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The woman is dangerously perfect. She reminds Vespa of that Saturnite movie star (what was her name? Heplin? Auburn?) who’d starred in the first and last romantic comedy she’d ever watched, back on Ranga five years ago. The actress had been in her heyday at the time, with wide doe-eyes and curling hair, but Vespa hasn’t really kept up with her career since. There are no movie theaters in Outer Rim prisons, after all. 

Besides, it’s not like Vespa has any time for movies these days. Or dangerously perfect women.

“You know, I really thought you’d be able to use that mouth of yours more creatively.” Buddy leans forward, her wavy red hair falling into her left eye. “You certainly weren’t holding back last night.”

Her single visible eye glimmers in the light. The bar they’re sitting in has dirty lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling, a cheap attempt at decor, but when Buddy Aurinko leans forward, the glow catches on the curves of her face, and makes her red hair look like flames. 

“That’s–” Vespa feels her face heat up. Goddamnit. This situation really isn’t doing any favors for Vespa’s cardiovascular health. She gives her thigh a hefty snap-out-of-it pinch under the table. “Stop trying to distract me, you thief!”

“Thief? That’s a rather mighty accusation.” Buddy leans back, and the effect disappears; the dim bar lighting throws half her face into shadows. The other half pulls into a smirk. “This wouldn’t be a continuation of yesterday’s roleplay, would it? Handcuffs aren’t usually my cup of tea, but I’m willing to make an exception if–”

“My score!” Vespa shouts too octaves too high. “You took my score after we had sex last night!”

Around them, the few tables peter off into a shocked silence. The smile slips off Buddy’s face. 

This whole thing has been a huge mistake. Last night, Vespa had been sitting at her usual dingy underground bar after work, sipping her usual disgusting beer from a red-rusted metal cup. (Everything tastes a little like rust on Mars. Even after a month, Vespa’s still not used to it.)  

Then a shadow had appeared to her right, and years of training had her fingers darting to the butcher’s knife hidden at her belt – until she’d turned, and almost spit her beer onto the most striking red hair she’d encountered. Buddy Aurinko’s hair, tied into an updo, had looked like fire. Even after months on this rusted-over desert of a planet, the view was welcome.

Strangely familiar, too, although the nagging deja-vu was quickly shunted to the back of her mind.

“Are – are you looking for something?” she’d stuttered at the woman, face flaming.

“Isn’t everyone?” Buddy had drawled, leaning in as her fingers danced little patterns on Vespa’s chair. “What are you looking for, gorgeous?” 

One thing had led to another. All of it a huge mistake. Vespa’s fatal flaw, apparently, is beautiful and mysterious women. She’d rolled awake the next morning to an empty bed and piano score missing from the floor beside her mattress, a face-down business card in its place. Same time, same place? it had read. 

She’d flipped the card. Aurinko Correctional Facilities, and the memories had come pouring back: the alarms going off, the click of her cell door unlocking, the fan of red hair she’d followed to a tenth floor fire escape, and then finally to the outside world. 

She’d placed, with sudden dread, exactly where she’d met Buddy Aurinko the first time.

The prison warden’s daughter. The one who’d pulled the Aurinko Correctional Facility alarms and masterminded the prison break of a lifetime. The unlikely source of her freedom -- who had somehow, strangely, tracked her all the way to this Martian dumpster. 

“Give it back,” Vespa growls. Well–-tries to growl, and hopes her voice doesn’t sound too much like a petulant whine. 

“Careful, Ms. Ilkay.” Immediately, Buddy’s face is more guarded. “An underground bar in the Cerberus Province isn’t a good place to draw attention. This place is crawling with thieves and criminal runaways.” Her eyes are still shining as they skim the bar’s crowd. She’s elegant as ever, but Vespa spots the miniscule tensing of her shoulders. Vespa hasn’t spent years as an assassin, in the old life she’d left behind, without being able to catch every one of her opponents’ tells.

“Guess we fit right in, then,” Vespa grumbles, slumping lower in her seat. 

“Depends how you read things. I’m the warden’s daughter, and I let you walk. So you’re not really a runaway, are you? And I don’t typically charge for my services, but.” She clicks her pristine nails against the tabletop again. “I’ll consider that score your gift of gratitude. I’m quite a fan of piano compositions.”

“Giving me my freedom is not a service. I don’t owe you my music.”

“Oh, not for that!” Buddy clicks her tongue. “I’m no Board of Fresh Starts body trader. Lives aren’t for sale.” Her fingers inch forward again, tapping a rhythm on the table by Vespa’s elbow.  “No, the score is an advance payment for what I’m about to give you.”

“And what exactly would I want from a solar planet brat?”

“A job,” Buddy says.

Vespa blinks at her. “What.”

“A job. You’re a good medic, from what I’ve seen over the past few months. You’re smart—enough to see past all my father’s tricks at the Aurinko Correctional Facility. Plus you’re a specialized assassin from Ranga, which means you know how to fight. Even if I haven’t seen you in action.” In the strange lighting, Buddy’s lips twist into something that could be mistaken for disappointment. “You’re bored at your current job, aren’t you? I’d be bored if I were a trained assassin who had to sit around nursing people’s hangovers all day.”

“...You’ve been following me?”

“Of course! What type of crime boss would I be if I didn’t scout my talent?”

“You.” Vespa scoffs. “A crime boss.”

“I’m recruiting you to be my partner in crime, darling, not a parrot.”

“Look.” Vespa sighs. “I don’t know what joke you’re trying to pull, but the Cerberus Province isn’t a place for somebody like you.” She looks pointedly at Buddy Aurinko’s manicured nails, and her silk dress that screams Venus craftsmanship. “It’s dangerous to stay out here too long, and not just because there aren’t any radiation shields.” She swallows, looking away from the woman in front of her, who’s likely spent her life in shimmering places vastly different from the Martian desert outskirts. “Go home, okay? That’s the best advice I can give you.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Immediately, Buddy’s eyes darken. She lifts up the hem of her silk dress, revealing a black strap along her thigh, and a string of knives and handguns. That’s hot, Vespa thinks, then immediately squashes down the thought like it’s a wayward beetle. “Well. It’s a good thing I take advice about as well as a cat takes to water. I don’t appreciate condescension, Vespa.” She lets the dress drop, morphing back into a wealthy socialite. “Seeing as I enjoyed last night, though, I’ll forgive you this once.” Rising from the table, she throws another business card down on the table. “We’ll continue this conversation in two days. Someplace less crowded.”

“I haven’t agreed to anything,” Vespa says, when she finds her voice again.

“Not yet. You’ll find that I can be very persuasive, darling.” Buddy winks, then turns, the dress swishing and sparkling and turning heads behind her. It takes another two minutes after her disappearance for Vespa to shake herself from stupor and down the rest of her lukewarm beer.  

Another five to realize that she’d forgotten to demand her piano score: the entire reason she’d dragged herself here for a dangerous second dose of Buddy Aurinko.

*

Life in the Cerberus Province is… well. It’s life, which means most days are no better than a pile of Martian rabbit shit. 

Vespa works at one of the government-underfunded pop-up clinics at the edge of town. It’s as terrible as it sounds; she spends her time bandaging up the bar-fight wounds of drunk thieves in their sixties, and doing her best to avoid their whiskey breath while she works. Sometimes, the screams of runaways from the Board of Fresh Starts will pierce the air – moments before they come barreling past security and into the clinic, their filtration bracelets flashing red, bodies already half-melted by radiation. 

She isn’t allowed to touch the Board runaways. Government policy. 

At night, she returns to a small two-room apartment, where her mattress sits in the opposite corner from the kitchen stove, and a door on the left wall opens to a tiny bathroom. It’s small, the heating scarce, and there’s a bar downstairs whose noise spills through the walls at night. The rent is atrocious. But it’s still a room in a concrete building, far enough underground to avoid the worst of the solar radiation. 

Living like this, she’ll last another five years. Probably.

Sighing, Vespa toes off her shoes at the apartment entryway. Red dust puffs into her face. She coughs it out. “Stupid desert,” she mutters under her breath. 

The eggs, she discovers when she pulls them from the fridge and tries to crack them into a frying pan, a half-hearted attempt at dinner, have started to fry in their shells. A white lump flops into the vegetable oil. “Stupid radiation,” Vespa mutters. She pulls a dagger from the scabbard at her hip, stabbing at the mess until it bursts. 

As she cooks, she can feel the edges of the card Buddy had left on the bar top digging into the front of her thigh through the fabric of her pocket. It feels heavier than paper ought to be, but Vespa thinks maybe that’s just because she still can’t get those stupid shimmery eyes and flaming red hair out of her head. 

Aurinko Correctional Facilities, the business card reads in a sleek sans serif typeface—but Buddy has scratched out the printed text with blue ink, and written in the margins, in a loopy cursive messier than Vespa would have expected: welcome to the Aurinko crime family. There’s an address underneath, and then a time. Tomorrow, 8pm.

When she’d first read it, Vespa had noted the strange way Buddy Aurinko wrote the ‘f’ of family—the end of the letter curling leftward in a little scroll-like spiral. 

It’s a stupid thing to notice. 

Ten minutes later, Vespa is seated on the floor beside her mattress, spearing pieces of scrambled egg with her dagger. “Stupid eggs,” she mutters when a piece flops onto her shit-green army pants. She daggers it and pops it in her mouth anyway. It tastes  metallic, which should trouble Vespa more than it does. 

Radiation sickness is inevitable in the Cerberus Province. Vespa knew this, but her stubborn ass had still jumped onto the first ship to Mars after the mass breakout from Aurinko Correctional Facilities — courtesy of Buddy Aurinko, self-proclaimed rebel and daughter of the warden. After ten years in that psychological hellhole, she’d been desperate to get as far away from the Outer Rim as possible.

Part of her wonders what she’s even trying to do here. It’s not like she’s accomplishing much with her freedom: Just work and household chores and more work, in a dry and endless cycle. Averting her eyes from radiation burns and blood filtration bracelets when she’s at the clinic. Turning into a lovely solar radiation slow-roast when she’s at home. She didn’t grow up with any far-fetched romantic aspirations for her own life, but still … her ten-year-old self would probably scoff at the life she’s leading now. 

If only her father could see her. 

As soon as the thought crosses her mind, nausea grips her stomach. She puts her plate down, taking deep breaths until it subsides. 

It’s been over a decade since she’s last seen him. She hasn’t once gone back to the wooden shed they’d shared, at the edge of Ranga’s second largest swamp – although the shadows of that first home seem to dog her heels wherever she goes. You don’t grow up in the Rangian swamps without expecting to start survival training at age six and be dead by thirty-five. 

Now that she’s out of that place, with more time on her hands than she’d ever thought she could have, she can still feel the ghosts of Ranga all around her, like a grip she doesn’t know how to break. Whispering – often in her father’s voice – that even if she were to make it to the bustling center of the solar system, she’d feel no happier, no less alone, than she does right now. 

At least here, everybody calls her by her name. Nobody looks at her twice when she steps into the women’s restrooms, and nobody even bats their third eye at her green hair or tattoos. She’s spent her whole life yearning for this type of anonymity. Now that she has it… well, she’ll take what she’s given without complaint. 

A cockroach hops two inches from her foot. Nose wrinkling, she squashes it with the blunt handle of her dagger. Gross. Well, maybe a little complaint.

When she’s done with the eggs, she rises, scrubbing off her dishes in the rust-caked sink before setting them by the stove to dry. Then–only because the edge of the card is cutting into her thigh, irritating her to no end–she digs it out of her pocket, and flips it over again to the side with Buddy’s messy scrawl ruining the typeface.

welcome to the Aurinko crime family, it still reads. The ‘f’ of family is still as ridiculously frilly as Vespa remembers. And…Vespa isn’t stupid enough to trust a rich solar heiress like Buddy Aurinko. She traces the letter with her calloused left thumb, though, and thinks about that pesky leak in her bathroom roof, and the Martian dust she can’t seem to keep off her floors and furniture, and the way all her work days have seemed to blend together into an endlessly bleak stretch of time as of late. 

“Tooru?” The voice repeats itself. Hajime’s voice has been dropping a little recently, turning into a deep sound that makes him seem gruffer than he really is. Right now it’s sleep-hoarse in Tooru’s ear. “Tooru, wake up!”

Groaning, Tooru blinks his eyes open. 

Although it’s nighttime, Tooru’s bedroom isn’t really that dark. Instead, the familiar green light of a couple dozen glow-in-the-dark stars illuminate the walls and furniture, elongating the shadows and making the place look sort of ghost-like. As he blinks the sleep-stickiness away, Tooru can make out the laminated poster from last year’s Sports Festival taped to his far wall, and the row of All Might action figures lined up on his desk. 

All of it is familiar. He’s back in his room now. No fire licks its way up the four walls that surround him; no planes roar their displeasure above his head.

He’s safe.

With a huff, Tooru pulls himself to a sitting position. “Are you my best friend or my mother, Iwa-chan?” he mumbles.

His own voice hasn’t dropped — not yet. He can hear it, too-high and a little shaky, scratchy only because of the acid burning its way up the back of his throat. It had been a really bad dream this time around. 

“Don’t scare me like that!” 

Hajime’s brow is furrowed. His pillow-squished dark hair sticks flat against his left temple. Where Hajime’s fingers curl into his skin, Tooru can feel the tingle of his own quirk just under his skin; it surges toward Hajime, feeding the rough layers of oak bark that spread on his friend’s skin. 

Without thinking, Tooru reaches out and traces the bridge of Hajime’s nose. Hajime’s brows draw tighter together, and the oak bark rises in patches across his face – but he doesn’t shift away.

“No need to be so gruff, Iwa-chan!” Under the green stars, Tooru pokes at the dimple on his best friend’s left cheek. 

Hajime’s frown grows deeper. “I am not gruff!” He bats the finger away impatiently. “Was it the planes again, Tooru? Was it the fire?”

“What fire?”

Hajime’s chubby fingers wrap around his wrist. “Stop pretending, you idiot!” 

“Fine, fine.” Tooru swallows. “It was … it was both.”

“Both? Tooru, that’s…!”

Tooru waits for him, but he just trails off, and Tooru’s left instead with a silence louder than the growl of phantom engines in his ears. The flashes of nightmare that had begun five years ago, when Tooru’s quirk first appeared— charred wooden walls, columns of fire, the dark shadows of planes — have turned into full-fledged, hyper-real memories over the past few months. Sometimes Tooru is in the body of a different child, cowering under a table as bombs descend and the house around him burns. Sometimes, Tooru is the bomber pilot, and he steers the plane for what feels like hours and hours on end.

Tooru hadn’t known a quirk would come with so much baggage. “That’s…?” He cocks his head.

“You have to tell someone!” Hajime blurts loudly. “Don’t you remember what your mother said? When our bodies change, our quirks do too! If anything about your quirk changes, including your nightmares, you have to—“ 

“I did, silly. I just told you.” Before Hajime can protest, Tooru wraps an arm around his waist, and pulls him down into the tangled sheets. “I’m sleepy, Iwa-chan,” he mumbles into the folds of Hajime’s tank shirt. “Let’s talk about this tomorrow, okay?” He can feel the protest leave Hajime’s body. 

“Tomorrow?” Hajime whispers.

Through the sleeves of his own nightshirt, Tooru can feel the way the oak bark spreads along Hajime’s skin. Tooru’s whole arms are tingling, and when he closes his eyes, he feels his quirk flowing past the boundaries of his own body. It latches onto something that tastes like fallen leaves and crisp air. It’s a nice feeling. Familiar. 

A small green branch grows from Hajime’s forearm, circling around both their wrists. 

“Tomorrow,” Tooru repeats, mind already wandering to half-formed ideas of how he’ll distract Hajime tomorrow, make him forget about this, as he drifts off to sleep.

*

U.A. Campus

Present day

“What are you, a five-year-old?” Hajime grumbles, dropping his breakfast tray onto the cafeteria table like it’s made of lead. It clatters loudly against the plastic tabletop, and Tooru’s pretty sure at least five new sets of eyes jump toward them at the noise. 

Maybe, though, they’d already been staring at Tooru. It’s not like he’d have any way to tell; the cafeteria is crowded, with everybody clamoring for breakfast even on a Monday morning before homeroom. Tooru’s not sure how everyone at U.A. manages to be so high-energy. It’s been barely a week into the new school year, but people are already buzzing with new inventions or projects or ‘special moves’ — when they aren’t too busy snapping pictures of Tooru. 

Two tables over, he can hear Tendou Satori raving about a new addition to his hero costume. His red spiky hair bounces in time with his words. Next to him, what Tooru’s pretty sure is the entire Shiratorizawa squad roll their eyes in unison. “But Wakatoshi-kun!” Tendou whines … and that’s Tooru’s cue to tune out. Stupid prep schools kids, he thinks as he slides his tray over two inches to make way.

“Ah, looks like the Neanderthal has finally decided to join us for breakfast!” Tooru chirps at his best friend, shaking off the feeling of a particular set of brown eyes boring into his back from the Shiratorizawa table. 

Sighing, Hajime plops himself down onto the cafeteria booth. “Don’t test me, Shittykawa.” He extends a hand. “Give it back. Now.”

“Give what back?” Tooru bats his lashes. There’s the beginning of a five-o-clock shadow at the base of Hajime’s jaw, and his short hair is mushed a little against his left ear. Personally, Tooru thinks it accentuates the unkempt grunge aesthetic that has become Hajime’s new look, as of late. “I don’t speak caveman, sorry! You’ll need to use full sentences.”

“You’re impossible.” Hajime pulls the sleeve of Tooru’s jacket. The light teal fabric scrapes across Tooru’s skin as it slides off his shoulders. “Touch my clothes again, and you’re sleeping on the couch in the common room for the next four years, Shittykawa.” 

The vein just above Hajime’s left brow pulsates dangerously. “Careful, Iwa-chan!” Tooru teases. “A jacket this ugly isn’t worth developing facial wrinkles over.” 

He winks, and the furrow between Hajime’s eyebrows grows even deeper.

He’d snatched the jacket from Hajime earlier this morning, when there had been just enough sunlight filtering through the window blinds of their shared dorm room to drown out the glow-in-the-dark stars on their ceiling. Hajime’s always been a deep sleeper, and it had been easy enough to peel the teal windbreaker off Hajime’s shoulders (careful not to let his fingers brush bare skin) as Hajime had snored into his pillow.

It’s not Tooru’s fault, really. Musutafu City is cold as hell in early spring, and if Hajime didn’t want someone rifling through his things, he should have insisted on rooming with someone else altogether. 

“I’m pretty sure Bokuto’s pet owl left a dead rat on that couch when we moved in.” Hanamaki stuffs his mouth full of egg roll as he speaks. “Not sure it’s the most infestation-free sleeping area.”

“Wonderful.” Tooru reaches across the table to bop Hanamaki on the nose. He keeps the touch short – just a half second of contact, not nearly enough for Hanamaki’s water quirk to activate under the touch. “I’ll just move in with my dear Maki-chan then!”

“No thanks. I’d rather live with the dead rat.”

“Hey! You love me!” Feigning hurt, Tooru sweeps his bangs aside dramatically, like he’d seen Mt. Lady do in her newest yogurt commercial. “I’ve got hundreds of people clamoring to live with me, you know? You three are just the lucky ones blessed with my presence!”

“You’re like the toddler we never asked for.” Across the table, Matsukawa sighs. “I seriously don’t understand how you’re so famous already. We haven’t even done anything yet, but your face is already plastered across half the billboards in Musutafu.” He reaches across the table to poke Tooru’s arm, and Tooru disguises his flinch with a giggle. “You and Ushijima both, brat.”

Swallowing, Tooru turns his attention back to his breakfast. “I’m too pretty to be compared with that oaf,” he says flippantly. 

The cafeteria smells like grilling fish, and like the bittersweet of roasting coffee. Beneath the table, he can feel Hajime’s warmth through his jeans, as well as the two inches of space he leaves between them. There’s the noise of hundreds of students shuffling through the cafeteria line, and morning light filters in from the floor-to-ceiling windows that ring the room. 

“Oaf or not, he did get in through recommendations,” he can hear Matsukawa saying. “Plus, he’s inherited both Endeavor’s and the Himura family’s quirk, that lucky idiot…”

Closing his eyes, Tooru fingers the upper edge of his knee brace. His quirk tingles on the skin of his palms. He can still feel the unwelcome weight of those brown eyes skimming his neck, like a doctor’s cold fingertips. 

“Hey.” Hajime bumps him with a shoulder. “You okay?”

“In tip-top shape!” Tooru sings. He takes a breath, then leans toward Hajime, hands unfisting. “Aww, are you worried about me?” Their faces too close, Tooru bats his eyelashes up at Hajime until he frowns and shoves him away.

“Shut up, Shittykawa.” 

“No can do!” Smiling, Tooru picks up his fork and takes a stab at his mackerel. “You know, you don’t have to worry, Iwa-chan. I can take care of myself just fine.”

He can, really. Despite the playful front he puts on, he’s been watching after himself for years. 

There’s a pause as Hajime chews the piece of toast he’d just stuffed into his mouth. He swallows, and Tooru tries not to track the bob of his throat in his peripheral vision. “Sorry. Habit, I guess,” Hajime says.

“We’re not kids anymore.” Pretending to butter the toast on his own plate, Tooru pauses, watching from the corner of his eye until Hajime picks up his own breakfast again. “We haven’t been for a long time.”

“Yeah.” Hajime turns away as he chews, and Tooru shivers at the absence, instinctively missing the warmth of Hajime’s windbreaker over his own shoulders. “Not for a long time.”

*

Tooru always makes the mistake of gravitating too close to Hajime. It’s a habit he’ll have to fix, eventually.

*

They’d made the decision to try out for U.A. together six months ago. Hajime had stared wide-eyed at him across the Iwaizumi kitchen table, their registration forms scattered messily across the lined wood. He’d been looking at Tooru like he was a glass vase that might shatter at any second, and Tooru had loathed the feeling of it. 

“Are you sure,” Hajime had asked him for the thousandth time that week, as Tooru squared his chin stubbornly and reached for the pen.

“We can’t let Ushiwaka-chan pull too far ahead of us,” Tooru had declared, in that voice that should have provoked an eye-roll or an annoyed sigh. Except neither came, and when Tooru looked up, Hajime had been staring at him, something uncomfortably close to pity in his gaze. 

Everything had changed for Tooru, that last week of junior high. With pictures of his face going viral online – paired with high-definition video footage of Kyudai-sensei’s clinic in flames – U.A. had been one of the few places he could still keep some semblance of a normal student life. 

Here, at least, living behind U.A.’s giant mechanized gate, Tooru can hide from the newscasters and the tabloid photographers. The classes aren’t too difficult – not when Tooru’s spent years in Kyudai-sensei’s underground clinic, running through logic puzzles and battle strategy until his vision began to swim. And despite his bad knee, the physical exhaustion of afternoon hero training is a welcome distraction. 

Today, Class 1-A is scattered across the P.E. grounds for a paired combat exercise. Aizawa-sensei watches from underneath a tree, the sleepiest drill sergeant in the history of combat training. 

“Watch out!” Hajime roars from a few steps behind him, and Tooru ducks just in time to save himself from a shaved head via oversized wolf claws. As he leaps backwards, he can hear Kyoutani’s roar of frustration, and feel the reverberations of a back claw stomping into dirt. 

“Thanks.” Panting, Tooru turns to give Hajime a fist bump. Hajime’s sweating and breathing heavily too, dark ridges running along his quirk-hardened arms. When their knuckles brush, Tooru feels a trickle of something down the veins of his left arm – warm, like water from an onsen – and the tree bark thickens along Hajime’s right arm. 

Tooru flinches away. The warmth vanishes. 

“Mad Dog’s strong, but impulsive,” Hajime says, his breath coming out in short puffs. He doesn’t meet Tooru’s eyes. “I think I can take him on, if you distract Guess Monster for a while.”

There’s dust in the air, kicked up into a thick cloud from Kyoutani’s attack. It prevents Tooru from seeing the details on Hajime’s face. That’s the reason, he tells himself, that he looks away too, busying himself with adjusting the fit of his knee brace instead. He shakes out the fingers of his left hand, until the ghost of that warm-water feeling is gone. 

“Sure.” Tooru’s hand shakes. He’s still getting accustomed to this whole fighting-together thing. Aizawa-sensei’s exercises feel like child’s play, compared to Tooru’s past training with Ushiwaka under Kyudai-sensei’s supervision. Still, he’ll have to be extra careful not to touch anybody today.

“Hey, are you okay?” Hajime asks. 

“Hm?” He snaps the edge of the brace against his thigh. It’s tight, but it’ll do. “Yeah.”

“You look–” A hand comes up to rest in Tooru’s hair. Tooru’s too surprised by the sudden touch to remember to flinch. “Tooru, if you need to rest–”

“Oi!” a reedy voice bellows, and Tooru snaps out of his reverie to see a lanky, red-haired kid picking at his nails next to Kyoutani. “Are the two love-birds done making out?”

Tendou Satori is standing with his back hunched at an odd angle, looking impatient. His Cheshire-cat smile is more predatory than friendly. 

“Can’t wait to have that grin wiped off your face?” Tooru calls back, face settling back into a practiced smirk. The kid’s neck bends backwards at an odd angle as he laughs.

“Ha! This one’s more reckless than I am.”

“Not reckless, Satori-chan.” Tooru straightens, dusting off his blue-and-white tracksuit. Hajime’s hand slides out of his hair. “Just honest.”

Grinning, Tendou Satori shakes out his right hand. A series of sharpened razor-blades jump out from the knuckles of the gloves he’s wearing. “Well, it’s true most famous kids have over-inflated egos.”

“You all talk too much,” Kyoutani grumbles, right before he takes a lunge in Tooru’s direction — but Hajime jumps out in front, his arms and face already turning bark-solid as his body absorbs the brunt of the attack’s force. 

From there, it’s a blur of high kicks and fast retreats, as Hajime lures Kyoutani away into a brawl that’s more brazen fist-fight than strategy. Tendou’s sharp laugh punctuate the huffs and grunts of the little dance he settles into with Tooru, just a few feet away. Tendou’s fast and illogical, and his two-second precognition gives him a slight edge over Tooru. 

“Not using your shiny special powers today, Tooru-chan?” Tendou taunts.

“I save it for people who can actually fight,” Tooru lies blithely, and Tendou brays out another high laugh, before launching a kick that grazes Tooru’s shins. 

They punch and dodge. Tooru allows his body to go on autopilot, years of honed instincts kicking in. It’s barely the second week of school, but with the Sports Festival looming over everyone’s heads, and the sounds of Class 1-B’s training regimen echoing out from Gym Gamma, there’s a tension that adds fire to punches and steel to eyes today. 

In the edges of his vision, Tooru can see the flashes of bark and branches that are Hajime’s attacks. Even without Tooru’s quirk to assist him, the rough bark that grows over Hajime’s skin makes for a solid defense, and the short spiking branches protruding from his arms are enough to give Kyoutani, who swipes his claws with unthinking aggression, reason to pause. 

The thought makes Tooru smile, even as he can feel the warmth of his own quirk dancing along his fingertips. Breathing in through his nose, he curls his fingers inward. Not today, he thinks, tamping the feeling down. Not right now.

In his periphery, Kyoutani howls as his curled wolf-claws snag in a tangle of branches. Tooru grins, a flash of satisfaction curling in his gut.  

And then, for the first time in over a year, it happens. 

Flashes of red — all along the edges of the P.E. grounds. At first, Tooru wonders if it’s a trick of his own vision, or if somebody’s quirk is acting up, their control lost to the adrenaline of combat. Then the wind blows, a gust of heat searing his forearms. As Tooru’s body kicks and dodges with memorized ease, Tooru’s mind flashes back to an older, familiar memory of heat and burning. 

Panic claws up his throat faster than wildfire. It wouldn’t be the first time, he thinks, that he’s seen a fire quirk go so violently awry.  

He doesn’t have time to stop and think, because next the buzz of plane engines descend, making the ground under Tooru’s feet shake. It’s been months since the planes have come for him – and never in his waking hours. With the heat that’s closing in from all directions, he’s not sure if he’s in a dream or still on the P.E. grounds.

It’s becoming harder to breathe. It must be the smoke, Tooru thinks, or the fire sucking all the oxygen from the air. Tooru can feel his lungs working in double-time, his heart racing and his chest rising and falling rapidly.

He stumbles backwards, arms dropping from their protective stance as he curls in on himself, trying to make himself a smaller target.

“Tooru?” he thinks he hears, in a high and panicked tone, but the voice is so distant that he’s not sure if it’s real…

When Tooru comes to, his back is to the ground, Hajime’s face hovering over him. 

“Tooru!” It takes him a second to register that the only heat is from Hajime’s hands, which flit from his shoulders to his wrists to his ankles. From the contact between them, the branches on Hajime’s arms are spreading, growing into curled dense cages that swallow his forearms whole. “Tooru, where are you hurt? Where did he—”

The fire is gone, along with the heat and the roar of planes. 

Maybe they were never there to begin with.

“What happened?” Tooru interrupts, pushing himself up to a seated position. When Hajime reaches out to steady his shoulder, he flinches back from the touch. “The fire, is it—“

“He just blacked out and fell.” Tendou is speaking to Aizawa-sensei, although his eyes, narrowed to slits, are still trained on Tooru. Tooru turns away from Hajime’s outstretched hand to focus on the conversation. “I didn’t touch him. He collapsed all on his own.”

Around them, the two-on-two battles have ceased, and a dust-caked Class 1-A surrounds them in a half-circle. Tooru can sense a familiar set of stern brown eyes studying him closely from the crowd. 

“That’s likely,” Hajime growls. His hands, in the absence of something to hold, have balled into fists. “People don’t just collapse for no reason!”

“Clearly, some do.” Tendou gives Tooru a not-so-subtle side-eye. “But since you insist…” Dramatically, he raises his right hand. “I pinky-swear, on my extensive One Piece merchandise collection, that I inflicted no harm upon your darling boyfriend!”

“He’s not my—“ 

“Stop it, Iwa-chan.” Tooru keeps his voice firm. “He didn’t touch me.” Sighing, Tooru pushes himself to his feet, dusting off the front of his pants. A sudden, sharp pain stabs through his left knee, and he stumbles again. “Shit.”

“Tooru—“

“I’m fine,” he snaps, ducking the hand Hajime has reached out to steady him with. He lowers his eyes, determined not to notice how the muscle in Hajime’s jaw tightens when he’s upset. “I’m fine,” he repeats more calmly. 

“The nurse’s office, Oikawa Tooru.” Aizawa-sensei’s voice sounds bored as ever, but when Tooru turns, his eyes are fixed on Tooru’s knee, his gaze sharp. “Tomorrow morning. I’ll let Shuzenji-sensei know to expect you.”

Dismissing the class with a single wave, he turns toward the direction of campus. “Class is over,” he grumbles, like they’re a gathering of moderately annoying pests. “Get lost.”

The crowd begins to disperse. Tooru nods at Hanamaki and Matsukawa, gesturing for them to go ahead, then turns to where Hajime is standing beside him.

“I’ll see you at dinner?”

It’s more a dismissal than a question. Hajime looks like he’s about to argue, for one tense second. But then he nods, and Tooru watches him leave, tracking the way Hajime’s shoulders are hunched with worry, and how his heels drag into the dust with each slow step. He does his best to pretend that each step away doesn’t feel like a new chasm between them that Tooru won’t know how to bridge.

*

Tooru’s not sure when the rift between them first arose – when Hajime stopped being the person who understood him best. What he does know is that, at one point, the similarities between them felt as innumerable as the stars in the sky. 

A five-year-old Tooru had spotted Hajime from across the primary school yard. Hajime’s left hand had been coated in an uneven layer of oak bark. He was using it to dig pill bugs out of cracked soil. “He’ll make a good botanist,” their homeroom teacher had said, in the same tone of voice that Tooru’s aunt always used to say to Tooru’s mother, “I’m sure Tooru will be a decent accountant one day.” It had been enough for Tooru to tug his hand out of his mother’s grip and dash across the schoolyard toward his future best friend. 

Hajime was his first sparring partner, back when sparring was no more than gentle wrestling that quickly unraveled into giggling fits. Tooru remembers wintry afternoons spent watching All Might action films in between Star Trek reruns, their shoulders pressed together under a thick blanket.

“The two of you are walking different paths,” his mother had pulled him aside to explain, just a month after Tooru’s quirk had presented in his last year of primary school. “You’ll be attending different high schools in no time.”

You’re wrong, Tooru’d thought, and although he couldn’t say it aloud to his mother’s face, he’d poured his all into afterschool hero practice with Hajime, sparring until the sun disappeared behind the city skyline, using his quirk to draw out more from Hajime when the two of them lay sprawling on the ground, panting and exhausted. 

“What does it feel like?” he remembers Hajime asking, his fingers reaching out to touch the tips of Tooru’s own. Where their skin met, ridges rose along the back of Hajime’s hand, and Tooru felt a sensation like warm water traveling up his arm. “Amplifying someone else’s quirk?”

“It’s different with each person. With you though?” Tooru considered the warmth in his arm, gentle like water. He’d looked up at Hajime with a cheeky grin. “It feels like an octopus is drooling on my arm!”

He’d laughed as Hajime’s face had turned redder than the sun hidden behind Musutafu’s thick city smog. “Shut up, Shittykawa, or I won’t practice with you again!” Hajime had shouted at him, embarrassed, without ever moving away from Tooru’s touch. 

He’d practiced with Tooru again the next day, griping and grumbling while Tooru laughed, and Tooru kept delving into Hajime’s quirk until he sometimes lost track of where his own body ended and Hajime’s began. 

Maybe the nightmares were the first real rift. Tooru hadn’t known how to explain the sort of things he’d see at night, the blood and all the lights. He hadn’t known how to explain the sorts of things that were happening in Kyudai-sensei’s clinic, either— and the long-sleeved shirts he’d worn even in the summers, to cover up his injuries, felt like new layers of falsehood between them. 

Since his last appointment with Kyudai-sensei over a year ago, Tooru hasn’t used his quirk on anyone. He knows that Hajime wants to understand – is waiting, in that gruff and awkward way of his, for Tooru to ask for help. But there have been years and years of unspoken secrets between them, and Tooru isn’t sure where he would even begin. 

He is sure of one thing: If they’re lucky, Tooru won’t ever use his quirk on another person. Especially not Hajime. 

*

It’s dark outside by the time Tooru slips in through the Heights Alliance front door, shutting the door quickly to cut off the chilly air that seeps inside.

“Ah, the man of the hour!” Startling, Tooru looks up to see Hanamaki sprawled across one of the green common room couches. He’s twirling a tablet pen between his fingers, and his pajama shirt is riding up his stomach. “Everyone was looking for you during dinner, you know. Iwaizumi kept sprouting acorns out of his neck, and Ushiwaka accidentally froze the miso soup ladle to Pro Hero Lunch Rush’s hand!”

Tooru snorts, his lips twitching. “Wasn’t hungry.” He pads slowly over to the couch. Dinner sounds like it would have been exactly Tooru’s scene, if he’d been in the mood to tease Hajime or watch Ushiwaka-chan make a fool of himself. Instead he’d sat in the P.E. grounds alone for hours after Aizawa-sensei left, breathing in and out in counts of three until his hands had finally stopped shaking. “Where’s Iwa-chan?” 

Peeling off his windbreaker, Tooru tries to sprawl himself across two couch cushions. Pain lances up his left leg at the movement. He gasps sharply, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths until it’s gone.

When his eyes open, Hanamaki is looking away. “He’s upstairs.” The tablet pen makes a full rotation around Hanamaki’s knuckles. “Hey, wanna help me with something?” His voice sounds purposefully light.

“Depends.” Tooru shifts so he’s lying on his side, cheek pillowed against his palm. “What am I getting out of it?”

With a sigh, Hanamaki lifts himself into a sitting position, reaching down to pull a tablet and a plastic-wrapped milk bread bun out of his backpack. “I always come prepared when making deals with the devil.” He tosses it over his shoulder, and Tooru catches the package in his right hand. 

“Have I told you I’m in love with you, Hanamaki?”

“Save that shit for Iwaizumi, please. I get enough secondhand melodrama in my life just by being your friend.” Hanamaki switches the tablet on, and the screen lights up with a multicolored 3D print design. “Anyway, I wanted to get your thoughts on this design.”

Tooru squints as Hanamaki rotates the 3D model on the screen. There are multiple chambers, filled with liquid, and connected by a tube with a piston and one-way valves at each end… “A water gun? Are you applying to work at Tokyo Disney this summer?”

“No thanks, I’ve already got my hands full babysitting you.” Hanamaki taps the screen with his fingers, and the image zooms in. “It’s to help bolster my offensive arsenal. With my water quirk, I’ve got a lot of targeted attacks. I usually focused on aim over power, you know? And when I’m partnered with Matsukawa’s electricity quirk, the two of us can carry out longer-range attacks. But –”

“You won’t always be partnered with Matsukawa.” It’s a practical thought, but voicing it still sends a pang of something like melancholy down his spine. Hanamaki and Matsukawa have known each other since primary school, just like... Fisting his hands, Tooru flips onto his back, staring at the ceiling as his mind begins to race, considering possibilities. 

“The last stage of the Sports Festival is always one-on-one duels,” Hanamaki says. A small shot of dread shoots up Tooru’s spine at the mention of the festival. “So I can’t rely on Matsukawa to win.”

There’s something hesitant in the way Hanamaki is speaking, right now, like he’s bracing for Tooru to tell him that he shouldn’t need to brainstorm solitary attack strategies. A naive, hypocritical part of Tooru wants to offer him platitudes about partnership and trust that have long fallen flat in Tooru’s own ears. 

“If it’s a high power, long range attack you want…” Tooru grabs the tablet instead, rotating the image with his fingers. “You’ll need an engine. A hand-powered piston won’t get you any range. We’ll ask Shimizu to design one small enough to fit inside a wearable device.” Tooru taps his fingers against the edge of the screen, thinking fast. “Makki-chan, your quirk works by drawing water vapor from the air, right?”

“I can convert vapor to water from any distance. I can’t make large volumes at a time, though, so for a large offensive attack, I’d need–”

“A way to store water,” Tooru cuts in. “And then to shoot it out at a high pressure.” In his mind, Tooru is pulling up his own models, rotating them, discarding some designs and keeping others. He tears off a chunk of milk bread and pops it in his mouth.

“High enough to injure,” Hanamaki agrees, after a pause.

“Or to deter attacks,” Tooru says quickly. “Remember, Ushiwaka-chan rarely uses his fire, but the threat alone is enough to make his opponents hesitate. Weapons aren’t always for direct harm.” Water at high speeds, Tooru thinks, might also make it easier for his friends to face Ushiwaka-chan. To neutralize the most dangerous quirk in their class. “Makki-chan, support items don’t have to be wearable, do they?”

Hanamaki turns to look at him, surprised. “Why? What are you thinking?”

It’s been so long since Tooru has used this side of his brain. He can feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins, different from the nervous energy before a fight. Design work is pure strategy, pulling at all of Tooru’s strengths and all the exciting aspects of hero work that he’s missed, minus the risks. Maybe with a centrifugal pump, like the ones on fire trucks…

“I’ll tell you in a few days.” He hits save on the CAD file, then hands the tablet back to Hanamaki, who stares at the notes Tooru has scribbled into the margins. “Run these to Shimizu tomorrow morning.”

“Can she even read your chicken scratch?” Hanamaki laughs, reaching over to ruffle Tooru’s hair. “Have you thought about what you’ll do?”

“Hm?”

“For the Sports Festival.” Tooru shifts, shaking off Hanamaki’s fingers, as some of the afternoon’s panic claws back up his stomach. “What support items you’ll use, or–”

Tooru tosses the empty milk bread wrapper in Hanamaki’s face, deterring his question with a shower of crumbs. “You’ll need to buy out the whole bakery if you want me to start spilling my secrets!” he exclaims, switching on his false cheer and bravado in the face of Hanamaki’s sputtering.

*

Hanamaki’s unfinished question stays with him through the night and into the early morning, echoing in his ears as he drags himself blearily out of bed and through his morning routine. Have you thought about what you’ll do for the Sports Festival? He stumbles out the dormitory’s front door, lost in worry and sleep-deprivation, only half his mind focused on getting himself to the nurse’s office on time.

“Oikawa-kun!” a voice calls out from behind him. “Wait up!”

Tooru turns to find a group of five girls running across the dormitory’s neatly-trimmed front lawn toward him. It’s still early in the morning, and moisture from the grass blades wets their slippers and clings to the hems of their pajama pants. He pauses, turning back toward the red brick and white steps of the Heights Alliance buildings as they wave for him to stop. 

He’s tired. His legs still ache from yesterday’s training, and he’d stayed up late last night, scratching away at all the messy draft sketches of his water pump design while Hajime slept across the room. Hajime hadn’t spoken to him at all last night, and he’d still been snoring into his pillow when Tooru slipped out the door this morning, his eyes closed and his chest rising and falling in peaceful, even breaths. It had been difficult not to stare.

The girls skid to a stop, panting. “I’m Sakamoto,” the girl in front says, her breath puffing white into the air. “Sakamoto Mayumi.” Tooru takes in the plaid scrunchie tying her hair back from her face, and the navy blue casing around the phone clutched in her left hand. “From the business track.” She extends her right hand for a handshake.

She’s wearing a wool scarf over her pajama shirt, and clay earrings shaped into two little plovers. Tooru notes the way she looks him right in the eyes. Self-consciously, he runs a hand through his messy hair. “Nice to meet you,” he says, grinning in a way that he hopes is charming. “Sakamoto Mayumi from the business track~.”

He takes her hand, keeping the handshake as brief as possible without being rude. 

“You look tired, Oikawa-kun,” she says, her wide eyes scanning his face and the small wrinkles on his U.A. uniform button-up shirt. “Have you been sleeping well?”

“Ah.” As he tugs at his shirt, Tooru notices, inexplicably, that her irises are the same almond-brown as Hajime’s when the sunlight hits them. “Nothing you need to be concerned about. That’s a cute phone case, by the way.” He nods down at the dark U.A blue case clutched tightly in her right hand. 

Her smile widens. “It’s the new merchandise for this year’s Sports Festival!” She turns the phone over in her hand, and Tooru sees the U.A. logo emblazoned across the back, below a picture of All Might’s grinning face. “Tickets sold out fast for the first-years’ stage, since you and Ushijima-san will be competing.” Her eyes, when she glances at him through her lashes, are full of excitement. “By the way … could we take a picture with you? You’re basically a celebrity around here!” 

It’s a good thing, Tooru thinks, that he’s had lots of practice smiling at crowds. “Anything for my fans.” He winks. “Should I…”

“I’ll do it,” Sakamoto says, and then she’s directing them all into a grinning single-file line, and tilting her phone to fit them all in frame. Tooru throws up a peace sign, and Sakamoto mirrors the pose, her smile completely undaunted. 

When they’re thanking him, afterwards, Sakamoto grabs his forearm before he can react. “You’ll partner with Ushijima-san, won’t you?” she asks. “For the group stage of the competition?”

Unbidden, an image of two stern brown eyes and a grim frown rises in Tooru’s mind. It takes a concerted effort to swallow back the panic that comes with it. 

“Ah ah~,” Tooru smiles through the bitter taste that rises in the back of his throat. “You’ll have to watch the Sports Festival to find out!”

“A salesman through and through.” Sakamoto laughs. “Good luck, Oikawa-kun! Everybody’s looking forward to seeing what you do.”

She winks at him, and Tooru ignores the way his stomach twists uneasily at her obvious flirtation. He keeps his smile plastered tight on his face until she’s disappeared back behind the dormitory door.

The rest of the walk to the nurse’s office is quiet. When Tooru cracks open the door, Recovery Girl is sitting at a metal chair beside her desk, her grey hair pinned back into a bun with a crooked syringe, her pink boots barely dangling just past the edge of her seat. Her fingers are curled over a computer keyboard. She’s staring at something intently, eyes narrowed at the screen. 

“Recovery Girl?” Tooru eases the door open a crack. The nurse doesn’t react, so Tooru lets himself the rest of the way inside, peering at the computer screen in front of her. 

There are two tabs open: the one pulled to the left of the screen looks like a scan of a newspaper article, black text printed across yellowing paper. When Tooru squints, he can just make out the headline: Kyudai-Sensei Pleads Not Guilty For Unlicensed Medical Experimentation, Claims Project In Service of Hero Society. 

Tooru swallows against the tightening in his throat as he glances away.

The tab open on the right is the footage from Tooru’s U.A. entrance exam. He recognizes the old, greying office buildings of Ground Beta instantly. The footage has been shot from an aerial view, and in the narrow shadowed street between two apartment complexes, Tooru and Hajime are standing side by side, facing down ten Villain Bots at once. 

Tooru still remembers that day clearer than a dream. The Bots had been the newest overseas models, imported from some US defense contractor. They’d been easily ten feet taller than any Bot Tooru had ever trained against. He remembers watching Ushijima leveling a dozen of them at once, looking almost bored as he’d thrown spears of ice out of his right hand at the Bots. Watching his quirk in action, so easy and thoughtless, just a few months after Kyudai-sensei had been caught, made anger churn irrationally in Tooru’s gut.

“We have ten minutes left,” Hajime had hissed at him from the corner of his mouth. “Before Ushiwaka takes all the targets for himself.”

Tooru had cut his gaze from Hajime’s stone-hardened skin to the row of Villain Bots towering before them. They had to be fast. Without Tooru’s quirk, they were at a steep disadvantage. “Take out the ones at the ends first.” He’d brushed his fingers against the sleeve of Hajime’s hero costume, careful not to brush against bare skin. “I’ll distract them, Iwa-chan.” 

The door to the nurse’s office creaks behind Tooru, and Recovery Girl startles at her desk. 

Recovery Girl’s hand twitches faster than he can register. When Tooru looks back at the computer screen, both tabs are gone. 

“Recovery Girl?” 

“It’s Shuzenji-sensei,” she corrects him automatically. She’s swung her chair around to face him, and her wide smile pulls at the wrinkles on her face. “I haven’t been an active hero in years, kid!” She extends her hand toward him; a handful of bright orange Anpanmen rest in the crevice of her palm. “Gummies?”

“Um.” Tooru shuts the door behind him. “No thanks.”

“How’s your knee?” Recovery Girl asks, as Tooru settles down on the paper-covered cot closest to the desk, pulling back the white cloth curtain surrounding it.  “Any pain?”

She slips off her elevated chair to approach him. Tooru’s forgotten how short she is. Her grey hair barely reaches Tooru’s shoulders, despite the elevated platforms on the bottoms of her pink boots. The white coat, though, makes her look infinitely more imposing. 

Behind her, the sterile off-white clinic walls sport a collection of posters. There’s a laminated diagram of the bones and muscles in the human body. Next to it, All Might smiles out in full color from a 30 x 45 cm print of the newest Sports Festival advertisement poster. April 16, it reads. (In one week, Tooru translates silently, and a new wave of nervousness shoots through him, making his fingertips tingle.)

“It’s fine,” Tooru replies. Recovery Girl manages to look unimpressed through her smile, and he sighs. “Well, it’s been aching a bit during afternoon training.”

“Iwaizumi-kun told me that you re-injured it yesterday.”

“You spoke to Iwa-chan yesterday?” Recovery Girl just gives him a look, and he sighs. “I landed on it wrong, is all.”

“Is that so?” Recovery Girl grabs a stethoscope from her desk, and a footstool from the corner. “That’s not what Iwaizumi-kun told me.”

The stethoscope’s metal chest piece is cold against his back. “Iwa-chan should learn to mind his own business.” Tooru keeps his body still, like one wrong move will be his undoing. He should be more used to doctor’s exams by now. 

“And you,” she says, tapping him with the chest piece, “should learn some self-preservation, young man. You’ve been my patient for just over a year, but there’s rarely a week when I’m not bandaging up some new injury of yours.” She wraps her stethoscope around her neck, then crouches to check his ankles for swelling. “Any new nightmares? Fire, or planes…?”

Her fingertips are cold around his feet. “No,” Tooru lies again. 

Her grip tightens. “Iwaizumi-kun said you lost consciousness for a moment yesterday. And that you haven’t been using your quirk.” At his continued silence, she sighs. “Let me check your knee, hm?” As Tooru rolls up the left leg of his jeans, and peels off his brace, Recovery Girl watches him with her arms crossed. 

“You know, Garaki’s hearing ends next week,” she says, as she slips off the knee brace. “The jury’s decision should be out right after the Sports Festival.” Her voice is gentler than usual. Garaki, Tooru’s brain supplies. Kyudai Garaki. He wonders why she refers to Kyudai-sensei by his first name.

“I haven’t been following the trial,” he admits.

“Ah.” It’s quiet for a bit, as Recovery Girl presses down on the tendons and muscles surrounding his knee. He winces when she tries to extend his leg. “Does that hurt?”

Tooru grits his teeth. “No, it’s fine.”

Her eyes look exasperated. “Is it?” She rummages through a drawer in her desk, procuring a small, silver tube of gel. “Put this on if it starts to swell or throb.” She tosses it onto the cot beside him. “No more than four times a day.”

Tooru picks it up. “Got it.”

“You’re wearing your knee brace to classes, right?” Pulling herself back up onto her high desk chair, Recovery Girl points a shaking finger into Tooru’s face. “I’ve asked Iwaizumi-kun to keep an eye on you, but he’s far too lenient on you, kid.”

“I’m not a kid anymore,” Tooru retorts immediately. 

Recovery Girl gives him a strange, long look. “No,” she says. “You’re not, are you?” There’s a long pause, and then she turns back to her desktop computer. “Come back if the pain gets worse. Or if the dreams return, Oikawa-kun.”

Tooru nods. The sound of typing fills the room, and Tooru takes it as a clear dismissal. He rises from the cot, smoothing out the wrinkled paper behind him.

Just before he opens the door— “Oikawa-kun!” 

“Yes, Shuzenji-sensei?” 

When Tooru turns, he finds Recovery Girl staring at him, something indecipherable in her expression. “Good luck next week,” she tells him. “At the Sports Festival.” Her voice, usually so high and bubbly, is uncharacteristically grave. Tooru can only nod at her, shivering, before he shuts the door between them. 

*

Hajime’s quiet all through homeroom. Their desks are right next to each other, but Hajime scoots to the far edge of his seat as Yamada-sensei hollers on about integrals, his books and pencil case perched precariously at the end of his desk to leave at least a foot of space between himself and Tooru. 

Occasionally, Tooru can feel the weight of eyes on his face, but every time he turns to check, Hajime is facing forward again, or looking down at his open textbook with a frown on his face. 

what crawled into your pants and died? Hanamaki texts him during lunch, raising an eyebrow at him across the cafeteria table once he swipes his phone open to read the message. Hajime is sitting next to him, but he’s left enough space to fit another person between them on the booth. it’s so quiet it feels like we’re having a funeral, not eating pork katsu

we are, Tooru texts back, we’re mourning the inevitable death of your calculus grade, Makki-chan!, and tucks his phone into his pocket to avoid whatever half-joking, half-probing response Hanamaki is bound to send him in reply.

Afternoon hero training is easier than it was yesterday. Aizawa-sensei has them working on their “core abilities”, which roughly translates to endless sets of push-ups and sprints and lunges without the use of their quirks — leaving most of the class sweaty and grumbling by the end of the first hour. Tooru vastly prefers this to anything involving quirks or collaboration, and he pants through his exercises in silence, ignoring the pain in his left knee that has escalated into a steady source of nausea.

At the end of class, Tooru waves off his friends again, watching the three of them disappear around the corner of Gym Gamm. Then he sits cross-legged in the dirt, and fishes his phone out of his pocket, hoping to look up some videos of centrifugal water pumps used in parts washers and industrial machinery. It’ll give his mind something to do besides ruminate on his dwindling friendships or the pain in his knee. 

Instead, when he unlocks his phone, Hanamaki’s lunchtime text stares back at him. Iwaizumi’s worried about you, you know, it reads, and Tooru tucks his phone away again immediately, guilt curdling like old milk in his stomach. 

*

In lieu of dinner, Tooru finds himself tip-toeing down the hallway staircase to the first floor of U.A.’s main building, stopping outside a set of heavy metal double doors.

He finds Shimizu Kiyoko standing by one of the stainless steel work desks in the development studio, hair tied back above her plastic goggles. She’s bent over what looks like a prototype of the centrifugal pump Tooru had been drafting last night. Her fingertips brush over the small plastic cylinder, flickering a faint blue color, and she hums. 

“I see you’ve found my gift!”

Shimizu startles, then visibly composes her face into an unimpressed frown. “Giving me extra work is not a gift, Oikawa-kun. I have a problem set due at midnight, and I woke up this morning to fifty different drafts of the same pump design cluttering my inbox.” She retracts her hand, the blue disappearing. “Send me one email at least a week in advance the next time you need something.”

“That problem set took you twenty minutes max. Kyudai-sensei had us doing harder things in our sleep when we were twelve.” The air inside the development studio is cold as Tooru walks in. Grinning, he lifts himself onto the metal workbench, settling down cross-legged beside a power drill. “Admit it, Shimizu-san, you’re impressed!”

She slides the power drill away from Tooru’s leg. “I’m annoyed, brat. You’re lucky I’m fond of you.” She picks up a jacket strewn across the table, tossing it to Tooru. “Otherwise I wouldn’t give your obsessive tendencies the time of day.”

“Obsessive, or brilliant?” Tooru drapes the jacket over his shoulders, letting the sleeves dangle. He catches a whiff of coconut-scented detergent – and it reminds him, suddenly, of yesterday morning, walking to the cafeteria with Hajime’s windbreaker half-zipped across his torso. “Iwa-chan says my mind latches onto things so fast it’s annoying to talk to me longer than five minutes at a time!”

“Iwaizumi-kun must have the patience of a saint.” Despite her words, Shimizu’s laugh is fond. “You should be kinder to him, Oikawa. A bond like that is rare.” She kneels, reaching for something beneath the table. “What do you need a water pump and a portable high-power engine for, anyways?”

His knee picks an inopportune time to ache, and he suppresses his wince. “Oh, nothing much.” Tooru tries to keep his voice light. “Hanamaki wants a support item that’ll give him long-range attack options. He can only produce about a gallon of water every ten minutes. Not a lot of attack volume, compared to the competitors he’ll face.” Even as he rambles, Tooru doesn’t say the name they’re both thinking. “It’ll give him a huge advantage in the Sports Festival, especially since he’s the only elemental quirk, you know, other than…”

“Ushijima-san,” Shimizu says, her voice soft beneath the table. When she rises, a screwdriver in hand, the annoyance is gone from her eyes. In its place is a level of perceptiveness that scares Tooru. “Oikawa, are you still worried about him?”

Behind her goggles, her blue eyes are knowing.

Shimizu Kiyoko is the only one, other than Ushiwaka-chan, who understands the full extent of what Tooru has gone through. Tooru doesn’t like to think about Ushiwaka-chan on the best of days, but Shimizu … she’d been there as Kyudai-sensei had monitored his nightmares, or drawn his blood, and she’d been the one to sneak him water and milk bread when Kyudai-sensei had put the three of them through one of his interminably long training sessions. 

It had been the three of them, Tooru and Shimizu and Ushijima, working themselves to the bone for hours in that hidden basement, the rest of the city unaware of what was being built just beneath their feet. Tooru forgets, sometimes, how well Shimizu has learned to read him. “Why should I be worried about some prep school oaf?” he asks flippantly. 

“You know he’s more than a prep school oaf.” Sighing, Shimizu reaches up to fix the collar of her jacket around Tooru’s neck, zipping it up to his chin. “You’ll have to face him next week in the Sports Festival. You and I are probably the only people who know exactly what he’s capable of.”

Her fingers are cold. Tooru lets the touch linger for one second, two, before pulling away. 

“You don’t despise him, though.” It comes out more accusatory than Tooru means to make it sound. “Despite what he’s — what we’ve done.” His voice breaks a little at the admission. “You don’t even fear him.”

“Oikawa, I don’t think anyone should fear him.” Shimizu’s voice is firm, although her eyes are kind. “Ushijima-san hasn’t used his fire quirk at all over the past year.”

“Ushiwaka-chan,” Tooru says stiffly, “is not the hero everyone thinks he is.”

“None of us are.” Her gaze lingers for another second, and then she’s turning away. Her hands go back to the plastic cylinder, tapping at a loose screw. “For the record, I don’t think you should fear yourself, either.”

Her hands glows a light blue color, and Tooru watches as the screwdriver levitates, twisting the loose screw into place. Tooru fixates on that rather than the shiver making its way down his back. “Who says I’m afraid of anything?”

“Iwaizumi tells me you haven’t been using your quirk.” 

Tooru makes a mental note to have a word with Hajime, later. “Oh, you know me.” He laughs. “Where’s the fun in things without a little challenge?”

“Amplification is a part of you, you know. Just like my Metal Touch is a part of me.” Her hand glows blue again, and a piece of metal inside the cylinder clicks into place. She smiles. “Our bodies aren’t without their drawbacks, but … they’re not something to fear, either.”

Tooru watches the glow of Shimizu’s fingers with a mixture of fascination and envy. He wonders, briefly, what it’s like to have a power that doesn’t constantly need to be kept in check. He’s seen his own quirk bring out the very worst in people. That’s a type of fear that Shimizu will never understand. 

He opens his mouth to reply, but then there’s a new wave of pain from his knee, more intense than the last. He tenses, letting the overwhelming hurt wash over him, biting the meat of his cheek to keep quiet. It makes him dizzy. When it finally dulls, softening to something manageable, he opens his eyes to see Shimizu studying the water pump piece intently. 

“You’ve always been good at this sort of stuff,” she says, turning the plastic cylinder over in her hands as she deftly changes the topic. 

Tooru’s grateful. “What, engineering weapons?” he asks, a little weakly. 

“No.” She snorts. “Engineering ways to amplify people’s abilities. Helping them shine.” She places the cylinder down on the table. Then she looks up at Tooru. Her next words are more hesitant. “Speaking of engineering…did you know UA is getting upgraded Villain Bots?”

Tooru arches a brow. “Didn’t UA just get upgraded Villain Bots?” He thinks back to the Bots he’d faced at the Entrance Exam: tall and well-armed enough that Tooru had narrowly avoided injury a few times. Some of the other students weren’t so lucky. There had been a few people he’d recognized, students from his and Hajime’s middle school, who’d been carried out with bloodied shirts and a few broken limbs.

“These are designed by the same person,” Shimizu says. “An engineer from a U.S. defense contractor. Lockhart Technologies, I think?” She shakes her head. “Anyways, they’re planning to use the Sports Festival as their Japanese debut.”

Tooru’s brows climb even higher. “The US hero industry has never taken much interest in the Sports Festival before.”

Humming, Shimizu clicks her nails against the metal table. “They have to now. The hero industry is global, and Japan’s is only getting more competitive each year. They’re not our benefactors anymore. If they can’t adapt to seeing us as collaborators, they’ll be left behind in the dust.”

It’s true, what she’s saying. Tooru remembers the sound of the television in Kyudai-sensei’s underground lab, the droning voices of Hero Public Safety Commission representatives a steady background noise to the thrum of his own pulse in his ears. The butterfly needles used for drawing blood had stung his forearm, but he’d managed to catch snippets of speeches about Japan’s burgeoning hero industry, in between Kyudai-sensei’s scoffs and disgruntled noises.

Tooru forces a smirk. “Rehearsing for your career in politics, Shimizu-san?” He can still feel the dull pain in his knee, but it’s at a manageable level now. 

“Not in a million years.” Shimizu looks at him, and her eyes seem to dig right through his skin and into his marrow. “It’ll be a good thing for Japan, this collaboration.” She sounds a little bit like she’s trying to convince herself. “But I did want to warn you. If you have anything to fear at the Sports Festival, it’s not your classmates.”

Her blue eyes look like mirrors. Tooru very much wants to avoid that gaze, afraid of what it’ll reflect back at him. 

“Didn’t we already establish that I’m not afraid of anything?” Tooru teases.

*

“You weren’t at dinner again,” Hajime says, when Tooru slips back into their shared dorm room that evening. 

The voice startles Tooru at the doorway. He looks up to see Hajime sitting on his own bed, a small desk lamp spilling light onto the book in his lap. The dorm room is washed green by the glow-in-the-dark stars plastered across the ceiling.

It’s the first sentence Hajime’s spoken to him in the past twenty-four hours. Despite the frown on his face, his voice sounds more sad than angry, and that realization has Tooru swallowing back another wave of guilt as he toes off his shoes at the entryway.

You should be kinder to him, Oikawa, he hears in Shimizu’s voice – one of a number of things she’s said that will likely keep him awake tonight, ruminating. A bond like that is rare.

“I wasn’t hungry.” Tooru lifts an eyebrow at Hajime’s book, flipped open to a text-heavy page. If he squints, he can make out part of an upside-down title: Post-war capitalism and the quirk enhancement craze among third-generation– “What’s that?” he asks, nodding his head.

“Ah. Just…something I’ve been working on.” Hajime shuts the book with a slam, and Tooru lips quirk at the embarrassment written into his grimace. “I brought you food.”

Tooru turns to his own nightstand, where he sees a steaming bowl of miso ramen. His stomach growls; he hadn’t realized he was hungry. Grabbing it, he saunters over to Hajime’s bed, and plops down beside him. “No milk bread?” he teases.

“Just eat, Shittykawa,” Hajime grumbles, although there’s a hitch in his words that belies his gruffness. 

Settling into the comforter, Tooru lifts the lip of the bowl to his face. He’s sitting close to Hajime, and he can feel the body heat radiating from Hajime’s left leg. When he hums at the taste of the broth, he feels Hajime tense beside him. 

“Thanks,” Tooru says, smacking his lips. “Although it still would have been better with milk bread.”

“Get your own meal next time.” Hajime’s voice sounds strangely breathless, but Tooru doesn’t let himself dwell on it. 

They sit there, in the dim light, and Tooru’s hard-pressed not to remember the many nights he’d spent in Hajime’s bed as a kid, underneath the same set of glow-in-the-dark stars. He wonders what it would feel like now, if he lets himself curl into Hajime’s side, so they can watch one of those old All Might action films together like they used to, or just sit in silence, letting their quirks intermingle. 

It’s been so long since he’s used his quirk. He feels it, sometimes, a warm tickling sensation just underneath his skin. Sometimes he misses the intimacy of experiencing another person’s quirk. He can remember each one distinctly. Crisp autumn air. Cold metal gears. Even the cinnamon taste of a low-burning fire–  

Pain sears up his knee into his upper thigh, cutting off his train of thought for an interminable moment. 

When he’s finished most of the bowl, Tooru shifts to slide off the bed. He’s stopped by a hand on his right thigh.

“Tooru, you’ve been having dreams again.”