might or not. Dad never did and he's still the best hero ever. And I'm never gonna, but that doesn't make me a bad hero. I'm just gonna do what I can. Just like you."

Shouto nods thoughtfully and then leans into Touya, his small, cold arm wrapping around his waist.

On the tv, All Might winks at them and says something about being 'everyday heroes'. Touya barely pays attention to the program.

He finds himself at the door to Dad's study about half an hour later. Shouto is fast asleep on the couch, and Touya couldn't wait any longer. He's never been particularly patient, and there's this nauseous pain in his gut that he knows he needs to get rid of by confronting his father.

They've rarely fought before. Dad barely has time to spend with them, even with Touya, so when he's around, they're always focusing on hero stuff. Not feelings stuff.

Touya remembers Dad letting him sit on his lap at his desk and explaining rescue procedures to him.

He does not remember ever playing games with him or being kissed on the forehead like Mom likes to do.

There are hugs, sometimes, on birthdays and when he does especially well on something hero-related. Once or twice when Dad found him crying over something, too, though that was always so awkward that Touya would forget about what was upsetting him in the first place.

Feelings are just not what they do.

Well, actually, Touya feels a lot but he doesn't share that stuff with his dad of all people.

This isn't about him though.

It's about Shouto.

He knocks and waits until Dad calls for him to enter.

Even then, he stays near the door, shifting his weight as he looks at his dad, leaned over his massive desk that's loaded with paperwork. He doesn't look happy to be disturbed.

"Touya. Is something wrong?" His brows furrow.

Touya takes a breath. "... you're pushing Shouto too hard." There. It's out.

Dad blinks, and confusion is followed by surprise and then anger and finally neutrality.

"It's up to me to decide what he can take or not. He's complaining because training is difficult, that's all."

Touya stands his ground. Glares as hard as he can. "It's not up to you, it's up to him! You're hurting him! He's only five."

"And he could be so much further along if he wasn't holding himself back," Dad says, glaring right back.

Touya wants to shrink in on himself, but he doesn't. Sometimes Dad yells, but he always calms down eventually. The problem is that Mom and Fuyumi aren't here to keep this from escalating and Touya isn't going to back down.

"He has so much time before he has to go to UA, and they'll give him more hero training there! If you hurt him all the time now, maybe he won't even want to be a hero anymore!"

Dad scoffs. "It's his duty to surpass All Might. His quirk is a gift that he'll have to learn to appreciate."

Touya bristles. "He doesn't belong to you! You can't make him be a hero! But he still wants to be one right now, you just can't ruin it! Why is beating All Might even so important to you?"

Dad opens his mouth, then shakes his head.

Touya balls his fists at his side. There's angry tears in his eyes. "Shouto said you told him he's not good enough for his quirk. That I should've had it. Am I worth less to you 'cause I don't have the quirk you hoped for? That you married Mom for?"

Again, Dad seems to struggle for words. Then, he sighs. "... of course not, Touya. I merely meant I wish he had your ambition. If you had Shouto's quirk, you would easily become a hero the entire country looks to."

Touya shakes his head. He opens a hand and looks down at it. "I have my quirk. It's a good quirk. I'm gonna help people with it." He blinks and is proud that his voice hasn't wavered once even though his throat is tight. "... I think you gotta remind yourself that that's what being a hero's really about."

He doesn't give his father a second look, just turns and leaves.

Broken pieces of a bridge between them.

__

That argument marks the moment where Touya will later claim his childhood began to end.

For the time being, it just feels like there's something utterly wrong in the house.

Touya doesn't tell anyone about it, and Dad doesn't change his ways. Dinners are even more silent than they have been.

Eventually, there's a day where Shouto comes to breakfast feverish from overusing his fire, and Touya explodes at Dad again when he comes home from work that night.

It becomes a pattern. Over and over again, they butt heads.

Then, surprisingly, Mom begins to join in. Quiet and gentle, and timid in a way Touya never learned how to be. She tries to reason with Dad, and calm them both at the same time.

Fuyumi takes over the job of keeping Shouto away and busy during those fights, somewhere in the house where he won't hear the yelling - and neither will she.

Natsuo is quiet, as always, but he'll stand at Touya's back sometimes and glare and that support means the world.

It takes a long time. It feels like an uphill battle they're going to lose, and Dad's stubbornness, his ability to stand strong in the face of anything, that Touya always admired, becomes something they now have to fight against.

Touya cries a lot. During the arguments and after. But he always has a pair of arms around him, and usually Mom telling him how proud she is of him.

It's so, so hard not to resent her for making him be the one who has to do this.

But it begins to work. After weeks and weeks of accusations and pleading and raised voices, Dad finally decides to limit training before breakfast to two days a week.

It's far from enough yet, but Shouto is absolutely thrilled.

He thrives under having a little more free time to spend with his siblings. He laughs when they play tag and starts to make suggestions for what they should do instead of just going with whatever they suggest.

Apparently it works for his training, too, because Dad seems much more satisfied with him.

Touya still can only act cold towards their father, but it doesn't hurt as bad anymore, knowing that there's some part of him that's listening despite himself.

It's probably not for Shouto's sake though - chances are, he's not changed his mind on anything but is trying to shut Touya and the rest of their family up by giving in a little bit. If he's listening to anything at all, it's probably the argument that being miserable now will only make Shouto hate the idea of being a hero completely as he grows up.

Touya isn't naive enough anymore to believe Dad is actually willing to admit to himself that he was wrong. That he'd be willing to change.

It's still a victory, though, and with Dad, they have to take anything they can get.

And the victories keep coming.

A few weeks after his sixth birthday, Shouto tells him that Dad has been calling training off when he complained about being tired or in pain.

And then Dad starts paying Touya's old combat trainer to teach Shouto the same way he did Touya back when he was little, and Shouto takes to it like a fish to the water. He loves fighting without his quirk, and Touya helps correct his forms after dinner and it's another one of those activities only the two of them can do together.

Time passes and, before they can even realize it, quirk training has been reduced to Tuesdays and Sundays. There's still combat training, and there's a tutor who solely teaches Shouto about heroics, but it's much more like Touya's schedule has been for most of his life, and Shouto seems actually happy. Enthusiastic about learning.

A little over a year after that first fight, they don't really argue anymore. Well, maybe a few pointed words every now and then, and sometimes Dad gets angry about Touya undermining him, but that's fine. Someone has to make sure he doesn't lose his fire.

It's never going to be like it was again, most of Touya's admiration for his father left behind with the child who thought he hung the moon - but Touya still can't help but admire the hero Endeavor, separate from his father almost entirely.

He still wants to work with him, go to UA, and show him how to be a great hero and a good person - because being both is totally possible, even if Dad has never really tried. It's just a little more effort, but even Dad has to see that their family's happiness is worth it.

__

Further disillusionment comes when Touya enters UA.

He gets in through recommendations, of course, and the rescue simulation they choose as a test is something he can breeze through.

Proper combat training is interesting and a fun challenge, and he likes feeling exhausted at the end of the day. There's little he can do with his quirk against most of his classmates, but he makes up for that with his strategic mind and close combat skills.

And the quirk training he does get in does help him develop his quirk further, too, something he never thought was possible. But working so closely with fire, something he was never allowed before with it being considered too dangerous, soon reveals another facet of his quirk - if he focuses on a flame, he can put it out. It's kind of a sensation as if he's pulling it towards himself, as if he's a black hole that sucks in light and heat instead of material objects.

It's a discovery that's cause for celebration - this is going to be a gamechanger for rescue work. And a prime way to mess with his father. Or... help him not have to hold back quite as much. Both options are fine.

Aside from training though, going to a real school, with real... people is weird. He doesn't know how to talk to kids who aren't his siblings, but he tries and things go well enough, even if he doesn't make any close friends. Everyone is a bit in awe of him being Endeavor's kid, and after about two days, it starts to really grate on his nerves.

So Touya starts experimenting. He has a lot more freedom now that he's in high school, and he uses that, and his dad's credit card, to his advantage. The first thing he does is get his ears pierced. It nearly makes his dad singe the ceiling when he comes home like that, but Touya takes it with a grin.

It's nice, being the center of attention like that. Doing this for himself instead of always just fighting for Shouto.

So he keeps doing it. Keeps getting different piercings - his earshells, his eyebrows, his nose, his lip, Touya does it all. UA doesn't forbid it explicitly and Dad takes away the credit card, but Touya already put money aside.

He starts smoking that same year. It's a bad habit for a hero, as it is for anyone, but he tells himself he'll stop when he goes pro.

At sixteen, he finds someone to do his first tattoo. It's kind of a shady place, but they don't ask for an ID and Touya comes out with an arm wreathed in pretty blue flames. He celebrates it with a drink in the bar next door, ignoring the flickering yellow gaze of the silent bartender, or the fact that the bar is entirely empty and obviously a front for something - Touya had been studying criminals all his life, he'd know.

The tattoo is what ends up making his father lose it enough to set part of the kitchen on fire - screen walls burn so easily - and Touya smirks as he puts it out with his quirk, winking at a horrified Fuyumi.

He pulls out a cigarette and lights it on his dad's burning mustache, and then laughs at the expression he's left with.

He feels like he can do anything. Get away with whatever he wants. His father deserves the extra stress, and Touya is free to be his own person, and he finds that person in his UA training, but also in punk music and dark clothes and changing his body until it finally fully feels like his. Not like someone's half-failed experiment.

His time at UA is filled with trouble and arguments and night-time excursions, and secret little parties, and no one cares if he's Endeavor's son anymore. He's just Touya, who has the guts to do anything and is a bit of a lone wolf but will have your back in any fight. That's a reputation he can more than live with. And for three years, he does.

__

At eighteen years old, Touya Todoroki steps into the Endeavor agency for the first time as a fully fledged hero. Fireproof Hero: Legacy is who he is now, and the country's eyes are on him.

The name took him a long time. He actually wasn't sure until the paperwork for his official hero license needed to be handed in.

He tried to find something related to his quirk, but nothing ever seemed to fit him right.

A Legacy is what he carries, and sure, he's grown into his own person over the past three years, but as a hero, he'll always be a Todoroki. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Endeavor is impressive, after all - and Touya still chose to work with him, despite all the tensions.

The name is also a reminder for Endeavor. Because Touya, even without flames of his own, made a place for himself as a hero and he'll shape the family name into something new, long before Shouto will even enter hero school. It's to show his father that he's... well, here. Touya won't be pushed aside. And the press just eats it all up, oblivious of the tensions behind the scenes. Touya smiles at them and amasses a hoard of swooning fans almost in no time. He's not flashy, but he doesn't have to be. Standing next to Endeavor is enough - and, as they find a rhythm in their work together, and Touya evolves from a sidekick to a hero employed at the agency, everything else begins to... settle, too.

It's somewhat easier to talk to each other when they're working side by side, and to witness firsthand, as a hero, the diligence with which Endeavor does his work, the respect his sidekicks have for him, it makes Touya see him in a bit of a different light. This is where his father shines. Maybe he never should have had a family if his job is all he knows how to do well, but that's a reality they're all aware of already.

It's reassuring, if nothing else, that the number two hero of the country is someone Touya can and always has been able to trust to keep them all safe.

__

Touya turns twenty, and his father gifts him with a motorcycle like he's been wishing for since he was sixteen. There's a genuine smile on the usually stern face, and Touya suddenly has to swallow around the lump in his throat.

Two weeks later, he dyes some red strands into his white hair.

For Shouto's sake, and for branding, he tells himself.

He still has to market himself as a Todoroki, after all.

__

Touya is still twenty when he gets dragged backwards out of a burning building that was just about to collapse. He'd managed to get the fire mostly under control, and to get all the civilians - plus four cats total - outside, but went back in to absorb more of the flames. Then, a terrifying cracking noise, like a log breaking in a campfire, only a hundred times louder... and then the air is punched out of Touya's lungs as he's pulled out of the window by a pair of strong arms. He gasps as the floor he was just standing on collapses in on itself.

"Close one!" a voice says by his ear, sounding almost as out of breath as Touya feels.

Massive, red wings are gently flapping on either side of him, keeping them aloft and in the same spot.

For a second, Touya feels a blade pressed against his throat, feels so much smaller in this grip, feet dangling over the pond below. There's that biting smell that he now knows to be alcohol on the villain's breath.

"... Takami?" he gasps.

The hold on him tightens, the wings stuttering briefly in the air. "... what?"

Touya blinks and turns his head. Oh. Of fucking course it's not Takami, somehow out of prison and rescuing him. Damn, it's been a while since he had a flashback like that though. He must have been... eleven or so the last time.

Those eyes looking back at him are raptorial like Takami's, but less yellow and more golden in color. The wings are more crimson than reddish brown. It's Hawks.

And he looks pretty taken aback. Touya can feel himself getting uncomfortably hot - the only way he can even feel that sensation, really, is when he himself causes it. "Ah... sorry, didn't... hi. Hawks. Thanks for the save."

He wants to die. It does not help that Hawks is insanely pretty up close and in person.

"Yeah, no problem. I was just flying in to see if you needed reinforcements. Guess I was just in time for the last rescue of the day!" There's that casual, cheerful tone Touya has heard from his interviews before. Something about it is a little stilted. Touya generally sucks at reading other people, but maybe it's the proximity or the adrenaline rush, but something feels... off.

He decides to think on it later when Hawks begins to lower them to the ground, and Touya's legs almost collapse underneath him when he hits solid concrete.

Clearly flying still isn't for him.

__

"Hey, Dad?"

"Huh?"

"You remember that villain who tried to take me hostage when I was ten?"

"... Takami? What about him?"

"I dunno. I'm just wondering... did he have family?"

"Where are you going with this?"

"... Dad, have you ever looked at Hawks closely?"

"... huh."

__

Their investigation leads to nothing, so they decide to just keep a collective eye on Hawks. It's not difficult since he seems to be everywhere. He shoots up to the number three spot in record time and makes his home there, seemingly comfortable.

"Are you worried he'll take your rank?" Touya asks once over dinner.

"Don't speak with your mouth full," his father chides.

Touya raises a brow and waits.

"... no, I'm not. He's a child."

"He's Yumi's age," Touya points out.

"He's an insolent, arrogant, annoying child," his father insists.

Oh. Hawks must really be ticking him off personally.

Touya feels the smirk spread on his face, and Fuyumi shares a look of dread with their mother.

Two weeks later, when Touya runs into Hawks on a modeling job, he asks him out on a date.

__

At twenty-four, Touya has a pretty comfortable rhythm down. He feels like this is the life he could be living forever. His family is dysfunctional but somehow keeping itself together, and Natsuo has finally taken the opportunity to leave the house to go to university. Touya suspects he has a girlfriend there that he's keeping secret for now, which is... fair. No need to subject her to their family until Natsuo is sure she can handle them. How he finds the time to date while in medical school, Touya has absolutely no idea. But he seems to be on top of things and really enjoying what he's doing. Another family prodigy, really.

Their father has calmed down further, though he still almost never smiles and dinners are the only times he really spends with them all. More would probably be awkward anyway.

Fuyumi is happy with her teaching job, which also means she doesn't need to use all her protective energy on her siblings for once, their mother tends to her garden every day and seems content now that she has no more small toddlers to look after - though she admits she misses it and occasionally hints at grandchildren - and Shouto just started UA earlier this week. He's admitted to having some trouble relating to his classmates, voicing his surprise at how undisciplined they all are, and Touya explained to him that other parents don't see the need to train their kids from the age of four.

Shouto has also started his own little teenage rebellion recently, and Touya could not be prouder. He'll take him to get his ears pierced, soon, to celebrate him starting hero school.

Yeah, family life is okay.

Touya's own home life is nice enough, too, especially since he more or less shares his apartment with an oversized bird. Their relationship is... complicated at best, but that's just a Todoroki trait. Touya finally weaseled Hawks' connection to the villain Takami out of him, on a particularly nice morning where they shared a rare cigarette on Touya's balcony, and he's keeping that secret with diligence. In return, Touya has told him some deeply personal things about his past and what growing up as Endeavor's child was like.

Still, they aren't exactly dating. That's one whole label and they both seem similarly allergic to those.

Neither of them is seeing anyone else, and sometimes they'll have small, romantic moments, but mostly they just fit into each other's busy lives whenever they can make the time. It's nice to be able to fall into a pre-warmed bed at night, anyway. It's nice to wake up to Japan's ranked Most Handsome Bachelor some mornings, too. (Touya is eighth on that list, which he thinks is still pretty damn decent.)

There's still things they don't talk about, especially Hawks, but they don't have to. This is the one easy thing they're both affording themselves.

And Touya really feels like this works. All of it works. He's... happy.

Hawks drops him off in front of the agency, and since they're in public, Touya already gave him a goodbye kiss back at the apartment, so now he just grins and waves as passersby are already starting to stop and stare. Touya lets Hawks deal with them and heads inside the agency.

There's some smiles and waves, everyone rushing about the lobby to get their work done taking a brief moment to give Touya a bit of attention - it's no secret he revels in it. He's also made sure to memorize the names of everyone working for his father and tries to keep up with the gossip around the agency, just so he can really feel like he's part of it all. He's never wanted them to treat him as just another Todoroki, and his efforts really paid off. No one is tense around him unless they're new, and he likes to believe he's friends with some of them, even if he rarely joins them on nightly excursions. There's been the occasional concert or two, and a disastrous clubbing experience where Touya punched a guy and Burnin' threw up on three separate people and they ended up having to use their hero licenses to get out of getting arrested - because apparently people working under an uptight boss like Endeavor like to really let loose when they can, and a drunk Touya has never been one to say no to a little vandalism.

All that to say, the agency feels like home almost more than his own apartment does.

He takes the elevator up, humming to himself, and is about to step out when he hears his father's voice across the big, open office space. "Touya!"

Touya? Not his hero name? He leaves the elevator before the doors close and turns towards where Endeavor is standing with his phone in hand, flames flickering in a way that betrays he's unsettled only to those who know him well.

"... what's wrong?" Touya asks after taking him in, approaching hastily.

His father looks back down at his phone. Then up to meet his eyes.

“Well, you try to deal with the shit-show that’s your father’s company.”

“You could just leave it ‘til tomorrow.”

“Except most people who call me need me immediately.”

Adrien scoffed. “You run a huge company that makes copious amounts of money, yet you don’t staff people to care for it in your absence.”

Marinette dropped her purse on the counter, looking up at her husband with a spark in her eyes. The phone was long forgotten; she’d check the voicemail later. “I’m trying to keep everyone on, but as you know, Nathalie quit and no one can fill her job. No one exactly wants to play PR rep for a company that’s only just hit its upswing after that disastrous scandal. What do you expect me to do, Adrien? Let it die? This is your family business I’m keeping alive.”

“The business was called Gabriel. I don’t know why you bother keeping that legacy alive when he’s dead and deserves to be.”

“Because he’s your father.”

“No, that’s no why and you know it.”

“Oh, then enlighten me.”

Adrien stared at her with a frown that seemed to perpetually be on his face. Long gone were the days he smiled for cameras, but Marinette couldn’t even remember what his smile looked like beyond the photoshoots.

“I find it fitting,” Adrien growled, “that a company built by a selfish workaholic gets taken over by someone equally so.”

Marinette’s jaw hit the ground in pure and utter shock. Those words hit her hard, settling sourly in her stomach and starting a fire in her gut.

Thinking he’d won, he turned to march off.

“Well,” she said, the words coming up so fast she couldn’t stop them. “Like father, like son.”

He whipped around to face her in a millisecond. “Excuse me.”

“You heard me,” Marinette snipped.

“And just how do you think I’m like my father? Enlighten me.”

“Both reclusive, bitter people with no care for anyone living under the same roof as you.”

“Reclusive?” Adrien sputtered.

“Deny it,” Marinette challenged, staring dead into his eyes. “I dare you.”

“And I dare you to deny that you care for nothing other than that damn company.”

“I do care.”

“Not that I’ve seen.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah. Damn workaholic that never does anything if it’s not related to the company. I do all the work around the house.”

“You have more time than I do,” Marinette defended.

“We both run our own business. Does it not occur to you that maybe I have just as little time as you?”

“Oh, well, if you think my life is so easy, then I suggest we switch a day. You’ll eat those words.”

“Or maybe you could just admit you’re wrong.”

“What am I wrong about? It’s not like I don’t clean the house.”

“When you’re here which is, oh, how often?” Adrien snipped, voice dripping in bitter sarcasm.

“I don’t need your sass.”

“And I sure as shit don’t need yours.”

“Oh, like you weren’t the one who started this.”

Adrien paused. To say the ensuing silence was tense was an understatement.

“Well,” Adrien finally growled. “I can end it.” With that, he ripped the wedding band off his finger and slammed it on the kitchen counter. “I’m done.”

Then he turned and marched away. Somewhere in the house, a door slammed shut, leaving Marinette standing there, stunned, numb, but surprisingly fine with that decision.

“So be it.”

…

From their hiding spot in the kitchen that allowed them to have full view of the explosive encounter, Plagg and Tikki shared a look. “This isn’t good, Tikki.”

“I know, Plagg,” the little kwami said, nervously looking at her charge as she marched into the guest bedroom seeing as Adrien barricaded himself in the master. “I’m worried for them.”

The little black cat rubbed his paws together. “Do you think it’s time we…”

Tikki looked at him, then nodded. “Its our only hope for them. I’m scared to say that Adrien may not be open to it.”

Reluctantly, Plagg nodded. “Usually the first one fed up is the last one to come around.”

“And your black cats are usually reluctant to do it.”

Plagg nodded. “They’re volatile. Your bugs are tamer.”

“They have to be to balance out your cat,” Tikki said. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try with Adrien. And I’ll hope for a miracle when it comes to Marinette.”

“You and me both, Tikki,” Plagg said, flying over to collect Adrien’s wedding band off the counter. “You and me both.”

…

Five long days had passed since the explosion between the two of them, and they were each plenty fine with not seeing each other as they came and went. Better that than arguing half the time.

“And he always starts it!”

“And she always starts it!”

Their friends and kwamis had heard it all, but it always came down to the same issue.

“Neither can accept responsibility for any of it,” Tikki said to Plagg as they were curled up together in their hiding spot. “And the only way they’ll make it work is if they stop doing that.”

“They’re both hurting, Tikki,” Plagg pointed out. “This fallout with Hawkmoth lead to both weaknesses being exposed. Adrien needs her comfort and support because she’s all the family he has left, yet he believes she is treating him similar to the way his father did, so Adrien’s closing off to protect himself. Then Marinette is trying to preserve Adrien’s father’s legacy and trying to help everyone else because she doesn’t know how to care for her own problems first. She likes fixing things, and since she can’t figure out how to fix Adrien, she dove into work because that’s the one thing she can control.”

“And it leads to a self-perpetuating cycle,” Tikki finished. “Yin and Yang.”

“The negative version of it.”

Tikki sighed, snuggling closer to Plagg. “We’ve handled this before,” she whispered. “So I can only hope we can fix this now.”

“The forty dares?”

“The forty dares,” Tikki confirmed. “It’s the only thing I see working at this point.”

Plagg sighed. “Hopefully, they’ll see sense, Cookie. They were always such a good team together.”

“Because they were strong separately,” Tikki reminded. “They aren’t now.”

“But that’s one of the things the love dares do,” Plagg said. “A partnership, whether of the superhero kind or a marriage, is not about each individual but individuals coming together. Tikki, they have to be reminded that they are part of something bigger than them and they are letting it fall apart by pointing fingers at the other.”