#utf chapter

Toshinori doesn't ask much more. He can see clearly how exhausted his tiny guest is--and, after a closer look, he's also likely still in pain, if his slightly pinched expression is anything to go by.

Toshinori knows that look well. That is the look of someone who knows how to hide their hurting. The only reason he had picked up on it at all is because he makes that expression so often. Almost every day now, and his scar the usual culprit, prickling with ache if he stretches his left side just a little bit too far. (Or if it's about to rain.)

He makes that face every day for the people he saves, for the heroes he works with, for the media clamoring for his attention. Toshinori knows how it feels. The pain. Ever present.

That look. That look is not a look that belongs on a child’s face, and yet here he is, trying to figure out how much ibuprofen one gives to a ten-year-old boy the size of one of his fingers (if that, even--his fingers are very long).

“Why were you standing on that leg?” he chides gently. “It's broken. Standing on it will only make it worse--and it must've hurt like blazes besides.”

Little Midoriya hesitates and looks down, faltering.

“Because--because I didn't want to seem weak. I didn't want you to think getting hurt would make me--make me...seem...vulnerable. You know?

I didn't know you were nice.” He looks up pleadingly, silently begging Toshinori to understand.

He does. Even if the villain seems much stronger than you and you know you can't win, you make sure the villain doesn't know that too. You puff out your chest and toss back your head and smile (that smile! That lying smile!) and proclaim to the villain and the bystanders and the whole damn world that you are here. That you will remain here, that you will not die.

(Because if you say it enough times, you might just begin to believe that you can cheat death over and over for the sake of...of...everything. Everyone.)

(Shut up, damn it. Shut up. Stop thinking, stop talking, stop.)

Toshinori takes a deep breath and wipes his thoughts from his mind.

“And...and I'm...used to it anyway. I could have--handled it,” Midoriya continues, oblivious to the clanging thoughts in his host’s head. Toshinori latches on to the boy’s words, grateful for a distraction but distressed at the meaning of them.

“Used to it? How do you mean? Are you used to broken bones?” Toshinori says worriedly from the counter, trying to finagle the knife to cut a small sliver of a painkiller pill without cutting his freaking fingers off.

“Not broken bones, exactly, just...hurting. In general.”

Toshinori stiffens, the knife coming to rest on the cutting board.

Midoriya takes it upon himself to explain hastily. “It's not--I'm not, like--I don't get hurt very often or anything, I just...uhh…”

He lapses into silence for a moment, then perks up.

“You remember your old couch?”

Toshinori feels like he's got the mental equivalent of fucking whiplash. “My--my what?”

Midoriya waves his hands impatiently, like he's trying to shape the air into a couch. “You know! The old brown one? With the springs?”

Oh, gods. That couch.

The Fucking Couch was probably thirty years old by the time Toshinori got rid of it. He's had it since he graduated and for some unholy reason insisted on lugging the thing with him whenever he moved. It was cracked leather and ugly when it was new. Pretty comfortable at first, but with time the springs poked through the leather and jabbed him whenever he tried to sit down. Eventually he got rid of it and felt his whole house give a little sigh when he did, like it was relieved.

“I'm--uh--yes? That couch sucked,” he added making a face. Midoriya giggled, then sobered.

“A month before you got rid of it, I was Borrowing. I took a shortcut across the couch, but it was dark and my flashlight burned out and--” he glances up at Toshinori.

“I got cut,” he finishes lamely, in a small voice. “By a spring. The end was sharp.” And so saying this he shifts the shoulder of the part of his shirt that's not covering the raccoon scars and displays a small, pale scar. Not much to look at, except…

Gods. Oh, gods. Those are stitch marks. He was all alone--did he have painkillers--did he have to sterilize it and stitch it himself--

“I had some ibuprofen that I Borrowed from the medicine cabinet,” the tiny boy says softly. “It hurt, but not...not that bad.”

Oh. Oh, my boy…

Toshinori's heart aches. He turns and brusquely slices off a corner of the pill, deftly catching the bigger half before it skitters off the counter.

“So long as I am here, that won't happen again,” he says, making his tone gentle, as Little Midoriya is still wary of him. “I don't know how much of this you should take,” he adds doubtfully, eyeing the sliver of ibuprofen. Midoriya looks at it carefully, then takes it from Toshinori's outstretched finger and snaps it in half, then snaps one piece into smaller pieces and swallows them dry. “I did some math for medicine since the couch thing,” he explains. “‘Cuz I didn't take enough ibuprofen because I didn't wanna poison myself.”

Toshinori watches, nodding, then takes the other half. “You should sleep now, my boy,” he says, putting the half on the counter for later. “You're exhausted. Did you eat enough?”

Midoriya shakes his head. “I'm still hungry, but I should take it slow. Can I...can I eat when I, uh, wake up?” he asks, suddenly shy. Toshinori nods and smiles. He's remarkably perceptive for a child his age, and smart too. The shyness is adorable in its own right, but Toshinori hopes he'll be comfortable around his host soon, even if he is a human “bean.”

Little Midoriya gets a dish towel to sleep in, with another tucked under his head for a pillow. Swaddled in the towels and dwarfed by them, he seems very small and depthlessly young, with just his sleepy greengage eyes and shaggy, curly mop of green hair poking over the edge of the “blanket.”

“I like your new couch,” Midoriya says sleepily. “It's bigger. And there's more space to hide things under there.”

Uh. “Does that mean there are. Things. Under my couch?” Toshinori asks carefully.

“Just some little things,” the boy assures him. “Notebook-making supplies, extra soap, non-perishables, water flask. For if I get stranded, or can't go back to my home.”

Toshinori almost asks him where his “home” is right then and there, but manages to hold back because the boy is so tired he can barely keep his eyes open anymore.

Ah well. Questions for later, I suppose. A part of him feels relief that the two parts of him that previously battled for dominance now seem to be in agreement again, silenced by the new arrival. And another part of him feels quietly excited for what's to come, the questions to be answered, the knowledge to be gained.

And deep down, a small, small part tells him that it's good that Midoriya and Toshinori found each other, because from the looks of things so far, it looks like they need each other.