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pumkinnxsmut · 9 months

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I’m not even really a Dabi person…BUT I AM NOW 😃 this was literally THE best Dabi/Touya fic i’ve read. Ever.

soulmate trope | dabi

Dabi’s route of soulmate trope.

"post-canon dabi? canon isn't even finished as of when this was posted on 30 july 2023!" to you. i know he's doing just fine. and obviously i will be wrong about some things. warnings: female reader. manga spoilers up to chapter 390: specifically about touya's body but vaguely about ~all of that~. sexual content. food mention/discussion. injury descriptions (burns) that aren't reader's. weeb slander. a note: part of the plot revolves around...analysing anime. i use hunter x hunter here, and if you are not into that, i have, to the best of my knowledge, included neither spoilers (aside from early story arc names) nor information that cannot be understood via context clues. additionally, there is a brief pokemon metaphor that also can hopefully be understood with context clues as well.

~27.7k

You’re being watched.

Or rather, you had the eerily intense inkling that you were being watched, or as if you were some sort of recently awakened sleeper agent—as if you were somehow the key to someone’s spying into U.A., even though the most secretive thing going on right now in 3-A’s common area was that Hagakure’s facial features were somewhat revealed by the drying face mask.

“Jirou,” you said, bookmarking your place, “Would you mind checking for—I don’t know, any kind of outside surveillance devices in here?”

Jirou bit the stem of the carnation she’d been about to weave into Yaoyorozu’s hair and shifted all the strands of the braid into one hand, and she tilted her head to jab the arm of the couch with her earjack. After a few moments, she unsheathed it, the hole in the couch sealing itself, and shook her head. “Nothing out of the ordinary. What’s up?”

Furrowing your brow, you shoved your book between the cushion and arm of your chair. “I’m not sure. It’s—I have this weird feeling that someone’s looking at me. Or through me, really. Both? I don’t know how to describe it, but it feels like someone else is seeing what I’m seeing.”

“Do your eyes hurt, ribbit?” Asui asked from her spot on the floor, where she was sorting her m&ms by colour.

“No. More like I’m hyperaware of them,” you said, “But I can’t shake the feeling that someone’s watching all of this because of me.”

“What’s there to watch? It’s nothing but a Girls and Todoroki Night. There’s nothing worth seeing and or any big secrets being spilled. Well, spoilers for the New Year’s episode of Kamisama Kiss, but it’s been out for years already,” said Mina, gesturing towards the television, and Uraraka snatched Mina’s hand out of the air and laid it flat on the coffee table again, because she’s not done painting her nails, damn it. Mina sighed dreamily at the sheep whose wool fluffed enough to take up the entire screen. “What I wouldn’t give for my hair to have that much volume.”

“I guess you’re right,” you said, settling down into your chair, pulling Shinsou’s blue-pineappled blanket up to your neck (he was out on his bike, so he wasn’t attending this Girls and Todoroki Night [Shinsou and Todoroki were the only boys allowed, since their presence wasn’t obtrusive or contrary to the vibe. Additionally, Shinsou thought it was funnier if his name weren’t included in the title of these events]). “Y’know, in the manga, the New Year avatar isn’t a sheep. It’s a dragon.”

Mina blew on her hands as Uraraka rebottled the nail polish brush. “Whaaaaat?

“It was changed to a sheep to align with the year the episode was released,” said Todoroki, his thumb and index finger pinching his lower lip with his eyes glued to the screen, “I understand the change on a narrative scale, but I believe the dragon had more of a character arc than the sheep. The dragon didn’t think it was as appealing as other years’ avatars, and it had to learn to accept itself and accept others’ love for it. It was rooted in misunderstanding.”

For some reason, when you looked at Todoroki, you were doused with regret. Sharp and cold, followed by a splash of something more muddled: envy, maybe? Gratitude?

These…these feelings weren’t yours.

***

“I can’t believe I missed a Girls and Todoroki Night,” said Shinsou, grinning, his legs dangling off the dorm’s kitchen counter, “but alas! The night was calling, and I had to go out in it.”

“We will not spoil Kamisama Kiss for you,” said Todoroki. He was crouched in front of the oven, hands clasped as he stared through the tinted window at the browning potato wedges. “You will have to watch that episode on your own.”

“You should really read the manga,” you were saying as you scanned the inside of the refrigerator, looking for anything that might go well with the potatoes—ah, Aoyama’s got some bougie-looking sauce. Savoury, by the looks of it. “It goes farther than the anime covers, and it’s so sweet. The worldbuilding gets better, too.” You took out the bottle and gave it an experimental shake.

“Really?” Shinsou wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know; that villain guy isn’t very fun. Feels like too much time is wasted on him.”

Todoroki’s head snapped towards Shinsou at the same time you slammed the refrigerator shut. “No,” the both of you said at the same time, and you continued. “The anime hasn’t been quite as accurate in tone regarding that character, but he’s really wonderful, eventually. You really feel for what happened to him and for his past relationship to the main characters. Simple but effective job of deconstructing his villainy and granting him humanity.”

“Huh.” Shinsou propped his cheek on his fist, his ankle resting on his opposite knee. “I wonder how much nuance I’m missing because I’m only watching the anime.”

For a second, you felt as groggy as if you’d just woken up, your eyes focusing a bit more precisely, blurring the kitchen tiles for a moment before re-focusing, and it crept in again: the feeling that someone was watching you, that someone else was here.

“Hey, Shinsou, Todoroki,” you said, blinking several times, Aoyama’s brown sauce clutched in both hands, “Do my eyes look any different?”

Both of them looked you over. Shinsou shook his head. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’ve got—” You nodded towards Todoroki. “I have that same feeling from last night. Like someone’s watching. But Jirou said nothing was wrong.” Shrugging, you tossed the sauce to Shinsou and sat in front of the oven with Todoroki. “I guess Kamisama Kiss must bring out the voyeur in me. Or being voyeur-ed. Watched.” You crossed your legs at the same time Todoroki jolted because of a crushed peppercorn popping in the oven. “Maybe we should start reading manga alongside the anime so that we can judge how accurate they are. See how much character nuance is lost or preserved.”

Todoroki’s eyes bulged. “You have no idea how much that appeals to me. I desperately need to discuss the differences between the Hunter x Hunter 1999 anime, the 2011 anime, and the manga. Sero refuses to watch the 1999 version.”

Amusement. Condescension. Bubbling to the top of your consciousness.

Distinctly not yours.

Why would you be feeling these things in the face of something that sounded so wonderfully, uselessly pedantic? A project like Todoroki’s just proposed sounded like an absolutely ideal waste of time that would allow you to be more accurate than the vast majority of people when it came to plot, lore, and characterisation. Why would emotions you’d associate with making fun of someone pop up now? You didn’t want to make fun of Todoroki; you were enthusiastic about joining him in this pointless endeavour.

The timer on Shinsou’s phone blared, and he tapped it off, patting his pockets (?) for the oven mitt, which he spotted on the counter next to him. “Why would Sero refuse to watch the older version?”

Todoroki helped you stand and guided the both of you away from the oven. “To be fair, in the 1999 anime, the animators did take liberties with panel composition and brought in new angles and lines sporadically. Colours are also odd and inaccurate, and those are corrected, for the most part, in the 2011 version. More of the manga is covered, and the animation is smoother in the 2011 version as well.”

Why did you feel the distant sensation of laughing? Nothing about this has been funny, per se, but the…what was going on?

“Okay, I’ll bite,” you said, strangely heavy and hyperaware and surveying the tray of steaming potato wedges as Shinsou shuffled it to the stove, “I’ll do it with you, all this manga accuracy checking.”

“Me, too,” said Shinsou, shaking the over mitt off, “My suggestion is that we keep it to just the three of us, to prevent exhausting arguments, like we’d have in a big group the size of Girls and Todoroki Nights.”

“I can lend you the first few volumes,” said Todoroki, opening a cabinet to search for Aoyama’s sauce bowls, “After that, I have a link to high-quality scans I can send you.”

“Sounds perfect,” you said, reaching for a potato wedge that did not sizzle and screech as much as the others, “Should we watch the first episode tomorrow night?” When you retracted your hand at the burn, you felt your own pain and someone else’s sense of nostalgia.

***

You’d already been on the precipice of falling asleep during Present Mic’s lesson, but when a concentrated shot of fatigue pierced you, you set down your pen and reluctantly resolved to get the subsequent notes from Iida. God, couldn’t this wait until you were out of class? No one needed to see how terrible your own notes were. No one needed to see your drawings in the margins.

Burying your face in your hands, you dug the heels of your palms into your eyes, rubbing them as the lethargy kicked in, and you braced yourself for the uncanny sensation of being your own worst voyeur.

When you opened them, after the lightheaded dots blinked away, you weren’t in the classroom, instead entrenched in darkness. Well, wait—you groped around on your desk: physically, you still were upright in your desk at U.A., able to grasp your pen, set it down, able to faintly hear Present Mic, as if he’s in the next room over.

Blindly, you tapped Mina’s desk behind you, turning your head over your shoulder. “Do my eyes look weird to you?”

“No. Should they?” she whispered back—or maybe she said it at a normal volume, and the classroom had been so far removed the distance silenced her.

Biting the inside of your cheek, you faced the front again. Looks like you have to figure this out yourself, or else you’ll be sitting in pitch black for who knows how long.

A minute passed. Your eyes adjusted to the darkness, shapes appearing—you’re inside. In a room with the lights off. Sideways, for some reason. One of the shapes was so rigidly rectangular that it had to be a shoji divider, and you were just trying to estimate its size when all of your mental facilities halted at a loud, rumbling groan.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” a scratchy, masculine voice said, “Must be my turn, huh?”

He flipped over, and barely cracked venetian blinds behind dark curtains just barely illuminated part of the scene: you were seeing this sideways because he was lying in bed, an out-of-place, opulent, Western-style bed in what you assumed was an Eastern-style room, judging what you could make out of traditional wallpaper and tatami flooring.

“Well, you’re not getting anything out of me,” he said, reaching for one of the many strewn pillows and hugging it—you lost half of your sight when his face sank into it (too dark for you to get a good look at his hands or arms), “Sucks for you, but I’m going back to sleep. Don’t care how curious you are. Not sharin’ anything with someone who can’t cook potato wedges right.”

No, get up. Get up. Say more right now. Who was he? It’s—it’s the middle of the day, anyhow; what is he doing asleep?

“Hah. You’re angry with me.” His laugh sounded more like a hiss, somehow. “Get used to it.”

He shut his eyes. After about a minute, the darkness faded, and Present Mic’s voice hit you at full volume, and you winced, clamping a hand down on your notes when the classroom came into view.

***

“You are not dropping out of school the semester you’re supposed to graduate,” said Aizawa, pinching the bridge of his nose, elbow digging into the puffy leather chair by Nezu’s desk.

“From my perspective, it does not appear you are a liability to U.A.’s security.” Nezu steepled his paws together, his pink toe beans preventing him from pressing them completely flat. “Simply seeing through each other’s eyes and feeling some of his emotions are no cause for the drastic security measures you are proposing. I believe that so long as you have some sort of indicator that either situation is happening, faculty can prepare for your temporary debility.”

“Don’t even think about abusing it to get out of class,” said Aizawa, propping his chin on his fist.

“You think I would? Shocked! Shocked and offended,” you said, “I’m gonna be in class; I don’t trust anyone else’s notes. I want my own interpretations of lectures.” You slumped down in your seat, tilting your head back to stare at the ceiling. “Principal Nezu, do you have an idea of why this is happening to me?”

“I do.” Nezu opened the top drawer in his desk to retrieve a stack of yellow-green papers, torn from a legal pad and crimped because of whatever was spilled on it. “Recovery Girl and Midnight have been analysing the results of Tainted Love’s quirk for some time now. The female rehabilitation centre with which Midnight works, Sakura Grove, has uncovered evidence of two other incidents that caused a soulmate bond with similar qualities to form.”

“What? No,” you said, letting a whine creep into your voice, “That means my soulmate’s a jerk. He was rude to me. He insulted my potato wedge recipe.”

Aizawa raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth twitching upward as he crossed his arms. “You can’t expect there to be love at first sight, can you? Love is a choice. You work at it every day. You have to keep choosing it.”

“Yaoyorozu and Jirou were already dating when they got assigned soulmates,” you said, listing on your fingers, “Midoriya and Uraraka had been pining after each other for years—”

Aizawa scowled. “Stop that.”

“So, do you want me to report anything? Do you want me to duck out of class when he—checks in?”

“If you feel unsafe, let us know. Otherwise, it is of my opinion that you will be just fine,” said Nezu, and he reached for his paw-sized coffee cup to remove the melting stroopwaffle cookie off the top. “Report what you perceive as dangerous, but you deserve privacy. When you decide on your signal that the bond is active, please send an email to faculty members. Whether or not you inform your peers is at your discretion.”

***

So, of course, you told everyone.

Meaning no one batted an eye the next time the soulmate bond activated, which was in class. Feeling the exhaustion and the slight buzz from your soulmate popping in to watch through you, you made the phone call symbol, grabbed a marker from the whiteboard, and headed out into the hall, no questions asked.

“Hey,” you were saying, shoving your forearm against the concrete-block wall and popping the marker cap off with your mouth, “Good to hear from you. Didn’t know I could see through you, too. Excited to see how we’ll deal with that. This is my phone number.” You scrawled it across your arm, along with your given name above it. “If you can’t memorise it now, that’s fine. I’ll write it down next time, too, so you could prepare to have something nearby to record it with. I look forward to getting to know you.”

No strong emotions on his part. But he was there.

“Okay,” you said, and you turned to sink down against the wall to sit in the deserted hallway. “Some basic stuff: I’m a student at U.A., in my last year. I’m in that—uh, I’m in the class that’s gotten into a bit of trouble over the past few years. Midoriya, Bakugou, and all of them, if you watch the news. I’ve just ducked out of class with everyone.” You kept looking at your arm so that he could memorise it. “I don’t really wanna talk about my quirk, since that seems like such a boring, capital-A adult question, but I can tell you about it later, if you really want to know. Oh! I do not suck at making potato wedges. It was just a recipe that none of us had made before, and they were fine. They were good. I—”

And he’s gone, link severed.

Crossing your arms, you slumped against the wall. Did he choose to end it? Could he? He didn’t seem very receptive, so you wouldn’t put it past him.

***

You woke up from a nap watching through him play a video game, some non-discernible, first-person shooter. Again in the dark, but perhaps not in the same room. The windows weren’t open enough to let in enough light to tell.

Your soulmate never acknowledged you were there by gesture or word. Just played his stupid fucking game. You were trying to send him foul vibes of frustration and indignation, but he ignored you.

After a mere six minutes of the world’s worst Let’s Play, you decided you could be a little bitch as well.

***

“Oh! He’s here. Excuse me,” you said to Shinsou and Jirou, making the phone call gesture as you pushed yourself up from the lunch table, “I’ll be back in a moment. Please guard my gummies from Monoma.”

A flash of curiosity, finally, from your soulmate as he got the image of Shinsou and Jirou smirking to themselves and waving you off.

Once you were alone outside in the courtyard, you pulled out and unfolded the piece of pink construction paper, at this point every inch covered by doodles of flowers and increasingly shitty bulbasaurs. You tapped at the writing in the centre. “This is called a telephone number,” you said, “This one belongs to me. If you dial this number into a phone to call it, you will reach me. Then, we could have a conversation and arrange to meet up, instead of this unreliable, one-sided bond.”

You flattened your hand to smooth out the creases, halting midway when it struck you. “I’ve just realised you may be confused by this situation. Don’t worry; I am as well. But be assured, due to a quirk incident, we’ve been assigned soulmates. Yeah, I know they’re fake, but with this villain Tainted Love’s quirk, soulmates are real.”

He evidently was feeling like he wanted to walk straight into the ocean.

“I’m assuming you’re not a U.A. student, so—do you remember breathing in some sort of pink dust? Within about the past—I don’t know, two and a half years? That’s how long Tainted Love was active. She only got arrested about a month or so ago.” You couldn’t garner anything from him except for exasperation, so you continued. “And not, like, snorting a line of pink dust. It would’ve been in a dust cloud. A bit like fog. You would’ve noticed it.”

Staring at your phone number the whole time, you allowed him silence to think. Whatever he was feeling was very subdued, so you couldn’t really surmise what it was, but ten seconds before the bond broke, a livid, fiery ire consumed your whole body in the heat of recognition.

***

Shinsou, Todoroki, and you were all crowded around a laptop in Shinsou’s dorm to watch the beginning episodes of Hunter x Hunter the next time your soulmate spoke to you. He’d gone a couple of times ignoring you in silence, once outside on a walk during the day on a path uptown you didn’t recognise, and the other on some rooftop while playing on his phone and watching a meteor shower. Completely disregarding your attempts to give him your number or talk to him in real time.

It just figured that he bothered to spare you any information when you were trying to see what the next phase of the Hunter Exam was, so Todoroki and Shinsou paused the show for you and waited. With a stab of affection for your friends, you moved to the corner, waiting for your soulmate to say something.

And he was. Your soulmate knew more combinations of swear words and general filth than you’ve ever cared to consider, and you were almost impressed with the creativity of his vulgarity. Outside under the night sky, he was furiously ripping open some medium-sized, cardboard box as he stomped towards a carefully cultivated, lilypad-covered, manmade pond towards the back of a highly organised, traditional garden.

Eventually, non-profanity was added. “Goddamn fucking shit-ass fish and goddamn fucking shit-ass crusty motherfucking doctor can’t take care of his own goddamn fucking pet project.” Tips of his house slippers stopping at the pond only by way of running into the stone wall, he stumbled, growling in frustration, before regaining his balance and yanking out the plastic bag inside the remnants of the box. “Wants a goddamn gift for fucking Mom but can’t be arsed to do it him-fucking-self. Deserves every fish fucked into his respiratory system, clogging up his arteries to give himself a goddamn heart attack. And then I can’t be blamed for—” The plastic stretched, and he ended up tearing it in half above the water, pieces falling atop waterlilies. “Shit on a cuntbag. What the fuck. I don’t deserve this.”

He stretched to reach the waterlilies, cupping his hands to sweep the fish food off and into the water. And—the moonlight struck the gently rippling water, enough for you to see a flash of an orange koi tail break the surface tension, but not enough to see whatever was going on with his hands—not that he was doing anything strange with them (just picking shreds of plastic out of the water), but they somehow were strange. They moved stiffly and had some sort of bumps on them, but—does this guy live in darkness? You couldn’t tell anything about what his hands looked like aside from the shadowed bumps, which could be anything.

“I deserve a lot, but I sure as hell don’t deserve this.” He rounded the pond and punched a few buttons on a small, hidden, monitor, checking the pH of the pool and water levels. “Not my fucking job. Not my fucking job. Why do they think—why am I the one to do this shit. How come I can get in trouble with my fucking brother for him not taking care of his project.” He swatted at his wet bathrobe sleeve, pissed, and shook out some of the water. “Hey, you. I know you’re there.”

Back in the dorm, you jolted in your seat. In the distance, you could hear Shinsou ask what was wrong. “Nothing,” you said, sounding distant yourself, “He acknowledged me is all. Hasn’t done that for a while, so it felt like a fourth wall break.”

Your soulmate sat down on the edge of the pond, glaring out at the rest of the garden (wisteria heavy, vines swaying in the night wind). “Are you hot?”

You’d never wanted to be able to transfer direct words or actions to him so much, because he needed to be strangled.

“I’m not kidding.” He crossed his arms, covered by a dark bathrobe, sticking his hands in his armpits. “Are you hot? I don’t like the idea of being connected to some hideous fuckwad.”

Never mind. Now you have never wanted to be—

“This quirk shit isn’t gonna last long, but if you’re hot, you need to get on my dick before it goes away. I wanna see how it looks giving me a blowjob from your perspective.”

Kill. Destroy. Maim. Eviscerate, even.

“Ooh, watch out. We’ve got an uptight, prudish bitch over here,” he said, and he laughed—again, sounding more like a hiss than anything else. “Well, then. If you’re not gonna put out, then I’ve got no use for you. Don’t need anyone, especially not some goddamn lunatic who claims to be my soulmate. Too many people are interfering in my life, anyway. And to be honest, it seems like you’re dumb and irritating. I don’t like people like you.”

Maybe you’re soulmates because you’re destined to kill him on sight. Your soul, calling out for his to suffer extreme violence. He’d deserve it.

May all his potato wedges burn.

***

Monoma was at the next Hunter x Hunter anime viewing, because he’d been dying to know why you were wearing an actual and literal clown costume, wig and enormous foam nose included.

“I’m liking the new hero outfit,” Monoma said, flipping his hair back with a flourish, “but why are you wearing it during our off-hours?”

“Shove off,” you said, grinning as Shinsou tossed you a pillow to hold, “Did you bring your peach gummies?”

“I did,” said Monoma, sitting next to you on Todoroki’s tatami mats, and he pulled a massive bag of white peach gummies from inside his jacket, handing it to you to open. “May I ask if it’s seriously part of your new uniform, or—”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Monoma,” you said, ripping open the bag at the notch, “I’m making a point.”

“Her soulmate,” Shinsou supplied, pulling up the next episode, “He wants to know what she looks like. So, she’s been dressing up in horrible, gawdy shit so that he can never really tell, even around mirrors.”

“He’s pissed,” you said, beaming, digging into the bag and popping a gummy into your mouth, “He wants me to stop playing around, but he was mean to me. Mean to me, unprovoked, and in a way that wasn’t hot. Tomorrow, I’m wearing a sheet and running around like a ghost. I will say nothing to him but boo.”

“I suppose that explains the influx of regular face masks you’ve taken to wearing during class.” Monoma scoffed, his incredulous, open mouth stretching into a grin. “You are impossible. If your humourless soulmate is worth his salt, then he should at least value the effort you’re putting into it.”

“Sero has sent me a message,” interrupted Todoroki, thumb swiping his phone screen, “He says that he has changed his mind and would like to join us. He’s started rereading the series and likes it more this time around.” Todoroki looked up and around his room, lips pursed. “There is not much space for five people. It is getter harder to see the laptop.”

***

The five of you started the Heaven’s Arena arc of Hunter x Hunter in Aizawa’s dorm apartment, seeing as he had the best television setup: for one, having an actual television instead of simply relying on his computer. His sound system held up, too, though you suspected Present Mic had something to do with that, instead of Aizawa’s own preferences.

You, Shinsou, Todoroki, Monoma, and Sero were scattered across Aizawa’s living room, all cosied under blankets and pillows and pointed towards his wall-mounted television, sitting on his cat-hair covered couch and armchairs, mugs and snacks on his coffee table, socked feet loose, and house slippers at the edge of the shag rug. The cats, Dango and Konpeito, chose to snuggle up towards Todoroki and you (beat that, Shinsou!), so you were careful not to disturb them from their slumber on your lap. No sudden movements, even when the tired dizziness of your bitch soulmate faded in.

“Spoilers for Hunter x Hunter, I suppose, even though it’s been out for decades,” you said under your breath, raising your hand to signal to the others that your soulmate was looking in. At your movement, Dango raised her head from her cocoon in your lap to yawn, her face nearly turning inside out, and she flinched, her pupils dilating, at the creak of the door.

Laden with groceries, Aizawa stepped into his own apartment, his brow furrowing at the sight of his students in his living room. “You have ten seconds to tell me what you’re doing here.”

“The fuck?” Sero whipped his head towards Shinsou and back at Aizawa. “Shinsou told us you were okay with it.”

“I said that he wouldn’t mind, which he can’t if he doesn’t catch us,” said Shinsou, bracing himself when Aizawa tugged at his capture weapon around his neck, “It’s my fault, Aizawa-sensei. Please don’t get angry at anyone else.”

Your soulmate seemed pleased that you were getting in trouble. Bastard.

Aizawa set his cloth bags on his kitchen counter, the insides shifting with the weight of the groceries. “Is this appropriate for Eri to watch?”

“Well, in general—”

A character onscreen chose that moment to seductively moan another character’s name, over and over again.

Aizawa winced, scrunching his eyes shut tightly. “Turn that shit off. Find another place to watch it.” Shaking his head, he unbagged the first of his groceries. “Shinsou, never bring anyone, including yourself, into my personal space again with express permission.”

“Damn it,” you said, reaching for the remote. You pressed the power button, watching the screen fade from the vibrant colours of Heaven’s Arena to black, with Aizawa’s living room reflecting back at you. Forlornly, you scratched the back of Dango’s neck, watching her mirrored reaction, before you realised what you were doing: giving your bitch-ass soulmate a clear view of your bare face. Eyes bulging, you gasped and bent over to hide your face, with Dango scurrying away at being disturbed.

The connection cut at the faint suggestion of intrigue.

***

YOU

hey i know we said we’d keep it small but. i think midoriya would really enjoy the battle analysis that the hxh characters are doing

YOU

bc they be doing some QUICK analytic work based on their opponents’ personalities

TODOROKI 💅🎏

Midoriya has been asking more questions than usual during our sparring sessions.

SERO 🧃🍊

ffs why isn’t he already in the group? should’ve thought of him

SHINSOU 💜🍡

want me to add him?

YOU

would that be okay, todoroki?

TODOROKI 💅🎏

There’s more than enough room at our new venue. We should invite him.

SHINSOU 💜🍡

why don’t you text him then? it’s at your place

MONOMA 🔇🎭

Midoriya CANNOT sit next to me

MONOMA 🔇🎭

I’d like to hear the onscreen dialogue instead of whatever he’s saying under his breath

MONOMA 🔇🎭

He CANNOT shut up

YOU

WHOMST won’t shut up??????

SERO 🧃🍊

don’t worry no one will sit next to you

MONOMA 🔇🎭

Good

MONOMA 🔇🎭

Wait

TODOROKI 💅🎏

Midoriya can attend! He’ll be a little late today, but I think we should wait for him, since it’s his first time joining us.

Startled by the waiter, you put your phone down on your notebook and accepted your coffee graciously. You shifted your laptop and notebook over so that you could cup the mug in front of you, its warmth seeping through the sides, and you took a tentative slurp. Interesting. You’ll finish it, but you won’t order this again.

You were killing time that Saturday by getting ahead on your work for Put Your Hands Up Radio: editing and fact-checking news segments that Yamada would read between songs towards the evening. Electing to get some sunshine on your skin before hunkering down with the group again to analyse some anime, you’d chosen to edit the articles outside at a café you’d discovered recently, one at which you hadn’t decided on a regular order yet and were shopping around the menu each time you came. Plus, if you’d stayed on campus, no doubt Shinsou or Monoma would’ve found you to distract you.

The café’s patio with scorching, cast-iron furniture and haphazard parasol installation led to most of its customers sitting inside, but that meant you had space to think, even with the hot groves of your seat imprinting patterns into your skin.

Your soulmate was probably being rude because he was scared, or perhaps he didn’t believe that Tainted Love’s quirk was legitimate. You’d have to assure him that it was, as you’d run through Nezu’s report with Midnight and Recovery Girl, fact-checking that. Either way. Some frustrated guy—living at home, apparently, and pissed about it—was paired out of the blue with some student at U.A. He might be scared that you were a creep.

Tainted Love’s team’s notes on her quirk that Midnight had confiscated explained that each soulmate bond, somehow, was moulded around the pair’s personalities and would fulfil a lifelong need. A lot of responsibility, it seemed, but if it were true—and other pairs proved it true—you would fulfil it naturally, and so would he.

So, even though your soulmate had been rude, you’d give him a chance. The soulmate bond existed for a reason. Plus, he might be a real-life tsundere, and wouldn’t that be fun to crack? To be the only one a rude, evil person was soft for was the ideal, wasn’t it? Someone so naturally cruel and heartless but learning to be kind for you—

Get a hold of yourself. He’s a real guy who will be in your life forever, not just someone you can throw away, like a celebrity/pro-hero crush. Treat him seriously.

“I’m…being serious,” you said to yourself, pouting into your coffee. You hunched in your seat to drink from the mug without lifting it, and you slorped away the neck of the latte art swan the barista had so carefully poured. “He’s probably not even be a sexy sort of cold-hearted. He’s just a type of bitchiness I haven’t learnt how to handle yet.”

Those boys in the anime analysis group? You could play their types of bitchiness like the world’s smallest fiddle. They were all so easy to handle (especially Monoma because of his predictability; Todoroki gave you the most trouble due to his complete non sequiturs), and it was fun bouncing off the petty parts of their personalities. Your soulmate spun things differently, but you’d learn his inclinations in time. If not, it’s not worth your time trying to “fix” someone who has no redeeming vulnerability.

You sighed. Now that you’ve lost your editing groove, you might as well do some last-minute reading before watching the next few episodes tonight. Closing your laptop, you reached down into your bag to get the next volume of Todoroki’s manga, and your vision blurred over, dizziness incoming. Well, at least you’re sitting down.

You held the manga volume in your lap and waited for your soulmate’s line of sight to appear. If he were in a darkened room yet again, you could buy yourself a little treat. The café’s display case had some sort of new chess square that you’d been eyeing. And—shit, sunlight was coming through. No little treat for you.

Well, maybe you’ll get one, anyway. You slumped farther down in your seat, blinking as dappled, sunlight-covered pavement and an empty terrace outside a business across a busy street came into view—your soulmate jumped back off the road when a car whooshed by, and after that, he jaywalked, horns blaring in his wake.

He did a little hop to get on the opposite sidewalk, hands in his pockets, and peered past the iron fence into the window of the shop—a packed coffee shop; maybe you could at least learn his coffee order, because then you’d have some shred of information about him. But no, he unlatched the iron gate and wove his way through the cast-iron patio chairs and tables, and—

You’re staring right at you: sitting, legs crossed, not taking up space, stuff spread out over your table, and he’s gaining on you. You flinched, watched yourself flinch, and your gaze darted around until you were able to meet his (your) eyes (your head making minor, nervous movements you wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t seen them), expression cautious, curling in on yourself on impulse. When you saw how, through an outsider, that made you look small, you made the effort to sit up and roll your shoulders back, elbows on the table. You watched yourself recoil at the heat of the iron, and you had to use his perspective to know where your notebook was so that you could rest your arms on it.

He brushed past your table’s open chair, instead yanking the table by the edge away from your lap so that he could stand closer to you and grabbing your face. He first cupped your jaw with his whole hand, pale skin and leather of a fingerless glove cold to the touch, and then, when he seemed sure you weren’t going to protest (his vision turned slightly to the left—he must have tilted his head), he narrowed his grip in little jerks of his hand, sliding erratically from gripping your jaw to just tilting your chin upwards towards him. He turned your head to the left and to the right before returning to centre to stare you down (you’d been pliant under his control, because the doubling of you watching you do things was throwing off your senses of balance and direction).

“Not as hard as you fucking made it out to be, huh?” His thumb rubbed over your chin. His nail was cracked. “Now, are you gonna stop acting like a little bitch, or are we gonna keep playing your stupid game?”

“First of all,” you said, fascinated by the way your lips curled in under your teeth to shape the consonants, and judging by where your soulmate was looking, he was, too. “It’s not an act. I am a little bitch.”

“No more of that hiding shit.” He tapped your cheek a little harder than he needed to with his middle two fingers. “Don’t know why you’d wanna hide this, anyway.”

You wouldn’t’ve said you winced at his rough touch, but you noticed enough of an aggravated microexpression around your eyes that you could tell you didn’t like it. “You’re doing the same. Hiding what you look like from me.”

“And I’m gonna keep doing it. You get nothing. There is no us. Soulmates don’t exist, and even if some hack fraud’s quirk has paired us off, I don’t need anybody, least of all you.”

“Well, maybe you don’t need anyone,” you said, your eyes dipping to see more of his hand (hot damn, we forgot we can’t see through our own eyes that quickly?) and then raising them to look directly into your soulmate’s—hyperaware of the way your eyelashes fluttered against your skin, of the slight pinch of your eyebrows, of the way the sun struck your cheeks, “but you could want someone.”

A sliver of a cool breeze wove its way through the patio, some of your hair swaying with it.

“I won’t pressure you to do anything you don’t want,” you said, lying, “but at the very least, we could communicate enough for this to be easy for us. Please let me give you my phone number, and please save it this time.”

His thumb inched up to press into your lower lip.

“Please,” you said, eyes dark but slightly glassy, letting your tongue tap the tip of his thumb, so lightly wetting it that it was as if you hadn’t touched it at all.

Your soulmate tilted his head again, lurching to the side as he shifted his weight to lean on the table. He knocked your pen onto the ground, and when you made the slightest movement to grab it, he pressed his thumb harder against you to still you, and he shook his head.

Your throat ran dry. Your (his) eyes honed in on the bead of sweat dripping down it and into your blouse. “Give me your name, then. A name, if you hate me that much.”

“It’s Touya,” he grumbled, and he closed his eyes in the moment before he kissed you, cold lips open before even touching yours (both rough, but his lower lip was much rougher for some reason). Blind, you startled back at the initial touch, but he held your chin firmly near his, sliding his gloved hand to your cheek as his tongue did into your mouth, pressing against the roof of your mouth and along your gums, alternating pressure where he pleased, not seeming to care what you did with your tongue—not that you were doing much at all due to surprise, but you at least had the mind to press your lips back, because while yes, his style was unorthodox, it still felt good. He laughed through his nose, once, when you slid your tongue against his, but when you raised a hand to cup his cheek, he pulled away before you could do more than graze him.

“Touya,” you said, and now that he was looking at you again, you—well, you looked kissed out, leaning towards him to chase that feeling, to encourage him to touch you again, and you looked fucking hot (the hell? It took a lot for you to think of yourself that way, and today hadn’t even been a good day for you, but now, freshly kissed, saying your soulmate’s name, you found yourself thinking you were pretty. Uh. Could this be what he was thinking instead of you? You couldn’t tell; it felt like it was coming from somewhere deep in your gut). “Touya. Let me write—”

You watched yourself grapple for your pen for a while. He huffed, crossed his arms, and bothered to look down where your pen was for you, and when he did, you finally grabbed it.

“Touya,” you said, uncapping the pen and hovering over your notebook, and you paused after the first stroke. “Touya spelled like that Todoroki Touya who released that Endeavor video during the war?”

The ink bled through the sheet of paper from being pressed in one spot for too long.

“Yeah,” he said eventually, voice rasping, “Spelled just like his.”

“Okay,” you said, bending over your paper and writing based on muscle memory, and under his name, you wrote your phone number for him again, with your name written beneath it, just to hammer it in. You ripped the page out of your notebook with some difficulty before passing it to him.

Touya scanned it and rubbed his thumb over your name, the leather of his fingerless glove catching on the uneven tear.

Cute. Nerd. “Do the gloves have something to do with your quirk?”

“What? No,” he said, crumpling the paper and stowing it in his pocket, and he kept his hands there, hiding them, “I don’t have a quirk.”

Okay, so Touya spoke in a rush and concealed evidence. Sounds like a lie. Monoma took that route on occasion, so the obvious thing for you to say was “Oh, so you wear them because of Naruto? Do you run like him, too?”

“Fuck off,” he spat, and you watched yourself grin: you’ve got him. “As if I had time to be a fuckin’ otaku.”

“Good to know,” you said, “So, all the manga re-analysis I’ve been doing with my friends is new to you? I hope you’re not planning on reading or watching any of the works that we’re covering, then. Unless you wanted to read along with us?”

“I don’t need that shit to scorch my brain.” For some reason, he winced, scrunching his eyes shut for a moment, and you waited in the dark for him.

“You have enough going on?”

He pried his eyes open, blinking blearily at you, still grinning, still smug. “Yeah,” he said, and he dug his left hand out to stare at the back of it, leather shining in the sunlight while he wiggled his fingers. He bent across the table to grab your coffee, fingers spidering over the rim to grip it, and he brought it to his mouth. “This is fucking awful; what’s wrong with you?” he asked after an audible swallow.

“It’s not my usual order.” Closing your notebook, you crossed your arms, staring down at you and feeling more and more like you’re in a dream. “You can either tell me what your quirk is, because I know you’re lying, or you could stay? For coffee? I’ll buy you something better.”

(You would have asked what’s up with his appearance that he didn’t want you to see or feel, but considering how early in your first official meeting it was, the question may be too insensitive, especially if he were born with it.)

Touya glanced over his shoulder, saw something you couldn’t, and set your mug on the iron table with a quiet clink. “I’ve got to go,” he said, and he spun around, taking the first step away.

You slammed a hand on the table purely on guesswork based on where he left your mug, and the sound of shaking iron and tinkling porcelain resounded, distant when you heard it through his ears, yet feeling the vibrations travel through your own arms. “Tell me your goddamn quirk, you daft fucker.”

Touya paused, and he turned back to you. “That’s more like it.” He sat on your table, at the place over your lap, and he reached out towards your face. You saw yourself lean back, eyes wide, but he simply dug his fingers into your hair at your hairline, scratching your scalp and digging his nails in enough to hear the movement.

(You saw yourself frown the moment you noticed his skin was colder than the glove.)

“Barking at me like that is how information is usually torn out of me. Makes me feel at home,” he said, a bit too cheerfully for your liking, “You can be trained to be a bitch towards me yet.”

“Touya,” you said, raising your head to embolden more of his touch, “Who’s—who’s been treating you like that? You don’t deserve it.”

“Shut up.” Touya laid his hand flat atop your head, the weight of it pushing down on you. “Sure, I lied. Said I didn’t have a quirk. Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters.” Your tongue swiped over your lower lip, and Touya’s gaze darted to it. “I want any scrap of you I can get. Everything I’ve already learnt I’ve filed away in my heart: your name, the way you speak, your hatred of your brother’s fish and living at home—”

The hand on your hand slipped to slap over your mouth. “Jesus Christ, stop noticing things about me. Freak. Goddamn.” Touya lifted his hand off of you, and based on his perspective, he ran it through his own hair. “So that you don’t go making your own intrusive observations, I’ll tell you about my quirk: I effectively don’t have one anymore. I used it a lot, and it fucked me up. So, for my own self-preservation, which I’ve been told I should value, I can’t use it anymore. Good enough for you?”

“Great enough for me,” you said, “I’ll take care not to talk about my quirk or hero course stuff too much. I don’t want you to feel left out.”

“Holy shit,” said Touya, and he broke eye contact with you to stare at his boots (scuffed, black, but new, so the scuffing must be intentional), blinking rapidly before pressing—probably—his thumb and forefinger against his eyelids.

Something was deeply wrong with this man. You needed him to kiss you again. You opened your mouth to ask him to, but wooziness and your dry throat called; the ripped page of your notebook you’d been staring at dripped back into your own perspective at a glacial pace. You heard the scuffle of his shuffling off the iron table and the grit of his boot against the concrete, and when you grappled for him in the dark, your hand clenched around nothing.

You rubbed your eyes until the vertigo passed, and when you opened them, Touya was gone.

***

Later that afternoon, you were scrolling through your phone on the end cushion of one of Todoroki’s couches in the living room in a poor effort not to gawk at everything. You expected some of it could be excused, since it’s your first time at his house, but good God, rich people were insane. This was the biggest, traditionally-styled building (estate?) you’ve been in since you toured a castle preserved from the Edo period—but it was apt, you supposed, since Endeavor had been acting as a sort of daimyo of his own.

Dormer gables. Hip-and-gable roofs, with golden shachihoko shibi cupping the corners—though instead of the customary sea monsters, if your eyes weren’t deceiving you, they appeared to be made for flame-swimming instead of in water. A recessed entryway, its wooden flooring tiles hand-cut in tiny designs to make you aware of the space, with brand-new guest slippers already provided before you could ask. Todoroki’s house (estate?) screamed business, or at the very least, don’t touch anything.

At least the living room in which you sat stiffly had a touch of clear modernity—and so it seemed that the inner rooms actually revealed that they were living in the modern age, but the barrier of traditional architecture to get to actual living space heaved a hyperawareness of outsider onto your shoulders.

Todoroki himself, bless him, moved around like the elegant austerity didn’t even occur to him. Waiting for Midoriya with the rest of you, he’d helped everyone spread out their notes and manga over the short table and floor, gathering blankets for everyone when it occurred to him that not everyone’s body tolerated temperature like he did (since the house was kept oddly cold), and, instead of offering tea, like he’d said his sister would expect him to do, he provided a peculiar but pleasant combination of snacks: cheap-ass cup noodles, strawberry chardonnay-flavoured cheese on soup crackers, old mooncakes that had been in the fridge for a month but he declared were still good, and gummy worms for Monoma.

The bitch even bought everyone a fancy little drink according to personal preferences—and no one had even requested them or informed him what to get, but he’d gotten everything right, regardless (you suspected he’d asked Shinsou for help).

“Thank you,” you said, turning over in your hands the poshest bottle of pink lemonade you’ve ever seen, “You’re a very gracious host, Todoroki.”

He slurped his own caramel frappe. “I’m very excited to have so many friends over at once.”

“Of course,” you said, your weight jostling on the couch cushion as Todoroki sat next to you, “I can’t believe we didn’t think of going off-campus to watch this shit earlier. There’s way more privacy here.”

“Our doors are always open nowadays,” he said, and when Sero tapped Todoroki on his shoulder to help open another package of cheese, he held up a finger to pause your conversation.

Smiling softly, you twisted off the bottlecap of your lemonade, holding it up to your nose to inhale that pressurised burst of lemon scent, and—oh, hey, you felt a little lightheaded as you did so. Two times in one day? That’s new. At least it was from your perspective this time, so you didn’t have to worry about knocking anyone’s drink over.

“Hey,” you said, snuggling down into the couch, your palm atop the opening of your drink (when Monoma shot you a questioning look with the phone call hand signal, you nodded, and he relaxed and leaned towards you, his teeth cutting into his lower lip as he grinned). “Funny how we keep meeting like this, yeah?” you asked, feeling soft and full of love for this fucker, and you reached towards the coffee table to set down your drink and grab a flower-shaped mooncake. “I guess I can stop hiding from my reflection now, sweet boy.” You made eye contact with yourself in the reflection of the Torodokis’ enormous flatscreen, and you held your mooncake up in a toast before biting into it. “Hope you’re well. You seemed stressed earlier. I’m currently—”

Your phone rang in your lap, and you narrowed your eyes at the unknown number before answering it. “Hello?”

“Where the hell are you right now?”

“Wow,” you said, chewing, “No greeting, even? No mention of how much that you miss my voice or my lips now that you’ve—”

“Just tell me where the fuck you are,” said Touya, at the same time that Monoma’s eyebrows shot to his hairline at the kissing implication, and he thumped Shinsou in the chest for him to look up from his phone.

“Does it matter?”

“I told you my quirk shit when I didn’t want to, so fucking tell me,” said Touya, sounding muffled and, again, like he stood near traffic.

Swallowing mooncake in a rush and choking a bit, you cleared your throat and said, “Fine. I don’t know why it matters that much to you, but I’m at a friend’s house. Our anime analysis group has gotten too big for the dorms, so we’re trying out his place.”

You had to ensure the call hadn’t dropped due to his long response time. “What friend?” he asked.

You raised a brow, though he couldn’t see you. “I doubt you would know—shit!”

Struggling to tear the plastic covering the cheese, Todoroki had accidentally slammed his elbow into your collarbone.

“Geez.” You winced at Todoroki and rubbed the spot. “No, no, I’m fine,” you said when he reached towards your collarbone, his fingertips already icing over, “You may want to go get a knife to open that, though.”

Nodding soberly, Todoroki lowered his thawing hand and rose from the couch, tossing the cheese to himself. “I’ll do that. Anyone need anything from the kitchen while I’m up?”

While the others answered, you spoke into your phone again, hand on your chest. “Sorry about that. I guess if you paid attention to the news last year, you’d know him: one of Endeavor’s kids, Todoroki Shouto.”

The soulmate connection started to trickle away, but Touya stayed on the phone. “Do you not have any other friends who have a place?” Plastic crinkled on his end, along with a car horn in the background. “Hell, the library downtown rents out portable TVs—”

“Why should I be at another friend’s house?” Touya wouldn’t be able to see the reflection of your self-satisfied smirk now, but surely he could hear it in your voice. “Jealous that I’m at the house of another man?”

Touya gagged into the speaker. “Someone’s full of herself. Don’t wait up for me,” he said, and he hung up.

You pulled your phone away from your ear, pouting at the call screen before creating a new contact.

“You didn’t tell us you’d met your soulmate,” said Shinsou.

“It only happened this afternoon,” you said, saving his number under Touya 🐠🚷 (the fish for the koi pond he hated, and the no pedestrians sign for his apparent propensity to jaywalk), “and I’m not sure what to make of him. I was hoping to form my own opinion before telling all of you.”

Todoroki perked up and tilted his ear skyward at the sound of the front door opening. “I’ll get it,” he said, standing, “I bet that’s my brother. He’s back four hours late from physical therapy; I hope everything’s okay.”

Your eye twitched.

(Todoroki had warned everyone before coming over that his family would probably be in and out. Less so Fuyumi and Natsuo, because Fuyumi had recently moved in with her significant other and Natsuo had his own place near campus, but more of his parents and Dabi. Well. Touya, now, but you had your own Touya to worry about.

You’d met Dabi. Twice, during freshman year. When he’d been a villain, instead of whatever was happening with him in recovery. Rather formulative experiences for you, ones you only permitted yourself to think about in the hollowness of lonely nights—but you didn’t need those memories anymore, because you had your Touya now.

Remember? You have your own Touya. You don’t need another.)

“Do you want me to carry that for you?”

Todoroki’s voice trailed behind boot scuffing and a sliding door, and in Dabi/Touya shuffled—hoodie yanked up (layered over a longer coat?), strings pulled firmly around his face, plastic bags from the convenience store down the street on his wrist, very determinedly staring at the floor as he strode past behind the couch instead of at the four of you strewn across his living room, ducking into the kitchen as soon as possible.

You’d barely seen him for five seconds, and your heart was going to beat out of your chest. Or maybe that was just the bruise forming on your collarbone.

Todoroki nodded after his brother, standing behind your place at the couch. “There’s no ceremonial introduction, I assume. That’s my brother, Touya. You’ve all,” said Todoroki, scratching the back of his neck, “met him before. But! If you’re nervous, we will not be seeing much of him. He doesn’t spend much time in the main house; he lives in the old-fashioned teahouse towards the back of the garden. Privacy, you know, even though we’ve got to keep him close.” Todoroki wetted his lips as he looked towards the emptied shrine on the far wall. “He shouldn’t be any trouble, but I may have to zip out on occasion to help him. Not all of his skin grafts are taking.”

The doorbell rang, and Todoroki started towards it. “That must be Midoriya. Sero, would you please pull up the next episode?”

When Todoroki stepped into the entryway to greet him, you couldn’t suppress your curiosity. “I’m gonna go pour this over ice,” you said, gesturing with your pink lemonade bottle, “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Shinsou—the only one whom you’ve told about what happened with Dabi back then—shot you a crooked grin, but he distracted Monoma from noticing exactly what you were doing while you sneaked away down the hall.

His back was to you. Water flowed out of the kitchen faucet while he yanked his hoodie over his head and tossed it over the back of a chair, and he did the same with a longer, black coat—similar in shape to the coat he’d worn as a villain but not the same one. Maybe he’d grown accustomed to having the weight of it on his body, so what he wore now was a type of security blanket. While he ran a spoon under the faucet, he fumbled behind himself for his plastic, convenience store bag and fished out a pudding cup.

Backtracking a little, you purposely made your footsteps audible so that you wouldn’t startle him, and you entered the kitchen, shaking your lemonade for more noise to alert him of your presence.

His white brows pinched when he saw you, and he hastily shut the water off and scooted off to the edge of the counter while he put his stuff away, his movements rigid and close to his chest.

“Hi,” you said (oh, my God, you were talking to Dabi; holy shit), “Where do the cups live?”

Dabi blinked slowly, unable to look at you, and he peeled the lid off of his pudding cup. He glanced towards the door and back towards his stuff on the table, and he pointed towards a cabinet, his finger returning to his fist in a rush to get back what he was doing.

“Thank you,” you said, opening the one he’d pointed to. Oh. Fancy. Lots of choices. “I hope we’re not bothering you. We can—we can always leave, if you need us to. Or you could join us, if you like.” You turned around in time to see the flat of his tongue lick pudding off of the lid, stitches showing at the back of his tongue, and in the moment where he ducked his head, the tiny, unblemished part of his skin near the corners of his eyes blazing pink, your brain short-circuited.

(Dabi had been your first kiss.

During freshman year, in the week of that first round of internships, you’d been planted in Hosu City, around the time Stain closed his fist around the public consciousness. On a night patrol, your mentor had slipped into a restaurant that the yakuza frequented and stationed you in a nearby alley to watch for other yakuza incoming from the employees’ entrance.

An official sidekick had caught up with you—late forties, spandex, unrecognisable. You’d been terse in your replies, since he’d been essentially blowing your cover, but he couldn’t take a hint.

It’d only occurred to you that he’d been hitting on you when he’d propped an arm on the brick wall above your head to dominate your personal space, and an all-consuming dread had erupted in your stomach when he’d said, moving to take your chin in hand, “You know, you remind me a lot of my daughter.”

Before he’d been able to touch you, something rabid and ravenous about the size of a labrador had tackled him to the ground, the force knocking him almost two whole meters away, and the thing ripped into the sidekick’s chest, blood spewing—and somehow having the sense to cover his mouth to stifle the shouts.

In the moment you’d moved to get a better look at what was, in retrospect, a nomu, another figure had stepped between you and the sidekick, his own arm resting on the wall to keep you from getting closer.

“Hey,” Dabi had said, an easy grin stretching across his face, “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about anything. Just testing some shit out for someone. So long as you don’t go making any noise, I’ll let you walk away.”

Dabi hadn’t made his villain debut back then, but even so, it hadn’t seemed like it was just testing something out for someone; this guy had seemed his own brand of dangerous. Your gaze had started to creep towards the source of crunching, but he’d tapped your cheek, making you look at him. “Nuh-uh. Keep your eyes on me. If you don’t know anything, I don’t have to kill you, do I?”

“I, I’m—” You’d steeled yourself somewhat, your hands clenching into fists at your sides. “I’m not just gonna let you kill a hero while I stand here.”

Again, Dabi had stopped you before you could take a full step, this time by gripping your jaw, letting it rest in his palm while his fingers dug into your cheeks. “Can’t call him a hero. Was comparing you to his daughter—didn’t you hear? And it looked like he was gonna assault you. Some guys aren’t meant to be fathers.” His syrupy gaze had fallen to your neck, and he’d squeezed your face. “Jesus, your heart is beating like crazy.”

“I don’t normally calm myself down to the sounds of someone getting maimed,” you’d said, blood splattering in the air behind him, “Oh! Fuck.” You’d scrunched your eyes shut and curled in on yourself, trying to block out the sound of bones snapping.

“Some hero you are.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you’d said, “You’re more of one than I am, tonight. Thanks—?”

“Dabi,” he’d said, and at the time, it had just been a name. When you’d pried open your eyes, he’d been smiling, mouth closed, head tilted at being called a hero. You’d smiled back, but at an enormously strident crack from behind him, you’d had a full-body jolt. “Fucking hell, calm down,” he’d said, his arm sliding from the wall to your upper arm, “For once, you’re safe with me.” Seeing you try to look over his shoulder again, Dabi had dragged you forward by the jaw to kiss you, closed-mouthed but hot, leaning into you, his mouth overwhelming you with hardly any effort on his end, and he’d kept kissing you, stroking your cheek with the back of his hand, until the nomu slinked into silence.

Dabi had broken off when the nomu scuttled farther down the alley. “Right.” He’d taken a deep breath. “You gonna tell anyone about me?”

You’d shaken your head, confused as to why he seemed more concerned about descriptions of him rather than descriptions of the murder. But he’d been nice to you. Had given you a hell of a first kiss. “I can say someone in the yakuza killed him.”

He’d roughly patted your cheek and dropped away from you, stowing his hands in the deep pockets of his coat. “His death isn’t worth reporting, but I’ll take it.” He’d spun on his heel, raising a lazy hand in a wave as he disappeared into the night. “You’d better hope you never see me again.”)

And now, here he was, hunched over shitty gas station snacks in his family kitchen, a spoon hanging out of his mouth while he stowed things away. His naturally white hair showed now, and…he seemed terribly shy. Dabi, shy. Fucking ridiculous. But, you supposed, there’s guilt and shame around, uh, doing what he did. And—and his body was horribly, horribly mangled and mottled. He might not think anyone should look at him.

Todoroki (Shouto, you supposed you should think of him as, since Dabi was a Todoroki, too) had mentioned not all of Dabi’s skin grafts were taking. It was obvious. He’d burnt up during the war, and while you’d heard Recovery Girl and Eri had worked on him, despite outside protests that he wasn’t worth it, he still was very clearly cobbled together.

He still had a lot of staples, though faded stitches filled in new gaps, and those that remained had been replaced with medical-grade staples that wouldn’t get infected. Patches of successful grafts left a waning diamond pattern, particularly around his neck. Very little purple, overall, but going by the scars, you could still tell where it had been. Based on his appearance, he shouldn’t be alive, let alone able to walk around.

But he scooted with such speed out of your way when you got ice out of the freezer. “But really, you could stick around with us, if you wanted to. No pressure, though, if you want to be alone.” Calmly. You were calmly popping ice out of a tray and letting them clatter into your glass. “We’re watching Hunter x Hunter right now, if you’re interested. Have you read or watched it before, either the 1999 or 2011 version? Do you have a favourite character?”

Dabi clutched his snacks and discarded clothes to his chest, almost at the door, with his eyes darting all around the kitchen except on you.

Yeah. Must be shy. You were one of the U.A. students who fought in the war, after all, even though you didn’t personally fight him in the end. Probably feels guilty about the whole thing. Shy could be refreshing, after those bitches in the living room and your cunning soulmate.

Finally, tentatively, Dabi shifted his belongings to his right arm, and he raised his left to pat his throat, swallowing so that his Adam’s apple bobbed.

“Oh,” you said, ice melting in your hand, “I’m sorry. Are you on vocal rest? Vocal cords messed up somehow?”

After a moment, Dabi nodded. He edged towards the hallway.

“Okay. I hope you feel better soon,” you said, and you poured your lemonade over the ice. “I’ve kept you long enough. Please go rest; I hope we don’t disturb you further.”

Before you finished, he’d already skibbled off, his house shoes slipping on the wood.

***

(The second time you’d met Dabi hadn’t been as hands-on, but it’d still left an odd impression.

It’d been in an urban jungle-type battle, after knowing his involvement the League but before his backstory reveal, and you and some classmates had been fighting a handful of PLF-aligned villains.

You’d slithered underneath a lean-to created by a partially collapsed building to catch your breath, along with shielding yourself from an explosion Bakugou had been building up. You hadn’t even known Dabi was in the group you were chasing, but he’d slinked underneath the same, protective ruins as you had, barely slipping underneath the cover before Bakugou’s explosion had shaken it.

Dabi had braced himself on the crumbling entrance, scrunching his face away from the explosion, and once it’d stopped, he’d noticed you were barely two paces away from him, sweat dribbling down your face the same as it’d been down his.

You still didn’t know if his startled, constipated expression had been of recognition or simple surprise to see someone else taking cover under something that could collapse and kill them. He’d taken in your U.A. gym uniform—your personal hero costume had been in repairs that week—and there’d been a couple of heavy seconds where neither of you had done anything besides pant and let sweat drip onto the rubble.

He'd slipped out first, since he’d been blocking the entrance, and you’d left soon after. You hadn’t been five steps out of the lean-to before someone on the PLF side had destroyed it, and in the privacy of your heart, you liked to think that Dabi had waited until you were out to raze it.)

***

You made it a habit to call Touya whenever the soulmate bond activated. Though he never initiated a call, he answered most of yours. What else was he going to do, if it were on your side, besides sit there in the dark? He continued to be hold information about himself like a miser clutching coins, but you found it refreshing to have a charismatic grouch of a pseudo-pen pal.

You’d closed the door of a library study room behind you as you called him this time, setting your stack of books on the table.

“You’re finally reading something besides manga? I thought your brain was gonna rot,” he said upon picking up.

You slung the strap of your purse over a chair. “No greeting? No admittance of missing the melodious sound of my voice?”

“Why in the hell would I do that,” he said over the screech of pulling out your chair.

“Because you missed the melodious sound of my voice?” You pulled out your notebook, flipped it to a new page, and fossicked around for a pen. Clicking the one you found, you reached for the first book in your stack, a rudimentary sign language dictionary, and you jotted down a list of common words as they came to you, such as thank you, help, and, of course, the all-important cat.

Touya clicked his tongue. “Are you seriously gonna make me study with you?”

You made the final stroke in the word pudding. “I don’t expect you to absorb the information. If you rather I read manga, I can go to that section for a while. Pick out a shoujo.”

“Get fucked with that otaku shit,” said Touya, and—he must have had his phone on speaker, because a couple of people were speaking to each other nearby about what must be the latest Assassins’ Creed, and the sound changed after some scrapes, with Touya sounding closer. “Why study sign language?”

“There’s someone in my life who recently became unable to talk all of the time,” you said, “and I’d like to help give him some way to communicate.”

“Just text him,” said Touya, “Well—never mind. Who’d wanna text you, anyway?”

“Sometimes, people put away their phones, Touya. Have you heard of it?” You drew a line down the half of your paper to make a new column, one sorting the words in groups—places, family members, requests, and the like.

“What are you getting out of it?” Touya must have scratched somewhere on his face, the sound coming over the phone. “You makin’ fun of him? Making him feel bad? If he wants to talk to you, he can just write shit down.”

“I think he might hate it because of how slow it is. And what if I luck out, and he knows sign already? Then half of my work is done for me,” you said, listing off all of the terms for family members, “Text-to-speech may be okay, but I don’t know. Still slow.”

“He probably doesn’t even want to talk to you,” said Touya, “let alone learn something for you. That’s a lot to ask for someone you ain’t fuckin’.”

You hummed and ignored him. You titled a new column Body, and the first word under it was burns. Followed by healing, surgery, hands, skin, hurt, and rest. For the first time in a while, Touya’s emotions were strong enough for you to feel, but you couldn’t name them. More like some pitiful, fearful soup, if anything, and other stuff you couldn’t put your finger on.

His voice still came in confidently derisive, though. “What kind of fucked up guy are you spreading your legs for, since those are what you’re writing down for his body? Seems like you’d be better off as a cocksleeve for someone else actually capable of fucking you.”

“Oh, rude! Rude!” Scowling, you set down your pen. “That’s rude to both me and him. I’m not talking to you anymore. Enjoy studying, asshole.” You flipped to a random page in the dictionary and started memorising, a bit too pissed to be productive for real, and you kept it up—if Touya were going to be here, then he’s not learning productive sign language, either. Try using marble and mare in everyday conversation, jackass.

Later, you caught yourself zoning out while staring at an entry, only shaking yourself out of it when Touya grumbled under his breath for you to turn the page already.

***

Todoroki paused the episode when the pizza arrived.

Moaning way too sensually, Kaminari stretched his arms above his head and arched his back. “My electricity is cooler than Killua’s, right? I have more swag than him?”

“No.”

“In your dreams.”

“Yikes.”

“Wrong,” said Shinsou, pelting him in the face with a popcorn kernel.

Kaminari picked it up off the floor and ate it mournfully. “I’m getting beaten by a fictional twelve year old.”

“I’m going to the bathroom,” you announced, pushing yourself up from your seat between Shinsou and Monoma (which was just as well, since they were comparing scans of the current manga chapter over your lap), and you set off with the intention going to the farthest bathroom to increase your chances of bumping into Dabi.

No such luck, even though you deliberately stomped your slippers as loudly as you could to try to draw him out. Sighing, you backtracked to a tiny bathroom you’ve used before, one that wasn’t as intimidatingly wealthy as the rest of the house and therefore actually felt like it was meant to be used, and you opened the creaking door onto an exhausted, shirtless Dabi trying to rub some sort of cream on the back of his neck, a massive jar open on the sink, blood seeping down his biceps at the strain around his staples.

Both of you froze. He took a quick glance to the gobs of cream on his hands and managed to kick the door shut from his seat on the closed toilet, but your foot caught in the door, which struck your nose and cheekbone, with you yelping and clutching the area.

“Sorry! I’m sorry,” you said through the crack in the door, shakily dragging your bruised foot out of it, “I didn’t know anyone was even in this side of the house. Are you okay? No, wait, sorry again—you’re bleeding; of course you’re not okay. I’m sorry.” You checked your nose for bleeding of your own, but nothing leaked out of your nose. “Can I—may I help with whatever you’re doing?”

No answer. But he hadn’t shut the door.

“Fine,” you said, and you spoke into the crack, only able to make out the granite on the near side of the sink. “I don’t know what’s going on with you nowadays, but I hope you’re doing okay. Or that you’ll be okay soon, at least. I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve been through, and I’m sorry you had to go through it. But I can grasp, I think, that having a bunch of your brother’s friends over can be intimidating and isolating. If nothing else, I’d like to get to know you better—or you could just get to know me better, if you don’t feel like sharing—so that having all of us over isn’t as terrible. I’m sorry we’re bursting into your life when you’re working out a lot of stuff in recovery—”

Dabi yanked open the door, brow furrowed, and instead of looking at you, he clamped his slimy hands on the sink and stood on his toes to arch towards the mirror, opening his mouth wide to breathe hot air onto it, teeth bared, as if he were roaring. In its fleeting fog, he traced out kanji, streaked with lotion and hidden by his left hand as he wrote, and he blew over it a final time before stepping back and jabbing at the message.

Stop apologising.

“Ah—oh,” you said, while Dabi squatted and rooted through the cabinet under the sink, “Okay. I’ll try. Thank you for saying so.” How do you talk to someone who was formerly 1) an S-tier villain and, more importantly, 2) your longest-running crush?

Dabi plopped a meagre first-aid kit on the counter and pointed to the source of bleeding on one of his arms, the inside bicep where two staples had come loose.

“I don’t know shit about first-aid,” you said, reaching for the kit anyway, “I know you have to keep pressure on it, and stuff, but—”

And so the first time Dabi looked you in the eyes was to shoot you an incredulous, suspicious glare that accompanied his snatching the kit back from you, clutching it out of your reach. Relaxing once it was in his hands, he hesitated a moment, shifting his jaw, before nudging the open jar of lotion with his knuckle, reverting to his fixed gaze on his feet.

“I can do that,” you said, heart racing, “You wanna—why don’t you sit back down?”

Not lotion, you noted, as Dabi pulled out disinfectant wipes and a roll of gauze near its end, burn cream. Aw. You dipped your first three fingers into it (heavy, roll-around slimy, like holding a frog) and hoped to God that your soulmate didn’t tune in during this. Touya didn’t like a lot of things you did, but he’d probably loathe your gawking over the scarred back of someone who wasn’t him.

Yeah, Touya would probably hate how you would hone in, laser-sharp, each time Dabi’s muscles flexed as he wrapped his wound, how the space between his shoulder blades with the tiny dent along his spine (well, his spine indented at the top of his back, where he was broader and still held muscle, and poked out towards his lower back as he bent over) held your focus far too long to be impersonal—and you got to touch it. You kept the contact to your fingertips, because as much as you wanted to flatten your hands to feel every moving tendon, you didn’t want to scare him. He’s probably not used to outside touch, and you shouldn’t come on too strongly, especially when someone else’s soul was fucking bound to yours.

But as your fingers smoothed over the marks around his shoulders where burns used to be, skin cold to the touch, as Dabi turned his head to the side just barely so that he could watch you out of his periphery, you found it hard to remind yourself that you already had a Touya. Can’t have two.

“I know it’s none of my business, but, uh, if you’re on vocal rest this often, I could—I could help you learn some sign language?” You scratched underneath your eye in a nervous gesture and smeared some of the burn cream on your cheek. “Nothing intensive. Only simple, everyday stuff, like—well. I don’t know what frequents your vocabulary. You don’t have to, but I’m offering. Just in case.”

In the mirror, Dabi halted in tying the gauze to glare up at you, his lip curling up in flash of a sneer.

“Okay, that’s cool. That’s fine. I can—I can leave a sign language book with your brother, if you—if you ever change your mind.” You nodded, just to have some sort of reaction he could see, and he tucked away the disinfectant wipes and tossed the empty roll of gauze into the trash bin. “Hey,” you said, noting how he’d only bled at his left arm, which was covered with mottled patches of skin, staples, and stitches, along with the faint diamond-pattern of skin grafts, while his right arm needed no medical attention, pale and unblemished without any sign of damage, “What’s up with—if you’re comfortable with sharing, why doesn’t your right arm have any scars? Was Recovery Girl able to heal that more effectively, or something?”

Holding your gaze in the mirror, Dabi raised his eyebrows, nearly vanishing under the drooping, white spikes of his hair, and he reached over with his left hand to rub his thumb over his right shoulder and curving down into his armpit.

He actually laughed (a laugh through his nose, yes, and one without the humming sort of vocalisation usually accompanying a laugh through a nose, but a laugh nevertheless) at how hard you jumped when he popped off what was apparently a prosthetic.

***

“If you hate gardening this much, why keep doing it?” you asked, once again trapped in Touya’s perspective late at night while he tended to a traditional, Japanese garden. You lay flat on your back in bed, hands and phone resting on your chest (laptop closed to the side. Your essay was due at eight o’clock in the morning. Would Present Mic accept late work due to soulmate interference?).

“Lots of dumb fucking reasons that all fold in together,” said Touya, shovelling gravel out of a wheelbarrow and into the man-made brook he was trying to shape, “One: my stupid fucking family has decided that doing this earthy shit would calm me down. Zen gardening, or whatever.”

“Oh, do you have issues controlling your anger, Touya?”

“Stop that. Two.” Gravel pittered off the shovel blade, falling into the trickling water with a series of tiny plops. “One of my brothers brought up how Mom always liked the garden but was stopped from taking care of it herself, and since I did some shit to—it’s not like I could’ve helped it; they were keeping stuff from her, too. Anyway, Mom’s fucking sad nowadays. Better, but sad.” Touya sank the shovel into the gravel to lean on it, tracking the flow of the water for a moment, twisting through the previous path currently being overtaken by moss and fallen stone. “And my brother thinks the garden being fancy again will make our mom happy, especially if I’m the one to do it. Dick. Saying if we hired people to do it, it wouldn’t be the same. Started with just the damn fish, but now the whole fucking thing’s my job. It’s fucking shit. It’s blackmail and family obligation and rent all at once. It’s a fuckin’ nasty trick.”

Touya dug into the wheelbarrow again. “And my fa—that guy had the nerve to suggest that I needed something to do during the day. As if I’m not busy enough.”

“During the day? Touya, I’ve only seen you garden at night.”

“Because it’s too damn hot outside all the time. And I don’t want anyone watching me. I’m no one’s business. But I bet they’d like staring out of a window at me, while I break my fucking body again moving all of these shitty rocks and shaping Mom’s fucking evergreens.” He shovelled with deep malice. “Did you fucking know that there’s goddamn symbolism in these shitty gardens? That you can’t just put things anywhere without it meaning something? Somehow ponds are supposed to be oceans. Rocks are supposed to be mountains. Forced perspective shit, paired with tenets of Zen and Shinto, and it’s the pettiest, most unnecessary bullshit I’ve ever had to deal with, and I dealt with a friend’s abominable driving for years. Never got any better at it, even though I got fucking motion sick.”

He knelt, and when two, fat glops of Touya’s sweat dripped onto the stone at the impact, you rather enjoyed the gentle wafting about your dorm room at the blades of your ceiling fan.

He must have felt your appreciation. “Stop that. I’m making a point. Look at this shit,” he said, gesturing to the brook and then up at the three-quarter moon, “I’ve gotta change the course of the water, because it’s better to face towards the moon to capture its reflection, and I’ve gotta make it somehow cascade or waterfall at some point over there.” He pointed far across the garden towards a flickering pair of stone lanterns. “How am I supposed to do that? I can’t even make it flow through gravel right. I might have to move some of the stepping stones again. I fucking hate those things. They’re too heavy for one person, and I’ve already had to rearrange them because some of them weren’t fucking weathered or natural-looking enough.”

“Sure. Death to aesthetics,” you said, blindly feeling around for a pack of gum you kept in your bedside table, “I’d come help you if I could, but somebody—”

“You’re not getting a location out of me, princess.”

You paused, hand on the knob of the first drawer, and a wide, smug smile broke across your face (Princess, Touya? You’re gonna call me princess? You sure you don’t care about me?).

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“I could feel it,” said Touya, flexing his fingers on his knees, “so shut up.”

Gloved hands clenched into fists, he glared at the brook, the gravel, up at the moon, and back into the water.

“You know, it looks like if you moved most of the gravel to one side, the water might flow the direction you need it to.”

“Who’s the one busting their ass here, me or you?” But he plunged his hands into the water, grabbed heaping fistfuls of rocks, and patted them onto the far side of the stone bed.

“Touya,” you said, feeling around in your drawer for the pack of gum, “Take your gloves off! You’re gonna ruin the leather.”

“Like I care.” He dragged more gravel underwater. “If I took ’em off, you’d see my hands.”

“Come off of it, Touya. I bet they’re perfectly fine,” you said, successfully grabbing gum and sliding your drawer shut, “Hands are often the most attractive part of a man.”

He paused, water flowing around his arms up to his elbows (he wouldn’t roll up his sleeves, either. Stubborn boy. He must hate whatever’s going on with him). “Not the dick?” He sounded like he was grinning.

“Not always. Some of them look like sad, sea creatures,” you said, unwrapping your gum into your phone’s speaker to annoy him, “It takes talent to have a pretty cock. Hands, however, can easily be lusted over because of what they’re capable of. Or what you know they’ve done.”

(Hee hoo hah, like burn down a city. You’re so normal about it.)

“Not how they look?”

“Appearance can help, but it’s not the whole cow,” you said, chewing while the flavour faded fast.

Touya scoffed, his fingers sinking into gravel. “You makin’ fun of me?”

What? “Of course not. Why?”

“Don’t say shit like that to get on my good side. I’m more than aware I ain’t got anything besides my shitty personality goin’ for me.” He cleared his throat. “That sign language guy got anything I don’t?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You sure seem obsessed with him,” said Touya, leaning more deeply into the water, soaking his hoodie even more, “even though he sounds pathetic. You tryin’ to fix him to make yourself look good?”

“Of course not. I know no one can fix anyone else. He has to choose to do that himself,” you said, “Not that there’s anything about him that merits fixing.”

Laughing (oh? hot), Touya scooped a handful of gravel out of the wheelbarrow to add it to the far side. “Yeah, you’re fucking obsessed with him. Am I not your soulmate?”

You rolled your eyes, even though he couldn’t see it (and…you…couldn’t see it). “You haven’t given me anything to obsess over, unless you want me to research gardening tips or how to breed carp.”

“I would love for you to be obsessed with breeding, sweet—”

“Oh, my God, you have to ease into that sort of thing, Touya.”

He pulled his hands out of the brook, drenched sleeves gushing water back into it. “D’you want me to start with how much I wanna suck on your perfect tits?”

“Touya,” you said carefully, shoving the gum to one cheek, “Is everything okay? You’re acting—strange.”

“What do you—”

“Where’s the blind hatred for me? Where’s the disdain?”

Sitting back on his knees, Touya shoved his leather-wet-dripping hands into the damp, double pocket of his hoodie with a muted slosh. “You think I hate you?”

“You’re that rude to people you don’t hate?”

Water seeped through the pocket and through his jeans, visibly darker in the moonlight and soaking his thighs. “Fuck off. I mean—what I mean is that I’m not used to people like you. Who don’t talk like me. Who aren’t mean to me back. Or who don’t seem to want anything from me. Didn’t know you really thought I was rude.”

You screwed up your face. “Who have you been hanging out with? What the hell is wrong with you? Spend time with people who like you, please?”

“No one likes me—”

“Get your head out of your ass, edgelord,” you said, sitting up in bed and holding the phone up to your mouth, “Newsflash, dipshit, it sounds like lots of people like you. Your brother, who wants to help you make your mom happy, in an easy, physical way that you’re more than capable of. Your mom, who sounds like she’s happier now that you’re back in her life. The rest of your goddamn family, who want you close by so that they can help you if you ever fucking accepted it. Your stupid friends who are into Assassins’ Creed.”

“Stop fucking noticing things about—”

“And me. I like you, dipshit. Get over yourself. You’re digging yourself your own lonely, self-deprecating hole, where I guess you’re at your most comfortable. But tonight alone you’ve shown in your garden that you fucking hate digging holes. They mean unnecessary work.”

Inhaling sharply, you threw your phone into the bedspread, but all that came through was a distant deer scare, bamboo hitting rock.

“Since when do you like me?” he asked, pushing on his knees to stand.

The artificial-yellow light from your lamp starting creeping in around the rim of your vision, blotting out parts of Touya’s silhouette in the moonlight. “I talk to you, don’t I? I wouldn’t even acknowledge the bond if I weren’t open to—we’ve been hanging out. You didn’t know?”

“Like I would know what that looks like,” said Touya, the walls of your room coming into view while Touya pulled his own phone out of his inner pocket, tapping the screen to see how long the call has lasted, “Like I would know how someone like you would behave when they like me.”

“Stay on the goddamn phone,” you said in the moment his thumb hovered over the end call button, the last thing you made out before fully sinking back into your dorm room, “If you don’t know what I—well, what does your love look like, Touya? What do you do when you like someone?”

“Sexually? Romantically?”

“Not necessarily,” you said, pissed to have the connection severed and sliding off of the bed to turn off the lights, “Just when you care for someone at all.”

“Gimme a minute,” came Touya’s voice, and after you flipped the lights and the ceiling fan off, you wandered over to your window, switched your phone off speaker, and held it to your ear as you stared up at the same moon Touya was under, and you waited.

“Right, I don’t know for sure,” he said after a while (but it sounded like he’d stopped dealing with the gravel to think about it), “but this is the only thing that’s coming to mind. Before I was living at home again, me and some friends didn’t have consistent sources of food. Don’t interrupt to say you’re sorry. But. So, whenever I’d, uh, buy stuff. From a store. I’d make sure I got some sort of snack for whoever I was with, even though we were all too proud to ask for shit. Didn’t really think about doing it on purpose. But I guess I did.”

“You are deliciously, delightfully, tender as fuck,” you said, clenching a fist over your heart, your boob jostling with the fervent impact (and it pleased you knowing that Touya would’ve laughed if he’d seen), and you kept talking over his sounds of disapproval. “And I am gonna cook for you. I am going to set you a table so vast that you’re gonna be eating off it for a long, long time. You’re never gonna be fucking hungry ever again, Touya.”

When he didn’t answer, you worried you said the wrong thing, but you stayed on the line, listening. Two minutes later, he hung up, and you could have sworn he cut off in the middle of a wet sniffle.

***

What can you cook? What were you good at cooking that actually constituted a filling meal?

Start small, you supposed.

Fuyumi kept the Todoroki kitchen much more well-stocked than the kitchen to which you had access, and so, with welcome permission, you headed over to the estate earlier than the scheduled viewing time to prepare, with Shinsou and Todoroki hanging out in the kitchen with you.

“Jirou says she can attend,” said Todoroki, thumb swiping across his phone screen, “Turns out her tipping point was stating the merits of studying Melody’s music powers. She’s asking if Yaoyorozu may attend as well?”

“It’s your house.” Shinsou was folding his napkin into an origami frog. “If there’s a need for excuses, you can always say Yao might like—I forget his name, but he’s that character in the Phantom Troupe whose hair looks like a mop? She might like analysing how his power lets him copy anything, even though it doesn’t have the same limitations like her quirk.”

“I will mention that,” said Todoroki, nodding sagely.

The plan was simple: with a captive audience of anime nerds, you could get feedback on your cooking until it was good enough for Touya (a small part of you still cringed thinking about how he reacted to your potato wedges). You would lure your friends into a state of complacency with your smaller dishes—baked goods, and the like—until there was no escape when you served them something more filling, like soups.

Today, you were making teeny little lemon ricotta pancakes (the recipe called for them to be regular-sized, but if you made them around the size of a potato chip, it would be more accessible to eat with fingers in the living room) that gave you the air of being fancy but were actually mindless to make, it turned out, and right now, you were stirring the stewing blueberry syrup that you’d decided would be a dipping sauce rather than drizzled over—the Todorokis had an excess of white furniture, and you would like to be invited to use their kitchen again.

“I think,” you said, once the syrup was behaving like syrup when you let it dribble out of the ladle back into the pot, “I’m gonna take some to your brother. I don’t want him feeling left out, if he comes through. He’s home right now, yeah?”

“He’s in his teahouse. It’s towards the back of the garden.” Todoroki got up from the table. “Do you want me to show you?”

“I’m sure I can find it, since it’s the only building not connected to the main one,” you said, but you did accept his help finding a tray and sauce cup for the syrup, and once it was set, you picked up the tray and strode with purpose towards the garden.

Walking through its seemingly-natural landscape while balancing food and liquids proved to be miraculously easy. Their hired gardeners must be doing insane upkeep to ensure its deliberate, natural-but-not cosiness. You made a mental note to ask Touya what some of the structures symbolised, like the recurring patterns of three rocks of different heights close together. He’d know, reluctantly, since he did stuff like this, and you considered his work to be superior to this, anyway.

In the blistering sun, you had to narrow your eyes to slits, regretting that both of your hands were full so that you couldn’t shield them from the light, and you found a gated, stone path to the teahouse. Clearly, it had once been slightly dilapidated but had since been worked on; another room had been latched on to the side to double its size, judging by the change in architecture styles, and the roof reflected sunlight a little too well for its polished, stone tiles to be less than a year old.

Bracing the tray, you took the steep step onto the neatly swept, bamboo engawa running around the edge of the teahouse, and you—was the door around to the side? Around the left side of the original part of the tearoom, two shoji panels had been spread to let in sunlight upon an empty room with an actual fucking sunken hearth, unlit, with one of the same fire-fish as on the estate’s roofs for the crank’s lever. Behind what would have been the seat of honour stood a dishevelled tokonoma, devoid of scrolls or incense burners but instead housing an unzipped backpack atop a long coat, its sleeves trailing onto the floor outside the tokonoma, with sticky notes taped to its inner wall. A red-tinted wood dresser had been pushed into the corner, tissues and hand sanitiser atop it and a single stack of books propped next to it.

A pair of boots was tucked inside the open shoji. Maybe he’s asleep.

At your first step inside, you jolted so hard you had to struggle to hold onto the tray—the floor had chirped at you. Dead ringer for a bird call. Tentatively, you took another step, and it chirped again, this time with a bit of a wheeze, more artificial-sounding.

You jumped and stumbled again at another wall sliding open, giving the impression that a flock of birds had flown inside, and Dabi poked his head through the gap (you could make out the gleaming pause screen of a gaming system in the newer room behind him). His face had relaxed when he’d seen it was you, but it pinched into a strange, unnameable expression when he saw what you were carrying.

“Hi,” you said, holding out the tray, “I’ve made too many snacks for the anime group today, so I thought you might like some? I can take it away, if you don’t want any.”

Since he probably didn’t know the amount of people attending nowadays, he probably didn’t recognise your lie. Dabi held up a finger for you to wait while he exhumed a short table and two floor seats from storage in the walls, and he waited for you to sit before he did, slowly, crossing his legs on the cushion, his joints creaking.

“They’re little lemon ricotta pancakes. Todo—Shouto told me you didn’t have any food allergies, so it should be fine. That’s blueberry syrup,” you said when he pointed at it. “I’m—I guess you could say I’m practising recipes for cooking for someone else. If you don’t like it, please let me know. I’ll make it better next time.”

Dabi fiddled with two of the tiny pancakes before selecting one, inspecting it in the sunlight, and dipping it into the syrup (you went a little crazy when it dripped onto his tongue stitches, but you managed to suppress it). As he chewed and swallowed loudly, Dabi’s eyes bulged, brow furrowed, and he, panicked, fumbled around for probably his phone, patting the pockets on his jeans. Hands pausing after slapping the empty pockets on his ass, he sprung up, grabbed a pen off of the dresser, and snatched a sticky note off of the inner wall of the tokonoma. He returned to the table and knelt half on the seat, scribbling furiously, and when he pushed the sticky note to you, under a crossed-out potting soil, sledgehammer, he’d written fuck you marry me NOW.

There’s a moment in which you forgot, a moment in which you laugh, head tilted back, flooded with endorphins at your long-time, pseudo-celebrity crush liking something you made to even joke about being in a relationship with you. You opened your mouth to make some joke about how you’d like to go on a few dates first, to have some sort of courtship, but you stopped at the first word: “Touya.” You cut yourself off, brow pinched. You can’t have two.

Not that…not that Dabi/Touya could ever genuinely like you, who fought against him and now witnessed his debasement, but in the far-flung chance that he could, you should clarify about your Touya.

“Touya,” you said again, this time sober and grim, hands folded on your lap, “I know you were only joking, but I was in a quirk-related incident a while ago, and it assigned me a soulmate. So, even if you could like me, I’ve got someone waiting. Presumptuous of me to say, I know, but. I want to treat you with kindness and not make you wonder, in the case it arises. Funnily enough, his name is Touya, too—”

Your phone rang loudly in your back pocket (you kept it on loud nowadays so you could easily feel around for Touya’s call, but it’d led you to awkward moments like this, too). Dabi scowled when you brought it out to silence it and dipped another pancake in the syrup, letting it absorb what it could to tinge it purple.

“It’s him, actually. Odd timing.” Lying flat in your palm, your phone flashed an incoming call from Touya. Leaning across the table, Dabi grabbed it out of your hands to answer it, put it on speaker, and lay it in the centre of the table while he ate his soggy pancake, shaking his head when you moved to undo all of that.

“Hey,” came a tinny, raspy voice that was very much not your Touya’s, “You’re the soulmate, right?”

Dabi shouldn’t have to hear this. Before you could tap the speaker button again, Dabi swatted your hand out of the way, gesturing for you to answer.

“Uh, yeah,” you said, shifting in your seat, “Who are you? Where’s—”

“Tell Touya he left his phone at my place the next time you see through him.” A repetitive, techno instrumental played in the background (video game music?). “At Shiiiiiiiimura’s place. Yeah.”

“I can do that, Shimura,” you said, unsure if you should hold out the vowel as long as he did, and perhaps you can take advantage of the situation for a brief moment, because Dabi was staring at your phone with a constipated sort of expression as he listened. “I can’t control when the bond activates, but I’ll let him know. Do you know what sort of food he likes?”

Shimura barked out a laugh, filling the room in a wide, cleansing way you wouldn’t expect from someone with his scratchy voice. “I heard your potato wedges are shit.”

You sputtered, “He didn’t even have any—”

Dabi ended the call, frowning, shaking his head, and tipping your phone off the table to gently bounce twice when it hit the tatami. He held up a tiny pancake and made a show of looking at it, at you, and back at it, and he shot you an aggressive thumbs-up.

***

Uraraka spent an entire patrol gushing about how she would fuck the author of Hunter x Hunter if she could, so she showed up to the next get-together, along with Asui, whom everyone already thought would be friends with the story’s protagonist if he were real. When you Aoyama caught you in the act of stealing one of his posh cookbooks, you explained the situation to him, and so he tagged along to taste what you were cooking, along with supplying some of the fancier ingredients you wouldn’t’ve known how to obtain. Then you’d asked Sato for advice on how to make the swirl in a strawberry swirl loaf not go to shit, and then the group had spent a few hours discussing the good relationships with animals that Hunters are inherently supposed to have, so Kouda was summoned for his opinions.

The long of short of it was that there were many more spectators than necessary to when Dabi strode into the viewing room, drenched in sweat from his walk back home, to pelt the back of your head with a two-pack of Sakeru cheese. As you rubbed the back of your head, pulling the cold plastic from between your shirt collar and skin, he at least had the decency to drop the single-wrapped fish bread into your lap.

“Hey, Touya,” you said, grabbing his hand before he could skitter away as usual (his wide eyes couldn’t decide to look at both of your hands or at your face), “I’ve set aside slices of both strawberry swirl bread and garlic bread for you in the kitchen. I recommend heating the garlic bread up so the cheese gets all melty again, but it’s good at room temperature, too. Thank you, by the way. For these.”

Nodding hastily, Dabi tore his hand away from your in two, spasming jerks, and he slithered into the kitchen.

Though the rest were watching the show, Shinsou was turned towards you, his head tilted with an incredulous sort of smile. You stuck your tongue out at him and crinkled open the cheese.

Dabi returned with both slices on a paper towel and stood behind you at the couch for a minute, watching the episode. Shifting his weight, he pulled out his phone. “This is garbage,” came a droning, text-to-speech voice from behind.

He stood behind the couch for three more episodes.

***

Through another moonlit, soulmate connection, Touya was failing to prod stray ducks out of the koi pond with the skimmer.

“They’re tenacious little bastards,” you said, sitting on the counter of the dorm kitchen and praying to God that the oven timer wouldn’t go off while you couldn’t see.

“Why. Won’t they. Move.” Touya nudged a duck with the flat of the skimmer, its width as long as the entire duck, and the duck kept gabbing to its friends. “I have no idea if ducks upset the chemical balance of the water enough to kill koi; I’ve never seen them in here before ten minutes ago. Goddamn.” He waved the skimmer over the water’s surface, filtering some debris, and he flipped it onto a duck, who remained vexingly apathetic at the new source of wet. “Tonight was gonna be easy; I was only gonna put up windchimes; I was gonna get to go to bed early. Now I—no, no, no, don’t—!”

One duck bit at the skimmer net, and having pierced it, the duck led the rest of them to the centre of the pond, where the skimmer couldn’t reach, no matter how Touya strained.

“I fucking hate birds,” said Touya, slamming the skimmer on the ground, “and I fucking hate fish. They’re not even good when they’re alive.” Seeming to have a change of heart, Touya picked the skimmer up and took care to lean it against the stone wall of the pond. “Tell me something good, won’t you?”

Does that imply you don’t have to work on any fish dishes? “You’ll be thrilled to hear that my little anime analysis group is almost through the Hunter x Hunter anime, probably. We got to the end of the 1999 version last night.”

Touya sat and splayed his legs on the koi pond stone, watching the moon’s reflection ripple as koi tails broke surface tension. “That’ll only make your process more streamlined, since you’re not watching two episodes covering the same chapters in conjunction anymore. The Chimera Ant arc takes forever, though. You’re not almost done.”

Groping around for your oven mitts, you smiled. “How do you know that, Touya? Thought you hated—”

“What are you going to watch next?”

Stupid boy. Shy boy. “Well, Sero is pushing for Pokémon since there’s so much of it.”

“God, no,” said Touya, leaning back on his hands, “Iconic, yeah. Fun, not really, because in the games, you’re the one getting to battle and bond with the things. It’s not fun to watch someone else get to do it.”

“I can rely on you for negative reviews of everything.” Oven mitt? Oven mitt. Now, where’s its pair? “You want a pokémon, Touya? Which ones?”

“You are such a fucking child—”

“You want a pikachu, don’t you?”

“Hell, no,” Touya spat, “None of that cliché shit. Pikachu isn’t even that good. I—” Cutting himself off, he hunched forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his gloved hands together. “You’ll shit on me for it. Forget I said anything.”

“Should I let you make fun of me first?” You slipped on the other mitt. “I’m cliché as hell. My top choice is either a certain starter or an eevolution.”

“No, I—”

“All right. How about you tell me your favourite as a kid and the one you would choose now?”

“You’re pushy as hell. When I was a kid, I wanted a Ninetales. I was—my mom had read enough for me to know about traditional kitsune,” said Touya, and he ducked his head to stare between his legs (crotch unfortunately hidden in shadow), “and Ninetales is immune to fire. It can use it and not burn up, and it’s not affected by outside fire attacks.”

The memory of rubbing burn cream across Dabi’s shoulders and how delicate his skin looked surfaced. You wouldn’t wish that on anyone. “You scared of being burned, Touya?”

Touya kicked the stone beneath his boot, scuffing it. “Just seems like it’d be neat.”

“Perfectly reasonable,” you said, wrapping your muppet-y, mitted hands around the oven handle in preparation for whenever it would go off, “and a perfectly logical pokémon to latch onto. It’s fairly popular. I don’t see how I’m supposed to make fun of you for that.”

“Sure.” Touya bent farther to re-tie his bootlaces. “I like my current choice for a dumb as hell reason, though. Shiiiiiiiimura,” said Touya, yanking the laces tightly (and he dragged out Shimura’s name, too. Was that the proper pronunciation?), “was trying to hype us up for something stupid we had to do that some of our friends were scared of. Shimura’s teacher—’scuse me, abusive fucking manipulative shithead of an adoptive father—wanted him to make a speech to show leadership, or some bullshit. Instead, Shimura pulled out his phone and showed us someone’s video of playing one of the early Pokémon games, for the battle at the end to win the game. And to defeat the last boss’s toughest Dragonite, the player used this…this fuckin’ weak-ass, all-around insignificant pokémon picked up from the beginning of the game, and it fuckin’ won. It won against the toughest opponent, and—and Shimura was saying, oh, the Venomoth is us, and we can win against our big-ass enemy, oh, ho, ho—”

“Excuse me. A Venomoth? You only use them temporarily at the beginning of the game, when you don’t have anything cool yet. They fucking suck.”

“See, you’re making fun of me. I’m not going to say anything else.” Touya leant back on his hands again, this time crossing his legs to prop his ankle on his opposite knee.

“No, I’m—I’m sorry. Sorry. First impressions. But you’re convincing me. Go on. I’m listening.”

Touya flicked water towards the ducks. “Are you gonna keep insulting—”

“I won’t! I won’t,” you said, sliding off the kitchen counter to stand directly in front of the oven, “So, Venomoths. I hear they’re fantastic.”

Touya rolled his eyes, and it was cute, you thought, how you had to follow the motion, seeing the moon at the upwards roll and back at its reflection in the pond. “Yeah. I bet Shimura’s forgotten all about it, but it stuck with me. Not immediately—at the time it was stupid, and to be fair, it’s still stupid. But now that I’m back here, living at home, it’s—it’s stupid. It’s, like, if that stupid fucking bug can defeat a goddamn dragon, then I can tend the garden. I can keep that stupid tsukubai clean. I can hang out with my brother. I can fucking—” He cut himself off again, this time striking the water hard enough to splash one of the ducks (it quacked at him with disdain and simply swam a couple of centimetres away).

“Do what, Touya?” The oven timer started beeping, and you tensed. “Hold on; don’t say anything. Don’t say—I have to concentrate; I’m getting stuff out of an oven.”

Touya stirred the pondwater with his ring and middle fingers while you blindly approximated the logistics of getting the tray out of the oven, and by standing at the oven’s side inside of reaching into it from the front, you were eventually able to remove the tray and rest it on the counter above it—you’re not going to bother feeling around for the pot holders.

When you sighed in relief once you’d closed the oven again, Touya asked, “What are you cooking?”

“Strawberry cheesecake muffins,” you said, frowning in the tray’s general direction, “They’re supposed to have a marbling effect, and I’m supposed to be putting on some sort of streusel-type sugar on top right now, but I’m not gonna risk it. I hope they’re done. You have to trust the recipe’s bake time with cheesecakes exactly, so I’m hoping it’s the same for—”

“I am gonna make you come so hard,” Touya was saying in a strained sort of way as he ran his hands down his face, “I am gonna fuck you so hard that you leave in a permanent dent in my mattress. I am gonna hold you and kiss the back of your neck and make you cry out as you gush around my fingers. You’re—you’re so fucking per—I am gonna take care of you back.”

“Cool.” Right, so bake the muffins again at some point. “Do you have any food allergies?”

“I’m allergic to you not saying anything hot in response to what I just said.”

Sure, Touya. “I’m also gonna make you this really sexy tomato soup with what the recipe calls a grilled cheese top. It’s got cheesy bread cut into chunks that coat the surface so that you can’t even see the red, and it melts into the soup—”

“Stop, I can only get so hard—”

“Show me your cock, then.”

“No,” said Touya, deliberately looking at a trio of fish convening near the pond’s surface, their o-shaped mouths blorbing and blobbing underneath the water towards Touya’s waving fingers, “I meant—well, first, you are gonna make that soup, pl—please—but I meant that—I mean.” He twirled his finger under the water, and the koi were fascinated. One of them kissed his finger. You were feeling a similar impulse—and perhaps that’s what prompted Touya to continue. “I came the first time someone stuck their tongue in my mouth.”

It occurred to you that anyone could be walking by the dorm kitchen to overhear. Now that the muffins were out of the oven, you elected to turn off the speaker setting to hold you phone to your ear. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I was sixteen and insane with hormones, and it hadn’t been long since I’d woken up from—well. When someone kissed me with tongue for the first time, I came in my pants. Taken completely by surprise that someone was even kissing me, that someone could even want me when I look like—and then that. We were outside, on a public bridge, during the day. I haven’t seen that fucker since.”

You had been contemplating whether it’d be worth fumbling around for a knife to ease the muffins out of the tray, but all cogs stopped at Touya’s story. “Why are you telling me this?”

“So you’ll tell me something back. I already told you some embarrassing shit about pokémon and shit, so you have to embarrass yourself back. You’re the one who brought up cocks, anyway. So—so you have to share something back,” said Touya, allowing a fish to rub up against his hand in a pseudo-sort of petting it, “Something about when you were young and stupid.”

“And preferably sexual, right? I know what you’re about, you shy, baby boy.”

“Ffffffuck that.I ain’t shy—”

“You won’t show me your face, Touya. You’re scared for me to see it. Shy boy.”

Touya scratched along the side of the koi like it wanted, and another nudged the back of his hand to be scratched, too. “Fuck off.”

“I’ve only told one other person about my first kiss,” you said, moving to sit on the counter again, “Wanna hear that story?”

“Fine,” said Touya, and he pulled his hand out of the pond, flicking water off his fingers and into the open, mournful mouths of the koi he’d been petting. “You had better be about to tell me about seeing through me at that coffee shop.”

“Come off of it, Touya; isn’t it better for me to have outside experience and still choose you regardless? My first kiss was way before that,” you said, hoping how pleased you were at his mild possessiveness was being transferred to his side of the bond, “and I didn’t even know the guy’s name at the time. And it was—it could’ve turned really bad, really quickly. Because my first kiss was with Dabi, before he made his villain debut.”

“Do—huh?” Touya shook his head, causing you to wince and steady yourself at the dizziness. “Beg pardon? Beg your fucking pardon? I didn’t—know that that Dabi guy went around kissing people.”

“He did at least once. It was back in freshman year, and I was out at night during my hero internship.” Getting comfortable on the kitchen counter, you crossed your legs and leant against the cabinets to support your back, exhaustion kicking in. “Some older sidekick hit on me in what was an exceedingly creepy way—he made it pseudo-incestuous by saying I reminded him of his daughter. In retrospect, the interaction could have gone much, much worse, if Dabi hadn’t inadvertently rescued me—scratch that, it may have been intentional, looking back, because he’d said stuff about the sidekick being a shitty father, and now he’s, uh, let us know about his own dad.”

It took Touya a moment. At least he wasn’t shaking his head anymore. “Are you saying Dabi burnt some guy to death in front of you, and you still kissed him?”

You sucked in through your teeth. “Not exactly. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was testing out a nomu, and that ripped the other guy to pieces. And—this is gonna sound wild—I think Dabi may have kissed me to comfort me? I know it was a distraction from the gore and from getting a good look at the nomu, but I think he may have also done it to calm me down. It was—oddly sweet.”

Touya gripped the edge of the stone wall, his fingers dipping into water (but not deep enough to remoisten his leather gloves) and koi swarming. “What did the nomu look like?”

Even though you couldn’t see it, you held your phone away from your ear for a second to shoot it an incredulous look. “Wha—Touya, weren’t you going to ask if he were a good kisser, or something?”

His knuckles popped when he clenched his fingers and asked flatly, “Was he a good—”

“You’re better.”

“Thanks,” he said, not sounding like he cared about that at all, letting a koi drag his hand into the water by biting his finger, “What did the nomu look like?”

“God, I don’t fucking know. That wasn’t important to me. I, uh—it was around the size of a good-sized dog, like a golden retriever or a lab. I don’t—I guess it walked on all fours,” you said, wondering why the fuck—oh, the dizziness must not have come only from Touya shaking his head, because it’s sweeping over you again, waves emanating from the bond. “Now that I’ve seen other nomu, I can recognise that its head looked whacky because its brain was exposed, and I think its skin was more green-tinged than the others who had that navy-black colour going on. Honestly, Touya, I wasn’t—”

Through the phone came such a strident, alarming crack that you halted mid-sentence to listen for it again. It’d come from Touya’s side, clearly, but nothing in his line of vision betrayed its source, although—and you would not have noticed this if you hadn’t been scanning his environment for any hint—something that looked like split glass frosted the inside of Touya’s fist before he unclenched his hand a second later, any illusion of something there melting into the water.

But something was wrong. “Touya?”

“You still see that Dabi guy when you watch anime at Shouto’s house, yeah? Stay on the line,” he said, darkness of the bond fading drabbling at the edges of his vision from your perspective.

“I am,” you said, uncrossing your legs, “I do.”

“What do you think of him? Ugly fucker, isn’t he?” Touya fell still as a duck approached him as it navigated through the water lilies, and Touya’s outstretching his hand to its head was the last thing you saw before the bond gave out. “Still as pathetic as he was in the war? Think he should be in prison?”

“Negative reviews of people, negative reviews of television, negative reviews of potato wedges—so cool, bro. Now say something true and beautiful.”

“Answer me, damn it.” A disgruntled quack.

“You’d better not be strangling that duck.”

“You think so little of me? Do you want me to put the duck on the phone?”

“I don’t think it could sit comfortably,” you said, pushing yourself off the counter and walking to the knife drawer now that you could see, “I see Dabi every once in a while when I’m at Todoroki’s house. He’s shy. I don’t mind. It’s not my place to assume anything, but. I don’t think he’s doing okay, since it seems like he’s spent a good part of his life wanting someone to look at him, to pay attention, and now he’s getting that in a way he probably didn’t anticipate, and I want him to be okay. I think I’d like to help him get there, if he’d let me. But I know I’m nobody important to him, and that’s fine.”

“Sounds a lot like pity,” said Touya, and when you made a noise of protest, he kept going. “Or maybe you’re fucked up enough that you like him? From when he kissed you?”

You couldn’t exactly tell your soulmate that you’ve been suppressing naïve, celebrity-crush-type feelings for someone else. “Well,” you said, grimacing as you slid knife edge between a muffin and the tray and started to remove it, “He’s very babygirl-coded.”

***

TOUYA 🐠🚷

looked it up. definition of babygirl does NOT help

TOUYA 🐠🚷

incidentally

TOUYA 🐠🚷

what should a guy wear to impress someone

YOU

a guy? or you specifically?

YOU

because i am, of course about to suggest the golden standard of rolling up thy sleeves to thy elbows, but you won’t even showing your fucken hands asldkjfa;

TOUYA 🐠🚷

gloves necessary.

TOUYA 🐠🚷

but think formal. formal setting.

YOU

why are YOU going to a formal event?

TOUYA 🐠🚷

have to. blackmail/family obligation/rent.

TOUYA 🐠🚷

open to suggestions. about style more than brand, because if I go too expensive, my dad will think I’m making him pay a lot as sabotage.

YOU

and here i was about to recommend that you go skinny-dipping in a vat of liquid gold

TOUYA 🐠🚷

you just wanna see my cock, don’t cha

YOU

what makes you think I’D be invited to some shitty formal event

TOUYA 🐠🚷

I’m betting you’d hear about it on the news

YOU

i think i’d be more interested in what food is provided

TOUYA 🐠🚷

…

TOUYA 🐠🚷

no, I shan’t say

YOU

is this a cum joke

TOUYA 🐠🚷

but seriously. what should I wear. assume I will do something awful and evil and that you will see the outfit on the news when I get arrested.

YOU

touya, how would i recognise you. idk what YOU even look like. not that it matters, i guess. all that matters is that you wear something that fits you well. you don’t need to impress me; you’ve already won me over

TOUYA 🐠🚷

i what

TOUYA 🐠🚷

wait what do you MEAN it doesn’t matter

YOU

does it help get it through your thick head if i tell you that you are also babygirl-coded? perhaps not even coded but genuinely babygirl??

TOUYA 🐠🚷

it does not.

***

Adjusting your lace shawl, you gripped Shouto’s arm as the both of you furtively sneaked away from the hordes of pro-heroes, industry workers, and flashing press to slink back to the enormous table of hors d'oeuvres to see how many of them you could pack into your purse and his strategically planned inner coat pocket, sewn into the inside of his lapel for the occasion.

When Shouto had invited you to this ghastly awards ceremony for Endeavor, he’d claimed his motivation was that so he could talk to you about how the 2011 Hunter x Hunter anime was wrapping up, since he (flatterer!) said you had the best interpretations of certain characters, unlike some of your classmates, and Shouto tempted you with how you could stake out whatever posh food they had for you to try to recreate later. So, you’d dug out the dress you’d only worn to All Might’s official retirement party and agreed to attend.

Those present were a strange conglomeration of people, since the public opinion of Endeavor has been odd and tenuous lately. Essentially, the handful of attendees you knew were busy ingratiating themselves to people you’ve never seen before but they evidently were acquainted with, so those with whom you could hold an actual conversation with were scattered and few.

However, you didn’t even need to bring a book, because once you and Shouto had settled at a back table with both of your plates stacked with the most variety you could fit on them, he deadass pulled out his anime analysis notebook, which was starting to resemble Midoriya’s quirk analysis notebooks in terms of extensiveness and insanity, with lines crossing several pages to connect ideas. As you discussed where the two of you thought the characters were going, you had your own notebook—a new one, this one for recipes, and whenever either of you thought one of the appetizers was interesting, you wrote it down.

You were chewing on what Shouto had informed you was a water chestnut when the chair on your other side was pulled out with a screech against the tile, and Todoroki Touya plopped into it, his legs hardly having the time to spread before swiping a piece of candied salmon from your plate. The instant he bit down into it, his nose scrunched up.

“It’s fish, Touya,” said Shouto, dipping his own crudité in a tiny bowl of raspberry vinaigrette, and he passed his napkin to him. Touya spat the salmon into it, bunched it up, and edged it underneath the edge of your plate.

On your list, you wrote no fish! at the top, but before you even lifted your pen from the paper, you froze. The list wasn’t for this Touya; it was for your Touya. You crosshatched it out, trying to remember if your Touya had ever said anything about liking fish. He’d said he hadn’t, right? He didn’t like them alive, at the very least.

Shouto chomped down harshly, the crunch of raw celery distinct even through his closed mouth. “What brings you over here, Touya?”

He already had the text-to-speech function pulled up on his phone, and he held a parmesan palmier between his teeth as he typed. “People were asking Natsuo and Fuyumi about what they’re doing with their lives. It was only a matter of time before they got to me. Don’t wanna hear anyone else describe the nothing I’m doing. At least I know you guys are too busy talking about nerd crap to shit on me.”

“Oh, sweet boy,” you said, pursing your lips, “You’re in recovery. That’s enough. You don’t have to do anything to be worthwhile.” Wait. Fuck. You don’t talk to this Touya this way. Reel it back.

Crumbs fell from his mouth to the tablecloth. “The hell is wrong with you?” he typed.

Yeah, reel it way back. You elected not to respond, instead biting with difficulty into a brie/fig/prosciutto crostini and not being able to taste any of it.

“Would you like to discuss some so-called nerd crap with us?” Shouto arranged his notebook father across the table to be more in the middle of the three of you. “I know it’s been a while since you read Hunter x Hunter, but it’s been on hiatus so long that there’s not much new information that you need to know.”

“Hey,” you said, rushing to swallow, “You’ve read this before? How come you haven’t been sitting in to watch stuff with us?”

Touya shot Shouto a dark look, tongued a chunk of palmier into his cheek, and furiously typed on his phone. “I’m not interested in that shit anymore. It’s for kids.”

Shouto looked taken aback. “This is news to me. Do I have permission to take your manga volumes out of the house, then?”

“Fuck you,” Touya had already typed while Shouto was talking.

You bit back a smile. You’ve been borrowing a former, major villain’s manga? Cute. “But if you read it a while back, that means you’ve had more time to think about the characters,” you said, resting your elbow on the back of your chair as you shifted to face him, “Most of us are absorbing the story for the first time. It’d be cool to hear what you think.”

That parmesan palmier had looked good. Trusting this Touya on his taste, you wrote it on your list to investigate later, while he typed his response.

His expression fell flat enough to match the robotic tone. “Do you just want to hear me project my daddy and mommy issues onto the characters in the Zoldyck family?”

“No, Touya,” you said, laughing, “You have valuable things to say across the board, and I want to listen.” You almost nudged his knee with yours, but you had to stop yourself, something dark swirling in your chest. This wasn’t your Touya. You’re not allowed to.

His eyes flicked down towards the movement, but he didn’t comment. Shifting his jaw, he slipped off his white tuxedo jacket to drape it over the back of his chair, and for some reason, his gaze kept darting to you while he rolled the sleeves of his button-down up to his elbows, but he tried to give the appearance of being very focused on whatever skewered meat and pineapple was on the rim of your plate.

You were frowning. Fuck this. Fuck him. Touya was probably one of those guys who knew their effect on women, so he would know about the rolling-sleeves-to-elbows move. And fucking hell, was it effective for him, because the way he’s lost a lot of weight but was currently gaining it back made the tendons in his forearms much more noticeable when they tensed and strained, and the asymmetry of the burns and scars up his left arm in comparison to the smoothness of his prosthetic right only made him even more horribly, horribly attractive, and you were pissed about it, only getting more furious as he wrapped his tongue around the base of the first pineapple chunk and used his teeth to maneuver it off of the stolen skewer, hooded eyes staring you down. This Touya can act like a fucking slut, sure, but your Touya won’t even show you his goddamn hands.

“Hey, watch out.” You scratched your forehead in an attempt to conceal how enraged you were. “I’ve already had one of those. That lump at the end is an overly-breaded coconut shrimp. So—fish—be careful,” you finished lamely.

Touya’s hands and mouth were full with the skewer. Unable to type on his phone, he shifted the skewer to his left hand, flattened his right, and tapped his left wrist with it—the JSL sign for thank you.

You nodded and didn’t think anything of it for a moment, but when it hit you, you seized up and stared at him, chest swelling, proud and confused and frozen. Getting a little lightheaded, actually, but oh, God, who wouldn’t at the sight of Todoroki Touya, quiet and subdued but still suave as fuck, sitting so close to you in a freshly dishevelled white tuxedo that fit like it was custom-made for him, smelling so, so good and smiling with his perfect teeth (how are they that good when he was with the League for so long?), leaning towards you to steal your food and showing that he’d been paying attention to you, that he’d taken the JSL book you’d left with Shouto, that he’d thought about you when you’ve been apart and cared enough to try to learn something new with you, and you were going to kiss him; he deserved it; you were going to grab that stupidly adorable face and—no, that lightheadedness was also stemming from the soulmate bond activating.

Nausea swept through you for more than one reason. If your Touya discovered you were fighting the urge to kiss someone else, let alone the other Touya, then—you didn’t know. You didn’t know how you’d ever recover. Please let this be from your perspective, so he can’t feel your feelings, please.

“I have to go,” you said, pushing up on the table to stand, not even bothering to flash Shouto the soulmate hand signal. You had to get away. No matter if it were from your perspective or his, distance would help you suppress your fucking shameful crush on your friend’s older brother.

Good God, you were crossing the streams, you noted and fumed as you escaped onto a vacant alcove. Because they have the same goddamn name, your brain has been conflating the two of them. Shut up. You’re only allowed to have one Touya. Two would be greedy and dismissive of the soulmate bond in the first place.

Vertigo struck you so severely that you had to brace yourself against the nearest column, but you swopped to the balcony railing because you could grasp it and put most of your weight on it, and because your brain was swimming, you hand to get on your knees to wait for it to pass. “No, you can’t,” you said, trying your hardest to push thought of that Touya out of your head in case your Touya could feel them, “You can’t—that one doesn’t need to be in a romantic relationship right now. He’s working on himself. It’d fuck him up.” And ohhhh, you left your phone at the table, so you couldn’t call your Touya, and fuck, you didn’t want him to feel confused or betrayed because you weren’t calling him—

“Whose future are you deciding, here?”

Your Touya. He was here?

You opened your eyes to the sight of the balcony and the garden below, thank fuck. Okay, you could work with this. You could work with this; he’s not supposed to be able to feel—

His voice came from close behind you, as if he were leaning on another side of the column. “What’s got you feeling this guilty?”

Holy shit holy shit, has the bond evolved? Can feelings be felt from both sides regardless of perspective? “Hey, Touya.”

“Don’t turn around,” he said, even though you’d made no movement to.

“Can you see?”

“Only through you, angel. Otherwise, I’m in the dark.” With the sounds of clothes shifting, Touya must have crouched behind you, joints cracking. A fingerless-gloved hand brushed down your arm, and he moved your lace shawl out of the way to stroke your bare skin. Your mind was already going haywire at your betrayal, and his cold, gentle touch was not helping. “What’s wrong, hm?” He adjusted himself again behind you so that he could wrap his other arm around your waist, pulling you back into him, and his cool, rough lips pressed against the curve of your neck as he rested his head there.

You were going to cry. You’ll do it. For real, this time.

“Did that Todoroki Touya guy bother you? I saw him sitting at your table.”

God, no, he brought up whom you were trying to avoid, and you cringed, hating yourself as Touya’s hand sank down your arms to entwine his fingers with yours, rumpled shirtsleeves grazing your bare skin and leather gloves curbing the maximal skin-to-skin contact.

“He’s so fucked up that I wouldn’t be surprised if you hated him,” Touya was saying into your ear, “I could grind him into a pulp for you. He’d deserve it, wouldn’t he, for what he did to everyone? And I was burning up with jealousy from across the room; someone as pretty as you shouldn’t have such a hideous thing by your side.”

You made a noise from the back of your throat. You didn’t know, and you especially didn’t need the one person you were trying to hide your internal conflict from while you were actively trying to work out the internal conflict. First things first, you supposed. “Touya’s not fucking ugly.”

Your Touya snorted against your neck, hot air washing down the hollow of your throat. “I forgot how twisted you are. But there’s no way you could actually like him, right?”

“I can’t,” you said, releasing the balcony to clench your fists on your knees, “I can’t like him. He needs to discover who he is as an individual before he finds out how he functions in a relationship. He doesn’t need romance—or me, at this point in his life.”

“Interesting,” he said, more clearly now that his mouth wasn’t muffled against your skin, “Sounds like you think something’s wrong with him. Like he’s not whole. And isn’t he broken? You’d have to be, if you pulled the shit he did, burning cities to the ground and murdering—”

“Shut up,” you said, hunching in on yourself, “You’re don’t know. You’re believing what other people have told you about him. You’re just—you’re just like people who talk about that nerd shit you hate without checking the source material. They’ll talk about certain characters in terms of false narratives they’ve crafted, and they’ll talk about them for so long that the false information becomes conflated with the characters, with everyone thinking the wrong stuff is real. I—fuck.” You winced, but he was listening, his free hand winding around your neck to adjust the migrant clasp on your necklace to the back of your throat. “I know my ideas of Touya stem from propaganda, but I want to learn about him from him. Just based on what I’ve seen, there’s so much out there that’s wrong—it’s even subconsciously perpetuated in his own home, since the shrine where his family mourned him is still there. And I hate it. I hate it, because he seems so lovable, but so are you, and I hate myself because I want to love only you, because you’re my soulmate, and I’m so, so, so goddamn terrified that you’re gonna reject me and leave me alone forever now that I’ve betrayed you. By feeling stuff for someone else.”

You were crying. You were crying, nose stopping up, and Touya kissed your throat, over the clasp of your necklace. “Rejection’s a bitch. I know that,” he said under his breath, “So, I’m not gonna do that to you, even if…” He trailed off, instead latching his mouth to your neck again, letting his tongue flick over your skin once, as if it were an afterthought. “You really like him?”

“I’m scared that I do,” you said, taking a corner of your shawl to daub at your tears.

“The only thing to do is feel it out, I guess.” Touya settled at last, shifting weight and moving his legs so that they’d be on either side of you, and his left arm joined the other around your waist to hold you close. “Or let it die, if you want. The soulmate bond doesn’t matter in the end. You don’t have to love him or me.”

“But Touya,” you said, sniffing, dying to look back at him but restraining yourself, “I do.”

***

Later that night, you were researching how to make little cheese balls that were shaped like pumpkins like they’d had at the awards ceremony when you felt the familiar wooziness. Funny. It’s not often that the bond activates twice in one day. You closed your laptop and set your notebook aside, waiting for the slow, drowsy fade into Touya’s eyes.

Tonight, it’s a jarring, instantaneous slam into his perspective, and you felt like you’d been knocked about in the baggage rack of a train. You threw out your hands to balance yourself, even though you hadn’t been physically moved, and the queasiness made it hard to concentrate, blackness blotting at the edges of your periphery.

But the darkness of Touya’s bedroom wasn’t helping, with only partially drawn curtains letting in moonlight, and—and oh, my God, he’s flat on his back in bed, tousled bedsheets, cock out, and it’s so pretty, unfairly pretty, thick as hell but thicker at the head than the base, blushing deep pink, leaking onto the faint lines of re-developing abs and a vaguely red trail of hair, and—

The hand touching it has skin grafts.

“—ugh, darlin’, fuck, you know what I’m gonna—gonna do to you, angel?” Touya was muttering to himself, too caught up to realise you were there. “You don’t—you don’t know what you do to me.”

You’d registered his pubic hair as vaguely red because, now that you were staring, only the very tips of the untouched hair trailing down his stomach were red, with what he’d probably shaved at some point lower on his body snowy against whatever unburnt skin could still grow hair. He’s gripping himself at an angle that doesn’t make him rub against a strand of load-bearing staples on his upper thigh (did someone say load?), connecting a stretch of familiarly burned skin to a healing graft, diamond-speckled and twitching with his cock the closer he drew to orgasm (from the back of your mind surfaced a questioning thought of if he’d advocated for healing his hands first, since staples would hinder smooth masturbation). His prosthetic arm lay unattached at his side.

“Hahh, I wanna,” said Touya, drawing in a ragged breath, “wanna make a mess outta you, y’always too put together, too fuckin’ pretty for y’own damn good, fuck.” He rubbed his thumb over his tip, the skin there giving everso slightly at the pressure, with another bead of precum swelling before it dripped onto his stomach. “Gonna find wha—whatever I can do to make you fuckin’ whine, and I’m gonna, hah, follow that sound for the rest of my goddamn life, and, oh—fuck, fuck, how, how sweet you’d feel wrapped around me, how much I don’t fuckin’ deserve—”

He cut himself off to take a deep, stuttering breath, and you saw the gates of heaven in the way his chest surged forward when he arched his back, lines of burns and scars carved into his skin like a roadmap. And Touya moaned for you, and you didn’t know how much you’d needed to hear both Touyas do that until now, but before he could finish the first syllable of your name, you were lurched out of the bond and back into your room, just as abruptly as it had begun.

Your hands were shaking as you tied your shoelaces, aware of the leak into your underwear when you bent over, and you dashed to the nearest train depot, navigating in fervent, distant buzz all the way to the Todoroki estate. You must have appeared sufficiently crazy, because the only vacant seats on the train were next to you.

(In your heart of hearts, you had known.

If you’d put it into words, consciously, where both Touyas overlapped, it would’ve been too hard to bear if they’d been different people, which was, regardless, the most logical situation. Getting excited for your soulmate to be your former crush and then being disappointed when it wasn’t him felt like a betrayal to your soulmate. You hadn’t wanted to set yourself up for disappointment or betrayal, because you shouldn’t feel guilt when you look at your soulmate. Someone who holds your heart in his hand should never be second best to you. Touya’s had enough of not being enough in his life.

Surely the random chance of a stranger’s quirk wouldn’t be so kind to give you whom you’ve been wanting. You haven’t allowed yourself to hope.)

You didn’t even go in the front door. You clambered over the garden wall and berated yourself for not recognising Touya’s garden earlier, even though you’ve usually been around the kitchen and living room when you’re here. It took you longer than it could’ve to get to his teahouse, because you were deliberately staying on the garden path instead of walking on his hard work, but you didn’t even take off your shoes at the entrance, the nightingale floors chirping out in the night as you surged towards his bedroom door.

Touya lay facing the window in his very Western bed that took up most of the room—and much of his bedroom was like that, with his modern belongings scattered across other outdated furnishings, clean but cluttered, thought it startled you to open the door onto a Naruto poster taped in the space designated for a hanging scroll.

You only had time to absorb poster and lived-in before you saw the face of God in how Touya stretched and groaned in bed, arching his back and holding it until his back popped (a little too fixated on his moonlit nipples, like seeing them would fix you, flip you back to your factory settings). “Natsuo,” he said, coming out of his groan, eyes scrunched shut, “Don’t say you’re here to make me re-hang the windchimes. I spent all day tracking how air flows through the garden.”

You sat at the foot of his bed, mattress dipping slightly, still in your coat and shoes and hesitant to spread dirt, but the need to be near Touya, even if it were through blankets, consumed you. Hands folded behind his head, Touya cracked open an eye at the weight, and he froze.

You hadn’t prepared any confession on the train. You’d been too focused on the memory of his thighs. So, what garbled nonsense that came out of your mouth was “I figured your dick would be pierced.”

Touya appeared to snap back into reality, and he sat up in bed, pulling the blankets up to cover more of his bare chest (mourning for his nipples. Inconsolable about it, even) and quite obviously tried so hard to be chill (the way his leg started jiggling underneath the covers and how he wouldn’t look you in the eyes for more than a couple of seconds gave him away, though). “Is that what they say about me?”

You folded your hands in your lap, bent over for a swift escape in case he wanted you to leave “Jirou conjectures that you have a Jacob’s ladder.”

“Just what I need. More holes in my body.” He ran his tongue over his lower lip—much more scarred than the upper one, clarifying some things about kissing him. “Don’t know how to take that a bunch of kids who resent me talk about the state of my dick. You a part of that crowd?”

“I was shown a picture of what was advertised to be a very realistic dildo,” you said, scooting your ass farther back onto the bed now that he wasn’t going to send you away, “It had many, many piercings. It wasn’t as thick, if that makes you feel better.”

“It does not,” said Touya, brow pinched. He brought his legs up to hug them to his chest, but he must have changed his mind, instead just letting them block your view of him, hiding behind the cover of the lumpy comforter.

You waited for him to elaborate. His tuxedo was thrown over a wicker trunk, bowtie tossed onto a kotatsu, even though it wasn’t cold enough outside, with his gaming controller next to it and an open can of black tea. Two floor seats were haphazardly tucked underneath the kotatsu’s blanket, the one facing the TV flatter and duller than the one nearer the door. His only bookshelf had the illusion that it was constantly being added to, with the first shelf arranged neatly and the rest completely shoved together, the lowest one still mostly empty—your sign language book lay horizontally on it.

He should’ve said something by now, right? Antsy, you shifted your weight, staring down at your shoes. To have something to do, you slowly took them off, lining them up with Touya’s house slippers (with seahorses on them?) next to the bed, and you swallowed your pride to break the ice. “I’m glad it’s you, by the way. Very glad.”

Touya grunted and draped an arm over his knees. “Did you know?”

“I will be generous and say not really,” you said, shuffling off your coat to hang on the bedpost, “I didn’t permit myself to make the connections.”

“Eh.” He shrugged with one shoulder—the left one, the natural one. He’d reattached his prosthetic in the meantime. “There are around one hundred Touyas in Japan, according to the last census.”

“Sounds like a prepared statistic,” you said, holding back that the name frequency has probably plummeted in the last few years, “I’m serious, though. I wanted my Touya—soulmate, you, Touya—to be Todoroki Touya. So badly.”

He covered his mouth, thumbing at his lower lip and simply staring at you. In the moonlight, his eyes were as fucking bright blue as—well. As his flames. More things were clicking into place.

“Really, Touya,” you said, desperate for him to believe you, “I liked you as the stranger in the alley, and I liked you as Dabi, and when my soulmate seemed to share some traits with the other Touya in my life, I didn’t give myself permission to think about it. Because I was growing fond of the you that spoke to me, that I was getting to know, and while my feelings for the other you were being rekindled, too, I wanted to love the soulmate you more, because it's become fucking evident to me that I was made to love you, even without this soulmate stuff. You’ve been scattered throughout my life, anyway. It just happened to speed things up, since it forced you to talk to me. Otherwise, you’d probably still be at the point where you’re the brooding-older-brother figure who isolates himself in his room when his brother’s friends are over.”

Touya was frowning, but you waited it out entirely this time. “You saw…all that,” he eventually said, gesturing down himself, “and you still want me?”

Biting back a smile, you lifted your knees to the bed, moving slowly to gauge his reaction before getting closer to him. “I saw you decapitate someone, and I still want you.”

“You’re insane,” said Touya, tensing up as you neared him but twitching into a nervous grin, eyes falling to your boobs, away to the window, and back to your face.

“Correct,” you said, and you knelt next to him, taking all of your restraint to keep from reaching out the final few centimetres to run your hands down his chest. “Don’t you need someone a little insane, though?”

The comforter fell a few inches down his chest, and you throat ran dry at the long line of fading stitches and staples.

You raised a quivering hand to his face, and it’s strange: both of you flinched in the moment your fingertips felt the tiniest bit of body heat emanating from his cheek, and it’s strange: it’s the first time you’ve felt any heat come from Touya at all, and it’s strange: you could see yourself so clearly waking up next to him every day, putting your chin on his shoulder while he picked out fruits at the grocery store, feeding the koi late at night together while you lured the ducks away, watching his eyes soften in the same way both when he sinks his teeth into something you’ve baked and his cock deep into you while he cradled you closely to his chest, but at the moment, it might be too much for you—and perhaps Touya as well, judging by the nearly incomprehensible, jumbled sort of expression—if you even touched his face.

Perhaps the prospect of romance was too much for him at this point in his life. The last thing Touya should be feeling about that was guilt.

“I don’t mind being on the backburner while you figure things out,” you said, returning your hand to your lap and trying very hard not to look at his nipples, “I’ll wait for whatever you need to do. I’ll—”

“No,” said Touya, shaking himself out of whatever spiralling dive he’d been leaning into, “Hell, no. No fucking—” He snatched the hand you’d almost touched him with and clenched it hard, smushing your fingers together (startled by the physical contact, even though he’d initiated it), and after a flash of frustration at his prosthetic arm, he passed your hand to his left. “You’re fucking sticking around. You—you don’t just look at me; you see me, in such a different fucking way than anyone else, and you did it immedia—it took my family so long to look, and you—you’ve been watching. Been paying attention. It’s all I’ve ever—” He frowned, rolling his tongue along the inside of his cheek. “It’s good to have you around while I dig myself out of this hole,” he said, squeezing your hand harder but glaring outside through the window, “I wish I had known you sooner.”

“I’m here now, and I want to get to know you better. I want to hear more about you, things that are true,” you said, “and don’t start with anything self-deprecating, Touya. The next time the bond lets you see through me, I’m gonna show you what you look like through my eyes. And I’m not lying to you when I say you are so very, very pretty.”

Grunting, Touya fidgeted in bed, the covers slipping down to his stomach, drawing your hand closer to him, with your body leaning in to follow his pull. “Shit,” he said, “Don’t say shit like that right now.”

“Touya, I am gonna tell you how gorgeous you are until you believe it, and that starts now.”

“Not tha—well, yes, that, but I—” He sucked in through his teeth (also sucking in through a tiny hollow in his cheek caused by a loose staple, with a faint, wheezing whistle) and threaded his fingers through yours, pulling your hands towards his shoulder so that you loomed over his chest, “I have a hell of a refractory period now. It’s fuckin’ hard for me to get hard a lot, and you saw me; I just—” Inhaling sharply, he jerked his hand away from yours and frantically started wiping it on the blankets. The new skin around the tips of his ears bloomed pink. “I haven’t washed my hands.”

“Touya,” you said, “Like I care.” You took the hand he was trying to hide in the folds of the blanket and licked up his palm, holding eye contact and relishing the way the blush spread to the untouched skin around the corners of his eyes. “I want all of you. Both sides you’ve shown me, and more. So long as it’s real. So long as it’s you.”

“All right. First step is getting on top of me,” said Touya, and, palm wet, he took your hand again, and he tugged on it, guiding you into his lap, other hand sliding down the thigh you swung over him. “Makes it easier to talk, y’know. To look at you.”

“Oh? Are we starting with your tragic backstory? If you’re taking requests,” you said, sliding your hand up and over his shoulder to run your fingers over his collarbone (jutting out from under both burnt and new skin), “then I’d like to hear your perspective of when you first kissed me.”

Touya lift his prosthetic hand to your cheek, just as cold and strong as his real one, and he placed his thumb at the corner of your lower lip, tip breaking the seal of your lips to press in just barely. “Actually, I think we’ll start with this pretty mouth of yours.”

***

Iida was shouting and gesturing from the living room that you only had fifteen minutes before the episode viewing was scheduled to start, and Shinsou shut him up by reminding him that Tokoyami had to pick up Ojiro and Hagakure from the floristry across town and that they’d start watching whenever they started watching, so chill out, Iida. Go help Mina pick the bugles out of her hair, or something.

You and Touya crouched together in front of the oven, staring through the glass at the rows of potato wedges—the recipe he claims his mother made when he was five, but surely a woman as sensible as Todoroki Rei wouldn’t put that much fucking cayenne pepper or paprika or chili sauce or—listen, it was a lot.

“C’mon, pretty boy, tell me something else true about you,” you said, nudging his shoulder with yours while you made eye contact with him in the oven’s reflection.

“Hm,” he said, scratching the underside of his chin with a bare hand (the gloves lay folded back on the teahouse dresser), “I hate fish.”

(Here you sighed dramatically, because you obviously already knew this. His loathing was intensified at the moment, though, because he’d had to get up and leave you in the middle of the night last night because the koi pond monitor was blaring at a stupid clog in the filter.)

“Tastes fuckin’ gross dead. Bitch to take care of livin’.”

You pushed on your knees to stand, and you held out a hand to help him up. “Enough with the negativity, dickhead. Tell me more about what you like.”

“Besides you?” He took your hand and grinned, putting all his weight into it as you strained to lift him, and when the oven timer beeped and you’d shot a few choice words his way, he had mercy and stood up by himself. He grabbed the oven mitts and tossed them to you, and while you removed the tray from the oven, he ran his hand through the sharp, white spikes of his hair, inadvertently wiping specks of paprika into it.

You set the tray on a cooling rack. “C’mon, Touya. No need to be so cheesy.”

“I can be worse,” he said, winding his arms around your waist before you could even take off the oven mitts, cradling you close to him, no room in between, and he propped his chin on your shoulder. “I can even incorporate—you call me cheesy; you’re the one who called me pretty boy not a minute ago.”

Blindly, you raised a hand to run it back through Touya’s soft, soft hair, and you gently bumped your cheek against his. “I am not being cheesy by simply stating the truth. You’re gorgeous, Touya.”

“Bet I’d look even better throbbing inside you.”

“Please follow a logical flow in conversation like the rest of us,” you said, and when you couldn’t grasp the spatula you were reaching for, Touya grabbed it for you, scraping up some of the first row, having to release you during the process.

Leaning on the counter to face him, you flinched at the heat before pinching a potato wedge between the tips of your fingers, but Touya held one like it was completely cool. It had almost touched his tongue before he paused and waited for your reaction to his recipe.

His potato wedges were bad. Too crunchy on top because of the odd broil time and not-fully-ground peppercorns and too soggy and soft underneath, especially in the part where it’d stuck to the tin foil and peeled off, and the combination of spices didn’t quite mesh together well. With a sliver of quiet triumph, you swallowed a bite of potato wedge decidedly worse than the ones you made.

But Touya was looking at you, eyes brimming with hope despite his otherwise carefully cultivated cool exterior, watching, waiting for you—and it was Touya, after all; Touya was the one who cooked these—made them for you, deliberately, on purpose—and so that made what words were about to come out of your mouth true and beautiful.

soulmate trope taglist: @bakugouspsycho, @pansexualproblemchild, @doonaandpjs, @sunsetevergreen, @the-coffee-is-on-fire, @liberace2, @ladymidnight77, @nonomesupposedto, @gooooomz, @kissmebakugou, @pachiibatt, @celestair, @tiredkittykat, @cheshireshiya, @90s-belladonna, @infjsnightmare

#dabi #dabi x reader #dabi imagine #dabi fic #mha #dabi headcanons #dabi fanfiction #dabi is my new favorite #dabi fanfic

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pumkinnxsmut · 1 year

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soulmate trope | aizawa, part one.

Aizawa's route of soulmate trope.

Part one bc tumblr formatting weird. Part two here.

Warnings: BTS mention. Reader is explicitly a kissless virgin to make Aizawa feel Worse. Part one: reader gets a mild hand injury. Threat of dub-con. Claustrophobia. Sexual content, with virgin-y themes. Part two: alcohol consumption (not by reader). Sexual content, with virgin-y themes.

Remember that U.A., for the purposes of this fic, is a university. Lore dropped carries over to previous and subsequent chapters.

~38k overall. ~20k for part one.

You didn’t have a soulmate, and that was just how you liked it.

Because instead of being hooked to one of your weird-ass classmates, you were free to continue to harbour your crush for your weird-ass homeroom teacher, and you nurtured your crush like a stray kitten brought out of the rain. A creature comfort, really, this affection for Aizawa Shouta—a creature no one knew you kept hidden in the back laundry room and sneaked scraps.

You’re not stupid. The man has to stay your homeroom teacher for the rest of the year, until graduation. Besides, you did have a sneaky little goal with your crush, though it will probably never come to fruition. It’s not an immediate plan in which you corner him after class to beg for sexual extra credit, no, but it’s a long, onerous, masochistic plot of delayed gratification: sometime down the road after graduation, you’ll casually run into him on a patrol, casually suggest you two share a drink to catch up, and then casually I-miss-you-terribly-sensei-you-deserve-to-sleep-more-oh-wow-your-hands-are-really-big-what-if-I-place-them-right-between-my-legs your way into his heart.

For now, the most you can do is be the best student you can. Yes, Yaoyorozu is most likely always going to beat you in chemistry and some maths, since her quirk relies on her knowledge of those subjects, but you’re positively gruntled and satisfied with your place at the top for humanities, along with trading top spots in other subjects with the same three or four people.

But mostly, you tried to be 1) resourceful and 2) not annoying, because Aizawa dealt with a lot of teacher bullshit, probably.

So, while you knew about stories in which students would seduce their teachers by favours (sexual or not), lingering innuendo, or flashing lacy underwear from their seats, you weren’t going to do that shit. 1) How dumb, 2) how embarrassing, and 3) you didn’t want your (hopefully future!) relationship founded on cliches for student/teacher relationships. How a relationship starts shouldn’t have to be a secret, either, or be something to be ashamed of.

(Because you could just picture your family’s faces at Christmas if you said something like, “Hey, this is my boyfriend, Aizawa; he used to be my teacher, and we started dating after I sucked him off under his desk while he was giving a lesson.”

Although, admittedly, there’s probably no good way to introduce a former teacher as your boyfriend.)

You figured, for now, it was enough to stand out in a quiet way, never outright begging for his attention, yet somehow landing in situations in which you got it. You liked to think that Aizawa appreciated that you read when you finished your classwork early instead of talking to your friends (guiltily activating your cringey not-like-other-girls complex that you tried to suppress), along with being attentive in class in general, and you landed an unexpected advantage in Midnight.

Since your first year’s sports festival, you’ve been her sidekick. Well, first you were her intern, and then you signed on the next school year. It was mostly academic work instead of hero work at this point in her career, but you found you liked it and her. You tagged along to record events and complete evals and rubrics, and running her errands allowed you into the staff room, where Aizawa was often curled up in his office chair or on the couch. And hopefully, Aizawa heard good things about you from Midnight.

Midnight’s current project when not teaching or on active missions was rehabbing female villains. She was easy to trust. They tended to let down their guards around her, eventually, and it fascinated you the way the system treated male and female villains differently—

“Hey,” whispered Mina, hunching forward in her desk to tap you on the shoulder, “You got back from Sakura Grove Rehab with Midnight really late last night. Did something happen with Tainted Love?”

You shot a look towards the front of the classroom, where Aizawa was gripping the podium intensely in an effort to stay standing, and once you garnered he wasn’t paying attention to you (big sigh), you turned slightly in your seat to whisper back. “False alarm,” you said, shaking your head, “She used her emergency buzzer because she heard that BTS released a music video, and she wanted to see it.”

Grinning, Mina nodded. “Normal BTS fan stuff. Is a member her soulmate, or something?”

“Don’t you think she’d be dead by now if she were? Ito said—sorry, Tainted Love said that they’re all simply very easy on the eyes and that she’s a connoisseur of human beauty. But her ass is in trouble right now, because the staff’s pissed they had to break out the emergency procedures for that.”

“I don’t know,” said Mina, fiddling with her earring, “I think that’s completely fair. It’s, uh—girlboss, gaslight, get-to-see-BTS.”

You snorted, covering your nose with the back of your hand. “That’s the wrong order, and you know it—”

“Since you have the energy to talk during a lesson—” Aizawa called towards you, his voice sharp, and your head snapped towards the front of the classroom. “—then I expect you’ll be capable of a higher calibre of effort and example for the class in your stealth presentation today.”

“Absolutely,” you said, recovering and folding your hands on your desk, “I’m ready when everyone else is.”

Aizawa gave a dismissive wave and allowed the class to leave the four minutes early to change and head towards ground beta. You’d already triple-checked that all of your support gear was ready, because it was your day in the rotation to serve as a combat example to the rest of your peers. Your focus for the past month had been on stealth, so you were presenting on your findings—presenting through whatever challenge was posed to you at the hands of one of the faculty.

Giddy, you headed towards ground beta much more quickly than your friends, who were still getting dressed. Since you’d be presenting on stealth, you had a good idea of which teacher you’d be facing.

Aizawa was waiting at the entrance, himself clad in full gear. You shot him a cheerful wave, which he lazily returned, and you retreated to one of the benches nearby and opened the book you’d brought along.

(You don’t want to aggravate him, and what’s more, if you talk to him before your challenge, you’re going to be thinking about your conversation during it. Aizawa will be more impressed with your performance if you don’t fuck it up due to daydreaming about his cock.)

Making yourself comfortable, you lay down on the bench, holding the book above you to block out the sun.

Aizawa pushed his goggles back into his hair. “You have a book,” he said (asked?) flatly as he trailed towards you.

“You have a sleeping bag,” you said, jerking your head towards the yellow bundle wadded up by the door, “We must both be relaxed about this presentation.”

Crossing his arms, Aizawa carefully leant against the door and squinted down at you. “Do you not see me as a threat?”

You tore your gaze away from your book to look up at him, tilting your head backwards to smile into his scowl. “Should I?”

Kirishima and Tokoyami burst in and broke up the conversation before it turned into something that got you off for weeks.

Once the rest of the class clambered towards ground beta, Aizawa cleared his throat and addressed the class about the challenge; he spoke with his back to you (and a couple of others), since most of the class clumped in one spot.

“Sero’s melee close-combat presentation yesterday will be a tough act to follow, but today is our first presentation on stealth. Bakugou, Aoyama—your stealth presentations won’t be following the same format, but take inspiration from it.” Aizawa stowed his hands in the deep pockets of his jumpsuit and shifted his weight forward slightly, his broad shoulders lost under his capture weapon. “Hagakure and Tokoyami, I specifically want your critique of your peer’s performance today. Be ready to give her advice. I will be the faculty member she is up against, and—” Frowning, Aizawa cut himself off, did a quick head count, and spun in your direction, his hair whipping at the movement.

Seeing you reading over on the bench (which you were still doing in what was hopefully a sexy devil-may-care, fuck-the-police way), Aizawa pinched the bridge of his nose before spreading his palm over both of his eyes, heaving a sigh, and dragging his hand down his face. He then held it out in from of him and curled his fingers to beckon you closer. “C’mon; I know you said you weren’t threatened, but now you’re pushing it.”

You were sunshine; you were ease, and you were pushing it, for some reason. But you were feeling it, so you cheerfully trotted up to Aizawa, in front of whom you halted expectantly and bounced on the balls of your feet, hands holding your book behind your back as you waited for further instruction.

He cleared his throat and snapped, holding out his hand farther to confiscate your book. You shunted it towards him, and when Aizawa took it, your fingers grazed his—your pinkie and ring fingers just barely brushing against his thumb.

And.

And there’s an electric jolt.

Vibrant pink blossomed from the points of contact, staining the skin like watery ink.

And you knew, in that shock and subsequent ooze, how it felt to be pulled into his arms and held like you’re something precious—wrapping around you while he’s half-asleep and acting on instinct, hunching and curling over your back to shield you from a backdrop of a battlefield—the feeling of you two lying together bare. You heard the crack of his voice in the morning as he nuzzled closer to you in bed, the rumbling vibration when he growled against your skin. Felt a ghost of his fingers digging into your hips as you arched beneath him (rocking, writhing), sucking a small spot on your neck, kissing down your shoulders, your back. A shiver as he trailed his hand down the inside of your thigh. A prolonged kiss to your collarbone.

Aizawa must have seen—felt—the same phantom sensations, because once a noise from the class snapped him out of it, he grimaced, tucking your book and the pink-marked hand under his opposite arm.

Ducking your head to stare at your shoes, you took a step back, overheated and too aware that the class was watching.

“Recovery Girl’s office,” Aizawa said, his voice rasping, “Now.”

You bolted.

***

You slumped in the sky-blue plastic chair in the patient area of Recovery Girl’s office, unable to shake the sensation of his arms around you. You shuddered and hunkered over, a wave of misery washing over you as the last vestiges of his warmth (?) faded. Fucking figures that the only time in your life you’ve ever been in someone’s arms is in a goddamn vision and not reality.

On the other hand.

The pads of the two fingers that touched Aizawa were blemished with the same bright pink as that dust you’d inhaled the day Tainted Love’s team had invaded, and the colour wouldn’t rub off on your hero costume when you tried. An evil sort of smile spread across your face.

You jolted in your seat when the door slammed open, the knob banging into the wall, and Aizawa stormed in, shoving one of two clipboards into your lap.

“Quirk incident form,” he spat, a plastic chair scraping against the tile as he yanked it next to (but not too closely to) yours.

You slid the pen out from underneath the clip. “This says it’s a soulmate registry form.”

Aizawa glanced up at you, already a few strokes into writing his name in the first blank. “Tainted Love’s team had utilised her quirk enough before attacking U.A. that a specific form had to be made. Nevertheless,” he said, finishing the kanji for sho with so much pressure that the paper ripped slightly, “it’s a subset of the Quirk Incident Registrar.”

Huh. You supposed you should’ve known about the paperwork, since you’re working with her, but then, you’re dealing with personal rehabilitation, not the bureaucratical aftermath.

Following his lead, you quietly began to fill out your form. Basic stuff, really: name, home address, current address (dorms), quirk, soulmate’s name and quirk…

“How would you describe our inciting soulmate incident? Are you only putting first physical contact, or are you mentioning something about the, uh,” you said, leaning over to see his paper, but he flipped his clipboard up against his chest to hide it from view.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Aizawa, finally looking you in the eye. His tight grip on his pen didn’t dilute the saturation of the pink on his thumb. “And we’re not going to talk about it. You’re not going to tell anyone about this, and I’m not going to tell anyone.”

Oh, he’s repressed repressed. “Not even my mother?”

He shook his head. “Nothing important happened today, and nothing’s going to happen.”

“That’s a shame,” you said, moving onto the next section of the form, “I was already picking out China patterns.”

He flipped his clipboard out enough to continue writing. “Don’t even joke.”

“Hey, it says I need your phone number.”

“Leave that part blank. I’ll fill it out once before turning both of them in.”

That little sneak. “Wow. You really are intent on having nothing to do with me,” you said, sighing, which he echoed.

“Listen,” said Aizawa, running his hand back through his hair to sweep it out of his face, “if you genuinely require an explanation, you don’t deserve to be in school at U.A.”

You crossed your arms. “Try me, sensei.”

Aizawa winced, scrunching his eyes shut. “Don’t call me that. Listen. What I’m about to say does not apply only to me but to teachers in general. No one wants to fu—pursue a romantic relationship with a student because we are tired. Teaching is our job. No one wants to take work home when you don’t have to. You want to have a life outside teaching, and in addition to that, I have hero work.”

“There are lots of books and stuff about teacher-student relationships,” you said.

“Written by deranged maniacs who haven’t been teachers. Sometimes, it’s difficult to see your students as people, let alone the horrific romantic par—God.” Aizawa pinched the bridge of his nose again, his fingers moving the press into his eyes, almost like he wanted to gouge them out. “The only reason a student may be brought up in conversation in a non-school setting would be if that student did something particularly moronic that day. At the end of the individual day, teachers are tired of their students and want to slip back into being an individual instead of an educator.”

You pursed your lips. “I have yet to hear that you personally are tired of specifically me.”

“Let me attempt another approach,” said Aizawa, hunching over to rest his elbows on his knees, steepling his fingers together, “As your teacher, I would have an unfair power over you in a relationship.”

“Hell, yeah, you would,” you said, grinning.

Aizawa turned his head away, pressing his mouth into his shoulder. “I’m not going to engage with you if you keep making comments like that.”

You nodded even though he couldn’t see you, aware you were getting yourself in deeper shit the more you opened your mouth. “I wouldn’t want you to propose in Recovery Girl’s office, anyway.”

It took him a moment, while you waited by scribbling a doodle of your cat onto the bottom margin of your form, but Aizawa genuinely let out a hiss as he snapped towards you, his teeth gritted as his eyes flashed scarlet, hair flying upwards in an instant.

“You can’t make those sorts of quips around anyone else—at all. Nothing is going to—” He seemed to notice that you’d shrunken in your seat, away from him, your hands held up while you let the clipboard fall to the ground, and he released his quirk, mildly startled that he’d activated it on impulse. He settled back into his own cold, plastic chair and sank his chin into his capture weapon.

“I’m sorry,” you said, quiet and subdued, “Joking about stuff is how I handle it.”

“No,” he said evenly, stooping to pick up your clipboard and pen, “I knew that already. That’s how you show you understand the material in class discussions. I should’ve taken that into account.”

He held out the clipboard, pinching it by the edge. You won’t touch each other, this way.

You took it and clicked your pen, scanning down the document to where you left off. “There’s this checkbox I wanted to ask you about.”

“What checkbox—oh,” Aizawa said, his voice faltering.

Near the bottom. A single, small line and box, for the weight it held: do you want this form to double as your marriage registration?

You crossed your legs to prop one ankle over your knee and tilted your clipboard away from his line of vision. You checked it before he even answered.

“Yeah,” you said, proceeding to shade in the entire box, “Do you—”

His scowl cut you off. “Leave that blank, too.”

“Of course,” you said, drawing a couple of hearts around the inked-in box before moving on.

You finished filling it out before he did, and when he set his pen aside, he pushed on his knees to stand with a soft grunt, taking your clipboard underneath his without caring to glance over it.

“All right. The rest of class has been joined the training session that All Might was monitoring for Class B, and given the circumstances—” His eyes fell to your stained fingers. “—you’ll have to make up your stealth presentation at a later date with a different faculty member. I’ll have someone else grade your work from now on, so you won’t have to worry about my grading you more harshly because of this.”

Aizawa waited for you to nod, and after, he took a step towards the door. He ducked his head for a moment before turning back to you, saying your name under his breath. “I’m serious when I say that you can neither tell anyone about our soulmate bond nor do anything about it.”

Swallowing, you slowly stood up from your seat. “I don’t know how well I can do that, Aizawa-sensei, but I can promise that I’ll do my best not to trouble you. I haven’t been troubling you for the past three years, have I?”

“Not exactly.” Aizawa narrowed his eyes, his shoulders tensing enough that his mouth disappeared underneath his capture weapon. “Why do you ask?”

Okay. You can do this. You’re fine. You’re normal about it. You held up your hands, as if gesturing that he should brace himself. “Because that’s, uh, how long I’ve—” Been in love with you—no! Stop that. “—had feelings for you.”

Grimacing, Aizawa pinched the bridge of his nose. He’s done that more in the past hour than you’ve seen in the past semester. “Holy shit.”

“Please don’t—please don’t feel any fucking pressure whatsoever,” you said quickly, trying to backtrack, “I’ve been dealing with this by myself for so long that I’m good at it, so please don’t, uh. I mean, I—I live in my head; I live in my books and stories, so it’s fine and good and tolerable that I’ve never been in a relationship or kissed or anything; I’m used to it, so you don’t have to worry; I’ve been handling this by—”

Aizawa exhaled very carefully, his chest heaving in a controlled way as he dug his fist into his eye, rubbing it. “Are you telling me you’re a virgin?”

“Ah, ha. Ha,” you said, scratching the back of your neck, “Sorry if that’s too much information; that wasn’t the point—”

“You’re transferring to Class B,” said Aizawa, and he spun on his heel and sped out of Recovery Girl’s office.

Huffing, you seized the clipboards and ran after him. “Wait up,” you said, shoving the door to the stairs open after he nearly closed it on your face, “I was just trying to let you know I am open to a relationship if you want it, but I’m more than fine—” Liar, spat the voice in your head as you scrambled down the staircase after him, your footsteps reverberating against the grey-cinderblocked walls. “—if you don’t want anything to happen, but if you—”

Aizawa turned sharply to glare in your direction as you caught up to him, and when you skibbled to a stop on the same stair, he said under his breath, “Quiet.” His gaze followed how your hair fluttered with each of his harsh syllables, so he took another stair down to distance you. “Anyone on the stairs could hear you,” he said, resigned.

He crossed his arms, and you slanted the clipboards away from your chest for him to take them.

“You really didn’t know I’ve liked you?” you asked as he took them, “All this time?”

“It’s never crossed my mind,” he said, and he continued down the stairs at fast pace but one you could keep up with, “Like I said, students are a different category of person once you’re a teacher.”

Biting your lip, you followed closely enough to keep your voice down. “You never knew. That’s comforting,” you said, and after a few more stairs, you grinned. “Could that count as my stealth presentation?”

***

You would think that more was supposed to happen, now that you’re soulmates. More conversation, at least. Perhaps a conversation.

Instead, a lingering, bruising feeling branded your chest, as if you’d been kicked the night before, and often a stifling, smothering pressure weighed down on your shoulders until you could be in the same room as Aizawa again. Sometimes, it felt like steel marbles were playing pinball in your chest, the aches where they hit gnawing and settling into your bones.

(Your cat, your chocolate-point baby Dango, has been upset with the hours you’ve been sleeping away the pain instead of playing with her. Luckily, Kouda has been borrowing her some afternoons. You don’t know what he does with her, but you do appreciate very much being able to tell Dango, via Kouda, that you love her very much.

Kouda also has the advantage of being subtle when you lend him your cat, because cats aren’t allowed in the dorms. You’ve been secretly caring for Dango for over a year now, so it’s as if you, Kouda, and Shinsou, who brought Dango catnip treats, were partners in crime.)

In class, Aizawa interacted with you as little as possible, usually asking Present Mic to grade your assignments in his stead. He didn’t act any different towards you from the perspective of the rest of the class, you supposed, except you made fewer jokes and he fewer retorts. Instead, you kept your head down, reading or working on your Sakura Grove data for Midnight, and you were skimming by.

But sometimes you’d be doing Midnight’s paperwork after finishing an assignment early, hunched over your desk, when your skin prickles and the emptiness in your chest wavers for a moment, and you’d look towards Aizawa—either slumping over his desk with his chin on his palm or almost concealed inside his sleeping bag behind the podium—eyes half-lidded and boring into you.

When you look away, it’s as if he’s the one kicking you in the chest.

***

The Saturday after a particularly painful school day for you (aside from your fucking up in a combat exercise, Aizawa had been going down the line of those who’d participated to give individual feedback, and he skipped over you without hesitation), you’d planned to spend all day huddled underneath layers and layers of covers and throw blankets in bed as yet another snowstorm swept across Mustafu, but you jerked awake, completely fucking frigid, before the sun had truly risen. You blindly fumbled over the edge of the bed for any or all of your six billion blankets and felt none of them, and, making a miserable whimper as you cracked open an eye, you peered over the side of the bed.

No blankets on floor.

No…no little bedside rug.

Jesus, did you somehow kick your bed away from the wall during the night? Wait, where’s all the shit you have all over your walls this isn’t your room.

Something was pressed against your back.

Your life was over. You’re totally getting expelled from U.A. for sneaking into your teacher’s room. It’s got to be his—holding your breath, you slowly peeked over your shoulder before snapping back towards the bare wall. A flash of that yellow sleeping bag, even in bed—it’s Aizawa’s room, all right, and his back was pressed against yours, with only your sleepshirt and his sleeping bag keeping your skin from touching (unless he’s wearing a shirt, which, in that case, get sluttier, Aizawa).

In the case that somehow appearing in his bed overnight made him detest you, you elected to slither out of his living space without his ever knowing. You wouldn’t have any answers for him, even if he caught you, really, at least not this early in the morning.

In the vexingly slow process of getting out of bed without waking him up, you had the time to look around, not that there was that much to see; it was all greyish and sparse and didn’t really feel like a home at all or that he spent much time here, with the most significant pieces in his bedroom being the shoddily painted radiator (in heaven, everything is fine) and a desk with both a PC and a propped-up tablet on it, with some papers spread in front of them. But the layout of his flat appeared to mirror another part of the dormitory, so you bet the door to leave his area entirely was through the next room, and you’d be home-free.

What caught your attention, though, was a well-loved cat tower, with one of the dangling mice for the cat to bat at torn off the string and resting on the middle level. Aizawa must have a cat. Funny, since that’s illegal in the dorms. As you finally slinked off the bed entirely, you resolved to locate the cat to kiss its little forehead before slipping out of his room entirely. Cat detours are allowed.

Walking out of his bedroom, you first were hit by the pungent scent of brewing coffee and then by a cold wave of defeat. Across the kitchen counter, Aizawa’s back was towards you while he fossicked through different brands of sugar packets.

You could’ve punted that empty sleeping bag out the window.

You took one step towards the exit before he spoke, his voice gravelly from sleep: “Do you want to offer me an explanation before I write you up?”

Fucking stealth heroes. “I don’t have one,” you said, shoulders falling slack while trudging into his kitchenette—with an ulterior motive of seeing more of his place before being removed permanently. “I’m—I don’t know how I got here. You didn’t—?”

“Of course not,” said Aizawa, ripping open two differently branded packets and upturning them into his coffee. He turned to face you as he took the first sip, and you wished you could say that his eyes drank you in hungrily, or whatever, but you supposed that you have to get sluttier, too: you were just as completely and unalluringly covered as he was in his Purple Revolution sweatshirt and pants. “You don’t have any ideas from working at Sakura Grove?”

“Uh, no,” you said, “I’m not encouraged to talk to I—Tainted Love. It’s more like bringing her food and filling out paperwork for her craft requests. I am very much the middleman. I can—”

“Don’t.” Aizawa held out his free hand. “I’ll ask Nemuri.”

Nemuri. You’ve known, you supposed, that he was on a given-name basis with Midnight. You resolved to get him to call you by your first name, too. And then the thought came that you might be ruining something romantic between them? Based on every interaction you’ve had with either of them, you had no indication of romance, but Aizawa had said that teachers aim to have very private lives. Yikes. You elected to slough it off for now, because introducing feeling jealous of your mentor whom you admired very much would only complicate the situation more. You could linger on jealousy once you figured out what the hell was happening.

“Right,” you said, pulling at a hangnail, “What if this happens again?”

“We’ll put a stop to it. Simple as that.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “We’ll be able to prevent this once we have more information. Until then, just handle it maturely and without fuss.”

“And here I was hoping we could cuddle,” you said, heaving a huge, fake sigh as Aizawa narrowed his eyes, and you pushed yourself up to sit on the counter, swinging your legs. “This is the part where you offer me coffee.”

“Get out of my apartment.”

“C’mon, Aizawa. Or I’ll spread that you have an illegal cat in the dorms.”

Aizawa hesitated just as he brought the lip of his mug to his mouth. “I don’t have a cat,” he said before taking another drink.

“Come off of it; I saw the cat tower.”

“I don’t have—”

You nearly jumped out of your skin when something prodded your thigh; a lanky, tuxedo-patterned cat had sneaked up to headbutt you before you could notice, and it climbed onto your lap to loaf. It’d be nice if your own cat were this friendly.

“You need to be more aware of your surroundings,” grumbled Aizawa as he poured your coffee.

You flipped over the cat’s tag, the light catching on the rose-gold heart. “You named your cat Konpeito?”

“Eri named it.” Aizawa set the mug next to you instead of giving it to you directly—stubborn bastard, not wanting to touch you again. “Don’t make a scene when you return the mug.”

“You’re kicking me out before I even start drinking?” You tentatively gripped the handle and maneuvered the cat off your lap.

“You keep asking these questions that have obvious answers.” He gave a dismissive wave. “Don’t make too much noise on the way out; Eri’s in the next dorm over, and I don’t want you to wake her.”

***

You woke up in Aizawa’s bed again less than a week later. You’d had a dream that you’d been freezing, and the reason had been, once again, you were, since apparently Aizawa depended on his sleeping bag instead of blankets. You allowed yourself a moment of savouring the sensation of his back against yours (for real, this time, since the sleeping bag was snoring) before slipping out.

The third time, you left him a note to tell him to get a damn blanket, or else you’ll bring one of your own to keep there.

You idly took notes in Present Mic’s class, words coming slowly on paper while he prattled on. How come it was always you who was showing up in his bed? How come you always went to Aizawa, and he never came to you?

Your eyes flicked up to what Present Mic was writing on the board in skewed, thin handwriting. Had Aizawa told him the specifics? Present Mic had to know something, since he was grading your work, but Mic was also Aizawa’s friend—a luxury you didn’t have in this soulmate situation. Midnight would also be a strategic person to tell, from Aizawa’s perspective, but she hadn’t given any hint she was aware.

You drew a heart in the margins, and then you gave it legs. You made it walk off the page and onto the desk, colouring it in by crosshatching. If only you could get up and leave. Class without Aizawa dragged nowadays; where did he spend his time during school on break? Probably huddled in his sleeping bag in a slant of sunlight like a damn cat, maybe out on the grounds where he couldn’t be found. Or maybe he fucked off to a gym closet where the mats were; they’d be cosier than sleeping directly on the floor. And you could cosy up next to him, pressed up against each other in that snug—

You slammed into a wall of solid muscle, papers flying and tea spilling over the tile to seep into the rug in the teachers’ lounge, and you sprawled on your knees in the midst of it in your haste to get the fuck off of Aizawa before he could say anything, hissing as you tentatively raised your hand from the wet, broken cup. Despite the slivers of pottery in your palm, you one-handedly fumbled for the papers that had been dropped—third year evals, now crimped and tinted a yellow-green.

Aizawa took the papers, tapped the bottom to align them, and gave them a firm shake to flick off excess tea, and when you started to sweep the broken cup into your hands, he stopped you.

“Go to the faculty bathroom,” he said, pointing to the connecting lavatory, “I’ll be there in a minute with a first-aid kit.”

You had a moment to yourself in the clean, warmly-lit bathroom, so you pushed yourself up on the green marble by the farthest sink and crossed your legs, ensuring your shoes didn’t dirty anything. The pain’s setting in, but you won’t cry, not in front of him, and you’re crying, but just a bit, right? Fuck.

At the sound of the door, you hastily wiped your nose with your sleeve and did your best to look stoic, like pottery in your hand happened every day. But your eyes were too watery to even see the tweezers as he dug them out of the kit.

Standing in front of the sink, Aizawa clicked the tweezers twice (carcinisation, baby!) and held out his other hand.

You looked at it. “What do you want me to do with that?”

He said your name through a sort of scoff, which would’ve been way hotter if it had been your given name and also in bed. “Just give me your hand.”

Tears ran down your face in an overflow. “You wanna touch me?” you asked, sniffing.

“Fucking hell,” Aizawa said under his breath, “At least I know you’re all right if you’re still joking.” He shifted his jaw, scanning your palm. “If you’d rather have it at an uncomfortable angle over the sink—”

“No! No, I wanna—I wanna touch you,” you said, and you lifted your shaky, injured hand for Aizawa to hold steady. The instant his fingers cradled the back of your hand, everything fell into place: touching him was like breathing in cool, crisp air on a clear night or the smoky kindling of a fire that never goes out, like feeling sunshine on bare shoulders on a spring day with freshly cut grass, like walking into your childhood home’s kitchen when someone’s baked chocolate-chip cookies, like breathing in, like breathing, and—

You lifted your hand just a hair from his hand.

You have a stopped-up nose.

You glanced at Aizawa, whose lips were parted, his chest visibly heaving underneath his baggy jumpsuit. “Did you…?”

He ran his tongue over his lower lip. “I need to get the pottery out of your hand as soon as possible.”

Bracing yourself, you rested your hand in his again, and that irresistible warmth swept over you again. He’s got to be feeling it, too, so why isn’t he reacting? You’re embarrassing yourself, so why can’t he?

“Were you trying to teleport to me earlier?” he asked (distracting you from the sensation of each shard being plucked from your skin), head bent over the sink and your hand.

“No, I never—I don’t intend anything. But now that we’ve seen it, we at least know it’s not a gradual thing. Instantaneous and painless. Well,” you said, nodding towards your hand.

“Nor, I see, is it limited to my bed,” he said, shifting over when you uncrossed your legs, “What were you doing before the jump?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. I was in class.” You dangled your legs off the side to get closer to him (for medical purposes of course), and wow, Aizawa smelled incredible—probably; your stuffy nose wasn’t doing you any favours—what the hell kind of soap did he use?

“Were you thinking of anything in particular? The bond?”

That’s got to be pine, and there’s something earthy mixed in. You really needed to blow your nose (Can you even name earthy scents? [Dirt?] You’re not up-to-date with masculine scents; you’ll have to find his deodorant next time you wake up in his room). “I was—” You cut yourself off with a hiss as he pulled the largest shard out. “I’m fine. It’s not that bad, really. Keep going. I don’t really remember the specifics of what I was thinking about, but I—” You cut yourself off again, this time with heavy realisation. “Goddammit. I was feeling the acute loneliness hollow out my chest again, and I was wanting to—be near you. Which explains why I’ve been teleporting to you instead of you coming to me.”

“It explains nothing,” said Aizawa, and he set the tweezers next to the shards on the edge of the sink and flipped on the faucet, guiding your hand under the water and reaching for the gauze.

“Yes, it does,” you said, openly wiping your nose on the back of your sleeve, because fuck it, this man didn’t care about you, so be gross around him. “If the teleporting is triggered by intense longing to be close to the other person, then it makes total sense that I’d be the only one teleporting, since I’m the only one who has feelings.”

“It explains nothing,” he said again, drying off your hand, “It’s only a possible contributing factor to the teleportation. Maybe it has to do with location, or timing, or action. It’s highly improbable that this physical action was caused by thought alone.” Aizawa ripped off a long strip of gauze and began to wrap it around your palm. “Don’t feel like this is a weakness on your part. I’ll probably teleport to you before the month is out.”

You let your fingers relax, your pinkie falling enough to graze his own hands as he bandaged yours. The more skin-to-skin contact you had, the more serene you felt—or maybe it was the injury adrenaline wearing off. Either way, you might fall asleep on the bathroom counter. “My bed isn’t big enough for two people.”

“That’s okay,” said Aizawa, and he slowed at the final wrap-around, holding it in place until he found the metal clips in the first aid box. “I’ve gotten very used to sleeping in odd places.”

When he stepped away to pack up the kit, you fucking whimpered on impulse at the loss of physical contact, and he froze, stuck in the motion of clicking the box shut.

“Sorry,” you said, sniffing.

His jaw tensing, Aizawa shook his head. “You should go to bed early tonight. Don’t overexert yourself.”

***

Yeah, except it’s Friday, and Jirou has been arranging this girls’ night for two weeks now.

Apparently, the karaoke bar you’re going to overheats really easily, since it’s in a refurbished building that used to be something-or-other; you’re not really listening to the explanation but were more concerned with having to wear summer clothes while it’s snowing out. The past two weeks have been strategic outfit layering plans from the lot of you, most of which have devolved into being silly and impractical (ranging from “I’ll just take off my skin and hang around in my bones when we get there” to “I will walk out of this dorm in a sleeping bag over my underwear” [the latter reminding you of Aizawa, in a pleasing, warm thought that you had to keep to yourself]).

Either way. Twisting over your shoulder, you strained to tuck in your bra so that it wouldn’t show from a mostly backless spaghetti-strap that you ended up borrowing from Uraraka, and once it was kind of hidden, you stuck your tongue into your cheek. It didn’t really sit right with you to be going out in this shit in this icy weather. You’d be a lot warmer and probably a lot more content if you peeled off these Best Jeanist jean shorts (from the Moulded to Your Ass line, unofficially titled) and crawled into your pyjamas and bed.

In the corner of your eye, your bed beckoned, with all of its blankets and stuffed animals (for when you just need to hold a little guy). What if you ditched the outing and—no. Stop that. You’ll be warm soon enough.

But with an abrupt lurch towards your bed, you found yourself spluttering into the scalding spray of a showerhead, water dribbling into your mouth between gasps and sloshing down your body. Blindly, you took a step backwards out of the cascade, but a flattened palm on the bare skin of your back stopped you before you could move farther.

“Don’t.”

The water still gushed and flowed over you, eyes scrunched tight and heart pounding. The hand on your back maximised the space between the two of you, but with the pathetic size of the shower stall, his body heat still seeped into your skin, complemented by rising steam. There’s a quiet grunt when he knocked against the frosted glass door; his shoulders must be wide enough for that to happen frequently (you swallow against a dry throat, because the man could hold all of you). If he wanted to, Aizawa, the way he has you now, could press his lips to the crown of your head, keeping his mouth there as his eyes flutter shut.

Instead, Aizawa was reaching up to tilt the showerhead away, giving you a good face-full of his bicep, and your eyes followed its movement (his jumpsuit did an excellent job of concealing a fucking powerfully built form), straining as he twisted the showerhead and relaxing as it fell back into place at his side—

“Eyes up,” said Aizawa, using his first two fingers to guide your chin back to face your front, where they lingered for a moment to tap against your jaw to ensure you’d stay there.

(With the shock of getting wet and the heat of his hand flat against your back [still there, still flooding you with an intoxicating headiness], you’d been entirely too overwhelmed to even consider catching a glimpse of his dick.)

“Aizawa-sensei—”

“Cut that out,” he said, huffing, “You’re doing this on purpose.”

For once, you’re out of the loop. But since you’re in his shower, you could take a moment to locate his soap to put a name to what he smells like and perhaps get a look at his cock along the way. Only his washcloth hung over the faucet in front of you, so you moved to turn slightly as you spoke, ducking your head to scan for shampoo bottles: “Earlier today you were saying it wasn’t my—”

Hissing, Aizawa slid two fingers through one of your belt loops and yanked, jerking you backwards into his hips for an instant before establishing that space between you again—pulling you by the belt loop blocked your view of his cock, and his hand on your back kept you from touching him in any meaningful way. But he was still as close as he could be without touching you otherwise, his breath as searing as the steam as he grumbled into your ear: “Bad girl.”

The water splashing at your feet wasn’t so hot anymore.

Aizawa tugged at your belt loop again (for a moment, when a swish of cool air washed down your ass, you worried that he’d look) and kept you in front of himself as he turned sideways to face the shower door, which he (fuck!) lifted his hand from your back to prod open.

Light flushed into the stall, and he scoffed. “I knew it,” Aizawa said, bitterness creeping into his voice, and he unlooped his finger from your belt loop to tap the fabric firmly, nudging you forward.

“Knew what?” you asked, spinning on your heel the moment you were out of the shower, water flying, and Aizawa ducked behind the frosted glass with a defeated expression. “Right,” you said, grabbing the thick towel on the toilet and tossing it to him.

“Check your fingertips.”

Tearing your gaze from his frosted-glass impression of wrapping the towel around his waist, you held up your hands. “They look fine. My bandages are soaked, though, so I’ll have to redo—oh, okay, fuck. My soulmark is gone.” You’re not going to cry in front of him, and definitely not twice in one day, because that’d be—

“Sensei,” you said, choking up and curling your shaky fingers into an even shakier fist, “Sensei, my soulmark is—I don’t want my soulmark to be gone, fucking, I—” On accident, you slammed your elbow into the glass door when you were trying to—please get closer (so goddammit, if your eyes water, it’s from hitting your funny bone). “I don’t want my soulmark to disappear; I adore you and want—”

“It hasn’t disappeared,” Aizawa said softly as he stepped out of the shower, gripping his towel in addition to the firm knot, and he pointed behind you towards the mirror.

While Aizawa eased down onto the closed toilet to towel-dry his hair, you took the four, wet steps to the sink and wiped off the clouded steam. No difference in your reflection.

When you shot a baffled look towards Aizawa, he gently raised his eyebrows and his finger to twirl it once. So, you turned around to look over your shoulder at your back, where his pink handprint put all body glitter to shame in how well it reflected the overhead light and in how quickly it was spreading (ink leaking outside of the handprint in watery bursts before slowing, never detracting from the shape of his hand, though the ink seemed to rise more than fall, especially near his middle and ring fingers between your shoulder blades).

He was holding up his newly pink palm, wiggling his fingers in your direction.

You returned to him (really to stand on the bathmat, since you’re drenching his floor) and raised your hand to touch him, first glancing at him for his approval. Aizawa looked at your hand and back at you, and after he wetted his lips, he nodded and got back to towel-drying his hair.

You hesitated. Is this really so nonchalant, so trivial to him? It’s everything to you.

You dropped your hand to your side, mouth twitching. “What shampoo do you fucking use.”

“Hm?” He didn’t even look at you.

“You smell fucking good all the time. What’s. What scent is your soap,” you were saying, in the same, flat tone you’d use to argue with your landlord about finally fixing your leaky roof after two years.

Aizawa squeezed water out of the last of his hair and spoke in that infuriatingly gravelly, just-woke-up voice of his. “It’s sandalwood.”

Sandalwood. That’s earthy, you guessed. “Then where’s the pine come from?”

“That would be the aftershave,” he said, folding the hair towel in half twice and setting it aside, “You were going to touch me, but now you’re upset. Care to explain?”

You plucked at your wet shirt before crossing your arms over it. “Does this matter to you? The soulmate thing.”

“You matter to me,” he said, standing with a quiet grunt, “Let’s get you reasonably dry before going back to your dorm.”

“Oh, shut up with that teacher bullshit,” you said, following him to a cabinet, “You care about me through the lens of a student, because everyone in this fucking dorm is your—fuck, I’m. You’re insufferable.”

“I can’t lend you clothes, but I should have enough large towels to keep you warm.” Aizawa reached for the top shelf, with beach towels. “However, I recommend against going out tonight with the rest of your friends.” He handed you a new-looking, blue-pineappled towel.

You angrily wrapped it around you, pissed that you instantly felt better. “Oh, is it because you’ve gotten me wet—” Aizawa draped another towel around your shoulders, tucking it in a little to secure it. “—and going out into this fucking ass iceberg weather would get me sick—” Another towel, this one with Present Mic’s radio show logo on it. “—and then I’d have to miss one of your precious days of class—”

“Is that what you want me to say?” He arranged two more towels around you at once, tying the outermost one in a knot. “Or are you waiting to hear that I want you to hide away while you bear my mark?” He tugged your drapery down a smidge so that you could use your arms a bit—at the least, use your key to your room. “When in reality,” he said, taking a step backward and appraising his handiwork, “I want you to be comfortable and content. And I don’t think you’d be either if you went out after this, even if you got ready again.”

Goddammit.

“And you’ve had a long day with strange revelations. You have a new injury. Going to bed for the night will facilitate healing. Your body will have more time to process the day.”

Groaning, you said, “Fuck you for being right.”

“Thanks.”

Since you hadn’t touched him earlier, you took the opportunity to clonk your forehead against his chest (dense muscle was evidently comfy). The soulmark warmth blossomed throughout your body from the spot, and you took your time to appreciate it, taking a couple of unhurried breaths against his skin, dry save for some stray running droplets.

Aizawa sighed, the planes of his chest rising and falling under your close and thirsty scrutiny. “This counts, y’know. As staying up late.” If you hadn’t seen him put his hand on your arm, you wouldn’t’ve known, due to the thickness of the towels. “I told you to go to bed.”

You blearily looked up at him. “Take me there, then.”

After a moment, Aizawa said, “I have to feed my cat,” and he opened the bathroom door to escape. Before he left, he spun back around, and you would’ve sworn he was fighting a smile, if you hadn’t known how he felt about you.

“But first,” he said, “let me fix that forehead situation of yours.”

***

Picking up the folders from the office mailbox, you flipped out the flag for read/empty and trailed back to the office space that you and Midnight shared at Sakura Grove, idly waving to some co-workers as you flipped through the files. Pushing the door open with your foot, you dropped the folders onto Midnight’s desk and hurried over to lift the shaking electric kettle from the heat, since Midnight was too absorbed into her patient evaluation at which she was typing away.

You poured the boiling water the round teabag, watched it rise to the top of Midnight’s teacup, and bit back a cry—you clutched the chilled windowsill to stay standing, struck by an overwhelming dizziness that blacked out the edges of your vision and crept to darken it entirely; a bowling ball has just hit your chest and dropped to your toes, the ache reverberating through your veins as you caved and doubled over, nausea settling into your gut.

Through the dots clouding your vision, you barely make out Midnight stretching her arms over her head.

These attacks have been happening more and more. If Aizawa can have a friend in the know, so can you.

“Kayama-sensei,” you managed to croak, but she didn’t hear you.

You tried again, and she turned, her expression drooping when she saw you. “Is the tea that bad?”

Eventually, Midnight helped you into your seat across from hers with your own cup of tea, the pain draining away in the process of vague explanation.

“So, you genuinely think you’re starting to die because your soulmate won’t acknowledge you romantically. Easy solution in sight,” she said, picking her teacup up by her fingertips to breathe in the steam, “Just pick out some nice lingerie—you can use my sponsor discount for Wacoal—and arch your back when you lie in his bed for him to find. I can give you some tips on how to suck—”

“Kayama-sensei,” you said, your vision finally back to normal, “You do not understand how much I can’t do that.”

Her tongue flicked into her cup, testing the heat. “I’ll bite. Why not?”

“My soulmate is, um.” You frowned into your tea. “I’ve liked my soulmate for a long, long time. Before the soulmate stuff existed.”

Midnight ran her tongue over her lips, the corners quirking upwards. “So? All the more reason to make your feelings known and emphasised, now that you have an excuse for a legitimate relationship. Since he already knows about how you feel, you should keep trying to seduce him. All men crack eventually.”

“He won’t accept a lousy attempt at seduction, because—aside from I have no clue how to do that, I don’t—he’s, uh…” You trailed off, took a swig of tea instead of finishing, and ended up choking a bit at the heat.

“Yes? What’s the juicy detail you’re reluctant to share? Is he married? Is he a public figure? Is he too much older or younger than you?”

Narrowing your eyes, you asked, “Do you already know? Are you just making me say it?”

Tight-lipped, Midnight made a loose, dismissive gesture and moved to get back to her patient file.

“Fine. Fine! If anyone can help me with this, it’s you, because it’s—goddamn,” you said, deflating and sinking down into your seat, “It’s fucking Aizawa-sensei, okay? My soulmate is my stupid homeroom teacher.”

“Congratulations,” said Midnight, saving the document and shutting down the computer, “You have earned the right to call me by my given name for being so honest.” She spun in her chair to give you her full attention. “So. Shouta.”

“Did you know already? Were you just—”

“I had my suspicions but no concrete evidence,” she said, holding up her hand, “Just some observations from watching you for the past three years.” Tilting her head, she adjusted her glasses before lifting her cup to her mouth again. “Now, the reason why you can’t just seduce him is crystal clear now. I submit that you could start going to bed in skimpier clothes in the event you teleport to his apartment again, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Shouta’s got a steel will. He’s not going to violate that student-teacher professional relationship.”

“I know,” you said, slumping so far down in your seat that your ass was falling off of it, your chin touching your chest, “but if I’m in pain from not being with him, he probably is, too. And if he won’t acknowledge me romantically, I wanna know if there’s something I can do to alleviate the pain that we’re both feeling. He shouldn’t be distracted from his work because of it.”

“That’s exactly what I want to hear.” Midnight jabbed a finger in your direction. “Starting today, you’re promoted. You’re going to be Tainted Love’s primary monitor.”

“What?” You shot up in your seat. “But I haven’t—I haven’t even had a proper conversation with her before—”

“But she’s used to having you around,” Midnight said evenly, opening her top desk drawer, “To her, you’re in a position of authority but not a threat. You’ve seen how she likes to talk, anyway, and you’re in a perfect position to find out more schematics of how her quirk works on the individual level.” Midnight smiled and handed you Ito’s folder. “Plus, she can’t do anything more to you, right? You’ve already got a hell of a soulmate.”

“Okay,” you said, hesitantly taking her file to clutch it to your chest, “So, you just want me to talk to her? Try to solve my problems?”

“Yeah. And anything you find out about her quirk that she hasn’t shared so far—because she hasn’t exactly shared much past the first interrogation—is welcome intelligence. Record anything new. Keep Ito happy. You’ll be golden. I know you’re more than capable.”

“Funny,” you said, flipping through the file and joining Midnight as she stood, “This feels planned. Got anything else motivating you?”

“Besides a perverse desire to see my friend and my sidekick get together?” Midnight grabbed her whip from the hook on the side of her desk. “I was going to assign you this, anyway. Ito isn’t a threat anymore, and I need to focus on preparing for Serendipity’s arrival next week from St. Philomena’s. Even the airline we finally convinced to transport her has backed out, so I’m scrambling to bribe another.”

That had slipped your mind—Serendipity was being transferred to Sakura Grove for rehabilitation, mostly because no one else wanted to house the most potently dangerous female villain in the Americas. “Understandable,” you said, holding open the door for Midnight to follow closely behind, “When do I start?”

***

Fifteen minutes later, you were setting a tray with tea and powdered thumbprint-cookies in front of Ito at her desk in her room. She raised a sharp, white eyebrow at how the dishes clattered at your shaky handling, but she nodded in thanks and turned back to her book. You guessed you were lingering awkwardly by the door a bit too obviously, so she rolled her eyes and set her book upside-down on the desk.

“You’re my new handler, right?” she asked, scratching under her eye.

“That’s me,” you said, hands folded tightly in front of you, “Midnight says you cleared stage five, so you’re safe to be delegated off to me. I have your stage six schedule printed out—”

“But why are you still here? Everyone usually leaves as soon as possible.”

“I’m the only staff member immune to your quirk,” you said, sliding her schedule out of her file.

“Immune.” Ito grinned and crossed her legs. “That’s interesting. How do you know that?”

Well, Midnight said to be honest in order to get honesty from Ito. You sucked in through your teeth. “I’m only immune because you’ve already given me a soulmate. I was the, uh, student you landed on when you attacked U.A.”

Scrunching up her face, Ito scanned you from head to foot, and when she finally stopped at your chest, she nodded. “Ah. I remember you. You’ve got good tits, kiddo,” she said, reaching for her tea, “Be proud of ‘em. You allowed to tell me how it’s going?”

You glanced behind you at the door, pretending to be considering the trouble of talking to her, and when you prodded it shut with your foot, Ito’s grin stretched all the way across her face, her teeth cutting into her lower lip.

“I’ve been desperate to talk to you,” you said, dragging the extra chair closer to hers, “My soulmate is being a little bitch.”

“I like you better than Doc Kim already,” said Ito, and she took a noisy slurp of her tea. “Spill it.”

“I need your advice on what to do about the pain.”

“You found your soulmate already? Then you shouldn’t be feeling any,” she said, shrugging.

“No, I need you to tell me about what to do about the pain. I don’t know if he’s feeling it, but it’s fucking killing me, and he won’t do anything about the soulmate stuff because he doesn’t like me—”

“Back up.” Ito slammed her cup on the tray, spilling tea. “You’re not making any sense. Start over. Tell me about your soulmate.”

Groaning, you buried your face in your hands, leaning back in your chair until your back popped. “He’s my professor, and I’ve liked him for years. Since I met him, pretty much.”

“Hot. He got a sensei kink?” She shoved two thumbprint cookies in her mouth at once, and she nudged the plate in your direction.

“Eh,” you said, weighing your options, “It’s possible. But he doesn’t—”

“Nice. So, he says he’s not gonna do anything while you’re his student, which means he’s burning with shame and sexy, sexy doubts about how good of a man he is. Always sexy to bring a man to his moral and literal knees. Are you wearing fun things to class?”

“We have a uniform.”

“Shame,” she said, gulping down more tea, and then she cocked her head. “Unless.”

“No.”

“Spoilsport,” said Ito, gesturing towards the cookies again. This time you took one, pinching it absentmindedly in your lap. “I think I want to go on my daily walk around the courtyard. Is there room for that in my new schedule?”

You checked it. “I’ll make it work.”

Minutes later, you and Ito were bundled up and strolling the perimeter of Sakura Grove’s courtyard, full of other in-patients in team recreation in the middle and in private conversation on some of the benches.

“I’m still not with you,” Ito was saying as she stared up into the bare limbs of a sakura tree, “I don’t understand why you’re feeling the soulmate pain. It shouldn’t be affecting you, since you know and have met your soulmate.”

You huffed, breath visible. “Well, if you don’t know, then I’m lost. But if he’s not going to complain about the pain, then I suppose I’ll just have to deal with it. I like him too much to bitch about it to him, I guess.”

Ito shoved more of her long, white hair underneath her pom-pom hat. “Then it’s probably the same for him, with him liking you too much to bother you about it.”

“Nah.” You stepped into one of her footprints, the snow crunching under your weight. “He doesn’t like me, and I don’t think he ever will, since once a student, always a stu—”

Ito’s head snapped towards you, cheeks rosy from the cold. “What did you say?”

“My soulmate doesn’t like me, because—”

“You said that earlier, too,” said Ito, and she looked around for other monitors before jerking her head for you to follow her. She guided you in a casual-but-not trail away from any doors or eavesdroppers, and she said in a hushed voice, “You do know that my quirk doesn’t assign soulmates randomly, right?”

“What the hell? Say more right now,” you said, taking smaller steps to stay closer to her.

“Oh, well, that’s news for me. I figured they’d captured my team’s notes on my quirk by now. Okay, well, report this, or not,” said Ito, jabbing a finger towards you, “How much do you know about probability? Yeah, yeah, more math—yes, soulmates usually to inhale the same cloud of my quirk to be considered soulmates, but there are other factors, too. See, you were making sense until you said your soulmate doesn’t like you back.”

“Okay, I’m not following—hey, let’s walk more towards the centre; I think those two by the door are watching us.” You steered the two of you back onto the typical path but stayed close to speak quietly.

“In addition to breathing from the same cloud, two people have to have had a moment of genuine, mutual attraction between each other. Not, like, you pass someone hot on the street and think you’d suck the soul out of their dick before dissuading yourself from the impulse, because they’d clearly ruin your life, but a moment of true, lingering affection for someone that you don’t talk yourself out of. A moment worth thinking about later. Hey, Rika,” Ito said loudly as you passed another patient on the path, “Good to see you today. How’s your cult? You don’t know? Great! Healthy! See you later!” Ito and you sped-walked past her, and once Rika was out of earshot, Ito lowered her voice again. “You don’t have to know the person, but maybe a stranger shared a moment of kindness with you. Maybe an old friend laughed in a new way. It’s a moment where you’re attracted to something past the surface level in a person, even for a brief second. I don’t give out soulmates with absolutely no attraction, even if it may seem that way.”

You, fuming, kicked snow out of your path. “That bitch likes me!”

Ito nodded. “And not just for your tits.”

“Shit,” you said, pushing hair out of your face and pulling your scarf to be snugger, “Nothing I do is gonna—”

“I can help,” said Ito, glancing over her shoulders again for eavesdroppers.

You stopped in your tracks. “But why would you do that? I’m just some weirdo.”

“Because when I have employed the help I’m about to offer you, it has been very, very funny to me,” she said, “and I don’t get outside news except through fucking letters.”

You joined her on the path again. “How many times have you done this?”

Ito looked up as she bit the pad of her thumb, trudging through the snow. “You’ll be the twelfth time. It’s like a part two to my quirk, but I usually don’t come across victims again to offer this sort of thing—and people usually don’t need it. Step one: we’ll need an airtight container.”

***

Cut to that evening in your dorm room, with you hunched over a ziploc bag sealed to the brim with her quirk’s pink dust.

Door locked. Lights down. Cosy pyjamas. Already under the covers in bed.

An increased probability of cliches, Ito had said.

You flipped on the flashlight on your phone to shine through the dust, pink light scattering on the ceiling like a home-planetarium.

Inhaling her quirk for the second time would still affect you, but it wouldn’t assign you another soulmate. Rather, it would dramatically increase your chances for romance tropes to occur in your real life. Stuff that only happens in rom-coms and fanfic could start to happen to you and your soulmate.

(“Like sharing a bed when there’s only one of them,” Ito had said, swirling her finger through the leftover powdered sugar and licking it.

“We’ve already got that covered with the teleporting,” you’d said.

“Shifting is what I’ve been calling the teleports, babe.” Ito had smacked her lips. “And maybe you’ll wake up grinding on his hard-on, now. Do you know how big his dick is?” she’d asked, and then she’d clicked her tongue. “Never mind; I wanna know about his thighs.”

“I can—”

“Or maybe he’ll spill coffee on your shirt and have to pat you dry, accidentally making your shirt see-through and getting flustered at your tits. Or maybe he’ll have to pick you up in the rain, and oh, no, the weather’s too bad for you to go home, and you have to wear his clothes, and—”

You’d snorted at the thought of wearing one of his jumpsuits. He didn’t seem to have much else.)

Either way, you had your ziploc bag of soulmate trope dust, and you had a soulmate reluctant to acknowledge you—even though you knew now that he liked you, that bitch. You’d prepared accordingly, already in bed, since Ito had said you’d likely pass out again. It sat a bit unpleasantly in your stomach that you were going to rely on cliches to jumpstart your relationship with Aizawa, since you hadn’t wanted to do that in the first place with teacher-student relationship cliches. But you could avoid that the best you could, you supposed.

You lay down in bed, adjusting your hair on your pillow, and with the bag on your chest, you popped it like bubble wrap, the dust surging into your face in a rosy burst.

***

Popping it Tuesday night led to a cruelly dull Wednesday, since, as seniors, Wednesdays were off-days for the hero course to spend more time in the field. You weren’t needed at Sakura Grove, as you remotely typed up your reports and sent them their way, and since all your friends were with their mentors, the hours crawled. You puttered around online for a while, before cracking open a book whose plot couldn’t hold you. Since no one was around to witness, you plodded downstairs to the kitchen in your pyjamas, stole one of Aoyama’s green tea popsicles for an early start to lunch, and booted up the console Kaminari kept in the commons.

While the screen loaded, you plopped onto the couch, licking the last of the tea off the wooden stick. What does Aizawa do on Wednesdays now that his class is loose? He frequents a cat café; the punch-card was poking out of his wallet on his bedside table last time you shifted to his room. But there are the mundanities—grocery shopping, catching up on sleep, grading, caring for Eri. And hell, how you’d like to share those moments with him—perhaps scrunching his nose at a change of ingredients of his favourite chip, stroking the neck of his cat in a beam of sunlight, braiding Eri’s hair with ribbon at the start of a school day.

Fuuuuuck, when will Aizawa let you in?

The next moment, you’re suffocating. Pitch black softness, swaddling and falling around you, sweltering within seconds, sweat beading at your hairline. You took a desperate, gasping breath—relieved in the slim moment a slant of light puckered in front you, until the hand shoved onto your face, palm feeling for your mouth and shutting your jaw for you. Within the cocoon, the frame on either side of you tensed, and—the hand fumbled, once you’d quieted, in the crack of light to clumsily cup your cheek, patting it abruptly before rubbing the thumb over your cheekbone.

From that touch and the peace it swept over you, you knew where you’d shifted: kneeling right between Aizawa’s legs in his sleeping bag. But he’s sitting upright in a chair and needed to silence you, so where was he right now?

You settled, leaning against the hard muscle of his calf and into his palm, nosing at it to signal you knew it’s him.

“You have twenty-seven minutes to finish your tests,” called Aizawa, and for the first time, you picked up on pens clicking, paper shuffling, and chairs scuffing against polished tile. “Don’t ask me when they’ll be graded; Kuranosuke-sensei isn’t set to return until Saturday.”

Bless him.

But okay. You’ve got about half an hour stuck between his legs under this desk in front of what’s likely a bunch of younger business students.

Huh, if you only inched your chin forward on his chair, you’d be perfectly positioned to nuzzle against his cock, maybe suck it if you maneuvered your arms out of the sleeping bag’s constrictions. But, you supposed, it would be very mean to tease him in that way in front of students who haven’t built that respect for him, and you’d prefer your first blowjob to be where Aizawa could throw his head back, face flushed, groaning loudly with a gentle, guiding hand on the back of your head—hey, now’s not the time.

You didn’t want him to feel the shame of having an erection in front of who were essentially strangers. It’d…you don’t want to humiliate your soulmate. You love that idiot.

But Aizawa was shifting his hips, to your horror, the thick fabric of his jumpsuit brushing your face in the moment his hand retracted, and the sleeping bag was shuffled down past the top of your head, which grazed the underside of a desk drawer.

You rested your chin towards the edge of his chair—yes, mere inches between your face and his clothed cock, but your breath probably wasn’t even hitting it. From this angle, you and Aizawa could share that suspicious glare he shot you, so you backed up the half-inch for your chin to rest of the very brink of the chair—he closed his eyes, his shoulders losing their stiffness—and you leant your head against his thigh, just on the inside of his knee. He heaved a silent sigh, giving a subtle roll of his eyes, and minutely nodded—an act so slight that if you hadn’t been looking for it, you would’ve missed it.

Aizawa’s hand came to rest atop your head, scratching his fingers gently against your scalp. Part of it’s the soulmate bond; part of it’s being touch-starved, but his gentle scratch was so fucking soothing that a hazy, relaxed sleepiness came over you. Your head sagged, nose pressing towards the underside of his thigh, while your eyes crossed. Maybe it’s the magic of his sleeping bag, but you’re so drowsy that the scratch of his short nails almost drowned out clicking footsteps approach the desk.

Aizawa froze, his hand stilling in your hair.

“What are we supposed to do with our tests?” came the whisper of a business student.

Aizawa made a grunt and moved as if he were stretching and reaching for something on the desk. “Whatever you normally do. Is there not a routine?”

“The basket we turn papers in to is missing.” The shadow of the student’s feet grew closer to the desk.

“Not my problem. Just leave them on the corner of the desk—” A tinny clink echoed through the teacher desk when Aizawa tapped it—his thumb swiping over your forehead to calm you.

“Gotcha,” said the business student, and you thought you were in the clear before she asked, “What—what are you doing under…?”

“Oh?” Aizawa jolted the chair forward to hide you, but with the jolt came his clothed cock pressed against your face; even through the thick fabric you could tell it’s his shaft pressed against the length of your nose and corner of mouth and balls nestled against your chin and cheek. “I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to text under my desk, the same as all of you do when you think I can’t see.” A metallic-sounding object scraped across the desktop, followed by an impulsively-large-sounding gulp.

“Your phone’s on your desk, sir,” said the business student.

His fingers now curled into your hair in a vain attempt to pull you away from his cock, but he couldn’t, with the scant room under the desk and bulk of his sleeping bag. Trying to be polite, you opted to avert your gaze from his crotch (even though it was right there), which shuddered so hard that you saw and felt it.

“It’s a common practise for pro-heroes to have secondary phones purely for work,” said Aizawa, taking another loud swallow of his drink. “You may want to invest in one.”

“Gotcha,” said the business student again, just as another shadow joined her at the desk and whispered for her to hurry up.

When they both retreated, Aizawa stealthily scooted back to gain some space in a move that looked like he was simply leaning back in his chair to drain the tea out of his cup—and you savoured the unshielded view of the tender skin of his neck, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed—and hey, that’s—Aizawa relaxed enough to glance down at you, elbow on the arm of the chair, holding in the air the teacup you gifted him to replace the one you broke (nowhere nearly as nice as the pottery one you smashed presumably was, but its deep crimson glaze had reminded you of his quirk-activated eyes).

You were strangely moved that he was using your gift so quickly after he received it, in public, and not where you were supposed to see it being used.

Your eyes darted between the cup and his eyes until he noticed, and he raised the teacup just a hair in a toast. Nodding with a tired smile, you wormed your arm around to unwind his hand from its grip in your hair, unintentionally still tight, and held his gaze as you kissed the pad of each finger, starting with his little finger, the pink flashing from each tip until you pressed your lips against his thumb.

Aizawa never looked away, but he narrowed his eyes and cocked his head. You wondered for a moment if he liked the thumbprint bisecting the centre of your lips, the rounded edge aligning with the dip in your cupid’s bow. But his expression betrayed nothing, and instead, he raised the teacup to his own mouth, his hand returning to your hair for the rest of the period.

After the last student had petered out of the classroom and Aizawa had given an uncharacteristic little wave as the last one close the door behind her, Aizawa held out a groan as he kicked away from the desk, his hands flying to adjust his lower jumpsuit and then raking his fingers back through his own hair.

“How are you holding up?”

You balked. “How am I?” You shoved at his knees so that you had room to stand, and you sat on the desk.

Aizawa pointedly nudged your legs together (you hadn’t even thought of it that way). “Nice pyjamas.”

“You’re lucky I don’t sleep naked,” you said, plucking at your shirt.

“Am I?”

Was that…was he flirting?

Your surprise must have shown on your face, because he continued. “You shouldn’t walk back to the dorms like that. I don’t have anything at the school besides a spare jumpsuit, but Hizashi should have his jacket draped on his chair in the faculty lounge.”

“How romantic,” you said, flicking the side of his teacup for the hell of it.

“I don’t have another class to sub until the period after this one,” he said, pocketing his phone and other personals on the desk before handing the teacup to you, “Let’s go.”

Present Mic was gloriously absent from the faculty lounge, so there was no one to stop Aizawa from laying his stuff on his desk and swiping the jacket off the back of Mic’s chair. You set the teacup on the cat coaster and had just barely turned his way before he was sweeping the open jacket around your shoulders. Aizawa lifted the leather while you slipped your arms inside, and he zipped you up, stopping the zipper just above the curve of your boobs. You looked down, and he flicked the zipper up at you with a smirk.

“Are we married yet?”

His hand dropped from your zipper. “I saw what you did with the registration form. You’re not funny.”

“I happen to be hilarious,” you said, “I assume to want to adjust the mark?”

Nodding, Aizawa waited for you to tilt your head up and to the side. “I am not marrying you. You’re my student.” He grazed the usual spot behind your ear with his ring finger.

“And someday I won’t be.” You shivered as the frisson of his touch rolled through you. “You’d rather have even more paperwork, bureaucratical hoops, and possibly a ceremony at a later, inevitable date than one simple checkmark on a sheet? Not very logical, sensei.”

He frowned. “Stop that.”

A beat. “No otherwise rebuttal?” you asked, grinning, “You agree, then, that we’re going to end up together? That we’ll be—”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Funny,” you said, biting the inside of your cheek, eyeing Snipe in the far corner of the room, “Then, hey. Compromise. What if we just hang out with no romantic or sexual connotations whatsoever? I wanna get to know you better. You’re cool.”

Aizawa crossed his arms and followed your gaze to Snipe, who was bent over in his seat, cleaning one of his guns. “Think about it. Would you trust a teacher who spends time outside of school with a student?”

“How’s the training with Shinsou going?”

“You are not funny.”

“And everybody knows you’re training Shinsou, and they’re fine with it. You could say you’re training me,” you said, stepping closer to him, looking him in the eyes despise his hunkering down into his scarf, “Please say you’re training me. I want to spend time with you. Hell, actually train me. You could make me strong enough that you don’t have to worry about me, or any bullshit. C’mon, Aizawa. Please.”

“That,” he said, “I can easily deny you. Now, get back to the dorms. I’d like to—”

“What? Why,” you said with a whine, “How can you say that so quickly? You didn’t even think about it.”

“Yeah?” Aizawa turned to his desk to boot up the computer. “It’s because you’re already strong enough to take care of yourself. I don’t have to worry about you in a fight,” he said, just barely crinkling his eyes, so you figured that he’s smiling beneath his capture weapon, “Keeping you from being a fool—now, that’s something I’ll have to watch for.”

You groaned. Loudly. And for way too long. “Whatever. May I sit on your lap while you grade?”

“No,” said Aizawa, not missing a beat, “Go back to the dorm.”

“You want me to check on Eri?”

“Sure. That’d be—really nice. Let me know—”

“Yeah?” Grinning, you bounced on the balls of your feet. “How am I supposed to do that? Sounds like I might need a certain phone number.”

Aizawa collapsed in his cracked, leather lounge chair and spun it towards his cubicle desk. “No need. If you don’t shift to me in the next half hour, I’ll assume everything’s fine.”

“Oh, come on. I feel like I deserve some sort of treat for not mentioning your half-chub while it was in my face earlier.”

Aizawa rubbed at his temple, his eyes strained. “I’m busy grading and don’t have time to talk.”

He was staring into a blank screen.

“Fine, you big baby. I’ll concede to you this time,” you said, and before you could lose your nerve, you leant over to kiss the top of his head.

You’d bolted for the door before he could even turn around.

***

It was supposed to be a routine field exercise.

The hero course had been split into teams, each under the leadership of a faculty member, for a field assessment as twenty percent of your grade for your final semester. As an extension of the personal study starting with the student presentations from earlier, you were in the group focusing on stealth headed by Aizawa, along with Bakugou, Aoyama, and Todoroki (who swopped into your group last minute, since Midnight declared that he needed to get away from her group working on public relations). Bummed that no other girls were in the group, you resolved to make it work by being better than the boys. Not to mention that the three included would, hopefully, be dense enough to miss the subtler interactions between Aizawa and you that betrayed something else going on.

The four of you were to know as little as possible about the assignment as possible before going in, so you all spent the week leading up to it making contingency plans (you’d been told not to go out otherwise that week, so Midnight had to do her own work, for once, at Sakura Grove), with maps of the city and subway splayed out on the floor in the common room, along with bowls of trail mix Bakugou had thrown together, claiming that Aoyama’s stuff was bullshit (though you had enjoyed it very much when you ate it in secret that morning). All you’d been told was that you’d be making an escort in secret, without the target even knowing you were there.

No contingency plan could account for this.

A thunderstorm popped up on the radar out of nowhere, delaying the plane’s arrival, and the airport radio signal had been scrambled, fed into a different language, and back again. If you’d been allowed more details during preparation, you’d have more of the story, but all you could piece together now was excruciatingly obvious: the airport’s east wing exploded and caved before the plane even hit it, and now you were trapped underground under wet, crumbly tonnes of rubble, confined to a pocket of space barely tall enough to stand in, with the only structure keeping half of an airport bathroom’s mirrored wall from collapsing and crushing you being the charred, lower third of a column from the airport courtyard.

“You can’t blow our way out,” you hissed at Bakugou, who was climbing his way up the column to prod at the ceiling, “The column’s load-bearing.”

“I know that,” Bakugou said, contorting his upper body and neck as he gawped with his mouth open at the debris above him, “I’m just seein’ if there’s any light from the surface comin’ through, or if there’s anywhere rainwater’s drippin’ in.”

Hunching with his upper back grazing the rubble ceiling at the tallest point in the collapsed space, Aizawa frantically fussed with his work phone (which he genuinely had, after all) and his radio, unable to get a signal. “Be careful with your movements,” he said, mind barely in the conversation, “You could make the debris slip, or it could get weighed down with rain and further collapse. At worst, you want it to settle. Aoyama, are you getting anything?”

Tapping the AI filter on his sparkle shades away, Aoyama tore his gaze away from his handheld device’s screen. “Alas,” he said with a quivering frown. His ankle was being wrapped by Todoroki, who had been careful to refill the place in the concrete where Aoyama’s foot had been with ice, keeping the space intact.

“It’s fine; you’re doing well. Keep an eye on the signal. We want to know if we get one.” Aizawa handed his phone to you, giving you a short nod and the same job. “Todoroki, keep that cavity frozen. Keep an eye out for similar spot about to collapse and do the same.”

“I’m assuming this isn’t part of the assignment, since you’re taking charge,” you said under your breath to Aizawa, your back to the others as you stooped to stand yourself, arms crossed, “What relevant information can you share about the assignment that might get us out of here? Who were we escorting? If we know who they have for allies, then we can start to understand how the signals are scrambled and how to walk out of this situation.”

Aizawa stuck his tongue in his cheek. “None of it’s relevant. Our target has been isolated for well over four years and was being processed by professionals. She wouldn’t have had any opportunity to sabotage this procedure; St. Philomena’s has kept our target from having untracked outside communication.”

An uneasy stone dropped into the pit of your stomach. “St. Philomena’s,” you said slowly, biting your lip, “That’s a women’s penitentiary.”

Aizawa opened his mouth to answer but instead inhaled a mouthful of dust as the earth shook and clattered around you. Bakugou braced the column while you and Aizawa kept the bathroom wall steady, but the mirror shattered and fell with the wall, with Todoroki grabbing you out of the way of the sink from crushing your legs, icing the concrete shards into a makeshift support for the column, enough for Bakugou to twist out from underneath it. You gasped in deep breaths of powdery concrete yet dug into wet clods of silt and grime with the heels of your boots.

The ceiling had caved in by about two feet in height, and if Aoyama hadn’t skibbled away from his spot in the corner, he’d be buried under glass and tile. You experimentally knelt and stretched towards the ceiling—good for you, for having some room to move upwards, but Aizawa could only sit, now. Every heaving breath from your friends was too close for your liking, and the stone fell from your stomach right into your gut when you noticed the steady trickle of water between the rocks and down the column, cutting a clear, ivory path through the grey dust coating it. Bakugou scooted out of the ways of its dripping, letting it instead drain in a puddle next to him.

You and Bakugou nearly jumped out of your skins at the skrrrt of Aizawa’s radio, but nothing came through except static.

“We’re okay,” said Aizawa, once Aoyama started to show signs of hyperventilation, “The static is a good sign. Even if we can’t communicate specifics, they have a location on us. They know we’re down here, and if it seems like they’re taking too long, remember that civilians are the priority. We’ll be all right.”

Claustrophobia.

Not your favourite.

But Aoyama was clearly having a worse time handling it, so it’s better to set an example for him—see how calm you are? See how much you’re not being selfish, curling into Aizawa’s arms for him to pet your hair until it’s over, keeping him all to yourself, even though it’d be really easy to pretend like it’s the size of the cavern instead of your own selfish desires that’s making you touch him. See how mature you’re being, not even touching Aizawa, even though he’s right next to you. You’re being rational about the whole thing.

Todoroki stared off, his bright eyes narrowed and brow furrowed, and he parted his lips, wetting them slightly before speaking. “You should move closer to Aoyama,” he said to Bakugou, “Someone’s hurt.”

“The hell d’you mean?” When Todoroki gestured, Bakugou followed his gaze.

The water’s white path through the dust congealed and blushed deep vermillion as it coursed down the column, falling in thick, steady plops next to Bakugou, the upsplash ticking his exposed skin with red.

“Holy shit.” Bakugou scrambled away the best he could, kicking away from the water and practically into your lap, but he shot you a sort-of apologetic look and shuffled into more of Todoroki’s personal space. “Do you think—it’s not blood,” he said, smearing it on his arm, still running a dark red even spread thinly.

Aoyama cringed. “It’s not going to—it won’t fill up the—”

“No,” Bakugou said quickly, “It’s drainin’ through the cracks. We’re fine, Aoyama.” Bakugou made a point of dragging his hard glare from Todoroki to you, as if to say that keeping Aoyama calm was essential to getting out.

You checked Aizawa’s phone again for any signal, and, sighing, you stowed it to keep from scratching the screen.

“Nothing?”

Shaking your head at Aizawa, you resisted the heavy urge to rest your forehead on his shoulder. You know what? Maybe you could. He’s right there, and if you did it in this situation, it could be read as a simply act of comfort that you could have easily shared with anyone, perhaps. The two of you could stare romantically into the dripping, red goop, talk about your lives together, about teaching your psychotic friends, about sidekicking at Sakura Grove—

“Hey, don’t touch that,” you said, jolting in your seat, to Todoroki, who stopped, wide-eyed, in his odd stretch over Bakugou’s lap before he could prod with his outstretched finger the congealed mass accumulating in the puddle, “I think I know what that is.”

Beside you, Aizawa sucked in through his teeth. “Just once, I wish your deduction skills weren’t so good.”

Without averting your gaze, you moved to elbow him in the chest, hard, but he caught your arm and held it deathly still: he only touched you by your sleeve, though, so no soulmark would bleed through. Odds were that the mark was still furtively hidden behind your ear. Frowning, you tried to wrest your arm away from him, eyes on the falling droplet heavy enough to break the surface tension of the gathered, congealed mass, making the whole thing burst upwards in a dense, ruby smoke.

“Get down, as close to the ground as you can,” you said in a rush, cut off when Aizawa shoved your head to the ground with his hand on the back of your neck, his face inches from yours and only moving closer as he made room for the others to join you, cheek smushed against a patch of intact bathroom tile.

“It’s aerosolising,” said Aizawa, eyes darting over the ceiling, where the mist was rising through cracks in the rubble, “Follow where it’s escaping; we might be able to use—”

“No, you fucker,” you hissed (Aizawa squeezed the back of your neck), “Not all of it’s going to escape. It’s going to condense into liquid again on any surface that blocks it and then drop back on us.”

“Someone tell me what the hell is going on,” spat Bakugou, voice muffled from behind you but strangely reverberating back through the curved metal of Aoyama’s armour.

“We’re only going to be safe on the ground if it doesn’t condense, which is un-fucking-likely the way the thunderstorm’s moistened and lowered atmospheric pressure,” you said, the sound of water rinsing through crannies in the rocks growing from the far side of the cavern, “Aoyama, try to breath evenly but shallowly; you don’t wanna inhale this.”

The knuckles of Bakugou’s heavy glove struck the centre of your upper back. “Dumbass. Just tell him to hyperventilate, why don’t you?”

A drop of red water fell onto Todoroki’s pale cheek, sizzling with the impact as it was absorbed into his skin, a miniature puff of smoke emitting from the spot.

After a moment of heavy silence, Aizawa shifted his jaw, his eyes dark as they focused on you. “Academic protocols are over. Time to share what you know about Serendipity’s quirk.”

You dropped your jaw, even with the grit digging into your skin and jaw. “Who’s the insane person who assigned a bunch of students to escort fucking Serendipity—”

“I am,” said Aizawa, grip on your neck tightening and eyes flaring scarlet so briefly that you would’ve missed it if you hadn’t been inches away, “Considering your high level of academic success, I thought you capable enough to complete a more difficult mission than your—”

“Someone just fuckin’ say what her quirk does!” Bakugou’s hand curled into a fist with the fabric of your hero costume taut between its fingers, his fist lay, overheated, between your shoulder blades.

You jerked your shoulder away from him, but there wasn’t any room to go, so his hand stayed on your back, putting distance between the two of you, though his knees and hips still touched the back of yours. “Okay,” you said after settling, glaring directly into Aizawa’s eyes, “Serendipity is the third most dangerous villain in the western hemisphere, evidently being transferred today to the place Midnight and I work, because fucking no one else wants to handle her. C’mon, Aizawa, is that why I wasn’t allowed at work for the past week? So I wouldn’t know? Fucking—” You tried to give a half-hearted kick to Aizawa, but his thumb curled enough around your neck to locate your pulse point, which he pressed down on in warning. “But yeah, her quirk is so volatile and dangerous because—because yes, it’s a sex pollen quirk, but it’s fast, and you can’t solve it by touching yourself, like other sex quirks we’ve seen used for villainy; you have to orgasm at someone else’s hands. And no one can figure out why your internal organs shrivel and die within four hours—”

You inhaled sharply through your teeth as two droplets sizzled into your skin in quick succession, but the squeeze on your neck told you to continue. “Or the brain damage, or—because her quirk’s been studied, but no one can tell if it requires the feed of dopamine to the body, or not getting enough oxygenated blood cells, or capillary damage, or—” Bakugou thumped your back again. “—but no one is immune to it, and it’s fucking terrifying,” you finished, scrunching your eyes shut at the sensation of more droplets searing into your skin and into those around you, each person inhaling more with each individual puff of smoke from the viscous drops.

Tongue too big for your mouth, you trailed off, eyesight blurring as you zoned out for a just a bit, but you lurched back into reality when a hot ache stung the back of your neck and swept through your body. Aizawa retracted his hand faster than a viper striking, his eyes briefly holding the same dread yours did.

Shaken, you pushed yourself up to sit, and to your horror, an enormous gush of arousal pooled between your legs—you snapped your legs shut at the sight of the wet spot on your hero costume (and worse, the dribbling into the gravel), and Aizawa saw, holding a steady, neutral expression despite your visible panic.

“Fuck, baby—”

It hadn’t come from Aizawa but Bakugou, whose hips you’d inadvertently ground against when you sat up. His large hand came to grip your waist, fingers digging in and pulling your ass back against him, and his other hand clamped over his nose and mouth as he pushed himself up. “I’ve always known you smelled good, but this is somethin’ else—”

“Absolutely not.” Aizawa yoinked you away from Bakugou and put himself between the you and the rest, cramping you into the corner with pointed rocks digging into your back, and he held up his hand, Bakugou glaring a hole into his palm, vermillion streaking down his face. “You’re drugged. She’s drugged. Even if you both say you want it, it’s not a reflection of reality.”

Bakugou clicked his tongue, but Todoroki tilted to the side to keep his tense gaze on you.

“No,” said Aizawa, using the scant room and the end of his capture weapon to snap in Todoroki’s face, “You’d be ruining the professional relationship you have. You’d be violating her. There’s no way she’d actually want you.”

Bakugou scoffed over Todoroki’s quiet how do you know that, already palming himself through his costume. “I’d rather risk it all blasting out of here than suck Icy-Hot’s dick.” His other hand crackled with the beginnings of an explosion.

“You can’t,” you said with effort, mouth and throat coated with dust as heat rose to your skin, sweat breaking out at your hairline, “If you’re not a heteromorph, Serendipity’s quirk suppresses yours. It—it overwhelms your entire system—”

“You couldn’t mention that before I got hard?” Bakugou scowled, thumb playing with his belt buckle in consideration. “I would’ve blasted us out of here earlier.”

Aizawa shook his head. “It wouldn’t’ve worked—”

Todoroki made a sort of horting noise in the back of his throat, drawing everyone’s attention, before hacking a thick glob of red mucus right onto a spot of white bathroom tile, large trails of saliva trailing from his mouth.

“Holy shit,” you said softly, your eyebrows shooting up, and Aizawa held you back before you could even move.

“Mon Dieu,” said Aoyama, and he removed his sparkle shades to see it without a red filter.

Aizawa’s radio crackled static again, but nobody moved a muscle.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” said Aizawa, his hand still up but hardly deterring an increasingly twitchy Bakugou, who kept staring at you over Aizawa’s shoulder, “Aoyama, you’re probably going to hurt yourself and others if you stay in your armour. If you think you can handle being more vulnerable, take it off. Prop it up between the three of you and us.” The radio hissed again. “We’re going to camp out here until help arrives. Waiting is the heroic path to take sometimes,” he said in Bakugou’s direction, “If you find yourself succumbing to the quirk, that’s okay. It’s not shameful. No one is immune to it. If you can work it out among yourselves, that’s fine. No one here is going to share any details you don’t want out.” But here his voice darkened, and though you couldn’t see his face, you knew Aizawa was shooting a hard, unmerciful look towards them. “But you’re not going to hurt anyone here, and you’re especially not going to take advantage of her because she’s the only woman. To get her, you’ll have to go through me, and I do not intend to be kind.”

“Fucking hell,” said Bakugou, unbuckling his belt and sliding it off.

You were feeling a similar way, but Aizawa had you so backed into the corner that there wasn’t room to take anything off. So, instead of tearing off the increasingly abrasive and scratchy fabric of your hero uniform, you hugged your knees to your chest, thighs clenching, and bit down on your arm to keep from crying out. A choked sound still escaped you as a leather strap on your upper thigh rubbed closer to a more sensitive spot.

You couldn’t even lift a hand to fan your face—but with how heavy your limbs felt, even the promise of cool air couldn’t bring you to attempt it, and instead, you tried to find relief in the cold press of busted bathroom tile at the back of your neck—and you turned your head to feel it against your cheek, too.

Your hips rocked, knocking your legs against Aizawa’s back, and when he turned over his shoulder to spare you a glance, you jolted as far back as you could away from him. Not that you could go anyway but barely half an inch backwards. “Sorry,” you said quickly, shaking your head, “Didn’t mean to. Really. I—” Your heart flipped at his concerned face (himself looking a little red), and a sharp cramp curdled into your lower stomach. “Oh, fuck,” you said, a hand shooting to your stomach and doubling over—but your forehead grazed him before you could, and you let out a quiet yelp before jerking back into place, tears welling at the pain. “Sorry about that.”

Aizawa grimaced at your weak smile and turned back towards the others. You hadn’t even heard what they’re doing, since the blood pumping in your ears apparently deafened you to anything besides your own half-smothered sobs into your arm.

They were growing louder at their frustration, but they were, for the most part, not directing any of it at you. Hey, is—? Over Aoyama’s armour-wall, it looked like Bakugou might have gotten his cock out to start stroking it; maybe you could get a better look—

“Hey,” said Aizawa, blocking your view when he turned over his shoulder, “Stop all that squirming.” Were you? You hadn’t even noticed. “Remember what I’ve taught you. I know you can do better.”

“Oh, don’t say professor-y things like that,” you said with a whine while, yes, squirming in place, “It goes straight to my cunt.”

Aizawa closed his eyes for a moment, but he soon opened them and continued, unaffected. “Focus. I’m holding you to a higher calibre than your peers, because I know you can do it. What have you been taught about remaining calm in crisis? Ground yourself.”

“But I—”

“Do it.”

You huffed and tried to settle down into your body, counted, and exhaled slowly as you shut your eyes, waiting for your other sense to sharpen. Body scan—focusing on flowing energy, starting at your head, down to your toes, and back up again. But you had trouble on the return to the top of your head, since every cell in your body screamed to zoom in on the throbbing in your lower half—hard to say what’s tremoring more: you, or the walls of the cavern.

But there’s an infinitesimal sound that drowns every other maddening, oversensitive sensation: from the back of Aizawa’s throat comes a quiet, breathy whimper.

And—

“Oh, my fucking God,” you said, noticing all of the surreptitious ways Aizawa was trying to hide how affected he was: his hand clasped in a knuckle-whitening fist covering his lap, eyes watering with frustration, jaw tensed, neck and hand veins pulsating, sweating through his undershirt, and you?

Wetting your lips, you strained forward to brush his hair aside to kiss the back of his neck, and Aizawa fucking shuddered, the thing passing through his whole body. Though it hadn’t been your intention, your legs spread as you did so, parting on either side of him, and his hair flew into your face as he took in your legs surrounding him.

“Hey, no,” he said, and he pushed back on your legs, willing you to scrunch up to hug them to your chest again.

“I’m not doing anything—”

“You fucking are,” Aizawa hissed over his shoulder, “You’re being a goddamn brat.”

That shut you up immediately. Feeling slick drip out of you, you curled in on yourself, tucking your legs up to your chest like he wanted.

“That’s what I thought.” He turned back to keep guard.

His shoulders seemed wider than before.

Maybe it’s the heady, prickling excitement swarming in your chest at the unspoken threat of a punishment turned sexual, or maybe it’s the incoming brain damage, but you rounded up every nerve not currently on fire to keep pushing your luck. “Aizawa,” you said, soft enough for only him to hear over the squelching from the far side of the cavern, “If we were alone right now, what would you do to me?”

He didn’t respond.

An easy grin stretched across your face.

“Because I know there’s got to be stuff you wanna do to me, not with me, for how I behave sometimes. But I only want your attention,” you said, feeling a bit dizzy as heat flushed all over your feverish skin, “I know you can’t give it to me, because you wanna be all noble and stuff, but—”

Another cramp had you gasping and hacking up red-tinged spit. Aizawa started to turn his head, but you told him, totally deflated, “Don’t bother. I’m sorry—” You coughed up more red mucus. “I know I’m gross; I know you can’t look at me that way; I’m sorry I’ve been—I’m sorry.”

How can he be so calm? It’s not fucking fair that he can just sit there, cross-legged and sweating, with the scent of sex permeating the smoke-hazy air, and yes, he’s hard, but that’s just the stupid fucking quirk.

You’re dripping and clenching but still so, so empty, and the tears finally overflowed as Aizawa looked over his shoulder at you again. “I’m sorry,” you said again, eyes glazing over and breathing irregularly (for all the talk about Aoyama hyperventilating, you might be the one to actually do it). “I’ll—I’ll stop bothering you; I can handle this. I’ll, uh—” You cut yourself off at another cramp, seizing up at a stray spasm, loosing your hold on your legs and yanking at the roots of your hair. “Don’t worry about me; I’ll get—get Shinsou to make me come—sorry I tried to—I’m sorry; I should’ve left you alone—”

“Stop apologising.” Aizawa twisted to brush away your tears with his thumb, the skin that vibrant pink when he pulled away. “Christ, you’re burning up.” He hand returned to your face, this time against your forehead, and he frowned—yeah, he was frowning before you were pathetically raising yourself off the ground to nuzzle into his hand, to mouth voraciously at his palm, which flushed pink with every pass of your lips, and—

“Fuck,” said Aizawa, withdrawing his hand to press the heels of his palms into his eyes. You made a questioning noise, and to answer, he let his gaze drop to where the soaked patch between your legs dribbled into the rubble. He dragged his hands down the rest of his face. “You’re drenched,” he said, rasping.

A vehement moan from the other side of the space made both of you flinch, with Aizawa making a quick check to ensure their attention wasn’t on you.

You grabbed his capture weapon, pulling him close. “Please,” you said, panting, “Please, ‘Zawa, I’m not as capable as you think I am; I’m not good; I can’t take it. Please—”

His teeth dug into his lower lip as a grumbled scoff came from the back of this throat, and he shook his head. “God, not like this. It’s not supposed to be like this.”

Another loud moan and the sounds of skin on skin from the others brought another wince from the two of you, and Aizawa squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, he’d steeled himself, determined and set. “I can’t have you corrupting my protégé,” he said (it was a joke, right? Why isn’t he smiling?), “but I can’t offer you anything more.”

“Wha—?”

Aizawa was nudging your knees open, his eyebrows raised, and when he turned to face the others, he scooted backwards to sit between your spread legs, pinning you between the rock and his back, crowding you in, and oh, oh, my God, you should’ve been embarrassed at how wet the back of his jumpsuit got as he pushed himself back to sit right in front of your crotch, but the first, pulsing wave of relief as your clit rubbed against him washed everything else away.

Did this count? Did this count as coming at someone else’s hands? You found the problem less compelling the more you thrashed against him, grinding your clit against his back so hard that your vision blacked out at the edges, breathing in that terribly awful frustrating sexy combination of pine and sandalwood, desperately huffing it in in gasping breaths and curling your fingers into the back of his jumpsuit to bring him closer: you needed to kiss the back of his neck again, to see that pink mark on his skin.

But it’s as if he knew what you were going to do, because instead of letting you pull his hair aside, he reached back to grab your hand, and he (mercifully) allowed the grab to relax into a hold, letting you lace your fingers through his as he guided your arm around his waist (an evil part of you was disappointed that he didn’t place your hand over his cock, instead of resting your entwined hands on his leg [cute]).

And you were quiet: you didn’t moan, so the others wouldn’t know, unless they could somehow make out your laboured breathing behind the hand you cupped over your mouth. You’re grappling for pressure against your clit, but it’s your shiver when he stroked the back of your hand with his thumb that triggered your orgasm—pounding, rushing, and all at once, the throbbing of your clit taking you somewhere distant and piney, with you slowly coming back to reality by an abrupt pulsing, for some reason, in the roof of your mouth.

And the quirk had passed through you.

It counted.

But it kept you bound in a tired haze, sultry and lethargic and red, and lost in the lingering high of both the scarlet saliva you kept hacking up and that Aizawa let you grind against him until you came, you closed in on yourself and did your best to stay awake. Your brain tried to worry about Aizawa, but the quirk shushed you and forced you into a cloudy exhaustion.

You were out of it when Aizawa’s radio crackled to life, when the rescue unit exhumed your team, when the EMT on duty looked you over. You were still foggy when you were put in a passenger seat of a government vehicle, but the fog dissipated when Aizawa climbed in the driver’s seat and told you to call Midnight.

“I don’t know the number for Sakura Grove,” he said, turning on the windshield wipers, “and I need to warn Midnight that I’m asking her to help me with this quirk.”

Thunder rumbled through the sky and into your bones as he turned into downtown traffic, headlights blurring in the rain. Blankly, you wrestled his phone out of your pocket and began to dial her work number. “Okay, traitor.”

Aizawa’s expression darkened, his face glistening with sweat. “You know that I can’t—”

“So I can’t do the same for you?” you asked, putting his phone on speaker and letting it ring (cranking up the volume to hear it over the rain pelting the windows), “I can’t just, like, hold out my hand for you to grind against, or, God forbid, give you an actual fucking handjob—”

“Stop it,” he said, and he snatched his phone from you, switching off speaker, and you crossed your arms to fume, staring out into the miserably grey morning.

You smushed your forehead against the cool of the window, watching the raindrops chase each other down the glass, and you tried to focus on car horns blaring instead of the conversation regarding Aizawa’s sexual release that he and Midnight were currently having.

When he hung up, you sat up from your slouch against the window. “Is that all you need me for, then? You’ve got the number. You might as well drop me off at the next light.”

Aizawa swore under his breath. “Stop being such a—” He cut himself off, his leg not working the pedals bouncing profusely. “I still need you to enter Sakura Grove.”

That was true. You had three number-codes to punch in for clearance, and there was a thumbprint scan at the building in which you and Midnight worked. Still, you scoffed. “Just get Nemuri to let you in. You evidently don’t need me.”

The hand on the steering wheel tensed, veins pulsing. “First name basis?”

“Some professors like me.”

“Forget I said anything,” he grumbled, and when you turned to the window again, he mashed on the car radio, volume loud over the rain.

After a babble of a drum solo and what sounded like shouting in English, you were able to translate the song in your head by the time it hit the chorus:

“Got it bad, so bad, I’m hot for teacher.”

Aizawa stared, baffled, at the radio instead of the road as the guitar picked up, and he changed stations.

Again, in English, but with a hypnotically alt-relaxed beat: “Can’t tell my friends, ‘cause they will laugh; I love a member of the staff.”

You sneaked a glance at the driver’s seat, where Aizawa was fighting traffic, his erection, and his incredulity at what he was hearing.

“I fight my way to the front of class to get the best view of her—”

Aizawa changed stations before the singer could finish the couplet, and he sank into his seat at the safe sounds of synth and guitar, but you sat up straight, eyes wide and biting back a laugh, because you knew what the fuck was coming:

“Don’t stand—don’t stand so, don’t stand so close to me—”

Aizawa smashed the radio’s off button, seething. He ran his fingers back through his hair, and after a deep breath, he opened his mouth. “What’d you do,” he asked flatly.

“Me?” you said, pointing at yourself, doing your fucking best not to smile, “What makes you think I’ve done something?”

Aizawa was panting. Chest heaving. Sweat visibly dripping down his face. Free hand darting between a superfluous position on the wheel, resting on the car door, and bunching up his jumpsuit to hide his erection, which only drew attention to it. “You didn’t—you and Nemuri didn’t orchestrate all this, did you?” he asked, teeming with nervous energy, “It’s a little—it’s a little too perfect for you, to get to see me dishevelled and desperate, to nearly get me to cave into what you want.”

Several feelings flooded you at once: revulsion at the suggestion you made a criminal use her quirk on you, anger that he’d even consider it to be in your character when he’s known you for years (and more anger that he thought you would want to lose your virginity with three other guys in the room), a wretched, clawing desperation to prove him wrong and beg for forgiveness—and a creeping disgust and shame towards yourself, for having been so vulnerable in his presence when he didn’t want it or you.

Time to shut down. “C’mon, Aizawa. That’s not very logical in the grand scheme of things,” you said, scathingly using his favourite word, propping your chin on your fist, and leaning against the window again, “And if I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t let it end with my fucking soulmate going to someone else to make him come, especially when I was similarly helpless.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you—”

“Thanks for your vote of confidence,” you said bitterly, “but I wouldn’t do that. To you or to me. I don’t do things that would humiliate or hurt you.” You scooted closer towards the car window, away from him and his stupid pine aftershave. “I guess I’m a brat, yeah, but I’m not mean.”

To have something to do instead of talk to him, you exhumed the car manual from the glove compartment and started to read it, and you read that dull fucking piece of crap until you were forced to punch in your clearance codes for Sakura Grove.

As soon as he was inside the main building and out of sight, you slammed the manual and the glove compartment shut, and you screamed. No one would’ve heard you over the thunderstorm, anyway. Comforting that the weather was as angry as you.

You unbuckled and cosied up in your seat, glaring at the curtain of mist blowing rain horizontal outside. Lightning illuminated a worker rushing from one building to another, and she had to double back to get her ballet flat, hopping slightly to put it back on.

You don’t have another work shift until Monday, but you kind of wanted to clock in, anyway. It’d be satisfying to bitch about the whole thing with Ito. She’d tear into Aizawa. He deserves it.

Slunking down into your seat, you were struck with new terror: what if Aizawa was right? What if you did, inadvertently, plan this out, by inhaling Ito’s quirk dust a second time? Sex pollen was…sex pollen was a trope. A pretty fucking common one.

Oh, my God.

You clamped a hand over your mouth and tried to work out the logistics. Serendipity was already scheduled to arrive in Japan regardless of you inhaling the dust again, and—fuck fuck fuck. You didn’t like this.

You swallowed thickly, turning it all over in your head, and as the variables overlapped and blurred in your mind, you started to cry.

“Goddammit,” you said aloud, sitting up and dabbing at your face with your sleeve. You’ve already cried a lot today, and it’s not even noon. You’re taking a nap when you get back to campus.

You know who else likes naps?

You fucking sobbed harder, even though you were laughing a bit, too. You decided that you were too worn out to make any sound judgments. Go to sleep once you get back, and think about it when you wake up.

You sniffed and looked towards the door to the main building. God, he’s taking a long time. You’d figure that he’d edged himself to oblivion and back during the car ride, but no—

The next instant, you tensed up, frazzled, because a half-dressed Aizawa’s straddling you, hips jerking, driving into your own and biting into his fist as he came on your shirt, cum spurting all the way up to your boobs.

The groan he released once the spill of his cum slowed to a slight dribble nearly wrecked your ears and stopped your breath. You’re hastily, desperately drinking up details, eyes flicking over them rapidly in case they’re snatched away before you could notice: the weeping, pink tip of his cock, the only part of his dick peeking out of his jumpsuit’s lower half—the trail of dark hair leading up to it from his naval, framed by an infuriating v on his lithely muscled abdomen—all of his exposed, corded muscles of his chest, tendons visibly stretching and contracting in his forearms—and when he wiped that final drop of cum off his cock, it was with the thumb stained with soulmark pink.

Of course, for how much relaxation coursed through his body, it all fled him the second he finally opened his eyes.

You expected that he’d scramble to cover himself up and off of you, but once that initial panic faded, all he was left with was resignation. He yanked up the elastic of his boxer-briefs to hide his cock, and, sighing, he said, “Please. Please don’t say anything. I can’t handle it right now.”

You nodded. His eyes travelled over your face, his expression cracking. “You’re crying,” he said, voice breaking.

“Not because of you,” you said, wiping at your tears, “It’s something I did.”

He wiped away the tear stains on your other cheek. “Let’s find something to clean you up.”

While he twisted to fossick through the console for tissues, you swiped two fingers through the stuff on your shirt. So, this was a man’s cum. Weird. Thick. (You’ve seen some before; you’re not an idiot, but this was your first time, uh, experiencing it. Honestly, it reminded you a bit of the congealed quirk stuff earlier.) You rubbed it between your fingers.

“Oh, what are you doing—no, stop that,” said Aizawa softly, swatting your hand away from your cum-stained shirt. When you eyed the bit on your fingers, Aizawa sighed again. “Don’t taste it.”

He took your hand and wiped it clean, pink ink seeping across skin with every brief touch. He gave you a tissue from the pack he found for your tears, and he used the rest to wipe off your shirt.

“Doesn’t look like there’s anything else for you to wear,” he said, checking the backseat.

“It’s okay,” you said, balling up the tissues and putting them in the centre console, “We’re going straight back to campus. I’ll just shower and go to bed.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Aizawa, and he lifted himself from your lap and moved to cross to the driver’s seat.

You grabbed his arm to stop him. “You should, too. Don’t run yourself dry.”

Aizawa froze, considering, and then he nodded, slowly sinking back onto your lap.

He braced his hands on his thighs. “I’ve been cruel to you.”

Too exhausted to argue, you shrugged. “You have your reasons.”

“I shouldn’t be so cold to you, though. It’s been wearing away at my conscience,” he said, patting his pockets on his thighs and moving down to his calves. When he didn’t find what he was looking for, he said, “Give me your phone. You deserve my number, at least.”

You pulled yours out and opened a new contact before handing it over. “You’re sure you’re comfortable with that?”

“Yeah,” said Aizawa, tapping the screen, “So long as it doesn’t…lead to anything out of bounds. And…maybe you can stick around for a while next time you shift in your sleep.” He shot you a smirk as he returned your phone.

The contact name simply read Shouta. No surname or honorifics. Just Shouta.

Heat rose to your face, but it was much pleasanter than when it had earlier that day.

“Are you good to drive back to campus?”

Tilting your head, you pocketed your phone again. “Yeah, I’m up for it.”

“Good,” he said, climbing off of your lap and into the backseat, “I’m going the fuck to sleep.”

#aizawa shouta #aizawa x reader #aizawa shouta x reader smut #soulmate au #student/teacher themes #thisisthebestaizawaficIhaveeverread #dashielldeveron

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