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Tipping sideways into a parallel reality isn’t the craziest thing to happen to Shouto in his Yuuei career. It’s not even the craziest thing to happen in third year alone.
After kidnappings and an entire war and his brother coming back from the dead to wreak havoc on the general public, you think Shouto might be a little more prepared for universe hopping. Tragically enough, he didn’t even think it was a possibility before it happened. Hadn’t even considered it.
A rogue quirk and a bright flash of light and the same old song and dance as every other quirk accident, only this time he wakes up and isn’t where he should be.
Isn’t in a hospital or in the back of an ambulance, isn’t flat on the pavement with some combination of his friends hovering over him in obvious concern.
Instead of waking up with cat ears or the ability to hear thoughts through touch or something equally as novel, he comes to sprawled on the cold ground, head spinning, blood dripping from his forehead to stain the snow below him.
Snow? he thinks, a touch of hysteria coloring the word. It’s May.
Someone that looks frighteningly like Kirishima but very much isn’t peers down at him, pointed red horns brushing the bleak grey sky.
He says something, pretty mouth revealing sharp teeth that gleam in the half-light, but the ringing in Shouto’s ears blocks out the noise.
Something jabs him in the side, rocking his entire body. When he turns to look, his vague hunch that he’s concussed solidifies into abject certainty.
Shirtless-dragon-horns-pointy-teeth Kirishima is a lot to wake up to. Big-cape-tooth-necklaces-huge-boots-giant-sword Bakugou is what convinces him he’s possibly having visual hallucinations brought on by the concussion.
Furry Cape Bakugou uses his fuck off huge sword to poke at Shouto’s ribs again and Dragon Kirishima flutters his huge hands in a halfhearted attempt to get him to stop. Shouto is pretty sure they’re both still speaking, judging by the ringing in his ears slowly subsiding and the snippets of familiar voices filtering through in the gaps.
Dragon Kirishima hunches down and curls a giant hand around one of Shouto’s shoulders, tugging him upright. He goes easily, flopping to one side the second he’s in a sitting position and needing steadying with warm, rough hands.
He’s pretty sure said hands are tipped in claws but he has more important things to worry about right now. Like the snow and the mountain range in the distance and two of his closest friends very clearly being his friends but also very much not being them at all.
Bakugou-but-not poking him in the side with a sword is what woke him up apparently, a halfhearted attempt to make sure he wasn’t dead when they found him passed out in the snow.
The big sword was thankfully in its scabbard while doing the poking, beautiful and huge and terrifyingly easy for Bakugou to heft. A sword that he later finds out is an honor to carry here, in this place, because Bakugou is the chieftain of his people.
It takes two minutes of confused croaking from a likely concussed Shouto, three increasingly creative and descriptive threats from Bakugou-but-not, and a diplomatic, level-headed but slightly anxious explanation in two separate directions from Kirishima-but-not before they all understand what’s going on.
He takes a deep breath of frigid wintery air when the pieces finally click together—an alternate timeline, something fantasy-tinged—and forces himself off the ground and onto his feet.
They’re different, the Kirishima and Bakugou of here, of this timeline. But the same all at once. Mirror images in appearance alone, but complete divergence in all other areas.
It’s startling, at first. Unbelievable but blatant, unignorable.
He sits with the knowledge of being in a fully different timeline than his own. Breathes out, knowing it’s the truth, remembers the jolting bright light and a feeling of falling. Breathes in, and accepts it.
Shouto thinks he’s fairly well suited to be here, rolling with the punches as he does. There’s no other choice. He’ll adapt.
They bring him back with them, to the castle Midoriya occupies, because of course he does. A benevolent, democratic ruler to a combined people that look to both he and Bakugou for guidance.
Shouto expects nothing less.
Surrounded by his friends, by the people he loves and trusts and would give his life to and for in another timeline, they explain everything about this world to him.
A League different in name but similar in creed, a royal family that looks like his own, All Might a powerful and deeply beloved warlock in the prime of retirement and on the crest of a lifelong reputation of notoriety.
That makes him huff a laugh, which earns him a Midoriya-smile the likes of the sun and a Bakugou-scowl that hovers like a rain cloud beside it.
It’s fascinating, to hear about the parallels of his own world and how they exist here. Friends who dabble in alchemy, in invention, apothecaries and knights and mages and things Shouto knows only to populate the pages of fairy tales.
They skirt around talking about this world’s Shouto, shifty eyes and nervous, fidgeting fingers.
He’s dead, in this universe, come to find out. A prince used as a pawn and knocked off the board like one too.
But that’s fine, he supposes. With no skin off his nose and no fractaling timelines, he’s free to do as he wants here with essentially no repercussions.
There will be no convergence point, no rewriting of his own life. No meeting his parents and ruining his chances of being born or whatever always happens in time travel movies.
Kirishima and Bakugou had never met him, not when he was alive. They’d heard of him when they were teenagers. Everyone here has heard of him apparently. His death was prolific, a prince’s funeral.
Midoriya met him once, at a dance when they were preteens.
The face he makes as he remembers is a melancholy one, something nostalgic and achy. Tender.
But Shouto is here now, filling the space that a him-who-is-not-him left behind years ago. For better or for worse.
Midoriya adores him immediately, Shouto already years-warmed to his innate brightness, no hesitance in accepting friendship, no walls to be knocked down. He slips into a role he knows well and flourishes there.
The consistent mumbling illuminates the far reaching corners of this world faster than a lesson or lecture ever would.
He meets the people he already knows, gets quick insights into their lives here. It takes a few days, but he either stumbles across or is directly introduced to everyone. Passed around like a new toy, asked a thousand questions about his own timeline. At one point he shows Kaminari his cell phone which is almost dead and politely declines the offer of electricity magic to possibly charge it.
His quirk doesn’t work well here though, doesn’t translate into the magic that runs underground through ley lines and age old springs and in the soil itself, through the blood of the people that live in this place.
The thing that has lived inside of him for over a decade is unfamiliar, skittish. uncontrollable.
He explains quirks to Kirishima, Midoriya, and Bakugou three different times before the Uraraka-of-here says it’s like their magic but with a genealogical twist and everyone agrees.
They ask him to demonstrate, beg and plead and demand in that order actually, and he attempts to summon a chunk of ice into his palm but sends a glacier the likes of the first sports festival into the sky on the grounds of the castle and scares the living hell out of all of his friends-but-not gathered round. And himself.
Shouto can’t remember the last time he wasn’t able to control his quirk, can’t remember a time that it didn’t feel as easy as breathing.
He melts the glacier to the oohs and ahhs and the dismissive glare of Bakugou, but it’s not as easy as it should be. As it normally is.
He tells them this, explains that he’s not as well versed in this framework, and no one judges him, although Midoriya suggests maybe using his “genealogical magic” to a minimum.
It’s easy to agree, to find comfort in the fact that he feels safe, surrounded by these versions of his friends. This timeline like a loaned sweatshirt from a friend, perhaps a little ill fitting and not wholly yours, but comfortable and warm all the same.
Time passes differently here, slower days but faster weeks that rack up to almost a month before Shouto even blinks, Uraraka and Midoriya frantically researching as much as they can about timeline hopping and the magics that make it up.
He can only assume in his own home his friends are doing the same.
But Shouto knows these people, these faces. Their experiences may be different than the ones he knows, shifted to the left and viewed through a fantastical lense, but their cores are the same.
He falls for Kirishima and Bakugou here too.
Once upon a time he might have thought himself weak for these feelings, how encompassing they are, how big they feel. How far-reaching they spread out inside of him. But he’s long past considered and dismissed this narrative in the face of the two people he loves back at home, even if they don’t know it.
It’s just as easy to do here.
Loving them is easy in any universe.
Kirishima, so sweet and kind and bright, who can turn into a dragon. Who huffs a breath of warm air into Shouto’s face and flicks him onto his back with a gentle claw. Who takes him up into the air and soars, ducking and weaving and making excited dragon chittering noises as Shouto laughs and laughs and laughs, uncontrollable, fingertips touching the clouds.
Bakugou, steadfast and vivid and so damn challenging, who takes longer to warm up to him than expected, shifty and concerned for the safety of the people who have accepted Shouto with open arms. Who waits two weeks before he lets Shouto sit next to him in the frosty morning air, before he splits an orange-like-but-not fruit in half and gives the other to him.
Shouto’s not surprised when he pushes, unable to stop himself. When he leans in and chases the affection that Kirishima gives so freely, that he has to work for from Bakugou.
He knows this routine, this dance. While there’s more at stake here in terms of his whole person being transplanted interdimensionally, he feels freed from the interpersonal anxiety of home.
Shouto knows what he wants and it feels easier to get it here, more attainable.
They grow closer as the weeks pass, as the days crawl toward a second month in this fantasy world that’s a mirror image of his own.
There’s touching. So much touching. Casual and comfortable and thoughtless and then purposeful. Touching with eye contact that makes his quirk tingle at his fingertips, unwieldy.
Shouto wants so much that it hurts, feels too big. Too much.
He goes to Uraraka and obliquely inquires about it, halting and awkward but too curious about if they’re in love to not get to the bottom of it. He can’t tell if they’re together here and he’s not sure he wants to ask out outright, lest he embarrass himself farther.
She doesn’t tell him much, implies that they’re serious about each other but not in what way. As she finishes, she gives him a particular knowing look and starts to laugh so hard that Shouto flushes bright pink.
Next to her at her workbench, bearing witness to Shouto making an interpersonal fool of himself, Ashido makes a specifically devious face and offers him something from her potion stores.
The tiny gold cuffs on her horns glitter in the lamplight as she stretches onto her tip toes and snags something from a higher shelf.
“Show ‘em about this. They’ll know what it is. What it means.” She smiles, bright and kind and full of mirth. “You won’t have to confess, this’ll do.”
She gives him the tiny vial with a wink and a nudge and Shouto takes it, squinting down at the opalescent liquid. He stares after her as she slinks away without an explanation, the soles of her boots pitter pattering.
Uraraka huffs another laugh and mumbles something about aphrodisiacs and wedding rites and emotionally reticent fools.
Confused but intrigued, Shouto doesn’t waste any time heading to Bakugou’s rooms. He can only assume Kirishima is already there.
He’s proven right when the stately wooden door opens to reveal curling red horns and the brightest smile he’s ever seen. Bakugou’s sitting at his fancy wooden desk in the far corner of the room, booted feet kicked up on his desk while he reads a sheaf of curling yellow papers and fiddles with a gilded pocket knife.
“Shou,” Kirishima hums, pleased. He’s tugged into the room with an arm around his waist, Kirishima curling over him as he shuffles them over to Bakugou’s desk.
Keen red eyes watch them, track them in their three-legged approach. The papers are set on his desk but the knife remains, flickering in Bakugou’s deft fingers.
Shouto says nothing, the warmth of Kirishima curled around him matches the warmth of Bakugou’s eyes on them both.
He fishes the vial out of the pocket of his borrowed breeches, his hero jumpsuit quickly relegated to the washing and then folded and tucked away into the cupboard in his room. The liquid inside glints when he offers it to Bakugou for him to inspect.
Blond eyebrows go up, the look on Bakugou’s face one Shouto doesn’t recognize from either of his timelines.
“Mina give you this?” he asks, voice low. His boots thunk back on the ground and he slides around his desk, graceful as anything, to lean closer to the two of them.
“Mhm,” Shouto hums.
Kirishima drags his face across Shouto’s shoulder blade, curious from where he’s still tucked around him. “What is it?”
Bakugou snatches the bottle from Shouto’s fingers, lifting it higher so Kirishima can see it.
“Oh shit,” he breathes, humid warmth tickling the side of Shouto’s neck. Shouto can’t help but shift back, let Kirishima’s steadiness hold more of his weight.
“What does it do?“
Bakugou’s eyes go half lidded, a smirk curling his wicked mouth. “Wanna find out?”
He’d do anything, here with them. He doesn’t know much, but he knows that.
“Is it good?”
“It’s not bad,” Bakugou returns, honest to his core. “Won’t hurt. Won’t make you lose any of your mental faculties.”
Kirishima hums from behind him. “It’ll make you feel tingly. Warm.”
“Horny,” Bakugou adds, with a shrug that borders on purposefully casual. He flicks his eyes up and over the two of them. Kirishima practically purrs behind him. “Hornier.”
Shouto’s eyes go wide, his breath coming quick. They wait for his answer, a complete absence of pressure, of persuasion.
Just quiet curiosity and growing tension and the want that lives inside of Shouto’s chest, hot and bright like a golden core.
He nods, firm and sure, and lets Kirishima tip his head back with gentle claws around his throat and jaw as Bakugou tips a third of the vial into his mouth. Once he’s done, Bakugou tosses back the rest of the vial and shotguns half of it to Kirishima in a kiss so blisteringly hot and open mouthed that Shouto’s knees go weak as he watches.
That’s how he finds himself sandwiched between them, hot and needy and strung tighter than the bow he learned to shoot only a few days earlier.
Dragon scales against his sides make his eyes roll back. Two different mouths kiss him breathless as all three of them race to get undressed. There are hands everywhere, fingers plucking at the laces of his borrowed clothing, pressing fingertip bruises into his skin.
It’s messy and frantic and everything Shouto’s ever fucking wanted. More than anything he’s ever fantasized about, here or at home. It’s perfect.
Bakugou fingers him, thick fingers slick, because Kirishima’s claws extend even farther when he’s excited, hard to reign back in.
When faced with the unfortunate truth of being unable to help with his own hands, Kirishima bends down between his thighs and pushes his tongue between Bakugou’s fingers. It makes Shouto keen, head thrown back and heart in his throat.
It takes effort to get them both inside of him, takes time.
They’re gentle with him, soft and slow and a little bit mean.
Shouto’s the one who gets impatient, who starts whining and shifting, pinned between them like a butterfly in a shadowbox. Writhing, he begs in his ridiculous broken voice until Kirishima’s pupils go huge, so dark and reflective Shouto can see the light flickering in them.
When they finally slide home, hot and warm and hard and everything, just this side of too much, he sighs with bone deep satisfaction. His quirk skitters across his skin, flashing hot-cold-hot so fast that Bakugou makes a punched out noise behind him, his hands gripped tight to Shouto’s hip bones.
Full, he thinks, edging on delirious, trapped between them. It’s so good it makes his brain go quiet. They can move him wherever they want, he hopes they do. He’s sure they will.
They kiss over top of his head, the familiarity and ease lighting Shouto on fire and making him whimper.
He comes before anything really happens, before any rhythm gets established. Simply from the feel of them both inside him.
With a strangled keen and fingertips scrabbling against scale studded shoulders and another fisted in Bakugou’s hair behind him, he spills warmth all over Kirishima’s hands and claws.
He throws a room’s worth of frost above them when he comes, his quirk so damn different here. It floats down in sparkly plumes, settles on Kirishima’s shoulders and melts, delicate in his hair. Glitters on his horns and in his eyelashes.
Shouto imagines it dusting Bakugou’s hair, frosted and sparkling, and tilts his head back to confirm. When they make eye contact, he’s kissed breathless and hitched up higher only to be dropped back down on both of their cocks.
Even more frost glitters against the soft warm light from the lamps and candles when he groans, their rushed panting made visible with how cold Shouto’s making the room.
The chill of the frost makes Kirishima croon, an inhuman noise of pleasure, riddled with satisfaction. He licks the come from his claws and hums when Bakugou grips his hand and finishes the job.
Shouto stays hard, dazed between them, the warmth low in his belly stoked from the potion and made into a pyre at sight of the two of them.
They do use him, tugging and pulling him whichever way, kissing him and kissing each other, tongues messy and lips bitten.
He tries to press the noises they make into his mind, to memorize the feel of them against him, to make sure this lasts. That he can bring it back with him, when he goes. If he goes.
“It’s a courtship rite,” Kirishima mumbles against his mouth, breath coming quick. For a second Shouto’s got no idea what he’s talking about, but then he remembers the little sparkling vial, split three ways between them. “A ritual, a signifier of a bond.” He sounds ragged, restraint stretched thin.
He hopes they come soon, he wants to feel it. Experience it. Shouto wants all of it, wants everything they’ll give him.
This Kirishima and this Bakugou aren’t the same, aren’t the ones he knows and has grown up with and has saved and been saved by time and time again. But they’re close enough. They’re just as much, more and less in different ways.
This might be the only way he gets to have this and he’s going to take the chance he’s been given with both hands. He’s going to hold tight, so tightly, until he’s forced to let go.
“A bond?” he asks, orgasm-dazed and drunk on them still both inside of him.
“A bond,” Bakugou mumbles from behind him, mouth pressed to the slope of his neck. He starts up his movements with a renewed tenacity, grinding deep inside Shouto and against Kirishima and making them both groan. “Means you’re ours. Means we’re yours.”
He rubs the entirety of his face against the back of Shouto’s neck, the prickle of his stubble making Shouto squirm.
“Yes,” he moans, to the bond, to the words, to the touch. To all of it. He’s not sure what they hear, but he hopes it’s clear anyway. Yes to this.
They must hear something, unclear as Shouto is in the throes of his rapidly approaching second orgasm of the evening, because they double their efforts to make him and each other come undone.
Long after, in a tangled heap of exhausted limbs, Shouto stares up at the ceiling with a smile, making a mental note to thank both Ashido and Uraraka the next time he sees them.
Kirishima snuffles, snoring quietly where he’s wrapped around Bakugou like a cloak. Bakugou breathes silently in contrast, his brow furrowed and his hands touching as much of Shouto as he can reach.
The bite mark on his shoulder from when Kirishima came smarts as he smooths his fingers over it, throbbing in time with his heartbeat. There’s a matching one on his neck—too high up to be covered by the already high necks of the clothing he’s been lent, Bakugou made sure of that.
He isn’t sure how he’s going to look his own Bakugou and Kirishima in the eyes, after all this. How he’ll be able to pretend that he’s not replaying every single second of this in his mind when he’s back, next to them.
But that’s a problem for whenever they figure out how to get him back. If they do.
Curling closer to the chieftain and his dragon, Shouto decides he’ll deal with that when the time comes.