Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The building Todoroki Touya is ushered into by his police escort is modern, elegant and a bit plush. The doorman bows politely, then wordlessly indicates the way over to the lift. No doubt that “discretion” is part of his job description. As Touya steps into the lift, flanked by police officers, he catches sight of his reflection in the mirrored walls.

Because his burns from the Final War were still fresh when he got locked up, the Tartarus doctors with their fancy medical technology and Healing Quirks were able to slowly restore his skin to something akin to its state from before the war. A patchwork face of pale unblemished skin and old purple burn scars, held together by staples, stares back at him, but Touya supposes he is lucky that he even has some healthy skin left at all now after nearly burning himself to death.

(Again.)

The doctors weren’t able to restore his right arm, but with the cutting-edge neurocybernetic prosthesis Endeavour paid for, Touya is pretty much back to being a functional human being. Physically, at least.

Speaking of the old man, he is also the one sponsoring Touya’s fancy house-arrest-slash-bachelor-pad in the wealthiest neighbourhood in town. The aforementioned discretion of the people who live or work in these kinds of buildings was surely a deciding factor, but after nearly two years in the medical care unit in Tartarus and five years in a regular jail cell Touya really doesn’t give a flying fuck about why they’re giving him such a nice place to spend the rest of his 12-year-sentence in. All that matters is that it’s a real flat with real furniture and real rooms, and that he’ll have the place all to himself. The promise of privacy, peace and quiet is much, much needed (as attested by his therapist).

He’s still not interested in having any sort of actual relationship with his father, but if the old man wants to atone by buying Touya expensive things, well, Touya is still too much of a selfish bastard to say no to that.

The ride up to his flat is smooth, and whilst the assistant cops in the entourage unlock the door to the flat and carry Touya’s few belongings into the genkan, the chief of the operation gives him the house arrest lecture one more time.

“Your ankle bracelet will trigger an emergency alarm if you somehow try to take it off or move further than 10 metres away from this building. This is so that you can safely evacuate in case of a fire or gas leak. If you do step outside we will be notified regardless, however as long as you remain within the permitted radius there will be no alarm. You must keep your Quirk-cancelling wrist cuff on at all times, unless the hero assigned to keep an eye on you deems it an emergency situation and decides to remove it. If you try to remove it without authorisation it will also trigger an alarm. This is not just to protect other people from your Quirk but also for your own safety. Your medical team has urgently advised you, not to use your flames anymore after your - quite frankly - miraculous survival seven years ago. You will continue your weekly therapy sessions with Dr. Nakayama via video chat and your medical team will send someone over for monthly check-ups.”

Touya nods along solemnly as the police chief reiterates the rules and regulations they have already drilled into him about five times now.

“For any day-to-day matters please consult with the hero assigned as your guard. He’ll have his assistant take care of grocery runs and the like. Things you would normally have to leave the house for.”

At that Touya finally perks up a little. “And who is this glorified babysitter of mine?”

The police chief doesn’t twitch at his choice of words and just continues in the same matter-of-fact tone. “You’ll find out when he arrives. He moved into the flat across the hall last week and he’ll be here soon.”

Touya raises an incredulous eyebrow at the uniformed man. “Really? That’s all you’re giving me?”, he asks drily.

“Yes. He requested to be the one to introduce himself to you.”

It takes everything in Touya to refrain from rolling his eyes. His attitude towards heroes may have mellowed significantly over the past few years, but this mysterious hero kind of already sounds like an insufferable bastard. Figures that Touya of all people would get stuck with someone like that.

All thoughts of insufferable heroes however dissipate pretty quickly, when Touya is finally allowed to step into his new home. He toes off the boring white sneakers he’d been given at the prison and makes his way down the hall to peek into the different rooms. His police entourage politely waits in the genkan as he sets out to explore the flat.

The hallway leads into a spacious living room, illuminated by the winter sunlight streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows and balcony door. There’s a large midnight blue sofa tucked into a corner facing a sleek electronics set-up with a TV and sound system, and Touya can even make out the unmistakable colours of a Nintendo Switch.

He knows the flat’s interior was mainly put together by Fuyumi; he’s going to have to give her a call to thank her when he’s got his phone all set up later.

Across the room there’s a dining table able to seat eight people and the walls are artfully decorated with framed posters of bands and movies Touya liked when he was young. There’s a bookshelf housing just a handful of novels and practically begging to be filled with more. The room feels cozy, inviting and personal , and as the realisation hits Touya that he has never, in his nearly 31 years on this godforsaken planet, lived in a place this comfortable before, his eyes suddenly burn with phantom tears. He inconspicuously wipes under his staples to make sure his fucked-up tear ducts haven’t leaked any blood before he wanders back into the hallway to explore the rest of the flat.

The kitchen is modern but homey. The windowsill is decorated with flowerpots holding basil, parsley and chive plants, which Touya isn’t entirely confident he’ll be able to actually keep alive but he makes a silent resolution to try. Counters, cupboards and appliances line the walls of the room, while the centre houses a small kitchen island and four bar stools. Touya sneaks a glance into the fridge, but isn’t surprised to find it empty spare for a few bottles of water.

He sweeps his eyes across the room once more before he moves on to the next one.

A guest bedroom, indicated by the cheesy but strangely endearing pastel yellow cushion that has “Hello visitors!” written on it in English decorating the queen size bed.

A sleek and shiny bathroom with a ridiculous claw-footed tub lined up to face another set of floor-to-ceiling windows, offering an admittedly stunning view across the city. 

And finally, the master bedroom. The king size bed placed along the centre of the right wall looks so incredibly soft and cozy that Touya suddenly cannot wait to go to sleep later. There’s a comically large closet lining the opposite wall that could probably house three times as much as every piece of clothing he has ever owned in his life, and that includes all his clothes from his childhood. The floor-to-ceiling windows are framed by thick dark green blackout curtains and the light grey carpet under Touya’s socked feet feels pleasantly fluffy. 

He still can’t quite believe that after a childhood in a cold dark mansion, an adolescence and young adulthood mostly spent on the streets or in mould-infested ramshackle abandoned buildings, and the past nearly seven years in a high-security prison, he’ll get to live in a place like this now. Warm. Comfortable. Quiet. Safe .

He probably doesn’t deserve it, but he carefully locks that particular feeling away to be mulled and agonised over another time and makes his way back to the genkan, where the police officers are still standing around with his two small bags and quietly talking to each other.

“Todoroki-san!”, the police chief calls out when he sees Touya emerge from the bedroom. Touya grabs his luggage from the assistant officer and sets it down by the wall. “Your guard has just arrived and is on his way up. Once you two have become acquainted our job here will be done and we’ll be leaving you to your own devices.”

Well, now Touya is a little bit excited. The house tour has put him in such a good mood that even the idea of becoming acquainted with a goody-two-shoes hero bastard can’t dampen his spirits.

Maybe this guy will at least be fun to annoy.

(Because even seven years of jail and therapy can’t stop Touya from being a little shit.)

“Hello!”, a smooth (and weirdly familiar?) voice calls from outside the door and the police officers move aside to make space for the hero to step into the genkan. 

Blond hair. Golden eyes. Black markings. Red katana strapped on his back.

Touya’s heart lurches, then drops all the way to his arse when he registers the familiar face sunnily smiling up at him.

“Hawks?!”, he nearly screeches. “My babysitter is Hawks?!”

***

“Oh”, pro hero Shouto says a bit dumbly as he stands in the locker room of the agency, halfway out of his costume, and stares at his phone.

“Everything okay, shortcake?”, Katsuki asks from the other side of the bench, peeling off the skintight top half of his winter suit.

Shouto nods. “Yeah. My mum just texted me that my brother got released today.”

“Ah, right, you said it would be some time this week. You gonna go visit him later?”

“No, not yet. His therapist advised us to wait a few days before we visit him. Let him acclimatise to the new environment first.”, Shouto explains and sets his phone down on the bench, so he can continue changing out of his costume.

Katsuki hums in response, voice slightly muffled by the hoodie he’s tugging over his head. “Makes sense.”

“Who has to acclimatise to their new environment? Did someone get a pet?”, comes Izuku’s excited voice as he bursts through the door, face flushed from the cold outside and a few snowflakes melting in his hair.

Cute, Shouto thinks. 

“Touya was released from Tartarus today. He’s at his new flat now”, he says out loud, shimmying into his jeans.

“Oh!”, Izuku breathes and promptly flushes three shades darker.

Really cute.

“Gosh, sorry, that makes my question sound so tactless, I obviously didn’t mean-“

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it”, Shouto interrupts him gently before he can go off on a tangent of unnecessary self-castigation. 

Katsuki huffs from where he’s perched on the bench and lacing up his boots. “Seriously, nerd, stop fussing so much. Icyhot knows damn well you didn’t mean it like that.”

Izuku chuckles a bit nervously, but dutifully makes his way over to his own locker to change into his hero suit. “So, how was patrol? Anything important I need to know about?”

“Nah, not really. Some punk ass kid tried to steal sweets from a konbini on a dare from his little friends, but that hardly requires us heroes to step in. We only got involved because we just happened to be around the corner anyway.”

“I think the cold weather has made all the villains go into hibernation”, Shouto supplies helpfully. He can practically hear Katsuki roll his eyes now that Shouto has subjected him to this - clearly hilarious - joke for the second time within the past hour.

It’s worth it though because it draws a little giggle out of Izuku, and Shouto always gets a kick out of both riling Katsuki up and making Izuku laugh. 

“Are you guys heading home now?”, Izuku asks as he zips up his thermal undersuit. 

“Yeah, I am. What about you, Icyhot?”

“Me too. I still have some reports to finish, but I wanna curl up under a fluffy blanket with a hot chocolate while I do that. This weather calls for it”, Shouto explains as he shoulders his bag and makes his way over to the door.

That finally draws a genuine laugh out of Katsuki. “ You are literally the last fucking person who gets to complain about this cold ass weather, Halfie.”

Shouto offers him an innocent little smile. “What about the other Ice Quirk users in my family?”, he challenges, just because.

“Shut up”, Katsuki grouches (but Shouto is pretty sure he means it affectionately) and nudges Shouto out the door. “See you tonight, nerd.”

“Bye Kacchan, bye Shouto!”, Izuku calls cheerily.

“Be careful and stay safe!”, Shouto calls back as he lets Katsuki’s hand on his back steer him outside.

They head down to the underground garage of the agency building and Katsuki spends pretty much the entire drive back to their flat muttering about how his stupidly fancy car was not built for roads covered with disgusting slushy snow. Shouto just leans back in his seat and lets Katsuki’s voice wash over him as he watches the city outside pass them by.

Their flat is located in one of the nicer parts of town (being a successful pro-hero certainly does pay well), not too far away from the agency. The three of them - Shouto, Katsuki and Izuku - only moved in there a couple months ago, shortly after Izuku had gotten his suit and fully fledged pro-hero Deku had finally made his official debut. They had each lived on their own before that, but with the three of them finally starting their own agency together it just made sense to become flatmates and move closer to their shared workplace.

And, so far, Shouto is loving it.

It feels a bit like a tamer, more grown-up version of the UA dorms, especially because with the three of them being in the same place most of the time, their flat has kind of become Class A’s unofficial meeting spot whenever their schedules line up enough to organise a big get-together.

Some of their closer friends (mainly Kirishima and Kaminari) have also taken to showing up announced whenever they feel like it, which tends to earn them a grumbled “this isn’t a fucking Heights Alliance common room” from Katsuki, but no one genuinely seems to mind and Shouto is always happy when he gets the chance to spend more time with his friends.

Living completely on his own for a while after graduation had been a nice and educational experience, but after his lonely and isolated childhood, life in the UA dorms had been like a balm to his soul, something he hadn’t even known he’d needed that much, and he still finds that he generally feels a lot better when the option of pleasant human company is always just one bedroom door away.

Their flat is spacious - three bedrooms, two bathrooms and one large living room with an open kitchen area - and when they finally step inside after their drive home, Shouto quickly changes into sweatpants and then does exactly as he said he would: He concocts himself a large mug of hot chocolate with an obscene amount of almond-based cream on top and then curls up on the couch, wrapped in a fluffy blanket with his paperwork balanced on his lap.

When Katsuki emerges from his bedroom, also dressed in sweats, he snorts at the sight of Shouto in his little winter cocoon. “You’re ridiculous, Icyhot.”

“I made you coffee”, Shouto says, indicating the steaming mug of pitch-black liquid on the coffee table.

“Thanks”, Katsuki replies, plopping down on the sofa next to Shouto with a book in his hand. “You mind if I put on some quiet background music?”

Shouto shakes his head and takes a sip from his chocolate-y sugar bomb. “Go ahead.”

Katsuki starts tapping away on his phone and soon the warm guitar and husky vocals of an acoustic rock song start to gently seep into the room from their bluetooth speaker. He then squints warily at Shouto’s drink. “That shit looks disgustingly sweet.”

“It is”, Shouto confirms, smiling at him serenely.

They spend the rest of the afternoon like that - clutching their hot drinks, Shouto writing his reports and Katsuki reading his crime thriller, with soft rock music accompanying them as the winter sunlight from earlier that day finally fully makes way for another bout of heavy snowfall. When Shouto finishes his paperwork he burrows deeper into the couch and watches the flurry of snowflakes dance outside the window as his mind starts to drift.

He finds himself thinking about Touya - because how could he not?

Nearly seven years of family visits to Tartarus. Nearly seven years of clumsy attempts to reconnect and get to know each other in ways they never did as children. It certainly hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Especially the early years in the medical unit and the beginning of Touya’s psychotherapeutic journey were emotional roller coasters that threatened to throw different members of the Todoroki family completely off at various points in time, and the legally required presence of at least one of his parents during all of Shouto’s visits before he turned 18 certainly didn’t help matters either.

But they made progress.

Touya made progress in therapy and Shouto grew up and the two of them slowly managed to build a delicate sort of camaraderie.

Conversation now flows between them fairly easily and they probably know each other better now than they did when they were kids. Still, a certain emotional distance between them remains, like they’re both still keeping some of their guard up around each other. And Shouto, with his subpar social skills, who is even now still working hard to maintain his newly built-up emotional closeness with his non-criminal, non-incarcerated siblings, doesn’t really know what he needs to do to get them both past that.

He wonders if things will be different now that they won’t be under constant surveillance anymore. Maybe the natural setting will make them feel more comfortable with opening up to each other.

There’s still a promise to be fulfilled about making their paths cross and Shouto doesn’t intend to give up on that.

***

Touya’s brain is soup and it’s swirling and sloshing around dangerously in his skull as he stares at the formerly winged hero standing in front of him.

“Hello, Touya”, Hawks greets him cheerily. “I can call you Touya, right? I was told you don’t go by Dabi anymore.”

“Touya is fine”, Touya replies almost absent-mindedly as he continues to stare at Hawks and tries to get his bearings.

How the fuck is this his life?

“Awesome.” Hawks turns to address the police chief. “We’re good here, you and your folks can head out now. I think it’s better if Todoroki-san and I become acquainted without an audience of ten watching us. I’ll check in with you on the phone later.” He somehow manages to offer the uniforms a smile that is simultaneously polite and assertive, and with one last glance at Touya the police chief signals to his subordinates to follow him outside.

Hawks smoothly shuts the door behind them. “Sorry, I hope I didn’t jump the gun too much there, but you were looking kind of overwhelmed and I figured it might be better for us to have this conversation in private.” He looks vaguely apologetic.

Touya kind of hates that Hawks managed to read him that easily but he’s also grateful to be rid of the audience. “Why?”, is the first thing he manages to croak out. He awkwardly clears his throat. “I mean, why are you here?”

“Because I’ve been assigned to keep an eye on you.”

“Yes, but why? Why you?”, Touya asks incredulously, eyeing the hero up and down.

Hawks shrugs. “I mostly do independent freelance hero work nowadays. I cut ties with the Commission after the war and I’m not quite as powerful as I used to be. When an opportunity like this - longterm work contract, stable income, nice place to live with all expenses taken care of - comes along, I’m obviously not gonna say no.” For a moment his face is unreadable before his expression morphs into something old and familiar, a glint in his eyes and a cheeky smile curling around his lips. “Besides, aren’t you happy it’s me? You could’ve gotten stuck with some boring guy with a stick up his arse. This way your babysitter will at least be enjoyable company.”

If Touya’s heart hadn’t already plummeted to his arse earlier, it would definitely be heading there now. The stupid bird (ex-bird?) is still as brazen as ever and Touya is pretty sure he will need at least three therapy sessions to come to terms with the Pavlovian response his body apparently still has to the hero’s audaciousness.

Or, well, it would take him three therapy sessions.

If this was something he had actually ever opened up about in therapy before. Otherwise they surely wouldn’t have approved Hawks for this job.

It’s not that he’s been actively withholding this particular bit of information from his therapist. He just never thought the embarrassing animalistic urges the winged hero used to trigger in him, when he would hold a sharp red blade to his throat in those dark abandoned warehouses, would ever be relevant again.

Sue him.

“And you took this job, knowing it would be me you’d have to babysit?”, he asks, just to gain back some control over the situation.

Hawks shrugs again. “Out of all the criminals in Tartarus that I could’ve ended up babysitting, you certainly aren’t the worst one to end up with. And you know that.”

He’s right. Touya does know that. His criminal record might be bad, but it’s pretty mild compared to what a lot of those other prisoners have done to end up incarcerated in the high-security prison.

He supposes he’s also, like, mentally somewhat well-adjusted now. Or whatever.

About one year into his therapy sessions, one year of untangling the utter mess that had been knotting itself up tighter and tighter in his mind since his flames first started burning him, he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. And ever since he started receiving treatment specifically aimed at that particular issue, he’s been making a lot of progress.

So, Hawks is right. It could’ve been a lot worse.

Touya still doesn’t fully believe the hero’s reasoning for signing up for this job, but he knows he’s not going to get anything more out of the man for now, so he decides to leave it be.

“Alright, Birdie. Enlighten me. How’s this all gonna work?”, he asks, perhaps overdoing the exasperation in his voice a little bit.

Then he catches himself.

“Sorry, is that insensitive? With your…” He gestures vaguely at the lack of red-feathered wings on Hawks’ back.

Hawks chuckles. “Nah, it’s fine. I may not physically have the wings anymore, but I’m still me. I still go by ‘Hawks’ as well, don’t I?”

“How does that work, by the way? Being Quirkless and a hero?”, Touya can’t help but ask. He’s been curious about it for a while, especially since his little brother told him about Deku’s return to the job. 

“It’s getting much better these days. The discrimination and lack of trust people put in you is honestly much worse than the actual part of not having a Quirk on the job. I still have my katana and I have a bunch of really great support items from Hatsume Industries that allow me to still fight on the frontlines and keep up with the Quirk users. I’m obviously not at the level that I used to be at, but it’s definitely not bad. And society has really been making progress when it comes to accepting not just Quirklessness in general but also Quirkless heroes. Deku’s return to the scene last year really shifted things even further, and I think we’re slowly heading in the right direction. The general public really loves him, and I’m lucky to still have some remaining popularity from my heyday left as well.”

Touya nods and hums in understanding. He may not know what it’s like to suddenly become Quirkless, but he’s painfully familiar with the feeling of losing his ability to use his Quirk like he used to before, and he also knows what it’s like to lose a part of his body. He imagines it probably wasn’t easy for Hawks to adjust to life without his wings.

“That’s good to hear”, he offers honestly.

“Wow, you really have mellowed”, Hawks comments, amusement glinting in his eyes. “I had no idea you could be this nice.”

Touya rolls his eyes at the (totally lame) attempt to tease him. “What therapy does to a motherfucker”, he says drily. 

Hawks huffs a laugh. “Glad to hear that’s working so well for you. Now, let’s get down to business, shall we? May I?” He gestures at the zippers on his boots and Touya nods.

They migrate to the kitchen and settle on the bar stools. Touya grabs two bottles of water from the fridge and offers one to Hawks, who gratefully accepts it and promptly chugs down about half of it. Touya raises an eyebrow at him but decides not to comment and busies himself with taking small sips from his own water to cover for the fact that he suddenly doesn’t have a clue what he’s supposed to say or do next.

Luckily, Hawks takes the lead once he’s set down his half-empty bottle.

“Right. So. I know they probably already gave you the lecture about what you are and aren’t allowed to do multiple times, so let’s skip that and get to the part about my role in this.”

“Glorified babysitter”, Touya helpfully supplies, smirking a little around the rim of his bottle.

Hawks attempts to give him an unimpressed stare, but the twitch of his lips betrays him. 

“I’ve been assigned as an on-site first responder for all matters concerning your safety and well-being. That includes taking care of day-to-day matters as well as monitoring your condition and behaviour on house arrest. I’m also here to protect you from potential outside forces. We currently aren’t aware of any external threats to your safety, and all the staff and tenants of this building have signed NDAs to keep your presence here under wraps, but we know how quickly the tides can turn in our society, so as long as you’re under the care of our legal system we need to have a contingency plan to ensure nobody can get the jump on you.”

Touya would like to argue that he can defend himself and doesn’t need a bodyguard, but between his fragile health and Quirk-cancelling wrist cuff he knows damn well that right now he’s just a lanky guy with a prosthetic arm who hasn’t even engaged in any sort of hand-to-hand combat in seven years, so having a katana-wielding hero around probably isn’t the worst thing in the world, in case some lowlife thug he managed to piss off a lifetime ago decides to come find him and get their revenge.

“I will be checking in with you every morning around 10 to make sure you take your medication. I’m also required to spend two hours a day at your flat to monitor you. You get to choose when that happens every day and we don’t have to talk to each other during that time, if you don’t want to. Surveillance duties aside, your therapist believes it will be better for you if you aren’t left completely to your own devices all day long. Even if your company just consists of me silently sitting in the corner and reading a book.” Hawks lets out a little laugh at that.

Two hours. He’ll have to spend two hours in Hawks’ presence every day. Touya is starting to suspect that maybe prison wasn’t the real punishment for his crimes and it’s actually this .

“I’ll be across the hall in my flat the rest of the time. If I ever need to go somewhere for professional or personal reasons, there’s a small roster of heroes that have been briefed and approved for this and they’ll send someone in to substitute for me until I get back. Day-to-day errands will be taken care of by my assistant though. Groceries, drugstore visits and the like. You just let me know what you need and I’ll send my guy out to get it.”

“What if I ask for something I’m not allowed to have?”, Touya asks slyly, because he just can’t help himself, can he?

Hawks raises an eyebrow and smirks at him. “Then I’m afraid I’ll have to decline your request.” A brief pause. “Though I’m sure my assistant’s reaction if I told him to go buy a few grams of cocaine would almost be worth it. The guy is nice, reliable and very good at his job, but he is a bit of a goody-two-shoes.”

The hero’s eyes twinkle like he’s letting Touya in on some juicy secret and Touya kind of wants to bang his head against the marble counter his forearms are resting on.

He opts for rolling his eyes instead and rubs at his forehead. “So, how about those groceries?” It has started getting dark outside and Touya hasn’t eaten anything since his last (tragically bland) prison breakfast this morning. Now that the ruckus of the day has died down a little bit, his stomach is slowly starting to bemoan the lack of attention.

“Ah, yes”, Hawks says, producing a little notepad and a pen from his coat pocket and leaning in a little closer, so they can pore over the shopping list together.

Touya tries very hard not to think about the fact that the hero still wears the same cologne as he did all those years ago. 

“I have been told that your family stocked this place up with cleaning supplies and the like, but with food you’re gonna have to start from scratch. Do you have any dietary requirements or restrictions?”, Hawks asks, uncapping his pen.

“Uh”, Touya says eloquently. “I’m a bit lactose intolerant and I hate fish.”

“Gotcha.” Hawks nods and starts scribbling away on his notepad. “Anything specific you want? Or should we just start with the basics? Do you even know how to cook?”

Touya shoots him an indignant glare. “I’ll be 31 in like two weeks, what the hell do you think?” He doesn’t mention that his cooking skills - which absolutely do exist, thank you very much - are limited to a small handful of pretty basic dishes, but he’s sure he’ll be able to expand on those once he’s got his electronics and Internet access set up.

Hawks hums as he begins to list a variety of fruit, vegetables and spices on the notepad. “You’d be surprised how many people our age can’t even boil a pot of noodles.”

“Soba”, Touya blurts then. Hawks glances up at him curiously. “I like soba. Put that on the list.”

When they finally finish compiling a shopping list so long that Touya isn’t sure he’ll even be able to eat all of the food before it expires, they make their way back to the genkan.

“I’ll hand this to my assistant and head over to my flat to do my check-in call with the police now. I’ll drop your groceries off later”, Hawks announces as he slips his boots back on. “Will you be okay on your own for now? If you need anything you can always come knock on my door.”

Touya sighs. “I’ll be fine, Birdie. Go do your thing.”

The hero throws him a crooked smile and a two-fingered salute. “See ya!”

“Thanks”, Touya forces himself to call after him before the door shuts and Touya is finally, finally alone.

***

When Izuku returns from his afternoon shift, Katsuki has nearly finished cooking Fuyumi’s old mapo tofu recipe and Shouto has made himself useful by setting the table and stealing bits and pieces of the vegetables Katsuki had chopped for a side salad. Shouto didn’t get banned from the kitchen though, so he counts that as a win.

“Dinner is almost ready”, he informs Izuku when he shows up in the kitchen looking slightly dishevelled. 

“Oh, thank god, I’m absolutely famished”, Izuku sighs and plops down at the table. “You guys won’t believe the day I’ve had.”

“What happened?”, Shouto asks, taking the seat opposite him, as Katsuki carries the pot with the steaming food over to the table.

“There was a car crash downtown, near the train station. Nothing major, there was ice on the road and those two guys sort of slid into each other with their cars. Some property damage, but thankfully no one got hurt.” He shovels some food on his plate and then in his mouth. “Oh my god, Kacchan, this is delicious!”, he moans, slightly obscenely, and Shouto has to avert his gaze.

“Of course it is”, Katsuki scoffs, but Shouto can see the glow of genuine pride under all that attitude.

“Izuku is right, this is really good! Thank you for cooking”, Shouto tells him earnestly, and he knows he’s not just imagining the faint pink tint that appears on Katsuki’s cheeks.

“Shut up and eat your food, Halfie.” He then turns to Izuku. “You were saying, nerd?”

Izuku wolves down another mouthful before he continues his story. “Right, so, those guys got in an accident, but the situation seemed under control. It really was just a coincidence that I was even patrolling the area at the time, but anyway, suddenly I hear a commotion from around the corner, so I go to check what’s going on, and turns out one of the guys has a Quirk that lets him shoot tennis-ball-sized rocks from his hands and he’s bombarding the other guy, yelling about how he ruined his new car. The other guy is ducking behind one of the cars - a matte grey Porsche - using it as a shield and I’m thinking, well, maybe the rock guy is having financial problems or something and that’s why he’s getting so riled up. So I step in and help the police put the guy in Quirk-cancelling cuffs, and then , as they’re putting down names and statements, I find out that the rock guy is the CEO of some massive international coal-mining company and the Porsche is his car. Can you believe that?!” 

“Fucking rich people”, Katsuki mutters into his tofu.

Shouto tilts his head in thought. “Aren’t we technically ‘rich people’, too?

Katsuki sputters mid-bite. “Not like that, we’re not!”, he exclaims indignantly.

“No, no, Kacchan, I think Shouto has a point”, Izuku weighs in, mirroring Shouto’s head tilt. “I mean, look at how we live. Look at the monthly income we have at our disposal. Look at your car”, he adds pointedly. 

“So?! We’re not capitalist pigs destroying the environment and bombarding innocent civilians with literal fucking rocks!”, Katsuki exclaims exasperatedly.

“You’re right”, Shouto agrees mildly. “There are different layers and flavours to the whole ‘rich people’ thing. I just think we should keep in mind how privileged we are.”

Katsuki raises an eyebrow at him. “Big words coming from you, nepo-baby.”

Shouto just huffs a laugh. “That’s why I think it’s so important to check our own privilege. It’s something I was very unaware of growing up and I feel like I still have some catching up to do in that regard”, he explains earnestly.

Katsuki and Izuku exchange a quick glance Shouto couldn’t even begin to try to decipher, even if he wanted to, before Katsuki gently nudges Shouto’s shin with his foot under the table and Izuku offers him a warm smile.

This is a thing Izuku and Katsuki do sometimes. They seem to be able to have entire conversations by simply looking at each other, and unless it’s a really obvious situation Shouto almost never manages to make out what the two of them are actually saying to each other. He supposes it comes with the whole “childhood friends” territory and Shouto isn’t bothered by it per se, but he still sometimes wishes he was privy to whatever secret communication his two best friends have going on with each other.

They never make him feel bad about it or excluded, but if Shouto is being honest with himself there are quite a few personal things about the two of them that he wishes he was privy to. He also knows that that is likely never going to happen and he doesn’t want to risk ruining things between them.

What the three of them have is good. Their friendship is good. Their work is good. Their living situation is good. And despite his socioeconomic privileges Shouto’s childhood was sorely lacking good things, so when he actually gets them now that he’s older, he tends to do his damnest to hold on to them with gentle hands and protect them.

“Oi, you two nerds. Finish your food. I have early morning patrol tomorrow and I wanna go to bed”, Katsuki orders as he gathers up the empty pot and the dishes they’re not using anymore to rinse them in the sink and put them in the dishwasher. 

“You don’t have to wait for us, Kacchan”, Izuku tells him gently. “We’ll clean up. You can go to sleep if you’re tired.”

Katsuki squints at them like he’s trying to decide whether he can trust them with this monumental task before heaving out a sigh. “Fine. But you had better not forget to run the dishwasher over night.”

“Aye aye, captain.” Shouto offers him a stern salute, then softens his expression. “Good night, Katsuki.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it, Kacchan”, Izuku says with a placating smile. “We’ll take care of it. Sleep well!”

Katsuki heaves out another sigh, then turns around and stalks off to his bedroom with a mumbled “night”.

Shouto and Izuku quickly finish the rest of their dinner and dutifully load and turn on the dishwasher. 

“You wanna watch something?”, Izuku asks as he wipes down the kitchen counter and the dining table.

Shouto nods. “Sure. You got something in mind?” The two of them have the afternoon shift tomorrow, so they’re not in a hurry to go to bed.

“Well, I ran into Shinsou at the supermarket the other day - I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that - but he told me about this documentary he had recently watched about underground heroes and it sounded really interesting. I thought perhaps we could check that out?” The enthusiasm in his voice and face coaxes a fond little laugh out of Shouto.

“Sounds good”, he says. “I’m in.”

Even if he wasn’t genuinely interested, he probably still would’ve said yes. Just to make Izuku beam at him like he does now.

They head over to the living room and settle next to each other on the couch. Shouto fishes the remote out from behind a cushion and turns on the TV, while Izuku drapes the fluffy blanket Shouto had wrapped himself up in earlier that day over both their laps. They’re sitting close, but not close enough to touch, and yet Shouto can still feel the warmth radiating off of Izuku’s body underneath the blanket. Part of him wants to scoot closer, so that they’re actually touching, but he doesn’t feel quite brave enough for that, so he settles into the coziness and heat of the almost-touch and lets the documentary Izuku pulls up wash over him.

Outside it’s still snowing, big heavy clumps of white fluff falling down, and the evening city lights are glistening on the snow-covered streets and rooftops.

***

Finally on his own - truly on his own - for the first time in seven years, Touya feels like he can breathe just a little bit more easily again. He unpacks his few possessions he brought back from prison (two changes of clothes, two sets of sweatpants and sleep shirts, a few pairs of boxer briefs and socks and a small stack of books, that were gifted to him over the years by his siblings) and then sets out to explore the flat a little more thoroughly. As Hawks had said the kitchen and bathroom are both stocked with cleaning supplies, hygiene products and the like. Touya makes his way from one room to another, browsing every cupboard, closet and shelf he can find and running his fingers along the clean and smooth surfaces of every piece of furniture.

When his exploration leads him to the living room again, he inspects the selection of books his family has set up for him a little more closely. They’re mostly classics, brand new editions with ornate clothbound hardcovers, but there is also what appears to be a trilogy of old, worn-out paperbacks with cracks all over the spines, that have clearly been read and re-read many times over. When he pulls one of them out, he realises with a pang that it’s an old adventure series for children that he used to be obsessed with when he was about 10. He flips the book open and there, on the first page, is a little box that says “This book belongs to”. Underneath the box he finds his and all his siblings’ names scribbled in descending order by age. All of their names have been crossed out except for Shouto’s, right at the bottom.

The sight makes Touya’s heart clench painfully in his chest and his eyes sting with phantom tears again. This time he actually feels a little trickle of blood leak out between his staples. He carefully puts the book back on the shelf and pulls a tissue from the box on the coffee table to wipe his cheeks. 

Since the judge that signed off on the terms of his house arrest didn’t deem it a risk to grant him Internet access, Touya’s family also bought him a laptop and a smartphone. He plugs both of them in to charge, before his feet almost automatically carry him back to the shiny bathroom with its ridiculously opulent tub. The washing facilities in Tartarus were anything but pleasant, and life between run-down villain hideouts and the streets certainly didn’t offer anything beyond the bare necessities when it came to personal hygiene, and Touya’s tired patchwork body is suddenly aching to indulge in a warm bath.

He strips out of his clothes (and oh, wow, he’s really going to have to do some online shopping because these clothes he was given in prison are terribly bland and boring and so not his style) and carefully removes his prosthesis, while he lets the tub fill up with warm water that’s just so teetering on the edge of too warm. He also chucks in one of those colourful bath bombs he spotted during his shelf-browsing earlier, because why the hell not?

When the tub is full and the water has turned all purple and pink and bubbly, he finally sinks into the steaming warmth and actually lets out a drawn out groan. Submerged all the way up to his neck, he can actually feel every single knot in his muscles untie itself, and the tension slowly seeps out of his aching body.

For a moment he closes his eyes, just so that he can fully focus on the physical sensations. When he opens them again, he catches sight of the view through the large window he is facing. He knows the outside of the window panes is mirrored, so lack of privacy is not a concern, and the view across the city is truly stunning. Street lights, traffic lights and lit up buildings are twinkling against the backdrop of the velvety dark evening sky and the snow has picked up considerably again. Big fat clumps are raining down on the already impressively thick blanket of snow that is covering most of the city. For some reason, watching the swirling snowflakes outside makes Touya think of his Ice Quirk.

He spent all his time in the medical care unit on intravenous Quirk suppressants, until they replaced those with his Quirk-cancelling wrist cuff when they discharged and transferred him to his jail cell, so he hasn’t used any part of his Quirk in nearly seven years. He wonders if he would be able to use the ice again. Would it be safe for him to use? Would he be able to learn to control it like his little brother? Erect gigantic frozen structures in a matter of seconds? He kind of wants to try, although he’s not entirely convinced they’ll ever let him use his Quirk again, even after he has completed his sentence.

As he daydreams about sculpting intricate little figures with his ice, his ears suddenly pick up on a dull thud, followed by a few hissed curses from the hallway. The bird must be back with his groceries.

Feeling a little wistful about having to leave the relaxing warmth of his bubble bath again, Touya steps out of the tub, quickly dries himself off and one-handedly wraps a towel around his hips before he makes his way out of the bathroom to show the hero that he has not run off or hurt himself or whatever.

In the hallway he nearly physically bumps into Hawks, who is carrying three grocery bags, one of them precariously cradled in his arms as the torn plastic handles tragically dangle off the sides.

“Woah”, Hawks says as he attempts to balance the groceries in the aftermath of his near-collision with Touya.

“Woah”, he says again when he actually looks up at Touya, and then promptly whirls around so quickly he damn near tips over the bag again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to barge in on you like this. I knocked to give you your groceries and you didn’t answer, so I figured you were asleep and I let myself in to drop these off in the kitchen”, the hero babbles as he continues on his way into the kitchen, intently avoiding to glance at Touya again. “Why don’t you, uh, get dressed and then we can put these away together?”

Touya raises an eyebrow at the back of the bird’s blond head, but successfully manages to bite back the comment that is threatening to tumble out about how Hawks is behaving like a blushing virgin at the sight of Touya in a towel. Instead, he obediently marches over to the bedroom and pulls on a pair of grey sweatpants and a plain white t-shirt (simple but much less of a crime against fashion than the rest of his prison-issued clothes), then makes his way back to the kitchen where Hawks has set the bags down on the island and started unpacking them.

“Am I allowed to do online shopping? I desperately need new clothes. Whoever picks out those ‘civilian’ outfits they give us prisoners has the most atrocious taste in fashion I’ve ever been subjected to.”

The bird looks up from where he’s artfully stocking up the fruit bowl at the centre of the kitchen island and he gives Touya a brief once-over. “Yeah, just make sure you use the official card they issued for you and put my alias in the shipping address.” 

Oh, thank fuck.

Touya joins the hero at the counter and starts piling things in the fridge.

“You’re not wearing your prosthesis”, Hawks notes after a moment, and it’s neither a question nor a statement.

Touya briefly wriggles what’s left of his right arm. “No. I just bathed and I want to clean it first”, he explains as he gently probes the firmness of the vegetables he’s putting in the fridge. “Besides, sometimes it feels nice to just be. No technological or medical contraptions attached to me. Just a living human body, all flesh and blood.” He pauses. “Is that weird?”

The bird quickly shakes his head. “No, no, not weird at all.” He turns his back and starts filling a cupboard with spices. After a moment he continues to speak. “When I first lost my Quirk I considered getting prosthetic wings. Not in the sense of a support item that allows me to fly like I have now, but genuine, realistic-looking neurocybernetic wings. Like your prosthesis. It wasn’t so much about functionality, but more about just feeling them there on my back. Being able to move them. Using my feathers. But ultimately I decided that the ridiculous amount of money that would’ve gone into developing and building something like that could be used for much more important and impactful matters and there were much cheaper yet more functional ways to get me airborne again.”

The unprompted honesty in the hero’s admission takes Touya a bit by surprise, but he still hums thoughtfully in response.

“How was it for you? Losing your arm, I mean”, the bird asks then. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer that if it’s too personal. I don’t mean to pry”, he adds after a breath.

“Yes, you do”, Touya admonishes good-naturedly. “It’s fine, though. You’re in luck, Birdie. Honestly, losing my arm was a bit of a non-issue for me in the grand scheme of things. I was on a deeply insane suicide mission and it’s one hell of a miracle that I survived that whole ordeal at all, not to mention recovered as much as I have. Between having half of my skin healed, recovering from all my internal burn damage and getting a prosthesis that pretty much grants me full functionality, losing an arm was a rather small price to pay.” He shrugs. It took a lot of therapy sessions for him to be able to talk about it like this, but he’s being truthful.

“It makes sense that you felt differently about losing your wings though”, he then adds pointedly. “Their meaning and significance to your life were on a completely different level than my silly old arm. These things also happened to us for vastly different reasons. You can’t compare your experience to mine.”

By then Hawks has turned back around and is now openly gaping at him. “Man, therapy has really done absolute wonders for you.”

That rips a genuine laugh out of Touya. “Oh, shut up”, he huffs, and it’s…nice.

It’s fucking weird.

Because it’s Hawks.

But it’s nice.

Once they’ve finished putting away all the groceries, the bird hands Touya a scrap of paper with his phone number on it “for emergencies” and then bids him good night. Touya goes back to the bathroom to clean up after himself and wipe down his prosthesis, and then whips himself up a quick rice and vegetable stir-fry for dinner (after he spends a good ten minutes trying to figure out how the hell the settings on his uber-modern stove work). He settles on the couch with his food and his new phone and adds Hawks’ number to his contacts while he eats. He shoots the hero a quick Hello, this is the criminal you’re babysitting text, then starts to open and close random apps to reacquaint himself with the technology he hasn’t used in nearly seven years. He has never really used social media in the past as it was always too much of a risk (not that that used to stop certain other members of the League, be that to stalk their hero crushes on Instagram or to argue with online gamers who probably would’ve pissed themselves in fear, had they known who exactly they were arguing with), and apart from his family’s phone numbers, which they must’ve put in themselves before they left the phone at the flat for him, and now the hero’s his phone is expectedly barren.

On a whim he snaps a picture of his half-eaten stir-fry on the coffee table and downloads Instagram. He creates an account, cleverly names himself “lightarrow” and posts the picture. It’s not like he has anything to worry about now with social media as long as he remains anonymous. He types his siblings’ names into the search bar and sends Fuyumi and Natsuo’s private accounts follow requests while he’s able to follow Shouto’s public (verified) account right away. His posts seem to be rather sporadic, a few pictures with his friends and hero colleagues (Touya recognises most of them as Shouto’s classmates from UA), some professional shots of him dressed to the nines at publicity events and a few random pictures of things ranging from landscapes to colourful cocktails. He also has a current story up, which turns out to be a picture of a black cat sitting in what appears to be a small alley with intricate snowflakes caught in its fluffy fur. It’s pretty cute, Touya has to admit that.

He also considers following Hawks’ public account, but then decides against it. It’s probably best if the two of them maintain a certain professional distance to each other, and following each other on social media probably isn’t the right way to go about that.

Still, Touya isn’t above stalking the hero’s account a little bit. Most of the content he posts doesn’t seem to be much different from the stuff on Shouto’s account, although the bird’s page definitely features more professional shots, including a couple that seem to be modelling gigs or brand endorsements. Touya continues his innocent scrolling until he happens on a Calvin Klein modelling gig and Hawks’ chiselled chest, the V of his lower abdomen and his happy trail glare up at him from the phone screen, with one of Hawks’ thumbs seductively hooked into the waistband of his criminally tight grey boxer briefs and pulling them just a tiny bit lower. The hero is looking just slightly to the side of the camera and caught in the middle of what looks like an actual genuine laugh. Touya simultaneously feels his blood rush south and to his head, and the abrupt diversion of blood flow makes him feel slightly lightheaded.

He takes a deep breath, willing his blood to return to a more even distribution across his body again, and resolutely closes the app.

That’s enough social media for today.

He peels himself off the couch and quickly scrubs the dishes he used for dinner by hand because it’s not like he has much else to do anyway. Then he settles back in the living room and types out a quick group message to his siblings.

Hey, it’s me. Just wanted to let you know that I arrived at the flat today and I’m pretty much settled in now. Talk to you soon, Touya.

He adds a little lamp and arrow emoji after his name to clue them in about his Instagram account, then locks his phone and puts it down on the coffee table. 

A few blocks away a phone buzzes on another coffee table, but its owner is too distracted by the hero documentary he is watching and the presence of his green-haired friend by his side to notice.

Touya randomly picks one of the classic novels from his shelf and curls up with it against the couch cushions. He reads a few pages, but soon the exhaustion after the day he’s had washes over him and he closes the book and trudges over to the bedroom, where he barely manages to fall onto the plush pillows and pull the thick duvet over himself before he is out like a light.

Chapter Text

The first few mornings of his house arrest Touya wakes up feeling disoriented by his unfamiliar surroundings, but the peaceful tranquility and coziness he is wrapped up in quickly manage to soothe his little spikes of anxiety once he realises where he is. Hawks makes good on his promise and shows up every morning around 10 to watch Touya dutifully swallow his mood stabiliser pills. These morning visits always make Touya feel a little awkward and unsure of how to proceed from there, so he hastily offers the hero coffee and tells him he could just do his two hours of daily surveillance now.

Hawks always accepts the offer with a grateful smile, that is entirely too wide and earnest considering it’s just coffee, and goes to fetch a book from his own flat, before the two of them settle in Touya’s living room, the bird on a chair at the dining table and Touya on the sofa with his feet tucked up under him. 

It feels awfully stilted and Hawks does as he said he would, silently reading his book and sipping his coffee for the entire duration of his visit.

For a lack of better things to do Touya opens up his laptop and goes on an extensive online shopping spree to upgrade his tragic wardrobe. He buys black jeans, a couple of t-shirts and hoodies - both plain and with vaguely edgy prints on them - a faux-leather jacket and three pairs of chunky lace-up and metal-studded combat boots, even though he knows perfectly well that he won’t actually be going outside any time soon. 

Since they’re still brand new, he decides he’s just going to wear them around the flat when he feels like it.

They’re an integral part of the look, okay?

Once he feels like he’s sufficiently put together a few outfits, he moves on to browse the current bestseller list of a large online book shop. The little selection on his bookshelf is pretty nice, but with all the time he has to kill now he feels like he’s going to need a lot more than that. He picks out a high fantasy horror series that seems to have absolutely raging reviews, a couple volumes of a manga series about pirates he remembers watching the anime adaptation of with Fuyumi and Natsuo when they were kids and a British crime comedy, then sets his laptop aside, satisfied with his purchases for now. 

With nothing else for him to busy himself with, Touya pulls his phone out and opens Instagram. Fuyumi and Natsuo have accepted his follow requests and all of his siblings have liked his dinner post. He mindlessly scrolls through their profiles for a while and watches Fuyumi’s recent story upload (an artful shot of the morning sun rising over snow-covered rooftops), but with his shopping mission completed now he is becoming almost painfully aware of the hero still sitting across the room from him, quiet spare for the occasional rustling when he turns a page in his book.

Hawks’ presence is weirdly unnerving. Not in the way the presence of the other prisoners or wardens in Tartarus was, and also not like the League’s presence (well, mainly Shigaraki’s - the only member of the League Touya isn’t sure he would’ve been able to beat in fight if it had come down to it, even before he underwent his little genetic modifications) back when he lived in the hideouts with them.

No, with Hawks it’s different.

It feels like Touya should be talking to him. Like they shouldn’t just co-exist in polite silence. Like they’re old friends or something.

But that’s ridiculous, because they’re obviously not.

Touya thinks back to his “relationship” with the bird back in the day. They were a hero and a villain, enemies who used each other to gain benefits for the opposing sides they fought for, and the majority of their interactions consisted of untraceable calls from pay phones or burners and clandestine meetings in abandoned warehouses, with a healthy dose of homicidal threats sprinkled on top. 

Sure, there was also the hero’s ever so flirty demeanour and Touya’s unfortunate weakness for pretty boys, but neither of those were ever addressed or acted on, except for in Touya’s shameful wank fantasies. 

And then they fought each other at the Gunga mansion and Touya shamelessly used the personal information about the hero’s background he had managed to dig up as ammunition, because it seemed like an easy weakness to exploit. 

A little part of him feels like maybe he should apologise to Hawks, but a much larger (and much more cowardly) part has no idea how he would even go about doing that. And besides, the hero doesn’t appear to be holding a grudge against him. Otherwise he wouldn’t be here now, would he?

Still, Touya doesn’t quite believe that Hawks was being truthful, when he told him his perfectly credible little story about why he signed up for the babysitter job. His reasoning sounded entirely logical, but Touya has an inkling that there’s still more to it.

But then again, it’s not like Touya ever actually knew the person behind the hero persona of “Hawks”, and a lot has happened since they were tangled up in their little dance all those years ago. He resolves to just leave it be and let things play out for now. Perhaps the bird will open up on his own eventually.

On the second day the first batch of shipments from Touya’s shopping spree arrives, and Hawks brings the parcels over with him when he shows up for his morning check-in. Touya happily busies himself by putting on an outfit that finally actually feels like him, and he can see Hawks watching him from the corner of his eye with an amused smirk playing around his lips as Touya plops down on the couch in his black skinny jeans and leather jacket and starts to lace up his brand new combat boots, but the hero apparently seems determined to keep his promise of babysitting him in stoic silence, so Touya grabs the first instalment of his horror series and sinks back into the cushions.

On the third day he finally can’t stand the stifling quiet anymore.

“Oi, Birdie.”

“Hmm?”, Hawks looks up from his book. 

“Wanna play some Mario Kart? Or Smash Bros.? My siblings got me a Switch and I downloaded a couple of games last night.” That’s a safe and unassuming suggestion, right? They’re stuck with each other anyway, so they might as well do something to kill the time together.

The hero carefully bookmarks his page, then smiles up at him a little hesitantly. “Sure”, he says. “I’ve, uh, never played before though.”

“Never?!”, Touya exclaims, staring at him incredulously. “Birdie, I’ve spent the past seven years in prison and the ten years before that semi-homeless and on the run, and even I have played before. Though I’ll admit, the Switch is new territory for me as well”, he adds after a brief pause. “When I was a kid, my siblings and I played on a Nintendo 64, and when I was with the League of Idiots, Shigaraki Decay-threatened me into playing against him on the Wii a couple of times.”

Hawks barks out a laugh at that. “Sorry, that image is just so surreal to picture”, he explains as he makes his way over to the couch. 

“Oh, the stories I could tell you…”, Touya replies faux-wistfully, chucking one of the controllers at the bird as he turns on the TV and starts up the console. He settles on the seat cushion next to Hawks’, making sure to keep a respectful distance between them without it coming across like he’s trying not to catch any cooties from the hero.

“One time I managed to beat Shigaraki at Rainbow Road and he got so mad he started decaying the couch cushions in the hideout one by one, so I set up an emergency meeting with my hero contact person to get the hell out of there.” That was one of the few moments he actually feared for his life while he was living with the League.

Hawks flutters his stupid eyelashes at him with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Your hero contact person? Are you saying I saved you from being decayed by Shigaraki because you beat him at a video game?”

Touya rolls his eyes and waves at him dismissively. “Yeah, whatever. Don’t let it get to your head, Birdie. Now, are you ready to get crushed?”

“You wouldn’t dare to say that if I had the ability to decay these couch cushions.”

“Well, duh”, Touya scoffs as he starts the game.

Hawks, as it turns out, is frustratingly good at Mario Kart. Especially for someone who has apparently never played before.

Damn those fast hero reflexes.

But Touya wouldn’t be the guy who beat Shigaraki Tomura at Rainbow Road, and on the Wii no less, if he didn’t have a solid video game racing skillset of his own, and by the end of their babysitting session Touya has managed to rack up a win tally of 5-3 against the bird.

Hawks is still laughing when he shuts Touya’s front door behind himself and Touya feels oddly light and floaty for the rest of the day.

***

A few hours later, in another part of the city, Shouto unfortunately finds himself forced to revise his theory about villains and winter hibernation. Just as he’s nearing the end of a deceptively uneventful evening patrol shift at the edge of their agency’s jurisdiction, a sudden wave of warm water crashes over him and drenches him to the bone as he rounds a corner.

He’s instantly on high alert and blinks the wetness out of his eyes to assess his surroundings. 

There’s a man hovering in the middle of the street and laughing maniacally, gushing rivers of water pouring out from both of his hands and feet. About half of his body seems to consist of water, the transparent liquid of his arms and neck somehow keeping up a humanoid shape and steaming like a warm drink in the freezing winter air. 

Panicked civilians are screaming and shouting as they’re running away from the villain, but as far as Shouto can make out, thankfully no one seems to have gotten hurt so far.

“Everybody get out of here!”, he yells and gestures at the open road behind him, before he activates his earpiece. “Air-Con Hero: Shouto here. Requesting immediate assistance against a water-based Quirk.”

This guy really isn’t the best Quirk match-up for him. Normally he would just use his ice against Water Quirks, but with this guy’s body seemingly partially consisting of warm water, Shouto isn’t sure whether he would survive being frozen. The best he can do is freeze and steam the water the villain is pouring out to keep the street from flooding.

His earpiece crackles. “Shouto? Chargebolt here. I’m just reading your coordinates and I’m about two minutes away. Can you hold out that long?”

“Yes, that’s fine. Thank you”, Shouto affirms as he carefully approaches the water guy a little more closely and steams away some of the puddles he’s wading through.

“So, tell me about the villain”, Kaminari’s voice pops up in his ear again. 

“He seems to be male, probably mid-30s. He’s got warm water gushing out of his palms and the soles of his feet.”

“What, like he’s peeing from his hands and feet?”

Shouto snorts. “Something like that, but the streams are much larger and more powerful. His body also seems to partially consist of water. No idea how he manages to keep up his shape like that, but that’s why I can’t just go ahead and freeze him.”

“Ah, yeah, gotcha. That’s not the kind of body count you’d want to go up”, Kaminari laughs good-naturedly.

Shouto pointedly refrains from thinking too deeply about the fact that his kill body count is already significantly higher than his sexual body count. (Although that isn’t really surprising, given his overabundance of attraction towards people he probably really shouldn’t be attracted to and his complete lack of attraction towards everyone else).

“He also seems to be psychologically a bit unstable and unpredictable”, he continues his rundown of the situation. “When I arrived on the scene he poured his water over me and he was also attacking the civilians in the area, but now that everyone has cleared away he’s kind of just…hovering. I don’t know if he has recognised me and is worried about my ice or if he’s waiting for something or…” He trails off.

“You mean he pissed on you?”, Kaminari says in Shouto’s earpiece and from behind him. Shouto glances over his shoulder to find his friend grinning at him in the dark. He attempts throwing him an unimpressed look, but Kaminari just continues grinning, undeterred. “Well, let’s get this over with before anyone else gets pissed on. I suggest you go airborne and steam away or freeze the guy’s water output and I taser him. Just enough to knock him out.”

Now that Shouto can get behind. He nods at Kaminari, then uses his fire to propel himself into the air. The villain’s eyes follow his trajectory warily as Shouto flies closer. With a surprisingly quick movement he suddenly hurls a wave of water at Shouto, but Shouto is faster and freezes it before it can hit him, stopping just a few centimetres short of the guy’s hand. He swerves around behind the villain to freeze the output from his other hand and feet as well, then screams “Now!” and blasts himself high into the air to get out of the line of fire.

A crackle of electricity zaps through the air and the villain instantly goes down like a puppet with its strings cut off.

“Nice work”, Shouto praises as he touches down next to Kaminari.

“You too!”

“Eh, I really wasn’t all that useful against this one”, Shouto laughs as he uses his Quirk to dry his hair and costume.

“Weird Quirk, though”, Kaminari says, stepping closer to the knocked out villain and inspecting him curiously. “How the hell do his arms and neck just stay like that?”

Shouto shrugs. “I’ll ask Izuku about it.”

Kaminari giggles at that. “Oh, yeah, Midoriya is gonna love to hear about this.”

After the police have arrived on the scene and taken the villain into custody, Shouto and Kaminari give their statements and then virtually clock out. They’ve both already done overtime.

“God, I’m starving. You wanna go grab a burger?”, Kaminari suggests.

Shouto’s stomach grumbles affirmatively. “Absolutely.”

“Awesome.” Kaminari slings a friendly arm around Shouto’s shoulder and chatters away happily as they make their way to the nearest 24-hour fast food chain.

By the time they finally slide into a booth with a tray of greasy goodies between them, it’s past midnight and Shouto is eternally grateful that he doesn’t have to be at the agency until noon tomorrow for their weekly debrief meeting.

They both tuck into their burgers like it’s their first meal in days, and even Kaminari doesn’t seem to have it in him to make conversation until they move on to dipping their chips in their shared bowl of ketchup. 

“So, how are things going with you, man? I feel like we haven’t seen each other in ages”, the blonde pipes up around a mouthful of chips.

Shouto thinks that’s a bit of an exaggeration - the last time they saw each other must’ve been shortly before Christmas at Class A’s annual holiday party - but it is true that they haven’t seen each other in a while now, especially since Kaminari couldn’t take the evening off work for Uraraka’s birthday dinner.

“I’m good, things are going good”, Shouto says, scooping up an obscene amount of ketchup with a single chip and popping it in his mouth. “My brother got out of prison a few days ago”, he adds after swallowing.

Kaminari’s eyes widen a little at that. “Ohhh, house arrest, right? How’s that going? Have you visited him already?”

Shouto shakes his head. “Not yet, although I probably will soon. They told us to wait a few days and let him adjust to the new living situation first.”

“Hmm, I see. I’m happy for you that he’s doing so much better”, Kaminari tells him earnestly, and Shouto feels a wave of gratefulness wash over him. His friends have been incredibly understanding and accommodating regarding the Touya-situation and Shouto’s complex emotional and personal involvement in it over these past few years, especially considering that his brother is a convicted murderer who hurt or at least tried to hurt several members of their class before. He knows they all would’ve been well within their rights to shun him for it.

“Thank you for being so kind about this entire situation”, Shouto tells his friend candidly. “All of you guys, really. You didn’t have to do that, and I really appreciate it so much.”

Kaminari offers him a warm smile. “You know, I think - if anything - the whole situation with your brother was a major wake-up call for hero society. We’ve seen firsthand what our self-obsessed and hypocritical tendencies can lead to, and I believe as the new generation of heroes it is our job to do better than the ones that came before us. Rehabilitation of the victims of that older generation is a good place to start, and I think the rest of our class feels that way, too.”

Shouto won’t admit it out loud, but he actually gets a little choked up at that. He’s been struggling with an internal conflict between his personal feelings towards his brother Touya and the scale of the harm Dabi has caused for quite a few years now, and being reassured that his nuanced view of the situation is okay always lifts a little weight off his shoulders.

He stuffs a few more chips into his mouth to gather himself and then not-so-smoothly changes the topic.

“How are things between you and Shinsou?”

Kaminari’s eyes visibly light up at that. “Oh, man, it’s so great. Being in a relationship is so great. Being in a relationship with Shinsou is so great. It’s like…being best friends, but there’s also all these giddy little feelings and this sexual heat and you just feel so happy all the time!”

Kaminari and Shinsou’s relationship is a fairly recent development, although most of their friends had apparently been anticipating it for a pretty long time before that. Shouto, on the other hand, hadn’t noticed a damn thing until the two of them officially announced that they were together now.

That is how it usually goes for him. The people around him always seem to be so naturally aware of all these little shifts and nuances in the behaviour and relationships of other people, while Shouto typically needs to have these kinds of things explicitly spelt out for him. He doesn’t think he’s as socially clueless as he used to be as a teenager anymore, but when it comes to these finer intricacies of human social interactions he still struggles to identify and correctly interpret them half the time.

He also never would’ve known about Momo and Jirou’s relationship until they made it official, if Momo hadn’t shown up at his dorm room one night during their second year and tearfully confided in him about her feelings for Jirou, when a lot of their classmates (apparently) thought that Jirou and Kaminari were on the verge of taking their friendship to the next level. Shouto hadn’t really known how to react to that at the time, so in an attempt to show solidarity he told her that he was gay. It made her smile a little through her tears and give him a slightly awkward hug, before the two of them settled down on his futon to watch a silly comedy film to take Momo’s mind off of things.

“I’m really happy for you two”, Shouto tells Kaminari with a smile.

“Aw, thanks, man!”, Kaminari beams, before his face morphs into something a little more sly. “How’s your love life going?”

Shouto gulps down a chip that suddenly feels uncomfortably dry in his throat despite being absolutely drenched in ketchup. “Oh, you know. Non-existent”, he replies dismissively, so focused on keeping his face perfectly neutral, that he barely registers the way Kaminari’s eyebrows shoot up incredulously for a half-second, before his expression settles into something a little more inconspicuous again.

“Hey, you know, it’ll happen when it’s meant to happen”, Kaminari says sagely, and Shouto just nods, relieved that he seemingly dodged that particular bullet.

They finish their food with a bit of harmless chitchat (Kaminari tells him about a skateboarding anime he recently watched and Shouto promises to check it out) before bidding each other good night and heading their separate ways.

When Shouto arrives at work ten minutes before their meeting the next day, he is greeted by Izuku screeching “A villain peed on you last night?!”, and Shouto, who hasn’t been awake for very long yet, just silently fish-mouths at him, trying to process that question.

Katsuki, who is slouched in an office chair with his hands crossed over his chest, cackles heartily. “Let me guess, Pikachu was talking bullshit again.”

Shouto continues to gape. “I…what?”

“I ran into Shinsou at the bakery this morning”, Izuku explains, and Shouto’s brain is finally starting to put together coherent thoughts again.

“You run into Shinsou a lot”, he notes.

Izuku laughs. “Yeah, we do seem to frequent the same places to buy food.”

“So what’s the story about the piss villain, Halfie? Obviously can’t trust Sparky’s version of events.”

Shouto huffs a laugh, pulling up another office chair to make himself comfortable, and gives his friends the rundown of last night’s villain encounter.

Just as their meeting is about to start his phone buzzes in his pocket. He fishes it out and finds a message from Touya in their newly created Todoroki sibling group chat.

Wanna come over tomorrow?

Shouto feels his heart rate pick up a little as he types back Would 5 PM be alright? and he receives an almost instantaneous reply with Got nowhere else to be, followed by a See you tomorrow at 5 x.

He sends a See you x back and quickly pockets his phone again, a little buzz of anticipation tingling in his veins.

***

The fourth day is the first time Hawks declines Touya’s offer of coffee after his morning check-in.

“Sorry, I have to get dressed up and head out to a meeting soon. We’ll have to do our two hours some time later today. I’ll probably be back in the late afternoon and there will be one of the back-up guards I told you about stationed at my flat until I get back. You don’t have to talk to her, but if you need something she’s there and you can always knock”, the hero explains a bit breathlessly as he’s already making his way back to the front door. 

For a second Touya feels a strange discomfort zip through him at the sudden change in what had almost become a bit of a routine these past few days, but he quickly catches himself.

He rolls his eyes, perhaps a tad too dramatically. “I’ll be fine, Birdie, don’t worry about me. Enjoy your meeting.”

Hawks barks out a laugh. “I’m sure I won’t”, he says good-naturedly. “I don’t think the corporate world particularly likes me and that distaste is very much mutual.” He offers Touya a smile and a two-fingered salute and then heads out the door.

Touya finds himself standing in the hallway a bit stupidly for a moment, unsure of what to do with himself now.

God, how pathetic is he ?

One little change in his otherwise extremely same-y day-to-day schedule and he’s already thrown off balance?

He physically shakes himself out of it and heads back to the kitchen to clean away his dishes and leftovers from breakfast.

Afterwards he settles the living room and browses the current offers in the Nintendo online shop on his Switch. On a whim he purchases the most recent instalment in the Zelda series. When he was a kid, he really enjoyed playing the old version on the N64, so he might as well give this new version a shot.

While he waits for the game to finish downloading, he picks up his horror novel from the coffee table and starts reading the next chapter. Without the bird’s unnerving presence distracting him, Touya actually becomes so engrossed by the story that he forgets all about his Switch and only puts the book down over an hour later, when his phone buzzes to inform him that his battery is about to die.

He quickly plugs the device in and then stares at it for a few moments. Eventually he makes a decision and opens his group chat with his siblings. His late morning reading session has made him feel pleasantly normal and his gut is telling him that he has settled in enough now to be able to have visitors come over.

He shoots his siblings a quick message and feels oddly endeared when Shouto replies almost immediately. He can’t help but send back a sarcastic little comment, because that’s his job as an older brother, isn’t it? But he follows it up with a genuine response right away, because he has learned that the kid isn’t always that great at reading social cues, and Shouto has been through enough shit in his life already (including at Touya’s own hands). He doesn’t need to be left thinking Touya is being unnecessarily mean to him.

As he waits for Natsuo and Fuyumi’s replies Touya decides he might as well kill some time in his ridiculous bathtub. 

He takes his laptop to the bathroom with him and puts on a blues-y chill playlist while he runs the bath and throws in another one of those bath bombs, this one an edgy-looking mix of blood red and black. He’ll definitely have to order more of these online - the way the colours swirl together in the steaming water looks incredibly satisfying. He strips out of his clothes, carefully peeling off his skinny jeans so they don’t get caught in the staples on his legs, and removes his prosthesis, before sinking into his warm emo bathwater with a sigh.

The view through the large windows feels a bit strange in broad daylight, but the sun is glistening prettily on the snow-covered rooftops of the smaller buildings, so it’s still nice.

Between the quiet background music, the winter sun outside and the warmth seeping into Touya’s body, his mind goes pleasantly hazy. He slides down a little deeper into the tub and absently starts massaging along his neck and shoulders with his left hand, down to his collarbones and over his chest. His fingers graze his right nipple and it sends a pleasant jolt through his body. He traces the hardening little nub again and starts rubbing and tweaking it between his fingers a little. He then trails his fingers over to his other nipple, along the strip of healthy skin at the centre of his chest where his nerve-endings are still sensitive and capable of feeling his feather-light touch, and rubs it into hardness as well. His leisurely ministrations of his chest slowly begin to send a stream of blood southwards, but Touya isn’t in a rush.

Between life as a villain and life in prison Touya has never really had much time or opportunities for genuine self-pleasure in his life before, at best fitting in a quick wank here and there in his locked room in a hideout or his prison bathroom to relieve some pressure, and his experiences while living on the streets have made him a bit wary of engaging in sexual encounters with other people, so now that he actually has the time, privacy and safe space to explore himself, he wants to make full use of that. 

He runs his fingers over his stomach, his touch feeling more like a dull pressure somewhere underneath his scars, and traces the healthy skin around his waistline, down his happy trail to his pubes, then swerving around his crotch and over his groin down to his legs. His hardening cock twitches a little when he spreads his knees as wide as the tub allows it and trails his fingers along the soft, unblemished skin of his inner thighs. His hand brushes his balls when he runs his fingers all the way up and the sensation draws a soft groan from him. He keeps skirting his hand around his crotch a bit longer, rubbing his fingertips over the edges of his pubes, before he finally wraps his hand firmly around the base of his now fully hard dick.

The staples in his palm have always felt a bit rough while jerking off, so he experiments a little with hollowing his palm out just enough to take a bit of the pressure off his seams, before he starts pumping his fist. He swipes his thumb over the head, the precum he’s leaking dissipating into the bathwater, and closes his eyes, fully letting the physical sensations take over.

He kind of misses the frenum barbell he used to have before they removed all of his piercings in the intensive care unit. It always made him feel sexy in a secret sort of way that was really mostly just for himself, and he liked the added sensation while jerking off. He carefully presses one of the staples at the base of his thumb against his frenum in an attempt to mimic the feeling of the piercing, but it doesn’t have the same effect. 

Nonetheless, he can feel the hot coil of pleasure at his core wind itself tighter and tighter as he continues jerking his hand and picks up the pace. It has been quite a while since the last time he came, and with the newly found privacy and safety of his own flat he knows he’s not going to last very long. He allows himself to throw his head back and moan as loudly as he wants to when the tight pressure in his pelvis finally snaps and white-hot pleasure starts radiating out from his core and flooding the rest of his body as he spurts hotly into his emo bathwater.

It’s a bit filthy, but he can’t for the life of him bring himself to care as he pumps himself through the last shudders of his orgasm and tries to catch his breath. When he opens his eyes again there are stars dancing in his vision, and for a moment he just continues sitting in his filthy bathwater as the happy little post-orgasm chemicals flood his brain, before he stands up and lets the tub drain while he gets into the shower to wash his hair and body. 

Afterwards he quickly cleans his prosthesis and makes his way over to his bedroom to get dressed, leaving a trail of water droplets from his wet hair on the floor behind him. He pulls on his old grey sweatpants and one of his new hoodies - a ridiculously soft turquoise-ish blue one similar to his eye colour (because yes, he is not opposed to wearing colours other than black, white and grey - the colours just need to be the right ones ) - and feels sufficiently cozied up now as he goes to fetch his laptop from the bathroom and then curls up on the couch near the outlet his phone is still plugged into. 

He checks his messages and finds apologies from both Natsuo and Fuyumi, saying they’re both too swamped with work to make the drive over from where they live tomorrow, but they promise to stop by soon. 

That’s fine by Touya. He thinks perhaps it’s even better to start out small with one visitor at a time, before the whole lot of them gathers at once and things likely (inevitably) descend into chaos. He quickly texts them back and then picks up his book again to read another chapter or two, but he soon finds that his post-bath/post-orgasm/post-shower brain is feeling a bit too hazy for him to really focus on reading, so he sets the book down again and starts scrolling through Instagram instead. 

Shouto has a new story up; it looks like he went on a late night burger run with one of his hero friends after a job. Since Touya hasn’t really used the app much yet, his feed is still pretty dry and most of his recommended posts are very generic and uninteresting to him. One thing the algorithm has seemingly remembered, though, is his deep-dive stalking of Hawks’ profile (because of course that’s the first trace he had to go and leave of himself on the Internet after all those years of being away), so his recommended feed is peppered with the hero’s posts. Luckily none of them are underwear modelling gigs, but Touya still finds his thumb hovering over his username repeatedly, tempted to open his profile again. 

Suddenly his phone starts buzzing in his hand and Touya damn-near has a heart attack when the caller ID shows it’s none other than the object of his social media stalking tendencies. He swallows thickly before he answers the call.

“Hey, you good?”, Hawks greets him cheerily. “Listen, I’m heading back home now and I’m gonna grab a pizza on the way. Do you want one, too?”

The casual offer makes Touya feel oddly tingly. With the way the bird has been treating him and talking to him these past few days, one could almost forget that Touya is a convicted criminal, still in the middle of his sentence, and Hawks is the pro hero assigned to guard him. The hero has this way of making it feel like the two of them are just two regular 30-year-old guys who live next door to each other.

“Sure, thanks”, Touya accepts the offer, trying to sound just as casual as the hero on the phone. “Spinach and garlic, please. Tell them to take it easy with the cheese though.”

The bird laughs. “My go-to place also offers vegan substitutes. You want that instead?”

Touya raises an amused eyebrow even though Hawks can’t see him. “Sounds fancy, Birdie. But yeah, why not. Might as well.”

“Gotcha. I’ll see you in about an hour”, the hero promises and hangs up. 

Touya stares at his phone a bit dazedly, trying to recover from the whirlwind his interactions with Hawks always kind of feel like.

He wouldn’t consider himself a particularly lethargic person - if anything rather the opposite. When he was a child he was never really able to sit still for long, always getting scolded for bouncing his leg too hard or picking at his nails, and he still feels that restlessness, that need to always be doing something, in himself now as an adult. Life on the streets and with the League kinda pushed that into the backseat for a while, but it slowly started to come out again when he was in prison, especially after he had gained back some emotional and mental stability through his therapy sessions and medication. He’s pretty sure his therapist is aware of it and that’s why his siblings were even allowed to give him books to keep him busy in the first place, despite the strict security regulations in Tartarus.

So Touya thinks of himself as a rather energetic person, always a bit on the go and seeking stimulation, but Hawks seems to be on a whole new level in that regard and it thoroughly throws Touya off balance sometimes. He often felt this way back in the day, too, when they used to meet in gloomy forgotten places, but it would always get all tangled up with the dangerous thrill of consorting with the enemy and Touya’s unfortunate horniness for the hero.

Now it’s just Hawks, breezing around Touya almost too fast to catch, and it’s confusing as hell.

Touya shakes himself out of his stupor and decides to use the time until his babysitter arrives to hunt for emo bath bombs on the Internet. 

When the doorbell finally rings (Hawks hasn’t used his spare key to let himself into the flat since that incident with the groceries in the hallway) and Touya goes to open it, his poor eyeballs nearly bulge out of his skull. Hawks did say he would have to get dressed up for his meeting and Touya did expect him to still be wearing his work outfit, but he did not expect said work outfit to look like this .

Hawks is wearing a dark green velvet suit, slim-fitting and meticulously tailored to his body, with a black shirt and tie underneath. The cufflinks and buttons on his jacket are sparkling gold and match the gold studs in his ears and the clasps on his shiny black leather shoes. An outfit like this would probably look ridiculous on most people, not to mention completely over-the-top for a simple corporate meeting, but the bird somehow looks like he just stepped out of a luxurious perfume commercial. The guy who spritzes on a few puffs of the product and then has a gaggle of beautiful people gravitate towards him, all wanting to get a taste.

He looks like a wet dream, and Touya once again wonders if the real punishment for all his crimes is actually Hawks.

“Delivery service”, the hero chirps dorkily and holds up two pizza cartons. It clashes almost endearingly with the rest of his expensive sex god get-up.

Touya surreptitiously pinches his own thigh from where his hand is buried in the pocket of his sweatpants. 

Get a grip.

“Thanks”, he says a little croakily, hoping the bird won’t notice, and leads the way to the kitchen once Hawks has slipped out of his fancy shoes. 

They quickly slice their pizzas, then migrate over to the living room and settle on the couch to eat. 

“You got any music preferences, Birdie?”, Touya asks as he connects his phone to his bluetooth speaker.

“Oh”, Hawks mumbles, swallowing around a mouthful of his extra cheesy pepperoni pizza. “I can listen to pretty much anything. You pick something”, he says placidly.

Touya scoffs a little. “Hope you like metalcore then”, he warns as he pulls up an album he used to listen to a lot about a decade ago, after he’d stolen the MP3-player of some poor sod who had looked like he might’ve had a similar taste in music as Touya. Hawks’ presence still has him feeling a bit off-kilter right now, so he needs something loud and familiar to keep him tethered to the ground.

“Edgy”, the hero comments, seemingly amused and raising an eyebrow at Touya when the vocals of the first song kick in and the singer promptly starts growling about crucifixion. 

Touya fixes him with a challenging glare. “Got a problem with that, Birdie?”

Hawks just laughs, all golden warmth and pearly white teeth. “Not at all”, he assures. “It’s just very, uh, you.”

Touya thinks that perhaps he should be offended by that, but he knows damn well how he dresses, so instead of arguing he just inhales another slice of his pizza. The vegan cheese substitute is really damn good - tastes pretty much exactly like the real thing and the texture is a very close match, too. The bird’s go-to pizza place really must be a fancy one. 

“You know, I had never really actively listened to music until I was about 20”, Hawks muses.

“Really?”, Touya asks curiously, thinking back to his own 20-year-old, MP3-player-stealing self. 

“Yeah. I mean you, uh, you know about my childhood, right?”, Hawks continues a bit stiffly, and Touya suddenly feels very awkward, because yes, he does know, and in hindsight he really doesn’t feel particularly great about how he got that information, nor what he did with it. 

He clears his throat. “Uh. Yeah. Um. Sorry about that”, he spits out a bit hoarsely.

For a second Hawks’ eyes widen a little and Touya can see a glint of something there as the two of them just stare at each other for a moment, before his composure morphs back into something more neutral and he haphazardly waves Touya off.

“Yeah, so, anyways, there was obviously never an opportunity to discover music at that shack. And then I was taken in by the Commission and life just…revolved around other things”, the hero explains vaguely, and Touya can tell he’s clearly withholding things on purpose. This part of Hawks’ childhood Touya isn’t very familiar with, although he has heard stories and rumours about other kids who were taken in and trained by the Hero Commission just like little Takami Keigo, and part of him badly wants to ask and dig deeper, but he knows it’s not his place, so he keeps his trap shut.

“It was only when I was out living on my own and had the freedom to do whatever I wanted when I was off-duty, that I started to engage with all things pop culture. It’s been ten years, but I still often feel like I’m still catching up.” Hawks huffs a little laugh and pops the last bite of his pizza in his mouth.

“Like with Mario Kart?”, Touya teases with a smirk, and the bird just shrugs and smiles back at him. “Wanna play another round?”

They set their empty pizza boxes down on the floor and plant themselves next to each other again as Touya starts up the game.

This time they draw at 4 wins each by the time Hawks makes to leave.

“God, I need to get out of this suit”, he groans as he slips his shoes back on in the genkan.

Touya keeps his mind carefully blank and pointedly does not think about anything involving Hawks, his ridiculous velvet suit or undressing.

“See you tomorrow!”, the bird chirps then, opening the front door and snapping Touya back to reality.

“Oh, my brother is coming to visit me tomorrow afternoon, by the way. That’s not a problem, right?”

“Shouto?”, Hawks questions and Touya nods affirmatively. 

“No, not a problem at all. I’ll be at my flat if you need me, but I’ll make sure to stay out of your hair then”, the hero assures. “Good night!”

And with that he is gone and Touya is left standing in his hallway alone.

***

Shouto’s palms are a bit sweaty as he walks up to the tall shiny building his brother lives in, and he awkwardly wipes them on his jeans as the doorman ushers him inside. He rides the lift up to Touya’s floor and takes a few moments to gather himself, breathing in deeply.

He isn’t nervous about meeting his brother per se. They’ve been spending time together for years now, including many one-on-one prison visits ever since Shouto turned 18, so he isn’t worried about that. It’s just the new setting, still unfamiliar to both of them, and the fact that this is the first time that Shouto is going to see Touya - just Touya, his oldest brother - and not Dabi , in a place other than Tartarus ever since they were kids. Shouto was only five years old when Touya disappeared and spent most of his childhood forcibly isolated from his siblings. The relationship the two of them have with each other now is almost entirely built on the time they spent together during prison visits these past seven years. They may have grown up in the same house, been hurt by the same parent, and share half of their DNA, but they still lived pretty much separate childhoods from each other.

And Shouto wonders how their rather fresh and delicate relationship will translate into this new chapter of their lives.

He wipes his hands on his jeans one more time, steeling himself, and rings the doorbell.

“Hey, little bro”, Touya greets, as he opens the door and gestures for him to come inside.

“Hello, nii-san”, Shouto replies, and for a moment he just stands there a bit awkwardly in the genkan, unsure what to do. Should he hug his brother? These past few years he has made a habit of hugging Fuyumi and Natsuo whenever he sees them, just like his friends do with him, but he has never hugged Touya like that before since the Tartarus security protocols didn’t allow it.

Luckily Touya takes the lead and breezily waves him down the hallway, so Shouto slips out of his boots and follows his brother to the kitchen. He has been to the flat twice before to help Fuyumi set up some of the furniture and decorate the place, so he already knows his way around.

“You want anything to drink? Water? Coffee? Tea?”, Touya rattles off as he fills up the kettle and flips it on.

“Do you have cocoa?”, Shouto asks.

His brother raises an amused eyebrow at him. “What are you, five?” He points at a cupboard. “But yeah, my babysitter insisted on buying a pack, god knows why. There’s oat milk in the fridge. Sorry, I can’t really handle dairy.”

“Oh, that’s fine, me neither”, Shouto explains while he scoops what other people might consider an ungodly amount of cocoa powder into the mug his brother has set out on the kitchen island for him.

“You can’t be serious”, Touya gasps, eyeing the cocoa mountain in Shouto’s mug suspiciously.

“Deadly”, Shouto says sagely as he floods his creation with oat milk and carefully stirs it in.

“I can’t believe you’re actually gonna drink that.” Touya shakes his head in disgust as he plops a bag of some black tea concoction into his own mug and pours hot water over it. He prods at it with a spoon while Shouto microwaves his cocoa.

He doesn’t really see why his brother is making such a fuss about him drinking hot chocolate, but then he suddenly recalls Katsuki calling him ridiculous at the sight of him on the couch with his cocoa the other day, so he thinks that maybe this is just a thing people do.

Once they’ve both finished preparing their drinks they migrate over to the living room and sit down next to each other on the couch. Shouto snatches one of the pillows and holds it in his lap.

“So, how have you been settling in?”, he asks, looking at his brother over the rim of his mug.

“Pretty well, honestly. The privacy and freedom to just do things I wanna do is really fucking great. The peace and quiet as well. And I really like what you guys have done with the flat. It looks very nice. I’m assuming I mostly have Fuyumi-chan to thank for that?”

Shouto nods. “Yeah, she definitely did most of the work. I wanted to help more, but what with us starting our own agency I was pretty swamped with work and Fuyumi insisted on doing certain things her way anyway, so she made it her little project.”

Touya hums. “How’s that all going? Work and the new agency? Can’t believe you’re a CEO now. I mean, you’re practically still a baby.”

Shouto decides to pointedly ignore that last comment. “It’s great! The first few weeks were pretty hectic, but now things have kinda settled into a certain rhythm and it’s all running pretty smoothly. With the three of us and our five sidekicks we’re still rather small, but we currently have a 99.5% success rate and everyone has to start somewhere, right?”

“Yeah, sure. I mean between you, Deku and, uh, what’s his hero name again?”

“Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight”, Shouto supplies helpfully.

Touya blinks. “Right. Well. Between you, Deku and Explodo-Boy you’ve really gathered the ultimate powerhouses of your class, so I’m sure you will start growing rapidly soon.”

“Momo said that, too. She actually statistically mapped out our predicted growth for the next two years”, Shouto explains. Her regression model predicted that in two years time they would be one of the largest and most successful hero agencies in the country.

“Damn. Smart girl. Which one was Momo again?”

“Creati.”

“Ohhh. Very useful Quirk”, Touya notes, then turns to grin at Shouto a little slyly. 

“Soooo…..you and Momo?”

Shouto looks at him bemusedly. “What about me and Momo?”

Touya rolls his eyes a little exasperatedly. “Is there anything going on between you two?”, he elaborates.

Shouto frowns. “No. Momo is a lesbian and she has a girlfriend.”

“Ah. My bad”, Touya apologises.

Shouto hesitates for a moment, fidgeting a little with the pillow in his lap, then decides to forge ahead. “Also, I’m gay.”

He hasn’t really been making a secret out of his sexuality in recent years, or at least not around his close personal circle, but the topic has never come up in conversation with Touya before, perhaps due to the fact that their meetings in prison always happened under constant surveillance and scrutiny from outsiders.

“Huh. Proud of you, little bro”, Touya says earnestly and pulls him into a quick one-armed side hug. It feels nice and Shouto leans into his brother’s side a little, before he releases him again.

“You know, when I was 13, just a few months before, well, you know, I had a crush on this guy from my class. He was really cool, knew how to do skateboard tricks and all, and one day after school we were hanging out behind the gym together and he kissed me. Just a little peck on the lips, but exactly at that moment Fuyumi-chan came looking for me, so we could walk back home together, and she saw us. And I freaked out so badly, I made her do a blood pact that she wouldn’t tell our parents.”

Touya cackles a little at the memory.

“We used a sharp rock to scrape our fingertips open - terribly unsanitary in hindsight - and then held them together. She took the whole thing super seriously, swore like she was taking an oath in court. That was probably her most rebellious middle school moment.” He cackles again. “I think, to this day, our parents still don’t know that I kinda prefer guys. Do they know about you?”

“Mum does”, Shouto explains. “She said she, uh, kinda had a feeling.”

Touya guffaws. “Mothers.”

“Endeavour doesn’t know though and I don’t intend to tell him. Guess he’ll find out if I ever end up publicly dating someone, but until then he can stay in the dark for all I care.”

“Oh, I’m with ya, baby bro”, Touya says, chuckling.

Shouto smiles at him in understanding, then lazily sweeps his eyes across the room. “Oh! You bought more books!” He scrambles off the couch to inspect the bookshelf more closely. “Cool! One Piece!”

Touya perks up at that and leans over the armrest towards where Shouto is standing. “You know it? We used to watch the anime when it first came out, uh, Fuyumi-chan, Natsu-kun and I, but I guess you would’ve been too young for it anyway at the time.”

Shouto nods, running his fingers along the book spines. “Yes, my friend Sero lent me a few volumes back when we were in school.”

“Sero…?”

“Cellophane”, Shouto clarifies. “I’m not caught up, though. Is this series good?”, he asks then, pointing at the horror fantasy novels he remembers Kirishima and Ashido talking about at Uraraka’s birthday party. 

“So far, yeah. I’m only a few chapters into the first book though”, Touya explains. “You can borrow it when I’ve finished it, if you want.”

Shouto feels pleasantly warm at that. “I’d like that, thanks.”

“Hey, um”, Touya starts a bit croakily then, clearing his throat. “Thanks for the, uh, old books. That was a really nice touch. Finding them here on the shelf. I didn’t even know you guys kept them.”

“Oh!” Shouto smiles at him and settles back down by his brother’s side on the sofa. “Yeah, I took them with me when I got my first own place after graduation. When Fuyumi told me she was setting up a bookshelf for you, I thought you might like to have them back.” He pauses, frowning a little, when he remembers crossing out Natsuo’s name in the books and scribbling his own underneath it. “Even though we all kinda claimed them for ourselves.”

Touya barks a laugh at that. “I think that’s just what normal siblings do”, he points out, chuckling. “Hey, you know what normal siblings do as well? Crush each other at Mario Kart. You wanna play a bit?”

Shouto feels his mouth stretch into a slightly unhinged grin. “Sure. I’m very good, though. Don’t be mad if you lose”, he announces, throwing down the gauntlet. “When I played with Izuku and Katsuki over Christmas break and got first place in Rainbow Road, Katsuki got so pissed off he tackled me off the couch and spilled a glass of water over both of us.”

“Better than being decayed.”

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing”, Touya says dismissively and tosses one of the controllers at him. “Let’s see who’s really gonna lose here, because I have been playing this game since before you were even born, baby bro.” Touya offers him an absolutely feral grin and Shouto can objectively see why his brother made for such an intimidating villain in the past. 

He isn’t bothered, though. “We’ll see who’s got better reflexes, old man.”

“Oi!”, Touya squawks offendedly, mildly elbowing Shouto’s side as he starts up the game.

“Ewww, this controller is all greasy”, Shouto notes when he picks the thing up, pulling a face. “What the hell have you done with this?”

“Blame the stupid bird and his pizza fingers.” His brother shrugs and hands him the box of tissues from the coffee table.

“What bird?”, Shouto questions as he wipes the worst of the greasy fingerprints off the blue plastic.

“Ah. Did I mention my pro hero babysitter and next door neighbour is Hawks?”

“ What? ”, Shouto gasps and turns to look at his brother with wide eyes. “Isn’t that, like, super weird and uncomfortable?”

Touya stares at him, looking slightly freaked out. “What do you mean?”, he asks, and Shouto is pretty sure his voice is sounding a bit higher than usual.

“Didn’t you have this pretty bad fight at the Gunga mansion? Didn’t you burn off his wings?”

“Way to rub it in, little bro.”

Shouto fixes him with an unimpressed stare. “I’m just saying. It’s pretty surprising that he signed up for this job. I mean, I’m assuming that was his own choice? As far as I’m aware he’s his own boss nowadays.”

Touya sighs. “Yeah, you’re right. I thought it was kinda weird, too. Still do. He doesn’t seem to be holding a grudge against me, though, and he gave me a fairly credible explanation as to why he took the job, but I’m not fully convinced. I feel like he’s withholding something from me.” He looks intensely frustrated about it, and Shouto briefly wonders if his brother is also withholding something from him, but can’t for the life of him figure out what or why.

“Still, I’m actually not too mad about it”, Touya admits then, his tone sounding carefully detached. “He’s pretty obnoxious, but it could’ve been much worse. Especially since he has to spend two hours here every day to ‘monitor’ me.” He mimes quotation marks in the air at that.

“Hence the pizza and greasy Switch controllers?”, Shouto inquires.

“Gotta kill the time somehow, right? Imagine if I had gotten stuck with some boring conservative guy on the verge of retirement.” Touya actually shudders at that, and Shouto sympathises. “At least the stupid bird plays video games with me and lets me put on loud music.”

Shouto hums contemplatively. “You know, you’re kinda like Katsuki.”

“Explodo-Boy?!”, Touya asks incredulously.

“You both call people mildly insulting nicknames when you say nice things about them.”

“I. What?! No. I do not do that!”, Touya sputters, going wide-eyed and throwing Shouto what’s probably supposed to be a menacing glare but kind of falls flat. “I do not say nice things about Hawks, and I definitely don’t call that stupid bird nicknames.”

Shouto gives him a deadpan look. He’s been told he’s very good at those.

“Oh, fuck off!”, Touya huffs exasperatedly. “I’m going to murder you.” He waves his own controller in Shouto’s face and starts the race without giving Shouto a chance to prepare himself. 

Being a meticulously trained pro hero, however, has its perks and Shouto settles into the game with ease.

It quickly becomes a blood bath, both of them more focused on keeping the other one from winning than actually winning the races themselves. They bombard each other with shells and bananas and repeatedly push each other off course, and it’s so fucking hilarious, that by the time Shouto announces that he should probably head home now, his stomach muscles are aching and Touya has a bruise starting to bloom on his shin from where he knocked it against the coffee table when he nearly toppled off the couch from laughing so hard.

“This was really fun, nii-san”, Shouto tells his brother earnestly as he’s lacing up his boots in the genkan. 

“Yeah, it was”, Touya replies, grinning at him from where he’s leaning against the wall. “Come back any time, little bro.”

Shouto smiles. “I will”, he promises. 

This time he doesn’t even get a chance to contemplate whether he should hug his brother, because Touya is already pushing himself off the wall and stepping forward to wrap his arms around Shouto’s shoulders. “See ya, Shouto-kun. Get home safely.”

Shouto hugs him back and smiles into his shoulder. “See you”, he says happily when they part again.

Outside it is snowing again and Shouto decides to walk the few blocks to his neighbourhood, his insides feeling warm and fuzzy all the way home.

Chapter Text

“Tadaima!”, Shouto calls out as he enters the flat with snowflakes melting in the left half of his hair while perfectly maintaining their shape on the right side of his head.

“Hey, shortcake”, Katsuki grunts from the couch when Shouto makes his way into the living room. “The nerd is out with Four Eyes and Round Face. There’s leftover soba in the fridge.”

“Oh my god, I love you”, Shouto blurts excitedly, and when his brain catches up half a second later and actually processes what he’s just said, he very nearly sets himself on fire.

Thankfully, Katsuki seems to take it in stride. “It’s just soba. No need to propose to me, princess”, he huffs exasperatedly.

If Shouto hadn’t just gone and stuck his head in the fridge, perhaps he would see the way Katsuki’s face flushes pink, but as it is Shouto is too busy trying to cool down his own, presumably beet-red face under the guise of grabbing the leftover food. His useless temperature-regulating Quirk has apparently decided to temporarily shut down.

“How did things go with your brother?”, Katsuki asks after a moment, getting up to join Shouto in the kitchen as he prepares his dinner.

“Really good”, Shouto says, still feeling pleasantly warm from his afternoon with Touya. “We talked a lot and played Mario Kart. Personally, I think I crushed him, but he would probably tell you otherwise”, he cackles as he carries his food over to the table and sits down.

Katsuki follows him with a raised eyebrow and settles down opposite him. “I hope he kicked your arse into oblivion”, he tells him very gravely.

Shouto is clearly still experiencing some aftershocks from having the giggles with his brother earlier, because he actually guffaws at that and promptly chokes on his soba.

Katsuki half-heartedly reaches over the table and thumps him on the back as Shouto tries to wheeze some air back into his lungs. “You good, Halfie?”

“Yeah”, Shouto croaks out when he finally feels like he can breathe again, and takes a big sip of the water Katsuki is nudging over to him. “Thanks.”

Shouto stuffs another bite of soba into his mouth and chews and swallows carefully, before he speaks up again.

“I also kinda came out to him. Didn’t plan to do it, it sorta just happened mid conversation.”

Katsuki narrows his eyes at him. “Did he take it well?”

“Oh, yeah, absolutely”, Shouto quickly assures his explode-happy friend. “That’s not something to worry about with him.”

Katsuki visibly relaxes at that.

“I think”, Shouto muses then, “a lot of villains are more progressive about this sort of stuff than hero society. I mean the League, for example, had several openly queer members while most pro heroes stay in the closet for the duration of their careers.”

Katsuki tilts his head, seemingly contemplating Shouto’s words. “Hmm, to be fair, I think a lot of villains just don’t care about anything at all, other than murder or whatever villainous ambitions they have”, he says and, well, Shouto thinks he probably has a point there. Still, he feels like even coming out to Shigaraki probably would’ve been safer than coming out to some of those Hero Commission types.

“But you’re right, hero society is still way too conservative and stuck up about that sorta stuff. It’s really nice to see that our generation is starting to change things, though. Ears apparently recently had a kid come up to her and tell her that her being so open about her bisexuality really helped the kid accept his own sexuality, too.”

Katsuki’s face looks unusually soft while he says that and Shouto can’t help but smile at him.

“That’s really sweet”, he says. “I’m sure there are a lot more kids out there, who feel that way, too.”

Katsuki hums in agreement, seemingly absent-mindedly running a hand through his spiky blond hair and ruffling it a little. Shouto’s eyes trace the movement like he’s been hypnotised. He knows that Katsuki’s hair is much softer than the spikes make it appear to be, unintentionally having brushed against it many times over the years, but he wonders what it would feel like to actually run his hand through it. Whether Katsuki would like having his hair played with. Whether he would like Shouto tangling his fingers in it, while Katsuki keeps Shouto pinned against a wall, licking hotly into his mouth. Whether he would moan if Shouto tugged on it to guide his mouth to-

Shouto blinks hard, trying to surreptitiously shake himself out of the fantasy.

Dangerous territory, and most definitely not the time nor the place.

Katsuki is already looking at him with an unreadable expression and Shouto briefly worries that his friend may have suddenly acquired a Telepathy Quirk. When he doesn’t say anything, though, and starts tapping away on his phone, Shouto breathes an inaudible sigh of relief and pointedly busies himself with the rest of his soba. 

Still, the fantasy won’t quite leave him alone. Later that night, when he’s tucked into his bed and desperately trying to fall asleep so he won’t be dead on his feet during his morning patrol tomorrow, his mind keeps stubbornly circling back to the thought of Katsuki pinning him against a wall and kissing him deeply, while Shouto tangles his fingers into his soft hair. The Katsuki in Shouto’s fantasy presses in close, slipping a thigh up high between Shouto’s and encouraging him to grind his hips.

Real world Shouto muffles a groan into his pillow as he feels himself start to get hard.

He always feels like he’s doing something wrong, something he really shouldn’t be doing, when he thinks about his best friends like this, so he really tries not to, but at the end of the day Shouto is just a man and a man has needs, so every now and then, in the solitude of his locked bedroom under the protective cover of the darkness around him, he allows himself to indulge.

He throws back his duvet and tucks down the boxers he sleeps in, just far enough to free his cock, and wraps his hand around his hardening length. He closes his eyes and lets his mind wander as he starts stroking himself. In his fantasy Katsuki is leaving a trail of kisses along his jaw and down his neck now, all light and fluttery, before biting down on the juncture between his neck and shoulder and sucking a bruise onto it. He soothes the sting with a few gentle laps of his tongue while his hand reaches down to cup fantasy-Shouto through his jeans.

Real-world-Shouto bites down on his free hand to stifle a loud moan that threatens to escape him when he imagines the feeling of Katsuki’s strong hand on his crotch. Knowing the explosive power those hands wield makes the thought even more intoxicating. He starts pumping his fist harder, using the precum he’s steadily leaking as lubricant, and imagines it’s actually Katsuki’s hand jerking him off.

Fantasy-Katsuki grips him firmly while ghosting his lips over fantasy-Shouto’s ear, his breath hot and tingly. “You like that, princess?”, he rasps lowly and oh , that nickname is really doing it for Shouto for some reason. He’s already tragically close, so he blindly fumbles for the box of tissues on his night stand, and when the mounting pressure in his abdomen finally bursts and releases, he lets out a small breathless gasp as he spurts hotly into his tissues.

He quickly chucks them in the bin and tucks himself back into his pants, before pulling the duvet back over himself and curling up on his side. There are familiar little wisps of sadness tugging at his heart now, and he holds his arms pressed tightly against his chest, but thankfully his orgasm has finally made him feel drowsy enough to fall asleep, so he nuzzles deeper into his pillow and quickly drifts off into dreamless slumber.

***

The day after Shouto’s visit Touya has his first therapy session since being released from Tartarus.

His morning starts off the almost usual way now - Hawks shows up for his morning check-in, Touya offers him coffee and they settle down in the living room together for the next two hours. Since that first time they played Mario Kart together, Hawks has made a habit of sitting on the couch with Touya (still a polite distance between them) rather than at the dining table. It makes the air between them feel significantly less stilted, but it also makes Touya feel hyper-aware of the hero’s presence.

Which is whatever.

It’s fine.

Touya successfully ropes the bird into playing video games with him again, and this time they decide to try themselves at Super Smash Bros. 

“Don’t leave your greasy fingerprints all over the controller again”, Touya warns as he hands the hero his usual blue controller. “Shouto complained about it yesterday.”

Hawks’ fingers brush against Touya’s as he grabs the controller from him, and Touya is simultaneously relieved and pissed off that it’s just his prosthetic hand. 

“Ah, my apologies to Shouto-kun”, Hawks laughs, not sounding particularly sorry at all. “Did he kick your butt?”, he asks then, grinning way too cheekily.

Touya gives him an unimpressed look. “You know you’re allowed to say ‘arse’ on the job, right? And no, he didn’t. We both kinda lost.”

“How did that happen? You seem way too good at this to lose against the computer-generated players.”

“We were too busy trying to murder each other”, Touya says with a shrug.

Hawks’ eyebrows shoot up and Touya rolls his eyes.

“In the game”, he elaborates exasperatedly. “Don’t worry, Birdie, I haven’t gone back to my homicidal ways.” He’s awfully tempted to add a “yet” to the end of that sentence, but he’s not sure whether a joke like that could get him into trouble this early into his house arrest, so he bites his tongue.

Better not risk it.

Touya isn’t quite as practiced at Super Smash Bros. as he is at Mario Kart, so when they first start the game he’s slightly concerned about actually losing to the bird and his dignity in the process, but his worries go out the window pretty quickly, when it turns out that Hawks is a button-smashing mess.

As easily as he took to Mario Kart, the opposite seems to be the case for Smash Bros. and Touya finds himself cackling all the way through their gaming session. He’s so distracted he messes up a bunch of times, too, but the hero is so terrible at the game that Touya still looks like an absolute pro in comparison.

“Fucking hell, I give up”, Hawks exclaims breathlessly after a particularly gruelling round and drops his controller onto the cushion between them. Touya distantly notes that the hero stopped giving a shit about his language about two matches into the game.

“You are so bad at this!”, he wheezes out, still cackling almost hysterically, and he’s pretty sure there would be actual tears in his eyes right now, if his tear ducts weren’t all burned out. “How are you so fucking bad at this?”

“Oi!”, Hawks squawks, offended. “This is so much more difficult than Mario Kart!”

Touya chortles and wraps his arm around his aching stomach. “Even Natsuo was better than you when we used to play this together, and he was like seven!”

“Yeah, well, maybe the old version was easier”, the hero says indignantly, but Touya can tell by the way his lips twist that he’s trying very hard not to laugh. 

“Find us a Nintendo 64 and we’ll test that theory”, Touya challenges, offering the hero what he hopes is a menacing grin. He used to have those down pretty well.

Hawks finally huffs a laugh as well. “Maybe I will”, he challenges back, before his demeanour suddenly shifts into something more serious. “Hey, are you bleeding?”, he asks, eyeing Touya concernedly. 

“Hm?”, Touya hums, mentally scrabbling to catch up with the sudden change of tone, before he registers the warm trickle on his cheek.

Ah.

He leans forward, reaching for the tissue box on the coffee table. “Sorry about that. This, uh, happens when I cry. Haven’t experienced it from laughter before, though”, he explains a little awkwardly as he wipes the blood off his cheek.

Hawks watches him, realisation blooming in his eyes. “Oh, right, your tear ducts…” He trails off and Touya can tell the hero is remembering the moment Touya first mentioned that particular detail to him.

He quickly averts his eyes and coughs a little, hoping they can just ignore that particular ghost from the past haunting them.

“Does it hurt?”, Hawks blurts out then, and Touya’s eyes snap back up at him in surprise.

“The actual bleeding? No. My tear ducts always sting a little when it happens, though. Like how your eyes burn when you start tearing up, except no tears actually come out, so the stinging kinda just continues”, he explains, and for some mystical reason unbeknownst to him he continues to ramble on. “You know, it’s kind of ironic, because when I was up on that hill and burned out my tear ducts, it was because I was crying and my stupid tears caught fire, even though I was trying so hard to keep them in and—“ He catches himself and clamps his mouth shut, genuinely horrified at the sudden bout of oversharing that just poured out of him.

He pointedly looks away from the sad little look on Hawks’ face and busies himself with neatly folding up the bloody tissue in his hands.

“I’m sorry. That, uh…yeah”, the hero stammers out awkwardly yet earnestly.

Touya waves him off dismissively, attempting to gain back some control over the situation. “It’s fine, Birdie. That was a very long time and about three lifetimes ago.”

“Sorry, I don’t want to overstep”, Hawks says then, and it sounds close to his professional hero voice, which honestly makes Touya more uncomfortable than the bird’s prying. He’d generally rather people overstep than keep him at a certain professional distance where he can’t really make heads or tails of their true thoughts and intentions.

He sighs, perhaps a little over-dramatically. “Relax, hero. If you ever overstep I’ll let you know. I’d rather you nose around a little than go all polite hero persona on me. I’m not that fragile.”

Hawks laughs softly. “Gotcha. Will add ‘nosing around’ to my job description.”

“Oh, shut up”, Touya huffs, feeling much better again now that the bird’s casual demeanour has returned.

“Well, now you’re sending me really mixed signals over here. Am I supposed to nose around or not?”, Hawks questions faux-seriously, and Touya nearly gives himself a minor aneurysm, trying not to think about that “mixed signals” comment too hard.

“God, you’re insufferable”, he groans in lieu of an actual answer.

The bird hums contemplatively. “Hm. I’ll take it.”

Touya rolls his eyes.

“Oh, I should head out”, Hawks proclaims then, glancing at his watch. “You have therapy at 12:30, right?”

“You spying on me again?”, Touya teases before he can stop himself. 

The hero thankfully just chuckles at that. “Sure, let’s just go with that”, he huffs as they make their way down the hallway to the front door.

“If you need me you know where to find me”, Hawks says as he gives Touya a two-fingered salute, before heading out the door and pulling it shut behind himself.

On his own again, Touya takes a deep breath, holds it for a few seconds and then exhales slowly and steadily to ground himself.

He’s been in therapy with Dr. Nakayama for years now, but under the new circumstances he’s suddenly feeling oddly nervous about his upcoming session. There’s a little part in him that feels terrified, that if he somehow leaves a bad impression or comes off as too unstable in a therapy session now they’ll lock him back up in prison.

It’s only been a few days, but he’s already grown awfully attached to his newfound freedom and privacy.

He settles back on the couch in the living room and sets his laptop up on the coffee table - probably not the most flattering angle for a video call, but his therapist has seen him in much worse states and he also just doesn’t give a shit.

As he anxiously waits for the incoming call he suddenly remembers how Shouto had held a pillow in his lap yesterday. It’s an odd thing he’s seen a bunch of people do, and he’s never really understood it, but he thinks there has to be some sort of point to it, so on a whim he grabs the pillow Shouto held the day before and sets it down on his own lap.

Hm.

He can’t deny that the extra little bit of weight and the warmth feel quite nice. He supposes he can keep this little experiment going for a bit longer.

When his computer finally starts ringing to signal the incoming video call from his therapist, he startles so badly he nearly drops the pillow to the floor.

“ Todoroki-san, good afternoon!”, Dr. Nakayama greets him when he accepts the call.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Nakayama.”

Dr. Nakayama isn’t much older than Touya himself, and when she first started seeing him nearly seven years ago he was one of her first patients ever. Touya has secretly always admired her for choosing to work at Tartarus of all places, fresh out of training, rather than a regular hospital or therapist’s office. A job like hers must make her privy to lots of deeply gruesome and disturbing stories from her patients’ lives, many of which likely make even Touya’s story and the things he has done seem pretty tame in comparison. 

Touya is really glad that she chose to work at the prison. Many villains suffer from mental illnesses or deeply engraved trauma, and someone needs to take care of those kinds of people, too. His own therapy sessions with Dr. Nakayama have certainly helped him tremendously - the state of his mental health and general psychological condition nowadays is something he never in a million years would’ve thought possible a decade ago. It took lots of hard work and some trial and error to get here and he knows all too well that recovery isn’t always linear, but overall he’s pretty satisfied with his journey so far.

Touya also feels incredibly lucky that he seemed to click with Dr. Nakayama right from the start. She’s generally a kind person, but she’s also never afraid to call him out on his bullshit. Some people might consider that particular approach to therapy a bit harsh, but for Touya it works very well. He would absolutely hate being coddled and he’d much rather people give it to him straight than beat around the bush. Sometimes, when he’s stuck too deeply in his own head and spiralling into some sort of pit, he also just needs someone to snap him the fuck out of it. And Dr. Nakayama is always fair about it and respects his boundaries.

“How are you doing? How have you been settling in?”, she asks, and Touya can slowly start to feel his nervousness dissipate into thin air. This is just another normal therapy session. He’s had hundreds of those.

“I’m doing well. I think I’ve settled in here very quickly. It felt a bit strange at first, like, when I woke up the first few mornings I was always a bit confused about where I was for a second, but I think I’ve gotten pretty used to the new environment now.” He absent-mindedly runs his fingers along the seams of the pillow in his lap as he talks.

Dr. Nakayama nods in understanding on the screen. “Well, it does tend to be a bit confusing to move into a new place. Most people need some time to adjust to that sort of thing. It’s good that you already feel like you’ve gotten used to it. How have you been spending your time?”

“I mostly read or play video games. I, uh, did some online shopping at the beginning and bought a few things - books, new clothes. The clothes I got from the prison were a crime against fashion, no offence.”

The therapist laughs a little. “Oh, I agree. Nothing wrong with figuring out your individual style. Although you do seem to have gone back to your rather black and edgy look”, she notes, raising an amused eyebrow.

“Well, I didn’t just use to dress like that for the villain aesthetic or whatever”, Touya explains a bit petulantly. “I wasn’t really allowed to dress all edgy when I was a kid, but I was listening to a lot of metal and punk music and hanging out with skater kids when I was twelve, thirteen, and I guess that really wasn’t just a phase for me.” He runs his hand through his hair a bit self-consciously. It’s not that he’s embarrassed of his style or taste in music or general edginess, it just feels a bit strange to be nearly 31 years old and essentially admit you’re still stuck in your teenage emo phase.

Dr. Nakayama doesn’t judge him for it, though. “As long as you feel comfortable with your style that’s all that matters. Being able to freely express ourselves, not just through words and behaviour, but also through our looks is an important aspect of many people’s journeys. People who struggle with their body image, transgender people who experience dysphoria or people who never really got to develop much of their own personal identity in their lives - there are many different groups of people for whom their appearances play a significant role in their mental health journeys.”

Touya hums in agreement. “I like being able to express myself through my clothes. It also…it kinda makes it easier to live with the way I look. With my scars, I mean. I’m not, like, super bothered by them - I mean, I’ve had them for so long now I’m very used to them. And when I was living the villain life, they often kinda worked in my favour because they made me look rough and scary and intimidating. But objectively speaking I know they’re not exactly pretty. And I’ve accepted that, but I still sometimes feel…I don’t know, just not really happy about them. And dressing the way I like kinda makes me feel better about that.”

He’s not sure if he’s really making sense, but he trusts Dr. Nakayama to pick up on what he’s saying.

“That’s understandable”, she says, nodding. “Most people have these things about their appearance that they’re not entirely happy with. Your scars are obviously something that sets you apart from the insecurities the average person might have, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter if it’s a big nose or belly fat or scars, it just matters that we find a way to accept these things about ourselves and present them to the world in a way that makes us feel the most comfortable. It’s good that you seem to have found that.”

She pauses for a moment, seemingly writing something down in her notebook.

“Now, something else I wanted to check in with you about is how you are getting along with Hawks”, she mentions then, looking back up at the webcam.

Touya suppresses a full-body twitch at the mention of the hero’s name and swallows a bit drily. “So, uh, you know that he’s the hero assigned to babysi- I mean guard me?”

Dr. Nakayama nods. “Yes, I signed off on it. That’s part of why I wanted to check in with you about it now. I know you two have a bit of a past with each other, but since he seemed to hold no ill will towards you and you have never really mentioned him much in therapy, I assumed you didn’t feel strongly about him either way and that it wouldn’t be an issue for you. Was I wrong to assume that?”

I never brought him up in therapy because I didn’t want you to figure out, that I used to have a frequently recurring wank fantasy about Hawks and his stupid feathers every time he threatened me with a blade against my throat in an abandoned warehouse, and that I walked away from a good number of those meetings already embarrassingly half-hard in my pants, Touya thinks, feeling slightly (okay, maybe a bit more than just slightly) panicked because he still really doesn’t want Dr. Nakayama to find out about that.

A tiny little part of him is worried that they would take Hawks off his babysitter job, if his therapist found out about Touya’s unfortunate weakness for pretty golden-eyed heroes who could kill him without even breaking a sweat.

And for some godforsaken reason he really doesn’t want that.

So he forces himself to remain calm and put on the most indifferent face he can muster. “No no, it’s fine”, he assures with what he hopes is a steady-sounding voice. “We’re good. We get along fine and we’ve started playing video games together during his daily two-hour surveillance.”

Dr. Nakayama eyes him quizzically for just a fraction of a second, before looking down to scribble something in her notebook again.

“I’m glad that is working out well”, she says then. “Part of the reason why I ultimately signed off on giving him the job was because I think regular every-day sort of social contact is very important for you, especially now that you are living on your own, and Hawks is around your age. You two might have lived extremely different lives up to now, but you’re about as close to being peers as you could get between a pro hero and a former villain on house arrest.”

Touya snorts at her blunt way of putting it, but she’s certainly not wrong.

“Yeah, I think you made a good call there. I’d rather have the bird around than some boring stuck-up 50-year-old”, he admits.

The therapist smiles knowingly and nods. “I figured.”

“Oh, and speaking of social contact, my brother - Shouto - came to visit me yesterday”, Touya tells her then.

“How did that go?”

“It was really nice. I was a bit nervous at first, just because it was the first time we saw each other outside of prison since, well, the war. So I wasn’t sure if maybe things would be awkward now, since almost our entire relationship so far is mostly just built on all those times Shouto came to visit me in Tartarus, and now we suddenly were in this completely new - and so much more normal - environment. And, like, I know I sometimes struggle with social stuff, but Shouto is much worse than me, so I wasn’t sure whether that was gonna be a problem either. But it all went pretty smoothly. The conversation flowed easily and we also played some Mario Kart together.”

He pauses for a moment, trying to untangle some of the feelings in his chest.

“I think…”, he starts hesitantly. “I think it was one of the first times I really truly felt like we’re proper siblings. I don’t think we’ve ever spent time together like that, just talking and playing some dumb video game. And I think even if Endeavour hadn’t isolated Shouto from the rest of us kids, we probably still wouldn’t have hung out together quite like that when we were kids because of our age difference. But yesterday felt so incredibly normal, and I think maybe in another world we already would’ve spent time together like that back when Shouto became a teenager.”

There’s a part of him that feels wistfully sad thinking about these little things that could’ve been. A normal adolescence and young adulthood, being the cool older brother who teaches his baby brother how to play video games. Introducing Shouto to good music. Giving his little brother’s first boyfriend the shovel talk.

Well, actually, that might be something he’ll still get to do someday. He doesn’t actually know if Shouto has ever had a boyfriend before, but he kind of got the impression that he hasn’t, or at least nothing serious. But either way, if Shouto starts dating someone in the future, Touya will be able to do his big-brotherly duty and threaten the person a tiny little bit, just so they know who they’ll have to deal with if they dare to hurt his baby brother.

The thought makes him feel weirdly giddy.

Dr. Nakayama, who has been listening patiently and giving him the time to think without interrupting him, finally speaks up again. 

“When we reconnect with people from our past, there’s often this tinge of missed opportunities and what-ifs in the air. And that’s a valid way to feel, because maybe our lives would’ve been much better if we had been able to take those opportunities, and maybe there are things we will never quite get the opportunity to do ever again. But in these kinds of situations it’s always important to remind yourself, that now that you have reconnected with this person, there are a whole lot of other opportunities on the horizon, and you won’t want to miss out on seizing them just because you were too caught up dwelling on what could’ve been in the past.”

She smiles kindly as she says this, and Touya knows that she’s right. Dwelling on the past and getting too caught up in things that could’ve been haven’t worked out all that well for him historically, so he needs to remind himself to focus on the present and the future and make the best of the relationship he has with his brother now.

“I, um, I told Shouto about my first crush. And my first kiss”, Touya blurts out then, recalling their little moment of sibling bonding when they came out to each other.

“And how did he react?”

“Ah, it was more of a mention on the side. He came out to me”, Touya doesn’t mean to out his brother, but it’s therapy and he knows Dr. Nakayama has to keep this sort of stuff confidential, so he supposes it’s alright for him to say that, “and so I told him about my first crush, who was also a guy. And a funny story about how our sister walked in on us when my crush kissed me for the first time. Shouto trusted me with something this important and personal, so I wanted to offer him the same kind of honesty in return.”

“That was very thoughtful of you. I’m sure he appreciated you telling him about this just like you appreciated him telling you about his sexuality.”

Touya hums in agreement. “I think he probably did, yeah. It’s really nice, finding out about things we have in common. We’re also both lactose intolerant and our favourite food is soba. When we were growing up we were made to believe that we were so very different from each other, and then we obviously stood on opposite sides in a war, but now, all these years later, we’re still finding out about things we have in common and things that connect us. It still always feels like a meaningful bonding experience to me, even when it’s just silly stuff, like the lactose thing. All those years ago, in the middle of a battlefield, Shouto promised me that our paths would eventually cross, even if forced, and I didn’t believe him at the time, but he was right. And he stuck by his promise for all these years. It means a lot to me.”

He almost gets a little choked up there, but he forces himself to swallow and breathe deeply to push the feeling back down. Dr. Nakayama has seen him break down a couple of times over the years, but if he’s going to cry over finding out that he and his baby brother share their inability to digest dairy properly, he’d rather do it while he’s alone, and not mid-video-call with his therapist, thank you very much.

“Your brother probably didn’t foresee things unfolding the way they have, but it certainly speaks to his character that he has made sure to stay true to his promise and build up a proper relationship with you. You’re very lucky to have someone like him in your life. He really seems to care about you a lot.”

Touya nods, not trusting his voice to come out steady right now. He surreptitiously takes another few deep breaths to get his bearings.

“Have you been in touch with the rest of your family since you were released?”, Dr. Nakayama asks then.

“I’ve texted Fuyumi and Natsuo. They’ve both promised to come visit sometime soon. I, uh, haven’t been in touch with my mother and I definitely don’t want to get in touch with my father”, Touya spits out, sounding harsher than he meant to. He has wasted so many years trying to get Endeavour’s attention and it thoroughly ruined him and his life as well as the lives of all the people he took his pain and anger and desperation out on, so now that he has been given this new shot at a life of his own making he wants to stay as far away from the old man as possible. He won’t let his father ruin this for him, too.

Dr. Nakayama nods calmly and scribbles something in her notebook. “You don’t have to get in touch with your father, if you don’t want to. While your actions and the way you hurt people were ultimately your own choices and are therefore your own responsibility to bear, your father has done a lot of damage to you and your entire family and repeatedly failed to do his parental duties with you when you were a child. He has shown himself to be a major trigger for you, so if you don’t want any contact with him now, I believe you are making the right choice for your mental health.”

Touya exhales heavily. It always stings to be reminded that, while blaming it all on Endeavour was certainly a convenient and - in his mind - logical option at the time, Touya chose to burn all those people with his flames. He could’ve chosen differently at the time, but he didn’t, and now that responsibility is something he’ll have to carry with himself for the rest of his life.

The more progress he has made in therapy over the past few years, the more the sudden guilt and remorse he started feeling have carved themselves a little hole in his heart to sit in. They still hurt, and some days they weigh pretty heavily on him, but he supposes that even more so than his prison sentence these uncomfortable feelings he’ll probably have to live with for the rest of his life are his true penance for what he has done.

Still, he also knows that Endeavour (well, and All For One with his caricatural mad scientist and fucked up child trafficking scheme) is the one responsible for making him spiral to the point where he even considered homicide a viable course of action in the first place, and after all these years it still always feels reassuring when Dr. Nakayama acknowledges just how much his father really hurt his family and how detrimental his neglect of Touya truly was.

“How do you feel about getting in touch with your mother?”, Dr. Nakayama asks. She doesn’t sound like she expects him to answer this question in a specific way, so Touya feels like he can be honest without having to worry about his therapist potentially disapproving.

“I’m undecided”, he admits. “I mean, she obviously came to visit me in prison and that was fine, but I’m still…struggling, I think, to accept her choice to stay with Endeavour. I know it’s none of my business, really, but knowing what he has done to her, I find it really hard to wrap my head around why she would stay with him anyway. Shouto wasn’t the only one in the family getting hit by him, and I still remember how she told my father that she didn’t wanna have any more children after they found out about my disability, but then she ended up having Natsuo and eventually Shouto anyway. And back then I was too young to really understand the implications of that, but now I obviously do, and I just…I don’t get why she would willingly stay with a man who abused her in more ways than one. It really bothers me, and I know ultimately it’s her own choice to make, but I find it difficult to find a middle ground between this aspect of her life and my own relationship with her. Whenever I talk to her it feels like she’s either walking on eggshells to avoid mentioning Endeavour around me at all costs, which kinda makes the conversations pretty bland and one-sided because she can’t really tell me about her life that way, or she actually does mention him and I have to try really hard not to get pissed off on her behalf for still acting as his loyal little housewife after everything he has done to her. I mean, she’s literally doing care work for him, for fuck’s sake!”

Touya can feel himself starting to get riled up just talking about this topic, so he pauses and takes a few deep, intentional breaths, just like Dr. Nakayama taught him to, to calm himself down. He digs his fingers into the pillow in his lap and closes his eyes for a moment, focusing on the way the air fills his lungs and the feeling of the slightly rough texture of the pillow under his fingertips.

When he feels like the ugly angry clamp around his ribcage has loosened, he opens his eyes again and looks back up at his laptop. On the screen Dr. Nakayama is watching him, a slightly proud smile playing around her lips.

“Better?”, she asks kindly.

Touya nods. “Sorry, this is a bit of a touchy subject for me, I think.”

“That’s alright. If there’s one place to explore those, it’s therapy. Keeping those kinds of feelings locked up would just start eating away at you eventually, so it’s good to be able to let them all out in a safe space like this. Now, I have two questions for you: If it weren’t for her current relationship with your father, would you want to get in touch with your mother? And how do you feel about the idea of addressing these issues with her?”

“I think”, Touya starts slowly, “I would like to get in touch with her, yeah. Maybe not as closely as with my siblings, but I think I would like to have at least some semblance of a relationship with her. I have caused her a lot of pain and as a child I resented her for not doing enough to protect us from Endeavour, but nowadays I understand that she was a victim, too. She was the parent that loved all of us children equally and unconditionally, and I think she still wants a relationship with me. I would like to give her that.”

He pauses for a moment to contemplate Dr. Nakayama’s second question. If he’s being honest, the thought of telling his mother all those things, that just got him so worked up he had to do a breathing exercise to calm himself down again, to her face scares him. He worries that he might just hurt her even more - not by lashing out physically, but with words. 

“I don’t think I’m ready to talk to her about how exactly I feel about her current relationship with Endeavour, though.”

Touya has started tracing his fingers along the seams of his pillow again, and he is looking down at his lap, watching the movement of his scarred and stapled left hand as he admits this.

Dr. Nakayama hums at that. “I see. That’s fine. You should do this all at your own pace, and especially a difficult conversation like that should only happen, if you feel ready for it. Just let me know if you ever do feel like addressing those issues, then we can work out a strategy together. Remember, you don’t have to do any of those things on your own and I’m here to guide you through them, if you need me to.”

“Thank you”, Touya tells her earnestly, because god knows where he would be right now, if she hadn’t been by his side these past few years.

“As for getting in touch with your mother - how would you feel about starting out slowly and testing the waters, so to speak, by texting her? You don’t have to dive headfirst into in-person meetings, you could start with texts and then move on to phone calls first. That way you could start building the relationship you want to give her while still keeping a certain distance between yourself and her life with your father”, Dr. Nakayama suggests, and yeah, actually, that could work.

Maybe.

Touya sucks his bottom lip between his teeth. “Yeah…”, he drawls, nodding slowly. “Yeah, I think I can do that.”

Dr. Nakayama smiles at him encouragingly. “There you go. Would you like me to help you figure out what to say to her or do you want to do that on your own?”

“I’ll do it on my own later. I have some ideas, but I wanna go over them a bit in my head first. Also, I think I’m gonna need some time to air out my brain after this session”, he adds, huffing a small laugh.

“That’s understandable. Well, if there isn’t anything more you want to talk about now, our session has theoretically ended five minutes ago already, so I would leave you to it now.”

“Oh, I’m sorry for keeping you”, Touya apologises.

His therapist waves him off. “It’s no bother. Sometimes a session takes a few minutes longer, that’s just how it goes. That’s why I always leave a 15-minute buffer between patients.”

“Ah, well then, I’ll let you get to your next patient. As always, thank you for all your help, Dr. Nakayama”, Touya tells her, bowing a little towards his webcam.

“See you next week, Todoroki-san.”

The video call ends and Touya exhales noisily. He shuts his laptop and slouches backwards into the couch.

Therapy always leaves him with a strange mix of emotions swirling in his chest. In a way he feels lighter than he did before, but he also feels a bit raw and vulnerable and exhausted. Like when you’ve scrubbed your skin just a tad too hard while washing yourself, so now you’re very clean but your skin is also a bit red and irritated.

Back when he was still in prison, he didn’t really have a choice but to sit in his cell and stew in it until the irritation wore off again whenever therapy left him feeling like this, but now that he has his own flat and lots more options at his disposal, he decides to busy himself by cooking himself a nice dinner and heads over to the kitchen. The rather gentle and mundane task will keep his hands and mind occupied without overexerting him, and he’s certain that getting some food in his stomach will make him feel more settled and re-energised.

As he dices his vegetables he can already feel the mist in his mind beginning to clear up and he slowly starts to formulate a potential text he might send to his mother.

Therapy really has made him feel much lighter.

***

Two days later, when Shouto enters the agency for his afternoon shift on his 23rd birthday, he is greeted by a chorus of “happy birthday”s and “wooo”s, and someone blasts a whirlwind of confetti in his direction.

“Happy birthday, Shouto-kun!”, Izuku exclaims excitedly and tackles him in a hug so fierce they both nearly topple over. Shouto clings to his friend tightly in return, partly to keep himself upright and partly because it just feels really nice. Izuku is always so warm and solid. Shouto buries his face against the side of his friend’s head for a moment, inhaling the scent of his green apple shampoo, says a muffled “thank you” into his hair, before Izuku slowly releases him, grinning from ear to ear. “Sorry we weren’t there this morning, but we didn’t want to wake you when we left for our morning shift.”

Shouto smiles at him. “That’s fine”, he says. “I kinda stayed up late last night because I got really caught up in Animal Crossing, so it’s probably for the best that you didn’t wake me up.”

“Nerd”, Katsuki huffs at that before pulling Shouto away from Izuku and into a tight hug of his own. “Happy birthday, shortcake”, he says by Shouto’s ear in a voice that is somehow simultaneously gruff and soft, and Shouto nuzzles a smile into the nape of Katsuki’s neck.

This is something Shouto is still always pleasantly surprised by - how physically affectionate Katsuki can actually be. Izuku has always been quick to give out hugs and other casual touches to people he likes, but when they first met at UA, Shouto certainly didn’t expect Katsuki, of all people, to be as tactile as he is. It was only after they had known each other for a few months and grown closer, that Katsuki started handing out little touches here and there. A comforting hand on Shouto’s shoulder. A little nudge of his side. And then one day, when they were still in the hospital after the Final War but had healed up enough to not re-injure themselves from a simple touch, Katsuki suddenly wordlessly wrapped his arms around Shouto’s shoulders and pulled him in a careful but firm hug. Shouto was so surprised he stood frozen for a moment before carefully wrapping his arms around Katsuki’s waist and reciprocating the embrace. Neither of them said a word and they just stayed like that in the empty hospital hallway for god knows how long, relieved that they were both still alive and revelling in each other’s presence, all soft breaths, warm bodies and beating hearts.

And from then on Shouto seemed to have become one of the very few people in their lives, who regularly got to experience the full scope of Katsuki’s affectionate side.

It still makes Shouto feel all warm and fuzzy inside. He gives Katsuki a tight squeeze, before releasing him to accept hugs and happy birthday wishes from the two sidekicks and four office staff members, who were also part of his birthday welcoming committee. One of the staff members, their IT admin, has even made a batch of chocolate brownies and Shouto thanks her profusely as she hands him the tray.

“Oh, these are delicious!”, he praises through a mouthful of exquisitely soft and gooey chocolate lusciousness, holding out the tray to rest of the little party.

Izuku and Katsuki immediately tuck in like starving wolves, while the sidekicks and office staff accept the offered cake a little more gracefully.

“Oh my god”, Izuku moans obscenely, closing his eyes as he chews, his tongue darting out to lick a few crumbs from his lips, and Shouto has to look the fuck away.

“Behave yourself, nerd”, Katsuki grunts, elbowing Izuku in the ribs, but Shouto doesn’t really think Katsuki gets a say in this, because the way he is licking traces of sticky chocolate off his fingers right now certainly rivals Izuku’s moans in obscenity.

Shouto gulps down another bite of his brownie, which has suddenly started to feel strangely dry in his mouth.

“Like you’re any better, Kacchan”, Izuku retorts, raising an eyebrow at Katsuki’s tongue on his fingers, and Shouto wholeheartedly agrees.

Katsuki pauses mid tongue swipe to narrow his eyes at Izuku. “At least I’m not making noises like a porn star.”

Izuku gasps indignantly and his face promptly turns about five shades pinker. Meanwhile Shouto is trying his damnedest to swallow the rest of his cake without accidentally sending it down his windpipe.

The sidekicks and staff are already eyeing their three bosses curiously and Shouto decides it’s about time to break up this little party. He has to get changed for his afternoon patrol anyway.

“Hey, uh, thanks again for the nice welcome and the birthday wishes and the cake”, he says politely, mostly addressing their subordinates rather than Katsuki and Izuku, who are still engrossed in some sort of competitive stare-down. “I have to go get ready for my shift now, but this was a really nice way to start my work day.”

That finally manages to snap his friends out of their own little world as well. “Oh, um, Shouto, you’ll get home at around 8, right?”, Izuku asks, looking up at Shouto with a soft smile on his face.

Shouto nods. “Yeah, why?”

“No reason really”, Izuku explains quickly. “Just…wanna give you your birthday present.”

Shouto feels his face flood with warmth at that. “Oh. Uh, thank you”, he stammers, still not used to people caring so much about his birthday, even after all these years of being friends with these two and the rest of Class A.

Izuku is still smiling at him. “Stay safe and be careful on patrol, yeah? Everything was pretty calm and quiet this morning, but you never know.”

“Always”, Shouto promises, smiling back. “See you tonight!”

“Yeah, see you tonight!”

“See you later, shortcake.”

And with that his two best friends make their way out through the big entrance of their agency building. Shouto briefly watches them as they walk away, side by side, their steps unconsciously in sync, when his phone buzzes in his pocket.

Hey, little bro, happy birthday! Hope you have a good one. Come give your old brother another visit some time x

Shouto smiles at the screen and quickly sends his thanks and a promise to visit again soon back, then pockets his phone again and makes his way to the locker room.

Thankfully, his afternoon patrol ends up being pretty calm and uneventful (he does stop a mugger from stealing a man’s wallet in an alley on his way back to the agency, but the guy is clearly a newbie to the world of crime and Shouto has him frozen to the ground within seconds), so that by the time the clocks strike eight, he is indeed riding up the lift to his flat. He fumbles with his keys for a moment, nearly dropping them in excitement when he remembers what Izuku said earlier, before pushing the door open and stepping into the genkan.

“Surprise!”, a chorus of 19 all-too-familiar voices greets him, and this time Shouto really does drop his keys.

The entirety of Class A (except for Mineta, the only member of the class no one has kept in touch with) is standing squeezed into the hallway and presumably the living room, wearing silly party hats or funny glasses with a variety of fake noses attached to them. Izuku and Katsuki are fronting the pack, and Shouto is pretty sure that he would be getting tackled into another bone-crushing hug right now if Izuku wasn’t currently holding a gigantic cake with 23 candles on it in his hands.

Shouto quickly kicks off his boots and puts his coat on the hall-stand. He’s almost a little embarrassed, having all these people here just for him, but he also feels incredibly giddy about it.

“Wow, thank you, guys. This is so nice of you”, he says happily to another chorus of birthday wishes and cheers.

“Happy birthday again, Halfie”, Katsuki says, patting his shoulder.

“Here, you have to try to blow them all out in one go”, Izuku tells him excitedly, shoving the cake towards his face. It’s an incredibly intricate thing with multiple layers of fruit and chocolate and artful swirls of cream on top. 

“It’s vegan”, Satou informs him from where he’s standing behind Izuku. 

Shouto smiles at him. “Thank you, it looks amazing!”

“Come on, come on, make a wish and blow out the candles, man”, says Kirishima impatiently, grinning at Shouto over Katsuki’s shoulder.

Shouto laughs a little. “Alright, alright.” He pauses for a moment, formulating the by now all-too-familiar wish in his mind he also sends chasing after every shooting star he sees, then takes a deep breath and blows out his 23 candles.

It’s a tough feat. Even his athletic pro hero lungs struggle on the last three candles, but he still manages to get them all in one breath, which elicits another round of cheers from his friends.

The group slowly migrates back from the hallway into the living room and people start spreading out on the sofa, the carpet and the big cushions Izuku and Katsuki must’ve set up on the floor beforehand. Izuku sets the cake down on the dining table next to a stack of plates and starts cutting it in 20 pieces, while Katsuki starts handing out cold beers from the fridge. There’s an upbeat playlist playing in the background and everyone’s chatter quickly starts to mingle with the music. 

Shouto joins Izuku at the dining table and helps him move the pieces of cake onto the plates. “This is a really great present, thank you so much”, he tells his friend earnestly.

Izuku blinks up at him. “Oh, this wasn’t the present I meant. We still have something else for you”, he explains cheerily. “Here, will you start handing these out to everyone? I don’t exactly trust everyone to eat this cake without spilling cream all over our couch or carpet once they’ve had a bit to drink, and I know Kacchan would have a fit if we got stains on our furniture, so I’d rather get this out of the way now while everyone is still sober.”

Shouto snickers at that. Izuku is not wrong - Katsuki probably would lose his mind if their drunken friends started smearing cream all over the sofa.

He quickly picks up two plates and starts doing his waiter services, handing out cake to all the party guests while receiving a few extra rounds of individual congratulations from his friends. By the time he has handed out all the plates and is ready to tuck into his own cake, his cheeks are actually aching from smiling so hard.

“To our Todobroki!”, Kirishima calls out, raising his beer for a toast. Kaminari, Sero and Ashido clink their bottles against Kirishima’s, and the whole class joins into another chorus of cheers.

“To Shouto!”

“To Todoroki-kun!”

“To Icyhot!”

Katsuki shoves a bottle of beer in Shouto’s free hand and knocks his own bottle against it, offering Shouto a smirk. Shouto grins back at him, then takes a large sip from his bottle, still keeping his eyes locked on Katsuki’s.

Which is the only reason why he doesn’t miss the way Katsuki’s eyes flicker down to Shouto’s mouth for a fraction of a second when Shouto closes his lips around the opening of his beer bottle.

Shouto briefly wonders if perhaps he’s got something stuck between his teeth and decides to make a quick trip to the bathroom after he has finished his cake.

“Alright, alright, present time!”, Izuku exclaims cheerily, exchanging a glance with Katsuki, just as Shouto is stuffing the last piece of his cake into his mouth, the cream and chocolate melting delectably on his tongue.

Katsuki disappears into his bedroom and reemerges moments later with a large envelope in his hands.

“So, this is from Kacchan and I. Maybe it’s a little weird and not really what you’re expecting, but we thought it would make you really happy and-“

“Just let him open it”, Katsuki huffs exasperatedly, interrupting Izuku’s rambling with a hand on his shoulder, and hands Shouto the envelope. “Here you go, shortcake. Don’t listen to the nerd.”

Shouto accepts the large envelope with a smile. The plain white design doesn’t give away what’s inside, the only thing written on it being Shouto’s name in neat kanji. He carefully opens the envelope and tugs out an oversized postcard with adorable cartoon cats plastered all over the front. Some of them are holding up colourful letters that spell out “happy birthday” and there are little accents of glitter on their fur. 

“Ohhhh, these are adorable!”, Shouto coos, running his fingers over the slightly rough texture of the sparkly patches.

He flips the card around and his heart actually lurches into his throat. A bold, curving headline reads “cat adoption coupon” in Izuku’s familiar script, with the address of what appears to be a regional animal shelter written underneath it.

“You guys are getting me a cat?”, Shouto asks a little breathlessly, looking up at his friends with wide eyes.

Izuku starts rubbing his neck a bit bashfully. “Well, yeah, I mean, you’re always talking about how you’d really like to adopt a cat, so we did some research. This shelter apparently has a particular large selection of cats that desperately need a new home and we thought we could all go there together, so you could pick one to adopt”, he explains.

“We’re also going to leave them a donation when we go there”, Katsuki adds, offering Shouto an unusually soft smile.

Shouto’s eyes sting a little. “Wow, thank you so much, guys! You have no idea how happy this makes me.” He smiles earnestly at his two best friends and then wraps an arm around each of them to pull them both into a tight little group hug. He nuzzles his face into both of their shoulders for a moment, and as he feels the two of them hug him back, a few lone tears actually do slip out. Thankfully, his friends either don’t notice or have the grace not to comment on it when they pull away again and Shouto sniffles a little.

“Awww, this is so cute”, Ashido coos from the little bubble of people that have gathered around them. “Our turn now!”

And with that, Shouto is handed one gift after another, his friends watching him unwrap them like they’re following an intense sporting competition.

Sero, Kirishima and Ashido have gotten him a box with the first 10 volumes of Jujutsu Kaisen. “You’re gonna love this one, I promise”, Sero tells him excitedly and Shouto fully trusts his judgment. Sero’s manga recommendations have never disappointed him so far.

He thanks his friends profusely before moving on to the next gifts.

Concert tickets for a punk band Jirou got him into, back in high school, from Momo, Jirou and Tokoyami.

A large scrapbook-style photo album filled with pictures of Shouto and the rest of Class A, taken over the course of all their years together, from Iida, Uraraka and Asui. (Katsuki guffaws hysterically over Shouto’s shoulder when he spots a picture of Shouto and Iida from their first-year school festival, posing behind a photo board with face cut-outs over images of their principal and the UA school building respectively.)

A pair of limited edition Dr. Martens with little Animal Crossing characters stitched all over the black leather from Kaminari, Shinsou, Ojiro and Hagakure. (Shouto actually squawks incredulously when he opens the cardboard box. He discovered those boots while he was on a shopping trip with Kaminari a few months back, but resisted buying them at the time since they were awfully pricey and Shouto had just put down a pretty large deposit to get their agency started. He didn’t want to use Endeavour’s money to buy them, but knowing that they would probably sell out very soon it was quite a difficult choice to make.)

And finally a soba-making kit complete with a thick recipe book for all things soba from Satou, Shouji, Kouda and Aoyama.

Shouto feels like his mouth might actually get stuck as he makes his way through his friends’ birthday gifts, entirely unable to stop smiling. He thanks everyone with effusive hugs and the group slowly starts to spread out across the living room again.

When he finally has some space to breathe again, Shouto remembers that he meant to go check whether he’s got something stuck between his teeth, so he excuses himself and heads to the bathroom.

It turns out to be a false alarm - his teeth look perfectly clean as he inspects his reflection in the mirror. Still, he uses the opportunity to fluff up his hair a little and brush his bangs out of his eyes with a bit of water. His hair has been getting quite long recently and he can’t seem to decide whether he should continue growing it out or cut it. Maybe he should invest in some hair clips and hair ties.

Feeling content with his appearance again, he makes his way back to the party (my surprise party, he thinks giddily).

In the living room he finds a little huddle gathered around Kaminari and Jirou, who are sitting on the floor by the coffee table. As Shouto approaches he realises that Jirou has brought her amateur piercing kit and is currently piercing the cartilage near the top of Kaminari’s ear, a new addition to the small gold creoles he’s already sporting in his earlobes - also courtesy of Jirou’s piercing kit. A couple of their friends are watching them intently, Sero nibbling on his thumbnail while Katsuki’s eyes are narrowed at the needle in Jirou’s gloved hands as he absently strokes his fingers over the shell of his own ear.

“Oi, Todoroki!”, Sero calls when he spots him. “Get over here and give me some mental support, yeah? I’m gonna get one of those things, too, when Kaminari’s is done.”

Shouto dutifully marches over to his friends and settles down on the floor next to Sero.

“I’m almost done here”, Jirou informs them without looking up as she fastens the little steel stud that is now glistening at the edge of Kaminari’s ear. Kaminari looks perfectly serene and unbothered by the fact that he just had his best friend poke a gigantic needle through his cartilage.

“Are you getting one of those, too?”, Shouto asks Sero curiously.

His friend shakes his head, looking a bit nervous but determined. “Nahhh, I’m gonna start small with an earlobe piercing. Kinda feels like you should ease into it slowly before you go for the cartilage ones, you know?”

Katsuki tsks from where he’s sitting, fingers still running over his ear. “As if getting your lobes pierced first suddenly makes a cartilage piercing less painful or something.”

“Oi, Bakubro, why don’t you go for it and get an industrial then?”, Kirishima teases good-naturedly, throwing Katsuki a sharp-toothed grin.

Katsuki just glares at him in response, but it kind of lacks edge and he is still touching his own ear. 

Interesting.

Shouto safely files that particular piece of information away to dwell on later as Jirou releases Kaminari to let him show off his new jewellery to everyone and waves Sero over to sit down in Kaminari’s spot.

“Next one”, she sing-songs, carefully disinfecting her needles and changing her gloves. Shouto watches her curiously as she starts to wipe down Sero’s earlobe.

He has always found piercings pretty cool. It certainly wasn’t on his mind at the time, but looking back on it now, Touya’s ear piercings and nose studs always looked incredibly badass to Shouto and they complemented his brother’s overall aesthetic very well until they removed them all in Tartarus. Shouto also thinks that Kaminari’s gold creoles and brand new helix look really good, and he finds himself tracing the soft skin on his left earlobe in thought.

Across from Shouto Sero hisses a little when Jirou drives her needle through his flesh, but it all seems to be over very quickly and soon after Sero is proudly sporting a little silver stud in his ear. Shouto’s eyes follow his friend as he stands up and lets everyone coo and gush over his new earring.

“How about you, birthday boy?”, Jirou suddenly asks, smirking a little at Shouto. “Do you want one, too?”

Does he?

On a whim, Shouto makes a decision.

“Do you also have silver creoles?”, he asks Jirou, and her smirk grows into a full blown smile.

“I do indeed”, she confirms, holding up a slim silver ring. “Technically it’s better to start off with a stud during the healing period, but if you promise to be careful and take good care of it, I’ll let you have a ring from the start.”

“I promise”, Shouto tells her dutifully as he sits down cross-legged in front of her.

“Earlobe? Which side?”

“Left, please”, Shouto says, turning his head a little to grant her better access to his ear.

“Oh, hold on.” Jirou discards her gloves and fishes a bobby pin out of her pocket. “Your hair is in the way”, she explains as she carefully gathers up the red strands covering Shouto’s ear and pins them in place behind it. “Better.”

She quickly sanitises her tools again and pulls on a fresh pair of gloves. “Are you fine with needles?”

Shouto nods. “I think so, yeah.”

Jirou smiles at him approvingly. “Good. This will only sting briefly, honestly. Earlobes are pretty tame when it comes to piercings”, she promises as she cleans Shouto’s earlobe with a cool wet disinfectant wipe.

“I’ll be fine”, Shouto assures her. “I’ve sustained much worse injuries befo- oh”, he gasps a little as a sudden sharp sting pierces his flesh, but it’s already over again before he can even react properly. “Was that it already?”

Jirou hums. “Yeah. Told you it’s not that bad.” She prods around at his ear a little, presumably fastening the little silver hoop. “Here, you need to spray it with piercing disinfectant every morning and every night while it’s healing”, she explains, dropping a little spray bottle in Shouto’s hands.

“Thank you”, Shouto tells her earnestly, not quite able to stop himself from grinning at her.

Jirou laughs and waves him off. “Yeah, yeah, happy birthday. Go check it out in the mirror.”

Shouto excitedly bounds off to the bathroom to inspect his new style upgrade. When he catches sight of his reflection a warm wave of satisfaction floods his chest. Not only does his new earring look incredibly cool to him, but he also really likes the way Jirou has pinned part of his hair back. The whole look somehow makes him seem more grown up and a little bit edgier, and there’s also a certain air of androgyny about it.

Shouto loves it and he’s smiling happily as he makes his way back to the living room and plops down on the sofa between Iida and Uraraka.

“Ohhh, Todoroki-kun, that earring looks amazing!”, Uraraka gushes excitedly, turning a bit sideways so she can inspect it better.

“Thanks”, Shouto says, grinning at her blissfully.

“I second what Uraraka-kun said”, Iida tells him as he twists his body to sort of lean across Shouto’s chest and look at his new jewellery from up close.

Across from them Izuku, Katsuki, Kaminari and Shinsou are sitting on the large cushions on the floor.

“Come here, I wanna see it, too!”, Izuku says, making grabby hands in Shouto’s direction.

As if Shouto could ever say no to him.

He obediently stands up and crouches down in front of his friend. Izuku leans in close to look at Shouto’s ear, and Shouto can smell a faint trace of beer and alcohol in his breath, but he finds that he doesn’t actually mind, way too caught up in the knowledge that he would only have to slightly tilt his head and lean in a bit further to brush his lips against Izuku’s slightly parted ones.

The thought is making Shouto feel a bit drunk, even though he’s only had a few sips of beer so far.

“Hey, Kacchan, when are you gonna get one of these?”, Izuku asks then, smirking slyly.

“I’m gonna Howitzer Impact you if you ask me that one more time, nerd”, Katsuki grunts beside him, and Shouto can’t help but huff a laugh.

“Something funny, Icyhot?”, his explode-happy friend inquires, the way he is looking at Shouto betraying the challenging tone in his voice.

Shouto can’t quite get a read on the slightly wide-eyed gaze Katsuki has trained on him, but he chalks it up to his suspicions that part of Katsuki wants to get a piercing, too, and raises his hands in mock surrender.

“No, no, nothing”, he laughs, getting back up on his feet and settling down on the couch again.

With his friends all gathered around him like this, Shouto feels blissfully happy, and for a while he just lets the music and chatter and laughter wash over him like a warm shower of summer rain. He isn’t always the best at keeping track of conversations in larger groups, especially when there’s a lot of background noise, but right now he feels perfectly content to just zone out a little and watch his friends as they talk and joke amongst themselves.

Kaminari and Shinsou almost seem to be in their own little bubble as they laugh and whisper to each other. Shouto kind of feels a bit stupid for never noticing how those two felt about each other before they got together, because as he’s watching them now he finds it glaringly obvious that they’re in love with each other. Kaminari looks at Shinsou like he personally hung the moon and every single star in the dark velvet night sky, and Shinsou’s eyes are softer than Shouto has ever seen them before whenever he looks at Kaminari.

Shouto shakes his head a little at his own past cluelessness and lets his gaze wander further across the room, watching Momo bury her face against Jirou’s shoulder as she giggles at something undoubtedly ridiculous Kirishima has said. A little further behind them Ojiro and Hagakure are tucked in a corner together, talking to each other with half-empty beer bottles in their hands. Shouto obviously can’t see Hagakure’s face, but he can tell by the way Ojiro looks in her direction that the two of them are completely caught up in their own world, and it would probably take a Dynamight-level explosion to rattle them out of it.

It’s strange, Shouto thinks. When he already knows that people are a couple, he actually finds it very easy to see how they feel about each other. Maybe that’s because couples are more confident in showing their affections for each other openly. Still, it kind of bothers him that he always seems to need someone to spell it out for him first.

As he continues to lazily sweep his eyes across the room they finally settle on Izuku and Katsuki on their floor cushions. His best friends. The two people - other than his siblings and his mum - that he loves the most in this world. He watches them, watches as Katsuki recounts a seemingly funny story, watches as Izuku throws his head back, laughing heartily at whatever Katsuki just told him. He watches the way Katsuki watches Izuku as he laughs.

And suddenly it hits Shouto like a ton of bricks and his blissful little bubble bursts.

It feels like a heavy punch to his chest, actually knocking the wind out of him for a moment. Something cold and ugly is clamping its claws around Shouto’s ribcage and it hurts.

It really fucking hurts.

The way Izuku looks at Katsuki like he hung the moon. The way Katsuki’s eyes soften when he looks at Izuku.

It’s too much and Shouto’s mind is spinning in nauseating circles.

He needs to get out of here.

He jumps up from the couch, almost tripping over Iida’s knee in the process.

“Woah, are you okay?”, his friend asks, steadying him with a hand on his arm.

“I’m fine”, Shouto croaks. “I need to call my brother.”

He doesn’t wait for an answer, rather makes a beeline straight for the bathroom and locks himself inside. He sits down on the edge of the tub and forces himself to breathe deeply to slow down his racing heart.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

His palms are cold and sweaty, and he wipes them on his jeans before burying his face in his hands. Maybe the darkness will shut off the swirling thoughts in his mind.

Could it really be…?

Are Izuku and Katsuki…?

Shouto attempts to physically shake himself out of it, forcing himself to walk over to the sink and splash cold water in his face. He needs to get a grip. Given his track record with these kinds of things, there’s a pretty strong likelihood that he just completely misinterpreted one little interaction that didn’t actually mean anything.

Izuku has always admired Katsuki, ever since they were children, hasn’t he?

And Katsuki has always had a soft spot for Izuku, even when he still tried very hard to pretend he didn’t.

Things have always been like that with those two. That doesn’t have to mean that they also have romantic feelings for each other, does it? And if they did, they would’ve gotten together a long time ago already, Shouto presumes. Because that’s how those kinds of things work, right?

Shouto is probably just freaking out over nothing.

Still, he feels uneasy and unsettled, his heart still pounding way too hard against his ribcage, and suddenly he remembers his getaway excuse. He didn’t actually intend to call his brother, but now he thinks that perhaps talking to Touya will actually help him calm down, so he fishes his phone out of his pocket and pulls up his brother’s contact.

The phone rings a few times, and Shouto nearly hangs up again, suddenly realising how late it already is, but then Touya picks up.

“Hello, birthday boy! To what do I owe this honour?”

“Hello, nii-san”, Shouto greets him, his voice still sounding a little croaky.

“Are you okay?” , his brother asks, and Shouto can almost hear him frown through the speaker.

He clears his throat a little. “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry for calling so late, I hope I didn’t wake you.”

Touya chuckles. “Nah, it’s alright. I was just changing into my pyjamas. Are you out partying?”

“No, I’m at home. My friends threw me a surprise party.” He smiles a little as he says this, still feeling so very lucky to have these people in his life.

Touya hums appreciatively. “That’s pretty cool of them. Do I need to give you a lecture about alcohol and drugs and knowing your limits?”

“I am 23 years old”, Shouto points out drily.

“That’s what I’m saying. I certainly didn’t know my limits when I was 23.”

Shouto raises an eyebrow, even though his brother can’t actually see him. “You were trying to kill me and my friends when you were 23.”

“Case in point. Alcohol, drugs, homicide - everyone goes a little wild at 23."

Shouto can’t help but snort at that. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m actually nearly sober.”

“Oh god, you’re not planning to kill anyone, are you?” , his brother asks in faux-concern, and that actually draws a proper laugh out of Shouto. 

“Don’t worry, there are no immediate plans”, he assures, cackling a little.

Touya exhales dramatically. “Phew, I’m glad. Now, is there an actual reason you called me or did you just miss your big brother?”

“Well…”, Shouto starts, hesitating a little. “Actually I was wondering if I could come visit you again tomorrow.”

“Sure” , Touya says breezily. “Would it work for you in the evening? I, uh, I have some stuff to take care of during the day” , he adds after a moment.

“I could make it at around 8, I’ve got the afternoon shift tomorrow.”

“Sounds good. See you tomorrow, then!”

Shouto smiles a little. “Yeah, see you tomorrow!”

Calling Touya really was a good idea, Shouto thinks as he pockets his phone again. His heart feels much lighter and he has calmed down significantly. Perhaps he can even ask him for some input to help Shouto figure things out. He’s sure his brother’s life experience will come in handy for that sort of thing.

When he finally emerges from the bathroom again, he notices Iida and Uraraka eyeing him with open concern, while Katsuki and Izuku seem to be looking at him rather curiously. He offers his friends what he hopes is a reassuring smile and joins them in the living room again.

With it being a weekday and most of their group having to work the next day, the party guests soon start to file out and Shouto makes sure to thank each of them for the lovely surprise again as he hugs them goodbye.

After everyone has left, Shouto, Katsuki and Izuku quickly clean out the empty cups, bottles and plates from the living room, before Shouto pulls each of them in another tight hug, thanking them for setting the whole thing up for him.

“You’re very welcome”, Izuku tells him, all warm eyes and sunny smile. 

“Yeah, happy to do this for you, shortcake”, Katsuki agrees. His red eyes are almost unbearably soft as he catches Shouto’s gaze and it makes Shouto’s heart clench a little.

When he finally falls into his bed that night, it’s with an odd mix of emotions pooling in his gut. He wraps his duvet tighter around himself and, thankfully, his exhaustion from the eventful day takes over soon and pulls him away into the land of strange dreams.

Chapter Text

“Birdie, I need your help. It’s an emergency”, Touya greets Hawks unceremoniously when the hero shows up on Touya’s doorstep for his daily morning check-in.

The bird’s eyes immediately widen in alarm and he tenses up like he’s readying himself for a fight. “What’s wrong?”

“I need a birthday present for my brother by tonight”, Touya explains, gesturing dramatically.

Hawks visibly relaxes at that, and a smirk starts to creep its way onto his face. “Pretty last minute”, he notes with a raised eyebrow as he toes off his shoes in the genkan and follows Touya into the kitchen.

“Yeah, well. I didn’t think I’d be seeing him again this soon, but he called late last night and invited himself over for tonight.” He grabs a mug for Hawks’ usual coffee from the cupboard before making a show of dutifully swallowing his medication for his BPD. The hero smiles at him approvingly.

“I don’t even have an idea what to get him yet, and I most definitely won’t be able to get anything by tonight unless you send your assistant out to buy it in store”, Touya continues then, running his hand through his hair and lightly scratching at his scalp.

Hawks’ eyes seem to trace the movement and it takes the hero a few moments before he actually opens his mouth to speak. “Let’s brainstorm this then”, he suggests as he pops a pod in the coffee machine and sets his mug underneath it. The bird has really started to make himself at home in Touya’s flat surprisingly quickly.

“What kinds of things does Shouto like?”

“Soba”, Touya blurts immediately, which earns him a knowing little smile from the hero. Touya pointedly ignores it, lest he spiral into another bout of gooey feelings about actually having things in common with his baby brother. “Cats, manga”, he continues listing things. “I think he also really likes Animal Crossing, but I don’t really know much about that. Never played it as a kid and it wasn’t exactly the type of game Shigaraki was into.”

Hawks hums thoughtfully. “I don’t know anything about Animal Crossing either, but I guess this is at least a decent place to start.”

“So you’re gonna help me then?”, Touya questions, not quite able to keep the relief out of his voice.

“Not like I’ve got anything else to do”, Hawks points out, grinning at him a little crookedly, and Touya feels a bit dizzy for a second, so he quickly averts his gaze.

“Oh! He also likes hot chocolate”, he suddenly remembers then, his eyes catching sight of the cocoa powder container Shouto left out on the counter the other day. “For whatever mysterious reason.”

“A man of taste”, Hawks says, nodding approvingly, because of course he would.

Touya scoffs exasperatedly. “How come my pro hero babysitter and pro hero baby brother both have the tastebuds of a five-year-old?”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong”, said pro hero babysitter tells him sagely. “You’re never too old for hot chocolate.”

Touya gives him an unimpressed look. “Mmmhhh, we’ll talk again in a few decades when you both have cavities and diabetes.”

“Aww, so you still see me in your life when we’re both old and grey?”, Hawks teases with a hand on his heart.

Touya mentally kicks himself all the way into the stratosphere.

“Shut up and make yourself useful, Birdie”, he snaps halfheartedly, and Hawks has the fucking audacity to giggle as he obediently follows Touya into the living room.

They set up camp in their usual spots on the couch, except this time they sit much closer, so that they can both look at Touya’s laptop on the coffee table together, and their knees bump against each other when Touya leans forward to open a new browser window.

“Sorry”, he mumbles awkwardly.

“No problem”, Hawks assures breezily and purposely knocks his knee against Touya’s again.

Despite the briefness of the contact and the layers of Touya’s jeans and Hawks’ uniform trousers separating them, Touya can still feel the hero’s warmth against the unblemished patch of skin on the side of his knee. Part of him wants to withdraw from the contact like he’s been burnt, but another, much louder part wants to chase it. He wonders what would happen if he scooted just a tiny bit closer to the hero, how it would feel to press their thighs together.

The thought is slightly maddening, in a worryingly addictive way, and Touya mentally shakes himself out of it to redirect his focus to the much more important task at hand.

“Right. So. Is there any way we could combine the things Shouto likes?”, he ponders, his fingers hovering over the keyboard.

“You mean, like, a manga about soba?”, Hawks muses, and Touya can’t help but snort.

“Not exactly what I was going for, but you get the gist.”

“Hmm. There’s a lot of manga merch out there, right? Animal Crossing probably has merch, too. Maybe we can just start by looking through merch offers and see if something there meets our criteria”, the bird suggests, tilting his head. “What kind of manga does he like?”

“Well, he recently mentioned One Piece. Shit, I wish I had asked him who his favourite character is”, Touya curses himself, before a thought suddenly crosses his mind. “Hey, Birdie?”

“Hm?”

“Do you have Cellophane’s contact information?”

Hawks stares at him quizzically. “Like, pro hero Cellophane?”

Touya nods.

“Uh, well, technically I do. There’s this pro hero emergency network we all have on our phones, just in case we urgently need to get in touch with a specific pro hero. As the name suggests, we’re only supposed to use it for emergencies, though”, the hero points out reluctantly, still staring at Touya like he’s some sort of maths problem he’s trying to solve.

Touya puts on his best pleading face. “This is an emergency, Birdie”, he says gravely. “Cellophane is the one who got Shouto into One Piece. He probably knows which characters my brother likes, and we’re on a time limit.”

Hawks seems to consider this for a moment, his brows furrowed, before he heaves out a sigh and fumbles his phone out of his uniform pocket. “Fine. If he gets mad at me for using the emergency channel to contact him for something so trivial, you explain that to him, though”, he warns a little petulantly as he dials up the call.

Touya grins at him triumphantly. “Fine by me”, he says with a shrug.

Hawks sets the call to speaker and puts his phone down on the table next to Touya’s laptop. It rings a few times before someone finally picks up.

“Hello? Cellophane here”, a voice greets them through the tinny speaker, clearly sounding confused but also as though ready to spring into action.

“Hello, Cellophane. This is Hawks. I apologise for using this channel to contact you.”

“Is something wrong? Do you need my help?”, Cellophane asks, voice full of concern.

A pro hero all the way through, Touya thinks, a little amused.

“Nothing is wrong, don’t worry”, Hawks quickly assures him. “I could really use your help with something, though. Non-hero related”, he adds.

The hero on the other end of the line exhales audibly. “Ah, I’m glad. What can I help you with?” He sounds much more relaxed and cheerful now.

“Well, I know you’re friends with Todoroki Shouto and I’m currently helping his brother pick out a birthday gift for him, but we’re a little stuck.”

“Hello, Cellophane, this is Shouto’s brother speaking”, Touya jumps into the conversation. He’s the one who needs help after all, so the bird shouldn’t have to do all the work for him.

“Woahhh”, Cellophane blurts out. “That’s…Dabi, right?”, he questions a bit nervously.

Touya swallows.

Well.

This reaction was to be expected, wasn't it?

“Yes”, he confirms. “I go by Touya nowadays, though.” He takes a deep breath. “Listen, I’m sorry if this is weird or uncomfortable for you or something. I know how you UA kids probably feel about me and I totally get it. I did a lot of really terrible shit to you guys and I’m genuinely sorry for that. I don’t expect you to forgive me or anything, but right now I just really need some input from someone who was there for my baby brother while I was too busy being fake-dead and planning my terrorist suicide mission.” He rattles all of this off at rapid fire speed, afraid he’ll lose his nerve again if he gives himself a moment to breathe and think. From the corner of his eye he can see Hawks watching him with an unreadable expression on his face, but he forces himself to keep his focus on the smartphone on the table in front of him.

For a moment there’s just silence on the other end of the line. “Wow. Um”, Cellophane finally stammers out awkwardly. “Uh. It’s fine. Not what you did in the past, but. Asking me for help. Now. That’s fine.”

Touya breathes a sigh of relief. “Thank you”, he tells the hero earnestly.

“So…what do you need?”

“Well, I wanted to get Shouto something One Piece related for his birthday, but I stupidly forgot to ask him who his favourite character is. He mentioned that you’re the one who got him into the series, so I figured maybe you know who he likes best?”, Touya explains his dilemma.

Cellophane laughs a little. “Oh, you have come to the right person then, although it has been a while since we last talked about this. He always used to claim his favourite was Zoro, but I’m pretty sure it’s actually Ace. He probably didn’t wanna admit that because it’s a bit too on the nose.”

Touya snorts. “Yeah, fair enough.”

“He’s also always said that Chopper is adorable, but that one is kind of obvious, isn't it? I mean, everyone thinks Chopper is adorable.” The hero on the phone pauses. “Actually, maybe you don’t.”

“Oi! What’s that supposed to mean?”, Touya squawks offendedly, although if asked he would most certainly deny the squawking-part.

“Well, I guess it just doesn’t really fit in with your whole…villain aesthetic…” Cellophane trails off, his tone dripping with faux-innocence.

Fucking hell, that kid went from being intimated by Dabi to taking the piss out of Touya awfully quickly. 

Why the hell are all of Shouto’s friends so goddamn impertinent?!

“I’ll have you know that even big bad villains are capable of finding things cute”, Touya points out indignantly, and he doesn’t miss the way Hawks suddenly presses a hand over his mouth and turns a concerningly deep shade of red. Touya glares at him and the hero releases a tortured little snort into his hand.

On the other end of the line Cellophane laughs unabashedly. “I apologise for making wrong assumptions”, he says, not sounding sorry at all.

Just for good measure Touya throws the phone a death glare as well.

“Somehow I get the feeling you don’t actually mean that”, he deadpans. “However, since you’ve just provided me with very helpful information, I’ll let it slide. This time.”

“Oi, don’t threaten my colleague”, Hawks admonishes lightly.

“Don’t worry, Birdie, I wouldn’t dream of it”, Touya promises diligently, which earns him a playfully raised eyebrow from the bird. 

“Thanks for your help, Cellophane”, Touya tells the hero on the phone then.

“Sure, no problem. Are we, uh, done here now? ‘Cause I kinda need to get ready for work.”

“Yes, of course. As Touya said, thank you very much for your help, and apologies for keeping you”, Hawks swoops in politely.

“No worries. See you, then!”

And with that Cellophane hangs up.

“That went pretty well”, Touya notes with satisfaction.

“Apart from you threatening a pro hero”, Hawks teases.

“I’m Shouto’s brother, it’s part of my job to mess with his friends a little.”

Hawks laughs at that. “You keep telling yourself that. Now, what about, uh, Ace? And Zoro? And, what was it, Chopper?”

Touya squints at him suspiciously. “You’ve never heard of One Piece before today, have you?”

“Afraid not”, the hero admits, rubbing his neck sheepishly.

“Damn, you really do still have a lot of pop culture to catch up on, Birdie. I have the first few volumes on my bookshelf, if you’re interested. You should also be able to find the anime online if that’s more your thing”, Touya offers helpfully. In a weirdly twisted and ironic way he sympathises a lot with the hero’s upbringing that caused him to miss out on so many things most people their age simply take for granted.

It’s strange, Touya thinks, how the two of them are basically polar opposites in so many ways, yet somehow, in some ways, they’re also oddly similar.

“Thanks”, Hawks says, smiling at him earnestly, all soft eyes and hints of dimples in his cheeks, and Touya quickly reverts his focus to the task at hand.

He pulls up the website of a pretty famous chain store that sells all kinds of nerdy things, including merch and gadgets. “They still have one of these downtown, right?”

“Pretty sure, yeah”, Hawks confirms.

The colourful homepage of the website has a large section at the top displaying their most popular franchises.

“Bingo!”, Touya exclaims triumphantly as he clicks on the hyperlink leading to the One Piece product section.

“Oh, they even seem to have Animal Crossing stuff as well”, Hawks notes. “Perhaps you’ll find something there, too.”

After meticulously digging his way through the massive selection of One Piece merchandise on the website, Touya finally settles on a white t-shirt with a cool print of Ace using his fire power on it. He has also found a pair of socks with lots of tiny Choppers on them and he just knows that’s the kind of thing Shouto would find adorable, so he decides to get those, too.

“This doesn’t really combine any of his interests, though”, he muses as he sends Hawks the screenshots he took of the t-shirt and the socks so the hero can forward them to his assistant.

“How about a mug with something he likes on it? He could use that to drink hot chocolate”, Hawks suggests. “Never underestimate the gift potential of a nice mug.”

Touya really wants to make fun of the bird for that strange piece of wisdom, but unfortunately he can’t deny that he, too, has always found a certain joy in drinking his tea or coffee from a mug with a cool design on it.

“Hm, might as well”, he relents, clicking his way back to the franchise selection page and opening the Animal Crossing section. He filters the products for mugs and is greeted by an overwhelming amount of cute little animal motives printed on them.

“Oh god, I’m completely out of my depth here. I don’t know enough about this game”, Touya groans as he skims his eyes over the screen. “Wait, I think Animal Crossing has cat characters. Please keep your eyes peeled for cats, Birdie.”

“That one’s a cat, right?”, Hawks pipes up when Touya scrolls down. He pauses and follows the hero’s finger as he points at the screen.

“That’s an orange.”

“Yeah, but it’s a cat.”

Touya blinks at the screen. The mug Hawks has pointed out does indeed have a cat on it. A cat that looks like an orange.

He sighs defeatedly. “What the hell, sure. Shouto will probably think it’s funny.”

“Alright then”, Hawks says cheerily. “I’ll have my assistant go downtown to buy these. In the meantime I’ll go search for wrapping paper in my flat because I’m assuming you don’t have any, do you?”

Touya shakes his head. “Probably not. Hey, um. Thanks for all this”, he says a bit hoarsely as he follows the hero to the front door.

Hawks waves him off, smiling up at him from the genkan. “Happy to help. See you later!”

***

By the time Shouto shows up at the agency for his afternoon shift the uneasiness in his gut from the previous night is almost forgotten and he starts his patrol in good spirits, his evening plans practically shining on the horizon like the low-hanging winter sun above the snow-covered hills on the outskirts of the city.

The cold weather has been very persistent so far this year, and the dirty slush on the roads aside, there hasn't been a trace of the snow melting since shortly before New Year’s Eve. Shouto knows a lot of his friends really hate winter, especially those like Katsuki whose Quirks kind of rely on warmer weather, but personally, Shouto absolutely revels in it. He loves the way his ice mixes and synergises with the snow and how the cold allows him to keep his creations up and solid pretty much indefinitely.

As he patrols the sidewalks of their agency’s jurisdiction he continuously tries to create intricate little ice sculptures in his right hand. He still finds it rather difficult to form particularly complex structures with his ice, but he’s been practicing for years and the freezing air around him allows him to go slow and really focus on how he is directing his ice, so by the time he has finished his first lap around the block he’s holding a little heart, a star and what he thinks is vaguely recognisable as a cat in his hand. He’s definitely going to need to keep practicing that one, but for now he is pretty satisfied with the results, so he carefully shoves his creations in his right pocket, steadily emanating frosty air from his thigh to keep the little sculptures from melting.

Perhaps he’ll use them to decorate the freezer in their shared kitchen at the agency later.

The sun has started to set and Shouto abandons his little art project to keep his focus sharp. Afternoon patrols generally tend to be rather uneventful in their part of town, but once it gets dark out certain types of criminals, the ones that silently drag people into shady alleys to rob or rape them, become much braver and start crawling out of their holes, so Shouto wants to make sure he’s keeping an eye on the back alleys he passes them by.

It’s probably one of the ugliest parts of his job, Shouto thinks. Fighting big bad cartoonish villains who want power, revenge or the destruction of the world is one thing, but physically having to pull some grimy thug off of a knocked-out passerby he was forcing himself onto, just for the hell of it, is a whole other thing. It’s gross and fucked up in ways that Shouto simply can’t wrap his head around. 

He shudders a little as he keeps walking, eyes vigilantly flitting from side to side to scan the dark alleys branching off from the main road.

When he’s just about to finish his second lap around the block, his ear-piece suddenly crackles.

“Red Riot here, anyone in the area who can fight someone with some sort of shock absorption Quirk? I’m keeping the situation in check, but it’s kind of a bad match-up for me and I can’t really do anything to incapacitate the lady.”

Shouto glances at Kirishima’s coordinates on his GPS wristband. “Red Riot? Shouto here. Do you think my Quirk will work on her? I’m a three minute flight away.”

“Shouto! Hey, bro, yeah, I think you should be able to freeze her. Would be super manly if you could come by and help me out.”

“I’ll be there soon”, Shouto promises and launches himself into the air with a blast of fire.

“Awesome, thanks, man!”, Kirishima replies gratefully. “I’ve already gotten the civilians out, it seems like she was trying to rob a jewellery store. One guy got a pretty nasty cut on his cheek when the villain shattered the store window and sent shards of glass flying, but the paramedics are already on their way and everyone else is uninjured. I basically just keep moving around and blocking her path out of the evacuated store. She can’t get past me, but all my hits just keep bouncing off her, so we’re at a stalemate.”

“I see”, Shouto says, nodding even though Kirishima can’t actually see him. He turns up his heat another notch to increase his flight speed, the glistening rooftops underneath him gliding past shockingly fast. “I’m almost there”, he tells friend when he finally descends onto the road the jewellery store is located on.

He can see Kirishima, Quirk fully activated, moving side to side like a goalkeeper behind the remnants on the storefront, and even deeper into the store he can make out the shape of an average-sized woman. She looks pretty nondescript when Shouto gets close enough to make her out properly. 

Rather useful trait to have as a villain, he thinks, pinpointing his focus on the woman and drawing his ice up to the surface.

“Step aside”, he says into his headset and Kirishima reacts instantly, dodging out of Shouto’s way.

Shouto shoots a high speed flurry of ice through the demolished shop window, and before the villain can even react or grasp the situation she is encased up to the neck in a thick block of ice and frozen to the plush carpet on the ground.

“What-“, she starts, gaze flitting around bewilderedly before she finally notices Shouto approaching the shop and realisation visibly dawns in her eyes. “You.”

Ah.

The recognisability that comes with being a pro hero is something Shouto is still sometimes getting used to, even though having grown up the way he has he was probably by the far the one most familiar with fame already when Class A was first shoved into the limelight back when they were at UA.

“Hey, man, thanks so much for this. You’re a lifesaver!”

Shouto thinks Kirishima is probably being a bit overdramatic there - the villain doesn’t really seem like she had homicidal intentions - but he still happily accepts the bear hug his friend engulfs him in.

“Anytime”, Shouto tells him, reciprocating the embrace before jumping away in realisation. “Oh, careful, you’re gonna crush my ice sculptures!”

Kirishima looks at him quizzically as he releases Shouto from his grip. 

“Here”, Shouto explains, pulling the heart, star and slightly misshapen cat out of his pocket and holding his hand out to his friend.

“Ohhhh, these are so cute! Did you make these?!”, the redhead exclaims excitedly, carefully tracing a finger along the cat’s icy back.

Shouto nods proudly. “I’m still practicing, but I think I’ve been getting a lot better at creating complex structures.” He tilts the cat sideways to show off the undersides of its paws. “Look, it even has toe beans.”

Kirishima coos, leaning over Shouto’s hand to inspect the little sculpture more closely.

“Oi! Could you two do that another time, maybe? I’m freezing my arse off over here”, the villain pipes up, disgruntled, from her ice block.

Shouto gives her an unimpressed look. “We have to wait for the police to arrive. I’ll thaw you if it gets too dangerous.”

She glares at him but doesn’t utter another word until the authorities arrive. When Shouto finally sets out to melt her out of the ice block, starting with her hands so the police can put her in cuffs, she curiously tilts her head at him. 

“What’s that like? Trying to be a goody-two-shoes pro hero now, while your brother is one of the most destructive villains this country has faced over the past decade and your father is a hypocritical ex-pro slash domestic abuser?”, the villain taunts casually.

Shouto forces himself to keep up his neutral deadpan face as he thaws the ice around her shoulders. “I’m not my brother and I’m not my father.”

The villain cackles a little, like there’s a private joke Shouto is missing out on. “No, no, you’re not. I was just wondering how you do it. Must take a lot of compartmentalising on your part.” She almost sounds genuinely intrigued.

“Don’t answer her”, Kirishima says, walking up next to Shouto and leaning a little into his side.

His friend is probably right, but Shouto can’t quite help himself. Even after all these years the shadows of his family’s past still sometimes loom over him and he hates it when people try to reduce him to all that. “I make sure I do better than my father, so that situations like my brother’s never happen again”, he explains a bit stiffly but firmly.

The villain cackles again, throwing her head back like Shouto just told the most hilarious joke in the world.

Kirishima gently wraps a hand around Shouto’s arm, just as he finishes thawing the ice keeping the villain frozen to the ground. “Come on, that’s enough”, he says softly, pulling Shouto away and leaving the villain to the police. “Don’t engage with them when they try to get you riled up like that.”

Shouto sighs a little. “I know, I know.” He runs his hand through his too-long bangs, probably getting the white and red strands all mixed up. “I hate it when they throw my father’s abusive behaviour in my face like I wasn’t literally one of his victims. It feels like they’re trying to blame me for not stopping him back then. Before Touya became Dabi. Like everything that happened after could’ve been avoided if I had just done my part as an aspiring hero.”

“That’s insane!”, Kirishima exclaims indignantly, staring at Shouto with wide eyes. “You were just a small child! None of that was your responsibility!”

“I know", Shouto groans frustratedly, because of course he does. “It just bothers me when they try to twist the work I do now into something hypocritical or tainted by insinuating that I somehow failed to stop my father and prevent what happened to Touya.”

Kirishima puts his hands firmly on Shouto’s shoulders and looks at him emphatically. “Listen, man. I know you know this, but I just need to tell you again. None of that stuff was your fault. There was nothing you could've done to prevent any of it when you were a child, and you did stop your brother in the end. As soon as you found out that Dabi was him you sprung into action - while your father, by the way, couldn’t move a damn muscle. Bakugou told me about how Endeavour was completely frozen when Dabi revealed who he was, while you were shouting at your father to protect Bakugou and Midoriya. And then you immediately took it upon yourself to stop and save your brother, and you did ! Look where you both are now! You did everything in your power to get the best possible outcome of a situation you were shoved into by things completely beyond your control.”

Shouto almost gets a little choked up listening to his friend’s earnest and reassuring declaration. He knows the redhead is right, and hearing those validating words makes him feel a lot better. “Thank you”, he rasps, awkwardly clearing his throat. “This, uh, this really means a lot to me.”

“Of course, of course!”, Kirishima tells him heartily, patting Shouto’s shoulder. Shouto offers him a slightly wobbly smile in return and takes a deep grounding breath.

They quickly give their statements to the police (Shouto pointedly ignores the villain, who has gone back to glaring daggers at him from where she’s being held by two officers), then say their goodbyes. Shouto still has about ten minutes left of his patrol shift, so he decides to do one last check of the entire area from the air before making his way back to the agency.

He drops his little ice sculptures off in the kitchen, artfully placing them in the freezer next to someone’s pre-prepped dinner, and takes a quick shower in the locker room. When he emerges from the bathroom with a towel around his waist he almost trips over Izuku, who is half-crouching and seemingly fighting to manoeuvre his foot through the tight thermal trousers of his undersuit.

Shouto instinctively grabs onto the open door of Izuku’s locker to keep himself from toppling over his friend and the hinges creak dangerously under his weight. 

“Woah”, Izuku squawks, abandoning his halfway pulled up pants to clap a hand over his heart dramatically. “You scared the living daylights out of me.”

Shouto giggles as he makes his way over to his own locker to get dressed. “Sorry.”

“Did your shift go over well?”

“Yeah, there were no incidents at all in our jurisdiction”, he confirms, putting on his own trousers much more gracefully than his friend. “I made some ice creatures. They’re in the communal freezer if you wanna check them out.”

Izuku’s eyes light up at that. “Oooh, have you been practicing?”

Shouto nods. “A little, yeah. The cold weather helps.”

“That’s so cool!”, Izuku tells him excitedly, and Shouto feels a fond little ball of warmth uncurl in his chest. He offers his friend a quick smile before hiding his face by pulling on his hoodie. The hem snags a little on his new earring with a sharp sting - he’ll have to remember to be more careful with this sort of stuff now.

“I also helped Kirishima contain an attempted robbery of a jewellery shop. The villain had some sort of shock absorption Quirk.”

Izuku frowns, and Shouto can practically see the nerdy little gears turning in his head. “That’s definitely an impractical Quirk match-up for Kirishima. I wonder if they also had some sort of skin protection? Would the sharp edges of Kirishima’s Hardening have been able to cut them or would those have been absorbed, too?”

Shouto contemplates that for a moment as he laces up his boots. “I actually don’t know if Kirishima tried to get any hits in that could’ve cut her, but she didn’t seem to have any visible wounds when we caught her. You should probably ask Kirishima, but I’d lean towards the shock absorption also including immunity to surface-level wounds.”

Izuku hums at that. “Hmm, you’re probably right. I’ll text Kirishima later. Oh, before you go and before I forget: Do you want to come to the mall with Ochako, Tsuyu and me on Saturday? I remember you saying you still needed a birthday present for your brother the other day.”

He does indeed still need a present and he’s starting to get a little desperate, because he just can’t seem to come up with the right idea. He wants it to be something personal, something that shows that he has been paying attention, but despite seven years worth of prison visits Shouto still feels like he knows fairly little about what kinds of things his brother actually likes. The strict security protocols and regulations in Tartarus didn’t exactly leave a lot of room for Touya to display all that much individuality or engage with his interests.

“That sounds great actually, I’m in. I really do still need a present”, Shouto admits, which earns him a cheery smile from his friend. “What are you guys looking for at the mall?”

“Well, Ochako and Tsuyu both need new outfits for the Hero Winter Ball next week…”, Izuku trails off, busying himself with the zipper of his compression shirt.

“And you?”, Shouto prods, raising a suspicious eyebrow in his friend’s direction.

“There may or may not be a “Greatest Heroes of All Time” themed pop-up shop that is selling a new super-duper limited All Might Silver Age figure.”

Shouto can’t help but grin fondly. “I see”, he says, privately revelling in the way Izuku’s cheeks turn a little pink.

“Yeah, yeah”, Izuku huffs dismissively. “Are you heading home now?”

“No, I’m going to visit Touya.”

“Oh. Well. Have fun then! I’d tell you to say hi to him for me, but that would probably be a bit weird, so don’t do that”, Izuku rambles, and it makes Shouto chuckle.

“To be fair, he would probably find it funny”, he points out, pulling on his coat. “Be safe on patrol, yeah? And say hi to Katsuki for me, in case we miss each other later at home. I haven’t seen him yet today.”

“Will do!”, Izuku promises breezily, offering Shouto a silly wave as he heads out the door.

***

When Hawks finally shows up on Touya’s doorstep with a large plastic bag in his hand, it’s nearly 8 o’clock already and Touya has been slowly driving himself into a frenzy for the past hour or so.

“Sorry this took so long”, Hawks apologises breathlessly as he stumbles into the flat and slips out of his boots. “They didn’t have the t-shirt in the right size at the shop downtown, so my assistant drove two towns over to another one of their shops, but with the rush hour traffic that ended up taking significantly longer than expected.”

He unceremoniously dumps the bag on Touya’s living room floor and starts unpacking it. Touya kneels down beside him and soon finds a roll of wrapping paper with colourful balloons printed all over it, a pair of scissors and a roll of tape shoved in his lap, while Hawks sets out the t-shirt, socks and mug on the ground in front of them.

In a sudden flash of pure horror and embarrassment it occurs to Touya, that he has never wrapped a present in his life, and he’s not entirely confident he actually knows how to do it.

“Uh”, he says a bit dumbly, staring at the utensils in his lap.

“Hm?”, Hawks says, glancing up at Touya and staring at him curiously for a moment before his eyes widen a little. “Oh! Do you need help with this? I assumed you could do it with your prosthesis since you can also use a video game controller, but I can totally do it if you need me to!”

Ah.

Yes.

Blaming it on his missing arm would certainly be an easy way out of this.

But it would also be a massive load of bullshit.

Touya’s prosthesis is absolutely cutting edge technology that provides him with nearly the same level of fine motor skills as his real hand, his lack of sensation in the prosthetic hand aside. And for some stupid reason he doesn’t want to lie to the bird about this.

“No, it’s, uh”, he starts, coughing awkwardly. “I’ve never wrapped a present before.” It’s one of those rare moments where he’s kind of glad that nearly half of his face consists of dark purple burn scars, because this way maybe the hero won’t even notice the way Touya feels himself blush.

Hawks laughs, but it’s not unkind.

“Ah, don’t worry about it. I’ll show you how.” He grabs the utensils from Touya’s lap (and Touya totally doesn’t care about the way the hero’s fingers brush his thighs at that, he doesn’t) and puts them down on the floor.

Touya watches him with a raised eyebrow. “You’re not gonna make fun of me?”

Hawks glances up at him pointedly, then starts cutting sheets of wrapping paper from the roll. “I’m pretty sure the first time I wrapped a gift for someone was for Rumi’s 24th birthday. I had to figure out how to do it by myself and it looked ridiculously messy.”

“Rumi?”

“Miruko”, the hero clarifies, chuckling. He picks up the folded t-shirt and places it on one of the sheets. “Here, look. As long as you’re not wrapping something really weirdly shaped, you can pretty much always just do it like this”, he explains as he demonstrates.

Touya feels a bit stupid watching him now, because it actually looks very simple and he feels like he probably should’ve been able to figure that out by himself.

“Now you try it with the socks”, Hawks encourages, nudging the paper and tape over to him. Touya does as told and his work definitely doesn’t look as neat as the bird’s, but he thinks it’s fine. 

He sets out to wrap the mug next (which conveniently comes in a cubical packaging), and just as he attaches the last piece of tape the doorbell rings.

“You go open it, I’ll clean this stuff up in the meantime”, Hawks tells him, so Touya nods gratefully and heads down the hallway to open the door.

“Hello, nii-san”, Shouto greets him cheerily (for his standards) as he slips off his boots and coat.

“Happy birthday, baby bro”, Touya says, pulling his little brother into a hug.

Shouto reciprocates the embrace happily, burying his face against Touya’s shoulder, so that Touya ends up with a nose-full of overgrown red and white hair.

He tries very hard not to sneeze when his little brother detangles himself from him again.

“Thanks!”, he says smiling.

“You want something to drink?”

Shouto’s smile grows a bit wider. “Hot chocolate?”

Touya scoffs and rolls his eyes exasperatedly, but dutifully starts to make his way to the kitchen. Shouto follows him like an oversized puppy.

“Oi, Birdie, do you want something to drink?”, Touya calls towards the direction of the living room. “Hawks is here”, he adds quietly when he notices Shouto’s confused look.

At that Shouto’s eyebrows shoot up almost concerningly fast.

“Oh, I don’t wanna impose”, Hawks replies hesitantly, emerging from the living room with his plastic bag.

“Don’t be stupid”, Touya says dismissively.

“I don’t mind”, Shouto adds politely.

“Well, then…”, the bird says slowly, setting his plastic bag down in the hallway. “First of all, happy birthday, Shouto-kun. And, uh, I guess I’ll have a cup of tea then.” He offers the brothers a dorky smile.

“I’ll just make a pot then. Shouto, you know where to find your stuff.”

“Hot chocolate?”, Hawks asks, grinning at Shouto conspiratorially. 

Shouto nods, albeit a bit bemusedly. “Did you guys talk about me?”, he questions, narrowing his eyes at Touya as he grabs the cocoa powder from the kitchen counter.

“Only good things”, Touya assures him with a smirk, and he can’t quite resist ruffling that ridiculous bi-coloured hair as he shuffles past his brother to grab his container of loose green tea from the cupboard.

Shouto squints at him suspiciously, but then busies himself with shovelling a frankly disgusting amount of cocoa powder in his mug. Hawks watches him, smiling approvingly.

“You’re a man of taste”, he tells Shouto supportively.

“Thank you”, Shouto says solemnly, pouring oat milk into his mug.

“I feel like you two are conspiring against me”, Touya grumbles as he prepares the tea pot.

“We’re just bonding over hot chocolate”, Shouto points out, and goddamnit, the kid has that deadpan delivery down so well, that Touya isn’t entirely sure whether his brother is messing with him or actually being genuine.

Hawks laughs lightly. “Don’t worry, no one is conspiring against you.”

“Yeah, that’s not particularly reassuring, coming from you , Birdie”, Touya points out drily, throwing the hero a pointed look, which just makes the stupid bird laugh even harder.

“Ouch”, he giggles, grasping his chest theatrically. “Fair enough, though.”

Touya sighs long-sufferingly. “Do you see what I have to deal with every day, little bro?”

“I don’t know, I think Hawks is pretty cool”, Shouto says with almost picture-perfect innocence, if it weren't for that stupid mischievous glint in his eyes. 

Touya raises an eyebrow at him. “Tell me again how you’re not conspiring against me?”

“I never said we weren’t”, his baby brother points out, smiling serenely.

“I can’t believe this is my life”, Touya states, shaking his head dramatically. He grabs two empty mugs from the cupboard and shoves them in Hawks’ hands. “Here, make yourself useful.” Then he picks up the steaming pot of tea and leads his two guests over to the living room.

Two guests.

Touya has two guests right now.

In his own flat.

He really never expected his life to end up like this, but contrary to the cool facade he likes to put up he actually feels stupidly giddy about it.

The three of them settle down on the sofa and put their drinks on the coffee table Hawks has apparently decorated with Shouto’s presents. Shouto is eyeing them with badly restrained curiosity and Touya needs to bite back a snort.

“Those are for you, baby bro. Go nuts”, he tells his little brother and Shouto grins at him excitedly.

He picks up the first gift (Touya is pretty sure it’s the t-shirt because the wrapping is so neat) and gasps a little when he sees what’s inside.

“How did you know Ace was my favourite?”, the kid asks, looking at Touya with wide eyes.

“Lucky guess”, Touya says breezily. “Okay, I may have had some help”, he admits after a brief pause.

Shouto is still staring at him with eyes like saucers. “But who…? How…? I’ve never told anyone I like Ace.”

“A gentleman never reveals his sources”, Touya tells him sagely.

Hawks has the audacity to snicker at that. “I don’t think ‘gentleman’ is how I would describe you.”

“Oi!” Touya whips around to glare at the stupid bird. The hero just grins at him dorkily and it makes a strange mix of emotions swirl in Touya’s gut, so he quickly redirects his attention to his little brother.

Shouto is watching Touya and Hawks’ interaction curiously, like there’s something he’s trying to figure out but he doesn’t actually know what it is.

“Come on, open the next one”, Touya tells him quickly to nip whatever obviously wrong interpretation the kid might be cooking up in his mind right now in the bud.

Shouto obliges and starts to unwrap the socks. “Ohhh, these are so cute!”, he coos excitedly, turning them over in his hands to inspect them from every angle. “The design kind of reminds me of these Animal Crossing Dr. Martens my friends got me”, he notes happily, and Touya mentally pats himself on the back for selecting such a fitting combination of presents for his brother’s interests.

The kid sets the socks aside and picks up the last gift. “Very cubical”, he notes matter-of-factly, drawing a snort out of Touya.

“Oh my god, it’s Hyakupā!”, Shouto exclaims as he pulls the cardboard box with the mug inside from the wrapping paper.

Touya blinks a bit dazedly, but ultimately decides not to question what appears to be the fruit cat’s name. As long as Shouto likes it, that’s all that matters.

“Thank you so much, nii-san, these are all amazing”, the kid tells him earnestly, twisting his body sideways to throw his arms around Touya’s shoulders.

Touya reciprocates the hug, lightly patting his brother’s back. “Glad you like them.”

When the two of them part, Touya accidentally locks eyes with Hawks, who is staring at them over the rim of his mug with a soft expression in his eyes and a small smile playing around his lips. It makes Touya’s chest clench a little, so he quickly averts his gaze and watches Shouto lean over the coffee table to pick up his hot chocolate.

That’s when he catches sight of something sparkly.

“Is that an earring I’m seeing there, baby bro?”, he asks around a slow grin.

Shouto flushes a bit and absent-mindedly touches the thin little silver creole that’s dangling from his left earlobe. “Yes, my friend Jirou has taken up piercing as a hobby and brought her kit to my birthday party”, he explains happily. “Kaminari already got multiple piercings from her and I think Katsuki is this close to getting an industrial. He still seems a bit scared, though. Kirishima also let Jirou pierce his eyebrow a while back, but the piercing got crushed when he activated his Quirk, so that doesn’t seem to be an option for him. I think he’s pretty upset about it and has been looking into tattoos instead recently.”

Touya nods and hums indulgently as he lets his little brother ramble on.

“Was Jirou the cool one? With the rock music?”, he asks. 

Shouto has told him a bit about his friends over the years and he also hazily remembers an afternoon in the League hideout, with Shigaraki and the lizard beating each other’s arses at Mario Kart and squabbling over it like an old married couple until they were interrupted by Toga screeching and cooing at her phone and making them all sit down and watch the little UA brats put on a song and dance performance. The girl with the vocals and the bass guitar absolutely killed it, even his villainous past self had to admit that.

“Yes, she’s very talented”, Shouto says proudly.

“A great hero, too”, Hawks adds appreciatively.

Touya’s memories from the final battle at the Gunga site are very hazy at best, given how overexerted his body already was from his fight against Shouto by the time he got there and how quickly he burnt and mutilated himself into near-delirium, but he does vaguely recall seeing the rock girl on the battlefield there, and it makes him feel a little awkward when he realises that Hawks’ appreciation of her probably stems from them fighting against All For One together.

The League and its members were different, but Touya never approved of nor cared for All For One, who was nothing but another child-abusing megalomaniac prick, and it makes him feel kind of stupid now that he let himself be so consumed by his own desire for revenge and his father’s attention, that he willingly aligned himself with that potato-looking freak instead of using his firepower to help the heroes take him down.

It’s not a particularly pleasant feeling, so he busies himself by taking a few sips of tea from his mug.

“Are you planning to get any more piercings?”, Hawks asks conversationally in Shouto’s direction.

“Well, I really like nose rings”, Shouto says, tilting his head contemplatively. “But I think I’m gonna wait a bit until I get more. I mean, I’ve only had this one for a day now”, he laughs, touching his fingers to the little piece of jewellery again.

“You probably shouldn’t be touching it so much while it’s still healing”, Touya points out, thinking back to when his own piercings were healing and how much of a hassle it was to make sure they didn’t get infected.

Still, he kind of really misses his body modifications and feels oddly naked without them. 

Suddenly a thought strikes him. “Hey, Birdie? Would I be allowed to get my piercings redone now that I’m out of jail?”

Hawks hums, seemingly thinking about it for a moment. “There aren’t any rules against it, but you would have to get cleared by your medical team first. They’re coming by this weekend, right?”

Touya nods.

“Ask them, then. Oh, and you would have to find a piercer who does house calls and is willing to sign an NDA. And who won’t freak out once they realise who they’re about to pierce”, the hero adds, chuckling a little.

“I could ask Jirou if she’d do it”, Shouto offers helpfully.

“Ah, well, having a pro hero do it would certainly make things easier”, Hawks agrees. “If she’s comfortable doing it. I’m assuming your friends probably feel a bit apprehensive about your brother?”

“They’re actually pretty on board with the whole rehabilitation thing. Kaminari just told me the other day that our generation of heroes needs to do better than the one that came before us, and that starts with rehabilitating the victims of the previous generation”, Shouto explains, and Touya feels incredibly touched by that. He doesn’t think he deserves it, but it’s very validating and comforting to hear that the new hero generation understands that the way hero society used to be wasn’t right and that change is much needed.

A warm wave of pride for his little brother and the UA brats floods his chest.

“Oh, I have complete faith in you kids, I’m sure you will be able to change this society for the better. You already are”, Hawks tells Shouto earnestly, and the unrestrained pride in his voice mirrors the way Touya feels. “I like to think that I am closer to your generation of heroes than I am to the one your father was apart of, but truthfully I’m very guilty of perpetuating a lot of what has been going wrong with hero society, too, so I’m probably not in a position to talk.”

Now that is kind of new information to Touya. He had assumed that Hawks was on board with the villain rehabilitation thing since he had signed up for the babysitter job, but he wasn’t really sure where Hawks stood these days in regard to hero society and its past mistakes. He wonders just how much of a change of heart the hero has had, but he doesn’t feel like right now is the time to ask, so he carefully files that thought away at the back of his mind.

“I think the fact that you’re acknowledging that the way things used to be wasn’t right, and your own role in it, shows that you’re closer to us than the older generation. You and your peers - like Miruko and Best Jeanist - have always been more progressive, and All Might was a whole category of his own, but I think overall a lot of the older heroes are still pretty conservative, even nowadays”, Shouto points out, his brows furrowed.

Hawks nods grimly. “That’s definitely true. Hero galas and the like always kinda feel like stepping into an alternate reality. Lots of stuck-up, old-fashioned types.”

“Why do you even go to those hero galas, if they’re all just swarmed with conservative weirdos on the verge of retirement anyway?”, Touya questions, frowning.

Shouto sighs a little. “It’s mostly a PR thing, especially for us younger ‘newcomers’ and especially those of us who have recently founded their own agencies”, he explains. “Public image is still a pretty important aspect of hero work, and it would be considered kind of rude if we declined our invitations for no good reason. There are always a bunch of carefully vetted press outlets covering those sorts of events, so it’s important we portray ourselves in a favourable light there.” He pauses to take a sip from his cocoa. “Those events also offer some good opportunities to connect with other heroes from all across the country.”

Hawks nods along in agreement. “Yeah, there are also always a lot of lesser known heroes present, so you can learn about the people who keep our country up and running every day without ever really being in the limelight for it.”

“It’s always good to know who you can rely on”, Shouto adds.

Well, Touya can’t argue with that, although this entire conversation is really making the difference between himself and his two guests glaringly obvious, and he admittedly feels a bit weird about it.

It’s not that he would like to be a hero himself - that was someone else, a long time ago, in another life - but it makes him feel kind of othered, and if he’s being really honest with himself, also a bit jealous of the fact that Shouto and Hawks can bond over this whole thing so easily, while Touya is still always kind of grappling with that sort of thing.

He would never admit this out loud, but therapy has certainly worked its magic on him, so he allows himself to acknowledge it.

Just in the privacy of his own head.

“Hey, uh, listen”, Hawks starts then, and Touya just so manages to catch the hero quickly averting his glance from him when he looks up. “I know you guys said it’s fine, but I don’t wanna overstay my welcome, so I’m gonna head out.”

He sets his empty mug down on the table and stands up, smiling a bit crookedly. “Thank you for the tea and happy birthday again, Shouto-kun. I’ll see you tomorrow, Touya.”

“Yeah, see you tomorrow. And thanks, Birdie”, Touya says, giving the hero a meaningful look.

Hawks fucking winks at him in response and Touya is glad he’s sitting down, because otherwise his stomach probably would’ve plummeted out of his arse just now.

“Thank you, Hawks. See you!”, Shouto calls after the older hero cheerily.

When they hear the front door open and close again, Shouto turns his attention to his little pile of gifts.

“Thank you so much again for these, I really love them”, he tells Touya, picking up the t-shirt and holding it out in front of himself. “Do you mind if I put this on?”

“Knock yourself out”, Touya says, chuckling. “So, I’ve gathered your friends got you some pretty neat stuff, too?”

Shouto nods as he takes off his hoodie and chucks it onto the couch. “Yeah, like I mentioned they got me those super limited edition Dr. Martens. And a really personal photo album and concert tickets and a soba-making kit with a large recipe book.”

Touya snorts at that last one, but he can’t deny that his interest has been piqued. “You should bring that soba kit around some time.”

Shouto gives him a wide grin when his face emerges from the new t-shirt he has pulled over his head. It seems to fit him well and Touya mentally breathes a little sigh of relief. He wasn’t sure which size to get and ended up going with his own, since he and Shouto are pretty much the same height, but Touya is lanky and Shouto is quite buff, so he was a bit worried it might be a tight fit.

“I also got a cat adoption coupon from Izuku and Katsuki”, Shouto adds to his list of birthday presents.

Touya blinks at him. “A what?”

Shouto laughs, and Touya notes that his little brother looks ridiculously happy in a way he doesn’t think he’s ever seen before. “It’s pretty much what it says. We’re gonna go to an animal shelter together and then I’ll get to pick a cat for us to adopt.”

“Oh, that flatmate business is pretty serious then, huh?”, Touya teases lightheartedly.

Shouto frowns at him bemusedly. “What do you mean?”

Touya waves him off, snickering a little. “Nothing, nothing. So, that’s a pretty sweet gift for them to get you. Do they also like cats or are they just doing it for you?”

“Well, Izuku pretty much likes all cute fluffy animals. And I think Katsuki secretly likes cats, even though he would probably deny it if you asked him”, Shouto explains matter-of-factly.

Touya huffs a laugh. “Yeah, that tracks. Both Deku liking cute animals, and Explodo-Boy refusing to admit he likes cute animals, too.”

Shouto smiles a little at that, and Touya thinks it looks very fond. The kid clearly cares about his friends a lot. He certainly deserves to have good close friendships after the lonely childhood he has had, and Touya is happy for his brother that he seems to have found those.

“So how was your party last night? Sounds like you kids might be wilder than I thought you were, if your parties include getting body modifications”, Touya muses, raising a questioning eyebrow at his brother.

“Well, that’s really just Jirou’s hobby. Beyond that it was pretty tame actually, since most of us had to work today”, Shouto points out, and his eyes suddenly cloud over like he has just remembered something unpleasant, but before Touya can ask or try to figure it out himself, his brother opens his mouth again. “I’m sure you’ve been to much wilder parties than I have.”

“That’s probably true, but I think you might be overestimating how much partying I’ve actually done in my life”, Touya notes, chuckling softly. “I have definitely seen some things in my time as a villain, but there really wasn’t all that much room for partying during those years and I mostly didn’t really feel like it anyway. And the few parties I went to before, well, Sekoto Peak, were very much the everyone-is-having-their-first-drink-ever type.”

“You were allowed to go to parties back then?”, Shouto asks, staring at him incredulously.

Touya snorts drily. “No, but they never cared enough to ensure I didn’t go, so I used to just sneak out. Another one of those things Fuyumi caught me at and loyally kept quiet about.” He cackles a little at the memories. Fuyumi really always was a good sport about his secret teenage escapades.

“One time my skater boy crush hosted one of those parties when his parents were away on a weekend trip - that was shortly after he kissed me behind the school gym - and we ended up spending half the night locked up in his bedroom kissing.”

“So…did you guys actually date?”, Shouto asks slowly, his eyes still a little clouded over.

Touya briefly wonders whether he should ask what’s wrong, but then decides to let his little brother come out with it on his own, if he wants to.

“No, it never got to that”, he says out loud. “Not with my disappearance, but also because I don’t think it would’ve worked out anyway. Somehow I doubt I would’ve been allowed to bring my edgy skater boyfriend home to meet the family.” He doesn’t know whether dating a boy would’ve been a problem per se, but surely a boy in ripped up baggy jeans with chains and leather accessories would’ve been too much for Endeavour’s oh-so-pristine reputation.

“I’m sorry”, Shouto says earnestly, frowning a little.

“Ah, it’s fine. It’s been nearly two decades at this point and it was just a harmless teenage crush”, Touya assures him breezily. “Besides, I also had a lot of other stuff on my mind at that time.”

It’s true. In the grand scheme of things, amongst all the other much more violent and tumultuous things 13-year-old Touya was feeling, his doomed little crush was really just a drop in the ocean.

“Hey, um”, Shouto starts tentatively then. “Can I…ask you something?”

Touya turns his full attention to the kid and eyes him curiously. “Sure. Shoot.”

His little brother looks down at his hands and starts picking at his cuticles. “How do you, uh…how do you tell when two people are in love with each other?”

Touya blinks in surprise. He definitely wasn’t expecting that particular question. “You mean two other people?”

Shouto nods, eyes still focused on his lap.

Well, that’s a good question, isn't it? Touya really isn’t sure if he’s the right person to ask this sort of thing, given his relative lack of normal interpersonal experiences in his life and general struggles with social stuff, but he’s determined to answer to the best of his abilities.

Something tells him that this question is probably related to the cloudy look in his brother’s eyes from before, and while he’s still confused as to what exactly Shouto is brooding over, he wants to make sure the kid’s brooding is at least rational.

Touya hums thoughtfully as he tries to figure out how to word what he wants to say.

“It can be pretty individual, to be honest”, he starts, running his hand through his hair and scratching his scalp a bit. “But with most people you can sort of see it in their eyes. The way they look at each other or the way they look when they talk about each other. They tend to get this sparkling softness in their eyes and it might look like they’re kind of lost in their own little bubble. Some people will also be pretty openly flirtatious with each other, but I guess in that case it’s fairly easy to tell. Sometimes flirting can also look more like teasing, though, especially when people are still trying to figure out how they actually feel about each other, or if they’re unsure about whether they should cross that line of plausible deniability or not.”

“Does that also include calling the other person nicknames? The teasing, I mean”, Shouto wonders and finally looks up at Touya again. There’s a puzzling expression on the kid’s face that Touya couldn’t decipher even if his life depended on it. 

He does, however, suddenly remember Shouto’s assessment from a few days ago - that Touya calls Hawks by silly nicknames - and nearly gasps out loud in an unexpected rush of panic.

Does Shouto think Touya and Hawks…? Is that why he asked that question?

But no, Touya hurriedly tells himself, that wouldn’t really make sense. Shouto’s question is clearly related to whatever caused the cloudy look in his eyes, and Touya is pretty certain that his brother wouldn’t get this upset at the idea of Touya and Hawks together (and even if he did, he would most likely just outright say it).

No, this has to be about something else.

“Well, nicknames can be part of it. That doesn’t mean that everyone who calls people nicknames is actually flirting with them, though”, Touya adds pointedly, just for good measure. He really does not need the kid getting the wrong idea about him and the stupid bird.

Shouto nods slowly, a little frown etched between his eyebrows. “I see. So how do you tell the difference between flirtatious nicknames and normal nicknames?”

“I guess you have to figure it out from context”, Touya says, blowing out a noisy breath. “I feel like I should tell you, though, that I’m probably not exactly the best person to ask about this sort of stuff. I spent the past seven years in jail, and before that I had been living in the criminal underworld since I was 16. I don’t exactly have a lot of experience with love and relationships and all that stuff, and especially not in the normal world.”

“Thank you for trying to help me anyway”, Shouto tells him earnestly, nodding his head in understanding.

“What’s that like for villains?”, he asks after a moment’s pause, looking up at Touya curiously. “Love and relationships, I mean.”

Touya stiffens a little. He knows Shouto is not a child anymore, but he’s not sure how much of these particularities he wants to divulge to his baby brother. The public sees the murder and the violence, but the things that go on behind closed doors in the criminal underworld aren’t always pretty either.

“It’s…complicated”, he starts after a moment of hesitation. “A lot of villains just don’t care about love or feelings and they’re not interested in engaging in any sort of personal relationships. They’re too focused on other stuff for that.” He laughs a bit drily and Shouto grimaces.

“Sometimes you do have types like Toga Himiko, who could yap about her crushes on the zero-gravity-girl and Deku all day long, but she was definitely more of an exception. Some people get into, well, I guess you would call them ‘situationships’ nowadays. They engage in certain aspects of romantic relationships but never make it official, because they know how fleeting an existence can be in that world or because their top priorities still lie elsewhere. Shigaraki and the lizard were kinda like that.”

“Shigaraki and Spinner were in a situationship?!”, Shouto gasps, eyes wide.

Touya snorts. “Yeah, and they were insufferable about it. Couldn’t keep their damn hands off each other whenever the League was hanging out in one of the hideouts. I wonder if Spinner got off on the knowledge that one wrong move or touch from Shigaraki could turn him into dust within seconds.”

Shouto wrinkles his nose. “Ew. I don’t wanna picture that.”

Touya cackles at him. “You asked.”

Then he hesitates again. He has probably already answered Shouto’s question sufficiently enough, so he could just leave it at that. But that wouldn’t be the whole truth of the matter, would it?

Perhaps giving the young hero a bit of an idea about the more gruesome aspects of sexuality in the criminal underworld isn’t such a terrible idea. Just some vague, general things to raise a bit of awareness. 

Touya takes a deep breath to steel himself, before he continues talking.

“Sex is different, though”, he says, and Shouto looks at him attentively.

“It’s generally fairly common for villains to have casual hook-ups. Just for fun or to blow off some steam or whatever. The criminal underworld has an unwritten class system, not unlike regular society, and people’s experiences with sex usually highly depend on where they fit into that system, though. If you’re powerful in some way - be that through Quirk prowess or status or connections - you’ll typically have people lining up to sleep with you. There will be some who just want to use you or your power for their personal gain, or people who hold some sort of grudge against you, so it’s not all unicorns and rainbows, but people will also be intimidated by you or they’ll want to get in your good graces, so you generally don’t have that much to worry about. If you’re lower-ranking or just not that strong, you’ll be taken advantage of pretty quickly, though.”

Touya absently starts picking at a loose thread at the hem of his hoodie. Shouto is still listening intently.

“If you’re lucky you’ll just end up with someone who will fuck you and then fuck you over. I’ve heard stories from a lot of people who hooked up with someone, only to get mugged by them afterwards. Or people would use sensitive information they somehow found out about you during sex to stab you in the back later. Figuratively or literally”, he adds when Shouto frowns a little.

“But, uh, there are also a lot of villains who don’t exactly care about consent. Many of them just…take what they want - forcibly - and often it’s not even about getting off for them. It’s just about intimidating people, threatening them or establishing who’s in power. It’s absolutely vile, and even amongst villain organisations it’s often shunned, but it’s still pretty common.”

The thread Touya is fidgeting with has unravelled awfully far at this point. He forces himself to tuck it under the hem and grabs the TV remote instead, busying his hand by opening and closing the battery lid at the back.

“Sometimes people also have to sell their bodies. Just to survive. And if you’re just some lowly thug, living on the streets and without any sort of organisation to back you up, shit can get pretty dangerous for you. Especially if you don’t have a Quirk strong enough to defend yourself.”

Shouto has started picking at his own hoodie by this point, the one he discarded on the couch earlier, and he’s looking at Touya with this equally horrified and inquisitive look, and Touya knows exactly what he’s thinking.

Please don’t ask, please don’t ask, please don’t ask.

Shouto silently opens his mouth and then closes it again, like he wants to say something but then thinks better of it.

It takes everything in Touya not to breathe out a huge sigh of relief, and he clenches his hand so hard, it’s practically a miracle he doesn’t crack the little plastic lid he’s still holding.

“I’ve seen that sort of thing happen on the job a few times”, Shouto speaks up glumly then, his fingers tracing the seams of his hoodie. “Not between villains, but I’ve seen villains do it to random civilians. I’ve had to stop them multiple times.”

The admission makes Touya feel slightly nauseous. Obviously, it makes perfect sense that his pro hero brother has been confronted with that type of thing on the job, but the thought that Shouto has had to physically step in and stop something like that hadn’t actually occurred to Touya before.

“Sorry you’ve had to witness that”, he says a bit hoarsely. He knows all too well how gruesome it is to be faced with that sort of thing, and there may have been a few murders in his past that he most definitely does not regret.

Shouto nods, his expression subdued with a note of thinly veiled concern laced into it. He’s clearly still drawing conclusions in his head, and as much as Touya does not want to talk about this (and especially not with his baby brother), he feels like he has to say something to ease Shouto’s mind a little.

He clears his throat and pointedly keeps his gaze focused on the remote he’s still fidgeting with. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, since I was never actually convicted of these, but I’ve crossed paths with a couple of bastards over the years who ended up getting the free premature cremation package for the shit they did.”

Shouto barks out a short dry laugh at that, and Touya briefly glances up to see the look in his brother’s eyes become just a little bit lighter. It makes at least some of the queasy unease in Touya’s guts dissipate into thin air.

“I’m not gonna rat you out. I’m sure those people got what they deserved”, Shouto promises, his tone firm and serious. A little bit of pride swells in Touya’s chest and he chances another look up at his brother.

“You’re a good hero, little bro”, he tells the kid, and a shy little smile makes its way onto Shouto’s face.

“Oi, don’t get all bashful about it now, you know damn well you’re good”, Touya teases with a smirk, attempting to lighten the mood a bit after all the heavy shit they just spilt into the living room air.

His brother rolls his eyes at him, but his little smile grows into a crooked grin, so Touya mentally pats himself on the back for his successfully completed mission. 

“Now”, he says then - just because it’s technically Shouto’s birthday - as his gaze sweeps past the fruity cat mug in his brother’s little pile of presents, “how about we download Animal Crossing on my Switch and you show me what that’s all about?”

Shouto’s eyes instantly light up like a Christmas tree at the suggestion, and Touya is privately amused by how easily excitable his little brother can be. Still, that game is clearly very popular, so Touya might as well have its apparent no. 1 fan show it to him.

By the time Shouto announces that he has an early morning shift tomorrow and should probably head home now, Touya has already completed a bunch of the tanuki guy’s assignments and discovered that fishing and frolicking around a virtual island with a net to catch bugs is actually pretty relaxing. And as ridiculous as some of the character designs may be, he has to admit that the whole game looks pretty cute.

He supposes there’s no harm in keeping it installed and playing a little more after the kid has gone home.

“Thanks again for the presents and the, uh, advice, nii-san”, Shouto says when they say goodbye and pulls him into a nearly bone-crushing hug. Touya is mildly concerned about his oxygen supply, but dutifully hugs his little brother back.

Clearly, the kid needs it.

(Touya isn’t exactly opposed to it either, although the concept of hugging people is still something he has to get used to again. For security reasons he wasn’t allowed to get this close to anyone the whole time he was in Tartarus, and his life before that didn’t exactly include a lot of open displays of affection.)

Once Shouto has left, Touya settles down on the couch again, curling up a little with one of the pillows in his lap and putting on an old album by an American rock band he used to hear on the radio a lot when he was a child, and resumes his hunt for the valuable rare bugs and fish Shouto has tipped him off about.

The blues-y warmth of the guitar and the vocal harmonies wash over him, mixing with the cozy atmosphere of the game, and soon his eyes begin to droop. The controller falls from his hands onto the couch cushion with a soft thud and Touya dozes off into hazy dreamless slumber.

Chapter Text

When Shouto finishes changing back into his civilian clothes after his morning patrol on Saturday, he finds Izuku already waiting for him outside the agency building, all bundled up against the cold and the tip of his nose red enough to rival Rudolph. His face stretches into a wide smile the moment he sees Shouto, and Shouto can’t help but grin back dopily.

“Ready?”, Izuku asks as they hail themselves a taxi and climb into the backseat.

“Ready”, Shouto confirms, pointedly trying not to think too hard about the way his fingers brush Izuku’s cold ones when they close their seatbelts in the small space between their hips.

The mall isn’t actually that far away from their hero agency, but they swing by Uraraka and Asui’s shared flat on the outskirts of town first to pick up the former. Asui had a morning meeting just a few blocks away from the mall and is planning to meet them there.

When Uraraka climbs into the taxi, greeting them cheerily, Izuku scoots a little closer to Shouto to make space for her, and the two of them end up sitting with their sides pressed together from their shoulders all the way down to their knees. Shouto can feel Izuku’s body heat seeping into his cold side, even through their multiple layers of clothes, and he’s eternally grateful that his two friends start chattering away excitedly immediately, providing Shouto with a decent-enough distraction.

“God, I so don’t know what kind of dress I should get for that stupid ball”, Uraraka groans dramatically. “You guys always have it so easy, you can just wear white suits. The winter theme is pretty nice in theory, but if I show up there in a white ball gown it’ll just look like a western wedding dress!”

“Well, to be fair, the white suits can get quite boring. I wish there were more options available for men”, Shouto finally joins the conversation as they climb out of the taxi and Izuku pays the driver. “Not saying I’d like to go super crazy with my outfit, but it would be kinda nice to wear something a little more eye-catching.”

Uraraka raises an amused eyebrow at him. “Honey, I think you catch eyes wherever you go, no matter what you wear”, she tells him, laughing unabashedly. Shouto promptly feels his face flush at the blunt compliment, and for some reason Izuku isn’t faring much better than him, his cheeks turning pink in a way that definitely isn’t from the cold.

Strange, Shouto thinks, watching his friend curiously from the corner of his eye as they hurry through the large main entrance of the mall.

Asui is already waiting for them inside, greeting them with a round of quick hugs.

“Alright then, what’s our itinerary for today?”, she asks then, tone all analytical and business-like.

“Well, I wanna go to that hero pop-up shop and Shouto-kun needs a birthday present for his brother”, Izuku starts to list off, scratching his head a little and getting his unruly hair even more ruffled up in the process. “Do you already have a specific idea what to get your brother? Or do you just wanna look around for now?”, he asks then, looking at Shouto inquisitively.

Shouto moves his head in something like a mixture between a nod and a head shake. “I don’t really have any ideas yet. I really hope inspiration will just strike eventually if I look around”, he admits, grimacing a little.

“That works for me”, Uraraka says. “I’m really at a dead end with this whole dress-buying business, so I hope I’ll just come across something that works for me while looking around.”

Asui tilts her head thoughtfully. “How about we head to the pop-up shop first then, so Izuku-kun can buy his All Might figure, and then we can just walk around this place systematically until we find what we’re looking for?”

Izuku blushes a little at the mention of his fanboy disposition, tucking the lower half of his face into his scarf, but their whole group nods along in agreement with Asui’s suggestion, so Izuku takes the lead and they head down to the lowest floor, where the pop-up shop is supposed to be located.

The shop would be hard to miss, Shouto notes privately as they approach. There’s a large gaggle of people gathered around the little agglomeration of merch stands at the centre of the bottom floor, and huge banners displaying prints of various popular heroes have been set up around it.

Shouto can’t help but wrinkle his nose distastefully when he spots his father’s flaming visage staring down at him from some of the banners.

As the four young heroes make their way over to the pop-up shop, some of the people gathered around the merch stands look up and stare at them curiously as a few waves of whispers pass through the crowd. Shouto quickly schools his expression into his default neutral face, while his friends all put on light smiles. It’s a bit ridiculous, but the crowd actually parts to make space for the four of them around the merch stands, and on Shouto’s left Izuku suddenly lets out an excited little gasp when a large shelf, filled to the brim with a colourful variety of All Might figures and other little trinkets, comes into view. 

Shouto smiles a little to himself as Izuku starts digging through the various figures, occasionally ooh-ing and aah-ing and muttering to himself while he inspects the different models. Uraraka and Asui drift over to a shelf with Ryukyu merch, so Shouto decides to do a little browsing of his own. 

He pointedly avoids the Endeavour shelf (how the hell is his father even still so popular?!), busying himself with the Miruko, Best Jeanist and Edgeshot shelves instead. Best Jeanist has these funny socks that look like his denim hero costume with a hem of fluffy yellow material similar to the hero’s hair colour at the top, and on a whim Shouto decides to buy them for Katsuki. It’ll be worth it, even if just for the incredulous look he’s sure he will receive once he hands the gift over.

He continues strolling along the shelves, noticing amusing little pieces of merch from various heroes here and there, before he finds himself circling back to the shelf beside the Endeavour one.

It’s a Hawks shelf, carrying merch from both before and after he lost his wings. Shouto never used to care too deeply for Hawks - the older hero seemed nice enough, but his extreme loyalty and obvious worship of Endeavour always made Shouto feel a little weird and awkward around him, especially after Touya had revealed to the world what kind of person Endeavour really was behind closed doors. Shouto understands that they were in a pretty major crisis and really needed all hands on deck back then, but Hawks’ apparent willingness to look past Endeavour’s offences so easily still always felt a bit off-putting to Shouto.

However, now that Hawks is Touya’s babysitter, and after actually casually hanging out with the older hero himself the other day, Shouto has started to feel considerably warmer towards him. Touya seems to be getting along with him pretty well, if the silly bird-related nicknames that remind Shouto so much of the nicknames Katsuki always calls him are anything to go by, so he supposes he may have misjudged the older hero a little in the past.

Shouto’s mind gets stuck on the topic of nicknames for a moment. Touya told him that silly nicknames can be a sign of flirtatious teasing, but don’t always automatically have to mean anything, and Shouto just can’t seem to figure out how this could be applied to Katsuki and him. The stupidly hopeful part of him, that is pounding away desperately somewhere in his ribcage, wants to believe it means something, but his brother said that you can only really tell from context clues and Shouto is notoriously bad at reading those.

And, if anything, the few context clues he thinks he may or may not have picked up on, make it seem much more like Katsuki has feelings for Izuku rather than him, based on what Touya mentioned about the way people in love look at each other.

It makes his chest clench painfully to think about that, and Shouto really doesn’t want to let himself spiral into lovesickness while he’s out in public, so he forcibly drags his train of thought away from his potentially doomed love life and returns his focus to the shelf of Hawks merch in front of him.

There are a lot of figures in various sizes, a bunch of stationery and accessories, as well as mugs and other household utensils. One of the mugs looks completely black, but is supposed to reveal a close-up image of the hero's eyes with their unmistakable black markings and bushy eyebrows once filled with hot liquid, according to the little information pamphlet beside it.

Shouto is suddenly reminded of his brother and Hawks drinking tea during his visit earlier this week and an, in his opinion, absolutely hilarious idea strikes him.

He grabs one of the still-sealed mugs from the back of the shelf and heads over to the little checkout stand to pay for his gag gifts before making his way back to his friends. Izuku is already carrying a little bag with his All Might figure inside, smiling happily, and he looks up at Shouto curiously when he spots Shouto’s own bag. 

“What did you get?”, he asks, and Shouto holds his bag out to him to inspect its contents.

“Gag gifts for Katsuki and my brother”, he explains around a mischievous grin.

Izuku pulls the Best Jeanist socks out of the bag and holds them up for Uraraka and Asui to see. “Oh, Kacchan is gonna love to hate these”, he snickers. “Or hate to love?”

“Both sound pretty spot-on”, Asui says matter-of-factly, and Uraraka guffaws into her hand.

“Sorry, I just pictured Bakugou actually wearing these. That image is absolute gold”, she wheezes out, and Shouto can’t help but giggle along.

Izuku drops the socks back in Shouto’s bag then, and the four of them walk off to start their systematic scouring of the mall for hero gala outfits and non-gag birthday presents.

“You know, part of me still always expects Shigaraki to pop up out of nowhere whenever I’m at a mall”, Izuku admits, chuckling a bit nervously, while they’re riding the escalator up to the ground floor after finishing their round around the bottom floor unsuccessfully. Shouto hadn’t been there for that particular incident and only heard about it in the aftermath, but he imagines it must’ve been a pretty scary experience for his friend to be ambushed like that, so without really thinking about it Shouto places what he hopes is a comforting hand on Izuku’s back.

Izuku turns sideways to properly look at Shouto, the two of them almost at eye level since Izuku is standing a step higher on the escalator, and offers him a grateful smile. It makes Shouto feel pleasantly warm all over.

The ground floor has a much larger selection of clothing shops than the bottom floor, and the four friends take considerably longer to comb through them. On a whim, Shouto buys himself a sparkly icy blue tie to upgrade the plain grey one he usually wears with his white suit, and a set of shiny silver cufflinks with intricate little snowflakes engraved in them.

“Oh, wow, that tie matches the colour of your left eye perfectly!”, Izuku exclaims excitedly, and he’s looking at Shouto with an expression Shouto doesn’t quite know how to decipher, but for some reason it makes his cheeks grow concerningly warm, so he quickly averts his eyes and busies himself with stuffing his wallet back into his pocket, lest he accidentally burst into flames in the middle of a fancy boutique.

“Todoroki-kun, we need your opinion!”, Uraraka proclaims then, suddenly popping up beside them and grabbing Shouto’s arm. “Tsuyu-chan may have found a dress!”

Shouto huffs a laugh and dutifully lets himself be dragged away towards the changing rooms.

“Oi, what about me? Don’t you want my opinion?”, Izuku calls a bit indignantly as he hurries after them. 

Uraraka turns around, pointedly trailing her gaze up and down his body, briefly lingering on the hoodie with the "hoodie" print on it peeking through his unzipped coat, and raises an amused eyebrow at him. “You want to be consulted for fashion advice? Really?”

Shouto quickly claps a hand over his mouth to keep himself from snorting wetly at the way Izuku absolutely gapes at Uraraka for a moment, before his face melts into something that is clearly badly restrained laughter.

“Ouch”, he says, pressing a hand over his heart, and his deadpan tone is betrayed by the way the corners of his mouth twitch. “I can’t believe my own friends would hurt me like this.”

Uraraka rolls her eyes faux-exasperatedly. “Yeah, yeah, you can come along and give your opinion, too”, she sighs then and continues dragging Shouto along by his arm.

Shouto throws a glance at Izuku over his shoulder, and the two of them exchange dorky grins when their eyes meet.

When they arrive at the changing rooms, Asui is already waiting for them in a sparkly silver dress. It’s a tight sleeveless one, ending at around mid-thigh level, with a high neckline and a triangular cleavage cutout.

Asui twirls around a little, the fluorescent changing room lights reflecting off of the glittery fabric and throwing little patterns on the walls like a mirrorball. “What do we think?”, she asks curiously.

“It’s absolutely gorgeous and you should definitely get it!”, Uraraka yells enthusiastically before Shouto can even open his mouth to voice an opinion. 

He agrees, though, and proceeds to tell Asui so. “It also fits the winter theme really well. It looks like snow glistening in the sun”, he points out when his friend does another little twirl.

“I think so, too”, Izuku says then, clearing his throat a little. “Even if no one wanted my advice…”, he adds faux-dramatically, staring off into the middle distance.

“I appreciate your advice”, Asui tells him earnestly.

“Shush, don’t coddle him”, Uraraka scolds her faux-sternly. “Have you seen how he dresses?”

Asui tilts her head thoughtfully at that. “Well, if you put it that way…”

“I’ve changed my mind, now would be a great time for Shigaraki to turn up”, Izuku huffs, and Shouto kind of wants to wrap his arms around him and squish him.

Uraraka finally breaks at that, offering Izuku a genuine smile and pulling him into a quick side hug. “You know we love you. Questionable fashion choices included.”

Izuku rolls his eyes a little exasperatedly, but smiles back at her, reciprocating the hug. “Yeah, yeah. Better worry about your own fashion choices now.”

“Woah”, Uraraka gasps. “Okay, I guess I deserved that. But damn, low blow. I’m really starting to get desperate here”, she groans theatrically.

Shouto is privately starting to feel similarly about his search for a birthday present for Touya.

They continue scouring the ground floor, but soon have to admit defeat and ride the escalator up to the top - and last - floor.

As Shouto avidly eyes the shop windows they pass, he suddenly catches sight of a rather small music shop squeezed between a bakery and a shoe shop. The shop window displays a motley assortment of record players, vinyls and CDs, band shirts and other music-related trinkets.

Now this could be Shouto’s desperately awaited salvation. He knows Touya really likes all kinds of guitar-heavy music - the big question is just, which bands are his favourites?

“Guys, wait!”, Shouto calls out to his friends. “I think I may have found something for my brother. Well, I think I might be about to find something. I just need to call my sister real quick.”

His friends stop in their tracks and join him in front of the music shop, inspecting the window display curiously.

Shouto pulls out his phone and searches up Fuyumi’s contact, fervently hoping she’ll pick up as he presses the receiver to his ear.

It seems to be his lucky day, because after three rings the line crackles and his sister’s cheery voice greets him. “Shouto! Hello, what’s up?”, she asks, and Shouto breathes out a little sigh of relief.

“Hello, nee-chan”, Shouto greets her, and he decides not to waste any time with his inquiry. “What kind of bands was Touya into as a teenager?”

“Oh”, Fuyumi says, sounding a little surprised.

“It’s for his birthday present”, Shouto adds, because he realises that maybe he should’ve elaborated a little more on that.

“I see”, his sister replies, laughing a little. “Well, he was really into Linkin Park at that time. I also remember him listening to this one Bon Jovi album a lot. God, I forgot what it was called, but the CD cover was sort of grey with a satellite dish on it. I think it was the most recent one back then. But, um, about the whole birthday present thing”, she adds then a little hesitantly. “I was talking to Natsuo yesterday and we’re both kinda struggling to come up with something, so we thought maybe the three of us could get something larger together.”

Shouto most certainly sympathises with that. “I was actually struggling to come up with something, too”, he admits, laughing a little. “But I’m just standing outside this music shop right now, and I thought, well, Touya likes rock music, so I figured maybe I could get him some CDs or something.”

Fuyumi hums thoughtfully in his ear. “I like your general thought process, but, uh, we didn’t actually put a CD-player in his flat, since no one really listens to CDs anymore nowadays.” She laughs a bit awkwardly.

Oh.

Well.

It’s a good thing Shouto called her, he supposes.

He rakes his gaze across the display in the shop window again. “Maybe we could get him a CD-player then? They definitely sell record players here, so maybe they have CD-players, too”, he ponders, attempting to look past the reflection in the glass to get a better look at the inside of the shop.

“They sell record players?”, his sister asks then curiously. “You know, CDs may not be very popular anymore nowadays, but vinyl records have really been making a comeback.”

Shouto’s gaze flits back to the sleek black device in the shop window and he hums affirmatively.

“Right, how about this then: The three of us get him a record player and a few vinyls to start out with. I’m sure Natsuo would like this idea, too. He seemed pretty stressed about the whole gift situation on the phone yesterday”, Fuyumi suggests, and Shouto actually really likes that idea as well. (He has also never listened to a vinyl record before, but he has heard people rave about their supposedly very special sound quality, so it’s safe to say his curiosity is piqued.)

“Sounds good”, he tells his sister. “I’ll just look for vinyls from those bands you mentioned, yeah?”

“Yeah, I mean, I don’t really know what exactly Touya listens to nowadays, but I’d assume he still likes this stuff from back in the day. The few times our more recent conversations have sort of touched upon music, I got the impression that he has a fairly eclectic taste.”

Shouto laughs a little at that. He kind of got that impression, too.

The siblings exchange quick goodbyes and Shouto promises to update Fuyumi and Natsuo via text about his purchases, before they hang up and Shouto gestures at his friends to follow him into the shop.

“Sooooo, what are we looking for?”, Izuku asks curiously as Shouto sweeps his gaze across the tightly stacked shelves filled with vinyls and CDs lining the walls of the shop. A long-haired middle-aged man with tattoos decorating his bare arms is sitting at the cash register and greets them casually when they step inside.

“How can I help you kids?”, the shop assistant asks, stepping out from behind the checkout counter.

“I’m looking for a record player and some vinyls”, Shouto tells him politely, and the man laughs good-naturedly.

“You’ve come to the right place then.” He waves Shouto deeper into the shop, while his friends start browsing the record shelves. Shouto follows the clerk and soon finds himself having the pros and cons of the various record players the shop is offering explained to him. He really doesn’t know anything about this sort of stuff, so he just trusts that the man knows what he’s talking about and ends up picking the one that is supposed to have the clearest audio quality, within the most reasonable price range for their budget.

“Good choice”, the shop assistant tells him approvingly as he heaves a sealed box onto the checkout counter. “Now about those vinyls - anything specific you got in mind?”

Shouto nods. “Yes, Linkin Park - specifically the older stuff from about two decades ago - and a Bon Jovi album with a grey cover and a satellite dish on it.”

The shop assistant laughs heartily. “I see, I see. Let me go check if we have those in stock.” 

Shouto trails after the man as he makes his way over to the vinyl shelves, where Izuku, Uraraka and Asui are currently inspecting the back cover of a record.

“Ah. So, we currently have Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory as well as that Bon Jovi album you mentioned in stock. Would that be all then?”, the clerk asks, holding said records out for Shouto to look at.

He contemplates that for a moment, absently chewing on his bottom lip. Three vinyls kind of seem nicer than two - more rounded and balanced somehow - and their budget could still handle it, if the price stickers Shouto spots on the Linkin Park and Bon Jovi records are anything to go by.

“Actually”, he starts then, “do you have anything you would recommend to someone who likes these? Something a little more recent perhaps?”

The shop assistant smiles thoughtfully, tilting his head a little. “Now you’re giving me a proper challenge, kid”, he laughs, then slowly drifts over to another shelf and pulls out a record.

“How about this? They’re a Japanese band, but they sing in English. This is their most recent album. Their stuff is pretty melodic, but also has that heavier alternative metal edge to it. Would probably appeal to someone who likes Linkin Park and Bon Jovi.”

Shouto eyes the record curiously. He doesn’t recognise it or the band’s name, but he trusts the clerk’s assessment. He definitely looks like someone who’s well-versed in this sort of stuff.

“That sounds good, thank you. I’ll take those three and the record player then”, Shouto says, smiling at the man gratefully. They make their way back to the cash register and the man gives Shouto a free jute bag with guitars printed all over it with his purchase.

“You can’t carry the record player in a plastic bag. It’s too heavy”, the clerk explains while Shouto swipes his credit card.

“Thank you very much”, he tells the man earnestly as he shoulders his indeed quite heavy bag of purchases.

Izuku, Uraraka and Asui have already left the shop and greet Shouto by the door when he steps outside.

“You got everything now?”, Izuku asks, smiling up at him. Shouto nods and smiles back, before the four of them continue their shopping mission.

“I can’t believe you all got what you came here for now and I still haven’t found anything”, Uraraka whines, burying her face in her hands.

“You’ll find something, I’m sure”, Shouto tells her in what he hopes is an encouraging tone, just as his eyes land on another shop window display. “Hey, do you specifically want a dress or just a fancy outfit in general?”, he asks, touching Uraraka’s arm to make her look over.

“Hm?”

“How do you feel about a suit?”, Shouto elaborates, pointing at the mannequin lady in the window. She is wearing a light blue, slim-fitting suit with an intricate pattern stitched all across the fabric. The yarn is white and slightly sparkly, and while the pattern is probably supposed to be more reminiscent of stars, it also kind of looks like tiny swirling snowflakes. The mannequin is wearing a halfway buttoned-up white blouse underneath the jacket and shiny silver brogues on her feet.

“Oh, this is perfect!”, Uraraka squeals excitedly, suddenly leaning onto Shouto’s shoulder so heavily he nearly loses his balance in surprise. “You’re a genius, Todoroki-kun!”

The four of them quickly head into the boutique and Uraraka drifts off to find a shop assistant to help her assemble the whole outfit in her size. When she finally tries it on, twirling around a little just like Asui did before, Shouto, Izuku and Asui all enthusiastically approve of the suit. It fits her perfectly, goes well with the winter theme, and most definitely does not look like a wedding dress.

By the time the four friends finally leave the mall, the sun has long set and Izuku’s stomach is growling loudly enough for the four of them, but Shouto thinks all in all this has been a very successful mission, and he contently trudges through the slushy snow on the sidewalk as the four heroes make their way over to Asui’s favourite sushi place to indulge in a well-deserved post-shopping meal.

***

“Do you mind if I stay?”, Hawks asks on the morning of Touya’s first monthly medical check-up. “It’s okay if you don’t want me to. It’s technically not part of my job description.”

Touya raises an amused eyebrow at him and takes a pointed sip from his tea. “Worried that I’ll attack my doctor?”

The bird’s eyes widen. “No! No, that’s not it, I promise”, he adds a little more calmly. “It’s just”, he looks down at his own mug and starts tracing his fingers along the handle, “well, I know you’ve had to deal with some pretty traumatic medical stuff in the past. And with the new circumstances and everything I guess I would just feel better if I were there to ensure everyone’s safety - including your own.”

Well.

Touya can’t really argue with that, can he?

It’s a nice gesture, and besides, it’s not like he’s got anything to hide anyway.

Maybe the bird can even help him convince his doctor to green-light him getting his piercings redone.

“Fine. You can stay”, Touya tells his babysitter, making a show of sighing over-dramatically. “But you have to back me up about getting re-pierced.”

Hawks huffs a laugh. “I feel like you’re trying to blackmail me, but I’ll let it slide. I’m sure I can show some support for your cause”, he says with a dorky wink, that really, really shouldn’t be this attractive, and Touya’s blood is momentarily torn between shooting into his head and rushing south. He quickly busies himself by downing the rest of his tea in one go.

The stupid bird is going to be the death of him one of these days.

The doctor Touya’s medical team back in Tartarus has selected for his monthly house calls arrives around noon, accompanied by two nurses, and introduces himself as Dr. Hasegawa. He’s very young, possibly even younger than Touya, but carries a dichotomous air of self-confidence and apparent experience with him.

“Great to meet you, Todoroki-san. Ah, and this must be Hawks! Is it alright with you if he stays?”, the doctor questions good-naturedly as he and his colleagues take their shoes off in the genkan.

Touya nods. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Hasegawa”, he says politely.

“Right then, where would you prefer us doing this?”, Dr. Hasegawa asks cheerily.

“Does the living room work?”

“Sure, sure. Lead the way!”

Touya obediently makes his way over to the living room, the doctor and his little entourage following him, while Hawks trails a little behind them.

“Have a seat”, Dr. Hasegawa says, gesturing at the dining table, and the five of them sit down opposite each other, with Touya and Hawks on one side and the doctor and the nurses on the other side. 

“Don’t worry, we’re not planning to do anything major today”, Dr. Hasegawa assures Touya as he pulls a notebook and pen from his bag. “Just a few generic questions and the usual stuff you would expect from an annual check-up at the GP.”

Touya breathes out a little heavier than he would like to admit and nods. It’s not that he was anxious about this check-up, but he still finds he’s quite relieved that he’ll only have to deal with routine stuff today.

Dr. Hasegawa eases him into it very gently, asking about how he’s been feeling, how he has been sleeping and eating, if he’s been taking his psych medication and if he’s experienced any noteworthy symptoms since being released. Touya dutifully answers his questions and tells him that he’s been feeling fine, and no, he hasn’t experienced any noteworthy symptoms. The doctor nods approvingly at his elaborations and scribbles a couple lines down in his notebook before looking up again to smile at Touya.

“Good, good. That’s good to hear. Alright, now I’d like to take a quick look at your eyes, ears and throat, and then I’d like you to take off your hoodie, so we can take your blood pressure and listen to your lungs and heart. If you’d rather Hawks leave the room for that, just say so.”

Touya waves him off dismissively as he scoots a little backwards with his chair to make room for the doctor to get a closer look at his face. “It’s fine, it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before.”

Dr. Hasegawa’s eyebrows twitch upwards almost imperceptibly, a surprised look ghosting over his face before he quickly schools his expression back into professional friendliness, and it’s then, that it hits Touya like a brick to the face how very wrong his words probably just sounded.

“I mean, I literally broadcasted a topless video of myself for the entire world to see”, he elaborates hastily, suddenly way too aware of the hero’s presence in the chair beside him, and pointedly avoids looking over at him.

He does, however, not miss the breathy, strangled little noise Hawks makes by his side.

Oh god.

Touya quickly redirects his focus to the doctor in front of him and attempts to distract himself by playing the perfect patient as Dr. Hasegawa shines a light in his eyes and down his throat and brushes his hair away to inspect the scarred skin on his ears.

“Have you experienced any tear duct bleeding recently?”, the doctor asks, carefully prodding at the burned skin and staples under Touya’s eyes.

“Uh, a little”, Touya rasps awkwardly. “When I was laughing really hard”, he adds after clearing his throat.

The doctor smiles at him kindly. “I see. No tears, though?” Touya shakes his head. He’s not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing.

Dr. Hasegawa seems to be satisfied with his answer, though, since he sits back on his haunches and gestures at Touya to take his hoodie off. One of the nurses carefully wraps the cuff of the blood pressure monitor around his left arm, mindful not to get his staples caught up underneath it, while the doctor motions at Touya’s prosthetic arm, questioning whether he can remove it. Touya nods affirmatively and sits back a little, keeping his body still as the nurse takes his blood pressure while Dr. Hasegawa inspects his stump and the sensitive scarred skin the prosthesis attaches to.

“Blood pressure is slightly low but within normal range”, the nurse notes as she removes the cuff from Touya’s arm again. Dr. Hasegawa nods and stands up to write something down in his notebook.

“Your arm is looking good, too. Is your prosthesis still working as it should?”

“Yeah, I can even play video games with it”, Touya confirms, and finally chances a glance over at Hawks for the first time since this whole check-up began. The hero is already staring at him a little dazedly, and his eyes only snap back into focus when Touya raises an eyebrow and smirks at him. “I’m really good at them as well”, he adds, keeping his gaze locked on Hawks’ challengingly, and the corners of the bird’s mouth twitch a little.

“He’s not bad, I’ll have to hand that to him”, the hero admits then, looking over at Dr. Hasegawa with a very serious expression on his face. “I fear it might be getting to his head a little, though.”

“Oi!”, Touya screeches indignantly, whipping around in his chair to face the hero properly. “You wanna lose your dignity at Smash Bros. again soon? Because that sure can be arranged, Birdie”, he threatens with a pointed look.

Hawks flushes a bit pink at that, but he still continues to steam ahead. “I’d rather make you lose yours at Mario Kart.”

Touya actually gasps at that bold provocation. “Challenge accepted, Birdie”, he tells the hero, holding out his left hand for them to shake on it. Hawks looks a bit surprised but grasps Touya’s outstretched hand nonetheless.

The hero’s fingers are warm and dry, and his grip is firm and his skin soft, and Touya dimly thinks that perhaps he got a little too carried away in his competitiveness. Still, there’s no turning back now, so he reciprocates Hawks’ strong grasp and briefly shakes his hand.

Dr. Hasegawa clearing his throat - clearly bewildered yet amused by the display in front of him - is what finally snaps Touya back to reality.

He quickly drops Hawks’ hand like he’s been burnt and turns his attention back to the doctor. “Sorry about that”, he says a bit hoarsely, but Dr. Hasegawa just laughs placidly.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s good to see that you two are getting along well. I’m sure Dr. Nakayama has told you many times how beneficial positive social interactions can be for mental health recovery.”

His therapist has indeed reiterated this to Touya very frequently, but the fact that Dr. Hasegawa saw that bit of competitive bickering with the bird and immediately categorised it as a “positive social interaction” makes Touya feel a tad too exposed, so he absent-mindedly starts running his fingers through his hair, just to give his hand something to do.

“Right. Uh. What’s next?”, he croaks, trying to change the subject.

Dr. Hasegawa produces a stethoscope from his bag and dangles it in front of Touya’s face in response. Touya scoots forward to the edge of his chair to give the doctor access to both his chest and his back.

The metal resonator feels pleasantly cool against the healthy patches of Touya’s skin and he tries to concentrate on nothing but his breathing as Dr. Hasegawa listens to his lungs and heartbeat.

“All good”, the doctor tells him while he stuffs his stethoscope back in his bag. “Now we just need to draw some blood and I’d like to take a quick look at all your staples. Just to make sure there are no signs of infection or irritation anywhere. I’ll have to ask you to take off your jeans for that, but I can start with your upper body while we take your blood.”

“I can go”, Hawks offers hastily at that, looking at Touya sheepishly from the corner of his eye.

Touya huffs a bit exasperatedly. “It’s fine, Birdie, just turn around or something. Remember what you promised me”, he reminds the hero pointedly.

Hawks chuckles awkwardly, rubbing his neck. “Alright, if you say so.”

For a pro hero who has probably shared countless changing rooms and communal showers with other people in his life, the bird seems strangely prudish about what’s essentially just beach-level nudity, Touya notes privately.

Or maybe he just has a problem with it when it’s Touya specifically, and Touya very determinedly avoids following that particular train of thought any further, because surely nothing good could come of it for his appearance-related self-esteem.

He shifts his focus to the cool wet feeling of the antiseptic wipe one of the nurses is rubbing over the back of his hand, before she ties off his arm and pokes a cannula into the large vein. Touya’s blood starts dribbling down the little tube and it’s oddly soothing to watch.

Dr. Hasegawa runs his eyes across the scarred seams lining his chest and torso, before bending over Touya’s shoulder to inspect the staples at his back.

“No infections in sight”, he says with a satisfied smile, as the nurse pulls the needle from Touya’s hand and sticks a plaster onto the little wound. “Stay seated for a moment, please”, the doctor tells him and Touya obliges, reattaching his prosthesis in the meantime.

“Are you feeling faint or dizzy?”

Touya shakes his head. His body has remained functional under much, much higher duress in the past; a small amount of blood loss like this is nothing in comparison, but he obediently remains seated as he senses the perfect opportunity to make his request.

“Dr. Hasegawa?”

“Yes?”

“I was wondering if now that I’m out of jail and living at my own place I’d be allowed to get my piercings redone.”

“Legally, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t, as long as he gets someone to make a house call and sign an NDA”, Hawks jumps in helpfully as promised. “It’s just down to you to green-light it from a medical standpoint.”

Dr. Hasegawa hums a little, nodding slowly and flitting his gaze over Touya carefully. “Tell me again which parts of your body used to be pierced?”

Ah.

Right.

Of course that was bound to come up.

Touya clears his throat a bit awkwardly. “Well, I used to have four helices in each ear, three nose studs”, he pointedly fixes his gaze on the smooth wooden surface of the table in front of him and silently thanks whatever deity he doesn’t actually believe in, that he may have just lost enough blood to avoid blushing ferociously, before he continues, “and nipple and frenum barbells.” He’s not sure why he’s suddenly feeling so bashful about it, he certainly never has in the past, but something about revealing this particular bit of information in front of Hawks is weirdly embarrassing.

Like the hero might somehow be able to read it in his eyes, what kind of things Touya used to fantasise about while touching himself and, in the process, those piercings.

Perhaps he needn’t have worried, though, because Hawks promptly bursts into a choking coughing fit.

Touya whips around to stare at him bemusedly, and the hero’s face is beet-red with tears pooling in the corners of his eyes. 

“Sorry. Breathed in a piece of dust”, the bird wheezes out between short rattling breaths as he attempts to get some air into his lungs again. Touya squints at him suspiciously, but ultimately decides not to press the issue right now.

Maybe the hero really just is a prude.

Dr. Hasegawa is eyeing Hawks a little concernedly, probably already mentally running through his medical emergency protocols to save a choking person, then finally looks back at Touya when he deems the hero out of immediate perishing danger.

“Alright. So. I can green-light the nose piercings, but I’ll have to ask you to refrain from getting your ears re-pierced, or any other heavily burnt parts of your body. The risk of infection is too high, unfortunately. I also recommend you do not get any nipple or genital piercings at this point in time. You may not be scarred in those areas, but those are still very sensitive body parts, and I’d rather you don’t risk those getting infected either”, the doctor explains kindly but firmly.

Touya nods. He can understand and accept those conditions. “I wasn’t planning on getting those redone anyway. My brother has offered to ask his friend, uh, pro hero Earphone Jack, to come by and do my piercings since she’s got some experience, and I wouldn’t want to ask her to do any intimate body parts.” 

Dr. Hasegawa smiles at him. “I see. Well, then you have my professional permission to get your nose re-pierced.”

“Thank you”, Touya tells him, his tone earnest, and he really means it.

He feels like this is going to be another one of many little steps towards him truly finding his own identity, the person that he is now at nearly 31 years old.

Away from jail and villainy and the ghosts of his past.

He resolves to text Shouto right after this check-up to set up his unofficial piercing appointment.

“Now, let’s take a look at the staples on your legs and be done with this, alright?”, Dr. Hasegawa suggests. Touya obligingly stands up (still no dizziness), and when he starts to unbutton his jeans Hawks averts his head so quickly, Touya is genuinely concerned the hero might’ve given himself whiplash. 

Definitely a prude.

Touya carefully peels his skinny jeans off his legs and then stands there a bit stupidly in his boxer briefs as Dr. Hasegawa crouches down beside his legs to inspect the seams and staples curving around his thighs, knees and calves.

“These are looking a bit irritated”, the doctor notes, motioning at the staples lining the side of Touya’s left kneecap. “Nothing to worry about, but I’ll leave you a cream you should apply to this area every morning and every night for the next two weeks.”

Touya nods as the doctor pulls down his socks a little to get a better look at the staples below his ankles.

“Everything else is looking fine, though”, he announces, getting back up to his feet. “You can put your clothes back on.”

Touya quickly slips into his jeans and hoodie, then informs his babysitter “you can turn around again, Birdie.”

Dr. Hasegawa rummages through his bag and pulls out a little tube, handing it over to Touya. “This should reduce the irritation on your knee. You can also use it on other parts of your body, if you notice any irritation around the staples there.”

He settles back down on his chair and scribbles a few more notes. “Now, all in all you appear to be in good health as far as the circumstances of your condition allow it, so I would like you to start doing some light indoor exercise once or twice a week. You went through a very long physical recovery period and then spent several years in a prison cell, so now that you have a bit more space and privacy and options available to you, I would like you to build up your muscle strength and joint stability a little. Nothing too strenuous or with a high injury risk - you’ve been rather inactive for a long time now and you need to be careful with your seams and staples - but whether you choose to do yoga or pilates or something else entirely is really up to you. There are many resources available online and I can leave you a number of recommendations. You can try out different things and see what works best for you.”

That…doesn’t sound so bad, Touya thinks. If anything, it will probably help him with his antsy-ness and inability to sit still for too long.

“I can do that”, he affirms, “although I really don’t know much about non-Quirk-related training and I’m not entirely sure where I would even start.” 

Dr. Hasegawa nods sympathetically. “That’s alright. There are lots of introductory courses available online, too. I’ll leave you some pamphlets here.”

“I, uh”, Hawks pipes up from Touya’s side then, “I could also help you with the exercising. I had to do a lot of non-strenuous training during my rehabilitation after I lost my Quirk, so I’m pretty experienced with it.”

“That would work, too”, the doctor assents, nodding at the hero. “Having someone there to help you out, especially at the beginning, can also be very useful.”

Touya contemplates the offer for a moment, his mind threatening to run off into all sorts of inappropriate directions, but he forcefully keeps himself in check and tries to look at it objectively. He doesn’t know shit about that sort of exercise and he’d much rather have it explained to him quickly and efficiently in person than have to read a book or watch an unnecessarily long video tutorial about it.

“Works for me”, he says, daring to glance at Hawks from the corner of his eye. The hero’s eyes are oddly sparkly and the corners of his mouth are quirked into a smile, and Touya briefly wonders whether he really just made the most objective choice he could have, or if a much more subjective and much less reasonable part of his brain actually has the wheel right now.

“Well, glad that’s sorted then”, Dr. Hasegawa proclaims, clapping his hands in satisfaction. “I’ll still leave a few pamphlets here, in case you change your mind or want some new inspiration.”

Touya thanks the doctor and the nurses politely as he accompanies them to the front door. Once his medical team has left, Hawks pops up by his side.

“I should probably head back over now, too”, he announces, chuckling softly and pointing his thumb in the vague direction of his own flat. “Are you gonna be okay on your own here now?”

Touya scoffs a little exasperatedly. “All peachy, Birdie. I’ll be fine”, he promises, flapping his hand around a little.

“Well, uh, see you in the morning then”, the bird huffs around a smile and disappears into the hallway, pulling the front door shut behind himself.

Finally alone again for the first time in hours, Touya blows out a heavy breath. He wasn’t lying when he said he’d be fine, but this day has really been a whirlwind of stimuli and input, so he’s going to need a bit of time to come down and unwind. His stomach has been growling lowly since about halfway through the doctor’s visit, so he heads to the kitchen to whip himself up a quick early dinner with ramen and some leftover bread on the side, before settling down in the living room to eat.

He connects his phone to his bluetooth speaker, putting on a 90s indie playlist to fill the roaring silence in the room, and slowly starts to feel himself relax as the hot comfort food fills his stomach and the sound of soft jangly guitars resonates around him. He finds himself reflecting on the day a little while he eats - all in all he’s glad it went down without a hitch and he can’t help but grin a little into his food at the prospect of getting some of his piercings back. The exercise part he feels a bit more apprehensive about - mainly because clearly his unfortunate attraction to the stupid bird is not just a product of the past - but Touya is a weak and pathetic man and entirely unable to say no to pretty heroes, apparently.

Still, he thinks, perhaps working out a little will actually be quite fun and might even be a good way to blow off some steam - exhaust himself so much the horny part of his brain will simply shut down.

So, overall, he finds that he actually feels pretty good about the whole day, and when he finishes his meal, he migrates over to the couch to curl up with his phone and text Shouto the good news about his piercings. The kid replies pretty quickly - something Touya has already kind of gotten used to by this point - and informs him, that he has already spoken to his friend and that they could drop by sometime next weekend.

Touya grins at his phone screen pretty dumbly, but it’s fine because there’s no one there to see it.

After confirming the date with his little brother, Touya picks up his horror fantasy novel for the first time in a while and doesn’t end up putting it down again until he’s finished, his playlist having looped back to the start a while ago and the hands of the large clock on the wall having long moved past midnight.

***

“What. The fuck. Are those?”, Katsuki asks incredulously when Shouto plops down on the couch next to him and wordlessly holds the Best Jeanist socks under his nose.

“They’re socks”, Shouto explains helpfully, his signature deadpan face meticulously in place.

Katsuki raises an eyebrow and eyes the socks suspiciously, like he’s expecting them to be some sort of trap.

The corners of Shouto’s mouth twitch involuntarily, but thankfully Katsuki is too distracted to notice and Shouto quickly schools his expression back into something more neutral.

“They’re for you”, he elaborates then, keeping his tone as earnest and innocent as he possibly can, and dangles the gift a little in front of Katsuki’s face.

“They’re what?”

“For you”, Shouto repeats affably. 

Katsuki finally drags his gaze away from the socks and stares at Shouto like he has grown a second head instead. “You’re shitting me, Halfie.”

“No, really, they’re for you”, Shouto says very solemnly, reciprocating Katsuki’s gaze with the most innocent doe-eyed look he can muster, and mentally pats himself on the back for being able to keep this charade up for so long already.

Unfortunately, Shouto’s newly unearthed acting skills don’t seem to be shared by everyone in his vicinity, though, and Izuku, who has been watching their exchange from the doorway, suddenly bursts out into spluttering fits of laughter.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”, he gasps out, slapping his thigh for good measure. “Kacchan, your face!”

He staggers over to join them on the sofa, plopping down on Katsuki’s other side and still snickering breathlessly.

Shouto finally breaks, too, at that, guffawing like a hyena and leaning against Katsuki’s side to steady himself. He wipes the tears that have started pooling in the corners of his eyes away and turns his attention back to his friend, holding up the socks again.

“These really are for you”, he clarifies a bit hoarsely. “But I mostly bought them to see your reaction. You certainly didn’t disappoint.”

Katsuki scowls at him, but Shouto can tell it’s all bark no bite, and he snatches the ridiculous socks from Shouto’s hand. “Don’t mind if I take my gift then”, he growls, and Shouto suddenly realises he’s still sitting all pressed up against Katsuki’s side, but his friend hasn’t made any move to shove him off, so Shouto supposes it’s alright if he continues to indulge in the contact just a little longer.

“Did you know about this, nerd?”, Katsuki questions then, turning his head to squint over at Izuku, who is sitting with his legs drawn up to his chest, hiding the lower half of his face and what seems to be another fit of giggles behind his knees.

“I’m just an innocent bystander, don’t arrest me, officer”, Izuku says quickly, holding up his hands in mock-surrender. His lips curl into a grin then. “Hey, Kacchan, do you wanna see my new All Might figure?”

Katsuki sighs exasperatedly, and Shouto knows damn well it’s just for show - the Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight would surely love to see Izuku’s newest addition to his extensive All Might collection.

“Alright then, let’s see it, nerd”, Katsuki relents long-sufferingly, shifting his weight a little, and to Shouto’s great surprise and pleasure it’s not away but rather towards him, so that now Katsuki is leaning against Shouto’s side, too. 

It’s his fire side, and Shouto surreptitiously heats himself up a little like a human heating pad, because he knows Katsuki likes it warm.

The weight against his side grows a little heavier, and Shouto doesn’t miss the content little sigh his friend exhales. He quickly nuzzles into his right shoulder to hide the pleased smile that is threatening to split his face in half.

Soon after, Izuku returns with his still-sealed new possession and almost reverently unboxes the roughly 30 centimetres tall replica of his mentor in his Silver Age costume. Katsuki has given up all pretence of not being interested by this point and carefully runs a finger along the figure’s muscular arm. Shouto has to admit it’s very well-made - the detailed bones, muscles and veins on the figure’s body and the way they carved mini All Might’s face make the replica look incredibly realistic.

Due to his upbringing Shouto never used to be one for buying pro hero merch, and nowadays he would feel a tad too weird about putting figures of his high school teacher in his bedroom, but Izuku’s situation is obviously a little different from his, and Shouto has always thought that his friend’s collection is pretty cool.

Katsuki, who Shouto knows still carries his signed All Might trading card around wherever he goes, seems to feel similarly, so Shouto contently buries himself a bit deeper into the couch, just a bit closer to Katsuki’s side, and fondly watches his two best friends as they excitedly inspect the figure and discuss its pros and cons in comparison to the other figures Izuku already has in his collection.

Chapter Text

When Shouto, Izuku and Katsuki step through the main entrance of the animal shelter, they are welcomed by a distant cacophony of meows and barks. It instantly tugs on Shouto’s heartstrings, and he briefly wonders whether he could just adopt all the abandoned animals here.

“Hello, I’m Yoshida Haru. How can I help you?”, a young short-haired woman in a polo-shirt with the name of the shelter written on the breast pocket greets them, her manner of speaking casual and her smile friendly.

Being by far the most sociable one out of the three of them, Izuku automatically takes the lead. “Hello, Yoshida-san”, he says, reciprocating the woman’s smile, “I’m Midoriya Izuku, and this is Todoroki Shouto and Bakugou Katsuki. We would like to adopt a cat, if that’s alright?”

Yoshida laughs unabashedly. “That’s more than alright. We’re always very happy to send our little ones off into new loving homes. I’m assuming you three live together?”

Shouto nods affirmatively.

“Well then, let’s go have a look at our little fur babies, shall we? I will need a few more details and credentials from you guys later on, but, uh, I recognise you, so we can skip that for now.” She laughs again and gestures at them to follow her through a backdoor towards the direction of the meowing and barking.

They’re led into a large room with cages lining the walls, housing dogs on the right and cats on the left side of the room. Some of the animals seem to have a cage to themselves, others share them with one or two of their peers. Shouto’s heart clenches painfully when he notices how clearly unwell some of the animals look - bandaged injuries, bald patches where their fur seems to have been ripped out, emaciation.

“These are our newest rescues”, Yoshida explains sadly, when she notices Shouto’s horrified stares. “Some of them were barely even alive when they got here, and we’ve only just started nursing them back to health. Ultimately, they got very lucky that they were found, picked up and dropped off here at all.”

“That’s awful!”, Izuku exclaims wide-eyed, and Shouto is pretty sure his friend is fighting to hold back tears right now. “I mean, it’s really good that someone rescued them and brought them here, but the fact that they ended up like this at all…” He trails off, sniffling a little as he sweeps his eyes over a cage holding a small floppy-eared dog with protruding ribs and a missing front leg. Still, the little animal curiously hobbles closer, when Izuku holds his hand in front of the metal crate, and starts wagging its tail happily as it sniffs at Izuku’s hand.

Shouto kind of wants to start bawling.

He throws a glance over at Katsuki, who is watching Izuku befriend the small dog with the saddest yet softest expression Shouto thinks he may have ever seen on his friend’s face, and it makes a sharp little sting of tangled up, not-quite-identifiable emotions shoot through Shouto’s chest.

“I know they look really bad right now, but the large majority of our rescues actually do manage to get back to decent health eventually”, Yoshida tells them kindly as she motions for them to follow her deeper into the room. “The more difficult part is usually trying to find someone who will adopt them later on.”

Personally, Shouto finds that incredibly hard to comprehend, but he knows that, unfortunately, it’s the truth. “But why?”, he wonders out loud. “I just can’t imagine why people who want pets and know that these kinds of places exist wouldn’t adopt an animal from a shelter.”

Yoshida sighs. “I’m totally with you on that, but realistically speaking there are quite a few reasons why those people won’t adopt rescues. Some want specific breeds, some worry that a rescue might cause them too much trouble - either for behavioural or medical reasons - and a lot of people tend to prefer getting young animals as pets. We have some younger rescues, too, but a lot of rescue animals tend to be a bit older already. For many people that’s a dealbreaker, unfortunately.”

“Not for us!”, Shouto blurts before he can even really think about what he’s saying, but he quickly finds that he means it.

“Yeah, we don’t care about the age”, Katsuki speaks up for the first time since they got here, voice sounding a bit hoarse, and Shouto offers him a grateful little smile.

Yoshida nods, smiling at the three of them approvingly. “That makes me happy to hear”, she says earnestly. “We have a few 8-10 year olds in great health that have been waiting to be adopted for a pretty long time now. Would you like to see them?”

“Yes, please”, Izuku affirms as Shouto reciprocates the woman’s smile.

Yoshida leads them to the back of the room, where a few larger cages house a couple of much healthier looking cats.

“This is our little weather trio”, she explains fondly, pointing at a cage with three cats inside. One of them is snow-white and very fluffy, another one’s fur is intricately patterned in various shades of grey, and one is bright orange.

“They’re called Shimo, Kasumi and Aki. You can probably guess which one’s which”, Yoshida adds, snickering a little. “Of course you’re free to rename them, but those are the names we’ve been calling them since they got here two years ago.”

“Two years?”, Shouto gasps incredulously. Looking at those three adorable fluff balls lying curled up in their cage and watching the humans curiously, he simply cannot wrap his mind around the fact that no one has wanted to adopt them in two whole years.

Yoshida nods with a sombre expression on her face. “Yeah, no one has wanted to adopt them because of their ages. Shimo is around ten, and Kasumi and Aki are around eight. We believe Kasumi was abandoned by her previous owners only shortly before she got here, while Shimo and Aki had presumably been living on the streets for a while already by that point. Aki was bleeding very heavily from a deep cut on his abdomen - probably from some sort of wired fence - when he was rescued and Shimo had fresh burn wounds on his front legs and around his neck and chest. He still doesn’t grow fur in some of those places, but the wounds have healed well and he’s so fluffy, you can’t really see the scars unless you actively search for them. We have no idea what happened to him, but we suspect he might still get pretty anxious around fire, so if you have an open fireplace in your home he might not be the right pick for you.”

“We don’t have a fireplace”, Shouto informs her, tilting his head a little. “I also don’t use my Quirk like that at home”, he adds when he remembers that Yoshida recognised them.

The woman laughs good-naturedly. “I didn’t think you would, but thanks for clarifying that anyway. Now, do you guys want to become a little acquainted with those three? They tend to be pretty contact-seeking, especially Kasumi and Aki, so they might even let you pick them up.”

Shouto immediately feels his lips curl into a smile at the prospect of getting to pet those adorable animals. “That would be great, thank you”, he tells Yoshida very earnestly, and from the corner of his eye he can see both Izuku and Katsuki nodding at her.

Yoshida smiles at them before unclasping the top grating from the cage and setting it aside. “You can get inside if you want”, she says, gesturing for them to step over the now fence-like walls of the cage.

“You go”, Izuku tells Shouto, smiling encouragingly. “You’re gonna be the one to pick one anyway, and I fear the three of us getting in there might be a bit too much at once.”

Shouto grins at him happily, then does as told and steps over the low fencing. The three cats perk up immediately at his presence and Kasumi and Aki unceremoniously trudge over to him to start sniffing at his shoes and legs. Shouto crouches down carefully and holds his hands out to them, which he assumes will probably be more pleasant to sniff at than his worn-out snow boots.

Shimo is still lying curled up on the ground but watching with unmistakable curiosity as Kasumi starts sniffing intently around Shouto’s fingers and Aki bumps his little nose against Shouto’s palm before nudging his head underneath it, clearly demanding Shouto pet it. 

Well.

Who would Shouto be to deny him that request?

He happily obliges and gently scratches his fingers over the furry little head, and Aki starts purring almost immediately.

“Oh, that’s so adorable!”, Izuku gasps. “Kacchan, isn’t that adorable?”

Katsuki grunts affirmatively, and Shouto huffs a little laugh.

By this point Kasumi has given up on sniffing his fingers and starts demanding her own head scratches, so Shouto is now petting not one but two happily purring cats, and he dimly starts to wonder how the hell he’s supposed to choose between them, when - seemingly encouraged by his friends’ happy purrs - Shimo finally uncurls from his position on the floor and shyly trails over to Shouto.

The fluffy white cat is still eyeing him curiously, with a look that makes Shouto feel like the animal is probably a million times smarter than he is and somehow knows something he doesn’t. 

Shimo thoroughly sniffs around Shouto’s knees, before - completely out of nowhere - jumping up into Shouto’s lap and craning his head to look up at him. Shouto nearly loses his balance in surprise and lets up from petting Aki and Kasumi to instinctively steady the cat in his lap as he precariously staggers on his haunches. Shimo just continues to stare up at him with icy blue eyes, apparently entirely unbothered by the way he just nearly toppled Shouto over, and as the cat tilts his head a little Shouto can see a few burnt patches of skin underneath the white fluff around Shimo’s neck and chest.

Carefully, Shouto trails his hand from the cat’s side up to his head to start petting it softly, and as if that was all the permission Shimo had been waiting for, the cat instantly closes his eyes and curls up against Shouto’s stomach, purring so strongly that Shouto can feel the vibrations even through his thick jumper.

“What are you, a fucking cat whisperer, shortcake?”, Katsuki asks incredulously, his voice low and smooth like he’s trying not to disturb the moment.

Shouto chuckles softly, shaking his head a little as he gazes down at the little fur ball in his lap, so shy yet so affectionate. “I have no idea”, he whispers, feeling a bit stunned. “But I think I know which one I want.”

“I think the feeling is mutual”, Yoshida comments, smiling happily at Shouto. “I’ll need you to fill out some paperwork and then you can take him home.” She turns to address Izuku and Katsuki. “Would you like to become acquainted with Shimo while I kidnap your boyfriend for a moment?”

“Our what?”, Izuku damn-near screeches, and Shouto can feel his heart plummet all the way to the floor he’s crouching above. He’s pretty sure Shimo can sense it, because the cat lifts his head to squint up at him inquisitively before pointedly bumping his nose against Shouto’s stomach.

Shouto doesn’t dare to look up properly at his friends, but from the corner of his eye he can see that Izuku’s entire head is bright red and his mouth is hanging open, while Katsuki’s carefully neutral expression stands in stark contrast against his pink ears, and Shouto is eternally grateful for having such a great excuse to be looking down and hiding his own face right now.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I just assumed- sorry if I misjudged the situation”, Yoshida apologises, laughing a little awkwardly, but the gaze she keeps trained on the three heroes holds equal amounts of confusion and curiosity.

“Uh, it’s fine”, Izuku tells her quickly with a nervous little laugh, rubbing his hand over his neck. “I mean, not like there would be anything wrong with it, of course. If it were the case. Which it isn’t. But…”

Katsuki interrupts him with a dry cough into his elbow. “Please stop talking, nerd. We get it”, he rasps out.

“Right…”, Yoshida says slowly, eyeing the three of them with thinly veiled suspicion, and Shouto feels a bit like he’s about to be dissected and have his innards and the pandemonium of feelings churning inside them put on display for the whole world to see, so he quickly sets Shimo down - much to the cat’s dismay, if the accusing icy stare he gets for it is anything to go by - and gets to his feet to step out of the cage. 

“Let’s go do the paperwork”, he suggests a little shakily and finally chances a glance at his friends, hoping his face won’t betray him. “You guys get familiar with Shimo in the meantime. If you want.”

Katsuki nods a bit stiffly at him while Izuku nearly trips and face-plants straight into the cage as he steps over the low fencing surrounding it.

Shouto looks over at Yoshida, whose smile is still friendly but a bit less casual than it used to be, and motions for her to lead the way. As they make their way back to the main entrance hall Shouto can hear Izuku coo, “oh, Kacchan, look, he really likes you, too!”, and smiles a little to himself.

Yoshida leads him to a reception desk and pulls out a small stack of papers from a drawer underneath it. “Basically, we just need all the usual personal information from you - your full legal name, birth date, address, your living situation, and also your occupation and a rough estimate of your monthly income.” She chuckles a little as she nudges the papers and a pen over to Shouto. “Of course your situation is a little different, but we still need this stuff on paper with your signature underneath for formality reasons. We usually have to ask the occupation and income question to ensure that the people who adopt our animals are actually financially stable enough to care for their pets - buy food and care products, pay for the vet, stuff like that”, she explains.

“I understand”, Shouto tells her placidly as he starts to write down his personal details as neatly as he can manage. It seems very reasonable to him, and if anything it just speaks to this shelter’s dedication to ensuring their rescue animals are well cared for, even after adoption.

While Shouto fills out the paperwork, Yoshida briefly disappears into a backroom, only to return a few minutes later carrying a large plastic bag and a plastic pet carrier. Shouto quickly finishes signing the papers before turning his attention to the woman.

“Here, this is our adoption care package”, she explains, holding the bag out to Shouto, so he can look inside. “This is a few days worth of the cat food we usually feed Shimo as well as feeding bowls, a few toys and grooming and hygiene products. We always give these to people who adopt our rescues to ease them into caring for them a little. Once you run out, you should be able to get these products at every local pet store. Also, if you can, we would be really grateful if you could return the carrier to us within a week or two, since those are quite pricey and we’re mostly running off of donations.” 

Yoshida smiles at him a little crookedly and Shouto nods. “Of course, I’ll return it!”, he promises her quickly. “Thank you very much for this, it’s very helpful.”

That makes Yoshida’s smile grow into a full-blown grin. “Well, we thank you. Now, shall we go get your, uh, friends and Shimo?”

Shouto doesn’t miss the way she stumbles over the word “friends”, and it makes his cheeks feel a little hot, but he resolutely pretends he didn’t notice anything and follows Yoshida back into the large room with the animals. When they reach the cage of the weather cats, they find Izuku and Katsuki both kneeling on the floor. Izuku is alternating between petting and playing with Aki and Kasumi, while Katsuki is carefully petting Shimo, who is lying curled up against his knees and purring softly.

Shouto feels an almost overwhelming wave of affection crash over him, and he’s not even sure if it’s for his friends or the cats or both. He can’t help but smile softly at the sight.

“Look, Shimo really likes Kacchan, too!”, Izuku blurts out happily when he spots Shouto. Katsuki huffs a little, but continues to gently run his fingers through the cat’s fluffy white fur.

“The snowman is quite alright, I guess”, he admits then, and Shimo meows a little, as if to affirm his statement.

“I kinda feel really bad about having to leave Kasumi and Aki here, though”, Izuku says sadly as he scratches Kasumi’s head to the sound of happy purring. Shouto didn’t want to say it out loud, but he feels very similar. He knows they’re probably not quite ready to adopt three cats in one go, and he feels like adopting two of them and leaving one behind would be more cruel than adopting one and leaving two behind, but it still hurts his heart to think about how these two sweet little creatures have been waiting to find a home for two whole years already and no one has wanted them so far.

“Haven’t Pikachu and Eyebags been going on about how they wanna get a pet? Maybe they’ll wanna adopt them”, Katsuki muses, and that suddenly reminds Shouto of something.

“Momo also recently mentioned that she and Jirou have been thinking about getting a cat together!”, he informs his friends excitedly.

Katsuki nods approvingly. “There we go. Problem solved. I know Ears and Ponytail won’t be able to resist these either”, he says, jutting his chin towards Kasumi and Aki.

“If you know anyone who would like to adopt any of our rescues, we’d of course be very happy if you sent them our way”, Yoshida tells them, smiling gratefully.

“We will!”, Izuku promises forcefully.

“We’d also like to leave you a donation before we go”, Katsuki says then, stroking Shimo’s fur a little apologetically before getting to his feet and dusting off his legs.

Yoshida looks incredibly touched at that. “Thank you very much, that means a lot. Let’s get Shimo ready then. You can leave either a cash or a card donation at our reception when you head out.” She turns to Shouto and holds the pet carrier out to him. “Here, would you like to do it?”

Shouto nods, taking the carrier from her hands and stepping back into the cage. When he crouches down and sets the carrier on the floor, all three cats excitedly pad over to him immediately, but Shimo almost possessively nudges past the other two to try and claim Shouto’s attention all for himself. Shouto can’t help but laugh a little at that. He opens the crate of the carrier before carefully picking Shimo up and placing him inside the transport box. The cat looks a little confused at that, tilting his head and staring at Shouto with slightly narrowed eyes as he closes the crate again.

“It’s fine, don’t worry”, Shouto tells the cat softly. “This is just temporary until we get home.” He gets back up to his feet and carefully picks the carrier up before climbing out of the cage.

Aki and Kasumi watch the four humans with big and - as Shouto sees it - sad eyes as Yoshida closes their cage again.

“I’ll make sure some really nice people will come and take you two home soon, too”, Shouto promises the two cats, and he means every word of it. If Kaminari and Shinsou or Momo and Jirou don’t want to adopt after all, he’ll ask the rest of their friends and colleagues.

If he can’t even save a few cats and make sure they end up in a loving home, what kind of pro hero is he then?

Yoshida leads the trio and their furry little adoptee back to the reception desk and Katsuki and Izuku both pull out their wallets.

“We’d like to donate by card, please”, Izuku tells Yoshida, and she nods happily as she pulls up a card reader and turns it around towards them. 

“You can enter the amount here, then press the green button, swipe your card and enter your PIN”, she explains as Shouto carefully sets the pet carrier down on the floor to fumble his own wallet from his pocket.

“I’d like to leave a donation, too”, he announces, waving his card in the air a little.

Katsuki turns to raise an eyebrow at him while Izuku enters his PIN code. “That kinda defeats the point of this being your birthday present, shortcake”, he points out, but there’s a little smile curving the corners of his lips as he looks at Shouto with deep red eyes.

Shouto steps up beside him, offering the widest, most earnest smile he can muster. “The fact that we’re getting a cat at all and that you guys are making donations is more than enough of a birthday present for me. It has made me very happy, and I’d like to leave my own contribution here on top of that, as that would make me very happy, too”, he explains very seriously, and Katsuki briefly squeezes his shoulder in response, the smile on his lips twitching just a little wider. Shouto revels in his firm touch, before Katsuki steps up to the reception desk to leave his own donation.

Shouto follows suit soon after, and as the three heroes pocket their cards and wallets again, Yoshida offers them another grateful smile. “Really, thank you so much for this. I - and the rest of our team and our animals of course - really appreciate your donations. I’m sure they will help us save a lot more lives.” She giggles a little to herself before adding, “You three really are heroes.”

Izuku flushes pink as he bows deeply to her. “It’s our pleasure!”, he tells her forcefully, and Shouto is suddenly vaguely reminded of Inasa, quickly biting down on his bottom lip to keep himself from snickering at the thought.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Halfie?”, Katsuki whispers by his side, his voice sounding slightly choked and wobbly, like he’s trying very hard to hold back the giggles himself.

Shouto can’t help but let out a little snort at that, which he quickly disguises as a cough. “Sorry, spit went down the wrong pipe”, he explains hurriedly when both Izuku and Yoshida throw him curious glances, which draws a similarly suspicious sounding cough from Katsuki by his side.

Izuku narrows his eyes at the two of them, like he can tell they’re hiding something and, maybe, if he just stares at them for long enough, their faces will reveal to him what it is.

“Sorry, spit down the windpipe seems to be contagious”, Katsuki says in a deadpan tone that could seriously rival Shouto’s, and now Shouto really has to fight not to burst out into a fit of giggles.

Thankfully, he is saved by Yoshida.

“Well, I’ll let you three go now, then. If you have any questions or you need help with anything, especially during the early days, please don’t hesitate to call us.”

She hands Shouto a little business card. “This is my work phone number, but I usually keep it with me all day, so if anything urgent comes up you should be able to reach me there”, she tells them as Shouto nods and pockets the card.

“Now, congratulations on adopting your first rescue cat and all the best to you!”

“Thank you”, Shouto replies, offering her a friendly smile.

Izuku and Katsuki offer their thanks, too, before the three of them say their goodbyes and head outside, trudging over to Katsuki’s car through a fresh layer of powdery snow, illuminated only by street lamps and headlights in the late afternoon darkness.

Shouto gets into the backseat with the pet carrier by his side, and Shimo eyes the interior of the car a bit suspiciously, but seems fairly unbothered by the 20 minute drive back home to their flat. Shouto is pretty sure Katsuki is driving extra gently, and the volume of the rock music playing from the sound system is definitely turned a bit lower than normally. He smiles a little to himself as he watches Shimo get comfortable in the carrier and lick his paws to the light sway of the vehicle.

When they get back to their flat, they quickly shed their shoes and coats before making their way to the living room, where Shouto sets the carrier down on the floor and opens the crate. Izuku busies himself with unpacking the large bag Yoshida gave them and Katsuki heads to the kitchen to fill up the water and food bowls, while Shouto crouches down a few steps away from the carrier, hopefully encouraging Shimo to come outside on his own.

The cat carefully pads towards the edge of the carrier and sticks his head outside to look around, diligently inspecting the surroundings of their living room like he’s trying to catalogue every detail. 

Shouto kneels down properly and gently taps the floor in front of him in an attempt to capture Shimo’s attention. The cat’s eyes snap towards him, and the animal tilts his head a little before finally deeming the outside world safe (or worthy?) and sophisticatedly stepping out of the carrier and making his way over to where Shouto is sitting. Shouto immediately rewards him with head scratches. 

“You wanna go explore a little?”, he suggests, vaguely indicating the rest of the living room and adjacent kitchen to the cat. 

“Hey, snowman. You wanna eat or drink something?”, Katsuki’s voice suddenly pipes up from the kitchen as he sets the filled-up bowls down on the floor. Shimo whips around to stare at him inquisitively and then pads over to him, curiously sniffing at the bowls. He takes a moment to eye the water and the wet food before hungrily tucking in.

“Well, that seems like a good place to start”, Izuku chuckles, watching their new flatmate devour his dinner.

“Thank you so much again for all this”, Shouto tells his friends emphatically as he scoots over to where Izuku is kneeling on the floor to help him sort through the contents of the care package.

“We’re just happy you’re happy, shortcake”, Katsuki replies from where he’s leaning against the kitchen counter, keeping an eye on Shimo as he feasts, and Izuku quickly nods affirmatively.

Shouto smiles widely at them. 

Yeah.

He’s definitely happy.

***

When Touya blinks his eyes open against the morning sun filtering through the curtains into his bedroom on his 31st birthday, he feels almost ridiculously giddy.

It’s his first birthday that he isn’t spending in jail, the criminal underworld, on the streets or in a coma since, well, the digits were the other way round, so he supposes he’s allowed to feel a little bit of childlike enthusiasm about actually getting to celebrate his special day like a somewhat normal person for the first time in nearly 20 years.

His siblings have promised to come by today - Fuyumi and Natsuo in the evening after they get off work, while Shouto has announced himself for the afternoon so they can cook dinner together. Touya isn’t entirely sure whether he and Shouto, of all people, should really be trusted to prepare a big family dinner together, but he supposes that at 31 years old that’s one of those “normal person” responsibilities he should probably be able to take on, so he resolves to make the best of it.

When he climbs out of bed and gets dressed, he puts together one of his nicer outfits - black skinny jeans, his leather jacket, and even his never-worn-outside combat boots since it’s a special occasion - and takes in his appearance in the full-length mirror on the door of his bedroom wardrobe for a moment.

Angry purple scars and silver staples dominate his reflection, but he resolutely ignores those and focuses on the other parts of his body. His clothes look good on him - even with his dissatisfaction with the state of his skin he can still admit that to himself. The tight black denim clings to his long slim legs like it’s been painted on and the faux-leather fabric of his jacket stands in harsh yet appealing contrast to the soft white waviness of his hair.

Piercing, deep-set eyes stare back at him - his father’s eyes in colour and his mother’s eyes in shape - as he steps a bit closer to the glass to inspect the patches of healthy skin on his face for wrinkles. At 31, and considering the life he has lived, he should probably start expecting the first ones to appear rather sooner than later, but for now his forehead still looks smooth and uncreased. He carefully traces his index finger over the side of his nose where his piercings used to be, feeling the three little dots of scarring where the holes closed up over the years, and excitedly remembers that he’ll finally get them back this weekend.

With a satisfied little smile playing around his lips, he heads to the bathroom to relieve himself and wash up before making his way to the kitchen to prepare himself a nice birthday breakfast.

By the time he has finished eating and pours himself his second cup of coffee it’s nearly 10, and soon after the doorbell rings. Touya gets to his feet and goes to open the door, carrying his coffee with him only to nearly spill it on his t-shirt, when the loud and cheery “happy birthday, Touya!” Hawks greets him with startles the shit out of him.

“Here, this is for you”, the hero says grinning, seemingly uncaring that he just almost made Touya take a coffee shower, and holds out a neatly wrapped gift to him as he toes off his boots.

Touya blinks in honest surprise. “You got me a present?”, he questions, not quite able to keep the incredulousness out of his voice. He’s pretty sure birthday gifts do not fall under babysitting duties, and he didn’t really think the hero cared enough to do something this nice for him.

“Well, duh. It’s your birthday”, Hawks replies nonchalantly, like that’s somehow explanation enough, and briskly walks down the hallway and into the kitchen. Touya follows after him a bit dumbfoundedly, mug in one hand and the - as he distantly notes - soft present from the bird in the other.

“God, I need coffee”, the hero announces, helping himself to his own mug. “I stayed up way too late last night.”

Touya raises an inquisitive eyebrow at him as he clambers back onto his bar stool at the kitchen island to finish his coffee and take his medication, carefully setting the present down beside him.

“I’d ask if you were partying late, but I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to do that while you’re supposed to be guarding me, so what were you doing?”

Hawks offers him a serene yet absolutely shit-eating grin. “That’s for me to know, and for you to…dot dot dot.”

Touya actually gasps a little at that. “Excuse me?! What the hell is that supposed to mean?!”

The hero just continues smiling at him stupidly. “You’ll find out.”

“Something about your face is telling me that I won’t enjoy it, and you’re having way too much fun with that.” Touya suspiciously narrows his eyes at the bird, whose eyes sparkle with mischief as he stares back at Touya over the rim of his coffee mug.

“It’s nothing to worry about”, Hawks says a little more earnestly then, ever the heroic heart trying to pacify.

“I wasn’t worried”, Touya states a bit petulantly, perfectly aware that that probably isn’t going to help him prove his point.

The bird chuckles at that. “It’s fine, you know? I have certainly given you enough reason in the past not to trust me”, he points out, and Touya thinks he actually sounds quite regretful about it.

He sighs a little. “I think we’ve both given each other more than enough reason to be wary of each other in the past. I’m not saying I fully trust you now”, he admits, “but we’re both in very different places than we used to be back then, and you don’t have to walk on eggshells around me like that.”

Hawks tilts his head, regarding him contemplatively for a moment. “That’s fair”, he acquiesces then. “I don’t want to make you feel like I’m patronising you.”

He pauses briefly, seemingly steeling himself for his next words.

“May I ask something of you, though? If I ever do cross a line and genuinely make you worry, will you please tell me?”

The hero looks down at his coffee a bit awkwardly, clearly avoiding Touya’s gaze, and Touya isn’t entirely sure how he’s supposed to respond to that. He’d really rather not confess and communicate his anxieties to the bird, but given the mutual grounds for distrust the two of them stand on, Touya thinks that maybe this is something where he just needs to give a little, even if he doesn’t like it.

“Okay”, he finally says, spitting it out a little too harshly perhaps, but Hawks has the grace not to comment on that. The hero takes a deep breath before opening his mouth to speak again.

“Thank you”, he says seriously. “I promise I will do the same thing with you. I’d, uh, really like us to be on even footing. Given how long this whole arrangement is supposed to last.”

Woah.

Yeah.

Touya suddenly feels like it’s only really hitting him now, that this arrangement - as the hero called it - they have going on right now is supposed to last for five whole years.

Five years of daily coffee and video games and talking to each other about god-knows-what and whatever other activities they might come up with in the future.

Thinking about it like this feels kind of daunting and overwhelming, but also strangely exhilarating, which is something Touya determinedly refuses to examine any further, because he’s not sure whether he really wants to deal with that particular can of worms right now.

But, ultimately, Hawks is right - if they’re going to be stuck in close proximity like this for the next five years, they need to be on even footing and communicate honestly with each other, otherwise that’ll surely spell disaster.

“I’m with you on that, Birdie”, Touya admits, mumbling it into his long empty mug to avoid looking at the hero.

“Good, I’m glad we’re on the same page then”, the bird replies, seemingly back to his cheery demeanour from before. “Now, will you open your present, please? The wait is absolutely killing me!”

Touya snorts. “Patience, Birdie”, he says sagely, like he himself wouldn’t feel literally exactly the same way, but obediently picks up the soft package and painstakingly removes the pieces of tape one by one.

“Oh my god, just rip it!”, Hawks groans dramatically, and, of course, that only makes Touya work even more meticulously as he slowly unwraps the paper.

Inside he finds a neatly folded black hoodie, and when he picks it up and holds it out in front of himself he finds a white Flower of Life print on the front and an English band name written along the left sleeve.

“You got me a Bring Me The Horizon hoodie?”, he asks in surprise, feeling the soft fabric between his fingers.

Hawks chuckles a little nervously. “Well, that was the band you recently played, right? The edgy one? I assumed you liked them, and I was really struggling to come up with something to get for you since, uh, well, I don’t actually know you that well. On, like, a personal level. So…”

“I do like them, and I like the hoodie”, Touya hurries to tell him. “Thank you. You, uh, really didn’t have to, though.”

The hero visibly relaxes, his nervous laughter morphing into an earnest grin. “I wanted to, though.”

Oh, fuck him.

(Not like that.)

(Okay, maybe a bit like that.)

(Fucking hell, Touya, get a grip.)

The stupid bird can’t just say things like that. Like they’re completely normal things to say to your ex-enemy-who-dug-up-your-tragic-past-and-severely-burnt-part-of-your-body-turned-convicted-criminal-on-house-arrest-who-you’re-supposed-to-be-babysitting. 

Touya is a weak man.

Still, he knows exactly how to fight fire with fire.

Wordlessly, he shuffles off his bar stool and shrugs off his leather jacket, discarding it on the empty stool beside his, before reaching his hand under the hem of his t-shirt and working it off his body as well.

“What are you doing?”, Hawks asks, and while Touya can’t see the hero’s face, he can most definitely tell that his voice is sounding significantly higher and more strained than normally.

“Changing into the hoodie”, Touya explains calmly, carefully tugging the t-shirt over his head, so it doesn’t snag on his staples, before turning to look at the bird with a challengingly raised eyebrow. “You a prude or something?”

“What?!”, the hero screeches, his face turning bright pink as he stares at Touya with wide eyes. “No, I’m not. Why?!”

Touya can’t help but cackle a little at the bird’s scandalised expression. “You always act so dramatic about me being shirtless.”

Hawks gasps and silently fish-mouths at him for a second. “I do not! You’re just very casual about nudity!”

Now Touya is the one going wide-eyed. “Have you ever been to an onsen? Or scratch that, have you ever been to the beach? A public swimming pool? A communal locker room? Me taking my shirt off is literally nothing in comparison”, he points out, staring at the hero in a mix of amusement and incredulousness.

“Well, in those places you expect people to be naked”, Hawks mutters, scratching his neck a little awkwardly, his face still a deep shade of pink.

Touya narrows his eyes at him warily before grabbing the hoodie and slipping it over his head. It fits him perfectly and the material feels very soft against his unscarred patches of skin. He hops back onto his barstool, then looks up to catch the hero’s eyes.

“Does it make you uncomfortable?”, he asks seriously. “If it genuinely does, I’ll be more mindful of it in the future. I just figured you were only acting overly polite or something.”

Hawks shakes his head, clearing his throat a little. “It’s fine. But thank you for trying to be considerate. I guess I really was just trying to be polite”, he adds with a nervous little laughter, averting his eyes for a moment, and Touya feels like the hero is withholding something from him again, but they did just have that conversation about honest communication, so Touya decides to take Hawks by his word for now.

“Good”, he says, and then, in a quick attempt to bring back the casual air between them, he adds, “wanna play some Mario Kart?”

At that Hawks’ expression morphs into a smirk, and a slightly terrifying manic gleam suddenly appears in his golden eyes. “I actually wanted to suggest that, too. We still have a score to settle, after all.”

The hero slips off his barstool and confidently struts out of the kitchen and over to the living room, leaving a mildly discombobulated Touya to follow in his wake.

When they settle down on the couch and Touya hands Hawks his usual controller, their knees brush against each other and Hawks’ fingers momentarily cover Touya’s own as he takes the controller. It makes Touya’s head spin a little, but he bravely soldiers on and starts up the game, like he can’t still feel the phantom warmth from the hero’s touch tingling on the sensitive skin on his fingers.

However, something is not going right.

They play race after race after race, and somehow, for some reason, the stupid bird is leading the victory tally the whole time.

For a brief moment Touya genuinely wonders if turning 31 makes you lose your Mario Kart mojo, but he quickly discards that theory again when he actually starts paying a little more attention to how exactly the hero is playing.

As it turns out, Hawks has taken to milking every single opportunity he can get to use drifting for a speed boost, even when he’s already far ahead of the pack, and Touya, who up to this point has only used drifting for corners that actually required it, realises he desperately needs to step up his game.

It’s tough work, but eventually he manages to pull himself back up to a draw and the two of them agree to a best-of-three decisive match.

“How the hell did you suddenly learn how to do all that, Birdie?”, Touya questions as they finally gear up for their final, all-deciding race.

“Well, remember how I said I stayed up way too late last night?”

“You were practicing Mario Kart?!”, Touya asks, actually whipping around to face the hero and stare at him in disbelief.

Hawks chuckles innocently. “Maybe.”

“I can’t believe you”, Touya grumbles, shaking his head a little.

“I wanted to make sure I was thoroughly up to the challenge. I thought you’d appreciate having an evenly matched opponent”, the hero points out, his tone still innocent but his grin most definitely not.

Touya narrows his eyes at him. “Don’t try to play mind games with me, hero”, he warns, but that just earns him another chuckle from the bird.

“What, are you scared you’ll lose?”, Hawks challenges.

“In your dreams.”

“Oh, I’m sure I will dream about my moment of victory”, the hero says faux-wistfully.

“Less talking, more racing, Birdie.”

And with that Touya starts the final decisive race.

And ends up losing.

It’s a close fucking call - the two of them are pretty much head to head on the final few metres to the finish line, but Touya is out of items and suddenly one of the CPUs fires a red shell that hits him right before he reaches the finish line and Hawks shoots right past him.

“Fucking Wario”, Touya mutters, glaring at the TV screen displaying the final ranking with Hawks in 1st and Touya in 2nd place like he could fire a burst of blue flames at it through sheer willpower alone.

The stupid bird is giggling by his side. “I almost feel bad for crushing you like this on your birthday”, he says a bit apologetically, and the worst part is it actually sounds kind of genuine.

Touya turns to scowl at the hero. “You did not crush me. We were at a draw until the last few metres and you only won because you got lucky. It’s not like you had anything to do with that red shell”, he points out, disgruntled.

“Hmm, you keep telling yourself that. The red shell came after you, not me, for a reason”, Hawks replies, grinning in satisfaction with the tip of his tongue poking out between his teeth.

It should look stupid, like some sort of panting dog, but instead it’s just stupidly attractive, and Touya damn near forgets what they were even talking about.

“I propose a rematch. Or a Smash Bros. battle or something”, he suggests grouchily, once his brain has managed to come back online. “There was basically no clear winner here.”

The stupid bird snickers at him. “You’re such a sore loser!”, he teases, leaning back on the couch and glancing up at Touya with amusement written all over his face.

“Show me how to be a gracious loser next time I crush you at something then”, Touya challenges, smirking at the hero as he puts down his controller and settles back against the couch as well.

“And you’re ridiculously competitive”, Hawks points out, turning his head a little sideways to look at Touya, and, woah, Touya may have miscalculated something here, because their faces are suddenly much closer than he expected them to be.

From this close he can see the rings of darker brown around the hero’s pupils, bleeding out into the impossible gold of the rest of his irises, and the light dusting of freckles covering his nose, and Touya’s heart rate picks up a little, the stupid thing thumping in his ribcage like he just sprinted up a flight of stairs.

“Like you aren’t just as competitive”, he shoots back, noting with embarrassment that his voice is sounding kind of hoarse and breathless, but steadily holding eye contact with the hero.

Hawks chuckles, and Touya can feel wisps of warm air ghosting over his face. “Guess you’re right”, the hero concedes, his voice suddenly just a tad lower, just a tad softer.

Touya’s head is spinning like crazy, and his heart is beating wildly in his chest. He feels a bit like he always used to back in the day, during clandestine meetings in abandoned warehouses when they would dance around each other, electric tension heavy and dangerous in the air like the razor sharp blade the hero used to hold against Touya’s throat.

Hawks is still looking at him, the expression on his face soft but not entirely decipherable to Touya. Warm golden eyes are sparkling in the early afternoon sun that is streaming into the room through the large windows, and Touya dimly thinks he wouldn’t be able to look away right now, even if he wanted to.

For a moment it feels like they’re frozen in time, before the hero’s eyes suddenly flit down to Touya’s mouth. 

Just for a fraction of a second, almost imperceptibly so.

But Touya is so transfixed by Hawks’ face that even the tiniest twitch of a nerve couldn’t go unnoticed by him right now, and a sharp spark of arousal pierces the depths of his lower guts when the realisation hits him.

They’re still so close, much closer than two people in their respective positions should probably be, and Touya is so, so weak. He can’t help but risk a glance down himself.

Hawks’ lips are pink and slightly parted, and they look unfairly soft. The hero’s tongue darts out a little, running along the seam of his lower lip, and it makes Touya feel like he might just drop dead on the spot. He flicks his eyes back up to meet Hawks’ gaze and finds the gold reduced to a small rim around the bottomless black of the hero’s dilated pupils.

The air between them feels almost unbearably charged, and Hawks’ breath is still ghosting over Touya’s face in agitated little puffs. As if controlled by some sort of outside force Touya feels himself lean in a little closer, just as the hero shifts forward, and suddenly they’re mere millimetres apart, their eyes fluttering shut as they breathe hotly into each other’s mouths, until-

Ding dong.

Touya jumps and scrambles to his feet like he’s been stung by a wasp. His heart is lodged in his throat, threatening to beat its way straight outside, and his head is swirling like he just got off one of those wildly spinning torture machines at an amusement park.

“I’ll get it”, he rasps out, pointedly avoiding looking at the hero on his couch, and damn near runs out of the living room. When he gets to the genkan he skids to a stop to take a moment to get his bearings. With all the mental power he can muster he forces his mind to go blank as he focuses on taking a few deep steadying breaths. That’s most likely Shouto at the door, and right now Touya absolutely cannot afford to even begin thinking about what just very nearly happened.

It takes him embarrassingly long to get his breathing and heart rate under control, but once he finally feels like he’s calmed down enough to put up a facade and face another human being again, he steels himself and opens the door.

“Happy birthday, nii-san!”, Shouto says with a wide grin, stumbling a little over the doorstep as he steps forward to engulf Touya in a big hug. 

“Thanks, little bro”, Touya mumbles against the kid’s shoulder, where his face is currently being squashed, the by now almost familiar feeling of his baby brother’s firm embrace grounding him a little more.

“I, uh, have to wait until Fuyumi and Natsuo are here to give you your present, but I brought my soba making kit. I thought you might like to have soba for dinner?”, Shouto informs him as he untangles himself from the hug and kicks off his boots. He’s carrying a large jute bag with guitars printed all over it and starts rummaging around in it a little, before pulling out a recipe book, a box of cooking utensils and packages of buckwheat and wheat flour and setting the jute bag down in the hallway.

“Ah, hello, Shouto-kun!”, Hawks’ voice suddenly pipes up cheerily, and Touya’s heart nearly drops through his arse all the way to the floor. For a second he had almost forgotten the hero was still here.

“Hi, Hawks”, Shouto greets him back, entirely unsuspecting, as Hawks shows up in the hallway looking perfectly calm and put together, like nothing out of the ordinary happened before.

Touya hopes his own facade of indifference is convincing.

“I’m gonna head out, leave you guys to it”, the hero announces, offering Touya a friendly, if a little distant, smile. “Happy birthday again, Touya. Enjoy your time with your family. If you need me, you know where to find me.”

Hawks laughs softly, and Touya nods at him, almost on autopilot. “Thanks, Birdie”, he says, mentally slapping himself for sounding breathless again and praying to whatever deities he doesn’t actually believe in, that the hero won’t notice.

“See you!”, Shouto says breezily, seemingly still completely unaware that there’s a massive elephant keeping them company in the hallway.

The bird offers the brothers a final wave before heading out the door and softly closing it behind himself. Touya can’t help but stare after him a bit stupidly.

“Touya-nii?”

The sound of Shouto’s voice finally snaps Touya out of his daze and back to reality. 

“Hm?”

“I asked if you’re ready to start making dinner”, the kid repeats, narrowing his eyes a little at Touya.

“Sorry. I spaced out for a moment. Yeah, I’m ready”, he quickly says, flapping his hand dismissively and leading the way to the kitchen.

Shouto heaves his cookbook, utensils and ingredients onto the kitchen island. “There are a lot of really different recipes in this, but I figured maybe we could just start with something like zaru soba to keep it simple. Oh, why do you keep your clothes in the kitchen?”, he suddenly questions as he hops onto the bar stool next to the one where Touya discarded his leather jacket and t-shirt earlier.

A wild tangle of memories - about taking his clothes off in front of Hawks, the hero getting all squeamish about it, the thing that almost very nearly happened between them on the couch - floods his mind, and Touya vaguely thinks there might be some things he’ll have to process and possibly reinterpret later, but he really can’t afford to indulge in that right now, so he mentally shakes himself out of it and busies his hands with grabbing some plates and mixing bowls from the cupboard.

“The chicken got me this hoodie for my birthday and I put it on right away”, he explains, keeping his back turned towards Shouto, lest the kid manage to read something on his face.

“Oh, cool!”, Shouto says earnestly. “That’s a band, right? I don’t think I’ve listened to them much before.”

Touya finally turns around to grin conspiratorially at his little brother. “You wanna?”

The kid smiles and nods. “Sure.”

With a grin Touya pulls his phone out of his pocket and opens his music app. “The logo on my hoodie is the cover design of this album”, he explains as he starts playing the music through the slightly tinny speakers and sets his phone down on the counter, a safe distance away from where the cooking magic is supposed to happen.

Shouto tilts his head a little, seemingly listening curiously. “It’s a bit theatrical. In a good way”, he muses after a moment, nodding approvingly.

Touya barks a laugh. “Can’t argue with that”, he admits, “although this album is probably their most dramatic one.”

“What do the other ones sound like?”, Shouto asks as he unboxes his soba-making utensils before making his way over to the sink to wash them.

“Hmm, the ones before are a bit, well, not necessarily heavier but faster and a bit less melodic. The ones after I actually don’t know. I saw online that they have released more since then, but it must've been while I was in Tartarus”, Touya explains, picking up a dish towel to dry off the freshly rinsed cooking utensils.

“Maybe you can ask Jirou about them when she does your piercings this weekend. I’m pretty sure she knows them”, the kid suggests, settling back at the kitchen island and flipping through his recipe book.

Touya hums. Figures the rock girl would be into them.

“Now, shall we get started?”, Shouto asks then, waving the package of buckwheat flour in Touya’s direction. Touya hops onto the bar stool next to him.

“Alright, how do we do this? Have you ever made soba from scratch before?”

The kid averts his eyes suspiciously and rubs his temple a little. “Well…once. Sort of”, he says noncommittally.

Touya raises a questioning eyebrow at him. “And…?”

Shouto coughs. “It was a very long time ago”, he says evasively. “But! There’s a nice step-by-step recipe here”, he points out, nudging the open book over to Touya, so he can read it.

He briefly narrows his eyes at his brother, contemplating whether he should try getting the story the kid is clearly withholding out of him and if so, how, but ultimately decides to focus on preparing their dinner for now. Fuyumi and Natsuo will be here soon as well, and he kind of doesn’t want his arguably most well-adjusted and “normal” siblings to get the impression that he can’t even handle the basics of a normal life, when they come to visit him at his flat for the very first time. 

The recipe Shouto has picked out really does look rather simple, and apart from the flour the kid brought with him Touya is pretty certain that he has all the ingredients in his kitchen.

“It says here that going 50/50 with the buckwheat and wheat flour is recommended for beginners. We should probably do it that way”, Shouto announces, laughing a little awkwardly, as Touya sets two large mixing bowls and his kitchen scale down on the counter and pulls a nitrile glove over his prosthetic hand. In theory, the prosthesis can be washed and sanitised like a real hand, but Touya still feels a bit icky about using it to touch food directly.

They quickly wash their hands at the sink before weighing and mixing the flour together with water and kneading it in their mixing bowls. Touya thinks this whole thing is actually pretty easy so far as the dough in his hands slowly starts to smoothen out, but when he glances over at Shouto, the kid looks like he’s trying to diffuse a ticking time bomb, and Touya can’t help but cackle.

“What’s so funny?”, Shouto asks into his mixing bowl, apparently not daring to look away from the dough for even just a second.

“Nothing, nothing. You just look so damn serious”, Touya snickers.

The kid furrows his eyebrows a little. “Well, a lot could go wrong at this stage.”

“Is that so?”, Touya teases, wondering whether he’s about to get to the bottom of the soba-related story Shouto seems to be withholding from him after all.

“Yes. I saw a video about it once.”

Ah.

Well.

Maybe not yet.

They continue preparing the dough to the sound of songs Touya once used to listen to between flaming rage, suicidal ideation and violent sorrow, and at one point he actually needs to stop and discreetly pinch himself, because never in a million years would Dabi have expected his life to turn out like this one day. Dabi was absolutely certain he’d never even make it to his 30s, and he definitely didn’t think he’d ever be making soba together with the little brother he tried to burn to death on more than one occasion.

And yet, here he is.

On his 31st birthday, preparing a family dinner with little baby Shouto, who is actually a grown man himself now.

Life is funny like that.

Touya can’t help but smile a little to himself as they finish slicing the noodles and Touya prepares the pot to boil them in, while Shouto gets started on the dipping sauce.

They successfully manage to finish their dinner preparations just in time for their other siblings’ arrival.

“You get it, I’ll go set the table”, Shouto says, gathering the various bowls and plates on a tray, as the doorbell rings.

Touya dutifully marches down the hallway, a little coil of nerves suddenly twirling in his gut when he realises he’s about to see Fuyumi and Natsuo for the first time since getting out of prison.

It probably shouldn’t feel like a big deal, especially now that he’s already been through this whole spiel with Shouto, but the truth of the matter is that Touya’s relationship and personal history with Shouto are vastly different from his relationships and history with the older two of his siblings, which made reconnecting with them over the course of the past few years simultaneously easier and so much more difficult.

There were so many memories, so many pent-up feelings, so much shared history to work through.

It hurt differently from practically building his relationship with Shouto up from scratch.

Not more or less.

Just differently.

Touya takes a deep steadying breath before he opens the door to a slightly out-of-synch two-person chorus of “happy birthday, Touya-nii”.

Fuyumi and Natsuo are both smiling widely, and just like that Touya feels the coil of nerves in his gut loosen.

“Thanks”, he says, his lips curling into a little smile of his own when Fuyumi throws her arms around his neck and pulls him down into a hug that’s surprisingly forceful, given her small frame.

After Fuyumi lets him go again, his stupidly big little brother engulfs him in a bear hug that makes Touya feel like he’s actually on the verge of being crushed.

He kind of doesn’t mind.

The two newcomers quickly take off their shoes and coats, then follow him to the living room where Shouto has finished setting the dinner table and greets them with a quick round of hugs of his own.

“Ohhh, this looks lovely!”, Fuyumi exclaims, inspecting the food spread out on the table as the four siblings take their seats. “Did you two actually make the noodles from scratch?”

Shouto nods proudly as they start filling up their plates, and Touya can’t help but grin a little in self-satisfaction as well. The food really does look great. 

Natsuo laughs heartily. “Wow, clearly I was the problem that one New Year’s Eve.”

The wheels in Touya’s head start turning creakily at that and he raises a questioning eyebrow at his big little brother. “What New Year’s Eve?”

Natsuo is still grinning, and from the corner of his eye Touya can see Shouto shaking his head pointedly while Fuyumi is clearly hiding a smile behind her hand.

“Seven years ago. Shouto and I tried to make soba noodles from scratch to surprise Fuyumi and, well, let’s just say they did not turn out like this”, Natsuo explains, cackling while Shouto is glaring daggers at him.

“It was just one large clod!”, Fuyumi suddenly bursts out giggling through her fingers. “We had to eat a clod of soba dough that night!”

Suddenly everything makes perfect sense and Touya snorts wetly.

“It was awful!”, Shouto exclaims with the anguished face of a man talking about his battle memories rather than a cooking mishap.

It finally breaks Touya completely, and he starts guffawing like a maniac, joining Fuyumi and Natsuo while Shouto glares at the three of them like they’ve all just committed blasphemy.

“Now I get why you were staring down your dough so intensely earlier”, Touya wheezes out, nudging his arm against Shouto’s placatingly.

The kid scowls at him like an angry kitten. “You wouldn’t be laughing like this if we had ended up with another soba clod”, he points out, and, to be fair, he does have a point there. Touya might not be as outwardly intense about his love for soba as his baby brother, but the idea of having to eat shapeless clumps of soba makes him feel deeply uneasy as well.

“It really wasn’t that bad”, Fuyumi says diplomatically, which earns her a raised eyebrow from Natsuo.

“If I recall correctly, you were washing it down with alcohol. No offence, but we probably shouldn’t trust your judgement on this.”

Fuyumi gasps a little, clearly offended nonetheless, and Touya barks out another laugh at that.

“I’m afraid you’re gonna have to make do without the alcohol tonight. I’m not allowed to have any in my flat”, he says lightly, picking up his chopsticks. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. I’m starving.”

This earns him a round of approving nods from his siblings, and after a chorus of “itadakimasu” the four of them start tucking in hungrily.

Both the soba and the dipping sauce have really turned out deliciously, Touya notes contently as the siblings devour their dinner like a pack of malnourished wolves, and he reaches out to pat Shouto’s shoulder when their plates are finally empty and their stomachs full.

“Nice work, kid.”

“Oh, this was so good”, Natsuo groans, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands over his stomach. “You might have to roll me out of here, though.”

“I’m not rolling anyone”, Fuyumi says, sighing lazily as she sets down her chopsticks.

“Shouto, will you roll me home later?”, Natsuo asks then, which earns him the infamous deadpan look.

“Roll yourself”, Shouto suggests blankly, and Touya chortles a little.

“Wow, who needs enemies when you’ve got a family like this?”, Natsuo says dramatically, shaking his head and staring off into the middle distance.

Touya decides to have mercy on him. “If you can manage to roll yourself over there, you can take the guest bedroom tonight”, he offers placidly.

Look at him, being a nice and responsible oldest brother and all that.

“Don’t even think about it”, Fuyumi warns with a sharp look in Natsuo’s direction. “You promised to drive me home later and I am not asking Shouto to make a detour like that.”

Natsuo sighs heavily. “Fiiiine”, he concedes. “Just give me some time to digest.”

“I’ll clear the table real quick, and then let’s do gifts, yeah?”, Shouto suggests then, smiling conspiratorially at Fuyumi and Natsuo as he stacks the empty plates and bowls back on the tray, and Touya feels a little burst of excitement pool in his chest at that. It’s a bit like that ridiculous giddiness from when he woke up this morning again, and he allows himself a private little smile.

While Shouto hurries back and forth between the living room and the kitchen, both Natsuo and Fuyumi’s phones start buzzing wildly where they’re lying face down on the table. Fuyumi frowns and picks hers up to scroll through her notifications.

“Shouto tagged us on Instagram”, she explains when she notices the questioning eyebrow Touya is raising at her.

Touya frowns and pulls his own silent phone out of his pocket to open the app. He briefly notes his own lack of notifications before searching up Shouto’s profile and clicking on his most recent post.

It’s a picture of their food he must’ve snapped right after he had finished setting the table earlier - the plates are still clean and shiny and the bowls are filled to the brim with deliciousness. The picture already has several thousand likes and hundreds of comments.

“I figured you’d want to keep your Instagram account a secret, so I didn’t tag you”, Shouto explains when he pops up at the table again, his jute bag slung over his shoulder.

Touya nods approvingly. “Good call.”

“Pretty sure some people have figured out you’re here anyway, though, if the comments are anything to go by”, Natsuo points out.

“I don’t really read comments”, Shouto admits, setting his bag down on the floor. “Sometimes they can be pretty mean, and I don’t need some stranger ruining my mood like that.”

He says this very matter-of-factly, and Touya feels a strange little wave of pride wash over him. He supposes it’s really good to see that his baby brother, with his long childhood worth of mistreatment, isn’t paying attention to the shit his haters might be saying about him.

“Alright, so, I’m just gonna put these all on the table and then you can work your way through them, yeah?”, the kid says then, heaving a pretty large boxy gift from his bag before following up with three smaller ones. “They’re from all of us together.”

“You should probably start with the big one”, Fuyumi adds, grinning a little.

Touya eyes the big box incredulously for a moment before pulling the heavy thing over to himself when Shouto gives him an encouraging nod.

The impatient part of him just wants to rip the paper, but it looks like whoever wrapped it (presumably Shouto since he seemed to have brought it here) really put a lot of effort into making it look nice and neat, so Touya paces himself and unwraps the box carefully.

“No way!”, he gasps, feeling his eyes go wide like saucers when he sees what’s inside. “A record player?! Are you guys crazy?! Aren’t those, like, mad expensive?!”

“Ah, well, you know, baby bro’s got that pro hero salary now…”, Natsuo points out with a grin, which appears to earn him a kick against the shin from Shouto underneath the table.

“We all contributed to this equally”, Shouto corrects him seriously. “And I’m really not as liquid as you think I am. We’re still bouncing back from the deposits we had to put down to start the agency”, he adds, frowning a little.

“Just teasing”, Natsuo laughs good-naturedly and seemingly aims to give Shouto’s shin a friendly nudge under the table, but ends up missing and kicking Touya’s ankle instead.

“Ow”, Touya deadpans with a quick glance up at his brother before busying himself with unboxing the record player. He really doesn’t know much about this sort of technology, but it’s a sleek and shiny black thing and the power cable and loudspeaker adapter seem intuitive enough to him, as he makes his way over to his electronics setup to position the record player in the free space next to his TV and plug it in.

“You’ll have to let me come by and listen to something on this some time”, Shouto says excitedly, when Touya settles back down next to him at the dining table. “I’ve never listened to a vinyl record before.”

“Neither have I actually”, Touya admits, chuckling a little, as he starts unwrapping his next present.

“Well, looks like today is your lucky day, baby bro”, he says then as he pulls Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory on vinyl out of the paper, throwing the kid an amused look.

“Wow! Seems like it is”, Shouto says solemnly, and Touya can’t help but cackle at the kid’s deadpan demeanour.

“You little shit”, he huffs with thinly veiled approval in his voice. 

The next package he unwraps reveals a vinyl record by a band Touya doesn’t recognise.

“The guy at the music shop recommended this one to me”, Shouto explains. “He had long hair and tattoos, so I assumed he knew what he was talking about.”

That makes Touya laugh in earnest, and Fuyumi and Natsuo can’t help but join in. Shouto narrows his eyes a little at the three of them, but there’s a dopey smile playing around his lips as well.

“Thanks, I’m sure you made the right call”, Touya tells him, before moving on to his final present.

“Damn, Hybrid Theory and Bounce?! What a throwback!”, he gasps in surprise, when he pulls a third vinyl from the wrapping paper. “Thanks, guys, I can’t believe you actually remembered I liked these.”

He genuinely feels deeply touched, looking at the three albums spread out in front of him. It’s been nearly 20 years since he disappeared, and he really didn’t expect his siblings to still remember such inconsequential little details about his interests from all the way back then.

“Ohhhh, I remember this one as well!”, Natsuo exclaims excitedly, picking up the Bounce vinyl and flipping it around to inspect the back cover. “You always used to put this on when you tried to teach me how to play Magic! There was this one song I was really obsessed with, but I can’t remember which one it was…”

“You can put it on, if you want”, Touya suggests because, well, they have to try the record player out now anyway, don’t they?

All his previous complaints about needing someone to roll him around seemingly forgotten, Natsuo jumps up from his chair immediately and scrambles over to the electronics setup to start fumbling with the record player settings.

“What’s Magic?”, Shouto pipes up curiously.

“Oh, here we go…”, Fuyumi mutters quietly, busying herself with her glass of water and leaning back in her chair a little.

Touya briefly narrows his eyes at her before turning to Shouto to explain this incredibly important piece of childhood lore to the kid.

“Magic The Gathering is a trading card game, kinda like Pokémon or Yu-Gi-Oh. You’ve heard of those?”

Shouto nods attentively. “Kaminari and Kirishima taught me how to play Pokémon back in high school.”

“Okay, so, basically, those games were already popular when I was in middle school, but some of my classmates back then thought they were too cool for Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh since they were so mainstream, so they played Magic instead and kinda roped me into it as well.”

He is interrupted by a half-scoff-half-snort from Fuyumi. “That’s so not how it happened! Don’t lie to Shouto like that. Shouto, don’t listen to him”, she says very seriously then, leaning forward to address the kid. “He was the one who thought he was too cool for those other games. And maybe his classmates felt the same way, but don’t let him just pin that all on them. Your brother very much thought he was cooler than the mainstream.”

Touya gives his sister a pointed look. “Shouto knows what kinda music I used to listen to and that I used to have a thing for skater boys. I’m sure he’s managed to figure that one out by himself already. Anyway,” he turns back to his baby brother. “Yeah, Magic is cooler than the mainstream stuff. The actual game mechanic is much more complex than Pokémon, and it requires a lot more strategic thinking and planning. It’s pretty fun. Natsuo never really got the hang of it, though”, he adds with a shit-eating grin in his big little brother’s direction.

“Oi!”, Natsuo grunts indignantly. “I was like eight.” He finally drops the needle on the vinyl record, and the sound of a low gritty guitar riff accompanies him as he makes his way back to the table.

“I think I still have your old decks lying around at my flat, though”, he muses then. “I can drop them off some time if you want.”

Touya contemplates that for a moment. He might not really have anyone to play with right now, but he could certainly teach people, and having some gaming options that don’t require controllers or a TV screen in the flat might not be such a bad idea.

“Sounds good”, he tells his brother with a little smile.

“You know he’s gonna make you play, though, right?”, Fuyumi warns, throwing Natsuo an amused grin.

Natsuo puffs up his posture and thumps his fist against his sternum. “I’ve grown up a lot. I think I can handle it now”, he announces very seriously, and by Touya’s side Shouto snorts loudly into his drink.

“I really appreciate how much faith you have in me, baby bro”, Natsuo tells the kid sarcastically.

“I’m just being realistic”, Shouto proclaims with an unimpressed shrug.

Natsuo gasps at him faux-dramatically. “Wow. You succeed at making soba once, and now you’re already betraying me like this?”

Touya looks over at Fuyumi amusedly. “Are they always like this?”, he asks her lowly over the sound of their little brothers bickering back and forth.

Fuyumi huffs a laugh. “Increasingly so, yes.” She fondly glances over at the two of them. “It took them a while to become comfortable like this with each other, but I feel like they’ve been becoming more insufferable with each passing day ever since.”

She doesn’t sound bothered by that at all.

Touya chuckles a little. It’s a strange feeling, watching his younger siblings squabble with each other like they’ve been doing it their whole lives and reconciling it with the fact that they were actually kept apart from each other for a significant portion of their childhood. These past few years Touya has been so focused on building and rebuilding his own relationships with his siblings, that it kind of never really occurred to him, that they had to build and rebuild their relationships with each other as well over the years.

He supposes they’re all pretty dysfunctional in their own little ways, but the realisation makes a pleasantly warm feeling of communion wrap itself around his heart.

Perhaps he’s not as much the odd one out as he always thought he was.

He offers Fuyumi a meaningful smile, putting emotions into it that he couldn’t even put a name to if he tried, hoping she’ll understand whatever the hell he’s trying to convey anyway. The warm expression on his sister’s face he gets in response makes him feel like he must’ve succeeded.

“Touya-nii, can we play on the Switch?”, Shouto suddenly pipes up from his squabble with Natsuo.

Touya shrugs. “Sure.”

The four siblings decide to migrate over to the couch, spreading out across the cushions as Shouto triumphantly produces a second pair of controllers from the little basket underneath the coffee table. Touya stares at them in surprise. He hadn’t even noticed he had them yet.

“We figured we’d need four one day, so we bought an extra pair when we put the flat together”, Fuyumi explains with a laugh when she sees Touya’s bemused expression.

Shouto turns on the console and starts up Mario Kart in a seemingly unspoken agreement with everyone. Touya eyes his siblings a little suspiciously as they all select their characters, vehicles and gear in quick practiced movements, as if they do this for a living, and he briefly wonders whether childhood trauma automatically comes with a free affinity for classic Nintendo kart racing games.

As it turns out, he was most definitely right not to underestimate his siblings’ Mario Kart skills. He already knew Shouto was good, but Fuyumi and Natsuo are right up there with him, and in the end it takes Touya using his newly acquired drifting-as-much-as-possible-for-speed-boosts technique to secure a few incontrovertible wins against those three monsters he’s apparently related to.

Which is quite the feat in and of itself, because every time he boosts himself forward the memories from his races against the stupid bird earlier that day threaten to kick down the doors in his brain he’s locked them behind. If he allowed himself to think about it, he would probably still be able to feel a phantom echo of the hero’s hot breath on his lips, but he resolutely keeps the doors bolted shut and pours all his focus into throwing virtual shells and bananas at his party guests.

At some point Shouto one-handedly snaps a quick mid-race picture of the TV screen with the record player beside it and posts the photo on Instagram, all accompanied by a snippet of the song that’s currently playing from the speakers. He leaves Touya untagged again, but when Touya skims through the comments that are rapidly appearing underneath the post there are actually a bunch of people theorising about which one of the characters is his.

In typical shortsighted stereotyping fashion, most of them seem to be convinced that he’s Bowser, and Touya feels so offended by that, that for a moment he genuinely considers giving up his online anonymity and joining the discussion to set the facts straight. But then he realises that when Shouto took the picture, Natsuo - who is actually the one playing as Bowser - was in first place and Touya - who is playing as Rosalina, obviously - was in fourth, so he supposes it’s really not that bad to let people believe he’s Bowser.

“Shit, we really have to head home”, Fuyumi exclaims eventually with a horrified glance at her watch. “God, I’m gonna be dead on my feet at work tomorrow.”

From the corner of his eye Touya can see a matching expression of pure horror growing on Natsuo’s face when he checks the time on his own watch.

Understandably so - the working day at a hospital typically starts much earlier than the working day at a school.

The siblings set down their controllers and gather up their things before heading out to the hallway together.

“Are you going home, too?”, Touya asks Shouto as Fuyumi and Natsuo slip on their coats. 

“I probably should”, Shouto says, laughing a little. “I have morning patrol tomorrow and I wanna check on Shimo before I go to bed.”

Touya frowns a little in confusion. “Shimo?”

Shouto’s eyes light up immediately at that. “Oh! I haven’t told you guys yet. We adopted a cat! His name is Shimo and he’s soooo adorable. Here, let me show you a picture.” He excitedly fumbles his phone out of his pocket, nearly dropping it on the floor in the process, and swipes around in his camera roll a little before holding the phone out to Touya. Fuyumi and Natsuo come around to peek over his shoulders as he takes the phone from the kid to inspect the white ball of fluff on the screen from up close.

“Oh, he really is adorable”, Fuyumi coos, hooking her chin on Touya’s shoulder to see better as he zooms in on the picture.

“He looks a bit like Touya-nii”, Natsuo points out.

Touya whips his head around so fast, he nearly bashes the back of his skull against the side of Fuyumi’s face. “I do not look like a cat”, he protests indignantly, glaring at his big little brother.

Natsuo just cackles at him. “No, no, I said the cat looks like you.”

“That’s the same thing!”, Touya does not screech.

“Well, not necessarily”, Fuyumi says placidly, retreating her head from Touya’s shoulder and the imminent danger of being smashed. Touya turns to gape at her before looking over at Shouto, who seems to be contemplating whether he should actually say whatever is clearly ghosting around his head right now.

“You do have the same eye and hair colour, but you don’t look like a cat”, the kid eventually says diplomatically.

Well.

Guess that’s the best Touya’s going to get from these three people who were clearly just sent here to torture him for the rest of eternity.

“Yeah, yeah, go home”, he huffs exasperatedly in their general direction, but when the three of them line up to hug him goodbye, he squeezes them all back tightly and quietly thanks them one more time for visiting and for the presents.

“Get home safely”, he tells them as they head out and pull the door shut behind them.

A quick look at his phone tells Touya that he has another half hour of his birthday left, and he decides to spend it in the company of his new vinyl records and the stupidly cute anthropomorphic animals on his virtual island.

He pulls the sleeves of his new hoodie down over his hands as he cosies up on the couch to the wildly antithetical sound of Hybrid Theory and sets out to hunt for valuable fish to sell, so he can pay off his debt to build his first bridge.

Alone again for the first time since he had breakfast this morning, he’s struggling mightily to keep the memories from earlier in the day at bay, though, and as much as he tries to focus on his game, images of golden eyes with blown pupils and pink parted lips keep flitting through his mind like little shooting stars, and even the scarred skin on his face is tingling with the memory of Hawks’ breath ghosting over it.

Chapter Text

“Hurry up, shortcake, the taxi is already pulling up!”, Katsuki bellows through Shouto’s bedroom door, just as Shouto finally finishes tying his new sparkly tie.

“I’m ready, I’m ready”, he calls back, slipping his phone and wallet into his pockets and hurrying outside to the genkan where Katsuki and Izuku are already waiting for him. “Sorry, this tie was a bitch to tie for some reason”, he apologises a bit breathlessly as he puts on his coat and bends down to lace up his shiny black wing tips.

“It’s fine, don’t worry. The taxi seems to be a few minutes early, Kacchan is just being dramatic”, Izuku says placidly, which earns him a scowl from Katsuki.

“I’m not being dramatic, I just have manners, you nerd.”

“We know”, Shouto cuts in diplomatically, because if those two go off on a bickering tangent now, they really will end up being late. “Come on”, he adds, gently nudging both of them through the door with a hand on the small of each of their backs.

Katsuki grumbles something to himself while Izuku is clearly trying to hold back a laugh, but the three of them manage to make it downstairs just in time, tiptoeing a little awkwardly through the slushy snow on the sidewalk as to not get their fancy shoes too wet before getting into the taxi.

The Hero Winter Ball is set to take place at a five-star hotel not too far from where they live, so the car ride over is a short one, and soon the three of them are gearing up to step outside. The main entrance of the hotel is lined with a red carpet, fans and paparazzi alike huddling and squeezing against the barricades lining the sides of the walkway.

“God, this is ridiculous”, Katsuki huffs as he runs his fingers through his hair, setting a few stray strands back in place.

Shouto wholeheartedly agrees. He’s been dragged to these sorts of events since he was a child, so he’s deeply familiar with them, but he still thinks the whole rockstar treatment well-known pro heroes typically receive at these events is way over the top.

“Well. Let’s just get it over with, shall we?”, Izuku sighs, fiddling with his tie a little before reaching for the car door handle. “Ready?”

Shouto nods and Katsuki grunts affirmatively, so Izuku pushes the car door open, and excited screams and screeches instantly mix with the sound of camera shutters going off. Shouto paints on his best publicity face - a small smile and “mysteriously smouldering eyes”, as Ashido once referred to them - and follows Izuku out of the car with Katsuki on his heels. 

The three of them make their way down the carpeted walkway to the hotel entrance quickly, only stopping to sign a few pieces of hero memorabilia here and there for the fans at the barricades before hurrying inside. Fans and tabloid press are typically not allowed to enter these sorts of events; only a few carefully selected journalists and photographers from “serious” media outlets who are far more discreet and well-behaved have gathered inside the hotel lobby. 

There’s a large photo screen set up in a corner where Iida and his brother - an honorary guest at these sorts of events as a former pro hero - are currently posing to have their publicity pictures taken. In unspoken agreement Shouto, Izuku and Katsuki make their way over there together, eager to get the official smiling and posing portion of the evening out of the way as quickly as possible.

“Oh! Midoriya-kun! Todoroki-kun! Bakugou-kun!”, Iida greets the three of them in his usual enthusiastic yet strangely choppy manner. 

“Hello, Iida-kun, Iida-san”, Izuku says cheerily, pulling their friend into a hug before bowing to his older brother. Shouto follows his example, and even Katsuki gives Iida a quick - if slightly stiff - hug.

“I’m assuming you three were about to get your own pictures taken, so we’ll leave you to it”, Iida announces with a smile. “See you around later?”

“Yeah, see you!”, Shouto tells him, reciprocating his friend’s smile, before nodding at the photographers lined up by the screen to signal to them to get ready.

At least they don’t have to take these kinds of pictures on their own anymore now that they run an agency together, Shouto thinks gratefully as the three of them get in position. Him and Katsuki sandwich Izuku between them, perhaps a bit overprotective of their friend who has only returned to the pro hero world somewhat recently and who - despite the warm welcome from most of the general public - still occasionally experiences discrimination for being Quirkless, but Izuku doesn’t seem to mind the two of them looking out for him at all, so it’s fine.

They end up having three sets of pictures taken - one where they’re all striking a serious pose on their own, one where they have their arms around each other, and finally an inoffensively silly one for the news outlets that prefer a more humanising portrayal of pro heroes and typically cater to a younger audience. Once they’re done, they politely say their goodbyes to the photographers before swiftly walking over to the actual event hall.

“Oh, thank fuck, that’s over”, Katsuki groans in relief while Shouto scans his eyes over the semi-crowded room. He quickly spots a wide range of familiar faces - a couple of their friends from UA, some of their former teachers, and a few other heroes they’ve crossed paths with over the years. Off in one of the corners he can make out Hawks and Miruko, seemingly already halfway through their drinks and laughing hysterically at something.

Shouto makes a quick mental note to say hello to his brother’s babysitter later.

“Oh god, I need a drink. I cannot deal with this sober”, Katsuki suddenly states drily when a familiar small shape with purple balls at the top approaches them. Shouto sweeps his eyes further across the room in search of the bar and, unfortunately, notices a head of red hair and a flaming beard off in another corner in the process.

Yeah, Shouto needs a drink, too.

“You two go, I’ll, uh, take care of this”, Izuku tells them with a quick glance at their perverted creep of a former classmate, who is still steadily making his way over to them.

Katsuki’s hand lands on the small of Shouto’s back, and with a low “come on” he leads Shouto away and towards the bar he was struggling to find before.

At the bar they bump into Kirishima and Tetsutetsu, enthusiastically discussing a new exercise they’ve been incorporating into their workout routines while they nurse their long drinks.

“Ehhh, Bakubro! Todobroki!”, Kirishima greets them excitedly when he spots them, pushing himself off the bar to pull them both into a hug at once. Shouto’s face gets dangerously squished between Kirishima’s chin and Katsuki’s shoulder, but he makes it back out safely, just to receive a friendly pat on the back from Tetsutetsu that is so forceful it briefly knocks the air out of his lungs.

“It’s good to see you, too”, he wheezes at the same time as Katsuki barks out, “Oi, no need to break my spine, Steel Boy.”

“What can I get you two?”, the barkeeper asks politely when Shouto and Katsuki join their friends at the bar.

“Spicy margarita”, Katsuki answers promptly.

Shouto, on the other hand, takes his sweet time to flip back and forth through the cocktail menu. They have such a large variety of delicious-sounding fruity options available, and Shouto doesn’t exactly plan on getting black-out drunk tonight, so he’ll only be able to try a rather limited number of these drinks, which means he has to weigh his options carefully.

In the end he decides to start with a strawberry daiquiri. It feels like a safe choice and, in Shouto’s professional opinion, you can never go wrong with strawberries.

“Here you go”, the barkeeper says, setting down their drinks in front of them.

Shouto’s cocktail even comes with a little umbrella, and he happily points this out to Katsuki.

“Look! It even has a little umbrella!”

Katsuki snorts and nudges his side a little. “Good for you, princess. Good for you”, he says, chuckling softly, before clinking his glass against Shouto’s, Kirishima’s and Tetsutetsu’s.

“Cheers.”

“Cheers, Bakubro!”

Shouto captures his straw between his lips and takes a big sip from his cocktail, closing his eyes with a pleased little hum as the cold fruity sweetness of the drink hits his tongue.

By his side Katsuki suddenly starts choking on his margarita, which makes Kirishima burst out into boisterous laughter as he thumps Katsuki on the back.

“Too spicy?”, Shouto questions, frowning a little at the concoction in his friend’s glass.

“Something like that”, Katsuki rasps out weakly between coughs.

“Are my eyes deceiving me?”, a familiar voice suddenly questions theatrically. “Is that Class A’s most explosive man losing a fight against his drink?”

Manic laughter follows and Shouto turns around to find Monoma grinning at them.

“Is he bothering you?”, Kendou asks, popping up by Monoma’s side as if magically summoned by his attempt to make contact with the former Class A members.

“Nahhh, it’s fine”, Kirishima laughs good-naturedly. “Good to see you two!”

With social skills that are way beyond Shouto’s comprehension his red-haired friend quickly ropes the two newcomers from Class B into a conversation, and Shouto turns his attention back to Katsuki.

“You alright again?”, he asks, watching a little concernedly as his friend moves to take another sip from his spicy cocktail.

Katsuki huffs a little exasperatedly, but nods nonetheless. “Listen, are you gonna be okay on your own for a bit? I was gonna go talk to Best Jeanist, but I can stay with you if you want me to”, he says then.

Shouto quickly shakes his head. “No, no, I’ll be fine. Go talk to him. I was gonna go talk to someone as well anyway.”

Katsuki narrows his eyes at him suspiciously. “You’re not planning to talk to…you know…are you?”

At Shouto’s quizzical expression he elaborates, “The flaming bastard.”

Shouto barks a dry laugh. “God, no. Definitely not. I was gonna talk to Hawks.”

“Hawks? The guy who worships the flaming bastard?”, Katsuki asks a bit sourly. 

“The guy who babysits my brother”, Shouto corrects him patiently.

Katsuki’s eyes widen in surprise. “Hawks?! Hawks is your brother’s hero bodyguard?! You know what, I’m not even gonna ask about the Freudian details here. You go do your thing, shortcake.” He grunts a little as he shakes his head incredulously at no one in particular, before giving Shouto’s shoulder a quick squeeze and heading off to where Shouto saw Best Jeanist talking to Mount Lady earlier.

Shouto glances around, searching for the blonde head of the formerly winged hero, and finds him still lounging in his corner with Miruko. With his strawberry cocktail in hand, Shouto determinedly makes his way over to them.

“Shouto-kun!”, Hawks greets him enthusiastically when he spots him, and Shouto is quite certain the hero is already well on his way to being absolutely hammered.

“If that isn’t my second-favourite Todoroki”, Hawks sing-songs, slurring the words a little and throwing a friendly arm around Shouto’s shoulders. “My first-favourite is your brother, but don’t tell anyone that. Especially not him”, he stage whispers into Shouto’s ear, a plume of alcohol-scented breath blowing past Shouto’s face, and across from them Miruko looks like she’s on the verge of pissing herself from silent laughter.

“My lips are sealed”, Shouto promises, smiling amusedly. Touya probably wouldn’t believe it anyway, even if he tried to tell him.

“But, hey, you know what?”, Hawks says then, leaning his weight a little on Shouto’s shoulders and grinning at him conspiratorially. “We should take a picture together and send it to your brother. I bet he would looooooove that.”

That does seem like a pretty good idea to Shouto, so he quickly pulls his phone out of his suit pocket and opens his camera app.

Hawks, still leaning on Shouto’s shoulders, pulls a variety of silly faces at the front camera while Shouto just grins stupidly as he snaps a couple of selfies. Most come out kind of blurry because Hawks is shifting around so much he keeps jostling Shouto’s arm in the process, but in the end he manages to snap a fairly decent one where Hawks is sticking his tongue out through a toothy grin to match Shouto’s and throwing up a peace sign.

Shouto pulls up his chat with Touya to send him the picture, captioning it with I found your babysitter in the wild and the peace sign hand emoji, then pockets his phone again. 

“You know”, Hawks starts then, finally deciding to let go of Shouto, but continuing to hover by his side. “Your brother is actually so nice. You wouldn’t really expect that, would you? Big scary former villain, right? You wouldn’t really expect someone like that to be, like, super nice, right? But he is! And he’s fun. He’s really fun. He gets so competitive about video games. It’s really funny. He’s so fun.”

The older hero seems to be exceptionally determined to drive the point home, but Shouto supposes it can only be a good thing if the guy who is supposed to babysit his brother for the next five years thinks Touya is nice and fun.

Miruko chokes out a breathless laugh. “You are so drunk!”, she wheezes, looking at Hawks like he has just performed the greatest stand-up comedy show she has ever seen.

Hawks just grins at her dazedly.

“I think we need to get some water into you”, Miruko assesses then, sobering up a little from her laughing fit. “Sorry, Shouto-kun, I hope you don’t mind if we leave you for a bit”, she says apologetically, jerking her head towards Hawks. “This one is probably gonna break down your brother’s door to bother him when he gets home tonight, if he doesn’t start sobering up now.”

Shouto laughs good-naturedly. “No worries”, he tells her. “And good luck.”

On his own again, Shouto takes a few more sips of his cocktail and casually starts strolling around the hall, stopping to chat with Uraraka and Asui for a while (they both look phenomenal in their new outfits and gush happily when he tells them so), informing Tokoyami that Hawks is kind of busy right now, but he should probably be able to catch him later for a chat, and excitedly telling Kaminari and Shinsou about Shimo and about how there are still two other cats at the shelter, desperately waiting to be adopted. Kaminari stares at him with big sad eyes when Shouto explains that no one has wanted to adopt Kasumi and Aki so far because of their age, before looking at Shinsou and seemingly having one of those silent conversations couples sometimes have with each other.

“We’ll go and see if we can adopt one of them”, Kaminari promises Shouto then, and it makes Shouto break out into a wide happy grin.

One more cat to go.

He continues walking around a little until Izuku, who is standing in a corner with All Might and Aizawa, waves him over.

“Hello, sensei, All Might”, Shouto greets his former teachers, bowing at them politely.

“Todoroki-shounen! It’s great to see you!”, All Might bellows and swoops Shouto up in a hug. Even in his true form and at his current age the former number one hero still hugs him like he’s got the full power of One For All cursing through his veins, and Shouto feels a little breathless when he’s released again. 

“I’ve just been telling them how things have been going at the agency”, Izuku informs him breezily.

“I’m very proud of you kids”, Aizawa mutters, and while his face and tone might say differently, Shouto knows he’s being earnest and offers his former homeroom teacher a grateful smile.

“Thank you, sensei.”

All Might nods in fervent agreement. “So am I, so am I. All you kids have done very well for yourselves, and the world has become a better place for having you in it.”

By Shouto’s side Izuku blushes fiercely, even after all these years of having him as his mentor still not immune to his idol’s praise. 

Shouto can’t help but smile fondly at his friend, and from the corner of his eye he notices Aizawa raising an eyebrow in their direction.

“You know, Hizashi was saying this at home earlier, too”, their former homeroom teacher says very pointedly. “How you kids are really making the world a better place.”

Shouto flits a brief questioning glance at Izuku, who quickly mouths “Present Mic”, presumably under the impression that Shouto doesn’t know who “Hizashi” is.

That’s not it, though.

He just has a suspicion that Aizawa is trying to convey some sort of hidden message with his words, but Shouto can’t for the life of him figure out what the message is supposed to be.

He’ll have to ask Izuku if he understood it later.

With a little slurp Shouto finishes up the last of his strawberry daiquiri. The alcohol has made the world just a tiny little bit fuzzy around the edges so far, but Shouto has been drinking pretty slowly, so all in all he still feels rather sober.

“I’m gonna get another drink”, he announces to the little group. “Does anyone else want anything?”

He receives a chorus of polite “no thank you”s, and with a slightly awkward little wave he excuses himself and heads back to the bar. 

While he pores over the cocktail menu, yet again faced with the near impossible feat of choosing a drink, two cool hands suddenly come around to cover his eyes, accompanied by a familiar voice sing-songing “guess whooooo!”.

Shouto pretends to think about it hard for a moment. “Hmm. I have no idea…”, he lies faux-dejectedly.

“Oi, don’t mess with him!”, another familiar voice pipes up then, this one quite loud and passionate.

The cool hands leave Shouto’s eyes and he turns around with a grin on his face to greet Camie and Inasa.

“I never would’ve guessed it was you”, he tells Camie sarcastically, and she laughs brightly, smacking his arm amicably before tugging him into a hug.

“Stop hogging him”, Inasa complains dramatically, and before Shouto can even get a word in, Camie has already passed him over to be crushed against Inasa’s large frame.

“It’s good to see you two”, Shouto tells them when Inasa releases him and he feels like he can actually breathe again.

“And you! We haven’t seen each other in, like, forever!”, Camie points out, pouting a little.

She’s right. Both Camie and Inasa live several hours away and work keeps them all busy, so Shouto is pretty sure they haven’t actually seen each other in person since last year’s Hero Summer Ball.

“How have you been? How’s everything going with the agency?”, Inasa asks, leaning against the bar next to Shouto and inspecting the cocktail menu in front of him.

“Good! Things have been going pretty well. We’re definitely still in the early stages, but we’re moving forward and we’ve got some really decent statistical trend predictions”, Shouto explains with a satisfied nod. “How have things been going for you?”

“Oh, we’re doing, like, totes awesome”, Camie says, snatching the cocktail menu away from him and Inasa to study it. “We’re currently saving up some funds and brainstorming to set up our own agency, probably, like, next year or something. Hey, oh my gosh, you know what? We should totally get these blueberry cocktails”, she adds then decisively, waving the barkeeper over to order. Shouto hadn’t even considered this option before, but as he peeks over the menu in Camie’s hands to read the list of ingredients upside down, he has to admit it does seem like an exquisite choice.

Their drinks arrive shortly after, and Shouto is happy to find the rich burgundy-coloured concoction in his glass to also be topped off with a cute little umbrella. This one is light blue and even has silver glittery snowflakes on it. Shouto quickly pulls his phone from his pocket and sets the glass down on the bar to snap a picture of the neatly decorated drink. He briefly goes back and forth between two different filters, before picking the slightly colour-enhancing one and uploading the picture to his Instagram story. His notifications start going off with likes and reactions almost immediately, but Shouto just closes the app and opens his messages with Touya instead.

His brother has reacted to Shouto’s selfie with Hawks with an eye-roll emoji, followed by a Is the stupid bird drunk? text.

Possibly…, Shouto texts back, but Miruko is making him drink water to sober up right now.

Touya’s reply comes almost immediately.

Ha, my babysitter needs a babysitter of his own. Kind of wish I could be a fly on the wall.

Shouto laughs, and shortly after a second message follows.

Natsuo says hi, btw.

Tell him I said hi back, Shouto replies, then carefully pockets his phone and turns his attention back to his fruity drink.

“Cheers”, he says, clinking his glass against Camie’s and Inasa’s before taking a large sip. The berry mix tastes so delicious he can’t help but groan a little, and from the corner of his eye he can see Inasa draining his glass thirstily like a cool bottle of water on a hot summer day.

He supposes Inasa must have a pretty high alcohol tolerance, given how big he is.

“Hey, Shouto-kun, do you happen to know where Katsuki-kun is? I haven’t seen him in, like, forever either and I reaaaaaally need to catch up with him”, Camie announces then, sweeping her gaze across the room.

“He went to talk to Best Jeanist earlier, but I haven’t seen him since, sorry”, Shouto tells her. 

“Ah, well, that’s fine”, she says, smiling around her straw. “I’ll just go search for him. Are you coming, too?” She tilts her head inquisitively at Inasa, who quickly slurps down the last of his drink, before setting his empty glass down on the bar and nodding enthusiastically.

“Yes, he is on my list of people I meant to talk to tonight. See you later?”, he adds, turning towards Shouto.

“Yeah, see you later. Good luck finding him!”, Shouto says, grinning and giving his two friends a silly thumbs up, before they turn around and head off in search of the explosive blonde.

Shouto leans back against the bar, nursing his drink and scanning his eyes over the menu again. The blueberry cocktail is truly delicious, but it’s also one unplanned drink closer to his limit for the night, which means he’ll have to be extremely meticulous about choosing his drinks from now on, so he supposes he should really try coming up with a list.

He’s deeply entrenched in mentally going back and forth between a coconut peach and coconut pineapple mix when someone behind him suddenly says his name.

Shouto could never mistake that voice, and a cold shiver promptly runs down his spine as his chest grows uncomfortably tight.

He wishes he could just ignore the voice, pretend he didn’t hear it, but they’re in a very public place and he’s way too publicity-trained to risk making a scene right here right now, so he takes a deep breath to steel himself and turns around.

“Father.”

Endeavour is looking up at him from his motorised wheelchair, his obnoxious flaming beard framing his face. “How are you doing?”

Shouto can’t bite back an irritated sigh. “What do you want?”

He’s not planning to cause a scene at a public hero event, but that doesn’t mean he has to engage in pointless small talk with his father.

Endeavour averts his eyes a bit dejectedly before resolutely looking back up at Shouto. “I was wondering how Touya is doing. Now that he is on house arrest.”

Of fucking course.

Always an agenda with this man.

Always some sort of selfish interest behind his actions.

He didn’t come up to Shouto because he actually cared about how his youngest son was doing. No, he was just planning to pry for information about his oldest son, who has actually successfully managed to cut his father off in every possible way except financially.

Shouto gives Endeavour an unimpressed stare, taking his sweet time to take another sip from his cocktail before finally answering his father. 

“I’m not your carrier pigeon”, he states drily. “And Touya has made it very clear that he doesn’t want anything to do with you, so I will respect his boundaries. I’m sure you still have enough contacts and connections to get your hands on whatever official information is available about him, but anything beyond that is not my place to tell you.”

Endeavour sighs a little exasperatedly at that. “It’s not like I’m trying to get in touch with him”, he defends himself gruffly. “I just want to know how my son is doing. I still worry about him.”

“Yeah, well, too little, too late”, Shouto says sharply, fighting to keep the ugly mix of feelings that are beginning to churn in his gut restrained inside.

“I worry about you, too, you know?”, Endeavour admits then, self-pity written all over his face, and that’s the final fucking straw for Shouto.

“You don’t get to fucking do that after everything you did to us. To our family. So drop the concerned parent act and stop always making everything about yourself!”, he hisses angrily, stepping a bit closer to his father so he can keep his voice low enough to avoid anyone overhearing them.

Endeavour frowns up at Shouto. “You know I’m trying to atone-“

“Well, then start by actually respecting our wishes!”, Shouto interrupts him, not quite able to keep his pitch from rising up a little and causing a few people in their vicinity to curiously turn their heads to look at them.

Shouto quickly pastes on a placating smile. “And now leave me alone before we start causing a scene. I have an image and an agency to worry about.”

Endeavour silently opens his mouth, like he wants to retort something but then decides against it.

“Fine”, he concedes eventually. “I don’t want to cause you any trouble with your career. Goodbye, Shouto.”

Shouto doesn’t grace his father with a goodbye, instead he just turns back around to lean on the bar and take a large gulp from his drink, scowling into his glass and letting the fruity liquid wash down the bitter taste the conversation with his father left in his mouth. 

God, this drink is good.

His father is such a prick.

Shouto drains the rest of his glass and slams it down on the bar.

All these years of supposed “atonement” and his father still always puts his own interests above those of the children he abused.

These cocktails really are fucking fantastic.

Selfish bastard.

Shouto quickly waves over the barkeeper to order the coconut peach drink he was looking at earlier.

He’ll get the coconut pineapple one after.

A few more of these surely can’t hurt.

They’re mostly just fruit juice anyway.

***

On Friday morning the stupid bird ditches Touya pretty much on the dot right after his mandatory two hours of daily surveillance. Apparently there’s a big pro hero winter gala in the evening and Hawks still needs to figure out what he’s going to wear, so Touya is soon left to his own devices and, subsequently, the clamorous chaos in his head.

It’s been three days since his birthday.

Three days since that dangerous moment on the couch, where both of them seemingly forgot who and where they were for a moment and very nearly indulged in something, that probably would’ve been a horridly awful idea. 

And Hawks has been acting like it never even happened ever since.

Which, objectively speaking, is probably the smartest course of action here, Touya has to admit that, albeit begrudgingly, but it’s so stupidly frustrating how easy it seems to be for the hero to act all cool and nonchalant about it while Touya’s mind is running around in dizzying circles, replaying that brief little moment, the feeling of that hot and heavy humidity in the air, over and over again, no matter how hard he tries not to think about it.

Clearly, it was just the heat of the moment, some sort of misguided competitive or rivalrous tension that went to their heads before the doorbell snapped them out of it just in time.

Clearly, two people in their respective positions should never engage in something like that anyway.

But Touya’s unfortunate metaphorical and literal boner for pretty golden-eyed heroes isn’t exactly new, and while he might be doing a decent enough job of not showing it too much outwardly, it’s not like he can just switch it off.

Simply ignoring it was more or less doable when it was nothing but a distant fantasy, a small leftover from the few private little moments Touya managed to steal during his villain days, but now that he has gotten infuriatingly close to experiencing the real thing, those particular thoughts have been impossibly harder to keep at bay, especially without a plethora of distractions around to keep his mind occupied with other things.

So every time he’s left alone now, his mind inevitably starts to drift.

He wonders if - despite his apparent nonchalance - Hawks’ mind ever drifts, too.

What the image in the hero’s mind looks like.

Does he think about Touya’s eyes? The way they held each other’s gaze?

Were the healthy patches of skin on Touya’s face flushed? Were his lips parted?

The way Hawks’ lips were?

Was the hero as transfixed by Touya’s face as Touya was by the hero’s?

Touya can still see it all so clearly in his mind.

The golden eyes, the soft pink lips.

He can still feel the hero’s breath ghosting over his face, mingling with his own breath as they both leaned in closer, trading hot puffs of air between their mouths.

As he replays the memories and sensations in his head, Touya’s dick slowly starts to perk up in interest within the confines of his jeans, and the idea of simply giving in and indulging in this private little pleasure is incredibly tempting. 

However, this isn’t like back in the day anymore when both of them were nothing but lies upon lies in a dramatic leather coat and a fur-lined flight jacket, cosplaying as a villain and a hero. Now, they’re essentially on the same side, as far as their lives and plans for the next few years are concerned, and they have to spend a significant amount of time in each other’s presence on a daily basis. This isn’t “meet in a secret location, get threatened with a blade to your throat, mentally kink-shame yourself, go back to the hideout, have a much-needed wank and move on with general villainy and your big revenge plan” anymore, and surely nothing good could come of jerking off while fantasising about your personal pro hero babysitter.

In a brief moment of weakness Touya presses the heel of his hand into his crotch, just to get a tiny bit of relief, before determinedly getting to his feet and hurrying to the bathroom to take an ice cold shower lest he break his resolve after all.

It’s frustrating as all hell, and it takes him embarrassingly long to fully calm himself down as the icy water trickles over his cold resistant skin like nothing more than a refreshing summer breeze, but eventually it does the job, and as Touya returns to the living room, little droplets of water falling from his hair and onto his t-shirt clad shoulders, it’s to the sound of his phone buzzing on the coffee table.

“Hello, big little bro”, Touya says when he picks up after glancing at the caller ID.

“Hello, Touya-nii”, Natsuo greets him through the tinny speaker. “Listen, I know this is kinda spontaneous, but I’m free tonight and I thought maybe I could come by and drop off your Magic decks. If that works for you.”

“Sure!”, Touya responds, most definitely a little too quickly to not sound suspicious, but he’s kind of desperate for a distraction and hanging out with his little brother certainly doesn’t sound like a bad evening plan.

Either said little brother is too gracious to comment on Touya’s eagerness or it went right over his head, but whatever it is, Touya is grateful that he doesn’t have to try coming up with a good way to explain himself right now. “Awesome, see you around six-ish then? I’m getting takeout ramen on the way, do you want something, too?”, Natsuo asks cheerily.

“Yeah, thanks. I’ll have whatever you’re having. As long as it’s not fish or dairy.”

Natsuo laughs heartily at that. “Gotcha”, he says. “See you soon, then!”

Touya smiles a little at the empty room in front of him. “Yeah, see you.”

There are still a few more hours to kill until Natsuo said he would arrive, so Touya picks up the second instalment from his horror fantasy series and starts reading, hoping that immersing himself in an epic fantasy world will be enough to keep his mind from wandering to dangerous places again.

In the end that only works semi-well, because as it turns out the series actually has a slowly developing romance subplot between the winged Faerie Prince and his fiery arch nemesis the Dragon Prince, and when the story reaches the first explicitly steamy scene between the two of them, Touya snaps the book shut so forcefully he probably would’ve injured his fingers if he’d had his left hand between the pages rather than the prosthetic one.

He quickly banishes the book back to its spot on the shelf and opens up his laptop instead. With a loud playlist in the background to drown out the noise in his head, he decides to read up a little on Magic: The Gathering gameplay and how much it has developed since he was a kid. Fuyumi wasn’t wrong the other day, he most certainly will make Natsuo play a few rounds with him later.

Unsurprisingly, quite a lot has changed over the past two decades. Countless new cards have come out, and many new mechanics have been introduced. Fans and players are discussing power and complexity creeps within the gameplay - some favourably, some less so - and Touya makes a mental note to do a deep dive into the new game mechanics and look into buying some more recent cards.

He’s certainly not opposed to keeping his brain preoccupied with complex card game strategies.

Finally, six o’clock rolls around and, as promised, shortly after the doorbell rings.

Natsuo is carrying a large styrofoam box in one arm and pulls Touya into a quick hug with the other arm before setting down his backpack and following him into the kitchen to unpack their food.

Given the precarious nature of eating a dish that is half liquid, the two brothers decide to sit down properly at the dinner table rather than the couch to eat.

“Oh, this is delicious”, Touya groans approvingly around a mouthful of noodles.

Natsuo laughs and hungrily wolfs down another bite of his own food. “Right?! I’ve eaten at this place with Shouto a few times. It’s just a few blocks over from his flat. Apparently his friend Bakugou really likes the extra spicy ramen on their menu.”

“Explodo-Boy?”, Touya asks, and Natsuo nods. “Yeah, that checks out that he likes his food extra spicy. He certainly was a handful to deal with when we-“ 

He quickly cuts himself off, picking up a massive bite of food with his chopsticks and stuffing it into his mouth to shut himself up when he realises that maybe he shouldn’t be discussing his temporary side gig as a kidnapper for Shigaraki’s little villain recruitment plan with Natsuo.

It’s different with Shouto - the kid is a bit messed up in the head and Touya’s villainous past isn’t a particularly touchy subject for him - but Natsuo is far more normal than Touya and Shouto could ever dream to be, and Touya knows that his big little brother has had a much harder time coming to terms with the morbid details of Touya’s past and crimes.

Natsuo sighs a little, catching Touya’s gaze from across the table. “You can just say it, you know?”, he says placidly. “I already know what happened. I may not like it, but it’s part of your life and you don’t have to walk on eggshells around me like that.”

Touya eyes his brother curiously for a moment, trying to figure out whether his words are genuine, then nods slowly. “Okay”, he acquiesces. “I, uh, I often talk about those aspects of my past pretty casually with Shouto and Hawks. I don’t have to do that with you, I don’t wanna bring up things that make you uncomfortable, but I guess they sometimes just slip out.”

Natsuo shakes his head a little. “It’s fine. Really. But back the fuck up for a moment - why the hell are you talking to Hawks?” He raises a questioning eyebrow at Touya, and oh, yeah, right, it seems he never actually mentioned that particular detail about his house arrest to Natsuo and Fuyumi.

“Hawks is my legally-assigned pro hero babysitter”, he explains, carefully keeping his voice as neutral as possible. “He lives in the flat across the hall and has to do two hours of mandatory surveillance at my place every day. That’s when I talk to him.”

Natsuo stares at him incredulously. “Are you serious?! Hawks?! The guy who is, like, obsessed with our father?!”

Touya quickly averts his eyes and focuses on drinking up the rest of the liquid in his bowl. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think he’s actually that obsessed with Endeavour anymore. He certainly never mentions him around me, and he knows that I’m not in touch with him.”

He has to admit to himself, though, that the hero’s past worship of his father does still make him feel a little uneasy in some distant corner of his mind.

Just because he doesn’t actually know how Hawks really feels about Endeavour nowadays, and he definitely doesn’t want to ask and risk getting an answer he won’t like.

“Hmmph”, Natsuo replies eloquently, picking up their empty food containers and stacking them together to throw them away. “Just be careful. Don’t let that bird mess with you.”

Oh, if he only knew.

“What are you, my mother? I’m not a teenager with a crush”, Touya replies, perhaps a little too defensively.

Natsuo frowns at him. “That’s so not what I meant. Wow, imagine that!” He cackles a bit. “Freud would probably have a field day.”

Touya nearly chokes on his own saliva at that and quickly tries to cover it up with a semi-convincing scoff. “Like that would ever happen”, he says dismissively as they head back to the kitchen to clean up, Touya following behind Natsuo to keep his face hidden from his brother’s prying eyes.

Just as a safety precaution.

Natsuo laughs good-naturedly. “I suppose he’s nowhere near edgy enough to be your type”, he muses, and Touya is more than happy to let his brother believe that his type in men hasn’t evolved at all since he was mere 13 years old.

They quickly finish cleaning up the remnants of their dinner before making their way back to the living room with Natsuo’s backpack in hand and settling down on the couch.

“Alright, so”, Natsuo starts, unzipping his bag, “I found five of your old decks. They look pretty shit, if I might say so. I can’t believe you never sleeved your cards.”

He produces one deck box after another from his bag, plonking them down on the coffee table in front of them, and Touya has to admit that even the boxes already look like they’ve seen much better days.

“No one was sleeving their cards back then. It wasn’t cool”, he still replies a little defensively, picking up one of the boxes and opening it. 

The 60 playing cards inside really do look kind of terrible - the sides are blunt and frayed and the print on both the front and back sides of the cards has come off around the edges, Touya notices as he shuffles through the deck. Some of the cards have also obviously been bent or folded and then haphazardly pressed back into shape before. Still, the pertinent parts of the prints are still perfectly legible.

“You wanna play?”, Touya asks the inevitable question, and Natsuo grins at him in a way that suggests he’d been waiting for Touya to finally ask.

“Let’s do it. I wanna play Elves, though”, he announces, opening and closing the deck boxes in search of the mono green one Touya remembers being one of his very first decks.

“Fine by me”, Touya says with a shrug as he starts to shuffle the cards he’s already holding in his hands. “I’ll play Goblins then.”

“Ughhhh, noooo, that was always such a mean deck”, Natsuo complains, shuffling his own deck much more smoothly than Touya does his.

Touya would blame it on his prosthetic hand, except even little 8-year-old Natsuo was already better at shuffling cards than 12-year-old Touya.

“You said you wanted to play Elves”, Touya points out, giving his brother an unimpressed look. “You know the decks, you easily could’ve picked Goblins for yourself.”

Natsuo scowls at him a little as he frees up some space on the coffee table for their boards, setting down his library and drawing his starting hand. “I was hoping you’d pick something else”, he grumbles, reorganising the seven cards in his hand. “I’m keeping my hand, by the way.”

Touya shrugs again, drawing his own starting hand. “You can’t always get what you want. I’m keeping mine, too, and I’ll let you have the first turn.”

Because he’s a nice older brother like that.

Natsuo eyes him a little suspiciously, but ultimately seems to decide that Touya doesn’t appear to have any ulterior motives, and plays his first land, immediately tapping it to smugly cast a creature spell.

“Oh, come on, first turn Llanowar Elves? What are you even complaining for?”, Touya huffs amusedly, trying not to let it morph into a full blown cackle when he plays his own first land and taps it to hit Natsuo’s Elves with a Lightning Bolt.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”, Natsuo gasps in theatrical outrage, and Touya promptly loses the fight against his laughter, guffawing manically when Natsuo grumpily moves his Elves to his graveyard.

“You’ll pay for this. Just so you know”, he threatens very seriously, drawing his card for turn. 

Touya is still snickering behind the cards in his hand, already planning to send two Raging Goblins his brother’s way on his next turn. “We’ll see”, he says ominously as Natsuo plays a vanilla one-drop Elf and passes the turn.

In the end it’s a ridiculously close call - Natsuo does not manage to follow through with his threat, but Touya wins while he’s down to two life points, so he didn’t exactly wipe the floor with his brother either.

“Wanna switch decks?”, he suggests then, a pretty fair approach to a rematch, in his humble opinion.

“Please”, Natsuo groans, making grabby hands at the Goblin deck. “I need to be on the other side of the mean deck just for once in my life.”

Touya chuckles, handing the deck over to him, when his phone suddenly buzzes. He fumbles the device from his pocket and opens the message Shouto has just sent him. There’s an image attached to it, and Touya very nearly drops his stupid phone when he opens the picture.

It’s a selfie Shouto must’ve taken with Hawks at tonight’s hero gala. The kid is smiling a bit awkwardly into the camera while the stupid bird is grinning with his pink tongue poking out between his teeth, throwing up a peace sign with his hand.

Hawks is clad in a glittery white suit, the lighting in the ballroom reflecting off the fabric in bright little sparkles, and Touya feels a bit dizzy as he stares dumbly at the photo on his screen.

The hero looks a bit flushed and loose, probably already a few drinks in, and the combination of his model-worthy get-up and silly demeanour is infuriatingly attractive.

“You okay?”, Natsuo’s voice suddenly snaps Touya back to reality. “You’re looking a bit dazed.”

“Hm?” Touya blinks at him, mentally shaking himself out of his stupor. “Yeah. Sorry. I just zoned out for a moment”, he explains hurriedly, sending Shouto an emoji reaction and a quick text back before pocketing his phone and focusing his attention on Natsuo and their card game again.

“Let’s do this”, he says, forcing his voice to sound firm and unbothered as he shuffles the Elves deck and draws his starting hand.

Touya has to admit the Goblin deck is really a mean one to play against. No matter how much he ramps up his mana and buffs up his Elves, it feels like there are still constantly new Goblins spawning from Natsuo’s hand, half of them coming at Touya straight away with Haste, and combined with a few misplays here and there on his part (all thanks to the stupid bird living rent free in a certain corner of his head), Touya actually ends up losing this round.

Natsuo promptly jumps onto the couch, his fist raised into the air. “Yes!”, he bellows triumphantly. “I win! Finally! After all these years!”

Touya can’t help but cackle a little as he watches his brother perform an impromptu victory dance on top of the couch cushions. He supposes Natsuo kind of deserved that win after a childhood worth of being decimated by Touya over and over again.

“Good game”, he tells Natsuo a little begrudgingly, holding his hand out to his brother for a fist bump, when his phone buzzes in his pocket again.

It’s another text from Shouto, confirming that yes, Hawks is indeed drunk but currently sobering up, and god, does Touya wish he could be a fly on the wall for that. The hero is probably an incredibly entertaining drunk, and in the privacy of his own head Touya can admit that he would get one hell of a kick out of teasing the bird about it.

“Who are you texting?”, Natsuo asks curiously, plopping his arse back down on the couch and slouching back into the pillows.

“Shouto”, Touya explains. “He’s at this hero gala thing right now.”

“Oh, tell him I said hi”, Natsuo says, grinning a little.

“He says hi back.”

Touya pockets his phone again and leans back a little, mirroring his brother’s position on the couch.

“Crazy stuff”, Natsuo muses vaguely. “The pro hero world, I mean.”

Touya hums thoughtfully. “It does still seem pretty stuck-up and elitist in some ways. Based on what I’ve heard from Shouto and Hawks.”

Natsuo huffs a little, shaking his head. “Still can’t quite wrap my mind around the whole Hawks thing, if I’m being honest. I mean, maybe it’s just because I don’t really know him, but it seems like he’d be one of the last people you’d get along with well enough to have civil conversations.”

“I’m a changed man”, Touya deadpans, giving his brother a pointed look, which earns him a chuckle.

“They should use you to advertise therapy”, Natsuo says drily, the corners of his mouth twitching.

“Oi!”, Touya grunts a little indignantly before breathing out a small sigh. “Seriously though, it’s fine. The bird never talks about Endeavour, and I think as far as our, uh, shared history is concerned we’re kind of even. In a weirdly twisted way.”

Natsuo hums a little. “Fair enough. Hey, you think the old man is there, too, tonight? At the gala?”

Touya wrinkles his nose in distaste. “I dearly hope for Shouto’s sake that he isn’t. But I do think they also invite former pros to those sorts of events, so who knows.”

Natsuo frowns, running his fingers through his hair and ruffling it up a little. “You know, I always kinda feel this need to protect Shouto from our father. He’s the one who had to endure the worst of his violence when we were kids, and back then I utterly failed to help him and I still feel pretty guilty about it”, he admits quietly, staring out the large living room windows across the evening skyline of the city.

Touya blows out a heavy breath. Even after seven years of intensive therapy, he still doesn’t quite feel like he’s the right person to seek emotional comfort from. It’s definitely one of his weakest areas as far as social interactions are concerned.

He briefly nudges his knee against Natsuo’s in what he hopes is a comforting gesture. “I get it”, he says a bit stiffly then. “I kinda feel the same way, but my therapist always tells me that I shouldn’t. We were just kids back then - you even more so than me - and we had our plates full with our own issues from living in that house. What Endeavour did to Shouto wasn’t our fault, and as much as I like to think differently, realistically speaking we probably wouldn’t have been able to stop it anyway. You know what he did to our mother when she tried”, he adds sourly, grimacing down at his lap.

Natsuo’s face contorts into a scowl and he sighs heavily. “I…”, he starts, seemingly struggling to get his thoughts in order. “I also feel like I should’ve done more to try and help her. I know that was even less my responsibility”, he adds hastily when Touya opens his mouth to protest, “but I still feel like I should’ve tried harder.”

His brows are furrowed, and he looks like he wants to say more, so Touya decides to practice restraint and wait his brother out.

Eventually, Natsuo takes a deep breath and continues to speak. “I also feel guilty for not protecting you”, he admits, carefully avoiding Touya’s gaze.

Okay.

That’s enough.

“Natsuo”, Touya says very seriously, nudging his brother’s knee again to make him look him in the eye. “Protecting me wasn’t your responsibility, and you did more than enough for me when we were kids. For fuck’s sake! You were a, what, seven, eight year old child, and I was a deeply mentally ill tween, crying and unloading all my shit onto you every night! The fact that you let me do that at all was more than enough.”

Touya absent-mindedly realises that he has started picking at a loose thread on the seam of his jeans perhaps a little too aggressively, but he steadily continues holding Natsuo’s gaze. 

“If anything, it should’ve been the other way round and I should’ve been the one protecting you.”

Natsuo’s eyes glaze over a little at that, and he quickly swipes the corners with his fingers, averting his gaze from Touya.

“I just keep thinking that maybe, if I had done more, if I had tried harder, things wouldn’t have turned out the way they did. Maybe you never would’ve gone to Sekoto Peak that night”, Natsuo rasps out, and it makes Touya’s chest tighten uncomfortably.

On impulse he scoots a little closer to his brother on the couch and puts a firm hand on his shoulder.

“Listen to me”, he says pointedly. “I know this sounds harsh, but I really don’t think there was anything you could’ve done to change what happened to me. I needed a psychiatrist and for our parents to take me seriously.”

He swallows thickly.

“Please stop blaming yourself for what happened.”

Natsuo sniffles a little and wipes his eyes again, and now Touya finally has to avert his gaze as well. Something about seeing his little brother drown himself in guilt, with a weight on his shoulders that shouldn’t be his to carry in the first place, has triggered a deep, long forgotten and hardly used protective instinct in him, but this entire conversation is still far beyond his comfort zone, and he’s kind of starting to reach his own limit.

“Thank you, nii-san”, Natsuo says hoarsely, clearing his throat before unceremoniously wrapping his arms around Touya’s shoulders and pulling him into a bone-crushing hug.

After a brief moment of surprise Touya goes easily, tucking his chin onto his brother’s shoulder.

After all, a hug is a good way to hide your face.

“Right, uh, sorry about all this”, Natsuo laughs a bit awkwardly when he releases Touya again.

Touya just waves him off, coughing a little into his elbow. “It’s fine. My therapist said the other day that these kinds of, uh, conversations were bound to happen now. Something about privacy and a more normal environment.”

Natsuo laughs again, this time sounding a bit more relaxed. “I suppose that makes sense. Have you, uh, already talked to anyone else like this?”

“Not really”, Touya says, picking at the loose thread on his jeans again, albeit a bit less violently. “I guess I have told Shouto some things I probably never would’ve talked about in prison. But it was really different stuff.”

Natsuo hums in acknowledgment. “It’s nice to see that you and Shouto have hit it off so well”, he says then, smiling earnestly at Touya. “I mean, we’ve all kinda had to start from scratch with our relationships with Shouto, but the two of you are surely the most polarising ones out of the four of us. I’m glad that didn’t get in your way.”

Touya can’t help but reciprocate his brother’s smile at that. “I’m glad, too. The kid barely even knew me, and he still never gave up on me, even when I was at my very worst. He saved me when I thought I was long beyond saving. Not sure whether I deserved it, but I sure as hell am grateful that he did.”

“He’s a good kid”, Natsuo agrees, nodding. “Probably ten times the man the rest of us are.”

That draws a laugh out of Touya. “He’s certainly more than ten times the man I am.”

The two brothers exchange a look of pride for their youngest sibling, and Touya kind of feels the urge to text his baby brother again, but he’s not sure what he would even say (“Hey, Natsuo and I were just talking about how great you are and I felt like telling you”? Yeah no, that’s too mushy, even for someone like Touya, who has been discussing his feelings in grand detail on a weekly basis for more than half a decade now.), so he gets to his feet instead and trudges over to the record player to put on some music.

On his way back to the couch he picks the Switch controllers up from the coffee table and holds one of them out to his brother, when he plunks back down on the cushion.

“Do you have Smash Bros.?”, Natsuo asks, weighing the controller thoughtfully in his hands.

Touya feels his lips curl into a smirk. “Sure do.”

***

“I’ll have another one of those, uhhhhhh, blueberry things”, Shouto tells the barkeeper decisively as he sets down his empty glass, swaying a little on his feet.

The world is kind of blurry right now, but the cocktails are delicious, and Shouto knows he’s been drinking them for a reason, though he can’t quite remember it right now.

It must’ve slipped his mind, but he’s pretty sure it was something important, so he needs to make sure he always has a full glass at hand.

The barkeeper frowns at him a little. “You sure you want more?”

Shouto opens his mouth to answer, but an accidental burp escapes him instead. He quickly claps his hand over his mouth and giggles a little into his palm. “Whoops”, he says, trying to redirect his attention to the barkeeper in front of him, but he can’t quite seem to get the image to come into full focus.

Oh well.

He can make do with a blurry barkeeper. As long as he keeps serving him more cocktails.

Which is very important, even if Shouto has temporarily forgotten why.

What did the barkeeper ask him again?

“Sorry, you were saying?”, Shouto inquires, offering the man in front of him his most charming smile.

The barkeeper raises an eyebrow at him (or at least Shouto thinks he does - it’s hard to tell through the blurriness). “I asked if you were sure that you really wanted another drink. Forgive my bluntness, but you do seem like you may have already had a bit too much.”

For some reason that is absurdly funny to Shouto - after all, normally he’s the one who should probably apologise to people for his bluntness more often - and another giggle bursts out of him. “No, no, it’s fine”, he explains, hiccupping a little. “You see, it’s really important that I drink more. I can’t tell you why - it’s a secret”, he emphasises this by putting his index finger to his lips in an over-exaggerated shushing motion, “but I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”

The barkeeper eyes him warily, seemingly contemplating his next words for a moment.

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I have to cut you off”, he says then, looking at Shouto a little apologetically. “It would be irresponsible of me to give you more alcohol right now.”

It takes Shouto a few seconds to process those words, and when he finally does he can’t help but whine a little. “But it’s really important!”, he repeats, staring at the barkeeper poignantly. “Look, how about I give you my word that I’ll take on the entire responsibility myself?”

“Sorry, mate, but it’s still a no”, the barkeeper tells him kindly but firmly. “The responsibility is part of my job.”

Shouto pouts at that and slouches against the bar, crossing his arms on the surface and resting his cheek on top of them.

This is so not fair.

“This is so not fair”, he tells the barkeeper out loud, the words muffled by the way his cheek is squished against his arm.

That earns him a huffed little laugh from the man.

“Hey, shortcake”, a familiar gruff voice suddenly says by Shouto’s side, and Shouto lifts his head so fast he nearly keels over from the sudden rush of dizziness.

“Katsukiiii”, he exclaims excitedly at the sight of his blond friend. “Kacchaaan!” He frowns. “No, that doesn’t sound right when I say it.”

Katsuki squints at him suspiciously. “You good?”

“Perfect!”, Shouto sing-songs, offering him a wide grin and leaning his head against his shoulder.

Katsuki smells really good.

Like expensive cologne mixed with just a hint of caramel and something deeper, more primal that is just so Katsuki.

“You smell good”, Shouto tells his friend, nuzzling his nose a little into the fabric of his suit jacket.

Katsuki wraps a warm hand around Shouto’s arm and turns him around a little to look at him properly.

“Are you drunk?”, Katsuki questions, eyeing Shouto’s face like he might find the answer written onto his skin.

Shouto can’t help but puff a little laugh into his friend's face, which earns him a slightly wrinkled nose. “I have drunk some cocktails. It was very important, but I don’t remember why”, he admits solemnly.

Katsuki sighs, rubbing his temple a little with the hand that isn’t clutching Shouto’s arm. “Do you remember how many you’ve had?”

Shouto contemplates that for a moment, but as he tries to list the drinks he’s had in his head he keeps losing track of where he was about halfway through, so he just shakes his head a bit dejectedly. “They were all really good, though!”, he feels the need to mention. He’s not forgetting about them because they were bad or boring or anything, his brain just feels a little too sluggish for maths right now. Surely, if you asked him tomorrow, he’d be able to provide you with a neat list of all the cocktails he has tried tonight.

“Alright, that’s it, Halfie”, Katsuki says, breathing out another sigh. “Let’s go find the nerd and head home. It’s getting kinda late anyway.”

Shouto isn’t quite sure whether he actually wants to go home already, but he trusts Katsuki, and if Katsuki thinks it’s time to go home they probably should. “Okay”, Shouto says placidly, smiling a little at his friend.

“Come on, then”, Katsuki says, gesturing at Shouto to follow him as he starts weaving through the crowd, presumably in search of Izuku. Shouto’s balance isn’t all that great anymore, though, as it seems, and he’s kind of struggling to keep pace, so eventually Katsuki just grabs his hand, firmly interlacing his fingers with Shouto’s and pulling him along, and Shouto forgets all about what they’re even doing for a moment. Katsuki’s hand is warm and dry against Shouto’s, and Shouto kind of never wants to let go again.

In the end, it’s Izuku who finds them rather than the other way round.

“Hey, Kacchan! Shouto-kun!”, he greets them cheerily before noticing the serious look on Katsuki’s face and furrowing his brows a little. “Is something wrong?”

“Shortcake’s had a few cocktails too many”, Katsuki explains lowly. “We were just trying to find you, so we can head home together. Unless you wanna stay?”

Izuku’s eyes widen a little and he quickly shakes his head. “No, I’m coming with you. Let’s go out through the backdoor.” He unceremoniously grabs Katsuki’s free hand and starts leading the two of them through the crowd and towards the exit.

The world around Shouto is really feeling exceptionally blurry right now, so he just holds on tightly to Katsuki’s hand and lets himself be led outside by his friends. The icy cold night air that greets them in the dark back alley behind the hotel is ridiculously refreshing and manages to sober Shouto up just enough to feel a little more aware of his surroundings again by the time a taxi stops for them at the curb and Izuku helps him climb into the backseat.

Halfway through the ride back home the swaying and jerking of the car starts to make Shouto feel a little nauseous, so he closes his eyes and leans his forehead against the cool window pane by his side.

The three of them make it to their flat safely and without any incidents, and once inside Katsuki makes Shouto sit down on the couch with a big glass of water on the coffee table in front of him, while Izuku hurries off to fetch Shouto a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants.

“Drink this”, Katsuki says, plopping down by Shouto’s side and pointing at the glass. “But slowly.”

Shouto nods and obediently does as told. The cool liquid feels heavenly on his tongue as he realises how parched he actually is, and it takes all his willpower to keep himself from chugging it all down in one go.

“Thank you”, Shouto says when Izuku returns with his clothes, and he unceremoniously sheds his three-piece-suit right there on the couch, dumping the pieces on the carpet beneath their feet, and pulls on his sweatpants and t-shirt instead.

With a content little sigh he settles back into the cushions and takes a few more small sips from his water.

His mind has cleared up enough by now that he can acknowledge that yes, he absolutely has had way too much to drink and he will probably regret it deeply in the morning. He groans a little, scrubbing his free hand down his face.

“You wanna talk about it?”, Katsuki asks, eyeing Shouto a bit warily.

“You don’t have to”, Izuku adds quickly. “But you can if you want to.”

Shouto groans again. An unfortunate side effect of sobering up is apparently remembering vividly why you were drinking in the first place.

“I had a run-in with my father”, he explains sourly. “Well, actually he sought me out and nearly got me to cause a scene.”

Izuku gasps a little at that, and Katsuki’s face contorts into a scowl.

“He was prying for information about Touya”, Shouto continues, clenching his fingers a bit more tightly around the glass in his hand. “His typical self-centred bullshit, and it got me a bit riled up.”

“That fucking bastard…”, Katsuki hisses, and his face looks like he’s contemplating the pros and cons of various ways of committing murder.

Shouto finds it kind of touching.

“I guess I got a bit carried away with the cocktails when he finally left me alone”, he admits then, looking down at his lap a little embarrassedly.

“That’s perfectly understandable!”, Izuku tells him, his tone earnest and forceful. “It’s not necessarily healthy, but it’s totally understandable, and most people probably would’ve reacted similarly.”

Shouto glances over to find big green eyes looking at him full of warmth and concern, and Shouto briefly wonders what he has done to deserve people like this in his life.

“I’m sorry I made you leave the gala”, he says a little awkwardly. “You, uh, you didn’t have to. You could’ve just stayed and made me sober up there. It’s what Miruko did with Hawks as well.”

“Well, we’re not Miruko and you’re not Hawks”, Izuku points out softly, putting a hand on Shouto’s forearm. “It’s fine, I promise. And besides, you would’ve done the same thing for us.”

Okay, Shouto really can’t argue with that, because of course he would have. 

“Thanks”, he tells his friends quietly, and Katsuki bumps his shoulder against Shouto’s in response while Izuku gently squeezes his forearm where his hand is still resting.

The three of them continue sitting in companionable silence while Shouto finishes the rest of his water, slowly feeling himself sober up more and more. Eventually his eyes begin to droop and he vaguely registers someone taking the empty glass from his hand before he drifts off into deep, dreamless slumber.

When Shouto wakes up the next morning with a sledgehammer pounding in his head and his stomach churning violently, he finds himself tucked into his bed, a fresh glass of water and a pack of painkillers on the nightstand beside him, and despite his general state of misery, he can’t help but smile a little dopily into his pillow.

Chapter Text

“Ready for your first workout?”, Hawks sing-songs cheerily when he shows up on Touya’s doorstep on Saturday morning with two yoga mats tucked under his arms and two pairs of trainers in his hands. He’s clad in ridiculously short workout shorts and a skin-tight muscle shirt, and Touya is once again questioning all his life choices that led him to this point.

“You’re looking way too chipper for someone who got hammered last night”, Touya comments coolly.

Extremely coolly.

He’s cool as a cucumber.

“What did Shouto tell you?”, the bird asks sharply, staring at Touya like a deer caught in the headlights.

Touya raises an amused eyebrow at him. “That you were drunk and needed your bunny friend to help you sober up?”

Hawks visibly relaxes at that, and the cheery smile slowly creeps its way back onto his face.

Huh.

Touya briefly wonders whether the bird did something embarrassing last night that his brother neglected to mention to him. He might have to shoot Shouto a text later.

“I got lucky”, Hawks says then, gesturing for Touya to follow him to the kitchen. “It was still pretty early in the night when Miruko cut me off and put me on the water and fresh air treatment, so I was almost back to normal by the time I went home.”

“Freak of nature”, Touya grumbles, popping one of his mood stabiliser pills from the blister pack and making a show of washing it down with his leftover coffee. His experiences with getting drunk are fairly limited, given his years spent in jail and the precarious nature of his physical well-being during his time as a villain, but the few times he has gotten properly smashed in his life he so wouldn’t have been able to show up bright and early for a workout session the next morning.

Hawks just grins dorkily and holds out a pair of trainers to him. “Here. I figured you probably don’t have any gym shoes, so I brought an extra pair”, he explains as Touya takes the shoes from him. “If they don’t fit you should probably do this barefoot, because socks can get pretty slippery. I’ll go set these up in the living room and you go change into something comfortable and breathable you can move in well.”

He waves his yoga mats around a little before using them to shoo Touya off to his bedroom and disappearing into the living room.

Touya sighs and does as told, pulling on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, surreptitiously rolling on an extra layer of deodorant (for no noteworthy reason at all, obviously) and slipping his feet into the gym shoes Hawks has given him. They seem to be a size smaller than what he would usually wear, but it’s fine. It’s not like he’s planning to run around in them all day.

When he makes his way over to the living room, he finds that Hawks has spread the yoga mats out next to each other on the floor, already sitting on one of them with one foot pulled up to his thigh while his other leg is stretched out across the mat. The position has made the hems of the hero’s shorts ride up even higher, leaving fatally little to the imagination, and Touya can see his thigh muscles flex as he bends his torso over his outstretched leg until his fingers reach the toes of his shoes.

What on god’s green earth has Touya gotten himself into here?

“Oh, you’re ready, awesome!”, Hawks says breezily when he spots Touya. “I already started doing some stretches, but don’t worry, I’ll still walk you through them.”

Yeah, because that’s what Touya is worried about.

He swallows a bit thickly before awkwardly kneeling down on the empty mat beside the hero’s. 

“If you want you can put on some music. Something upbeat, perhaps”, Hawks suggests, and Touya happily obliges, connecting his phone to his bluetooth speaker before setting it aside on the coffee table.

Anything that might provide some distraction from the way the hero’s tight-fitting shirt reveals the outlines of his pectoral muscles and nipples.

“Alright”, Hawks says then, clapping his hands eagerly, “before we start I just wanna check in with you real quick about whether you’ve ever had any musculoskeletal injuries - other than your arm - that might limit your range of motion or cause you pain if you move a certain way. I know Dr. Hasegawa has cleared you for gentle exercise in general, but I’m assuming he trusts you not to do anything you’re not physically cut out for.”

The hero looks at Touya very seriously while he says this, and it makes Touya contemplate for a moment, tilting his head a little in thought.

“Well, I’ve dislocated some joints during fights before”, he muses, mentally running through his - rather short - list of non-Quirk-related injuries. “Mostly my shoulders. Sometimes my knees or fingers. But it was nothing, really. I usually just popped them back in, maybe put some ice on them for a day if I could get my hands on any, and then it was fine again. So none of that should be a problem.”

Hawks gives him a wide-eyed stare at that. “I don’t think that’s how joint dislocations are supposed to go”, he points out dubiously, and Touya blinks at him in surprise.

“It’s not? I mean, I’ve known people who seemed a lot more incapacitated with a dislocated shoulder than me, but I kinda just assumed they were being overdramatic.” 

Now he kind of regrets some things he may have said to Twice when he dislocated his shoulder once.

Hawks huffs out a little laugh. “You’re a strange man, Touya”, he notes, shaking his head a little, and Touya feels like he should probably be offended, but the hero’s tone sounds weirdly soft, so Touya just offers him a half-hearted little scowl for good measure.

“Well, I guess we don’t have to worry about that then. How about your scars? Do they limit your range of motion? Or will the seams rip if you stretch too far?”

Touya shakes his head. “No, they’re not that fragile. They can rip from high impact blunt or forceful trauma, and the staples are mostly there as a safety precaution, but low strain exercise shouldn’t be a problem. They’re much more susceptible to burn damage.” He grimaces a little, the phantom feeling of too-hot smoke trying to escape his skin and burning through the most fragile parts at his seams still vivid in his mind.

“I see”, Hawks says, giving him something akin to a sympathetic look before putting his happy cheery mask back in place. “Alright, let’s start with some simple warm-up stretches then. You saw what I was doing when you walked in, right? Let’s start with that.”

Touya nods dutifully and shifts on his mat to mirror the hero’s position, plunking his arse down with one leg outstretched and one foot pulled up to his thigh, the outer side of his knee touching the ground. He has to admit that even just sitting like this is already tugging on his muscles in a slightly achy but pleasant way.

“Perfect”, Hawks tells him with a satisfied nod. “Now try reaching your toes with your fingers. Don’t worry if you can’t, just go slow and bend as far as you can before it starts hurting. This is just a warm-up exercise, so you shouldn’t be feeling any pain beyond a mild ache from the stretch.”

Touya does as told, slowly bending his torso over his leg and stretching his arm out, and finds that reaching his toes is actually pretty easy. It stings a little on the inner side of his thigh, but the sting quickly lessens as he continues to hold the position.

Hawks whistles approvingly. “Wow, you’re much better at this than I thought you’d be. Did you use to do stretching exercises while you were in Tartarus?”

“Nah, I didn’t really know how to do them and I think I would’ve felt weird about doing them with a security cam trained on me anyway”, he explains, uprighting his torso again. “I’ve always been pretty bendy, though.”

It’s only when he sees the hero’s Adam’s apple bob heavily that he realises the double entendre in his words, and he quickly busies himself with another stretch to hide his face.

“Right. Uh. Yeah. That’s, uh, pretty useful, I suppose. For these exercises, I mean!”, Hawks blabbers awkwardly, and Touya internally rejoices at the fact that he has finally managed to crack the bird’s cool and collected facade - even if unintentionally.

On the other hand, the knowledge that the hero actually does get flustered like this makes Touya’s heart pump his blood just a tad harder in just a tad more inconvenient directions.

For a lack of better and more inconspicuous grounding methods available to him, he quickly sucks his bottom lip between is teeth and bites down hard until he tastes blood, resigning himself to simply enduring the sting of the puncture wounds in his mouth every time he eats or drinks something for the next few days.

“Alright, let’s do the other side now”, Hawks says then, his tone back to his usual smooth cheeriness, and Touya obliges, switching the positions of his legs and stretching his prosthetic arm out to his toes.

“How much weight does your prosthesis support?”, the bird asks curiously as he watches Touya tap the bionic fingers to the tip of his shoe. “Could you do stuff like planks?”

“I think so. It can definitely support much more than my own body weight, and the inside is cushioned very heavily, so the pressure doesn’t hurt my stump”, Touya explains, sitting up properly again and tilting his head a little at the hero. “Should I try?”

Hawks shakes his head. “Not yet. I’d like you to do a few more warm-up stretches, but then I’ve got a few yoga poses in mind that you could try. Here, let’s do a shoulder stretch next”, he suggests, demonstrating the exercise. It looks pretty simple and Touya easily mirrors his position, feeling his shoulder blades and the muscles in his upper back stretch pleasantly, and he makes a mental note to try doing some of these exercises more regularly from now on, even if he’s not actually going to work out.

Clearly, his muscles are aching for it.

The hero continues walking Touya through a few more stretching exercises before deeming him sufficiently warmed up and deciding it’s time to move on to the actual work-out part.

“Okay, so”, Hawks starts, his tone vaguely reminding Touya of a P.E. teacher, “I’ve picked out a few basic yoga poses we can start with on the mats, and then I have a few more we’ll have to stand up for.” He chuckles a little. “You’ve probably heard of most of these before, so let’s start off simple with the downward and upward facing dogs.”

Those names definitely ring a bell in Touya’s head, and he recognises the poses when Hawks demonstrates them for him. They’re simple enough to imitate, and Hawks makes Touya hold the poses for three sets of 30 seconds each. As expected his prosthesis supports his weight easily, and Touya begins to feel a mild burn in some of his muscles towards the end of each set.

“Awesome, you’re doing great!”, Hawks praises him encouragingly, and it makes Touya swallow a bit drily, because woah, apparently that’s a whole new can of worms practically begging to be opened.

Touya resolutely resists and shoves the can to the farthest corners of his mind, stubbornly keeping his focus on the burn in his calves instead as he finishes his last set of holding the downward facing dog pose.

“Now let’s try that plank pose”, Hawks announces when Touya releases the pose and kneels down on his mat again. “I want you to support yourself on your elbows like this to take some weight off your joints.” The hero gets into position to demonstrate, his biceps holding him up steadily and the defined muscles in his back flexing under his tight shirt, keeping his body straight as an arrow.

Touya gulps and averts his eyes from the sight, positioning his arms on the mat and stretching his legs out before pushing himself up on his elbows and toes.

Now this is definitely making his biceps protest indignantly.

“Try keeping your spine straight”, Hawks advises from his side. “I don’t know if you can feel it, but right now your shoulder blades are sticking up like crazy while your spine is curving downwards.”

Touya grunts a little in acknowledgment and attempts to push his back up higher, but it kind of feels impossible.

How the fuck does the stupid bird just do that?!

“How the fuck do you do that?”, Touya hisses out bewilderedly, his muscles practically screaming at him at this point.

“Uh”, Hawks says eloquently. “I kind of just…do it?”

Touya can’t help but snort. “Very helpful, Birdie”, he deadpans.

Hawks chuckles a little. “Sorry, I’ve kinda never really had to think about it before”, he admits apologetically. “Maybe you need to get an idea of what the position is supposed to feel like first. Uh, may I?”

He scoots a bit closer, and from the corner of his eye Touya can see the hero’s hands hovering tentatively over the sides of his ribcage.

It’s probably a stupid idea, letting Hawks touch him like that, but at this point, what difference does it even make anymore?

“Knock yourself out”, Touya grumbles, mentally steeling himself, but the warm touch of the bird’s hands on his sides still catches him off guard, and he exhales a silent little gasp.

Thankfully Hawks doesn’t seem to notice, firmly curling his fingers towards Touya’s chest to get some leverage, before lifting his torso upwards, taking some of the weight off of Touya’s muscles and guiding his spine into the correct position.

“This is how it should feel”, the hero explains, the warmth of his hands still searing through Touya’s shirt and into the healthy patches of skin lining his ribs.

“Right”, Touya says a bit hoarsely, desperately trying to shift his focus to the way his spine feels rather than imagining what it would feel like if Hawks’ hands were touching him without the fabric of his t-shirt between them.

“Now try holding the position on your own”, the hero tells him, carefully letting go of Touya and transferring his full body weight back onto his muscles. Touya barely gets to mourn the loss of the bird’s touch, because the position suddenly feels insanely hard to hold, his shoulders shaking with the effort to remain in place and keep his spine straight.

He barely manages to hold the position for a few seconds before slouching back downwards, his shoulder blades sticking up into the air and his spine curving down towards the floor.

“I don’t think I’m cut out for this one, Birdie”, Touya huffs, lowering himself onto the mat to lie on his stomach.

“Hmm. Maybe your shoulders are a bit too unstable for this”, Hawks muses, seemingly eyeing Touya’s back. “Let’s try the bridge pose instead then. That one shouldn’t be a problem for your shoulders.”

He scrambles back onto his own mat to show Touya the pose, lying down on his back with his feet planted on the floor and lifting his hips up into the air. The position makes his shorts ride up again and Touya quickly averts his eyes from the soft-looking skin on the hero’s inner thighs, except the point of focus for this exercise is clearly the hips, so Touya’s next best option is to stare at Hawks’ crotch.

The tiny shorts stretch over his hips in a way that is simply way too revealing for Touya’s sanity, so he promptly decides he doesn’t really need any more instructions and busies himself with manoeuvring his body into the same position as the hero. He rolls onto his back, his arms stretched out by his sides, and plants his feet on the floor, before lifting his hips up into the air as high as he possibly can.

This exercise is definitely much easier, he notes contently in his mind.

“Yeah, you almost got it”, Hawks praises when he looks over at Touya. “Just lower your hips a little. Your back, hips and thighs are basically supposed to form a straight line from the floor to your knees.”

Touya does as told, letting his hips sink a bit downward until he feels like his body is pretty straight. “Like this?”

“Ah, no, now you’re too low”, Hawks laughs, kneeling down by Touya’s side. “May I again?”, he asks, holding his hands out, and what the fuck is Touya even supposed to say to that other than yes?

He’s already let the hero cross that line once, he might as well do it again now.

“Yeah”, he rasps out, already anticipating the return of the hero’s warm touch, and Hawks smiles at him a little crookedly before slightly leaning over Touya’s body and placing his hands on his hips.

Touya kind of feels like he might just drop dead any moment, the image of the hero leaning over him while firmly holding onto his hips entirely too much for his poor animal brain, and he pointedly starts conjuring up mental images of decidedly unsexy things - bugs, Gigantomachia, that prison guard in Tartarus whose hair always looked like it hadn’t been washed in about a month - to keep himself from tenting his sweatpants right there under Hawks’ nose as the hero manoeuvres his hips into the correct position. 

“Like this”, the bird says with a satisfied nod before releasing Touya’s hips and sitting back on his haunches.

Touya’s skin feels like it’s on fire - not the scarring kind - where Hawks has touched him, like the hero’s fingerprints have been branded into his hips, and somewhere deep inside a part of him wishes Hawks would touch him again, but Touya bravely soldiers on and maintains his pose.

“Perfect”, Hawks tells him with a grin before pushing himself to his feet. “Now let’s try some of those standing poses.”

He holds his left hand out to Touya to help him up, and Touya is so far gone at this point he just clasps the hero’s hand without a second thought, feeling the warm, slightly sweaty skin beneath his fingers, and lets himself be pulled to his feet.

“I only have two more exercises planned for today”, Hawks explains, dropping Touya’s hand again. “I think you’ve already done quite a lot today, considering how long you’ve been physically inactive before, so let’s do one more for muscle strength and one for balance and then call it a day.”

Touya doesn’t really feel particularly worked up yet (at least not from the exercise), but he suspects he’ll get the sore muscles tomorrow, and it certainly can’t hurt to start off slowly after all this time, so he nods in acquiescence.

“Alright, so, this one looks a bit stupid, but basically you place your feet in parallel like this, stretch your arms out in front of you and then squat, like you’re about to sit down in an invisible chair, and hold it.”

The bird demonstrates the position, and Touya privately agrees that it looks pretty stupid. He can’t help but chuckle in amusement as he watches the hero hover in the air.

Hawks gives him a pointed look at that, his lips curling into a little smirk. “Your turn”, he says, and something about it almost sounds like a threat. Touya cackles in earnest at that but dutifully obeys, getting into position and feeling the burn in his thigh muscles as he lowers himself down into a squat.

“Now hold it”, the stupid bird says, snickering into his fist.

Touya glares at him, resisting the urge to release his pose. “Are you trying to be discreet? Because if so, it’s not working, Birdie.”

Hawks barks out a proper laugh at that. “Not really, no”, he admits good-naturedly. “Five more seconds, then release and repeat.”

Touya feels like his thighs and arse actually sigh in relief when he finally straightens up again and shakes his legs out a little before lowering himself back into his second set.

“Well done, Touya”, Hawks tells him earnestly when Touya finally finishes this particular exercise from hell, and the can of worms at the back of his mind starts rattling violently.

Touya determinedly elects to ignore it and coughs a little into his elbow to buy himself a second to get his bearings.

“Thanks”, he says a little croakily when he finally trusts himself not to blurt out anything too embarrassing. 

“I want us to finish with the classic tree pose”, Hawks tells him then, stepping on the heels of his trainers to slip out of them before getting into position. “You should probably take your shoes off for this one. It might be uncomfortable otherwise.”

Touya follows his example, toeing the borrowed shoes off his feet, and planting himself on his mat, facing the hero as he mirrors his pose. He’s a bit wobbly on his foot until he manages to find a spot at the top of Hawks’ unruly hair to fixate his gaze on to stay balanced.

The two of them hold the pose for one minute for each side before the hero starts shaking out his limbs and offering Touya a satisfied grin.

“Nice work”, he says, nodding approvingly. “That would be it for today. I hope you liked it?”

Overall, Touya feels a bit like he’s been hit and whirled around by a tornado, but he still manages to grace the bird with a grin of his own.

“I did. Thank you for helping me”, he tells the hero appreciatively. 

Hawks’ grin promptly morphs into a smile to rival the winter sun outside. “Anytime”, he says breezily, reaching his hand up to scratch the back of his neck, and Touya is so hyper-vigilant at this point that he doesn’t miss the way the hero’s muscle shirt briefly rides up a little at the bottom, revealing a stretch of chiselled golden skin and the faint blonde dusting of a happy trail.

Fucking hell.

“Right then, uh, I think I need a shower, and I’m assuming you probably want one, too, so I’ll leave you to it”, the hero announces then, laughing a little nervously, and a small twinge of embarrassment zings through Touya as he wonders whether he really smells that bad from such low intensity exercise, despite loading up on deodorant right before.

He surreptitiously sniffs the air surrounding him, but his nose doesn’t pick up on any scents beyond the slightly musky humidity that has settled around them over the course of their workout.

Perhaps he just can’t smell his own sweat.

“Yeah, uh, sure. A shower sounds good”, he says, clearing his throat and carefully avoiding the bird’s gaze as he bends down to help him roll up the yoga mats.

“Just leave them here for next time”, Hawks tells him, waving him off with a casual smile when Touya picks up the mats and his borrowed trainers to carry them to the door as he follows the hero out into the hallway.

Right.

Next time.

“I’ll drop by again in the evening to finish my surveillance.”

Touya gives the bird a pointed look. “You mean babysitting.”

Hawks chuckles as he slips on his outdoor shoes in the genkan. “Sure”, he admits good-naturedly. “I’m thinking about ordering takeout later. Do you want anything?”

“And that’s all the exercise from today down the drain…”, Touya comments, shaking his head faux-dramatically, which earns him a snicker from the hero.

“Consider it a reward”, Hawks suggests with one of his irritating dorky-yet-attractive winks.

“Well, it’s not like I was gonna say no”, Touya points out, holding back a smirk.

The hero grins at him like a Cheshire cat. “Awesome, I’ll text you for the details. Give me a shout if you need me.”

“I’m good, Birdie”, Touya huffs a bit exasperatedly, rolling his eyes at Hawks’ back as the hero disappears into the hallway.

Once the front door is shut securely, Touya heaves out a long-suffering groan, scrubbing his hand down his face. He should probably really take a shower - preferably an ice-cold one - but first he’ll need a moment to just…sit down and sort through the chaos in his mind.

Burying his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants, he makes his way back to the living room and sinks down onto the couch with another deep groan, leaning his head against the backrest and closing his eyes.

At this point there’s no sense in denying that Touya is inconveniently and infuriatingly attracted to Hawks, and if their almost-kiss on his birthday is anything to go by, the stupid bird isn’t entirely unaffected by this whole ordeal either, despite what his cool demeanour might suggest.

This kind of sexual attraction doesn’t really come easily to Touya, and he’s not sure whether that’s due to his experiences while living on the streets or simply the way he is, but the last time he’s felt this way about someone was, well, also the stupid bird, back when they used to sneak around for secret meetings, blatant lies and thinly veiled threats of violence and murder. Touya is perfectly aware how messed up all that probably was, but now things are much, much different - and infinitely worse.

Because now they have to be civil with each other.

Now, they have spend the next five years in close proximity to each other with a whole shitload of legal rules and restrictions regulating their relationship with each other, and Touya really, really doesn’t want to jeopardise his newly found freedom and this second chance at life that he was given even though he probably never deserved it. And throwing yourself at your pro hero bodyguard must be a surefire way to catapult yourself straight back to Tartarus, so Touya absolutely cannot risk acting on this misguided attraction he is feeling, no matter how badly a certain part of his brain wants to.

He’ll just have to keep the feeling locked up deep inside and hope and pray that it’ll just go away on its own over time as he continues hanging out with the hero.

Like exposure therapy.

With a heavy sigh he reaches up to massage the bridge of his nose between his fingers.

Unfortunately, it almost feels like Hawks is trying to make things difficult for Touya on purpose, what with his stupid grins and winks, his expensive suits and tight, revealing workout clothes.

Touya kind of feels like the most pathetic person in the world for it, but as he sits there alone on his couch, his eyes still closed and legs stretched out in front of him, he can’t help but let his mind drift a little again.

The feeling of Hawks’ hands on his ribs and hips is still burned into his skin, the image of the hero leaning over him while Touya was lying on his back with his hips up in the air keeps replaying itself vividly in his mind.

From there it’s so easy to imagine what it could’ve been like if Hawks had crawled between Touya’s legs, nudging his knees apart.

What it would’ve felt like if the hero had leaned down further over Touya’s body, letting his breath ghost over Touya’s face, warm and tingly, just like on his birthday, his hold solid and searing on Touya’s hips.

Touya is already rock hard in his sweatpants by this point, the desperately contained arousal from earlier slamming back into him at full force, and even though he adamantly swore to himself that nothing could come out of doing this, he simply can’t resist the urge anymore when the Hawks in his fantasy lowers himself all the way down onto Touya’s body, lining up their groins and grinding down heavily.

With a stuttering sigh Touya shoves the hem of his sweatpants and boxers down, just far enough so he can pull himself out, and firmly wraps his hand around his throbbing cock.

After all, he’s only human, and there’s only so much he can do to deny himself his needs.

He’s already leaking precum, a few drops dribbling down onto his sweatpants, and he quickly swipes his thumb over the tip to gather it up and use it as lube. It’s not quite enough, though, the staples in his palm scratching the sensitive skin just a tad too roughly, so he briefly lets up to spit in his hand before squeezing his fingers around the base of his dick and pumping his fist.

The Hawks in his fantasy grinds down again, and Touya can feel the hero’s hard cock rubbing against his own through the layers of fabric separating them. The friction is heavenly, but also not enough, so fantasy-Touya reaches up to tug both of their trousers down and free their dicks before grabbing fantasy-Hawks’ arse to pull him back down and line them up properly.

Fantasy-Hawks’ cock lies hot and heavy against his own, and real-life-Touya starts jerking himself a bit harder as fantasy-Hawks shifts to support his weight on one arm, while reaching down with the other to wrap his hand around both their dicks.

Touya is already pathetically close, hot pressure pulsing vigorously at his core, and he twists his hand a little, pressing into the sensitive spot beneath his head as he recalls the feeling of the hero’s hand in his and imagines what it might feel like wrapped around his dick.

The thought of Hawks’ fingers squeezing around him as he pumps him steadily is what finally sends Touya flying over the edge, the maddening pressure bursting into burning pleasure as he spurts hotly over his hand and stomach. Milky white streaks of cum paint his t-shirt and he should probably be embarrassed about it, but right here, right now, in the safety of his own flat with no prying eyes to see, he allows himself to let go and just feel for a moment.

Feel the way the last waves of pleasure gently roll through his body, seeping out into his limbs.

Feel the way his heart is pounding wildly against his ribcage, the way his breath is rattling in his lungs.

For a few blissful moments his mind is pleasantly blank as he slowly comes back down from his orgasm, before his consciousness starts creeping back up to the surface. He carelessly wipes his hand on his filthy t-shirt and tucks himself back into his pants, the light touch of his fingers almost too much on his softening dick, as he tries to catch his breath.

When he glances down at his cum-stained shirt, he wrinkles his nose a little, but ultimately he finds that he doesn’t actually feel as bad about this whole thing as he thought he would.

It’s not like this was the first time the hero has made an appearance in his wank fantasies anyway.

Nothing really has changed compared to all those years ago, except that nowadays Touya doesn’t really have to worry about the two of them killing each other anymore. He’s fairly certain that even if Hawks found out about what kind of filth Touya has gotten up to in the privacy of his own mind, he wouldn’t go so far as to murder him, and Touya himself has long abandoned his homicidal ways.

So it should be fine, really.

Hopefully.

Touya breathes out a long sigh before pushing himself up to his feet, the first signs of post-workout muscle soreness zinging through his thighs at the movement, and making his way to the bathroom to get himself cleaned up.

He starts by rinsing the worst of the cum stains off his t-shirt in the sink before throwing it in the washing machine with the rest of his clothes. As he undresses and carefully removes his prosthesis, he catches sight of himself in the bathroom mirror. His hair is sticking up at gravity-defying angles at the back, his eyes are glazed and oddly shiny, and the healthy patches of skin on his face are flushed light pink, but as Touya stares at his ruffled reflection he finds that he doesn’t actually mind.

Something about it makes him look so alive and human, like an actual person with feelings and desires rather than just the walking corpse he feels like he spent so many years living as, this hollow shell of a person filled with nothing but rotten misery and ashes.

It makes him look vulnerable and that is a fucking terrifying ordeal - not just feeling vulnerable but actually having it written all over his face like an open book - but as long as no one else but him is there to see it, it’s also strangely beautiful in a way that makes his chest ache a little. Knowing that these soft parts of him still exist, and that he is actually capable of feeling them nowadays, is like a balm for his jagged soul.

He sniffs a little, and there’s a tiny droplet of blood leaking out beneath his right eye, but he doesn’t bother wiping it away as he averts his gaze and steps into the shower, turning the tap to a pleasantly warm setting and stepping under the gentle spray of the rain shower head.

The warmth quickly seeps into his skin, soothing the dull aches in his strained muscles, and he ends up indulging in a pretty long cleanse. It might not be particularly environmentally friendly, but the relaxation that takes over his body as he stands under the steaming spray and massages coconut-scented shampoo into his hair is simply too addictive. Once he finishes up, he quickly cleans his prosthesis before heading over to his bedroom to pull on a fresh pair of sweatpants and the hoodie Hawks got him for his birthday.

Only because it’s so soft and cozy.

Obviously.

Dressed and refreshed, he makes his way back to the living room, picking up his phone from where he left it lying around earlier, and settles on the couch, sinking deep into the cushions with a satisfied groan and pulling his knees up to his chest. When he unlocks the device in his hands, he finds a new message from the bird.

I was thinking curry for takeout. You in?

Touya ponders that for a moment, then texts him back affirmatively before opening up Instagram and lazily clicking his way through his siblings’ new stories.

Natsuo has posted a picture of a gigantic burger, melted cheese dripping down the sides obscenely, while Fuyumi seems to have built a tiny snowman on her windowsill, and Touya is absolutely convinced she must’ve used her Quirk to get it to look as neat and intricate as it does.

Shouto currently has multiple stories up, all of them videos showing the kid playing with his fluffy white cat - which totally does not look like Touya, thank you very much. There’s no sound, but Touya presumes the videos were filmed by Deku or Explodo-Boy, and Shouto looks pretty happy in them, grinning widely as the cat curiously paws at the toy the kid is dangling in front of him.

The sight makes Touya’s chest feel a bit warm.

It’s nice to know that his little brother gets to enjoy himself like that.

When Touya has finished catching up with his - admittedly rather short and overall uneventful - Instagram feed, he puts his phone down and grabs his One Piece manga from the bookshelf before curling up on the couch again, tucking his feet under him.

By the time the doorbell finally rings to announce the bird’s return, Touya’s stomach is grumbling so viciously, he doesn’t even have it in himself to worry about whether he’ll actually be able to look Hawks in the eye after what he did earlier.

“Delivery service!”, the hero sing-songs with a grin, dangling a white plastic bag in front of Touya’s face when he opens the door. The smell wafting from the bag is absolutely mouth-watering.

“Thank god. I’m starving”, Touya sighs, and his stomach growls in agreement.

Hawks laughs as he follows him inside. “Exercise does tend to have that effect”, he says amusedly. “You wouldn’t believe how much I was eating after the War when I had recovered enough to start physical training again. It was like trying to feed a pack of wolves.”

“And here I thought it would’ve been like trying to feed a pack of hawks”, Touya deadpans, which earns him a hearty guffaw from the bird.

“Didn’t take you as the type to make bad puns”, he snickers, looking at Touya delightedly.

Touya feels the corners of his mouth twitch, but he successfully manages to keep a straight face as he shrugs nonchalantly. “I have my moments”, he says ominously.

He pointedly does not think about how Hawks somehow manages to look even more attractive when he smiles at Touya like that, his golden eyes sparkling impossibly as his cheeks dimple.

They transfer their takeout dinner to porcelain bowls, then head over to the living room to eat. Touya puts on the record the clerk at the music shop had recommended to his brother, just to give them a little bit of background noise. He’s been enjoying the album and he presumes the bird will like it, too.

At least, he has never complained about Touya’s music choices so far.

They mostly eat in companionable silence, and Touya is briefly struck by the realisation that it’s much less awkward than he’d expected it to be, given the day’s previous events.

Perhaps because - despite their changed dynamic - it wasn’t really anything new.

Perhaps Touya's grand plan to cure himself of his unfortunate feelings through prolonged exposure might actually work out.

***

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?”, Shouto asks Jirou for what must be the millionth time that day as the two of them - accompanied by Momo for emotional support - ride up the lift to Touya’s flat on Sunday afternoon.

Shouto is certainly no expert at reading people, but even he can tell that his friend is nervous by the way she keeps twirling her earphone plug around her finger.

Jirou exhales a bit heavily and nods. “Yes, I’m fine. I believe in rehabilitation and I wanna lead by example, it’s just…a bit weird. You know?” She smiles at Shouto a bit crookedly, and Momo supportively grabs her girlfriend’s hand.

“I understand”, Shouto says earnestly, because of course he does. He knows he comes from a different place, given his relation to Touya, but the early days of rehabilitation were still a strange little thing for him to deal with. Truly coming to terms with the hurt his brother had inflicted on people, understanding the emotions and motivations that led him there, and reconciling all of that with the man his brother was trying to be then as he healed and recovered wasn’t exactly easy for Shouto either. There were a lot of conflicting emotions and moral dilemmas he had to work through, and he can imagine very well that it must feel similar for his friend now.

“Thank you for agreeing to do this”, he adds. “I think it’s really important to Touya, and he’ll probably appreciate it a lot.”

“So, uh, do we call him ‘Touya’? He doesn’t go by ‘Dabi’ anymore?”, Momo wonders then, as the lift dings to announce their arrival on Touya’s floor.

Shouto nods. “Yeah, he’s just Touya now. Dabi was the villain facade, Touya is the person underneath.”

They exit the lift, and Shouto notices from the corner of his eye how his friends visibly steel themselves as he rings the doorbell.

Surprisingly, it’s not Touya who opens the door for him, but rather a certain formerly winged hero. 

“Hello, Shouto-kun! Jirou-san, Yaoyorozu-san!”, Hawks greets them breezily as they step into the genkan and take off their shoes.

“Touya is making tea right now, so he sent me to open the door”, he adds at the surprised look on the three friends’ faces.

“I had therapy earlier, so Birdie here hasn’t done his daily surveillance yet”, the man himself informs them then, appearing in the hallway carrying a large teapot. “They were clearly wondering why you were here at all”, he says, rolling his eyes a bit exasperatedly in Hawks’ direction as he leads the way into the living room.

“Hello, nii-san”, Shouto says once Touya has set the pot down on the coffee table and pulls his big brother into a hug.

“You okay?”, Touya mumbles quietly by Shouto’s ear, presumably confused by the mild death grip Shouto is keeping him locked in.

Shouto nods against his shoulder. “Yeah. Had a run-in with the old man at the hero gala.” He tightens his hold a little as he feels Touya twitch against him, seemingly ready to spring into action and return to his patricidal ways, and quickly assures, “I’m fine, though. Really.”

“Good. Don’t let him mess with you”, Touya says a bit gruffly, giving Shouto a final squeeze before releasing him to greet his friends. 

“Hello, Jirou-san, Yaoyorozu-san. Thank you very much for agreeing to do this”, Touya tells the women, bowing politely. “Would you like some tea?”

Jirou and Momo both look a bit bewildered, but Momo quickly gets her bearings and smiles. “Tea sounds lovely, thank you.”

Touya nods a bit stiffly and starts pouring a few cups before handing them out to his guests.

Shouto watches his friends carefully as they accept their steaming drinks, and Momo is beginning to look pretty relaxed, but Jirou is still fidgeting with her earphone plug, so Shouto makes a quick decision.

“I’ll put on some music”, he announces, pulling his phone from his pocket and connecting it to Touya’s bluetooth speaker. He searches up an album he knows Jirou really likes and presses play. At the sound of the opening notes his friend glances over and smiles at him gratefully before taking a sip from her tea.

“Nice choice”, Touya says then, nodding approvingly in Shouto’s direction. “I didn’t know you had that in you, little bro.”

“Actually, Jirou got me into this band”, Shouto explains, plopping down on the couch and picking up his own cup from the coffee table.

“You’ve got great taste”, his brother tells his friend then with another approving nod.

Jirou huffs a little laugh. “Thanks”, she says, and Shouto thinks she is finally starting to look a bit more relaxed as she sets down her little piercing kit bag on the table.

“Wow, I think I’ve just identified another gap in my pop culture knowledge”, Hawks pipes up, grinning dorkily and sitting down on the sofa next to Shouto, which draws a snort from Touya.

“If it makes you feel better, I didn’t know about this band until I was like 17 either”, Shouto tells the older hero sympathetically, since apparently his brother can’t be counted on to offer his babysitter any kind words of support.

Hawks laughs good-naturedly. “Thanks, Shouto-kun. Guess your brother and your friends are just too cool for us.”

“Oh, Touya-nii is definitely the type to be ‘too cool’ for stuff”, Shouto points out then, grinning slyly as he remembers Fuyumi’s words from the other day. “When he was in middle school, he used to play Magic because he was too cool for Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!”, he explains sagely.

“Oi!”, Touya grunts, glaring at him indignantly, and Shouto giggles into his tea.

“Right, I think we’ve found another one of my knowledge gaps”, Hawks laughs then, curiously looking back and forth between the brothers. “I’ve heard of Pokémon, but I don’t think I know what Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic are.”

Touya sighs theatrically at that. “They’re trading card games. Like Pokémon. Magic is the best one”, he rattles off dutifully.

“Don’t you mean ‘the coolest’?”, Shouto asks innocently.

“Fuck you. Yes”, Touya replies very seriously, giving Shouto a pointed look, which makes Shouto burst into another fit of giggles while the older hero next to him barks out a hearty laugh, throwing his head back.

Shouto thinks he briefly sees a strange expression flit across his brother’s face at that, but it’s gone way too quickly for him to even begin trying to figure out what it could mean.

“For what it’s worth”, Momo pipes up then, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Magic either. The other two, though…”

“Never mention them in Denki’s presence unless you wanna hear an entire lecture”, Jirou adds, cackling. “He might even show you a PowerPoint presentation.”

From the corner of his eye Shouto catches Touya mouthing “Denki?” at him with his brows furrowed and Shouto quickly mouths “Chargebolt” back, earning himself a grateful nod from his brother.

“Right, let’s get to it, then, shall we?”, Hawks says then, clapping his hands on his thighs with a sunny smile. “I don’t wanna rush you guys, but I still have some paperwork to finish later and I, uh, was actually gonna ask if you would mind doing one more piercing once you’re done with Hot Stuff here, Jirou-san.”

Shouto blinks at the unexpected nickname, and he’s pretty sure his brother has just gone a few shades pinker between the scars on his face.

“Oh, sure”, Jirou says, nodding at Hawks professionally. “What did you have in mind?”

“Just a helix”, Hawks explains, “but I can wait.”

Jirou nods, then turns to face Touya. “You, uh, you should probably sit in a chair for this”, she suggests, gesturing towards the dining table, and Touya eagerly obeys, pulling the chair a bit away from the table to make more space around him.

“Which piercings did you want to get redone?”, she asks then as she unzips her little bag and empties its contents on the coffee table.

Shouto leans back a little on the couch, kind of feeling like a veteran at this point after having experienced it himself and watching Jirou pierce several of their friends.

“My three nose studs. I’m not allowed to get my ears re-pierced for medical reasons”, Touya explains, looking a bit subdued at the last part.

“I see”, Jirou says, nodding a bit clinically as she finishes setting up her materials and pulls on a pair of latex gloves. “May I?”, she asks then, stepping up beside Touya’s chair with an antiseptic wipe in her hand.

Touya nods and tilts his head a little to give her better access to the side of his nose.

Jirou carefully starts disinfecting the site, eyeing it curiously. “I can still see the scars from your old piercings, so I’ll just re-pierce those same spots, yeah?”

“Yes, please.”

As Shouto watches his friend carefully stab three little holes into his brother’s nose and decorate them with shiny little silver studs, he starts fiddling a little with his own piercing. It’s been healing very well so far, and he kind of feels like the single little ring looks a bit lonely on his ear.

Like maybe he should get another one.

“I can tell what you’re thinking”, Momo stage-whispers by his side, smiling at him conspiratorially.

Shouto raises a questioning eyebrow at her.

“I’m sure Kyouka won’t mind giving you another one, too, while she’s at it”, she whispers properly the time, nudging Shouto’s side.

Shouto hums a little, contemplating that for a moment.

What kind of piercing would he even get?

A second lobe piercing?

No, that would feel too same-y. He wants something different.

“All done”, Jirou announces then, inspecting her work on Touya’s nose contently for a moment before pressing a little bottle in his hand. “Don’t take them out for the next three months. Spray this on them every morning and every night for the first few weeks.”

“You are so much more professional than the guy who did my piercings the first time around”, Touya muses, grinning a bit crookedly as he eyes the bottle of disinfectant in his hand. “Thank you”, he adds earnestly, looking up at Jirou.

She offers him a little smile. “You’re welcome. Now, next one, please”, she says then, turning to wave Hawks over. 

Touya makes space for the hero on the chair and joins Shouto and Momo on the couch, plopping down in the now abandoned spot by Shouto’s side.

“How do they look?”, Touya asks a bit giddily, tilting his head towards Shouto.

Shouto eyes the little studs glinting on his brother’s nose, right where his old piercings used to be, and nods approvingly. “Cool.”

They really do look cool, and while Shouto doesn’t feel quite bold enough to get his own nose pierced yet, there’s a little part of him that kind of wants to copy his big brother.

“Shouto-kun is thinking about getting another piercing as well”, Momo informs Touya then, smiling a little.

“Oh, really? What do you wanna get?”, Touya asks curiously.

Shouto tilts his head a little. “I’m not sure”, he admits. “I want another one on my ear, but I don’t want a second lobe piercing.”

Across the room Jirou is just finishing up cleaning the outer shell of Hawks’ ear with an antiseptic wipe, and it makes Shouto contemplate for a moment.

“Maybe I should get a helix”, he muses as he watches Jirou poke her needle through the older hero’s cartilage.

“Ugh, I’m starting to feel like you guys are just trying to rub it in that I can’t get my helices back”, Touya grumbles by Shouto’s side, but Shouto knows he's just kidding.

“Maybe”, he says lightly, just to be a little shit. It earns him a prosthetic elbow to his side, but it’s worth the disgruntled look on Touya’s face that really eerily looks like the face Shimo always makes when someone takes one of his toys away.

Deciding to risk another elbow attack, Shouto proceeds to tell him so, smiling serenely.

“Oi, you little shit, I do not look like your goddamn cat!”, Touya gasps, and Shouto braces himself for more elbowing, but the attack never comes. Instead Touya just scowls at him murderously while on his other side Momo is hiccuping badly restrained giggles into her hand.

“Anyone else want any piercings?”, Jirou pipes up then amusedly, releasing Hawks from the chair with a spray bottle in his hand and a silver stud in his ear, contrasting the red gemstones he’s sporting on his earlobes.

“Yes! Please!”, Touya exclaims theatrically, grabbing Shouto’s shoulder and shoving him to his feet. “This menace wants a helix. Please take him off my hands.”

Jirou raises an eyebrow at Shouto and gives him a lopsided grin. “Is that so?”

Shouto nods. “If you don’t mind?”

His friend waves him off dismissively. “I’m already at it anyway. Might as well”, she says, laughing a little. “Come on, then.”

Shouto obediently walks over to her and sits down in the designated piercing chair, fumbling a bobby pin from his pocket to pin his hair back like last time.

“Same ear as your lobe piercing, I presume?”, Jirou inquires as she pulls on a fresh pair of latex gloves and grabs another antiseptic wipe. Shouto nods, twisting his head a little, and then the cool wetness of the disinfectant is seeping into his skin. 

“This one will have to be a stud at the beginning”, his friend explains, carefully sanitising her needle. “You can take it out and put a ring in instead in about three months, if you want.”

“That’s fine”, Shouto says. He does want a ring eventually, but the little stud in Hawks’ ear looks pretty cool as well, so it’s not like he’ll be sacrificing much.

It stings a little more than his earlobe piercing did when Jirou finally pokes the needle through his cartilage, but the pain is as quick as it is sharp, and by the time his friend is fastening the new piercing in his ear, it has already dulled down to a mild ache.

“Same rules for you”, Jirou tells him sternly, handing him his own little spray bottle. “Disinfect it every morning and every night. If you’ve got a weird patrol schedule, bring it with you. Don’t let Bakugou or Midoriya distract you.”

A brief feeling of alarm shoots through Shouto’s stomach at that, making him feel mildly queasy.

Does Jirou know…?

“What do you mean?”, he asks out loud, trying to keep his voice perfectly calm and even.

Jirou narrows her eyes at him. “I mean that, no matter how well you work together as heroes, you three kind of only share a single brain cell. You’re like Dumb, Dumber and The Dumbest when you’re together.”

“Which one am I?”, Shouto inquires very seriously.

“Depends on the situation”, Jirou says with a shrug, and a chorus of giggles makes its way over from the couch. Shouto turns around to squint at the trio sitting there suspiciously.

“I’m sorry, Shouto-kun, but she’s right”, Momo snickers, wiping her eyes a little.

“It seems to work out pretty well for you most of the time, but yeah, she definitely has a point”, Hawks adds, and at least the older hero sounds a tiny bit apologetic about it.

Meanwhile Touya looks like he’s on the verge of combusting, holding his stomach as he cackles wildly, and Shouto is pretty sure there is blood on his brother’s face.

“One. Single. Brain cell”, he wheezes out breathlessly, reaching for the tissue box on the coffee table and wiping the blood off his face.

“You missed a spot”, Hawks tells him kindly. “Left cheek.”

Touya scrubs the tissue over his cheek again, but even from his spot on the chair Shouto can see there are still red traces on his face.

“Sorry about this”, Touya says a bit awkwardly in Momo and Jirou’s direction. “This sometimes happens when I laugh.”

The two women avert their eyes a little and Momo shakes her head. “No, no, don’t worry, it’s fine”, she reassures quickly. “I probably have mascara running down my face.”

“Yeah, babe, you actually do”, Jirou laughs, grabbing a tissue from the box and gently wiping away the black stains under her girlfriend’s eyes, and Shouto feels a bit like he’s intruding on something when he sees the soft look the two of them share, so he quickly redirects his attention to his brother and the older hero.

“You still didn’t get it”, Hawks tells Touya amusedly, unceremoniously plucking the tissue from his hand and getting to work on the blood stains himself.

Touya looks like a deer caught in the headlights, his body visibly turning rigid and his eyes nearly bulging out of his head as Hawks dabs the tissue on his cheek, and Shouto can feel his own eyes widen in surprise.

He really did not expect his brother and the hero to be on this particular level of friendship already.

But Hawks acts like it’s the most normal thing in the world, so Shouto chalks his brother’s flustered reaction up to the social issues that seem to run in their family.

His 15-year-old self surely would’ve reacted like that, too, if someone from Class A had suddenly started dabbing blood stains from his face.

“Alright, I should probably head out. My paperwork unfortunately won’t do itself”, Hawks announces then, huffing a soft laugh while Touya is still gaping at him like he’s seen a ghost.

“We should leave, too”, Momo says, getting to her feet and grabbing Jirou’s hand to pull her up, too. “We wouldn’t want to impose.”

“Oh, no worries!”, Touya blurts out, jumping up like he’s just been snapped out of a trance and leading the little group out to the genkan.

“Thank you very much for this again”, he tells Jirou, indicating the piercings on his nose, while everyone is pulling their coats on and slipping into their shoes.

Jirou smiles at him, and Shouto happily notes that she doesn’t look nervous at all anymore. “You’re welcome”, she says. “Nice hoodie, by the way.”

Shouto glances over and finds that his brother is wearing the band hoodie Hawks got him for his birthday.

“You into Bring Me The Horizon?”, Touya asks Jirou, fiddling a little with the material to straighten out the print on the front. 

Jirou nods. “Yeah, Sempiternal and That’s The Spirit were really big records for me in high school.”

“Ah, that’s the one with the umbrella on the cover, right? I’ve never listened to that”, Touya admits, smiling a bit crookedly. “I was kind of in jail by then. I used to listen to Sempiternal a lot before that and I, uhhh, had this mp3-player that had There Is A Hell/There Is A Heaven on it back in the day.”

There’s a blatantly obvious look of “I’m hiding something” on Touya’s face, and Shouto squints at his brother suspiciously.

“Oh, you should give it a listen!”, Jirou tells Touya excitedly. “It’s a killer record! I also really like the most recent one they’ve released.”

Touya gives her a salute, a deeply serious expression on his face. “Aye, will do”, he promises. “I’ll have Shouto tell you what I think.”

Shouto isn’t even bothered by the fact that he has apparently just been turned into a messenger without even getting a say in it. He’s just happy to see his big brother actually kind of bond with one of his friends. It’s far more than he could’ve hoped for, given the circumstances, and he can’t help but smile a little as he watches the exchange.

“It’s nice to see, huh?”, Hawks suddenly whispers by Shouto’s shoulder, and Shouto gives a subtle little nod. “You kids really make me hopeful for the future of hero society.”

“Oi, baby bro”, Touya calls then, making his way over to Shouto. “Are you leaving, too?”

Shouto nods. “I promised to take Jirou and Momo out for dinner as a thanks”, he says a bit apologetically. A brief flash of what Shouto is pretty sure is disappointment crosses his brother’s face, but it’s gone as quickly as it came.

“I could come by again some time later this week?”, he suggests.

“Sounds good”, Touya agrees with a nod, the corners of his mouth quirking up a little. “See ya, kid.” He tugs Shouto into a hug, and Shouto goes easily, wrapping his arms around his brother’s lanky frame.

“Don’t let the old man get to you, you hear me?”, Touya tells him pointedly, squeezing Shouto a bit harder, and Shouto squeezes back, tucking his face into his brother’s neck for a moment as the hazy memories from his little drinking escapade at the hero gala swim through his mind.

Touya doesn’t need to know about any of that, and especially not the fact that Endeavour was trying to pry for information about him.

“I’ll try”, Shouto says honestly when he releases his brother again.

“Good”, Touya replies with a satisfied smile, ruffling Shouto’s hair a little. It kind of makes him feel like he’s about five years old, but he dutifully lets his brother, well, be his brother before stepping aside to put on his shoes and allow everyone else to say their goodbyes.

When the four heroes part ways in the hallway, Hawks calls a cheery “enjoy your dinner!” after Shouto and his friends as he disappears into his own flat and the three of them make their way over to the lift.

Shouto ends up taking Momo and Jirou to a Thai restaurant a little further downtown - an enthusiastic recommendation from Iida, and as they tuck into their food Shouto totally understands why.

“Oh, this is so good”, Jirou groans a bit obscenely. “You should take us out for dinner more often, Todoroki-kun.”

“Okay”, Shouto says easily, munching down another bite.

Momo gives Jirou a stern look before turning to face Shouto. “What she means is thank you for inviting us, and we should have dinner together more often”, she explains pointedly, and Jirou shrugs by her side.

“Same thing.”

“Well, first of all, you don’t have to thank me, this is literally me thanking you for today”, Shouto points out a bit amusedly, “and second of all, I really don’t mind taking my friends out to eat. You guys have done so much for me over the years, buying you dinner every now and then is really the least I can do.”

It’s the truth, Shouto thinks. He would be nowhere near the person he is today, if it weren't for his friends from Class A. 

“Awww”, Jirou coos, grinning at him a little crookedly, and Momo’s lips curl into a smile, too.

“You know”, Jirou says then, tilting her head pensively, “I feel a bit weird saying this, but your brother was actually pretty nice today, Todoroki-kun. I really didn’t expect that.”

Momo nods in agreement. “He seemed surprisingly normal. Considering everything. Like he’s just a regular 31-year-old guy rather than a major former villain. Therapy really must’ve done wonders for him”, she muses.

Shouto laughs a little at that. “You’re right, he does seem pretty normal now that he’s out of prison. Turns out that if you actually treat a mental illness accordingly - instead of ignoring it and hoping that will make it go away - it actually will get better”, he adds a bit sourly, the menacing shadows of his father’s ghost and blurry pieces of memories of tween Touya crying flickering at the back of his mind.

Momo’s eyes soften a little and she offers Shouto a sympathetic smile. “I’m happy to hear that”, she says. “It makes me feel like our generation is really on the right path with the rehabilitation approach. I’m sure other members of the League, like Toga or Shigaraki, would’ve benefited from it, too.”

“You really think Shigaraki could’ve been rehabilitated?”, Jirou asks - not doubtfully, just pensively - and Momo nods.

“Midoriya-kun said it, too, right? There was still a little part inside of him that wanted to be saved. I think without All For One taking over Shigaraki’s body he still could’ve been. And maybe, if the rehabilitation approach had been implemented earlier, things never would’ve gone as far as they did anyway.”

Shouto contemplates Momo’s words for a moment and finds that he agrees. Touya and Shigaraki may have come from very different places, but at the end of the day they were both abused and horribly traumatised children, and seeing where his brother is now, Shouto wants to believe that there was still hope for Shigaraki, too.

“I think you’re right”, he says out loud, tilting his head a little. “Some villains are really just straight up evil like All For One, but most of them are not. Most people don’t just decide to become villains overnight, they usually experience some sort of traumatic event or suffer from a mental health condition that leads them down that path. I think even extreme cases like Shigaraki probably still have something inside of them that psychotherapy could latch onto.”

“Hmm, that’s true”, Jirou hums in agreement, nodding slowly. “It’s not just rehabilitation then, though, is it? It’s also early recognition.”

Shouto nods vigorously, because yeah, that really is a big one.

Part of him always circles back to wondering how different everything would've been, if their father had actually done his parental duty and taken little Touya to a psychiatrist. Way before Sekoto Peak and way, way before Dabi was born.

Maybe Touya never would’ve died.

“You’re right, early recognition of mental health issues plays a key role in preventing people from becoming villains in the first place”, Momo agrees, frowning a little. “Honestly, now that I’m thinking about it, that’s something that’s kinda still missing from our collective advocacy. We always talk about rehabilitation, but we don’t really talk about the root causes of villainy.”

“Yeah, and there’s still so much stigma surrounding mental health care, and it’s severely underfunded compared to physical health care”, Jirou adds grimly, and Shouto suddenly feels the first wisps of an idea fluttering around in his mind.

“What if we set up a foundation?”, he blurts out, the half-formed plan rushing to his mouth faster than he can even think it through.

“What do you mean?”

“Like, a foundation to raise awareness and fund mental health care for kids, teens and young adults”, Shouto elaborates excitedly as the idea begins to take a little more shape in his mind. “Especially kids from difficult backgrounds - abusive families, bad neighbourhoods, poverty, stuff like that. We could set up centres those kids could go to, anonymously and for free of course, to talk to professionals and get advice, help, whatever they need, and if necessary a referral to a psychotherapist’s office.”

Momo nods slowly. “That’s a really good idea, actually. Are you sure that’s something you wanna take on right now, though? With your agency and everything?”, she questions, eyeing him a bit concernedly, but Shouto just shrugs.

“I’m sure we can get a lot more people in on this. Our friends, other people from UA, maybe even Aizawa or All Might. We could also ask Hawks and the rest of his hero generation”, Shouto lists off, mentally skimming through a checklist. “Split the work between us.”

Jirou tilts her head thoughtfully. “I bet our friends would all want to contribute, one way or another. I really like the idea, I think something like that is sorely missing in our country. How about we all get in touch with heroes we think might want to join and set up a video conference some time this week?”, she suggests, pulling out her phone to start tapping away on it.

“I like the way you think”, Momo tells her, smiling proudly. “I could look into the, uh, more business-y side of things. My family probably has some useful contacts for that sort of stuff”, she offers, flushing a little pink, and Shouto nods enthusiastically.

“That would be great, thanks!”, he says earnestly as his phone buzzes against his thigh.

“I figured I’d just ask in the Class A group chat”, Jirou informs him, grinning a little as Shouto fumbles his phone from his pocket.

Shouto grins back and mentally makes a note to call Hawks - and by extension Miruko - tomorrow. When he gets home later he’ll ask Izuku to get in touch with All Might and Katsuki to contact Best Jeanist and Edgeshot.

The idea had really come to him on a total whim, but now that it’s beginning to take shape he feels like they might actually have something solid in the works here, and he can’t help but smile a little around his food as they finish up their dinner over brainstorming and lighthearted chatter.

As they finally head out into the cold winter night to part ways, it suddenly hits Shouto that he nearly forgot something very important, and he turns around to smile widely at his friends.

“How do you guys feel about adopting a cat?”

Chapter Text

On Tuesday afternoon Touya is in the middle of making vegetable stir-fry, when his phone suddenly buzzes so violently against the marble countertop beside him that he physically jumps and nearly knocks the pan off the stove. Hissing out a string of curses, he manages to precariously catch the handle in his prosthetic hand, steadying it above the flame, while blindly fumbling for his phone with his left hand. The spoon he was using to stir his vegetables clatters noisily to the floor, leaving a few droplets of cooking oil sprinkled across the tiles, but at least his food has managed to survive unscathed.

“Hello?”, he grunts, holding his phone to his ear without bothering to check the caller ID as he crouches down to pick up the spoon and clean the oily mess.

“Touya-nii?”, Fuyumi’s voice comes through the speaker, sounding mildly concerned. “Are you alright?”

Touya heaves a sigh as he pushes himself back up to his feet a little too fast, making his vision swim for a second. “I’m fine”, he tells his sister placidly, dropping the dirty spoon in the sink. “Just nearly knocked my pan off the stove.”

Fuyumi laughs a little, clearly relieved. “Oh, I’m sorry”, she says kindly. “Well, I hope I’m not intruding, but I just had to pick up some school supplies in town and I thought perhaps I could stop by? I could be at your place in about 20 minutes. If that isn’t too spontaneous for you.”

“Ah, you know me, Fuyumi-chan, I’m not a particularly busy man these days”, he points out a bit amusedly, grabbing a fresh spoon from the drawer to give his vegetables another stir. “Are you hungry? I’m pretty sure I’m cooking enough for two right now.”

“Well, if you’re offering…”, Fuyumi replies, the smile evident in her voice. “See you soon, then!”

“Yeah, see you”, Touya tells her before pocketing his phone and eyeing his food contemplatively. He was just going to stick to the vegetables for dinner, but now that they’re going to share them, perhaps he should make some rice as well.

With 20 minutes to spare, he quickly puts on a pot of rice as he continues to let the vegetables simmer on low heat, and by the time the doorbell rings he has just taken the food off the stove and turned the flames off.

“It’s good to see you”, Fuyumi says happily as she slips out of her boots and coat before bounding over to Touya to wrap her arms around his shoulders.

“You too”, Touya mumbles around a mouthful of red-streaked white hair as he hugs his sister back. “You’re just in time for dinner”, he adds when she releases him again, leading the way to the kitchen.

“Oh!”, Fuyumi gasps, her eyes widening in surprise when she spots the stir-fry. “I didn’t really expect you to be such a healthy cook”, she admits, laughing a little, while Touya grabs two bowls from the cupboard.

He shrugs, splitting the stir-fry and rice evenly between the bowls. “I prefer lighter dishes. Don’t really like feeling all sluggish and bloated after some overly heavy meal.”

He’s pretty sure that’s a leftover inclination from his villain days. When you’re living somewhat on the run and have to be prepared to engage in heavy physical combat basically every second of your life, you quickly start thinking twice about whether you really want to stuff your face with junk food until you’re borderline nauseous.

Fuyumi hums in agreement as she accepts the steaming bowl Touya hands her. “I get that”, she says, leading the way to the living room.

They decide to forgo the dining table and settle down on the couch instead before tucking into their food.

“This is really good”, Fuyumi praises, offering Touya a soft smile.

“Eh, it’s just vegetables”, Touya huffs dismissively while internally preening at the compliment, and Fuyumi chuckles amusedly, giving him a knowing look. It’s kind of annoying how she’s still able to see right through him, even after all these years.

“So, what kind of school supplies were you buying that you had to drive all the way into town for?”, Touya asks then to distract his sister from using any more of her psychic powers on him.

Fuyumi hums a little as she swallows another mouthful of rice and vegetables. “The school board decided to have each class paint their own mural on the walls around the school yard, but our small art shop in the suburbs doesn’t really sell that kind of paint and especially not in such large quantities. So each staff member was assigned two colours to go out and buy three buckets of each.” She chuckles a little. “They made me get white and crimson, and somehow I feel like that wasn’t a coincidence.”

Touya frowns at her. “They’re gonna compensate you for the paint, though, right? They’re not making you teachers fund their little school renovation project, are they?”

Fuyumi shakes her head. “No, they’re not. Making us fund it, that is. They’ll reimburse us with our next paycheques”, she says placidly, but Touya isn’t particularly satisfied with that answer.

“What, so they’re making you finance that shit in advance? Do they think their teachers are just swimming in surplus cash?”

Fuyumi gives him a soft look, the corners of her mouth quirking into a little smile. “You’re getting quite worked up about this”, she notes lightly.

“Yeah, well, teachers are underpaid and under-appreciated anyway, and they’re still making you invest your own money and do extra work for free. It’s not right”, Touya grumbles, glaring at a large piece of aubergine in his bowl.

A warm hand lands on his scarred forearm and squeezes gently. “Thank you for caring”, his sister tells him earnestly. “You’re right, teachers are often overworked and underpaid. I’m alright, though. I don’t mind putting in a little extra work for something like this. I know the kids will love it, and that makes it worth it for me.”

Touya’s heart aches a little at that, because it’s just so painfully Fuyumi.

His lovely sister who always tried her damnest to hold their family together. To please everyone, make everyone happy, no matter how bad things were.

While Touya was spiralling down further and further into his fiery abyss, Fuyumi was the one protecting and practically raising their younger brothers, doing all the care work their father never would’ve thought of doing in a million years, while their mother simply wasn’t able to anymore.

Hell, Fuyumi was even looking out for Touya, supporting him and keeping all his secrets, even when he treated her unkindly because he felt like she didn’t understand the magnitude of his pain.

He still feels queasy tendrils of shame wind through his chest when he thinks about how ungratefully he used to behave towards one of the very few people in his life whose love for him wasn’t conditional.

“Your pupils are damn lucky to have you as their teacher”, he tells his sister, not quite looking her in the eye, as he gathers the last few bits of his meal between his chopsticks and shovels them into his mouth. “I’m gonna make tea”, he announces then, not-so-smoothly changing the subject, lest he start word-vomiting another apology tirade despite the countless times Fuyumi has kindly but firmly told him to stop apologising already over the course of the past few years.

He stacks his sister’s empty bowl on his own and hurries off to the kitchen where he puts the kettle on and grabs two mugs from the cupboard. He’ll have to remember to run the dishwasher later - between his own minor addiction to hot drinks and the bird’s mandatory morning coffees, he always seems to be running low on mugs in record time.

Hoping his sister will forgive him for not bothering with the loose leaves, he plops two bags of green tea in the mugs as the kettle beeps and fills them with boiling hot water before carefully carrying them back to the living room.

Fuyumi doesn’t seem to mind the teabag, gratefully accepting the steaming drink from him as he settles back on the couch and curls his fingers around the warmth of his own mug.

“I heard Natsuo dropped off your Magic cards the other day”, Fuyumi says, setting her drink down on the coffee table to stuff an extra pillow behind her back as she pulls her feet up on the couch. 

“Mhm, and I crushed him with Goblins”, Touya replies, grinning smugly.

Fuyumi raises an eyebrow at him. “Is that so?”, she questions, smirking a little. “Because I heard that he crushed you with Goblins.”

Damnit.

Touya had hoped that particular loss of his dignity would never leave the sanctuary of his flat, but of course Natsuo had to go around blabbing and boasting.

“Yeah, well, I was distracted”, he grumbles defensively before his brain can actually process what he’s saying. When it hits him a breath later, he promptly chokes on his tea.

Fuyumi’s brow creases in concern. “You okay?”, she asks, leaning forward and taking the mug with the dangerously sloshing liquid out of his hand as Touya hacks up a lung and a half.

“I’m fine”, he wheezes out, honestly more concerned with the possibility of his sister trying to figure out what he was so distracted by that Natsuo managed to beat him at Magic.

With those creepy psychic powers of hers he fears she might actually be able to read it on his face. Aside from the fact that it’s embarrassing as hell how pathetically attracted he is to the stupid bird, having someone else know about it would make it feel way too real. As long as it’s just between him and himself, it’ll remain nothing more than an abstract idea in his mind.

Thankfully - unlike him - his sister seems to be primarily worried about the imminent danger of Touya choking to death, so she just thumps his back semi-helpfully as he attempts to get fresh air into his lungs.

“I’m fine”, he repeats after a moment, his voice still hoarse but much more steady again, as he grabs his mug to soothe his abused throat with a few sips of warm liquid.

“Sore spot?”, Fuyumi asks, chuckling a little, and honestly, yeah, why not? He’d much rather people think he’s deeply upset over losing at a card game against his little brother than know that he was actually just losing his marbles over a picture of a formerly winged pro hero in a stupidly sparkly suit.

Touya forces his expression into a mild scowl and nods, which draws a proper laugh from his sister.

“Apologies for bringing it up”, she says, not sounding sorry at all, and Touya bites back a laugh of his own.

“Don’t do it again”, he threatens half-heartedly, making Fuyumi laugh even harder.

“You’re really not particularly scary, you know”, she tells him, an amused glint in her eyes.

Touya snorts at that. “Most people in this country would probably disagree”, he argues, crowds of blurry faces flitting through his mind, faces of civilians and criminals alike, people he nearly frightened to death by simply flickering his flames in his palm. “You’ve known me since before I could even walk. Your opinion doesn’t count.”

Fuyumi’s face softens a little and she hums pensively. “I suppose you have a point there”, she finally concedes. “God, isn’t that crazy to think about? We were already sitting together like this three whole decades ago.”

Touya raises an amused eyebrow at her. “I’m pretty sure that was more ‘lying on a futon and sleeping’ than ‘sitting on a couch and talking’”, he points out, and Fuyumi rolls her eyes a bit exasperatedly.

“You know what I mean”, she huffs, elbowing his side a little.

Admittedly, he does, and his sister is right - it is a bit crazy to think about. Other than their parents no one on this whole planet has known him for as long as Fuyumi has, and there were certainly times when no one knew him better than she did either. She’s the only one who was there for it all, the only one who still remembers what their family was like, once upon a time, before everything went to shit.

What Touya was like before his demons started trying to consume him.

Natsuo never knew what he was like before all the hurt and despair, and Shouto barely knew Touya before he became Dabi at all.

But Fuyumi knew.

“Penny for your thoughts?”, the sound of her voice gently rips him out of his musings, and from the corner of his eye Touya sees a smile playing around her lips.

He shakes his head a little. “Just…thinking about how you were always there when we were kids. You were there for it all, even before Natsuo and Shouto were born.”

Fuyumi’s mouth twists a little and her brows furrow as she averts her gaze from Touya.

“What?”, Touya asks, mirroring her frown.

Did he say something wrong?

His sister starts fidgeting with the little charms on her bracelet, still avoiding Touya’s eyes as she opens her mouth to speak.

“It’s…I just- I really don’t feel like I was. There, I mean. Not enough, at least”, she admits quietly, and Touya’s chest clenches uncomfortably.

“What do you mean?”, he inquires carefully, watching the way she twirls a small silver snowflake between her fingers. He has a creeping suspicion what his sister is getting at, but he’d really rather be wrong.

Fuyumi sighs softly. “I feel like I wasn’t there for you enough”, she whispers, like it’s a horrible truth that should never be revealed, cursed words that should never be spoken. “I’m sorry I couldn’t grasp what you were going through. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you the way you needed me to”, she says then, her voice a bit wobbly as she finally looks up at Touya again.

Her stormy eyes are shiny with unshed tears, and Touya feels so incredibly out of his depth.

“Please don’t apologise”, he tells her hoarsely, setting his mug down on the coffee table and twisting around to face her properly. “You were carrying the weight of the fucking world on your shoulders, taking care of our little brothers and the household at the age of twelve because our father never bothered and our mother was institutionalised, and you still tried to do what you thought was best for me, even though I treated you horribly for it. If anyone should be apologising it’s me - and I know you don’t want me to”, he adds quickly before she can open her mouth to protest, “but compared to me, you’re the last person who should have to apologise for anything.”

The words tumble out of his mouth a bit clumsily, and he’s briefly reminded of his talk with Natsuo last week. Dr. Nakayama will probably have a field day once he tells her that he’s had another one of these emotionally loaded conversations within the span of a few days.

Fuyumi is blinking up at Touya wetly, clamping a hand over her mouth to muffle a sob before surging forward to fling her arms around him.

Not really knowing what else to do, Touya decides to just work with what she’s giving him and hugs her back as she starts sobbing into his shirt in earnest, the frames of her glasses poking into his collarbone a bit painfully. Touya isn’t sure whether asking her to take them off now might upset her even more, so he simply bears the discomfort and awkwardly rubs her back in what he hopes is a soothing manner.

She doesn’t seem to mind it, at least, so he counts that as a win.

As his sister clings to him with a mild death grip, Touya is suddenly struck by the realisation that during these past few weeks alone - ever since he was released from Tartarus - he’s probably been hugged more frequently than ever in his life before.

He’s definitely still clumsy and awkward with it, never really sure when and how to initiate it or what to do with his prosthetic arm - surely it must feel uncomfortable to be held by such a hard mechanical device? - but, ultimately, he finds that he quite likes it.

Hugging, that is.

It feels grounding and warm, and also surprisingly safe.

For the most part, allowing people this close during his years on the streets and in the criminal underworld meant someone was about to get hurt, be it him or the idiot who dared to invade his personal space without permission. Allowing people to get close usually meant danger or pain.

But now, within the safety of his own four walls, the only pain is a pair of glasses digging into his collarbone, the only danger toppling over from his siblings’ enthusiasm, and Touya privately thinks it’s really nice.

He tightens his hold on his sister a little as her sobs begin to quiet down into sniffles, and while Touya can’t quite feel it through the numb nerve endings in his burnt skin, he’s pretty sure his t-shirt is soaked with tears and snot.

“God, I’m sorry about this”, Fuyumi shakily mumbles into his shoulder. “And I got your shirt wet.”

Touya huffs a small laugh, rubbing her back a bit more firmly. “It’s fine. All of it”, he tells her honestly before clearing his throat, surprised by how gravelly his own voice is sounding.

Fuyumi chuckles wetly and clings to him tightly for another moment before lifting her head and pulling away. Her eyes are red and puffy, and there are still fresh tear tracks glistening on her cheeks, intermingling with black streaks of runny mascara as she reaches for the tissue box on the coffee table. 

Touya just watches her silently as she blows her nose and haphazardly wipes away the tears and traces of makeup on her face, until she suddenly lets out a loud gasp and Touya raises a questioning eyebrow at her.

“Okay, please don’t freak out”, she starts, raising her hands placatingly as she stares at a spot slightly beside Touya’s face with what can only be described as abject horror written all over her face.

Instinctively, Touya sits up a bit straighter in alarm.

“I may have gotten mascara on your shirt”, Fuyumi says then, still staring at the spot Touya now identifies as his shoulder. “Like, a lot.”

Touya discreetly heaves out a sigh of relief and glances down at the white fabric covering his shoulder.

Or perhaps he should say formerly white fabric.

“Please don’t be mad”, his sister says, chuckling nervously, and Touya pins her with a pointed stare.

“I’m not mad. It’s just a t-shirt. It’s fine”, he tells her very seriously, hating the way she is now looking at him like he’s a strung up rubber band that might snap at any given moment. He understands why she’s worried - after all there’s a reason why he’s wearing an ankle bracelet and a Quirk-cancelling wrist cuff and can’t actually leave this flat - but it still stings that, somewhere deep down, despite the fact that she just told him that she doesn’t think he’s scary, on some level even his own sister is still afraid that he might suddenly lose his temper and lash out.

“And even if I were, I wouldn't hurt you. I promise”, he adds, his voice coming out raspy.

Fuyumi quickly averts her eyes. “I wasn’t thinking-“

“Yes, you were”, Touya interrupts her as gently as he can manage. “I know you were, and I get it, okay? I really do get it. But I want you to know that I wouldn’t. I’m not in that place anymore mentally, and I know how to regulate myself. It’s just a fucking t-shirt anyway, but even if it weren’t, I wouldn’t lose my marbles over it like that, okay?”

Fuyumi nods, still not quite meeting his eyes and visibly embarrassed. “I’m sorry for thinking-“

“I know. No more apologies, okay?” Touya bumps his knee against hers, and that finally makes his sister look at him, a small smile forming on her lips.

“Okay”, she says, reciprocating the consolatory knee-bumping, and Touya feels the persistent sting in his chest slowly let up. “At least let me take the shirt home and wash it for you, though. I have a special detergent for this sort of stuff.”

Touya huffs a proper laugh at that. “Alright”, he concedes, getting to his feet. “Let me go change real quick.” He bounds off to his bedroom and replaces the ruined shirt with a fresh one - this one black, just in case - before heading back to the living room where he finds Fuyumi gazing out the large windows. He throws the t-shirt onto her handbag, then follows her gaze outside.

It’s snowing again, big chunky pieces of white fluff dancing through the air, and it kind of makes Touya crave candy floss.

“I can’t remember the last time we’ve had a winter this snowy in this area”, Fuyumi notes, frowning a little. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love it, it’s really pretty, but it is a bit strange.”

“Climate change”, Touya says, shrugging, although she does have a point. The snow hasn’t melted even just a little bit in nearly a month, and they’re still getting fresh bouts every other day. A long buried and forgotten childish part of him kind of wishes he could actually go outside and walk through the crunchy white.

Fuyumi hums thoughtfully. “Perhaps”, she says before turning to look at Touya. “Do you ever think about your Ice Quirk?”

Touya plops down next to her on the sofa again and nods. “Sometimes”, he admits. “I’d really like to try using it again.”

“Do you think you could?”, his sister wonders, and Touya shrugs again.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” He looks down at his scarred and stapled hand, where ridged purple skin meets smooth and pale. “I feel like I should, though. It’s what my body is made for, after all.”

“Hmm”, Fuyumi says, closing her eyes and opening her hand. Touya watches in earnest fascination as she creates a stunningly intricate oversized snowflake at the centre of her palm.

“That’s beautiful”, he compliments in genuine admiration, and his sister wordlessly grabs his hand to flip it around and carefully places the large snowflake in his own scarred palm. “If they ever let you try again, I can teach you how to make these, if you want”, she offers, smiling a little.

“Yes, please”, Touya tells her, lifting his hand up to his face almost reverently, so he can inspect the little sculpture more closely. Between the cozy room temperature air and the body heat emanating from Touya’s hand, the snowflake is already beginning to turn watery and dulling around the edges, but Touya still holds it carefully lest he break the pretty creation.

“Can you make other things as well?”, he wonders, watching a bit sadly as the snowflake in his hand melts into a small puddle, dripping through the gaps between his fingers and onto his jeans.

Fuyumi sways her head a little. “Somewhat”, she says. “Snowflakes are easy because they’re close enough to the natural structure of my ice, but other shapes require more…well, not exactly force, but definitely more conscious effort and strength. It helps when it’s cold, and it’s much easier to fine-tune pre-existing chunks of ice or snow.”

“Like the snowman you posted the other day?”, Touya asks with a grin, and his sister chuckles at that.

“Yeah, that was very convenient”, she admits. “I think Shouto has actually been practicing making ice sculptures as well.”

Touya huffs a laugh. “Bet the kid is naturally good at it. Crazy Quirk prowess he has.”

“Well, he did say he was practicing”, his sister points out good-naturedly. “And besides, blasting out an iceberg is much easier than intricate shapes.”

“Have you ever thought about that? Using your Quirk to fight?”, Touya questions then, curiously. Their father may not have given a shit about it, but Touya knows his sister’s Quirk is actually pretty strong. He doesn’t doubt that she could’ve easily made it into UA, if she had wanted to.

Fuyumi sighs a little. “I have thought about it. Occasionally. But I don’t think I could be a hero - I see and hear what kinds of things Shouto has to deal with on the job, and I don’t think I could compartmentalise well enough to keep a clear head”, she admits, scratching her neck a bit awkwardly.

Touya hums in understanding. He sure knows a thing or two about emotions getting the better of you and clouding your judgement.

“Hey, um”, Fuyumi starts then, a bit hesitant, biting her lip. “I’ve been meaning to ask. Have you…have you considered getting in touch with our mother? Since you got out of prison, I mean?”

Instinctively, Touya averts his gaze, crossing his arm over his chest to start running his fingers along the edges of his prosthesis, right where the device meets the scarred skin of what’s left of his right arm. “I have”, he admits stiltedly. “I’ve…I’ve been talking about it with my therapist. I do want to get in touch with her, but I’ve kinda been…avoiding it. So far.”

His sister nods, her smile warm and non-judgmental. “I don’t want to pressure you, so please don’t take this the wrong way”, she says, the smile turning a little crooked, “but I do think she would be really happy to hear from you. She’s been asking me how you’re doing and she really wants to talk to you, but she said she would keep her distance and leave it up to you to initiate anything.”

It’s what Touya had been suspecting, what with the total lack of attempts to contact him on his mother’s part, but getting it confirmed still makes his heart clench a little. He knows how badly his mother wants a relationship with him, and the fact that she’s been staying away out of respect for his feelings is a bit painful to think about, and Touya can’t even quite pinpoint in what way.

“I…”, he trails off, attempting to sort through the whirlwind of thoughts and feelings inside of him before starting again. “I don’t think I’m ready to see her in person”, he admits, and it makes ugly feelings of guilt clamp themselves around his stomach, but he stubbornly reminds himself of what Dr. Nakayama has told him repeatedly - that it’s okay to do this all at his own pace, that he can start out as slowly as he wants to.

“I do want to call her, though.”

He really does. He wants to apologise for being so cruel towards her, the one parent who actually loved him unconditionally, when all she ever did was try to help him while she was literally falling apart herself. Touya can only imagine how horrible the past three decades must’ve been for his mother, and based on what little he knows about the Himura family, surely her childhood couldn’t have been particularly great either.

If he can ease her mind a little by giving her a relationship with her thought-to-be-dead oldest son, he really wants to do that.

The thing is, though, he doesn’t really know what he would want for himself out of that relationship, and perhaps that’s part of why he’s been procrastinating on actually contacting her so far.

As a child - and as a young adult - Touya was so deeply fixated on wanting his father’s love and attention, that his mother never quite fit into the picture for him like that. He loved her, sure, but he never really wanted or expected anything from her the way he did from his father, and now, at the age of 31, he’s kind of struggling to figure out what kind of base level dynamic he is supposed to want with his estranged parent.

Besides, he thinks that maybe letting himself become emotionally attached to - or, god forbid, dependent on - a parent just isn’t a particularly good idea for him in general, given his track record with that sort of thing. Perhaps he should just keep his own emotional distance and do it all only for her sake.

That does seem like a safer option.

“If you…need some support or something, or someone to walk you through it, you can always ask me”, Fuyumi’s voice gently snaps him out of his brooding, and Touya blinks a bit dazedly.

“I, uh, thanks. I’ll keep that in mind”, he says hoarsely before quickly clearing his throat. “I think I still need to think about some stuff”, he admits, chuckling a bit awkwardly.

Fuyumi hums in understanding. “That’s okay”, she says kindly. “Would it be alright with you if I told her a bit about how you’re doing, though? Nothing personal or sensitive or anything. Just some trivial stuff. I think it would still make her really happy to hear.”

Touya nods, because why the hell not?

“Sure. That’s fine”, he tells his sister and receives a grateful smile in response. Touya smiles back, earnestly albeit a bit weakly. Both his mind and body are beginning to feel a bit fatigued with how many heavy and emotionally loaded topics he’s been confronted with this evening, and he’s pretty sure he has kind of reached his limit for now as far as that sort of stuff is concerned.

Suppressing a yawn, he reaches up to rub his eyes, mindful not to irritate the staples underneath them, and Fuyumi’s brows furrow a little.

“Are you tired?”, she asks, giving him a quick once-over and probably taking in the way he’s bonelessly slouching into the cushions right now. “I should probably go home anyway. We’ve got a staff meeting before first period tomorrow, so I’ll have to be at the school almost an hour earlier than normally.”

Touya laughs softly, slightly amused by the way his sister has once again managed to read him like an open book. “A little tired”, he admits, running his hand through his hair. “You don’t have to leave on my account, but if you have to wake up an hour earlier than usual tomorrow, you probably really should.”

Fuyumi snorts. “Thanks, mum”, she says drily, and Touya rolls his eyes at her, albeit fondly.

“Yeah, yeah, just doing my big brotherly duty.”

That earns him a raised eyebrow from Fuyumi as she gathers her handbag, stuffing Touya’s t-shirt inside, and gets to her feet. “You’re eleven months older than me. Get your head out of the clouds.”

“Still means I’m older”, Touya grumbles, pushing himself up to his feet as well and groaning at the way several of his joints creak and ache at the shift in weight distribution. “Do you feel like a senior citizen when you stand up?”, he asks pointedly.

His sister watches him amusedly as he bends and twists his legs and torso this way and that to loosen up the achy stiffness in his spine and hips. “Fine, I’ll give you that one”, Fuyumi concedes with a chuckle when his shoulder pops noisily as he rolls it around.

“Thanks”, Touya huffs sarcastically as they make their way down the hallway to the front door. His sister pulls on her coat and thanks him for dinner and his emotional support - and Touya has no fucking clue what he’s supposed to say to that, but luckily she doesn’t seem to expect him to say anything, since she moves on pretty much immediately to tugging him down into a hug.

Touya tucks his face into her shoulder and closes his eyes for a moment, his exhaustion making him feel a bit heavy and unsteady on his feet.

Thankfully, Fuyumi is strong enough to hold him up (she’s always been strong enough to hold all of them up), and when she releases him again and says her goodbyes, Touya feels like he can support his own weight again, even if his fatigue is making it feel larger than it really is.

Once his sister has left, Touya briefly considers going to bed right away, but for someone who doesn’t have a job - and hence doesn’t have to wake up early tomorrow - it’s really not particularly late yet, and he doesn’t really feel like he could sleep right now anyway, so he sets up his bluetooth speaker in the bathroom and runs himself a steaming hot bath. He chugs one of those colourful bath bombs in the water - this one rich dark shades of green and glowing gold - and puts on an old school indie mix before stripping off his clothes and setting his prosthesis aside.

When he sinks into the colourful heat of the ridiculous tub, he feels half of the heaviness in his body dissipate almost immediately, the water making him feel pleasantly weightless as the warmth seeps into his marred skin and achy muscles.

He exhales a little sigh and closes his eyes, carefully leaning his head back against the edge of the tub, and lets the comforting sensations and dreamy sounds of the music wash over him.

The boy with the thorn in his side.

Behind the hatred there lies a murderous desire for love.

***

When Shouto finishes his Tuesday morning patrol with Izuku (a fairly uneventful one, except for the amateur mugger they apprehended after he tried to snatch an elderly lady’s purse and the woman promptly smacked the guy unconscious with her walking stick), they head over to one of the meeting rooms at their agency together, where they’ve set up a comically large holographic screen for video conferences.

Shouto, Momo and Jirou have been working their way through their contact lists at record speed for the past two days and successfully managed to recruit over 30 pro heroes, who would like to contribute to their mental health care foundation in one way or another. As Jirou had predicted, their entire class (as well as some members of Class B, who approached them after they heard about their project through their mutual friends) was eager to get involved right from the start, and several of their former teachers as well as other pro heroes agreed to help out as well. Some mostly want to lend their financial support and publicity, while others with a little more time to spare have also promised to do some more hands-on tasks, and so they’ve set up their first conference today with about 20 people ready and willing to get to work.

On their way to the conference room Shouto and Izuku run into Katsuki, who postponed his afternoon patrol shift in order to attend the meeting, and together the three of them settle down on the plush office chairs as Shouto starts up the large screen and opens the video conference software via remote control.

“There’s fresh sushi in the fridge when you two get home later”, Katsuki mentions casually as the minutes tick on and they wait for their friends and co-workers to join the pending group call.

Izuku’s face lights up immediately at that, and Shouto is pretty sure he hears his friend’s stomach grumble excitedly.

He kind of sympathises. Patrols always give him the appetite of a severely pubescent 15-year-old who just grew like 15 centimetres within the span of a year.

“How come?”, Izuku asks lightly.

Katsuki carefully keeps his eyes fixed on the wall opposite them. “I got bored this morning”, he says noncommittally, and even Shouto with his not-so-great people-reading skills can pick up on the fact that his friend is not telling them the whole truth, but maybe that’s just because Katsuki is notoriously bad at bullshitting.

“And…?”, Izuku prods with a crooked little smile, clearly aware of the fact that Katsuki is withholding something from them as well.

“And nothing! Just accept the damn food!”, Katsuki snaps, but there’s very little bite to it and his ears are looking a bit pink. 

Shouto grins to himself before gently nudging his elbow against his friend’s side. “Thanks”, he says earnestly, and Katsuki pointedly continues avoiding his gaze, his ears turning a few shades darker.

“Yeah, thank you, Kacchan!”, Izuku sing-songs brightly, and that earns him a grumbled “shut up, nerd”, which just makes the smile on his face grow even wider.

There’s a little pang in Shouto’s chest as he watches the blatantly fond bickering between his two best friends. His brother’s words about flirtatious teasing and what it can mean are still swirling around at the back of his mind, and he harshly digs his fingernails into his palms to ground himself back in reality and banish the queasy ache from his heart.

He has more important things to focus on right now.

The clock strikes the full hour, and the big holographic screen in front of them promptly starts to fill up with little squares displaying their friends and colleagues in their respective work spaces. The heroes exchange quick greetings, before Momo - as the three instigators agreed upon beforehand - takes over moderation duties and runs them through their itinerary for the conference.

“We’ll start with a quick summary of what we’ve come up with so far, then I’ll share some pointers I was given about the business side of things, and then we can brainstorm more ideas and assign concrete tasks for everyone”, she announces professionally. “Does anyone want to add anything to that?”

The 20 or so squares on the screen shake their heads in unison, and Momo smiles a little. “Alright, I’ll hand the proverbial mic to the person who suggested this whole thing in the first place then.”

Shouto clears his throat, absently touching his fingers to his earring and helix. “Right. Okay. So”, he starts a bit awkwardly. “The core idea of this project is to extend the rehabilitation approach we’ve started taking with villains to early recognition and a prevention programme. The majority of villains are not inherently evil, and they don’t just become villains on a whim. They are often people who have experienced grave trauma - such as abuse, grooming or discrimination - or suffer from other mental health conditions, but never received the help they needed. We’re all familiar with the League of Villains, and they were all great examples of this - Shigaraki Tomura, Toga Himiko, Dabi, Spinner, none of them were born villains.”

He pauses to discreetly take a few deep breaths to gather himself. Everyone on this video call obviously knows about his personal investment in this particular matter, but he still doesn’t want anyone to think he’s just blindly following his emotions here.

“The fact that we live in a society that upholds and perpetuates abuse and discrimination aside, this is also a systemic issue”, he continues then. “Access to mental healthcare in our country is subpar and inadequate at best, and kids, teens and young adults from difficult backgrounds are particularly disadvantaged in that regard. A low socioeconomic status, neglect, stigmatisation of mental health issues by the parents or living in more rural areas with worse access to healthcare in general all prevent troubled youth from getting the help they so desperately need. That’s why we want to set up centres across the country that kids, teens and young adults can frequent for free and without needing their parents’ permission, where they will receive support from specially trained psychologists, social workers and pedagogues, and if necessary a referral to a psychotherapist or psychiatrist. The goal of our foundation is supposed to be to fund those centres and the therapy sessions for those kids and to get the word out about the fact that those kinds of resources and support systems even exist.”

Shouto feels his face flush a little in agitation as he finishes his speech, and Izuku gives his knee a reassuring pat under the table, his hand warm and steadying even through Shouto’s jeans.

“We’d also like to try to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues and therapy in general”, Jirou adds, and oh, yeah, Shouto kind of forgot to mention that part. “Have popular public figures speak up about it and position themselves in support of destigmatisation, you know?”

“Exactly”, Momo says then, smiling approvingly into her webcam, and Shouto smiles back. He chances a sweeping glance at the other faces on the large screen and finds most of them wearing similar expressions of approval.

“As far as the business side of things is concerned”, Momo continues, back in professional hosting mode, “there will be some legal things we’ll need to keep in mind - such as ensuring that the staff we hire to work at our centres are all qualified to work with children specifically and have completed a sensitisation training for sexual abuse prevention - but most of it should go pretty smoothly. The two big things we’ll have to work out, though, are who will be our chairman or chairwoman and how we plan on getting things started financially. We’ll be able to set up a board of ‘decision makers’”, she mimes speech marks at that, “so the chairperson won’t have to bear all the responsibility by themself or do all the work alone, but they will function as an official and legal representative. As the foundation was Todoroki-san’s idea, he has already offered to take on the position as chairman, but, quite frankly, I don’t think that burden should be on the shoulders of a freshly baked co-CEO of his own hero agency”, she points out kindly before adding, “my apologies, Shouto-kun”, with a small laugh. 

Shouto just shakes his head. “That’s alright”, he says placidly. “I’d be happy to take on the chair position, but if someone else wants to do it, I really wouldn’t mind either. I understand that I do already have quite a lot on my plate right now.”

Momo smiles a little. “Right, then choosing a chairperson should be on our agenda for today.”

“If I may interrupt, Yaoyorozu-shoujo”, All Might suddenly speaks up from another corner of the screen, “I would like to offer myself for the chairman position. I don’t want to take it away from anyone else who wants it”, he adds quickly, huffing an awkward little laugh, “but seeing as I’m the only one here who isn’t on active hero duty anymore, I just figured it’d make sense to have me take on that particular bit of extra work. And, if I may humbly say so, I would also happily lend my social status to the cause.”

Even through the holographic screen Shouto can see the former No. 1 flush a little pink at that, and it’s strangely endearing. He makes a good point, though - even over seven years after his official retirement from active hero duty, All Might still enjoys immense popularity amongst the general public, and having someone like him not only contribute to their cause, but actually become the face of it, could certainly have a massive impact on their success.

“Thank you for offering, All Might”, Momo tells him earnestly. “I’m sure that would indeed take quite a burden off of the rest of us. Should we just do a vote right away then?”, she muses and the screen floods with another wave of collective nodding.

“Is there even anyone else who really wants the position?”

The question is met by silence and a few head shakes, and Shouto can’t help but chuckle.

“Alright then, I suppose that makes things clear”, Momo laughs. “Congratulations to our new chairman, All Might!”

A round of slightly tinny clapping mixes with Shouto, Katsuki and Izuku’s own applause, and the former No. 1 blushes even more at that.

“I thank you all for entrusting this position to me”, he says demurely, bowing his head a little.

“Ah, I think we’re all very grateful you offered to take it on”, Momo brushes him off gently before seemingly rustling around a few files on her desk. “Right, let’s discuss money then, shall we?”

She looks up into the webcam again, apparently having found what she was looking for, and Shouto suspects this is probably going to be the most crucial part of this whole - forgive his wording - endeavour. They’re most definitely going to need a significant amount of capital to get started, and raising money for a non-profit organisation that technically doesn’t even exist yet surely can’t be an easy feat.

He absently starts chewing on his bottom lip as he fixes his attention on his friend with the business insights on the big screen.

“I have spoken to a few people who’ve been involved in setting up charity organisations and foundations before, and they’ve all advised me to organise some sort of fundraiser event to raise the money we need to get started. Donating some of our personal funds to the cause obviously works as well, if we currently have the cash to spare, but as the foundation is supposed to finance itself through charity and donations in the future, a fundraiser event will also help us to gauge how much financial support we can realistically rely upon for this sort of project in the longterm”, Momo explains, rifling through her papers again. “I’ve also had my family’s financial advisor break down all the things we’ll need to pay for and how much money we’ll actually need to get started. I will e-mail you all the documents with the numbers after the meeting, but you can probably already guess that they’re pretty high.”

She grimaces a little at that, and some of the other heroes on the screen mirror her expression. From the corners of his eyes Shouto can see Katsuki’s brows furrowing furiously, while Izuku has started nibbling on his thumbnail. As discreetly as he possibly can, Shouto reaches for his friend’s arm and gently pulls his hand away from his mouth, which earns him a half embarrassed, half grateful little smile and a knee bumped against his own.

“So what you’re saying is, we need to come up with a good fundraiser concept and then we can get started properly?”, Kirishima speaks up, scratching the back of his spiky-haired head.

Momo nods. “Yes, pretty much. It should be something that allows as many people as possible to get involved and offers a variety of ways for them to make donations.”

“Ribbit”, Asui says thoughtfully, touching her finger to her chin and tilting her head a little.

“We should probably use ourselves in some way, right?”, Kaminari muses then. “I mean, like, use our popularity as pro heroes. Maybe something like a convention?”

“I like that idea”, Uraraka says, nodding slowly. “What exactly would we do, though? Meet & greets and all that sort of stuff feels a bit silly, given how many people simply meet us on the streets every day.”

“She’s right”, Miruko agrees. “Meet & greets or interview panels aren’t gonna cut it. People get to experience those all the time anyway, and even if it’s for a good cause, most of them probably wouldn’t be willing to pay the kinda money we need for that sorta stuff. We need something more. Something unusual.”

Present Mic, who is sitting squeezed next to Aizawa in a shared little square on the screen, clears his throat at that. “If I may suggest something”, he starts, and a chorus of nods encourages him to keep going. “I know quite a few people here have shown significant artistic talent in the past as I recall from our school festivals, and I wonder whether something like that could have the kind of pull we need.”

“Oh, that’s a great idea!”, Ashido exclaims excitedly. “We could make, like, a whole amusement fair out of it - something like the school festival, but on a much larger scale.”

“With live music and food stands and games and contests!”, Kaminari shouts even more excitedly, bouncing up from his seat so that only his torso is visible on the screen until Shinsou wraps a hand around his forearm and pulls him back down beside him.

“And a photo booth!”, Iida adds then.

Shouto snorts a little.

“Maybe we could even set up an ice rink! It is still winter after all”, Kirishima muses.

“We could also livestream the event online in exchange for donations!”, Izuku adds excitedly.

“So, who’s gonna do the live music then? I’m sure we’ll be able to find people to put in charge of all the other stuff, but the music is kinda the one part that genuinely requires talent and skill”, Shinsou points out a bit drily.

Though he looks perfectly still, Shouto is pretty sure that Katsuki is vibrating a bit by his side.

“Well, I’d be down to get the old band back together”, Jirou pipes up then, smirking a little crookedly. “I’ve got a bunch of original songs written that we could play, but I also think we should mix them up with well-known covers because that’s probably what most people will want to hear at such an event.”

“Oh, I’m so in”, Kaminari says, grinning so widely Shouto thinks his face might actually split in half.

“Me, too”, Tokoyami speaks up for the first time.

“Well, I’m in, too, although I do fear I will need quite a bit of practice beforehand”, Momo says, laughing a bit nervously, but Jirou immediately waves her off. 

“You’re fine, babe”, she reassures her confidently, and Momo does seem to relax a little at that.

“Only missing one more person then”, Uraraka says faux-innocently.

“Yeah, what about it, Kacchan?”, Kaminari asks with a shit-eating grin, and Shouto mentally prepares himself to flash-freeze whatever explosion Katsuki is about to set off by his side.

Surprisingly, though, his friend doesn’t detonate, but heaves out a grunt that might just rival one of his explosions in terms of volume.

“Fine”, he says gruffly, scowling viciously at the holographic screen with their friends’ faces on it. “I’ll do it. But only because it’s for a good cause.”

Shouto feels the corners of his mouth tug into a smile and he gently nudges his thigh against Katsuki’s under the table. Katsuki huffs a little, but reciprocates the nudge anyway, and that makes Shouto break out into a full grin.

On his other side, Izuku seems to be feeling similarly.

“Alright”, Momo speaks up again then, absently running her fingers through her ponytail, “before we get carried away too much here, I think we should set up a separate meeting to brainstorm the specifics of the fundraiser and assign tasks to everyone, especially since I suspect some of those who aren’t here today might want to get involved in that sort of one-off thing as well. Before we finish up today, I’d like us to do a little feedback round about the actual foundation. We need to have a clearly defined outline that we can present to the public when we announce our fundraiser anyway.”

“I agree with Yaoyorozu-san”, Aizawa says calmly. “We should go about this as rationally as possible. We’re still dealing with a heavily stigmatised subject matter here, and that’s not to mention the fact that certain populist voices, who don’t like the rehabilitation approach we’ve been taking with villains, will very likely try to twist our project from helping troubled kids to prevent them from becoming villains to providing villains with free charity-funded healthcare. There will definitely be people who won’t like what we’re doing here, so we need to make sure we present our cause very clearly with as little room as possible for them to twist the facts and portray it as something it’s not. Most of the general public will probably be sympathetic to our cause, as long as we make sure they all understand what we’re actually doing.”

“Absolutely, yes”, Hawks says then, shifting a little in front of his webcam. Shouto mentally notes that the room in the background of his video kind of looks like a mirrored version of Touya’s living room, as far as the general set-up is concerned, and he briefly finds himself wondering what his brother might be up to right now.

“Some of those conservative populists also have pretty thinly veiled ties to the Hero Public Safety Commission, so we shouldn’t underestimate the pull and the power they have”, the formerly winged hero continues a bit grimly. “I think as long as we get ahead of the narrative and make sure that none of what we’re doing can be misconstrued by them, we’ll probably be fine, but we should be very mindful of the risk.”

“Fucking backwards old hags”, Katsuki grumbles under his breath, and Shouto wholeheartedly agrees.

Momo pulls up another stack of papers and a pen before speaking up again. “I agree on all accounts”, she says. “We’ve all heard Todoroki-san’s pitch of the project earlier, so I think if anyone has anything to add or any suggestions for things we should change, please do share them now.”

“Apologies for butting in here so much”, Hawks speaks up again, chuckling a bit awkwardly, “but I do want to stress that we should really play with fully open cards for this entire project. I know how those HPSC-adjacent types typically operate, and I know that they can and will find any little piece of ‘dirt’ that you could possibly imagine and try to use that to discredit us. I believe we should be 100% transparent about who exactly is involved in this project, and we should also be prepared for them to drag up our past or present ties to former villains. Most of that stuff is public knowledge anyway, but it has been a few years, and we should probably make sure no one can get the false impression that we’re trying to keep anything like that hush-hush.”

Shouto clears his throat a little. He doesn’t think that Hawks meant to single him out with his words, given how many of the people gathered on their video call have had some sort of personal relationship with a villain in the past, but he still feels like with his family history he probably holds an extra bit of responsibility in this matter.

“I agree”, All Might says, his tone thoughtful but calm. “We should try to take the steam out of their twisted narratives before they can even begin to take off.”

“I believe that also ties in with something I wanted to add”, Izuku pipes up then, and Shouto turns to look at him with a curiously raised eyebrow.

“I, uh, I think that when we present our idea to the public, we should make it very clear, that our foundation isn’t just supposed to help kids who have an elevated risk of turning to villainy someday, but rather all kids who need some sort of support but can’t get it elsewhere”, Izuku explains hastily, his face turning a little pink, and god, does Shouto find that endearing. “I think emphasising our core goal like this will help prevent people from framing it as something it’s not.”

“Yeah, Deku is right”, Katsuki says. “If we make sure everyone understands that this project is supposed to help all kids who need it, it’ll be harder for the Stone Age brigade to twist it into something negative, because then they’ll end up looking like kid-hating arseholes and no one wants to believe or associate with someone like that.”

Katsuki’s choice of words earns him a few chuckles from the heroes gathered on the screen, but they’re accompanied by a round of supportive nods. Momo scribbles down a few notes, then speaks up again.

“So, what I’m getting here is that we all agree with the initial pitch, and the part we still need to work on is publicity. I know we all have PR advisors for our personal careers, but if it’s alright with everyone, I’d be happy to use my family’s business contacts again to try finding us a team that specialises in representing charity organisations. We all have our ideas and insights, but it’s probably for the best if we let professionals handle our PR or at least guide us through it, lest we overlook something important.”

She sets her stack of papers aside with a content smile.

“I think that’s all for today then - unless anyone still has anything else to add?”

Shouto tilts his head contemplatively, attempting to recreate the - admittedly slightly off-the-rails - train of thought that led him to coming up with the idea for the foundation in the first place, but he finds that their conference and Momo’s hosting itinerary have covered pretty much everything that had crossed his mind before. A little blossom of something - satisfaction? Pride? - opens up in his chest as he lets the fact that they’re really going through with this whole thing now, sink in for a moment.

It’s a nice - yet slightly bittersweet - feeling to know that they might soon be able to help lots of struggling kids out there, and a little part of him wishes that a foundation like this had already existed 20 years ago.

Back when Touya was a struggling kid.

“Thank you very much to everyone for joining us here today and for wanting to get involved in our little project”, Momo says gratefully, snapping Shouto back to reality, and he quickly refocuses his attention on the screen in front of him.

“I wanna thank you all as well”, he says a bit hoarsely, clearing his throat before he continues. “This idea pretty much came to me on a whim, and I really appreciate how quick and enthusiastic you have all been to join in.”

The heroes on the screen offer up smiles, nods and thumbs up at that (as well as two pairs of enthusiastic finger guns from Kaminari and Kirishima), and Shouto suddenly finds himself sandwiched between gentle side nudges from his two best friends.

“Nice work, shortcake”, Katsuki tells him lowly, and Shouto can’t help but smile happily at the praise.

“As I said before, I will email you all the documents with the numbers and I will also create polls to set up our next general meeting as well as a specific one to start planning our fundraiser properly”, Momo swoops in again, nodding a little to herself like she’s ticking boxes on a mental checklist. “And with that I think I can let you all go now. Thank you again for being here, and have a great afternoon!”

Accompanied by a cacophony of “bye”s and “see you”s the little squares on the screen quickly start disappearing as their friends and colleagues leave the video call, and soon Shouto, Izuku and Katsuki find themselves truly alone in the silence of the meeting room again.

“Right! That was productive, wasn't it?”, Izuku notes contently as the three of them get up from their chairs and stretch out their legs. “I think you really set something important in motion there, Shouto-kun.”

Shouto feels himself flush a little at the compliment and quickly twists his face away, pretending to fix his earring.

“Stop fiddling with your piercings, Halfie”, Katsuki promptly scolds him, warm fingers wrapping around Shouto’s wrist to drag his hand away from his ear. “They’ll just get infected.”

“My hands are clean”, Shouto defends himself a bit weakly as Katsuki lets go of him again and the three heroes make their way out of the conference room.

“Kacchan is just squeamish about unhealed piercings”, Izuku says casually, a light note of teasing in his tone, which earns him a scowl from Katsuki. 

“I am not squeamish”, he says pointedly, keeping his gaze ahead as they stroll along the hallways of their agency building. “I just have common sense - unlike you two.”

By Shouto’s side, Izuku starts skipping a little as he sing-songs, “sure, and common sense is why you still haven’t gotten pierced yourself, even though you so clearly want one.”

At that Katsuki stops and turns around to stare at Izuku a bit exasperatedly. “God, what is it with you today, you nerd? I was in the kitchen all morning to do something nice for you two, and you’ve been on my case all day!”

Izuku smiles at him sunnily. “Just in a good mood- wait, what did you just say?”

“Nothing?”, Katsuki says defensively, swallowing visibly as he suddenly looks at them like a deer caught in the headlights.

Shouto feels his lips curl into a grin without his permission. “No, no, I think I heard something, too”, he teases, aiming for a deadpan tone but failing utterly with the way his smile is pulling on his cheeks.

Katsuki’s entire face promptly turns pink, and Shouto is nearly overcome with the sudden urge to kiss his friend’s forehead.

“See? Shouto-kun heard it, too”, Izuku points out with an absolute shit-eating grin. “You said you made food because you wanted to do something nice for-“

“I didn’t say anything! Shut up!”, Katsuki cuts in hastily, and the scowl on his face looks significantly less menacing framed by his glowing cheeks. “I have to get ready for patrol. Go home and eat, you losers.”

Before Shouto or Izuku can get another word in, Katsuki has already hurried off to the changing rooms and left the two of them standing in the hallway with matching dopey grins on their faces. 

“Home?”, Izuku asks after a moment, laughing softly.

Shouto’s heart tumbles a little in his chest. “Home”, he confirms.

Chapter Text

Touya’s Wednesday morning starts out just like any other - he wakes up to the silvery rays of the winter sun glistening on the fresh layer of fluffy snow outside, gets dressed, devours his breakfast and soon leads his blond babysitter into the kitchen for their usual “meds and morning coffee” ritual. It’s all very normal - or at least as normal as a Wednesday morning can be, when you’re a former villain on house arrest being guarded by the pro hero whose threatening blades at your throat used to give you inconvenient boners.

It’s also nothing too out of the ordinary that when Touya opens his cupboard to grab a mug for said pro hero, he finds that in his exhaustion after his meeting with his sister the evening prior he completely forgot to run the dishwasher. He simply fishes the last mug from the back of the cupboard, plunks it down on the kitchen island in front of the pro hero and gets to work on the dishwasher, lest he forget to run the damn thing again.

As far as Touya’s assessment of the circumstances is concerned, he thinks, personally, that there’s really no reason to expect any unexpected occurrences.

And yet…

“Hey, Hot Stuff, why do you have a mug with my face on it?”

Touya promptly drops his dishwasher pod on the floor as he whips around to face the hero, who is already looking at him with an expression somewhere between annoyingly smug and deeply amused. 

“What?!”, Touya damn-near screeches as his gaze flickers over to the kitchen island and the mug he just pulled from his cupboard.

In utter horror he realises that the stupid bird is right - the supposedly plain black mug is now sporting a wrap-around print of a close-up photo of Hawks’ infuriatingly golden eyes, all complete with his unmistakable black markings and bushy eyebrows.

“What. The fuck. Is that?”

The stupid bird has the audacity to cackle delightedly at that. “I think it’s one of those heat-sensitive mugs that reveals an image when you fill it with hot liquid”, he explains helpfully, lifting the cursed object up and carefully shifting it around a little as if to show it to Touya from every possible angle. “One moment it was completely black, and then I poured myself a coffee and boom - the most handsome face ever known to man. I mean, I definitely didn’t expect to find something like this in your kitchen, but I really must commend your taste.”

Hawks offers him an absolutely shit-eating grin, his (stupidly golden) eyes sparkling like this is the most fun he’s had in ages, and Touya suddenly desperately misses his flames.

Not to fling them at the bird - homicide is truly a thing of the past for him now - but rather to burn himself to ash on the spot.

“I’ve literally never seen this mug before in my life”, Touya states stiffly, crouching down to pick up the pod he dropped earlier and busying himself with starting the stupid dishwasher that got him into this mess in the first place. “Someone else must’ve put it there.”

And Touya has a pretty solid suspicion as to who.

Between motive and opportunity, there really aren’t a lot of people who could’ve been behind this in the first place, and it seems that Touya is going to have to have a very serious conversation with that little shit who calls himself his baby brother.

(As long as he’s certain he won’t accidentally reveal anything that even the kid could pick up on. No way he’s going to risk giving his little brother that sort of ammunition.)

Hawks sighs theatrically. “See, I wish I could pretend you’re lying, but unfortunately my people reading skills are just too good, and I can tell you’re being honest.”

Touya turns around again and gives the hero an unimpressed look. “You seem to think awfully highly of yourself today, Birdie. Even more so than usually”, he points out.

“It’s called self-confidence, and according to this article I read online yesterday, smart powerful men are really attracted to confident young women”, Hawks explains matter-of-factly, as Touya slips onto the bar stool opposite him.

“Right, and you’re a young woman in search of an entrepreneurial husband?”, Touya questions, unable to bite back a dry snort at the thought of Hawks sitting alone in his flat and reading the dating section of some sort of lifestyle magazine online.

The bird gives him a faux-scandalised look. “What, you think I’m not young enough to be anyone’s trophy wife? Am I not pretty enough?!”, he gasps dramatically, lifting that horrible mug up to his mouth to indignantly sip on his coffee.

If he only fucking knew.

“Of course you’d make a great trophy wife”, Touya replies sarcastically, carefully sidestepping that question about Hawks being pretty, because, surely, nothing good could come of Touya even just attempting to answer that diplomatically.

“Thank you”, Hawks sighs dramatically. “You know, I’d actually consider a career change - I mean, who could argue with a life consisting of nothing but looking pretty and being spoiled? - but then I wouldn’t be able to bother my favourite former villain anymore, so I guess I’ll have to stay in the hero business for the time being.”

“By all means, don’t let me hold you back from your dream job”, Touya says, fixing the hero with an unimpressed stare.

“Who says I was talking about you?”, the stupid bird teases, grinning gleefully and fucking winking at him like a total loser.

Touya is deeply grateful that he’s sitting down right now, because that dorky look on the hero’s face instantly turns his knees into fucking useless blobs of jelly.

“Ouch, you’re gonna hurt my feelings, Birdie”, he deadpans, desperately hoping his expression doesn’t show that maybe, possibly, hypothetically, it actually would hurt his feelings on some level, if the stupid bird really did have a favourite former villain other than him. As a mature 31-year-old adult with seven years of psychotherapy on his back Touya is man enough to acknowledge this particular emotional reaction in his head, but also boy enough to conveniently avoid analysing it any further.

Hawks’ grin just grows impossibly wider. “I always knew you secretly loved me, even when you threatened to kill me.”

Touya takes it all back - he so wouldn’t give a fuck if the stupid bird actually liked some other former villain better than him. In fact, it would make his life so much easier if the hero simply fucked off to babysit another convicted criminal and stopped bothering him altogether.

“You keep telling yourself that, birdbrain”, he says as nonchalantly as he can possibly manage, slipping off his stool and leading the way out of the kitchen.

“Aww, now don’t be like that”, Hawks coos, theatrically clutching his chest as he follows Touya into the living room. “Don’t act like you’re too cool for me. I mean, I know that’s like your thing, but-“

“Excuse me?”, Touya interrupts him with a quirked eyebrow, as they settle down in their usual spots on the couch.

“Being too cool for stuff is your thing”, the bird elaborates breezily, crossing his ankle over his knee. “I mean, even your little brother said so, and I’d assume he, of all people, would know.”

Oh, there they go again - Touya’s hero brother and his hero babysitter ganging up on him together.

How fun.

He would ask the heavens whatever the hell he has done in his life to deserve this kind of torture, but unfortunately he can hazard a shockingly large number of good guesses.

“Don’t listen to a single word the kid tells you. He’s a lying liar who lies”, Touya lies. 

Hawks snorts at that. “So you didn’t use to play - what was it called, Magic? - because you were too cool for the other card games?”, he questions innocently, and Touya scowls at him a little.

“No, I played it because Magic is cooler than the other card games”, he snaps defensively. “There’s a difference.”

The bird hums pensively. “I’ll believe it when I see it”, he says nonchalantly, but Touya thinks he can detect a little glint of something in those golden eyes.

Never one to back down from a challenge, he really can’t help but jump right onto the opening the hero is giving him.

“I’ll prove it to you”, he announces determinedly, bouncing up from the couch to grab the deck boxes Natsuo dropped off the other day from the shelf, before settling back down on the couch and lining the boxes up on the coffee table.

Hawks gives him a long-suffering sigh. “If you must”, he says, but there’s a hint of that triumphant grin twitching around his lips again, and something tells Touya that the stupid bird may have just been gunning for this particular outcome right from the start.

“Right. Don’t mind the state of these cards, they’re old and battle-weary, and Natsuo was storing them for me for the past two decades”, Touya states as he pulls his trusty Goblin deck from its box. He supposes if he’s going to teach the bird how to play, he should probably start with a mechanically simple and straightforward playing style.

“Wow, these really look worn as hell”, Hawks acknowledges, chuckling softly. “You really must’ve loved them as a kid.”

“I guess so”, Touya mumbles with a shrug, as he rifles through the deck to search for good examples to explain the different card types. When he’s finally satisfied with his teaching materials, he lines them up on the coffee table and clears his throat.

“Alright, Birdie, pay attention”, he says, and Hawks promptly scoots a bit closer - so damn close that Touya can feel the body heat radiating off of him, even through their layers of clothing - and leans forward to inspect the cards spread out on the table.

“In Magic there are five main card types you will usually find in every deck - Creatures, Instants, Sorceries, Enchantments and Lands”, Touya begins his explanation, pointing at each showcase card. “Lands are your resource. Basically like money. You’re allowed to play one each turn, and you have to tap them like this”, he demonstrates, “to activate them. The other card types all have these little symbols in the top right corner to indicate how many Lands you have to tap in order to be able to play the card. Lands also come in five different colours, and different cards require differently coloured Lands to be tapped, but this deck is mono-red, so don’t you worry your little birdbrain about that right now.”

“Oi!”, Hawks squawks at that, but Touya just waves him off dismissively.

“No interrupting the teacher”, he scolds, before returning his attention to the playing cards in front of them.

“Each Land can only be activated once per turn, but they all untap at the beginning of your next turn, so you can use them again to play new cards. The main cards you’ll typically wanna play are Creatures - once you’ve cast a Creature spell, the card will usually remain on your board until it dies in combat or your opponent uses some sort of removal spell on it.”

He picks up his showcase Creature card to indicate the different stats and features on it.

“These numbers at the bottom are the power and toughness of your Creature. Power means the amount of damage it can do, while toughness is the amount of damage it can take until it dies. Each player starts out with 20 life points, and you win the game if your opponent hits 0 life points before you do. You can use your Creatures to attack your opponent as well as to block your opponent’s attacking Creatures. If you use a Creature to attack, you typically have to tap it like a Land, and assuming that it survives combat, it will remain tapped until your next turn. If your opponent decides not to block your attack with their own Creatures, they’ll lose as many life points as the cumulative power of your attacking Creatures. If they decide to block one of your Creatures with one of their own, those Creatures deal each other damage instead. If your opponent’s blocker has more power than your Creature has toughness, your Creature will die and go to your graveyard pile. If the damage isn’t lethal, your Creature’s toughness will heal itself on the next turn. Creatures also often have additional abilities written in their text box - this one here has Haste for example, which means that unlike other Creatures it can attack right after being played. Normally Creatures suffer from something called ‘Summoning Sickness’, which means they have to wait a turn until they’re actually allowed to attack.”

“Damn, this is a lot to remember”, Hawks points out, laughing a little. “Not that I’m complaining”, he adds hastily, when Touya raises an amused eyebrow at him.

“For what it’s worth, the other card types are a bit more straightforward”, he says generously. 

“Instants and Sorceries both typically only have one-off effects, while Enchantments add a permanent effect to your game. Each player’s turn consists of several phases. At the beginning of your turn your Lands and Creatures all untap and you draw a new hand card. Then you move into your first main phase, where you can play a Land and cast Creature spells, Enchantments, Sorceries and Instants. After that you have your combat phase, where you can use your Creatures to attack your opponent, and then you have a second main phase, where you can cast spells again or play a Land, if you haven’t done it during your first main phase already. Creatures, Enchantments and Sorceries can only be played during your two main phases, while Instants can also be cast during your combat phase as well as during your opponent’s turn - as long as you still have enough untapped Lands. Your Instants and Sorceries will also go to your graveyard pile once their effects have resolved. Ah, and you start out with seven hand cards at the beginning. Any questions?”, Touya asks finally, mentally checking a few boxes and noting with satisfaction, that he seems to have mentioned all the important parts he can think of.

The bird huffs a laugh at that. “Hold on, gimme a second to process all that.”

Touya smirks a little, leaning back on the couch while Hawks - still torturously close by his side - looks like he’s mentally running through battle strategies.

“So, those abilities Creatures have. Like, uh, Haste was it? Are there more keywords like that I should know?”, the hero wonders after a moment, tilting his head curiously in Touya’s direction.

“Loads, actually”, Touya admits, cackling a little. “But it’s easier if you just ask me what they mean while we’re playing because there really is a shitton of them.”

“I see, I see. Well then, no, I don’t think I have any more questions right now. I’m sure my teacher will be kind enough to help me out, if I get stuck in a tight spot while we’re playing”, he adds with another one of his stupid dorky winks, and Touya discreetly takes a deep grounding breath.

“Perhaps. If you ask nicely”, he replies noncommittally, biting back the smirk that is threatening to appear on his lips as he picks up the deck of cards and starts shuffling them.

“I’ll have you know that I’m letting you play one of my strongest decks here, so I’m expecting you to prove yourself a worthy opponent.”

Hawks, the fucking weirdo, gives Touya a salute at that. “Promise to do my very best”, he says dutifully, and Touya scoffs exasperatedly as he plunks the deck down in front of the hero and pulls a mono-white Humans and Angels deck from its worn-out box to spice things up a little.

“Draw seven hand cards and set the rest of your deck down beside you. That’s your library that you will draw a new card from each turn”, he explains while he gives his own deck a good shuffle. “If you don’t understand a keyword or ability, you can ask me. Most of the time reading the card should explain the card, though.”

“Wise words”, Hawks teases as he draws his opening hand.

Touya rolls his eyes at him. “Yeah, yeah, less talking, more playing, Birdie.”

***

“God, I fucking hate winter”, Katsuki grumbles, as he and Shouto trudge through the fresh snow on the sidewalks during their Wednesday morning patrol. “Can’t wait for this shit to finally melt. I mean, how the hell has it been consistently snowy for several weeks now anyway? This is excessive, even for this part of the country.”

“I like it”, Shouto points out, smiling happily at the soft crunch under his footsteps.

Katsuki snorts a bit exasperatedly at that. “Of course you do, ice princess.”

Huh.

That’s a new nickname, but Shouto quickly finds he really doesn’t mind being an ice princess.

As far as he’s gathered from various pieces of media, ice princesses are usually really pretty and have great singing voices.

(Though Shouto definitely has to question whether the nickname actually has anything to do with his musicality. Jirou has told him before that his voice “has potential”, but he knows he’s certainly no Elsa.)

Shouto holds out his right palm and directs all his focus into it, diligently crafting a little sculpture with his ice. “Does this help?”, he asks then, holding his creation out to Katsuki, who carefully picks it up with a gloved hand.

“A skull?”, he wonders, lifting the sculpture up to his face to examine it more closely.

“Yeah, like on your t-shirts”, Shouto explains, pointing at his own chest.

Katsuki lets out an impressed whistle. “Damn, this is cool as fuck, Icyhot. In both senses of the word. You’ve gotten really good at making these.” He balances the little skull in his open palm as they continue walking, careful to have as little body heat seep into it as possible.

Shouto preens at the compliment and smiles happily at his friend. “Thanks”, he says, briefly cupping his right hand over Katsuki’s to shock freeze the sculpture. The air around them may be below zero, but Shouto can generate much colder temperatures much faster.

“This should make it last a bit longer. Just don’t touch it without gloves for a while”, he advises.

Katsuki stretches his palm out a little further at that. “How cold did you make it?”, he asks curiously, inspecting the little block of ice from a safe distance.

“About -50° Celsius”, Shouto explains. “Give or take. It might survive until you can put it in the freezer later like this, even if it gets warmed up from your hand.”

“At this point, I feel like we should consider buying some sort of display freezer with a glass front”, Katsuki snorts, giving Shouto an amused look. “Keeping them in the regular freezer is kind of a waste, and I’m not gonna lie, Halfie, I’m really starting to struggle to find the space to actually store food in our freezer at home.”

Shouto feels his cheeks tint pink at that. He supposes he has really been making a lot of these sculptures recently. The consistently cold weather just has been so convenient for practicing. 

“Sorry about that”, he says, laughing a bit awkwardly. “I got a bit carried away.”

“Oi, don’t apologise for it, shortcake. As I said, your sculptures are cool as hell. We just need to find a better place to store them”, Katsuki huffs, nudging Shouto’s side a little as they walk. Shouto nudges back, careful not to jostle his friend, lest he drop the somewhat precariously balanced skull, and hums a little.

“I’ll look for display freezers online later”, he promises, briefly wondering whether he should ask his sister for recommendations. He knows Fuyumi likes using her Quirk to make little sculptures, too, and surely she must be storing her favourites somewhere as well.

A sudden crackling in his ear piece rips him out of his musings, and he instantly looks up to meet Katsuki’s alerted gaze.

“Dynamight? Shouto?”, their on-duty secretary and coordinator speaks up sharply through the speaker. “We’ve just received a call about a villain with some kind of growth Quirk wreaking havoc a few blocks over from you. Witnesses have requested immediate help, and all the other pro heroes nearby are rather bad Quirk match-ups. If you’re not engaged otherwise right now, please head down there and see if you can help. I’m sending you the coordinates right now.”

“Got them”, Shouto confirms with a glance at his wrist, before looking back up to nod at Katsuki. “Thank you, Tanaka-san, we’ll go check it out.”

And with that Katsuki quickly sets the skull down in an empty flower pot outside a bookshop, before the two of them propel themselves high into the air, flames and explosions painting their path as they take off westward.

***

“What does Vigilance mean?”, Hawks asks, squinting at the new card he has just drawn. 

Their game has been a fairly slow one so far, what with Touya explaining keywords and mechanics and Hawks taking quite a while to complete his turns, but both of them have built themselves a bit of a board at this point and their life counter is at 14-12 in Touya’s favour. The hero quickly took to the aggressive playing style of the Goblin deck, getting in quite a bit of early damage, but he has also made a few misplays and Touya is way more experienced and intimately familiar with both their decks, so he’s been able to keep the mean Goblins in check with his peacekeepers fairly well so far.

“It means the Creature doesn’t need to be tapped when it attacks, so you could theoretically still use it as a blocker during my turn afterwards”, he explains, sweeping his gaze across their respective boards. He’s got a pretty strong game changer in his hand right now, and he’s already mentally planning how he’s going to hit Hawks with 10 unblockable damage on his next turn. The thought makes him smirk a little with glee.

“Hmm, great stamina”, the bird comments innocently, and Touya swallows a bit drily around his own smirk.

“Right, so I’ll play my Land for turn”, Hawks continues then, adding another Mountain to his collection, “and then I’ll tap three for this guy.” He smiles contently as he casts his Creature spell.

“You said Flying means only Creatures who also have Flying or Reach can block this Creature, right?”

Damnit.

There goes Touya’s unblockable damage strategy.

“Yeah”, he grunts, quickly assessing how his soon-to-be aerial Creatures measure up against the hero’s flyer, and finds the stats actually aren’t that bad. Worst case scenario would be the bird killing one of his otherwise vanilla Humans, but that would mean Hawks’ flyer would die as well, so it’ll be a risk worth taking.

“Awesome”, the bird says happily. “Then I’ll move into my combat phase. So, at the beginning of combat this guy here gives me another 1/1 Goblin creature token”, he adds another face down Elf card to his board as a token substitute, “and then I’ll attack you with two tokens as well as this 2/2 guy here”, he declares, looking up at Touya with a wide grin, the pink tip of his tongue cheekily poking out a little between his teeth, and Touya does not find that endearingly attractive.

Nope.

He stubbornly forces his focus to remain on the game in front of him, and runs through a few quick strategies in his head. Ultimately, he decides to forgo blocking altogether. The bird still has two untapped Lands, and Touya knows damn well that Goblin deck runs four Lightning Bolts. He really doesn’t want to risk the hero killing his wounded Creatures post combat.

“I’ll take the damage”, he announces confidently, scribbling down his new life total on the scrap of paper beside them.

Hawks narrows his eyes at him suspiciously. “What are you planning?”, he questions with a hint of his assertive pro hero interrogation tone in his voice, and it makes the bottom of Touya’s spine tingle a little.

“Wouldn’t you love to know, Birdie?”, he deflects quickly, offering the hero his best smugly villainous smirk.

“Well, I guess I’ll find out now”, the bird replies, smiling nonchalantly. “I pass my turn to you.”

“Be careful what you wish for”, Touya sing-songs as he untaps his Lands and Creatures and draws a new hand card. “I’ll play my Land for turn”, he starts innocently, “and then I’ll tap four to cast this Instant and choose the first option”, he finishes, grinning gleefully as he holds the card out for Hawks to read.

“What the ever loving fuck is that?”, the bird gasps incredulously, staring at Touya with wide eyes. “Flying, Vigilance and Double Strike? Is that even legal?!”

Touya cackles delightedly at the hero’s outrage. “Great card, isn’t it?”, he snickers. “So - as you may have already guessed - I’m sending all my Creatures your way.”

Hawks frowns at that. “Doesn’t that mean I’m already dead?”, he questions, skimming his eyes over Touya’s board.

Touya shakes his head. “No, if you don’t block this would be 10 damage. Since it’s your first time playing, I’m gonna be nice, though, and remind you that you do have one Creature with Flying yourself.”

Look at him being all kind and generous towards the formerly winged hero.

Who would’ve thought things would end up this way, huh?

“So if I block one of your 2/2s, I will only get 6 damage?”, Hawks asks.

“Yeah, and your flyer would even drag my guy down with him”, Touya explains, propping his chin up on his hand.

The bird nods, seemingly deeply focused. “Alright, then I’ll block this one”, he indicates one of Touya’s vanilla Humans, “and take the 6 damage.” He picks up the pen to jot down his new life total, while Touya puts his Instant and his dead Human in his graveyard pile.

“Your flyer dies, too, though”, he points out, and Hawks obligingly removes it from the battlefield.

“Alright, I pass my turn then”, Touya announces with a satisfied grin and lazily watches the hero untap his board and draw a new card.

The way Hawks seems so deeply entrenched in the game, taking every single move extremely seriously, is annoyingly attractive and captivating to Touya. He suspects part of it is because it’s one of his beloved childhood interests that the hero is getting so invested in, but another part is also just the fact that Hawks is hot as hell when he puts that clever, strategic hero brain of his to use.

It’s kind of embarrassing, but Touya is really getting one hell of a kick out of simply watching the bird contemplate his next moves.

Still, his lack of experience shines through when he - presumably panicking after Touya’s big attack - sends his entire army of Goblins at Touya in a non-lethal attack, so by the time Touya buffs up his remaining 2/2 Human with a +3/+3 counter and attacks Hawks with a cumulative power of 6 during his own combat phase, the hero is completely tapped out and can’t do anything but admit defeat.

“Not bad for your first time”, Touya tells him placatingly, when Hawks lets out a noisy frustrated groan.

“Hmph. I bet you say that to all the girls”, the hero grumbles, scowling about as threateningly as a golden retriever puppy.

Touya huffs a laugh. “What, you want special treatment?”, he questions with a quirked eyebrow.

“In another life I am a trophy wife. Of course I want special treatment”, Hawks explains sagely, and Touya’s mind drifts off in extremely inconvenient directions regarding the question as to whose trophy wife the hero actually wants to be.

He’s just scrambling to get his bearings and come up with an appropriately witty reply to that comment, when Hawks’ phone suddenly beeps noisily in his pocket. The bird frowns and pulls the device out of his pocket.

“Anything important?”, Touya asks casually, re-boxing his decks.

Hawks sways his head a little. “Apparently there’s a pretty big - like, literally big - villain causing chaos downtown, and your brother and the Bakugou kid are fighting him. It’s being live-streamed online.”

Touya frowns a little as he’s hit by the sudden realisation that he hasn’t actually seen his baby brother in pro hero action since that day during the final war nearly seven years ago. He really wonders what his fighting style looks like now.

“Can we watch it?”, he asks, giving the bird the best puppy eyes he can muster.

Hawks momentarily bites his lip as he seemingly contemplates the question, before finally slowly nodding his ascent. “Alright, go grab your laptop.”

***

When Shouto and Katsuki arrive on the scene, they’re greeted by an already shockingly extensive amount of destruction. A tall, multi-story building looks like a giant took a huge bite out of the upper floors, while two smaller buildings have already been crushed entirely. The streets are filled with the panicked screams of fleeing civilians, and there are banged-up cars scattered around carelessly like abandoned toys.

The large villain is hard to miss, and in mild horror Shouto notes that “growth Quirk” doesn’t just mean that the guy is exceptionally big, but also that he seems to be growing sharp bone-like appendages under his skin all across his body, kind of reminiscent of the armour of an ankylosaurus. And judging from the way it easily rips another chunk of cement out of the large damaged building when the giant brushes it with one of the appendages on his arm, those things must be rock hard.

More civilians scatter and scream as blocks of cement start raining down, and Shouto quickly shoots out an iceberg to freeze the falling debris in the air. It gives the people in imminent danger enough time to escape, but as the giant continues in his path he easily crushes the ice under his foot, and Shouto has no illusions about how useful his Quirk could even be with a villain like this.

“Dynamight?”, he calls into his ear piece. “My ice is useless against this guy and we still have civilians running around everywhere. I’m gonna focus on evacuation and rescue on the ground while you try to keep the guy contained from the air, yeah?”

“Don’t order me around, candy cane”, Katsuki snaps gruffly, and Shouto takes that as a “yes, let’s do it like this”.

From the corner of his eye he watches as his friend blasts himself forward and higher, right up to the villain's face, and with a little smile Shouto redirects his focus to the chaos and panic on the ground in front of him. He takes a brief moment to assess the situation and gauge his options - most of the civilians are already trying to flee, but no one seems to be quite sure in which direction they should run, and the scattered cars and debris from the buildings must surely make it more difficult for the untrained eye to find an optimal escape route.

A little further away, by the dusty piles of rubble that used to be two small buildings, Shouto can also make out a few people crying and attempting to move the debris around, so he presumes there must also be people stuck under the rubble. It’s always a difficult choice when you have to decide who to help first, and for a millisecond Shouto freezes with the weight of it, but then his instincts and years of training kick in and he quickly starts erecting walls of ice to line a few escape routes through the chaos on the street.

“Everyone follow the ice paths and then get as far away from here as possible!”, he shouts at the top of his lungs, sending little flares of fire up into the air to catch the civilians’ attention.

Thankfully, people seem to be getting the message and gather together in small groups to hurry down the paths Shouto has set up for them. He attentively sweeps his eyes around to ensure no one is being left behind, then chances a glance over to Katsuki and the villain.

He can tell his friend is firing Howitzer Impacts and AP Shots left and right, but the giant still seems concerningly undeterred and unharmed, and Shouto begins to suspect that they’ll have to call for back-up.

“You okay up there?”, he asks into his ear pierce, frowning a little as he uses his ice to slide over to the collapsed buildings.

He receives a string of impressively colourful curses in response and deeply sympathises.

“This guy is not taking any fucking damage”, Katsuki grunts frustratedly, the sound of his Quirk going off booming in the background. “Not even a fucking scrap. You should try using your fire on him, maybe we need to turn the heat up more.”

Shouto considers that for a moment. “I think there are people stuck under the rubble down here”, he says then. “Can you try to get them out?”

“Yeah”, Katsuki grumbles obediently, “just get your fiery arse up here.”

Shouto snickers a little and blasts himself into the air, focusing all of his energy into his left side, as he sees Katsuki land safely by the collapsed buildings.

The villain seems momentarily thrown off by his opponent’s sudden deference, but soon spots Shouto zooming at him, leaving a blazing trail of fire in the air, and Shouto doesn’t waste a single second. He concentrates his fire in his fist, turns up the heat to the max and uses his forward propulsion to increase his momentum, before smashing his fist straight into the villain’s face.

“Flashfire Fist - Jet Kindling!”

Shouto’s knuckles crack and a brief but sharp pain shoots through his fingers as the giant tumbles backwards, slapping at his own face to extinguish the leftover flames from Shouto’s attack flickering across his skin. With a groan Shouto shakes out his hand and flexes his fingers, grateful to find that apart from his bleeding knuckles and the remaining ache in his bones, his wrist gauntlet seems to have absorbed most of the shock from the punch.

However, as he refocuses his gaze on the villain, he finds that other than a bit of charring and swelling the giant still doesn’t seem to have taken any notable damage from Shouto’s punch.

“What the fuck?”, he hisses incredulously as he dives left to dodge a swing from the villain’s spiky arm.

“Still nothing?!”, Katsuki’s voice pipes up in Shouto’s ear.

“Still nothing”, Shouto confirms, blowing out a frustrated breath. “It’s like he’s got some sort of heat-resistant armour. How’s rescue going?"

“Fine”, Katsuki mumbles. “We still have five more people stuck down here, but they’re all responsive. It’s just annoying as fuck how careful I have to be with the debris. If there was no one else down here, I could just blast this whole pile to smithereens in one go.”

Shouto huffs a small laugh. “Well, I’m glad you’re practicing patience”, he teases, shooting up higher into the air before taking a sharp right turn to redirect the giant’s attention.

“Listen, I think we’re gonna have to call for back-up”, he says then, tapping his ear piece twice to switch to the emergency hero contact network. “This is Air-Con Hero Shouto speaking. Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight and I are currently fighting a very large villain with some sort of growth Quirk who isn’t taking any damage from either of our Quirks. This is a request for immediate assistance.”

“Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight here. Better get us Mount Lady or Best Jeanist, and hurry the fuck up!”, Katsuki bellows into the emergency channel. “We’re practically fighting Gigantomachia-lite here.”

“Shouto? Dynamight? This is Mount Lady speaking. I’m already on my way, I took off when I saw the livestream of your fight online. ETA in five minutes.”

Shouto breathes out a little sigh of relief. Mount Lady is bigger than the giant, so perhaps she’ll be able to get a Quirk-cancelling cuff on one of the guy’s oversized fingers.

“Thank you”, he says into his ear piece. “We’ll keep him occupied until you get here.”

As if on cue the villain takes another vicious swing at Shouto, which he only narrowly manages to dodge by letting himself drop straight down, only turning his fire propulsion on again seconds before he would hit the ground.

“God fucking damnit”, he curses under his breath as he flies up and out of the giant’s reach again. Given the fact that the guy seems to be able to withstand all their attacks anyway, it would be a waste of energy on Shouto’s part to keep hurling Flashfire Fists at him, so he decides to switch tactics and focus on keeping the villain from causing any more damage or getting away from the area. Instead of attacking with his high output high effort moves, Shouto redirects his energy into flitting around the giant’s head, like an annoyingly fast and agile fly, and shooting smaller bursts of flames with the occasional horde of ice spikes at the villain’s face in order to obscure his vision and keep him preoccupied.

“Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight? Shouto? Mount Lady?”, another familiar voice suddenly speaks up in his ear piece as Shouto shoots two large ice spikes right into the villain’s eyes. 

“This is Best Jeanist. I’m out of town right now, but I can be there in about 20 minutes - if you still need me then.”

“Better come, just in case”, Katsuki grunts, and Shouto hums in acquiescence.

“Yeah, better safe than sorry”, Mount Lady says. “From what I saw on the livestream this guy is a tough one, and we’ve got no way to really gauge how much it will actually take to incapacitate him. I’m only two blocks away now, by the way.”

Shouto heaves out a sigh of relief at that. Moving around as fast as he is right now, all the while continuously using his fire, is beginning to take a toll on him, even in this pleasantly frosty weather. Flying doesn’t come to him as easily as it does to Katsuki, or even full-body fire users like his father or Touya. For Shouto it always involves an extra amount of physical effort to keep his balance and support all of his own weight one-sidedly in the air. It strains his muscles on top of the strain on his Quirk, and he’s not quite overheating yet, but he doesn’t feel like he’ll be able to keep up this pace for that much longer.

***

Touya is pretty impressed.

He’s also mildly concerned, but the impressed part of him is kind of behind the wheel right now and keeping his eyes glued to the screen of his laptop as he watches his baby brother fight a villain, who might as well be Gigantomachia’s very own baby brother.

Hawks is sitting next to him, and they’re so close their thighs are completely pressed together as they both follow the slightly shaky livestream of the fight.

It’s genuinely impressive - Shouto’s agility as he zooms through the air, blasting the villain with fire and ice - and it almost reminds Touya a little of the formerly winged hero by his side, whose warmth is steadily seeping through his jeans and patches of scarred and healthy skin alike.

“He’s freakishly good, isn't he?”, said hero says, whistling a little.

Touya nods without taking his eyes off the screen. “He is”, he agrees, while on screen Shouto practically pirouettes in the air, using the momentum to shoot a bright orange burst of flames at the villain’s eyes.

“It’s a bit concerning, though”, he adds then, furrowing his brows a little and sucking his bottom lip between his teeth as his hyperactive and hyper-analytical brain automatically picks apart the moves and techniques his brother is using on the giant.

“That attack he used when he took over from the explosion kid? I know that was one of his own Flashfire Fist moves, and it basically should’ve burnt mini Gigantomachia’s face off, but the guy didn’t take any damage at all. Not even a High End Nomu could withstand an attack like that without their regeneration ability.”

Hawks hums pensively at that, and from the corner of his eye Touya can see the bird frowning at the screen. “Bakugou’s explosions didn’t have any impact either. I think those two are a rather bad Quirk match-up for this guy”, he muses, shifting a little to lean closer to the screen. “I hope they’ve called for back-up.”

“I suspect Shouto has”, Touya says, watching his brother dive below the villain’s gigantic ear to dodge a swing from his spiky arm. “I don’t think he’ll be able to keep this up much longer - he’s leaning heavily on his fire, and continuously using it for aerial propulsion like that takes a lot out of you.”

“You’ve got a good eye for this stuff”, Hawks notes, audibly smiling. “Very analytical.”

Touya dismissively flaps his hand in the air. “It’s just a Fire Quirk thing. I know what it feels like. Even though my baby bro definitely has much better stamina than I do, but he’s mostly relying on one half of his Quirk right now, and that comes with limitations.”

“Still very observant”, Hawks points out, and, well, Touya supposes that’s somewhat true.

“I guess”, he replies noncommittally.

On screen Shouto is visibly venting out steam through his breath and his backplate, and a surprisingly ferocious little part of Touya kind of wants to reach through the screen and yell at his little brother to change tactics and take a quick breather, lest he pass out and tumble from the sky.

“He’ll be fine”, Hawks says confidently, as if he read Touya’s mind, and points at the corner of the screen. “Look, they really do have back-up coming!”

***

Okay, so, maybe Shouto is kind of overheating now.

He feels beads of sweat rolling down his forehead and dripping into his eyes, his tongue parched and the blood in his veins thick, and he knows he’s steaming from both his lungs and his backplate. The edges of his vision are already beginning to blur, and he can tell his body is on the verge of presyncope. If he doesn’t take a break to cool himself down very soon, he’ll put himself at risk of passing out.

“Shouto!”, a voice suddenly calls in his ear piece, and it kind of sounds like salvation. “Dodge left!”

Without second thought Shouto does as told, propelling himself leftward to make space for Mount Lady to come charging at the giant and launch an attack. She towers over the guy by a good five metres, and Shouto hopes dearly that she’s strong enough to actually take him down.

He uses the moment of reprieve to land on the flat rooftop of a nearby building and flicks off his fire immediately, activating his ice instead and sending currents of cold through his heaving body to cool himself down.

“You okay, shortcake?”, Katsuki asks over the com, his tone slightly worried, and Shouto blows out another steamy exhale before answering.

“I’m fine”, he assures. “I just need a moment to thermoregulate.”

Katsuki huffs out something akin to a chuckle at that. “If you want we can switch again. I just got the last person out of the rubble, and we’ve got two guys here with some pretty heavy scrapes. Nothing life-threatening, but I think your first-aid wee-wees could come in handy here. I’m still fit to fight.”

“They are not wee-wees”, Shouto states matter-of-factly, and Katsuki actually snickers at that. “But switching sounds good. Can you hold out for another minute? I think I need to cool down a tad more before I can fly down there.”

“Need some help, princess?”, Katsuki’s voice comes then - not through his ear piece, but from right behind him.

Shouto turns around to find his friend standing on the snow-covered rooftop and smirking at him mischievously.

“What do you mean?”, he questions, raising a curious eyebrow as the blonde stalks up to him.

Then, without a word, Katsuki wraps his arms around Shouto’s hips and casually throws him over his shoulder like a goddamn sack of potatoes.

Shouto squawks in surprise, fingers scrabbling at his friend’s back to keep his balance.

“What are you doing?!”, he asks bewilderedly, suddenly almost thankful that his body is so deeply exhausted, because otherwise he’d surely be fighting off all kinds of inconvenient reactions to this unexpected progression of events right now. 

“Moving things along”, Katsuki says nonchalantly. “Don’t worry, the cameras can’t catch us up here and I’ll fly down behind the building, so your dignity is safe. Hold on!”

And with that, he blasts himself into the air, the sudden force rattling Shouto’s entire body as he knits his fingers into the back of Katsuki’s costume in mild panic.

As promised Katsuki flies them down safely behind the building, unceremoniously dropping Shouto back onto his feet when they touch ground, and if Shouto is being very honest with himself, he’ll have to admit that he’s almost a little disappointed that it’s already over again.

“Anyone able to come help me out here?”, Mount Lady suddenly grunts a bit breathlessly over the com.

Katsuki gives Shouto a brief nod. “Go do your first aid, shortcake. I’ve got this”, he promises before taking off in a flurry of explosions again. “On my way”, he adds then over the com.

Shouto takes a few deep breaths to get his bearings, shaking out his limbs a little, before activating his ice to slide over to the piles of rubble from the destroyed buildings. From the corner of his eye he sees Katsuki firing Howitzer Impacts against the villain’s eyes and ears while Mount Lady is engaged in a fist fight with the giant. Shouto’s heart lightens a little in relief as he notes that she seems to be able to withstand the guy’s raw power, even though they currently seem to be locked in somewhat of a stalemate.

When Shouto finally reaches the little makeshift infirmary by the rescue site, he does indeed find two men, neither of them much older than him probably, with fairly deep cuts on their arms and legs, oozing thick blood through layers of dirty ripped-up clothing.

Those could definitely do with some cleaning and staples.

“Hello, I’m Shouto. May I patch up your wounds?”, he greets the men, still always feeling a bit awkward and uncertain about how exactly to communicate with the people he’s trying to help, but the fact that the men are roughly his age helps a bit. With children or significantly older adults it’s more difficult sometimes, because Shouto feels like he needs to code-switch to different languages while speaking to them, especially in these sorts of high stress situations, except he’s still rather unpracticed in those languages. Talking to peers is easier, and he also has significantly more experience with it.

The men introduce themselves as Sugawara and Sawamura while Shouto detaches his little first-aid containers from his belt and unscrews the caps. He produces a small pack of antiseptic wipes, some gauze and tape and his miniature surgical stapler. It’s really not much, but it’s enough to get the worst of the wounds patched up until the paramedics arrive.

The surgical stapler is a fairly recent addition to Shouto’s costume, and while already pocket-sized, it’s definitely not the most comfortable to carry around on his belt, but while watching Touya’s physical recovery over the past few years and learning a bit more about his condition and the role his staples play in protecting the fragile seams of his skin, Shouto had decided that having a device to close up dangerous wounds on hand at all times would be a stupid thing to forgo, so he had Hatsume Mei design a custom miniature version of the surgical instrument for him.

“This is gonna sting, sorry”, he says, grimacing a little in sympathy as he crouches down in front of Sugawara to clean the long, deep cut on his leg with an antiseptic wipe. It’s the worst injury between the two men, so he supposes he should take care of it first.

Unsurprisingly, Sugawara hisses sharply and clutches Sawamura’s hand in what looks like an absolute death grip when Shouto carefully starts cleaning the grime and dirt from the wound.

“Sorry”, he says again, trying to work as fast as he possibly can while still remaining diligent. Once he’s satisfied with his work he grabs his stapler, briefly pausing to mentally map out the number of staples he’ll need to put on the wound to close it up evenly. Ultimately, he settles on five, and with a warning to his patient to keep still for this, even if it hurts, he staples the wound shut. A small part of his brain is mildly concerned that they’ll have a set of crushed fingers to deal with on top of the wounds if Sugawara keeps clinging onto Sawamura’s hand like that, but the latter doesn’t seem to mind all that much, and when Shouto finally sets the stapler down, the man’s bones thankfully still appear to be intact.

“I’ll just tape some gauze over it to protect it from dirt, but once the paramedics arrive, you’ll definitely have to have them bandage the wound properly for you”, he explains as he places the gauze on the stapled cut, before thoroughly taping it to Sugawara’s leg. Once he deems it secure enough, he sits back on his haunches and gives a quick satisfied nod.

“Thank you”, Sugawara tells him, smiling down at him, and Shouto offers him a little smile back before shuffling over to Sawamura to get to work on his wounds.

He’s got multiple of them scattered around his forearms, and they’re similarly deep as Sugawara’s cut, but much smaller. Most of them should be fine with two staples, Shouto thinks as he cleans the wounds. With his arms occupied, Sawamura can’t return the favour and crush Sugawara’s hand, but Sugawara has a steadying hand placed on the other man’s back and is lowly whispering things to him that are probably not meant for Shouto’s ears, so he pointedly attempts to tune them out entirely and just focus on the task at hand.

Still, a few bits and pieces don’t quite manage to get past him, and he learns that Sugawara and Sawamura were best friends in high school, but have now been in a relationship for a couple of years already.

It makes Shouto think.

About himself. About Katsuki. About Izuku.

About possibilities and hopes and dreams he doesn’t let himself indulge in all too often, because what good does it do, really?

His situation is so much more complicated than that - the stakes are higher, way higher, and the three of them don’t exactly lead normal lives. There’s so much that could go wrong, and in the end everyone would just get hurt.

Shooting his shot simply isn’t an option for him, and his inconvenient feelings for his two best friends are best kept locked deep inside his heart, where no one will be able to find them.

Shaking his head a little to himself, he redirects his full attention to the stapled cuts he’s currently covering with gauze and tape.

“All done”, he announces after he has fastened the last piece of tape on Sawamura’s arm and approvingly eyes his work. 

“Thank you very much”, Sawamura tells him, and he and his partner both bow gratefully at Shouto while he stuffs his first-aid utensils back in their respective containers.

“You’re welcome”, he says politely when suddenly his earpiece crackles.

“Best Jeanist here. I’ll be there in five minutes. Do you still need my help?”

“God, yes, we do!”, Mount Lady groans in response. “This guy is too fucking agile for his size, and I can’t simultaneously hold his arms still and snap the cuff on him.”

“Understood”, Best Jeanist replies. “Please try holding out a bit longer. I’ll be there soon.”

“Do you guys need my help?”, Shouto speaks up then, carefully bringing a little fire to life in his palm to test whether his Quirk has recovered enough. The flames flicker happily against his fingers, and it doesn’t make Shouto feel bad, so he deems himself fit enough to fight again.

“Are you feeling okay again, Halfie?”, Katsuki questions, concern evident in his voice, even as he sets off another noisy Howitzer Impact.

Shouto stretches his arms and legs out a little. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll be up in a second”, he promises as he slowly turns up the heat in his left side, while cooling down his right. He’s not going to attack with Phosphor, since that would be a pointless waste of precious energy against this particular villain, but he circulates his hot and cold blood through his heart the way he would to use his cold flames in order to keep his body at somewhat of a thermal equilibrium, when he blasts himself back into the air.

Mount Lady and Katsuki have at least successfully managed to keep the villain contained to roughly the same area he was wreaking havoc in before, so additional damage seems to have been kept to a minimum, Shouto notes as he approaches the fight. He spots Katsuki flitting around the giant’s head in a similar manner as Shouto was before, firing explosions at his face to keep him just so occupied and distracted enough, while Mount Lady is wrestling with the guy’s massive spiky arms, clearly still trying to get that Quirk-cancelling cuff on him, even if unsuccessfully so far.

Shouto figures he’ll probably be more useful as another distraction, so he propels himself upwards to join Katsuki by the villain’s head.

Except, in that moment as Shouto approaches the fight, Mount Lady’s grip on the giant’s wrist seems to slip, and with all the force he must’ve been using to try and escape the hero’s grip, his large arm flies out sideways, smashing into the half-damaged tall building and sending enormous chunks of concrete hurtling through the air. 

Shouto sees it happen, sees that the trajectory of the villain’s arm will send the debris flying right at him, so he instantly dodges sharply down and flings himself to the left to escape the deadly onslaught.

Not unlike a hero’s reaction to someone in need, his body practically moves on its own, survival instincts taking over his Quirk and muscles to catapult him to safety.

However, in that exact moment, when Shouto throws himself out of harm’s way, the giant shifts his weight, lifting his SUV-sized foot high above the ground, before slamming it back down on the pavement to regain his balance.

And Shouto, distracted by the flying debris, sees it a millisecond too late.

He’s hovering about three metres above the ground when he notices the gigantic foot right above him, and for a moment it feels like the world is moving in slow motion. For a moment, Shouto can only blink in surprise at the sight above him, before his survival instincts finally kick in and try to propel him out of harm’s way at breakneck speed.

He isn’t quite fast enough, though.

The remnants of his exhaustion from before have slowed him down a little, both physically and mentally, and one second Shouto feels something violently knock against the side of his knee, making him lose his balance mid-air, and the next he feels himself crash onto the ground, an absolutely searing white-hot pain unlike anything he has ever felt before shooting through his right leg.

Shouto is pretty sure he’s screaming - or at least he thinks he hears something that sounds like screaming and he recognises the voice as his own - and he tries to move, but even just lifting his head makes him feel terribly nauseous. The pain in his leg is so blinding everything around him is spinning like crazy.

Or perhaps that’s just his vision blurring.

Yeah, actually, Shouto is pretty sure that’s what it is.

For a moment the world is nothing but a swirl of colours, and then everything goes dark.

Chapter Text

When Shouto comes to, there’s a steady beeping on his left and the sound of hushed conversation on his right. His mind is incredibly hazy, and trying to properly regain his consciousness feels like wading through thick heavy clouds. He’s tired, so very tired, and part of him just wants to go right back to sleep, but even through the fog in his brain he recognises the hushed voices as Izuku and Katsuki, and he feels a deep-seated urge to reassure them that he’s alright and awake.

Slowly, and with a substantial amount of effort, he blinks his eyes open, thankful to find his surroundings only dimly lit, and when his eyes finally focus he realises that he’s in a hospital bed.

It’s only then, that his memories come flooding back to him.

The gigantic villain. The fight. The blinding pain in his leg.

And, finally, complete darkness.

In mild panic he redirects his attention to his physical state, carefully wiggling his arms and legs a little, but finds nothing but a dull ache and bone-deep exhaustion in his limbs.

“Shouto-kun? Hey, Kacchan, look, I think he’s awake!”, a familiar voice - Izuku’s voice, Shouto registers after a second - exclaims softly by his side, and Shouto shifts his head a little.

He finds Izuku and Katsuki slouched in plastic chairs next to his bed, Izuku looking slightly flushed and sweaty while Katsuki’s hair is full of grime and he’s sporting a bandage on his forehead.

“Hi”, Shouto says - or rather attempts to say, because it mostly just comes out as a breathy croak.

“Here, have some water”, Izuku says, springing to his feet to hand Shouto a plastic cup from the bedside table.

Shouto gratefully accepts it and carefully takes a few sips of the pleasantly cool liquid. “Thanks”, he says a bit more steadily after clearing his throat.

“You okay, shortcake?”, Katsuki asks, brows furrowed deeply in concern as he gazes at Shouto.

“I think so”, Shouto muses, curling and uncurling his toes under the duvet. “I’m really tired, though. Are you okay? What happened?”

“Me?”, Katsuki questions, momentarily confused before briefly touching his fingers to the bandage on his forehead. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine. Just a scrape. We, um, well, we got the guy. The villain, I mean. When Best Jeanist arrived, he restrained him and Mount Lady finally managed to get that cuff on him. Without his Quirk that guy was barely 160 cm tall and skinny as hell. They had him arrested real quick.”

Shouto breathes out a little sigh of relief at that. “That’s good to hear”, he says, then frowns a little as he tries to comb through his mind for any indication of what happened to him after he passed out but comes up empty.

“What happened to me?”, he asks a bit nervously. “When I passed out, I mean.” He feels alright now, but given that he’s in a hospital bed hooked up to a heart monitor right now, he clearly wasn’t alright when he passed out.

Katsuki averts his gaze, absently running his fingers along his bandaged forehead, while Izuku starts wringing his hands a little, quickly glancing over at Katsuki before he looks back at Shouto and opens his mouth.

“You, uh, you got injured. On your right leg”, he explains a bit stiffly. “You also had a mild concussion and a few scrapes and bruises and a fractured rib from crashing to the ground, but the main thing was your leg. That giant crushed your leg from the knee down with his foot. All of your bones were completely shattered to pieces, and you had a lot of torn ligaments and muscles.” He pauses and swallows thickly before continuing. “It was really bad. They called in Recovery Girl, and she managed to heal you, but they said it was a close call and you got very lucky. Without Quirk-healing they likely would’ve had to amputate your leg.”

That makes Shouto gulp a little as well. The description of the magnitude of his injury sounds pretty spot on for the absolutely excruciating pain he remembers being in before he passed out, but hearing from someone else how bad it actually was is still a bit harrowing. An amputated leg is, of course, far from the worst thing he could’ve gotten away with - and his family are certainly no strangers to losing limbs in battle - but it’s obviously not exactly desirable.

He wriggles his legs again under the duvet, just to assure himself that they’re both still there and working, and takes another sip of water before leaning over to set the cup down.

“So what now? Have the doctors already said anything about whether I have to stay here?”, he wonders then.

“Yes, and no, you don’t have to”, Izuku says. “We’ve already spoken to them, and we still have to sign some paperwork, but they’re willing to discharge you into our care.”

“They want us to keep an eye on you at all times for the next 24 hours, just in case. Recovery Girl had to go pretty hard on you to fix you up, so you’ll probably be absolutely dead on your feet for a while, and they want us to make sure you don’t fall down the stairs or something”, Katsuki adds, the corners of his mouth quirking up a little, and Shouto feels his own lips twitch at that with a hint of a smile.

“Kacchan”, Izuku scolds, giving the blonde a stern look before redirecting his attention to Shouto. “We’ve already moved our shifts around, so that there will always be one of us at home with you until tomorrow.”

“Thank you”, Shouto tells his friends earnestly, scrambling to sit up a bit straighter in the bed, even though his body is practically screaming at him to go to sleep.

“Course, shortcake”, Katsuki mumbles softly, and Izuku reaches out to gently squeeze Shouto’s forearm.

His hand is warm, and Shouto can’t help but lean into the touch a little.

“I’ll go tell the doctors you’re awake, yeah?”, Izuku announces then before swiftly making his way out of the room, disappearing down the hallway.

Shouto sleepily stares after him for a moment before redirecting his gaze to Katsuki, who is still sitting in his plastic chair and viciously working his teeth into his bottom lip. He looks like something is eating away at him (other than his own teeth at the chapped skin on his lips), like there’s something he wants to say, and Shouto tilts his head a little in concern.

“Are you really okay?”, he asks quietly.

Katsuki promptly stops biting his lip, like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t, and stares down at the scuffed boots of his hero costume.

For a moment he doesn’t say anything, and Shouto is already contemplating whether he should repeat his question or simply drop it, when his friend finally opens his mouth.

“It was really awful. To see you get crushed like that”, he finally admits, talking lowly and still avoiding Shouto’s gaze. “I thought that fucker was gonna kill you and panicked so badly, I blasted myself face first into a tree.” He lightly taps the bandage on his forehead, the look on his face turning a bit grim. “And when I finally managed to fly down to check on you, you were unconscious and your leg…”

Katsuki gulps, and Shouto thinks his face has gone a bit paler.

“It looked horrifying, shortcake. Like, think of the worst, most gore-y slasher flick you’ve ever seen and triple that.”

At that he finally looks up at Shouto, and his face is a grimace somewhere between fear, horror and disgust. Shouto may not have seen his leg like that, but he certainly sympathises.

“I’m sorry”, he says, because it feels like the right thing to say.

He freaked his friend out pretty badly, so he should apologise, right?

“Why the hell are you apologising?!”

Okay, maybe not.

“You don’t need to apologise for that, it wasn’t your fucking fault!”, Katsuki tells him very pointedly, and the colour seems to have returned to his face.

Shouto blinks.

“I’m…sorry for apologising then?”, he tries, and honestly, perhaps he’s simply too tired to be having this conversation. His brain certainly feels like mush, and all of his thoughts only seem to be coming rather sluggishly.

“No! Stop apologising- you know what, nevermind. I’m sorry. You’re exhausted, I shouldn’t be bothering you with this right now”, Katsuki groans defeatedly before fixing his red-eyed gaze on Shouto.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. You’re fine. It’s all good”, he says, almost uncharacteristically placidly, and heaves out a long sigh. 

“Okay?”, Shouto agrees a bit tentatively, and at that Katsuki leans forward to place his hand on top of Shouto’s where it’s resting on the duvet.

His palm is smooth, and it takes everything in Shouto not to flip his own hand around and intertwine their fingers.

A bit belatedly he realises, that his other hand is still hooked up to a heart monitor, and his stomach almost drops out of his arse when he registers that the beeping has definitely picked up speed and become a bit unsteady.

Thankfully, in another stroke of incredible luck, the door to the hospital room bursts open in that moment, making Katsuki withdraw his hand like he’s been burnt, and a young doctor steps inside with Izuku following behind her.

“Todoroki-san”, she greets Shouto, smiling a little. “It’s good to see you up. My name is Dr. Yamaguchi. How are you feeling?”

“Pretty tired, but fine otherwise”, Shouto tells her, reciprocating the smile.

Dr. Yamaguchi nods contently and makes her way around the bed to carefully detach the heart monitor from Shouto’s hand. “Good. That’s good to hear. As your flatmates have already informed you, we are willing to discharge you into their care - as long as that’s alright with you.”

“Yes, please”, Shouto affirms immediately. “I’d like to go home.”

The doctor laughs a little at that. “Very understandable”, she says. “Now, as for your condition - your injuries have all been healed, and once you’ve slept off your exhaustion you can resume most of your day-to-day activities. We do, however, have to ground you from active hero work as well as physical exercise for the next two weeks. Recovery Girl has informed us that with injuries as severe and extensive as yours were, there’s typically still a significantly increased risk of recurring injury for about 10-12 days after the healing, so we want to make sure you’re back to 100% before you start doing physically taxing things again.”

Shouto blows out a frustrated little breath, but nods obediently. Most people would probably rejoice at the prospect of getting two weeks off work, but Shouto already knows he’ll likely get super antsy when everyone else is allowed to go outside and be a hero every day while he’s essentially benched.

He’ll get through it, though.

“Understood”, he says, and the doctor offers him a sympathetic smile before clapping her hands and turning to address Izuku and Katsuki.

“Alright, shall we go take care of the paperwork then?”, she asks.

Izuku nods, and Katsuki gets up from his chair.

“Here, I brought a change of clothes”, Izuku says then, producing a small gym bag and a pair of trainers from underneath his chair and setting them down by Shouto’s side. “Oh, and I have your phone. You, uh, should probably call Da- Touya. Apparently he was watching the livestream of the fight, and after you were injured, Hawks called me to find out what was going on with you. They were on speakerphone, and your brother made a few very thinly veiled threats of incinerating me if I don’t keep him updated on your condition.”

He huffs a half-nervous, half-amused laugh as he hands Shouto his phone, and Shouto lets out a little snort at that.

“Don’t worry about the threats, he’s sworn off homicide”, he says drily, which, in turn, draws a snort from Katsuki, who’s already standing by the door with Dr. Yamaguchi.

“But I’ll vouch for you”, Shouto adds then, placatingly, and Izuku gives a genuine laugh at that.

“Thanks”, he says, heading over to the door. “We’ll be back in a bit.”

Shouto offers his friends and the doctor what he hopes is a reassuring nod, before they disappear through the door and he finds himself alone in his hospital room.

He blows out a breath, gathering his energy, and shifts to sit on the edge of the bed, his bare legs dangling in the air underneath his hospital gown. For a moment, he bends forward to inspect his right leg and finds a couple of new scars littering his knee, shin and calf, but other than that it doesn’t really look any different than before. He carefully traces his fingers along the edges of some of the bright pink hypertrophic slashes before leaning down to unzip the gym bag.

Inside he finds a pair of boxers, socks, sweatpants and his softest hoodie, which makes him smile a little as he sets the clothes down beside himself on the bed.

Before getting to work on changing, he unlocks his phone and searches up Touya’s contact. He sets the call to speakerphone and places the device on the pillow, then starts shrugging out of his hospital gown as he waits for his brother to pick up.

Unsurprisingly - given the fiery threats he made to Izuku - Touya answers the phone almost immediately.

“Shouto?” , he asks, and his voice sounds a bit strained, even through the tinny speaker.

“Yeah, it’s me. I’m fine”, Shouto assures him quickly as he pulls on his socks.

“Thank fuck”, Touya says, breathing out a heavy sigh of relief, and the knowledge that his brother was clearly so worried about him makes Shouto’s heart clench a little in his chest.

“What happened? I mean, Deku already texted when that nurse from your school healed you, but fucking hell. We were watching the livestream, and that whole incident looked awful.”

Shouto takes a second to pull his hoodie over his head before he responds. The feeling of the soft cozy material against his skin almost makes him fall asleep right there and then.

“Bit of a freak accident, honestly”, he mumbles around a yawn. “I had to dodge the debris, but I wasn’t fast enough and kinda dodged in the wrong direction. I’m okay now, though”, he emphasises again, because something tells him that his brother might need the reassurance.

“I’m grounded from work for two weeks, though”, he adds a bit dejectedly, wiggling into his sweatpants while he’s still sitting on the bed.

Touya lets out a snort on the other end of the line. “Don’t get too excited about it. They might think you hate your job”, he teases, and Shouto huffs a laugh, albeit a tired one.

“You still at the hospital?”, Touya asks then before seemingly turning away from his phone to give his muffled ascent to making tea to someone in the room. Shouto is pretty sure he can make out Hawks’ voice debating himself about the difficult choice between green and black tea in the background.

“Yeah, but they’re about to discharge me. Izuku and Katsuki are off signing the paperwork right now, and I’m getting dressed”, Shouto explains, yawning again as he slips his feet into his trainers and laces them up loosely.

Touya hums through the speaker. “Good, good. Listen, I can tell you’re tired - and honestly, who wouldn’t be after that kind of fuckery? - so I don’t wanna keep you any longer”, he says, clearing his throat a little. “I, uh, I’m glad you’re okay, kid. Don’t do shit like that again, okay?”

“Okay”, Shouto promises obediently, knowing fully well that it’s pretty much an expected occupational hazard for him.

“Good”, Touya says again, seemingly satisfied, even though he must surely know, too, that Shouto can’t actually realistically promise anything like that. “Give me a call or shoot me a text or whatever when you’re feeling better again.”

“I will”, Shouto says, and, well, at least that he can genuinely promise. “I could also come visit you in a few days? I mean, I’m probably gonna need some time on the couch first, but after that I’ll still have loads of time to kill”, he muses, and Touya barks a laugh at that.

“Glad to know I’m worthy enough to be your off-work entertainment”, he says sarcastically, and it makes Shouto huff out his own small laugh. “Sounds good, though. Let me know when you’re rested up. See you soon, little bro!”

“Yeah, see you soon, nii-san”, Shouto replies, smiling at his phone as the call disconnects.

He pockets the device, and for a moment, he just sits on the edge of the bed in silence. There are distant muffled sounds coming from outside the room, but they’re soft and low, and within seconds Shouto finds himself on the verge of nodding off right there and then. He quickly shakes his head and rubs his eyes, forcing himself to resist the oh-so-tempting lull of deep slumber. In a desperate attempt to keep himself awake, he pulls his phone out again and starts scrolling through his social media apps a bit mindlessly, just to give himself something to do, something to keep his brain engaged enough, until his friends finish up their paperwork and they can finally head home.

Thankfully, he doesn’t have to wait much longer, and soon he finds himself sandwiched between Izuku and Katsuki and being ushered into the underground car park of the hospital. The three of them quickly make their way to Katsuki’s car, and pretty much the very second Shouto is belted up in the backseat, he finally gives into the pull of sleep and dozes off, the side of his head resting against the cool window.

His brain doesn’t register much from the drive back home to their flat, and the next time he’s actually somewhat aware of where he is and what he’s doing, he’s kicking off his shoes in the genkan before sleepily traipsing into the living room and planting face first onto the couch. The moment his tired body hits the cushions, he’s out like a light.

When he comes to again some time later, his cheek is resting against something warm and much softer than the coarse fabric of the couch, and there are gentle fingers carding through his hair. Something warm and fluffy is resting against his chest, and the soft material under his nose smells like Izuku’s favourite laundry detergent. It feels incredibly pleasant and relaxing - the warmth, the gentle scratches on his scalp, the comforting familiar scent surrounding him - and Shouto hazily wishes he could purr like a cat to make his satisfaction known.

He almost falls right back asleep, but unfortunately his bladder has different plans for him. His stomach is also grumbling lowly, and so he defeatedly blinks his eyes open, still heavy with lingering tiredness and sleep.

The living room is dark, spare for the colourful flickering from the muted TV. There’s an anime series playing that Shouto vaguely recognises, and as his consciousness slowly begins to clear up a little, he registers that the fluffy warmth by his chest is Shimo, who has apparently curled up to mirror his position and doze right along with him.

“Oh, you’re awake!”, Izuku’s voice comes softly from above him, and it’s only then that Shouto realises that the warm “pillow” underneath his head is actually Izuku’s sweatpants-clad lap, and Shouto has been nuzzling his face into the inner side of his friend’s thigh all this time.

In a wave of panic and embarrassment he shoots up into a sitting position - much to Shimo’s dismay, who meows at him disgruntledly at suddenly being jostled around like this - and Izuku’s hand falls from Shouto’s hair.

“Woah, are you okay?”, Izuku asks concernedly, and Shouto shifts around a little to sit up straighter on the couch, blinking himself out his sleepy haze and apologetically scratching his fingers through Shimo’s fluffy white fur.

“Yeah, sorry, just…needed a second to wake up properly”, he explains evasively, huffing a small laugh and turning to look at his friend.

Izuku is eyeing him with a note of concern, but there’s also a soft smile playing around his lips and he appears satisfied enough with Shouto’s answer.

“How are you feeling?”, he asks.

“Better”, Shouto says automatically, but quickly finds that he actually means it. “Still tired, but not like I’m literally gonna pass out any second anymore. I also have to pee and I’m hungry”, he adds, when his stomach grumbles loudly.

Izuku laughs at that. “Understandable - it’s like 10 PM already and you probably haven’t eaten anything since breakfast. Listen, why don’t you go to the bathroom and I get you some dinner? Kacchan made soba for you before he went to bed.”

Well, how could Shouto ever say no to that?

“That sounds great, thanks”, he says, smiling at his friend before frowning a little when he remembers how rattled Katsuki had seemed earlier. “How is he? Katsuki, I mean.”

Izuku contemplatively sways his head at that. “I think he’s okay now. He was pretty worried about you earlier - I mean, he did see it all happen in real time - but he seemed to relax a bit after we got home. He went to bed about an hour ago, I think he was really exhausted from the fight as well.”

“Hmm, I’m glad he’s doing better. He seemed a bit out of it at the hospital”, Shouto muses, still a bit concerned.

“To be fair, I think we’ve all had our fair share of not-so-pleasant hospital experiences, so being there probably didn’t exactly help”, Izuku points out sympathetically, and, well, he’s certainly right about that. Hospital stays and hospital visits are - to an extent - probably just another one of those occupational hazards of a pro hero, but Shouto is pretty sure that their little circle has been confronted with them a bit over-proportionally.

“Now. Dinner?”, Izuku says then, the soft smile from earlier returning to his face, and Shouto nods.

“Yes, please”, he says, carefully pushing himself up to his feet. His limbs still feel heavy, like he’s wearing a thick layer of soaking wet clothing, but thankfully Shouto is steady on his feet.

He quickly shuffles off to the bathroom while Izuku heads over to their open kitchen, and when Shouto returns he finds the table set with two plates of soba and various bowls with dipping sauce, onions and other toppings scattered between them.

“Haven’t you had dinner either?”, he asks a bit concernedly when he sits down on the chair opposite from Izuku.

“No, no, I have”, Izuku quickly assures him, flapping his hand about. “But, you know. Stressful day. Burns a lot of calories.”

Shouto huffs a genuine laugh at that and picks up his chopsticks. “Well then. Itadakimasu!”

As with all of Katsuki’s cooking, the food is absolutely delicious, and Shouto devours it like a starving man. Izuku fills the silence between bites with trivial chatter while Shimo is rubbing against Shouto’s legs under the table, and it fills Shouto with a deep sense of calm.

He doesn’t quite have the the energy to hold a proper conversation right now, still yawning around his chopsticks every now and then as he shovels his soba into his mouth, but he knows Izuku doesn’t mind, and it’s really nice to just sit and let his friend’s voice wash over him while he eats.

After dinner Shouto attempts to help Izuku clean up their dishes, but Izuku sternly shoos him away as he stacks the plates and bowls into the dishwasher, so Shouto goes to refill Shimo’s water bowl in the meantime. With his stomach comfortably full, his body is beginning to turn his sleepiness dial up significantly, though, so once he and Izuku have finished their respective tasks in the kitchen, he announces that he’s going to go to bed.

“Yeah, you probably should”, Izuku agrees with a chuckle as the two of them make their way down the hallway towards their respective bedrooms. “Good night, Shouto-kun. I’m glad you’re okay”, he says a bit more softly when they reach Shouto’s bedroom door and pulls him down into a tight hug.

Shouto goes easily, burying his nose into soft green hair and inhaling the fruity apple scent of his friend’s shampoo. Izuku’s arms around him are warm and firm, and it makes Shouto feel so safe. 

Izuku may be physically smaller than him, but his presence is always large and solid and comforting, and Shouto squeezes him a bit more tightly before they release each other again and Shouto disappears into his bedroom with a whispered “good night”.

He doesn’t really know how long he sleeps, but the next time he wakes up the winter sun is up high in the sky and streaming in unfiltered through the open curtains, painting Shouto’s bedroom in a soft golden glow. When he fell asleep last night, he was apparently so tired that he simply passed out lying on his back - a position he would normally never sleep in - and didn’t move a single centimetre overnight.

He blinks up at the ceiling a bit blearily, watching small pieces of dust dance in the beams of sunlight, and stretches out his limbs. The low-level ache that was still residing in his body last night is gone completely, although his right leg still feels a little bit tender, kind of like sore muscles after a workout except without the pain.

A bit embarrassed, Shouto notices that he’s still wearing his sweatpants and hoodie from yesterday as he sits up and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. Now that he doesn’t feel so terribly sleepy anymore, it also occurs to him that he hasn’t even showered since before the big fight, and when he twists his head to sniff at his armpit, he promptly wrinkles his nose.

Yeah, he could definitely use some freshening up.

He picks his phone up from the nightstand to check the time, but finds that his battery has died overnight, so he plugs it in before pushing himself up to his feet to return to the world of the living.

He quickly makes a trip to the bathroom to use the toilet and brush his teeth before heading to the living room to let whoever is at home know that he’s alive.

The sound of gritty alternative rock playing at a moderate volume makes its way to Shouto’s ears, and - unsurprisingly - he finds Katsuki lounging on the couch with a book in his lap and a cup of coffee in his hand.

“Morning, princess”, he greets Shouto when he spots him, and Shouto can’t help but smile a little at the nickname.

“Is it still morning?”, he wonders, shuffling over to the kitchen to grab a glass of water.

Katsuki hums a little. “Well, I guess it’s noon now”, he concedes a bit amusedly. “How are you feeling?”

“Waaaaay better”, Shouto tells him as he joins his friend in the living room again and sinks down on the armrest of the chair Shimo is currently occupying. He reaches out and scratches the cat’s head, receiving almost instant satisfied purring in response.

“How are you?”

“I’m good, shortcake”, Katsuki assures him, grinning a little, and Shouto notices that the bandage on his forehead has been replaced by a much smaller plaster. “Just needed a good night’s sleep - though probably not as much as you did.”

Shouto huffs out a laugh at that. “Yeah, I definitely needed that. Hey, um, thank you for cooking for me last night. It was really good.”

“Sure thing, Halfie”, Katsuki mumbles, quickly averting his eyes and taking a sip of his coffee. “The nerd sends his greetings, by the way. He left for work a while ago. I’m off today. Apparently they think I also need some time to recover or whatever.”

“Better safe than sorry”, Shouto says sagely, which draws a dry snort from Katsuki.

He thirstily gulps down the last few sips of his water before setting the empty glass down on the coffee table. As he leans forward, he catches another whiff of, well, himself and wrinkles his nose again.

“God, I need a shower”, he notes, covertly leaning away from Katsuki a little. They’ve certainly seen each other in much worse states than covered in one-day-old sweat, but here in their living room, under the rays of the midday sun, he still feels a little self-conscious about it.

“Yeah, uh, about that, shortcake”, Katsuki starts, clearing his throat a bit awkwardly. “You’re not allowed to shower without supervision until tomorrow. It was in the paperwork we had to sign at the hospital. Apparently they’re worried you’ll pass out and hit your head or something. I, uh, I can supervise you, though. If you still wanna shower today.”

He carefully avoids Shouto’s gaze while he says this, and Shouto swallows a bit drily.

Of course, this really shouldn’t be a big deal either - after all they have already shared countless communal baths and showers in their lives - but, again, the circumstances somehow make it feel a little different.

Still, Shouto kind of feels gross as hell, and there’s no way he’s waiting another whole day to take a shower.

He discretely takes a deep breath to steel himself. “I really don’t wanna wait until tomorrow. I feel disgusting”, he admits, pulling a bit of a face.

Katsuki huffs a small laugh at that, finally meeting Shouto’s eyes again. “Alright, go grab your stuff then, Halfie.”

Shouto swallows again and nods before quickly scurrying off to his bedroom to grab a fresh change of clothes.

When he makes his way to the bathroom, he finds Katsuki already sitting on a little stool in the corner, not facing the shower directly, but still keeping it within his field of vision.

“Just pretend I’m not here”, he says a bit stiffly, pulling his phone out of his pocket to keep himself busy. “If you suddenly feel weird or whatever, give me a shout, yeah?”

“Will do”, Shouto promises, setting his clothes aside and standing at the centre of the room a bit awkwardly for a moment before blowing out a breath and taking the plunge.

It really isn’t a big deal, after all.

It isn’t.

He quickly strips out of his dirty clothes, pointedly not looking in Katsuki’s direction, and gets in the shower. When the warm water finally hits Shouto’s skin, it feels like his entire body turns to mush, and he’s so overcome by the sudden relaxation that he briefly forgets himself and lets out a loud groan.

The choked off noise that reaches his ears from the corner of the room harshly snaps Shouto back to reality, and he’s hit by the sudden realisation how inappropriate that may have just sounded.

“Sorry, that wasn’t- I wasn’t- you know-“, he stammers awkwardly, feeling his face flush bright red, thermoregulating Quirk be damned.

“Please stop talking, Halfie. Do not finish that sentence. Just finish your fucking shower”, Katsuki cuts in hoarsely, and Shouto is deeply thankful that he’s facing the wall right now and Katsuki can’t see his face.

Feeling thoroughly flustered, he forces himself to redirect his attention to getting clean, squeezing a generous amount of shampoo into his palm before massaging it into his overgrown hair. Out of fear that he might start relaxing a little too much again, he keeps the rest of his shower as short as possible, focusing on washing himself from head to toe without any extra steps or lingering too long. Once he has finished rinsing the soap from his body, he quickly towels himself dry and pulls on his fresh sweatpants and sweatshirt.

Katsuki is still sitting on his stool in the corner and scrolling on his phone, but he seems pretty relaxed and unbothered again when he finally looks up at Shouto and asks “done?”.

Shouto nods, and together, the two of them make their way back to the living room. Katsuki sinks down onto the couch, picking his book back up, while Shouto shuffles over to the kitchen to make himself a quick late breakfast/early lunch and refill Shimo’s food bowl. He eats at the kitchen island, too lazy to carry everything over to the dining table, while Shimo devours his meal a few metres away from him, and once Shouto finishes, he briefly crouches down to pet the cat’s fluffy little head before heading back to the living room and plopping down next to his friend on the couch.

“Do you mind if I play Animal Crossing on the TV?”, he asks, picking up his controller from the coffee table where he left it lying around a few days ago.

Katsuki lets out a soft snort at that. “By all means, go ahead”, he says amusedly, and Shouto grins a little as he turns his Switch on before getting a little more comfortable on the couch, tucking his feet up beside him and leaning his head back. Katsuki is right beside him - not quite close enough to touch, but close enough for Shouto to feel the warmth radiating off of him against his cold side - and at some point Shimo joins them as well, hopping onto the couch and curling up by Shouto’s socked feet.

For a while, they just sit in comfortable silence, spare for the gentle music and sound effects from the game on the TV, as Katsuki reads and Shouto diligently de-weeds his island, until eventually Shouto hears the rustling of pages and sees Katsuki close and set his book aside from the corner of his eye.

“I’m really glad you’re okay, shortcake”, he says lowly after a moment, and Shouto lowers his controller onto his lap and twists around a little to look at him. 

Katsuki is staring straight ahead at a point somewhere near the TV and chewing on his bottom lip. With a quick glance down Shouto notes that his friend is also wringing his fingers in his lap, and the thought that Katsuki was this worried about him makes his heart clench painfully in his chest.

“I’m glad, too”, he says a bit awkwardly, because he’s not really sure what else he’s supposed to say in a situation like this. He eyes his friend tentatively for a moment before deciding to forgo the words altogether and leaning forward to pull him into a hug instead.

Katsuki goes surprisingly easily - in fact, he practically melts against Shouto as he winds his arms around Shouto’s waist. The position is a bit awkward, what with them sitting next to each other, but Katsuki is holding onto him tightly, and Shouto buries his face against the warm, slightly caramel-scented skin in the crook of his friend’s neck.

“You scared the hell out of me there”, Katsuki admits hoarsely by Shouto’s ear, and it makes Shouto tighten his hold a bit against the stab of pain that confession sends through his chest.

“I’m sorry”, he whispers, his lips accidentally brushing against Katsuki’s neck as he speaks, but Katsuki doesn’t seem to mind and simply mirrors Shouto’s position, nuzzling his face against Shouto’s shoulder, and Shouto dimly thinks that he’s quite glad they’re only doing this now after his shower.

For a moment, neither of them say anything. They just sit, slightly contorted, and cling to each other before detangling themselves and resuming their previous activities, except that now, they’re sitting so close together that their thighs are touching, and neither of them seems to want to move away.

They spend the rest of the afternoon lazing on the couch like this, until Izuku returns home from work, carrying a plastic bag of surprise takeout from their go-to ramen place, and the delicious scents lure the two of them to the dining table like hungry predators.

***

After recovering from the shock and subsequent panic of watching Shouto get injured so gravely on the battlefield, Touya’s mind hopped straight onto a dizzying merry-go-round of introspection and self-reflection, and it hasn’t made any moves to get off the damn thing again so far. Even two days later, his thoughts are still spinning round and round and round in circles, analysing the way he felt, the way he reacted, the way he has been dealing with it all since, and Touya feels a bit like he’s going to go mad with it.

Right now, he is stuck on his initial reaction to watching the whole thing happen on the livestream again.

How his mind went completely blank and his heart dropped straight out of his arse.

How he jumped to his feet, unthinkingly, ready to bolt out the door and personally burn that pseudo-Gigantomachia to a crisp.

How only Hawks’ firm, steadying grip on his shoulder managed to stop him and, eventually, get him to sit down again.

Touya’s very first reaction to watching his baby brother get hurt by a villain was an unconscious one. His body simply moved on its own.

Like a hero.

The implications of this particular realisation - that somewhere, deep down, he may have inherited his own set of heroic instincts after all - are nauseating enough on their own, but the absolutely violent protectiveness he suddenly felt for his little brother and the subsequent horror at the thought that something serious might’ve happened to him make Touya feel terribly off kilter.

After getting a handle on himself after his initial reaction and letting himself be pulled back down onto the couch by the bird, Touya quickly spiralled into vicious panic, pestering Hawks with wide pleading eyes to use the hero emergency contact network to get information about Shouto’s condition right the fuck now, until Hawks finally gave in and called Deku, who had just arrived on the scene by the time Shouto was being loaded into an ambulance.

Deku (who was clearly freaking out himself, but tried his damnest to keep up a calm professional facade on the call) informed them that Shouto was stable and not in life-threatening danger, but had sustained a severe leg injury they couldn’t give him any more precise information about for the time being.

In hindsight he feels a bit bad about it because Deku is Shouto’s friend and clearly very well-meaning, but Touya may or may not have made use of the fact, that the bird had set the call to speakerphone, to hurl a few colourful threats of cremation at the kid, lest he forget to call or text with updates about Shouto’s condition as soon as he got them.

Hawks stayed with Touya long past his usual two hour surveillance shift, pretty obviously trying to exude the calming presence of a hero and alternating between trying to distract Touya and talking him down whenever his panic began to spike again, but Touya could tell that the bird was worried, too, and anxiously awaiting the updates just like him.

When Deku finally texted Hawks to let them know that the UA school nurse had healed Shouto’s injuries and they’re just now waiting for him to wake up, Touya actually had to bite back a sob of relief and discreetly wipe a few bloody tears from his cheeks that had begun leaking from the seams under his eyes at the good news. The bird graciously pretended to be too busy texting the green-haired kid back to notice, and Touya let out a long shaky breath once he was certain he wouldn’t actually start sobbing the moment he opened his mouth. And when the kid finally called him to reassure him that he was alright, Touya finally felt the weight on his shoulders lift and the panicked sizzling in his damaged nerves dissipate into thin air.

The realisation that Touya has come to care this deeply for his little brother - the brother he once hated for reasons that weren’t even his fault, the brother he once meant to kill - is a genuinely terrifying one to him.

It’s not exactly news, of course, because he’s obviously come to care for the kid on some level over the course of the past seven years, but he wasn’t quite aware of how deep that affection actually ran, and the idea of caring so deeply about people kind of scares him.

Caring so deeply means you’re more vulnerable - it means that, when something bad happens to that person, it genuinely feels earth-shattering and it’s completely beyond your control. It hurts, and it’s deeply frightening to know that the universe holds the power to rip you open like this.

To make you spiral and panic.

To activate instincts in yourself, you never even thought you had.

Mentally replaying the way Touya’s body moved on its own with the urge to save and protect his baby brother (“just like a hero”, a small voice at the back of his mind keeps reminding him) over and over again eventually makes him think of his mother and the way she blindly ran out onto the battlefield during the final war to stop him.

To save him.

Touya has no illusions about how his position back then was nowhere near comparable to the position Shouto was in the other day, but it makes him wonder whether his mother felt similarly at the time.

Whether she was also simply overcome with the uncontrollable need to save and protect the son she loved, no matter the cost or consequences. 

He thinks that maybe, probably, she did feel similarly at the time. And now, that he has gotten his own taste of what that must’ve been like, he feels like he understands her a bit better.

There’s a newly found sympathy he feels when he thinks of his mother and the things she must’ve gone through, just because she cared so deeply for her son, loved him unconditionally even when he was nothing but an empty shell of a person, a mass murderer with nothing but revenge and suicide on his mind.

It really makes him want to call her.

Give their relationship a chance.

And so here he is right now, pacing up and down his living room with his phone in his hand and trying to psych himself up into actually opening his mother’s contact and clicking on the “call” button.

It feels like the longer he waits and overthinks the less he knows what he’s even supposed to say to her.

Like, what the hell do you talk to your estranged mother about?

Rationally speaking, he should probably just stop thinking about it and make the call already. After all, it takes two people to have a conversation, and surely his mother will have a word or two to say to him as well.

If she even picks up. It’s not like Touya knows her usual daily schedule or anything, but he supposes a Friday afternoon is as good as any day.

He takes a few deep breaths, focusing on the way the air feels as it fills his lungs, the way his ribcage expands, and exhaling it again slowly and steadily to ground himself before taking the plunge and pressing that daunting “call” button.

He can’t quite help it, as he listens to the beeping and waits for his mother to answer, he continues pacing back and forth in his living room. He’s feeling way too antsy to sit down right now.

It takes quite a few moments; and Touya very nearly hangs up again when his mother finally picks up the call.

“Touya?”, she asks, her voice sounding surprised and breathless in Touya’s ear.

“Yeah, it’s me. Hello, mum”, he greets her a bit timidly, stopping his pacing altogether to stand frozen at the centre of the room. His heart is racing viciously in his chest, and he has to swallow a bit drily around the way his throat is suddenly constricting.

“Oh, Touya”, his mother gasps then, the sound all wet and wobbly, and Touya has to swallow again. He probably should’ve expected something like this, but he’s so not mentally prepared to comfort his crying mother over the phone, especially when the reason she is crying is him.

“I, um. How are you?”, he asks dumbly, grimacing at his own awkwardness.

His mother is literally crying.

What kind of fucking question is that?

“I’m, well, I’m quite well actually. I’m really happy you called me”, she tells him, clearly attempting to pull herself together, but still sniffling a little into the speaker. “How are you? Fuyumi says you’ve acclimatised to the new flat quite well.”

“I suppose I have”, Touya muses, scratching his nose a little, careful not to irritate his healing piercings. “It’s pretty nice to live in a normal home and have real privacy again. The food and entertainment are also much better than in prison”, he adds a bit drily, and that draws a small chuckle from his mother.

“I’m glad to hear that”, she says softly. “So you are cooking for yourself then? Are you eating well?”

Touya can’t help but scoff a bit exasperatedly at that. “Mum, I am 31 years old. Yes, I am cooking for myself, and yes, I am eating well.”

Well enough at least.

His mother chuckles again, this time a bit less timidly. “Just checking. It is part of my job after all”, she points out, and Touya thinks he can actually hear her smile a bit mischievously at that.

He supposes he should just humour her with this kind of stuff.

After all, the ability to actually take care of her children wasn’t taken from her voluntarily, back when she was institutionalised, and she surely must have a whole list worth of things she feels like she missed out on.

With his phone still pressed to his ear, Touya shuffles over to the couch and sinks down into the cushions, pulling his knees up to his chest.

“Well, rest assured that I am well-fed”, he says as kindly as he can muster, quickly switching his phone over to his prosthetic hand, so he can wrap his arm around his left leg and start fiddling with the bottom hem of his sweatpants.

“How have you been doing?”, he asks then, because he feels like he kind of should, even if this might end up being another one of those situations, where his mother starts walking on eggshells around him.

There’s a brief pause on the other end of the line before his mother speaks up again, tone careful but calm. “I’ve been doing quite well. Although Shouto’s injury the other day gave me a pretty big scare. I’m certainly no stranger to the risks that come with the pro hero job, but I still always worry about him”, she says. “He’s my baby, you know? All four of you are.”

Touya’s throat tightens a little at that, but he determinedly swallows past the lump. He simply refuses to get choked up on the phone with his mother. A big part of why he’s even doing this is because he wants to give her a bit of peace of mind, and getting all emotionally unhinged surely isn’t the way to go in order to do that.

“I was worried about him, too”, he admits quietly instead, because as terrifying as caring so deeply is, he knows this is something he can safely confess to his mother.

She would never use the information to hurt him, or Shouto for that matter.

“I was watching the livestream of the fight and saw it happen in real time.”

“Oh, that must’ve been awful!”, his mother exclaims softly. “I’m sorry you had to see that. I only found out when he was already being treated at the hospital. Did you…does he know you were worried about him?”, she wonders then, sounding a bit hesitant.

The question makes Touya huff out a slightly embarrassed laugh as he thinks about the death threats he made to Shouto’s friend, lest he forget to send timely updates about his brother’s condition.

“Yeah, he knows”, Touya confirms, and he briefly finds himself wondering what his baby brother might be up to right now, grounded from work and exercise.

“May I…I hope I’m not overstepping a boundary here”, his mother starts then, hastily adding the second part like a disclaimer, “but it makes me very happy to know that the two of you have grown so much closer. Both of you had rather rocky starts to life, and with your age difference and everything that was going on at home, I’ve always felt like the two of you were really denied the opportunity to just be brothers. I’m really glad you were given a second chance at that.”

And there it is again, that stupid lump in Touya’s throat. 

He stubbornly forces it down again, even as he feels something hot and wet ooze out from his under-eye seams and trickle down his cheeks.

Well, it’s not like anyone can actually see him right now, so he simply grabs a tissue from the box on the coffee table and wipes the bloody tears away as he forces his voice to remain steady when he admits, “I’m really glad, too.”

He sniffles a little - but not suspiciously so, he knows, because he learned to perfect the art of inconspicuously sniffling the hard way, many many years ago - as he balls the blood-stained tissue up in his hand before resuming his fidgeting with his sweatpants cuff.

He’s just about to open his mouth and ask another inconsequential question to steer himself away from this infuriating state of emotional vulnerability, when the sound of another voice suddenly reaches his ear through the tinny speaker on his phone, albeit a bit muffled.

A male voice.

A voice Touya would still recognise anywhere.

“Who’s that on the phone, Rei?”, Endeavour asks on the other end of the line.

The sound of his father’s voice makes a wave of nausea roll through Touya’s stomach. At this point it has been a few years since he last heard it, and despite knowing that his mother still lives with him, Touya wasn’t quite prepared to suddenly be confronted with it like this today.

During his first few months in Tartarus Endeavour came to visit him frequently - to talk to him, to atone, or whatever the hell he wanted - and at that time Touya was still such a mess, both physically and mentally, that he didn’t quite have the capacity left to actually feel any particular way about his father’s visits.

However, once his patchwork body started becoming more stable again and Touya was making progress in therapy after finally receiving his BPD diagnosis and the appropriate treatment for it, he actually began reflecting on Endeavour’s visits more, and both him and Dr. Nakayama came to the conclusion that being around his father really wasn’t doing any good for Touya’s mental health recovery. The love and attention he had once craved so desperately just came way too late - and now it was twisted and tainted, and all it did was hold Touya captive in old unhealthy thought patterns.

What was broken simply couldn’t be fixed anymore, but there were ways to move forward and fill that empty space with other things, things that wouldn’t keep Touya stuck in his old ways instead of allowing him to develop a new identity of his own, and so with Dr. Nakayama’s support and authority as a mental health professional he ended up cutting all contact with his father about two years into his prison sentence.

Endeavour most certainly was not happy about it, but with Dr. Nakayama signing off on it there was nothing he could do, and so Touya has not been in touch with his father ever since that last visit, nor has he heard his voice.

Until now.

“It’s, uh, it’s…um…”, Rei stammers on the phone, and, well, that just makes Touya even more nauseous.

“You can say it’s me. It’s okay”, he cuts in quickly. He may not like having this sort of indirect communication with his father, but at the end of the day he’s just on the other end of a phone line, and while Touya didn’t feel it was necessary five years ago, he knows he’d only have to say the word and Dr. Nakayama would make sure a restraining order against his father was issued pronto.

His personal discomfort does not measure up to the fact that his mother actually has to live with the guy - even if voluntarily - and he really doesn’t want her to end up in some sort of bad situation, just because she lied for his sake.

“It’s Touya”, his mother says then hesitantly, her voice sounding a bit distant and muffled, like she has turned her head away from the phone.

Touya is torn between straining to hear his father’s reaction and purposely trying to blend it out, but ultimately morbid curiosity wins and he keeps his attention on whatever is happening on the other end of the line.

“Oh”, Endeavour says eloquently after a brief pause. “How is he doing?”

“I’m sorry, Enji, but I am not going to play messenger between the two of you and disrespect Touya’s wishes like that. I’m going to finish this call on the patio”, Rei replies, not unkindly but definitely firmly, and it makes Touya’s heart constrict a little. He really didn’t want to put his mother in a difficult spot like this, and yet here she is, sticking up for him and standing her ground against his father.

“Mum-“, he starts, not entirely sure what he even wants to say, but his mother cuts him off before he can even start contemplating it.

“It’s alright”, she says gently. “You have every reason not to want to be in touch with him. I’m sorry you had to overhear that.”

In the background Touya thinks he can hear the sound of a patio door sliding shut, and his mind conjures up an image of his mother, with her white hair and cold resistance, standing outside in the beautifully glistening snow as she presses her phone to her ear, and for some reason, just for a brief second, it kind of makes him wish he could be there with her in person.

White hair and cold resistance.

The thought is a fleeting one, though, as another part of his mind rudely reminds him of his father’s presence inside that house, and Touya can’t help but scrunch up his nose in distaste.

“I’m sorry I put you in that spot”, he says a bit grimly, unable to stop his brain from flooding with all sorts of thoughts about what life with Endeavour might be like for his mother.

It makes him angry is what it does.

This young woman who was bought by this rich powerful man, just so that he could use her genes and her womb to try breeding himself a “perfect” child.

This woman who was coerced into having more children, even though she didn’t want to after the first ones turned out to be “failures”.

This woman who was verbally and physically abused by this man, until he sent her off to a mental health institution.

Touya simply cannot wrap his mind around why his mother would still choose to stay with the man who did all this to her, even after everything that happened, and it makes him want to tear out his own hair.

Is she trying to punish herself? Is it some sort of Stockholm syndrome? Is there some other completely unfathomable reason?

Thinking about it, trying to figure out what is going on inside his mother’s head, drives Touya mad every single time, and the fact that his mother can clearly see and understand why some of her kids don’t want to be in touch with Endeavour makes it even worse.

“You know you have every reason not to want to be in touch with him, too, right?”, Touya asks pointedly before he can stop himself. There’s something hot and rabid bubbling in his chest, and it’s beginning to spill over.

“Oh, Touya”, his mother sighs, sounding almost dejected. “It’s just not that simple for me.”

“How is it not?!”, Touya questions incredulously, sitting up a bit straighter on the couch as that - what is it, righteous anger? - in his chest bursts out of him. “Surely you must know that everything he did to you was wrong?!”

His mother sighs again, and it’s a long heavy sound, a sound that carries a lifetime of adversity in its waves. “I do know that. I know he made a lot of mistakes, not just with you children but with me as well. But I made mistakes, too, with you kids in particular, and I was still given a second chance.”

“Mum!”, Touya exclaims, scandalised. “Whatever mistakes you think you made with us do not compare to the mistakes he made! He hurt you! In multiple ways! Repeatedly!”

He is getting so agitated now that he jumps up to his feet and starts pacing up and down the living room again, just to get rid of some of that oppressive energy sizzling in his chest.

“Touya”, his mother says, a bit sadly and almost infuriatingly calmly. “I hurt you kids, too. I wasn’t there for you, when you needed me. The most horrifying thing happened to you, and I wasn’t there to stop it. I unloaded so many of my responsibilities on Fuyumi and Natsuo. I burnt Shouto’s face-“

“Stop!”, Touya cuts in at that, perhaps a bit more harshly than he intended. “I know I can’t speak for Shouto, but I know damn well that he doesn’t blame you for that. And I also know that he would hate to hear that you are punishing yourself for it by staying with Endeavour, even if he would probably be too polite or considerate or whatever to actually say it. But, well, I’m not!”

He damn near shouts the last part, and it instantly fills him with thick ugly clumps of guilt and shame, the feelings sloshing heavily in his blood and constricting his throat. Not quite knowing what to do with himself, he sinks down on the floor right where he is standing and hugs his legs to his chest, resting his forehead on his knees as he takes a few deep breaths to reign in his temper.

“I’m sorry”, he finally says, and his voice sounds pathetically wobbly. He swallows thickly. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“I’m sorry, too”, his mother says, her tone impossibly kind - way too kind, a kindness he most certainly doesn’t deserve. “I shouldn’t have unloaded all these things onto you. I know this entire topic is a very difficult and touchy one for you, and I should’ve been more mindful of that.”

And, god, Touya hates that.

It’s true, of course - this is a very difficult and touchy subject for him, case in point, but he fucking hates that it is.

He fucking hates that his mother has to walk on eggshells around him like this to avoid upsetting him, and he fucking hates how every time they make a little bit of progress in their relationship with each other this kind of stuff sets them right back to square one.

And he doesn’t really see a way around it either.

Because as long as his mother continues to live with Endeavour and be his goddamn caretaker, Touya will feel deeply outraged on her behalf, and somehow the topic will always come up one way or another.

Touya has spent hours upon hours poring over this particular issue with Dr. Nakayama, but, ultimately, he can’t just stop feeling the way he does about the situation, and the alternative would be to stop caring about his mother altogether, and he really doesn’t want to try doing that either.

At the end of the day, the two of them will always remain stuck in this sort of limbo, and whatever tentative relationship they manage to build with each other will forever be limited to this tiny carved out space of safe, trivial conversations - and even those often turn awry.

“I’m sorry for making this so difficult”, Touya says quietly, hugging his legs a bit tighter, as if curling in on himself like this could keep his sensitive temper locked safely inside. “I think…maybe I wasn’t quite ready for this yet.”

The admission is merely a whisper, feelings of embarrassment and shame for being so weak and unstable curdling throughout his body, making him feel heavy and sluggish and rooted to his spot on the floor.

On the other end of the line his mother sniffles a little, but she soldiers on bravely. (Much more bravely than Touya, he thinks.)

“It’s okay”, she soothes, and if she were there in person Touya imagines she would probably run a gentle hand over his hair.

The thought almost makes him burst into bloody tears on the spot.

“We can take it slow and do this all at your own pace. I’m really happy that you called me and I will always be happy to hear from you, but I don’t want to upset you or put you in a position you are not comfortable with.”

For a lack of better options, Touya sinks his teeth into his sweatpants-clad knee to literally bite back a sob at that.

“Thank you for understanding”, he rasps out once he has swallowed the metaphorical tears right back down.

“Of course”, his mother says kindly, a smile vibrating in her voice. “Are you going to be alright on your own now?”

Touya nods against his knees until he remembers that she can’t actually see him. “Yeah, I’ll be fine”, he assures hoarsely. “Will you?”

At that his mother lets out a small chuckle. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me. Take care, alright? I’ll always be here for you, if you need me to”, she promises, and Touya can tell that she really means it. “I love you.”

Fuck, he doesn’t know if he can actually say that back right now. It’s all a bit too much, and he feels like his body is practically buzzing with the utter pandemonium of emotions currently swirling around inside of him.

“Yeah, you too”, he finally opts to say, cringing at how socially inept he’s sounding but entirely unable to offer anything beyond that in this moment. “See you, mum. Take care.”

When he finally ends the call, he carelessly lets his phone clatter to the floor beside him and wraps his prosthetic arm around his legs as well, hugging himself tightly even as the mechanical device digs uncomfortably into his delicate shinbones.

The lump in his throat that he stubbornly swallowed back down so many times during this call rises right back up, and this time Touya doesn’t bite back the sob. Here in the sanctuary of his own flat, where he sits curled up on the living room floor, there is no one there to witness it, so why should he hold back?

The first sob spills out of him like a broken gasp, slightly muffled by the way his face is still pressed against his knees, and then the floodgates are open and the sobs begin pouring out of him in earnest, wracking his curled up body and ripping the breath out of his lungs.

Thick hot tears of blood are oozing out from the seams under his eyes and soaking his sweatpants, staining the grey fabric deep red, but Touya is way too consumed by the emotional train wreck in his heart to care.

He feels so fucking miserable.

His righteous anger mixes with raging frustration, shameful self-hatred and a deep-seated violent sadness about the fact that he even feels like this at all, and he cries for all of it.

Cries until his sweatpants are soaked with blood and snot, cries until his eyes and seams are burning with the fiery pain of bleeding tears, cries until his lungs are aching and his body is shaking and his head is throbbing.

Until there are no more bloody tears, no more sobs left in him, and he just continues sitting there on the floor, silent save for his ragged breathing, feeling strangely empty.

Not good or bad.

Just empty.

He doesn’t know how long he stays there. The sun has long set and he can’t be bothered to check the time on his phone, but eventually his exhaustion from the day overcomes him so badly he nearly nods off right there and then, so he gathers all his remaining strength and pushes himself up to his feet.

Muscles he didn’t even know he had protest vehemently as he shuffles out of the living room and over to the kitchen to drain an entire half-litre bottle of water in one go, the cool wet liquid soothing his parched tongue and raw throat, before making his way to the bathroom to haphazardly brush his teeth and soak his blood-stained clothes in cold water.

Once he makes it to his bedroom, he doesn’t even bother with pyjamas; instead he simply removes his prosthesis and sets it aside before crawling under the covers in his boxers and curling up in foetal position, his arm wrapped protectively around his chest.

The sheets are soft and cool against his skin, and it barely takes a minute until Touya drifts off into deep, dreamless sleep.

Chapter Text

Izuku’s hands are all over Shouto. His calloused palms feel warm and firm as they glide over the expanse of Shouto’s naked back, leaving goosebumps in their wake.

Shouto is lying on top of Izuku, their bare chests pressed together, hot skin against hot skin, and he is tracing a trail of kisses along Izuku’s slightly stubbled jaw. The sensation is utterly intoxicating, and Shouto is already rock hard in his underwear, his aching cock begging for friction, so he grinds down against Izuku’s crotch, an electric spark of arousal shooting through his core, and-

Blearily blinks his eyes open against the morning sunlight shining into his bedroom.

He’s lying on his stomach, half of his face smushed against his pillow, and sporting the morning wood of the century in his boxers.

He promptly grimaces in embarrassment and buries his face into his pillow to muffle a groan when it dawns on him, that he must’ve been humping his mattress in his sleep like a dog while dreaming about his best friend.

It’s kind of humiliating, even in the solitude of his bedroom, and Shouto mentally curses himself for feeling the way he does about Izuku and Katsuki for what’s probably the one hundred millionth time. It’s just so frustrating to hold so much attraction and affection in his body that he could literally burst while having absolutely no outlet for any of it, and it fucking hurts to know that likely none of it will ever be reciprocated the way he wishes it were.

Still, that stupid boner probably won’t go away on its own any time soon, and that dream felt so thrillingly real, the memory of it still fresh on Shouto’s mind, that he decides to allow himself to indulge, even if it’s just for a few moments.

With a sigh, he shifts onto his side and blindly fumbles for the tissue box on his nightstand before unceremoniously pulling his dick out of his boxers and beginning to stroke himself.

He replays the way Izuku’s hands felt on him in his dream, the scrape of his friend’s unshaved jaw against his skin, as he pumps his fist, pretending it’s really Izuku’s fingers wrapped around him.

Unsurprisingly, Shouto is already ridiculously close after humping himself near-orgasm in his sleep, and his arousal is throbbing hotly at his core as he wraps a few tissues over the head of his cock before giving himself a last few tugs and finally falling over the edge, Izuku’s name tumbling from his lips in a noiseless gasp.

The tissues catch the evidence of his moment of weakness, and he quickly chucks them across the room and into the bin, before wrapping his arms around his chest and closing his eyes as he catches his breath.

Whenever he allows himself to fantasise like this, the buzz of the initial gratification and hormonal euphoria ends up being replaced by a dull hazy sadness in his heart as soon as he comes back to himself, and for a moment he just lies there in his bed, hugging himself tightly as if he could simply squash the ball of sadness in his chest like this.

At the end of the day it’s pointless, though, and moping around and feeling sorry for himself isn’t going to do him any good either, so Shouto finally heaves out a sigh and throws his duvet back to leave the miserable little cocoon of his bed.

It’s a Saturday, and with Izuku and Katsuki both back at work, Shouto has the flat (almost) all to himself. When he sleepily shuffles into the kitchen, he is greeted by Shimo, who meows at him pointedly as if to say “pull yourself together already” and starts rubbing himself against his leg.

Shouto crouches down to give the cat a few head scratches (which earns him a bout of satisfied purring from the little fluff ball), before whipping himself up a lazy breakfast and settling down on the couch to eat. Shimo curls up by his side and dozes off almost immediately while Shouto devours his meal and watches the morning sun dance across the snow-covered rooftops outside.

He’s only been grounded from work for a few days, but he’s kind of already going mad with it.

It’s not that he doesn’t know what to do with himself - his neighbours on his Animal Crossing island have probably seen more of him these past few days than they normally do in a month, and his list of books to read and shows to watch is still ridiculously long - but being cooped up all day and not being allowed to engage in any kind of strenuous activity has him feeling antsy as hell with all his excess energy, and the fact that he’s feeling perfectly fit physically makes it even harder to cope.

Of course, he is eternally grateful that his injury was fully healed and he’s not in any kind of pain, but at the same time he thinks being benched would probably be a bit easier to accept if his leg was still hurting.

He takes his sweet time to finish his breakfast, because it’s not like he has anywhere to go, before heading to the bathroom to brush his teeth and shower. (Which he is thankfully allowed to do without supervision again now.) He even puts on a hair mask and diligently moisturises his entire body after towelling himself dry - something he usually can’t really be bothered to do, even though he probably really should. With his towel loosely wrapped around his hips he carefully applies some scar cream around his eye and sprays a hearty dose of antiseptic onto his healing ear piercings before making his way to his bedroom to get dressed.

Out of boredom he tries on about five different variations of what’s basically the same outfit and experiments a little with clipping and tying his hair back in different ways after using his Quirk to dry it. It has really gotten quite long, but Shouto still can’t decide whether he wants to commit to fully growing it out or cut it short again.

He likes the look of it, but he’s not sure if he really wants to deal with the extra hassle of caring for long hair.

Freshly washed and dried, the overgrown strands are quite fluffy, and when he turns his head sideways to hide the red half, the reflection in his bedroom mirror looks a bit like Touya, now that Shouto is older and his bone structure has become sharper.

The realisation makes him smile a little, and he decides that even if he’s still grounded from work, he feels more than fit enough to go visit his brother, so he fishes his phone from his nightstand and sends him a text, essentially inviting himself over for tomorrow.

He really doesn’t think Touya will mind.

After setting his phone down again, Shouto gets to work on folding all the clothes he tried on, opting to pull on a pair of sweatpants and a simple sweatshirt instead. If he’s just going to be lounging on the couch all day again, there’s really no need for him to bother with jeans or fancy shirts after all.

Just as he finishes putting the last pair of jeans back in its respective drawer, Shouto’s phone suddenly starts ringing from his bed, and for a moment he thinks it’s his brother, but when he picks up the device and checks the caller ID, he finds that it’s actually Momo.

“Hello?”, he answers the call on speakerphone, grabbing his charger before making his way to the living room to sit down on the couch and plug his phone into the outlet beside it.

“Hello, Shouto-kun! How are you doing?”, Momo greets him, the smile evident in her voice.

Shouto smiles back a little, even though his friend can’t actually see him. “I’m good, thanks. Pretty bored, but I suppose it could be much worse”, he says a bit drily, and Momo tsks at him on the other end of the line. 

“How are you?”, he asks then, pulling his feet up to sit cross-legged on the cushion.

“I’m glad to hear you’re doing well. Thank god Recovery Girl was able to heal you - I saw the footage of your fight against that gigantic villain, and it was pretty tough to watch”, Momo rambles a bit breathlessly, and with the sheer number of people who have told him how bad the accident looked by now, Shouto is almost tempted to search the footage up on the internet to see for himself, but something tells him he probably shouldn’t do that to himself.

“I’m doing well, too, although I’ve been a bit stressed lately”, his friend says then, huffing out a slightly shaky laugh. “That’s actually kind of why I’m calling.”

Shouto perks up at that. “Oh? What’s going on?”

Momo sighs a little, seemingly rustling around a few papers in the background before she speaks up. “Well, Iida-kun and I have been chasing a very elusive villain for the past few weeks, and we’re kind of beginning to reach a dead end. We only even realised that we were probably after the same person when we talked about it at the Winter Ball the other week. Basically, for the past few weeks an unusually large amount of people have been found frozen to death all over the city, and at first we assumed it was simply due to the cold weather, but their autopsies revealed that they were shock-frozen, likely within a matter of seconds, so we began investigating the matter”, she explains, and Shouto chews on his bottom lip as he listens attentively.

“No one has managed to actually see our villain so far, not even Iida, but we’ve managed to inspect some relatively fresh crime scenes, and it seems like our suspect somehow rapidly freezes very small pockets of air down to deadly temperatures to kill the victims. Afterwards the cold air sort of dissipates, and I’ve spoken to some scientists at our agency who actually believe that the aftereffects of our villain’s Quirk might be the reason we’ve been experiencing such an exceptionally cold winter.”

Shouto hums a little as he contemplates that information. He has kind of been way too preoccupied with childishly enjoying the snow to seriously question the strangeness of the weather, but if put this way he definitely has to agree that the persistent cold is rather unusual for this part of the country.

“We’ve also found some footprints in the snow, which we’re somewhat certain belong to our suspect”, Momo continues, “and due to their size we’re currently leaning towards our villain being a man. Considering how fast they seem to be, we also suspect that we’re dealing with someone who is physically very fit and probably under the age of 60, but that’s really all the information we have to go on right now and we’re kind of beginning to run out of investigation angles.”

She blows out a frustrated breath, and Shouto deeply sympathises. He has worked a few cases in the past that took infuriatingly long to solve because there was so little information about the suspects, and he was always grateful when someone offered him an outsider’s perspective on the facts.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”, he asks, almost desperate for her to say yes - not just because he genuinely wants to help his friends, but also because he could really use having something a little more work-related to do while he’s still benched.

Momo chuckles at that. “I was hoping you’d offer”, she admits, sounding a bit amused. “I have been combing through the citizen databases, looking at people with frost-related Quirks since they’re not particularly common, but unfortunately none of them match our suspect, so we’re either dealing with someone whose Quirk isn’t registered or-“

“Or someone whose Quirk and personal details are classified”, Shouto blurts out as the gears in his head begin to turn.

“Exactly”, Momo agrees. “Frost and ice Quirks are pretty rare, and when I looked through the database I noticed that barely any members of the Himura family came up with the search results, even though they are probably the largest known clan of ice users in the country, so I searched for the name Himura specifically and turns out there are at least a dozen restricted Himura files I can’t access with my hero licence.”

“You want me to use my family privileges to request them?”, Shouto asks slowly, putting the puzzle pieces together in his head. He hasn’t really been confronted with this personally before, but he knows that under certain circumstances people are allowed to limit access to their personal files in the Quirk databases to specially authorised law enforcement and legal representatives as well as family members.

Given the overall mysterious nature of his mother’s side of the family, it doesn’t surprise Shouto at all that they’re seemingly also trying to keep up the secretiveness in the national Quirk registry.

“If that’s alright with you?”, Momo questions a bit tentatively, but she really needn’t worry.

“Of course”, Shouto assures her, scrambling off the couch to grab his laptop from where he left it lying on the dining table last night before sitting back down with the device in his lap.

“I hope they’ll accept me as a family member, though, since I don’t actually know any of those people. I’ve never even met my maternal grandparents”, he muses as he logs into the Quirk database with his pro hero identification number.

“As far as I'm aware the process is fully automated, and their algorithms simply run a check on your available ancestry data, so that should hopefully work”, Momo points out.

Shouto hums pensively while searching the database for the Himura files in question. As expected the system immediately alerts him to their classified nature, revealing nothing but the Himura surname about the people in them, and Shouto selects every single one he can find before clicking on the little “request access” button and entering his personal information and pro hero ID. He checks off the little “family member” box, quickly skims over the form again, and then finally hits “send”. 

“It says my information has been transmitted successfully, and that I will receive digital copies of the files within the next few hours, should my request pass the authorisation check”, Shouto informs Momo, setting the laptop down on the cushion beside him, so he can sit on the couch a bit more comfortably.

“Oh, you’re a lifesaver, Shouto-kun. Thank you!”, his friend tells him earnestly, relief evident in her voice, and Shouto smiles a little. It’s been years since he first started at UA and subsequently discovered the value of friendship, but to this day it still always makes him feel ridiculously warm and giddy inside when his friends express any kind of genuine appreciation for him.

“Happy to help”, he says, and he means every word of it.

“I’ll call you back, when I get the files”, he promises when Momo excuses herself to get back to work, and Shouto feels just a tad less antsy when they hang up.

Like he finally has some semblance of a purpose now, even if he’s still benched from his regular day job.

He quickly traipses over to the kitchen to grab a bag of crisps - because why the hell not? - before curling up on the couch again, Shimo on his left and his snacks and laptop on his right, to pay his virtual island another visit as he waits for the files to come through.

***

The morning after his phone call with his mother and subsequent crying session Touya wakes up with what can only be described as an emotional hangover. Everything feels kind of dull, but also strangely raw, and there’s still a gaping pit of emptiness in his heart, like he literally sobbed all his feelings right out of his body.

He kind of runs through his morning routine on autopilot and he knows he’s moving pretty lethargically, but he can’t find it in himself to care.

It’s not that he’s really upset about the call anymore. While the whole curling-up-on-the-floor-to-sob thing might still kind of be new territory to him, having meetings and conversations with his mother go awry because the topic of Endeavour somehow came up certainly isn’t, so he typically knows how to deal with the fallout of those, but he suspects that his miserable crying session has left him a little more raw and a little more tender than he usually feels after these sorts of events.

In all honesty, Touya isn’t sure he had ever even cried like that in his adult life before.

Seven years of therapy came with lots of bloody tears, and he certainly had his weepy moments during his time as a villain, but it was never like that. He really doesn’t think he could cry like that in front of another person or the security cameras in his prison cell, and allowing your vulnerability to rise up to the surface like that, while you’re living on the streets or in a building full of villains, would just be stupidly dangerous.

The last time he remembers crying like that ended with him very nearly burning himself to death.

It’s an unsettling realisation on one hand, bringing with it an entire storm of unpleasant memories, but on the other hand it feels oddly liberating to be able to replace that particular association with something a little less violent, a little less traumatising.

It makes the concept of letting yourself go that far in the first place seem just a tad less daunting and terrifying, Touya thinks as he sips on his morning coffee, the warmth of the drink slowly filling that emptiness at the centre of his chest a little.

By the time Hawks shows up for their usual morning spiel, Touya has nearly finished his coffee, and the tender parts of his soul have begun to mend themselves a little.

Still, the stupid bird with his stupidly impeccable perceptiveness doesn’t miss that Touya still feels a little off.

“Is something wrong?”, he asks a bit tentatively, frowning at him as they sit down next to each other on the couch, half-empty mugs in hand. “Is Shouto-kun okay?”

Touya blows out a small breath. “Shouto is fine, don’t worry, Birdie. He actually sent a text earlier saying he’ll come over tomorrow.”

Hawks looks somewhat reassured at that, but he’s still eyeing Touya inquisitively, and it kind of makes him feel like a leaf under the microscope of a 10-year-old kid in biology class.

“Are you okay?”, the bird asks then after a brief pause, his tone having gone just a tad softer, just a tad more quiet, and Touya simultaneously hates it and feels a little tug on his heartstrings at the sound of it. 

He doesn’t fucking need to be coddled, but perhaps a small part of him wants it anyway.

Not that he’d ever admit that out loud.

Touya’s first instinct, unsurprisingly, is to brush the hero off and tell him he’s fine, but seven years of therapy have indeed left their mark on him, and so, before he can open his mouth, a little voice at the back of his mind pipes up wondering whether he should take the opening Hawks is offering him and actually talk about his feelings.

It’s a strange and deeply unfamiliar urge to feel for Touya, who - despite being an intensely emotional person by nature - was forced to spend most of his teens and young adulthood bottling most of his feelings up somewhere deep inside where no one would be able to find them, even if they went digging, just for the sake of his personal safety.

But if therapy has taught him one thing, it’s that talking about your feelings helps you process and work through them, and he knows damn well that he won’t be able to actually fool the hero into believing that everything is fine and perfectly normal.

Hawks has already seen him freak out and panic when Shouto was injured, and the two of them will have to spend the next two hours together either way. Pretending that everything is fine when they both clearly know it’s a lie certainly isn’t going to make that time any more pleasant either.

So.

What the hell, right?

“I talked to my mother on the phone yesterday”, Touya finally admits a bit reluctantly, avoiding the hero’s eyes and not quite answering his question, but he figures this admission will do anyway.

“Oh”, Hawks replies a bit dumbly, and, well, Touya can’t really blame him, because that probably wasn’t exactly what the bird was expecting.

He sighs, setting his mug down on the coffee table and picking up one of his Switch controllers to start fiddling with the joystick on it. “I don’t have a particularly close relationship with my mother because we don’t quite see eye to eye when it comes to her…chosen living situation”, he elaborates a bit stiffly. “We’re not on bad terms and she’s very respectful of my feelings, but it still always makes our conversations awkward at best. It’s kinda difficult to talk to each other when one person is either always walking on eggshells or the other person will inevitably get…uh, upset whenever the topic comes up.”

“I see”, Hawks says slowly, sympathetically. “Forgive me for asking, but that ‘chosen living situation’ refers to her living with your father, right?”

Touya gives a single sharp nod. “He was there while we were on the phone yesterday”, he bites out grimly. “He asked my mother who she was talking to and I told her it’s fine to say it’s me because I didn’t want her to get in trouble, but god, I hated it.”

He is still refusing to look at Hawks, but he can feel the bird’s stare on him like two beams of heat. Part of him wants to risk a glance to the side, just to see what kind of expression the hero is wearing, but he doesn’t quite feel up to that right now, so he keeps his gaze aimed down at the controller in his hand, watching his own thumb move the little joystick back and forth and round and round.

“You know, I just don’t get it”, he continues then, and at the very bottom of the remaining pit of nothingness in his chest a few flames of familiar anger begin to flicker. Touya almost welcomes the fire with open arms, because that he knows how to deal with. His temper is like an old friend that has been by his side basically his whole life, and he knows how to handle it. Where the emptiness feels unsettling, his anger almost feels grounding.

“Everything he did to us kids aside, Endeavour has treated my mother horribly, and I just can’t wrap my fucking head around why the hell she would still choose to stay with him after all that and be his fucking caretaker. I mean, I know she’s doing it because she’s trying to punish herself for the mistakes she thinks she made with us kids, but I still can’t accept it, and it’s fucking ludicrous anyway.”

The flames have grown into a fully fledged fire by this point, burning wild and hot in Touya’s chest as he vents his anger and frustration, but the feeling is familiar and comforting, and he knows how to control it. It feels so much better than the hollowness from before.

“She knows that none of us blame her for what happened, and she also knows that we don’t like her choice to stay with our father, even if only some of us are willing to actually tell her that to her face. So why the fuck is she still doing this to herself?”

He sighs heavily, finally daring to glance over at Hawks and meet his gaze.

The hero is still staring at him, his golden eyes wide and warm but just as unreadable as the rest of his expression. Touya can’t for the life of him tell what the bird is thinking, and it’s not like he has actually bothered to say anything since Touya started word-vomiting onto him.

It makes Touya feel itchy and uncomfortable in his own skin, the feeling of revealing so much of yourself only to be met with nothing but an indecipherable stare. 

Perhaps he should’ve just kept his stupid mouth shut.

“What’s the matter, Birdie? Did I stun you into silence?”, he scoffs, raising an eyebrow at the hero. “Fuck, I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this. You practically worship my father after all-“

“I don’t”, Hawks cuts in sharply at that, finally, finally speaking up.

Touya blinks at him bewilderedly. “What?”, he asks dumbly.

The hero awkwardly clears his throat before he speaks up again. “I don’t worship your father. Not anymore at least”, he explains then, still sounding hoarse, and the expression on his face has shifted into something new.

Touya still can’t read it, but it looks…more intense.

“I’m not quite the person I was seven years ago anymore either, Touya”, Hawks says then, and it’s quiet but firm, so incredibly firm, and the way the hero steadily holds Touya’s gaze and uses his goddamn name - his real name - finally blows out the angry fire in his heart.

It leaves a pile of ashes, tendrils of smoke curling around it, but at least it doesn’t open up the empty pit again.

“What do you mean?”, Touya asks after a beat when he finally manages to find his voice again, unable to keep the tone of uncertainty out of it.

Hawks takes a deep breath, and from the corner of his eye Touya can see the hero’s ribcage expand under his questionably small t-shirt.

“I…I had a whole pile of things to work through in therapy myself”, the hero confesses a bit shakily. “After the war, I mean. There was a lot to unpack - losing my Quirk, leaving the HPSC and reflecting on the, uh, ways they fucked me up from a very young age when they started training me, and, finally, my feelings towards Endeavour.”

Touya gulps at the thought of little Hawks - Keigo, he thinks with a twinge of guilt - going through all sorts of hero, spy, double agent and whatever else training programmes at an even younger age than Touya was when he nearly burnt himself to death. He’s not familiar with the details of the HPSC’s training programmes, but it really doesn’t take much more than common sense to be able to paint yourself a picture that raises all kinds of ethical concerns.

He quickly sweeps the mental image away and looks at Hawks inquisitively to encourage him to keep talking.

The hero sighs, reaching up to fidget with one of the ruby-adorned studs in his earlobes.

“I…it was pretty difficult, I’m not gonna lie to you”, he admits, his cheeks flushing a bit pink in what Touya presumes is embarrassment.  “I know you know what my father was like, and back when your father arrested mine, I think he genuinely saved my life. Not just figuratively, but probably also literally because who knows what lengths my father would’ve ended up going to eventually.”

He lets out a humourless laugh at that, and it makes Touya wince. He sets his Switch controller aside lest he break it and opts to pull his leg up on the couch instead, tucking his foot under himself and beginning to trace abstract patterns on the inner side of his knee with his restless fingers, as he watches Hawks chew on his bottom lip for a moment before continuing.

“To me, Endeavour was the hero on TV who had actually become reality and walked into my life at the time I needed him the most. I was just a little kid, I knew nothing about the person behind the hero or his family, and so, of course, I began idolising him. When I started training with the HPSC, my goal was to become a hero just like Endeavour, and the sentiment never quite left me, even in young adulthood”, he explains, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his thighs and his chin on his folded hands, subsequently averting his gaze from Touya. “Hell, thinking about Endeavour and the fact that I wanted to become a hero like him was pretty much the one thing that kept me going whenever training with the HPSC got a little too tough to handle.”

He huffs out another dry laugh, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose between his fingers.

“When you…revealed your true identity and shared your story, it was really difficult for me to come to terms with all the things you said about your father. It genuinely made me feel sick to think about the fact that the man I had looked up to and idolised all these years, the man who had saved my life, was actually just another flavour of the type of man my own father was. I think trying to come to terms with that part of your revelation was probably the hardest part of recovery after the battle against the Paranormal Liberation Front.”

The reminder makes Touya wince again, and he sucks his scarred bottom lip between his teeth as familiar twinges of guilt about what he did to the hero during that battle rear their ugly heads in his stomach. Hurting people is shockingly easy when you’re too preoccupied with yourself and the vicious feelings eating away at you to spare a caring thought for anyone else, but once you’ve managed to carve out some space for empathy in your heart again and begin to see the people you’ve hurt as actual human beings with feelings and fears as complex and vivid as your own…

Boy, does it sting to have to live with the things you’ve done.

Touya kind of wants to say something, maybe utter another apology that won’t change a single thing that happened, but he wouldn’t even know where to start, so he keeps his teeth sunken into his lip and simply listens to Hawks as he continues his story.

“The thing is”, the hero says, breathing out a heavy sigh, “we were in such a high stress, high risk situation that really required all hands on deck at the time, what with All For One and Shigaraki and the rest of the League, and I felt like I really couldn’t afford to spiral and question my entire life and world view back then.”

He’s still avoiding Touya’s gaze, but Touya is watching the hero’s side profile and he sure as hell can recognise shame when he sees it.

It kind of makes his heart twist in his chest.

“I was also terrified of what could happen if I sabotaged my relationship with Endeavour while we were in the middle of all that”, Hawks confesses, his voice going a little more quiet. “We were the No. 1 and No. 2 heroes in the country and millions of people were relying on us to protect them. The UA kids - your brother, Deku and everyone - were so incredibly brave, shouldering all these responsibilities that never should’ve been theirs to carry in the first place, and I just felt like I had to be stronger than that. So I compartmentalised and made excuses for your father, because otherwise I don’t think I would’ve been able to continue working with him like before. And I’m still really ashamed of it because I feel like I - of all people - should’ve known better. I should’ve done better.”

The hero finally turns his head to look up at Touya again at that, and the gaze Hawks fixes him with is so intense Touya almost wants to shrink in on himself under the blazing fire in those golden eyes.

He feels strangely stripped bare, but he forces himself to meet the hero’s gaze head-on, even if not even his flames could compete with it.

“I was a coward and justified my behaviour by convincing myself it was all for the greater good”, Hawks states, and while Touya can tell by the way he wrings his fingers in his lap that this probably isn’t exactly easy for him to admit, the hero’s voice sounds firm and steady, like he stands behind every single word with the full magnitude of his self-confidence. “I know it’s probably too little too late now, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry I didn’t support you - and your siblings for that matter - the way I should have as someone who knows firsthand what it’s like to be abused by a parent. You weren’t right to hurt people the way you did because of it, but I should’ve been more sympathetic to your pain and what drove you to those extremes in the first place.”

He blows out a long noisy breath, like there was a physical weight pressing down on his chest and his words have finally released it, and Touya…

Is actually fucking speechless.

He’s pretty sure his mouth dropped open about halfway through that apology and he is now gaping at the bird like a fish out of the water.

“I…uh…”, he stammers eloquently, desperately trying to get his bearings and sort his swirling thoughts and feelings into a somewhat coherent order. “Thank you?”, he finally squeezes out, and it’s so hesitant and shaky, it sounds more like a question than a statement.

The thing is, he really never expected Hawks to apologise like this. Knowing about the hero’s childhood and seeing him continue to support Endeavour anyway, even after everything Touya had revealed about his father, had stung way more than he’d like to admit. After finding out that Hawks knew all too well what parental abuse felt like, a stupid little part of Touya’s jet black heart had vainly hoped that the hero would sympathise and reconsider his allegiances at the time, although in all fairness he probably really didn’t help his cause when he included footage of Hawks killing Twice in his broadcast.

Still, the belated sympathy and apology have really caught him off guard, and his thoughts are currently running at the speed of light.

Because if Hawks really doesn’t worship Endeavour anymore, then why the hell is he here?

Even after a few weeks and the two of them forming some sort of hesitant camaraderie, Touya still doesn’t fully believe that the bird only took this babysitter job because it’s stable, comfortable and well-paid, but with the old man out of the picture he can’t for the life of him think of another reason why Hawks may have committed to five whole years of playing his around-the-clock bodyguard.

“So why are you here then?”, Touya blurts out before he can stop himself, tilting his head as he stares at the hero quizzically.

Hawks frowns, shifting around on the cushion to face him properly, his knee briefly bumping against Touya’s. “What do you mean?”, he asks, kindly but clearly bemusedly. 

Well. No way back now.

Touya swallows a bit drily before answering. “The babysitter job”, he elaborates, reciprocating that golden stare, even if it still feels oddly intimidating. “I thought maybe it was because you were trying to impress my father or something, but that can’t be it if you don’t even like him anymore, so what is it? And don’t give me that ‘stable job’ crap, there’s no way that’s all there is”, he adds pointedly.

Hawks huffs out a small laugh at that before briefly nibbling on his lip as he appears to think about his answer. “Well, first off the ‘stable job crap’ was really part of it”, he finally says a bit amusedly before turning more contemplative again. “But I guess in a way it was also…closure? Coming to terms with everything that happened - my own past as well as yours, and how they kind of intertwine and mirror each other. In a strange way”, he muses, rubbing his jaw a little.

“Is that weird?”, he wonders then, offering Touya a slightly dorky smile.

It gives Touya pause.

Because Hawks is right - both their pasts are strangely intertwined through Endeavour, and yet they’re like polar opposites of each other.

Like the two sides of the same coin. Heads and tails.

It is a funky little thing to think about, and while Touya mostly only had to come to terms with his own past because Hawks’ past never really affected him personally beyond the hero’s allegiance with his father, Hawks’ entire life and world view were thoroughly rattled by the ugly truth of Touya’s past, and Touya supposes, in a way, he can understand the hero’s need to find closure and come to terms with all of it, even seven years later.

“It probably is a bit weird”, he tells the bird lightly, feeling the corners of his lips quirk a little, “but I get it. I think. I’m not sure if practically chaining yourself to me, of all people, for five whole years is really the best way to go about this, but I can follow your thought process.”

“You know, you really don’t need to sell yourself this short. I believe in the rehabilitation approach anyway, but you’re also genuinely not nearly as bad as you seem to think you are”, Hawks points out, smiling at Touya a little crookedly with a ridiculous glint in his honey eyes.

Touya raises an eyebrow at him. “You do remember I’m a convicted murderer, right?”, he deadpans, but Hawks, the absolute freak, just waves him off dismissively.

“You know I’ve killed people, too. Just because my murders were sanctioned by some higher judicial authorities doesn’t mean I’m better than you. I have unnecessarily taken lives, too”, he says matter-of-factly, and Touya is once again stunned into silence, because wow, he really isn’t the only one who has gone through a ginormous amount of mental growth over the past seven years, huh?

“Well, for what it’s worth, I guess you’re really not so bad yourself, Birdie”, Touya admits reluctantly, willing himself to hold the hero’s gaze and keep his blood from rushing violently into his face out of embarrassment.

The stupid bird - of course - offers him a full-on smirk at that. “Is that so?”, he asks faux-innocently, and Touya rolls his eyes at him.

“Don’t let it get to your head, pretty bird”, he scoffs half-heartedly, fixing the hero with a pointed look.

“What did you just call me?”

It’s only then that Touya realises his slip-up.

Fucking idiot.

One little heart-to-heart and his brain-to-mouth filter suddenly starts malfunctioning entirely?!

“Stupid bird”, he corrects hastily, praying to all the deities he doesn’t believe in that aforementioned stupid bird will just drop it and move on.

He doesn’t, of course.

“No, no, no, you called me something else”, he sing-songs, grinning cheekily, and Touya fucking hates him. Has he ever mentioned that?

“I called you a stupid bird, because that’s what you are”, he states stiltedly.

Hawks just continues smiling infuriatingly. “Weird”, he says faux-pensively. “I could’ve sworn you called me a pretty bird.”

“So?!”, Touya prompts defensively, glaring into those golden eyes with all the spite he can muster. “You fucking call me ‘hot stuff’.”

“I do”, the hero agrees lightly, shrugging casually and reciprocating Touya’s stare with more mischief than he ever thought a person’s eyes could possibly hold. “And you see how I stand by that?”

The unrestrained brazenness in the hero’s demeanour makes Touya feel a little woozy.

“You’re fucking insufferable.”

The stupid (stupid!) bird is still grinning at Touya, and his traitorous eyes can’t help but flicker down to those stupidly pink stretched out lips.

“Is that so?”, Hawks questions. His voice suddenly sounds just a tad lower, and as if summoned by Touya’s gaze on his mouth the tip of his tongue briefly darts out, wetting that plush bottom lip, and the inside of Touya’s mouth promptly turns into a desert.

He swallows thickly, forcing his eyes back up to meet the hero’s. “Yes”, he states, and he means for it to sound calm and assertive, but instead it comes out hoarse and breathy as he stares into dilated pupils that suddenly seem so much closer than they were just a moment ago.

Touya’s heart is drumming blast beats in his chest, and he’s suddenly hyper-aware of the way their knees are only centimetres apart, the way he can feel the body heat radiating off of Hawks even through their layers of clothing.

The hero chuckles softly, the warm puff of air ghosting over Touya’s lips, and it’s fucking dizzying and so frustrating.

“See, I don’t believe that. I don’t think you really find me that insufferable”, Hawks taunts, his voice nearly a whisper, as he leans in even closer, their faces merely a breath apart.

And Touya has had enough.

“Shut the fuck up”, he breathes, reaching up to cup the hero’s jaw with his left hand before pulling him in and crashing their lips together.

Hawks goes easily, his mouth slotting against Touya’s like he was just waiting for it (and perhaps he was), while his fingers make their way into Touya’s hair, gently tangling themselves with the wavy white strands.

The hero’s lips are warm and so, so soft, and he kisses Touya hungrily, sucking his bottom lip in between his own before darting his tongue out again to flick it along the seam of Touya’s lip, right where the scarred skin on the outside meets the healthy and hyper-sensitive skin on the inside.

Touya’s entire body promptly turns into jelly and he parts his lips on instinct, granting Hawks full access to his mouth as he slides his hand to the back of the hero’s neck to pull him even closer.

One of Hawks’ hands moves down to settle on Touya’s waist, his touch searing against Touya’s skin even through his hoodie as the other man’s tongue slips into his mouth, and Touya can’t help but groan a little into the kiss when he feels the hot wet slide of the hero’s tongue against his own.

The sensation is almost overwhelming - it has been very long since the last time Touya was this close to another human being, the last time anyone has touched him like this. He had almost forgotten what it felt like, and the sheer intensity of it makes his entire world tilt dizzyingly on its axis.

The hero tastes like coffee and something more undefinable underneath, something that’s just unmistakably him, and it’s utterly intoxicating.

Touya reciprocates the kiss ardently, licking into Hawks’ mouth like a sinner in search for salvation, and the hero wraps his hand around Touya’s waist a little more tightly before carefully lowering him backwards onto the couch, crawling after him and hovering his body just slightly above Touya’s.

“Is this okay?”, he whispers hotly against Touya’s lips.

“Yes”, Touya breathes into his mouth before wrapping his prosthetic arm around the hero’s ribs and pulling him down on top of himself. Hawks settles between Touya’s legs, and as their groins brush, a sharp spark of arousal shoots through Touya’s abdomen and straight into his hardening cock. He gasps at the sensation, and Hawks buries his face against the nape of Touya’s neck, muffling a groan against his skin.

Touya isn’t entirely sure how he’s supposed to use his prosthetic arm for this - hell, he isn’t even sure whether it feels particularly good to be touched with it - so he just leaves the mechanical hand resting against the hero’s spine while he runs his left hand along the expanse of Hawks’ shoulders and upper back, feeling the planes of muscle and two mild indentations - right where the hero’s wings used to be - through the thin layer of his t-shirt.

There’s a dull pressure wandering along the burnt skin on Touya’s neck, jaw and collarbones as Hawks seemingly kisses his way along all the exposed parts of Touya’s body and it’s nice, but it’s also a reminder that his body doesn’t quite work like it should, so he slides his hand up into the hero’s hair, gently scratching his scalp as he clears his throat a little.

“I, um. I can’t really feel that much there”, he says a bit awkwardly, and Hawks immediately lets up, lifting his head to meet Touya’s gaze.

The hero’s face is an absolute sight to behold - his lips are pink and kiss-swollen, his cheeks are flushed, and the gold of his irises has almost entirely made way for the black abysses of his widened pupils.

Touya dimly thinks he wouldn’t even mind falling into them.

“I’m sorry. Was that uncomfortable for you?”, Hawks asks, concern evident in his voice, and Touya quickly shakes his head, carding his fingers through the hero’s hair in what he hopes is a soothing gesture.

“No, I just can’t really feel light surface-level touches through my scars”, he admits, and he suddenly feels oddly embarrassed about it, even though he knows that’s kind of ridiculous.

It’s not like his scars are news to the hero.

Hawks furrows his brow a little before leaning up to press a soft kiss against Touya’s cheek, right next to his nose where his skin is healthy and his nerve endings are promptly set alight with the sensation.

“Where do you like to be touched?”, the hero asks then, looking at Touya attentively, and the earnestness in his expression is so much that Touya has to bury his own face against the side of the other man’s head for a moment to gather himself, inhaling the faint peach scent of his hair.

“Everywhere that’s unscarred”, he finally says a bit hoarsely, meeting the hero’s eyes again. “Like my chest.”

Hawks hums in understanding, smiling at him openly and tracing his fingers along the bottom hem of Touya’s hoodie. “May I?”

Touya nods, and Hawks pushes himself up a little, slipping his hands under Touya’s hoodie to strip him. Touya quickly tugs his arms out of his sleeves and helps the hero pull the hoodie over his head before carelessly discarding it somewhere beside them.

Obviously, this is far from the first time Hawks has seen Touya topless, but he still feels unexpectedly naked, lying spread out and exposed like this underneath the hero, and the nagging insecurities about his appearance threaten to rise up to his consciousness as Hawks sweeps his eyes across the expanse of Touya’s scarred chest and stomach.

“You know, you’re so hot, you drive me fucking mad whenever you casually take your shirt off in front of me”, the hero admits then, huffing out a small embarrassed laugh, and Touya promptly feels himself flush bright pink (probably all the way down to the healthy patches of skin of his chest) as he remembers his - apparently very misguided - assessments of Hawks being prude.

“Sorry”, he lies, cockily smirking at the hero until the bastard lowers himself down properly again, very deliberately grinding his crotch against Touya’s before placing a kiss at the centre of the unscarred patch of skin right above his sternum.

Touya would feel embarrassed about the way he moans loudly at the sudden friction against his dick, except he can feel that Hawks is just as hard as him in his trousers, and so he grinds his hips right back up, chasing the sensation, which makes the hero grunt roughly against Touya’s chest, the vibrations of it rumbling through his skin.

He smiles contently and buries his hand in Hawks’ hair again, feeling the soft blonde strands between his fingers as the hero begins to leave a trail of feathery kisses along the unscarred skin on Touya’s chest, clearly forgoing his nipples on purpose, but Touya refuses to act needy about it. Instead he reaches up to wrap his prosthetic arm around the hero’s back again, but then pauses mid-air.

“Do you want me to remove my prosthesis?”, he wonders, knowing all too well that the hard material isn’t particularly pleasant to feel digging against your bones.

“However you feel more comfortable”, Hawks says honestly, looking up from Touya’s chest. “I don’t mind either way.”

Touya bites his lip, contemplating the options for a moment before letting go of Hawks’ hair to unfasten the mechanical device and set it aside. 

It’s not like he has any real sensation in it anyway, and he’d rather not risk hurting the bird with it.

(After all, he has already hurt him enough in the past.)

Hawks smiles at him before diving back down to continue his diligent ministrations of Touya’s chest, and Touya wraps his arm around the hero’s shoulders, holding him right where he is - pressed tightly against Touya’s body, nothing but the flimsy fabric of the bird’s tiny t-shirt separating them. Hawks’ weight on top of him feels incredibly pleasant and grounding, and the soft kisses on his chest make him feel tingly all over, until the hero finally, finally flicks his tongue against Touya’s right nipple - the one that used to be pierced - before sucking the hardening little nub into his mouth.

A wave of arousal crashes over Touya at the sensation, and he bucks his hips involuntarily, grinding up against the hero’s crotch, who bites down on Touya’s nipple with a moan.

The sound of Hawks’ voice, all wrecked and desperate, combined with the physical sensations makes Touya’s head spin like crazy, and he finds he can’t really do much besides grind his hips up again and again, rubbing their clothed cocks against each other as Hawks alternates between biting, sucking and licking at Touya’s nipple.

The hero catches on quickly and starts meeting Touya’s thrusts as he switches his attention over to his other nipple, and the friction is just a tad too rough through their jeans, but fuck, does it feel good.

It’s a bit pathetic, but Touya is quite certain he could actually come from just this, and he feels his boxers dampen increasingly as he steadily leaks precum into them.

Still, it’s not quite enough and his body is aching for more - more skin, more friction - so he snakes his hand down Hawks’ back and around his waist between their bodies.

“Can we-“, he begins to ask breathlessly, ghosting his fingers over the hero’s belt, and Hawks doesn’t even let him finish the question.

“Yes, please”, he rasps out, lifting his head from Touya’s chest and scrambling to kneel between his legs as his fingers join Touya’s at his belt buckle.

Touya can’t help but whine a little at the sudden loss of contact and weight on top of him, but the sight of Hawks clumsily unbuckling his belt and opening his trousers is enough to soothe him over as he hurries to unzip his own jeans and shuffle them - along with his boxers - down just far enough to free his throbbing cock.

He’s rock hard and absolutely aching to be touched at this point, so he gives himself a few lazy strokes, swiping his thumb over the head, just to take the edge off a bit, as he watches the hero rid himself of the confines of his own boxers.

Hawks’ cock is thick and flushed, beads of precum leaking from the tip, and Touya almost starts drooling at the sight. A little part of him desperately wants to get his mouth on it, feel the hot girth on his tongue and find out what the hero tastes like, but for now he’s already way too far gone, and he can’t do much but stare up at Hawks pleadingly, willing him to close the distance between them again.

“Can I touch you?”, the hero asks hoarsely, lowering himself back down without fully closing the gap, his biceps trembling slightly as he supports his weight on one arm, his other hand squeezed around the base of his own cock as if to ground himself.

Touya swallows drily and lifts his head from the cushion underneath him, craning his neck to capture Hawks’ lips in a bruising kiss, their teeth clacking together with the force of it. 

“Yes”, he breathes against the hero’s mouth, wrapping his arm around his waist and lightly pressing his palm against the small of his back, but Hawks doesn’t need to be told twice. He shifts his weight onto both of his arms and closes the gap between their bodies.

The feeling of their unclothed cocks brushing together sends a spark so hot and fierce into Touya’s core, that he nearly comes on the spot.

He lets out a loud unrestrained moan into Hawks’ mouth, and the hero breathes a hot gasp against Touya’s lips as he grinds his hips down a little more pointedly.

Hawks’ dick is hot and heavy against Touya’s own, the sensation oscillating between too much and not enough, and Touya feels positively delirious with it.

There’s no way he’s going to last much longer, that hot coil of arousal in his abdomen already wound ridiculously tight as he meets the rhythm the hero has set with his hips, rubbing up against him, desperate to chase every bit of friction he can get.

They’re breathing hotly into each other’s mouths, gasps and moans intermingling between their lips until no one can tell which ones belong to whom anymore, and Touya runs his hand further down to clamp it over the hero’s muscular arse, which earns him a particularly earth-shattering thrust and a low broken groan.

“Fuck”, Hawks gasps against Touya’s lips, and Touya swallows it greedily.

“You like that, pretty bird?”, he teases slyly, but his voice comes out barely louder than a whisper when the hero’s hand suddenly snakes between their overheated bodies and firmly wraps itself around both their cocks.

God, has Touya fantasised about this, the feeling of Hawks’ hand on his dick, but none of his fantasies ever came close to the real thing.

The hero’s hand is warm, so warm, and his grip is firm as he squeezes them both together, and Touya feels like he might just die.

“Fuck”, he chokes out, involuntarily thrusting into Hawks’ hand, but the hero just hums contently, licking slowly, sensually, into Touya’s mouth as he sweeps his thumb over both their tips to gather the precum and use it to lube them up, before beginning to pump his fist around them in earnest.

“Does this feel good?”, the hero asks lowly, his breath stuttering over Touya’s lips, and Touya can only tighten his grip on Hawks’ arse as he slowly feels all remnants of coherent thought evaporate from his brain.

“Yes, feels really good”, he rasps out as the throbbing pressure in his abdomen tightens dangerously. “‘M not gonna last, though”, he warns shakily when Hawks twists his hand particularly deftly, the tip of the hero’s dick pressing into the sensitive spot just beneath the head of Touya’s cock.

“That’s okay”, Hawks says encouragingly against Touya’s lips, pumping his fist just a tad harder. “Come for me, baby.”

And that is what finally sends Touya over the edge.

The tight coil in his abdomen snaps, searing waves of pleasure pulsing from his core as he spurts hotly over the hero’s hand and his own stomach.

“That’s it. So good. You’re doing so good”, Hawks babbles breathlessly as he jerks Touya through his orgasm before following him right over the precipice only moments later, more streaks of white painting Touya’s stomach and mixing with his own cum.

When the touch begins to border on too sensitive, Hawks lets go of them both and buries his face against Touya’s neck, lying heavily on top of him, uncaring about the mess on his stomach, as they both try to catch their breaths.

Touya feels thoroughly fucked out. The insides of his skull are filled with nothing but soup, and he kind of feels like he could simply float away into space if the hero’s weight on top of his body weren’t keeping him tethered securely to the earth.

He releases his grip on Hawks’ arse and slides his hand up his back to firmly wrap his arm around the hero, the stump of his other arm coming up to rest against the hero’s shoulder.

“You okay?”, Hawks asks quietly against his scarred skin.

Touya nods, squeezing him a little. “Yes. Are you?”

The hero huffs out a small laugh. “Yeah. Great actually”, he says, shifting a little to slide his hand up into Touya’s hair.

Touya chuckles at that, giving Hawks another squeeze as he closes his eyes against the sensation of gentle fingers scratching against his scalp and carding through his hair.

The soothing touches and the warm, grounding weight of another human being on top of him feel utterly relaxing, and soon Touya’s post-orgasm drowsiness begins to mingle with the general lingering exhaustion in his body, until he drifts off into soft pleasant slumber.

Chapter Text

When Touya comes to again some time later, he blinks his eyes open a bit dazedly, wading through fluffy clouds of cotton as he tries to get his bearings and orientation. 

He’s still lying on the couch, but Hawks’ weight on top of him is gone - instead there’s a fluffy blanket draped over his still bare-chested but notably clean body, and the occasional sound of paper rustling drifts over to his ears.

He reaches down underneath the blanket to tuck himself back into his pants and refasten his jeans, before pushing himself up into a sitting position and twisting around towards the noises.

Hawks is sitting curled up against the armrest at the other end of the couch, a book in his lap and two steaming mugs on the coffee table in front of him. Instead of his tiny t-shirt he is wearing a black hoodie now, which Touya identifies as the one he discarded earlier at second glance, noting the tighter fit around the hero’s muscular shoulders and the way the long sleeves bunch up at his wrists.

Which totally doesn’t make Touya’s stupid heart skip a beat in his chest, thank you very much.

“Good morning, sleepyhead”, Hawks greets him amusedly when he notices Touya staring at him. “I made you tea.”

He points at the mugs on the coffee table, smiling widely at Touya, who can only blink at the hero a bit dumbly as he sits up more properly on the couch, the blanket falling from his chest and into his lap.

“Why did you just let me sleep? How long was I even out for?”, he finally manages to ask a bit incredulously.

Hawks just shrugs, closing his book (Touya’s book, actually, he notes when he recognises the cover of one of the classics from his shelf) and setting it aside before reaching for one of the steaming mugs. “Ah, not that long. 30 minutes, perhaps? Here, you woke up just in time. The tea is still hot. Oh, and I borrowed your hoodie. I hope that’s alright. My t-shirt was kinda soiled”, he adds with a slightly awkward laugh, running his hand over the black fabric covering his chest.

Touya blinks at him stupidly again but quickly shakes himself out of his stupor and reaches for the hot drink, blowing on it a little before taking a sip. “It’s fine. And thanks”, he mutters a bit bemusedly. “But why did you let me sleep? Why are you even still here?”

“I figured you were probably still exhausted from yesterday and I didn’t wanna disturb you”, Hawks explains, all nonchalant again, taking a sip of his own tea. “Well, and I didn’t wanna just leave after…you know. It wouldn’t have felt right.” He averts his eyes at that, and Touya can see traces of pink dusting his cheeks.

He promptly feels his own face flush because of course the hero is right. He probably wouldn’t have felt too great about waking up and finding that Hawks had just left without a word.

Embarrassed by his own sensitivity and the fact that the hero probably knew exactly that Touya would’ve felt this way, he quickly sets his mug down and busies himself with reattaching his prosthetic arm.

“I, uh. I’m gonna go grab some clothes”, he announces a bit stiltedly, pointing his thumb in the vague direction of his bedroom and pushing himself up to his feet.

“Oh, yeah, sure”, Hawks replies quickly, laughing a bit nervously as he runs his hand over Touya’s hoodie again. “Sorry for stealing yours.”

“It’s fine, Birdie”, Touya huffs, pointedly ignoring all the funny things the sight of Hawks in his clothes makes him feel, before borderline fleeing to his bedroom.

With the door shut behind him and away from the hero’s sharp eyes, Touya allows himself a moment to just sink down on the edge of his bed and breathe. His thoughts are a wild tangle of vivid memories of soft lips and firm hands and heated skin, hormone-induced giddiness and a swirling cocktail of complicated feelings about what they’ve done.

This was something Touya has secretly wanted for a pathetically, embarrassingly long time, and part of him is simply ecstatic that it finally happened, but another part of him is also kind of freaking out because holy fuck.

He’s perfectly aware that they just crossed about a million lines that two people in their respective positions should probably never ever cross with each other, and on some level Touya is absolutely terrified of the potential consequences their little hook-up might have for them.

Sure, the legal regulations for his house arrest didn’t exactly come with a clause about fucking your hero bodyguard, but something tells Touya that’s because they didn’t actually expect that to be a real possibility they’d have to consider, and not because they’re totally fine with him doing such a thing.

And what about Hawks’ job contract?

Surely, fucking the convicted criminal you’re supposed to babysit does not fall under appropriate professional conduct for a pro hero.

The two of them may have just done one of the stupidest things they possibly could have, and the worst part is that deep inside his heart (and his pants) Touya already wants to do it again.

Wants to feel Hawks again.

It’s utterly reckless, and if Touya is being honest with himself, that knowledge almost makes it even more thrilling, even more tempting.

He buries his face in his hands to muffle a frustrated groan before pushing himself to his feet again to grab his blue hoodie from his wardrobe - the one that matches his eyes so perfectly.

(Which he chooses for absolutely no reason at all.)

(Obviously.)

He quickly pulls it on and takes a deep, steadying breath before opening his bedroom door and heading back down the hallway to the living room.

The two of them are in this together now - after all, no one will ever know what they’ve done in the private sanctuary of Touya’s flat as long as neither of them tells anyone. And they both have more than enough good reasons to keep this particular secret just between themselves.

“Ah, I thought you might’ve fallen asleep again”, Hawks laughs when Touya reappears in the living room and plops down on the sofa beside him, not quite touching but close enough to easily reach out if they wanted to.

“If you want me to stay awake, you’re gonna have to keep me entertained, Birdie”, Touya taunts with a self-satisfied smirk as he picks up his tea again.

The bird snorts heartily at that, bumping his knee against Touya’s and then simply leaving it there. “Oh, is that how it’s gonna be?”, he teases, grinning that dorky crooked grin of his that really shouldn’t be as attractive as it is.

Touya just raises an eyebrow at him, desperately trying to keep up the semblance of a nonchalant demeanour while his brain is dancing around in circles and screaming something along the lines of “Hawks is wearing my hoodie! Hawks is touching me! Hawks is grinning at me!” at him.

“I see…”, Hawks says, nodding faux-solemnly. “Well, how about I let you crush me at Mario Kart then?”

“Let me crush you?!”, Touya squawks indignantly at that. “Either you play seriously and I win fair and square or we don’t play at all, Birdie”, he states sternly, and Hawks presses his leg a bit harder against Touya’s as he clearly attempts to suppress a smile.

“You got yourself a deal, Hot Stuff”, he concedes, the smile finally breaking through, and Touya feels a strange little swoop in his stomach.

Not knowing what else to do, he simply presses his leg back against the hero’s, chasing the warmth of the touch as he grabs the Switch controllers and the TV remote from the coffee table.

“Game on, pretty bird.”

***

Shouto has just finished cleaning his dishes from lunch when his laptop dings to alert him to the arrival of the Himura files in his inbox, and he unceremoniously forwards them to Momo’s work e-mail address before grabbing his phone to call her.

As a pro hero he should probably be more careful while handling classified data, but if he’s being honest he kind of just doesn’t care. The Himuras really aren’t any different from the Todorokis as far as pretentiousness and complacency are concerned, and in all likelihood the only reason those files are even classified in the first place is because this old clan, that lost the high social status it once used to have, is trying to assert itself as more important and deserving of special treatment than it really is.

Shouto doesn’t give a flying fuck about the reputation of some anachronistic noble family and he really doesn’t respect them much either after what they did to his mother, so why should he care about their secrecy?

“I got the files and I’ve just sent them over to you”, he informs his friend when she picks up the call a bit breathlessly, like she just came running to her phone.

“Oh, you’re a true hero, thank you”, she sighs, the sound of keyboard keys clacking in the background. “I’m so glad this worked. Have you already looked through the files?”

“No, I figured we could just do it together now? If you still want my help, that is”, Shouto replies a bit hesitantly.

Momo huffs out a laugh at that. “You really are bored, huh?”, she notes amusedly. “I don’t want to swamp you with work while you’re technically off, but I do think we could really use any input we can get at this point. I was on the phone with Iida earlier, and he also seemed pretty relieved to hear that you’ve offered to help.”

“Yes, I am bored out of my mind. It’s driving me mad. I’d love to get involved”, Shouto admits earnestly as he unzips the document with the Himura files on his computer.

His bluntness earns him another chuckle from Momo. “Alright then, let’s see we’ve got here. How many files were there in total?”

“I think it was 15”, Shouto says, opening the folder. “Yeah, 15”, he confirms after skimming over the rows of PDFs.

“Okay, then let’s just go through them all in order to get an overview”, Momo suggests, and Shouto hums in agreement before clicking on the first document.

The first three files they scroll through are about a 78-year-old, an 83-year-old and a 90-year-old, so they’re quickly eliminated from the list of potential suspects. Even with the aid of a support item or a good hiding place a 78-year-old should not be able to outrun Ingenium.

“Pay attention to the Quirks as well”, Momo says as they open the fourth file on their respective screens. “Most Himuras seem to be able to manipulate or even emit ice or water in some capacity, but the Quirk profilers we’ve consulted are 95% certain that our suspect only manipulates the air temperature. There have been no indicators of them possessing the ability to emit ice or manipulate water, no matter if frozen or liquid, in their environment.”

“That eliminates no. 4 as well then”, Shouto concludes as his eyes flit over the information in the file. “37-year-old male, but he’s got a low-level emitter Quirk. Hey, I wonder how I’m related to all these people. Like, is this guy my cousin or something?”, he muses then, zooming in on the ID picture next to the biographical information to inspect it more closely.

The man has slightly fluffy white hair and grey eyes, but those particular genes seem to be just as persistent in the Himura family as the frost Quirks, so it’s difficult to tell whether there’s any notable resemblance between them.

He supposes the man’s long eyelashes are a bit reminiscent of his mother’s, but that isn’t exactly much to go on.

“Do you not know anything about your relatives on your mother’s side at all?”, Momo wonders curiously.

“No, she never talked about them when I was little, and Endeavour most definitely didn’t talk about the Himuras. For all I know, those elderly ones we just saw could be my grandparents”, Shouto points out a bit drily. “I don’t know their names or ages or whether they’re even still alive.”

“I’m sorry”, his friend says a bit tentatively.

Shouto kind of gets it. He’s not entirely sure whether he feels sorry about the fact that he doesn’t know his grandparents either.

“It’s okay”, he finally assures, because it really is. “It’s just a bit strange and intriguing sometimes.”

Momo hums in understanding. “That makes sense”, she says. “My family is probably the exact reverse of yours - I was taught pretty much everything there is to know about my relatives from a very young age, and I feel like it would be quite odd not to know all those things.”

That makes Shouto chuckle a little, because he can practically see his friend’s parents telling her story after story about their family while little Momo listens to them attentively, soaking up every word like she would in school a few years later, in his mind.

The image is pretty endearing.

“Hey, let’s look at the next one”, he suggests then, shifting forward a little in his seat as he clicks on file no. 5, only to be greeted by what’s essentially a big block of black.

“Huh?!”

“Okay, that is weird”, Momo notes bemusedly. “I’ve never heard of Quirk registry files being censored like this before.”

Shouto blows out a breath, frowning at the document in front of him. “Neither have I. This file is already classified, why the hell is it redacted on top of that?! What are they trying to hide?”

He scrolls down a little, squinting at the screen as he tries to find any piece of information that isn’t blacked out in the file.

“Oh, wait, we have a birth year!”, he exclaims triumphantly when he spots the little number amongst the sea of black surrounding it. “Okay, this person should be 80 years old, so they’re probably not your suspect.”

“You’re right”, Momo agrees. “This is still pretty strange, though. I hope there aren’t any more like this, because I have absolutely no idea how we would even get access to this level of classified information.”

“Me neither”, Shouto admits, still frowning as he opens the next file.

Of course, luck isn’t on their side, and as they click their way through the remaining documents, they find another four almost entirely censored files.

The person in the second one is two years older than the first one, while the other three all seem to be 49 years old.

“Three people with the same birth year? Do you think that’s a coincidence?”, Momo wonders as they click their way through the remaining uncensored documents, eliminating one person after another from their list of potential suspects either due to their age or the nature of their Quirk.

Shouto absently bites his lip as he contemplates that for a bit. “I’d lean towards ‘no’”, he finally concludes. “They’re also the only ones here we can’t eliminate from your list of suspects yet. I mean, that doesn’t have to mean anything, it might be completely unrelated, but it’s kind of the only potential lead you have right now.”

“Ughhh, you’re right”, Momo groans frustratedly on the other end of the line. “I hate this. I really thought we were finally gonna get past the dead end with the classified files, but now I don’t even know how to proceed anymore. There’s literally no protocol for this stuff, and with pro hero authority and your status as a family member, we should already have the highest possible clearance level for the registry.”

“If you don’t mind going about this a little more unconventionally, I could ask my siblings if they know anything that might help us”, Shouto offers after considering their options for a moment. “I’d prefer not asking my mother, because I think her family is a bit of an upsetting topic for her, although if we completely run out of alternatives, I’m sure she would be willing to help if it meant potentially saving people’s lives. But perhaps my siblings know something, too. Especially Touya.”

Momo sighs heavily at that. “Honestly, I feel like we’re so out of options at this point, I don’t even care about doing everything by the book anymore”, she admits, sounding a little embarrassed by her own impropriety. “I have no idea how I’m going to sell using the former villain Dabi as an informant to decode classified Quirk registry files in my case report, but I’ll come up with something. If your brother knows anything that could help us crack this one, it would be greatly appreciated.”

She heaves out another sigh, and Shouto feels a bit sorry for her. He hadn’t really noticed how stressed his friend has been recently, and he’s not sure if that’s because she hid it well or because it went straight over his head, but he privately resolves to do the very best he can to help her and Iida solve this case as soon as possible.

“I’m seeing Touya tomorrow, so I’ll make sure to ask”, he promises out loud. “Are you gonna be okay?”, he asks then, furrowing his brow a little in concern.

“Thank you, Shouto-kun. I’ll be fine, I just really need this case to be done with, you know?”, Momo assures, huffing out a small chuckle. “Let me know if you find out anything, yeah?”

“I will”, Shouto says resolutely. “Take care, alright? Don’t overwork yourself too much.”

At that Momo finally lets out a genuine laugh. “Okay, mum”, she teases, and Shouto feels the corners of his lips quirk up.

It’ll be okay.

***

Things between Touya and Hawks aren’t exactly awkward.

They’re not behaving particularly strangely around each other, and Hawks isn’t acting like their little dry-humping-on-the-couch incident never happened, but he’s also not really acting like it did happen, and Touya doesn’t fucking know what he’s supposed to do with that.

He’s not sure what he expected things to be like now - did he expect them to talk about it? Did he think they would jump each other’s bones every time they see each other from now on? Did he expect them to get all lovey-dovey with each other? - but this weird limbo state they’re in right now, where they don’t exactly pretend it didn’t happen, but also don’t really seem to be taking the next step (whatever that step may be), is entirely new territory for him, and he spends about half of Hawks’ morning surveillance visit on the day after the incident overthinking his every word and action, worried that he might say something wrong or cross some sort of line he isn’t supposed to cross, so by the time Shouto rings the doorbell and Hawks says his goodbyes, Touya is almost relieved to see him leave.

Even if part of him really just wants to pull the bird right back inside his flat, pin him against the nearest wall and kiss him stupid.

But alas, Hawks disappears in his own flat just as Shouto steps out of the lift on Touya’s floor, and Touya welcomes the distraction with open arms.

Literally.

It’s his first time actually seeing his little brother since he was injured, and Touya suddenly just feels incredibly relieved to see the kid whole and healthy, haphazardly toeing his boots off in his genkan.

“Hello, nii-san”, Shouto says, his words muffled against Touya’s shoulder as Touya wraps him in a hug that is perhaps a bit tighter and a bit longer than what he’d normally go for just to say hello.

“Hey, baby bro”, he mumbles, giving the kid a final squeeze before releasing him again. “Do you want tea? I can make a pot.”

“Yes, please”, Shouto says with a smile, readjusting his shoulder bag before shuffling off to the living room.

Touya makes his way to the kitchen, quickly preparing the tea pot and grabbing a pair of mugs from the cupboard. While he waits for the water to boil, absently eyeing the inoffensive patterns printed on the mugs he picked, a sudden idea strikes him, and he grins to himself gleefully as he puts one of the mugs back in the cupboard and replaces it with a certain seemingly plain black one.

Two can play this game, and Touya simply refuses to be out-pranked by his baby brother.

Once the tea is ready, Touya grabs the pot and the two mugs and heads over to the living room, where Shouto has already spread himself out across the couch like he owns the damn place.

“Spare some space for me? You know, the person who actually lives here?”, he asks drily as he sets the tea and mugs down on the coffee table, inconspicuously placing the black mug in front of his little brother before unceremoniously shoving the kid’s socked feet aside to make some room for himself on the couch.

“Ouch”, Shouto says unemotionally, and a brief stab of panic shoots through Touya.

“Sorry, was that your injury? Does it still hurt?”, he questions a bit shakily, but Shouto quickly shakes his head.

“No, it’s fine. My injury is fully healed”, he assures Touya, smiling lightly. “You just knocked your prosthesis against my ankle. Kinda felt like banging your elbow on a door frame”, he explains then, grimacing a little, and Touya still can’t help but wince at that. He didn’t exactly mean to hurt the kid like that either.

“I’m sorry”, he repeats, but his little brother just waves him off.

“It’s fine. Really”, he says, and before Touya can really register what’s happening, the kid angles his leg and gives him a moderately hard kick in the shin. “See? Now we’re even”, he states unceremoniously, and Touya blinks at him like the dumbest owl on the planet, but in a strange way he does feel better about it now.

“You’re so weird, kid. Has anyone ever told you that?”, he notes, shaking his head a little as he reaches for the tea pot to fill up their mugs.

“Plenty of times, yes”, Shouto says, nodding solemnly as he watches Touya pour their drinks.

Touya watches him carefully from the corner of his eyes, and he can see the exact moment the kid realises which mug Touya has picked out for him, his eyes widening almost comically.

“You little shit, you did put that mug in my cupboard, didn’t you?”, Touya exclaims triumphantly while Shouto stares at the print of Hawks’ eyes on the stupid mug like a deer caught in the headlights, and Touya can’t help but cackle at the sight.

“How did you know it was me?”, Shouto wonders, and the slightly bewildered look on his face makes Touya cackle even harder.

“Come on, who else could it have been? This has you written all over it”, Touya points out, reaching for his own mug to take a few smug sips. “I’ve gotta hand it to you, though - I didn’t even notice anything unusual about the mug until the stupid bird used it to make himself coffee”, he admits then, carefully hiding his face behind his tea, worried his baby brother might be able to read it a little too well.

“When did you even put it there?”

“On your birthday”, the kid says, finally grinning a little as well and kind of looking annoyingly pleased with himself. “I’m glad it worked out so well.”

Touya rolls his eyes a bit exasperatedly at that. “Yeah, I’m sure you are. I’m gonna get you back for that, by the way. Just you wait and see”, he threatens.

Shouto, who apparently doesn’t fear anything at all anymore, has the audacity to snicker at that. “Okay”, he says mildly, and Touya is kind of tempted to knock the ridiculous mug right out of his hands, but he doesn’t want to deal with the mess of spilt tea on his couch, so he acts mature about it and restrains himself.

“Hey, um”, the kid starts then, setting his mug back down on the coffee table and reaching for his bag on the floor, “would you mind helping me with something?”

With his curiosity effectively piqued, Touya puts his own mug down as well and leans over a little to get a better look at the slightly rumpled sheets of paper his little brother pulls from his bag.

“Sure, what’s up?”

“Okay, so I’m currently helping my friends out with this case-“

“Hold on, aren’t you supposed to be benched from work?”, Touya questions with a frown.

Isn’t the kid supposed to rest until he has fully recovered?

“Technically I’m only benched from physically active hero work”, Shouto corrects, placing his papers on the table in front of them and running his hands over them a little to smooth out the creases. “I’m still allowed to do research and paperwork and stuff like that, but we don’t have any open work like that at the agency right now, so I don’t really have much to do at the moment”, he explains.

Well, Touya supposes that makes sense. If the kid is allowed to do normal day-to-day things, he should also be allowed to do desk work.

“Hmm, fair enough”, Touya concedes. “So, that case you’re working on…?”

“Ah, yes. So, I’m helping out with this case, and basically they’re chasing down an elusive villain with some sort of frost-related Quirk. They seem to be able to cool down specific pockets of air very rapidly and have been using that to freeze people to death all across town”, Shouto explains, seemingly switching into professional pro hero mode as he lists the facts. “We only have very little information about the villain and our current list of potential suspects is very short. Also, their Quirk registry files are almost fully redacted.”

Touya raises a surprised eyebrow at that. “And want me to help you with that? A convicted criminal?”, he questions, just to make sure he got that right, because what the hell?

It isn’t exactly unheard of for pro heroes and police alike to use villains and convicted criminals as informants, but normally they most definitely don’t give them access to apparently highly classified Quirk registry files.

The kid nods, seemingly pretty unimpressed. “Yes”, he confirms, spreading his papers out across the table, and Touya notes that they’re mostly covered with big chunks of black ink.

“There is no protocol on how to get access to uncensored versions of files like these - in fact, this level of censorship is actually pretty much unheard of in the Quirk registry as far as we're aware - and our potential suspects are all Himuras.”

Ah.

Well, that explains a lot.

Touya scoots a bit closer to his brother’s side, so he doesn’t have to crane his neck so much to look at the files. “So, let me get this straight - all you have on these people is the Himura name and their ages?”, he asks as he notes the legible birth years on the otherwise fully blacked out documents.

Shouto nods, rubbing his neck. “Yeah, unfortunately. And I really don’t know anything about our mother’s side of the family at all, but I thought maybe you did”, he says, chuckling a little, and Touya blows out a noisy breath at that, sweeping his eyes across the files again.

“I fear I really don’t know all that much either”, he admits, grimacing apologetically. “I think I used to know our grandparents’ names once, but I can’t remember them anymore now, and they would be way older than your suspects anyway. I mean, these people are, what, 49?”, he muses, glancing at the files again. “So they’re probably from our mother’s generation. Possibly even ours.”

“I’d assume so, too”, Shouto agrees, shuffling the papers around a little on the table before producing two more documents. “We also found these censored files, but we eliminated them as potential suspects due to their ages. Our villain is so fast, they’ve even managed to outrun Iida - that’s Ingenium”, he adds at Touya’s questioning look, “so they must be physically very fit.”

Touya hums a little at that as he runs some numbers in his head. “Do you think these two could be your suspects’ parents?”, he wonders, lightly tapping his fingers against the documents on the table. He isn’t too familiar with the ins and outs of all this bureaucratic stuff, but his gut feeling is telling him that these files are probably all censored for the same reasons rather than multiple unrelated ones.

“Possibly”, Shouto says, swaying his head a little. “The fact that our potential suspects were all born the same year kind of doesn’t really seem like a coincidence - Momo thought so, too.”

“Oh, is this Yaoyorozu’s case?”, Touya asks curiously, thinking back to his piercing appointment with Shouto’s friends. They had both been very nice during their visit, and deep down he felt quite touched by the way they treated him like an actual person rather than just a convicted criminal, even though the UA kids, of all people, surely have more than enough reason to shun him for all eternity.

“Yes, hers and Iida’s, uh, Ingenium’s”, Shouto confirms with a nod. “They were both working separately initially and only recently realised that they were probably chasing down the same person.” He shifts his focus back to the files in front of them. “But do you think this is too improbable?”, he muses, rearranging the papers, so that the three suspects are lying next to each other, their potential parents placed above them. “Triplets, I mean. Because if those two are the parents, these three would have to be triplets, right?”

That gives Touya pause, because somewhere, hidden in a deep dark corner at the back of his mind, something lights up a little at that, but the flash of recognition is so vague, so blurry, he can’t for the life of him make sense of it.

“I think I’ve heard of Himura triplets before”, he says slowly, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose for a moment, as if that might somehow shake the buried memory loose. “Fuck, I can’t remember anything beyond that, though”, he groans morosely. “I don’t even know where I got that information from, but I don’t think it was our mother.”

Shouto frowns at that, eyeing Touya pensively. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure, yeah”, Touya says, rubbing his nose, before placing his elbow on his thigh and resting his chin in his palm, thoughtfully tapping his ring finger against his bottom lip.

He heaves out a frustrated sigh before speaking up again.

“Because the thing is, back when Fuyumi-chan and I were really little - when our Quirks had only recently manifested and we didn’t know about my disability yet”, he explains, “the old man used to tell me all these stories about the Todoroki Fire Quirk. Where it originally came from, how it was passed on from generation to generation, and how it manifested differently in different people. How proud we should be of it”, he adds, wrinkling his nose in distaste, and from the corner of his eye he can see his little brother mirror his expression.

It makes a small, unexpected rush of affection for the kid flood his chest, and he briefly knocks his shoulder against Shouto’s in a show of something like fraternal solidarity.

“Anyhow, whenever he told me those stories, I would usually go share them with Fuyumi-chan afterwards, and I always thought perhaps she would tell me stories about the Himura Ice Quirk in return, but she never did. Turned out our mother was only teaching her the very basics about controlling her Quirk and that was it. So one time I dragged her with me to ask our mother about the Himura family - that must’ve been shortly before everything went to shit - but she clamped up completely pretty much straight away and basically didn’t tell us anything at all.”

He sighs a bit guiltily at the memory. The clear discomfort and haunted look that were written all across their mother’s face when they brought the topic up still makes his guts twist a little.

“We never tried asking again after that.”

Shouto winces audibly by his side. “She always reacted like that whenever I asked her about her family, too”, he says quietly. “Back when I was younger, I mean. Things must’ve been pretty awful for her, even before she married Endeavour.”

“Yeah, the Himuras are a pretty fucked up bunch. Incest, selling their children off for arranged marriages and god knows what else, bigotry - I heard a whole lot of stories like that from that ice bastard back when-“

Touya cuts himself off mid-sentence when the realisation finally hits him like a brick to the face.

“Of fucking course”, he exclaims, promptly sitting up straighter. “Geten was the one who mentioned the Himura triplets to me.”

“Geten?”, Shouto questions, his brow furrowed in confusion.

“Ah, I guess they never told you about that”, Touya concludes a bit drily. “Geten was that irritating ice user from the Metahuman Liberation Army - or I guess you mostly knew them as the Paranormal Liberation Front. He was a Himura, too”, he explains, grimacing a little as he remembers just how irritating that guy always was when they were living under the same roof at the Gunga mansion.

“Oh”, Shouto blurts out, clearly surprised. “In hindsight I probably should’ve suspected that, but it really never occurred to me before. And no one told me about it either back then.”

Touya smiles a bit grimly. “Of course, they would keep that from you”, he notes cynically. “Although, for what it’s worth, I don’t think we’re that closely related to him. He’s probably just a distant cousin. Or at least I hope so, because we already have more than enough insufferable bastards in our close family, and I don’t think I could take another one”, he adds pointedly, and that draws a small laugh out of the kid.

“Are you including yourself in that?”, he teases, probably thinking he’s being the funniest person on the entire planet right now, but Touya just gives him an unimpressed look.

“Obviously”, he deadpans.

Shouto fully guffaws at that, and Touya has to bite his lip to keep himself from cackling right along with him.

“What exactly did Geten tell you about the triplets?”, the kid asks once he has sobered up again.

Touya absently rubs his temple as he wracks his brain for the memory of that particular conversation. It must’ve happened during that time frame when Shigaraki was away, having god knows what kind of genetic experiments performed on him. There were several communal areas at the mansion, all outfitted with mismatched sofas, TVs and various gaming consoles, and people would typically just come and go, hang out with whoever else was currently present whenever they had some free time between their villainous missions.

Touya never really warmed up to most of Re-Destro’s people (not that he ever made much of an effort anyway), so he usually only frequented the communal areas when other members of the League or - as embarrassing as it is to admit - the damn bird were present as well, and-

Oh.

Touya does remember the conversation.

Except he doesn’t remember a single fucking thing the ice bastard said about the triplets, because Dabi was - very pathetically - distracted.

He had just returned from some stupid stakeout he had been sent on to gather information about a potential new recruit, and all he had really wanted to do that evening was to just crawl into bed and sleep, but when he had walked past the communal area on one of the upper floors on the way to his bedroom, he had spotted Hawks and Twice chatting on one of the sofas while Geten had been sprawled out on another one, yelling curses at whatever video game he was playing on the TV.

Dabi, with his metaphorical (and occasionally literal) boner for the traitorous hero, couldn’t really help but - totally nonchalantly, of course - join the little gathering, plopping down on Geten’s sofa as to not be too obvious about why he was really there.

He didn’t really involve himself in the conversation Hawks and Twice were having; instead he mostly just lounged on the couch, pretending to be winding down from his mission, when in reality all he was doing was to listen very intently to everything the two men were saying to each other, as well as mentally seethe a little every time Twice would reach out to casually touch the bird’s arm mid-conversation.

It really wasn’t Dabi’s proudest moment, but he was irritated and exhausted.

Give him a break.

That being said, at some point during his unofficial second stakeout of the day, Geten started babbling to him. A whole lot of crap about Re-Destro and his ideologies, which eventually turned into a more general rant about heroes and society and families of a certain social status. Dabi half-heartedly “ooh" -ed and “aah”-ed his way through it, just to keep up the pretence that he wasn’t there for the sole purpose of stalking the bird, and he still recalls Geten bringing up the Himuras and mentioning something about triplets after a while, but it absolutely eludes him as to what exactly the ice bastard was saying about them.

Especially because by that point Twice had probably had a beer or two too many and started leaning in way too closely to Hawks while he listened to the bird talk, and it took Dabi a whole fucking lot of self-restraint to keep himself from setting the couch under Twice’s arse on fire.

As he said - really not his proudest moment.

“I don’t remember. I was kinda distracted and didn’t really listen to what he was saying. I’m sorry”, Touya admits, grimacing at the memories floating around in his head and hoping desperately that Shouto won’t ask him to elaborate. “I only remember him mentioning that they existed.”

The kid exhales noisily. “Damnit”, he curses mildly, and he looks so comically disgruntled about it, that Touya can’t help but chuckle a little.

“Still thanks for helping us out, though”, Shouto adds then, offering Touya a small grateful smile. “Just knowing that the triplets are indeed a thing is already really useful. Gives us something more tangible to build our investigation on.”

Touya hums at that, briefly biting his lip as he contemplates his next words. “Listen, kid”, he says then, “it pains me to say this because the bastard really is insufferable, but perhaps you should try getting in touch with Geten and ask him about the triplets. I mean, he might not even want to cooperate, but he’s probably the best lead you guys have right now. I’m assuming he’s still in prison?”

Shouto tilts his head a little, seemingly disappearing into his thoughts for a moment. “He should be, I think”, he finally concludes then. “Or at least I don’t recall hearing about any prominent League or PLF members being released from prison in recent years. Apart from you, of course”, he adds with a chuckle. “But I can check online with my hero ID later. I think you might be right, he does seem to be our best lead right now. I’ll have to discuss this with Momo and Iida.”

“Just don’t let that bastard manipulate you into any sort of deal or whatever”, Touya warns grimly. “He’s a sneaky little bitch, and he can and will talk your ear off until you don’t even know what the fuck is going on anymore. An utter pain in the arse to live with, I’ll tell you that.”

Shouto has the audacity to snort at that. “You really dislike that guy, huh?”, he asks, clearly deeply amused by Touya’s suffering.

“You ever been assigned to do a school project with a kid who thinks they’re hot shit because they’ve got this one flashy skill, but in reality they’re just some useless spoiled brat who needs you to guide them through the whole thing, so in the end you basically do all the work on your own, but the insufferable brat still takes half the credit for it?”, Touya vents, scowling at thin air as memories of excruciatingly inefficient “strategy meetings” replay in his head. “That’s what it was like to have to run a whole damn PLF regiment together with that guy. Gave me fucking chronic headaches.”

“Oh, I’m sorry”, Shouto comments, but he doesn’t sound sorry at all. Instead he sounds - and looks - like he’s trying desperately to fight off laughter, and when Touya redirects his scowl at the kid, putting his best villainous wrath in it, the kid actually bursts into a fit of giggles.

Where, oh, where did the Touya go who used to be able to frighten low-level thugs into pissing their pants with only one sharp look and one little flick of his fingers?

“I’m glad my suffering is so entertaining to you”, he grumbles, crossing his arms firmly across his chest. The way it makes the hard material of his prosthesis dig into the soft gaps between his ribs is pretty uncomfortable, but he has a point to make and an attitude to uphold, so he just pushes through it and gives his brother a stare-down until the kid finally relents.

“Okay, fine. I’m sorry”, Shouto apologises seemingly semi-seriously, and Touya supposes that’s the best he’s going to get, so he sighs a bit theatrically and releases his stance, slouching back into the couch instead.

“You’ve become so ill-mannered. Your little UA friends have been rubbing off on you”, he notes then, not quite able to keep his secret approval of the fact out of his voice.

When Touya and Shouto first started reconnecting (or rather building up their relationship almost from scratch), back when Touya was in Tartarus, Shouto’s entire demeanour towards him tended to be rather temperate. Whether it was out of timidity or trepidation or some other completely different reason, Touya doesn’t know, but as much as he likes to moan about it, it actually secretly makes him really happy that his little brother acts like such a little shit towards him sometimes.

It makes him really happy that this kid - or, well, grown young man by now - who would have every good reason to fear Touya actually feels comfortable enough around him to play pranks and affectionately bully him.

It feels so beautifully ordinary.

“Perhaps”, Shouto says, humming a bit noncommittally, but if the way the corners of his mouth twitch is anything to go by, he actually seems quite pleased with it.

Figures.

“Hey, you wanna listen to a new vinyl I ordered the other day?”, Touya suggests then, as his eyes lazily wander around the room and his gaze lands on the record player set-up.

Shouto’s eyes light up almost instantly at that. “Oh, yes, please”, he says eagerly, and it makes Touya smile a little, even though somewhere deep inside his heart a small part of him also aches a bit as flashes of missed opportunities and what-ifs flit through his mind.

The kid always seems so enthusiastic when Touya shows him new things, and it kind of makes him imagine what things could’ve been like for them in a different universe. Teenaged Touya could’ve been the cool older brother who would’ve shown his baby brother all the new music he discovered, all the video games that were all the rage at the time, all the skateboard tricks he learned.

It’s a bit of a bittersweet thing to think about, because, to some extent, they do have that now, and it’s really nice, but they will never be able to get their lost childhoods back.

“It’s a pretty old one, and it actually consists of three individual records because it’s so long”, Touya explains as he crouches down in front of the record player to turn it on. “But it’s probably one of the most perfect albums to listen to on vinyl. It just has the exact right sound for it.”

“How do you know all this stuff?”, Shouto wonders curiously. “I mean, I certainly didn’t grow up with anything like this, and it really took my friends introducing me to things for me to really get to know pop culture.”

Touya winces a little at that as he shuffles the first record from its sleeve. “Well, for starters I think the old man was a lot more lenient about letting the rest of us engage with pop culture than he was with you”, he says, grimacing. “But I was also always just really into music and all that stuff. I was introduced to a lot of things by my school friends - not unlike you actually. Many of them had parents who were a lot less…traditional than ours, so they had all these CDs and cassettes they would always lend me. It was pretty great.”

He neatly places the record on the player before double-checking the playback speed settings.

“I also, uh, made good use of any kind of media I could get my hands on while I was on the streets and with the League. Books, music, films - you name it”, he admits, conveniently forgetting to mention the part where he stole pretty much all of it - even if his brother can probably fill that gap in by himself anyway.

“It’s a tough life out there, and even spite and mental illness can only get you so far. Sometimes you just gotta take a breather and either explore the so-called human condition or just let yourself be entertained for a bit. Art can give you both”, he adds with a shrug before carefully dropping the needle on the record.

As the soft sounds of a twangy electric guitar begin to spill into the room, he makes his way back to the couch, where he finds Shouto staring at him with kind of wide eyes and an expression Touya can’t for the life of him read.

“You okay?”, he asks, frowning a little as he plops back down on the cushions and draws his legs up onto the seat.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine”, the kid hurries to say, blinking a few times as his expression settles back into something a little more neutral. “It’s just…you say a lot of interesting things. In a good way”, he adds quickly, chuckling a little.

That bittersweet feeling from before tugs on Touya’s heartstrings again, and he offers his baby brother a slightly crooked smile.

“This album sounds great, by the way”, Shouto states then, contently.

Touya quirks an eyebrow at him. “We haven’t even finished listening to the first song yet”, he points out a bit amusedly.

“Yes, but the first song already sounds great”, the kid says matter-of-factly, leaning his head back against the backrest of the couch and closing his eyes.

It makes Touya snort drily, but he also can’t exactly argue with it. “Just don’t fall asleep”, he threatens non-threateningly.

“Don’t worry, I’m just fully immersing myself in the auditory experience”, Shouto assures him solemnly. “I won’t fall asleep.”

It’s a lie.

It’s a big, fat lie.

By the time Touya has to get up to flip the record, the kid is already softly snoring next to him, the sound so low it almost sounds like a cat purring.

He briefly considers waking him up, just to be a nuisance, but his somewhat newly discovered protective instincts quickly win out - after all, Shouto is technically still recovering from a pretty severe injury - and Touya resigns himself to flipping the record and curling up on the couch again with one of the classic novels from his shelf in his lap, while his little brother continues to snooze his way through the rest of the album like he doesn’t have a care in the world, before sleepily bidding his goodbyes to head home and probably face-plant straight onto his bed.

As he lounges and reads to the cozy sounds of folky English rock music, Touya’s traitorous mind keeps wandering off to places that involve suspiciously golden eyes and blonde hair, but he supposes that’s partly his own fault, given that the book he picked up from his shelf may or may not be the same book he found the bird reading yesterday when he woke up from his accidental postcoital nap.

Sue him.

He wonders what Hawks might be up to right now.

He frequently finds himself wondering about that in general - what does Hawks get up to in his flat across the hall when he’s not on active surveillance duty?

Touya supposes the hero’s life probably doesn’t look much different from his own nowadays, considering how there’s only so much you can do when you’re cooped up in the house all day and night, and isn’t that a bit funny?

How - despite all the things they have in common - their lives have always been so vastly different from each other, near-perfect opposites, and yet they both ended up here - virtually living the same life, day in and day out, and being closer than they have ever been before.

In every sense of the word.

It makes Touya’s head spin a little, and the anxiety over the illicit nature of their affair and its potential repercussions is still simmering in his guts, but it’s also utterly exhilarating, and there’s absolutely no denying that he wants more of it.

The nagging question at the back of his mind is: Does Hawks?

Chapter Text

“Are you going to be alright, Todoroki-kun?”, Iida asks Shouto lowly while they’re being escorted into the deepest depths of the Tartarus prison complex, armed security guards flanking them on every side.

“Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I?”, Shouto wonders, furrowing his brow a little in confusion as he absently sweeps his gaze over the heavy reinforced steel doors and tiled walls lining the corridor they’re walking along.

Years of frequent visits to this place to see his brother have made it so familiar to him that instead of freaking him out like it probably should, it just feels almost neutral to him now. On an abstract level he knows and understands what it means - why it was built and what kind of people it houses - but emotionally he feels mostly indifferent about it.

There’s a mild eeriness to the long sterile hallways when they’re empty, kind of like those liminal spaces Kaminari once showed him on the internet, but it doesn’t really affect Shouto much, and if anything it’s probably more intriguing than it is unsettling.

He supposes Iida might not be aware that Shouto feels this way, though.

“This place doesn’t scare me”, he explains helpfully. “I’ve been here so many times, I’m used to it.”

Iida frowns at that. “Oh, I wasn’t even thinking of that, but I probably should have”, he says, chopping his hand through the air a little. “I meant because you’re about to meet a long lost relative for the first time.”

Ah. Well, if you put it this way, Shouto can see why his friend would be concerned about him.

“I’m okay”, he reassures him, and it’s the truth. “I don’t really think of it like that. Touya said he’s likely only a distant relative, and I didn’t even know he existed for most of my life. And besides, I’m pretty sure I’ve already beaten the final boss of the long-lost-family-member-reunion game”, he adds, huffing out a small laugh.

“That is a good point”, Iida concedes with a solemn nod. “Well, I’m glad you’re alright.”

“Thanks, though”, Shouto says, briefly knocking his shoulder against his friend’s as they follow the security guards into a lift to take them yet another level below ground.

Due to his health issues Touya’s cell was at the other end of the prison complex, near the central medical bay, so Shouto isn’t too familiar with this particular part of it, but he is pretty sure the level they’re heading to right now is also the one where the other remaining members of the League of Villains are incarcerated.

Part of him wonders how they’re doing.

After they exit the lift the security guards lead them a few doors down the corridor, before moving aside and gesturing for Shouto and Iida to enter the visiting room.

“He’s been told that you’re coming to see him”, one of the guards informs them as they step into the brightly lit room.

It’s sparsely decorated - a table, two chairs on each end, not unlike an interrogation room - and Geten is already sitting at the far end of the table, unmistakable Quirk-suppressors and handcuffs around his wrists and attached to a metal ring on the floor with a thick chain.

Looking at the man now, Shouto feels almost stupid for never considering the possibility that he might be a Himura, back when he was briefed on the notable members of the Paranormal Liberation Front and shown a picture of him.

Fluffy white hair (even if prison has left it looking a bit unkempt), stormy grey eyes, long eyelashes and an ice Quirk - the thought really should’ve crossed Shouto’s mind earlier.

“Todoroki Shouto”, the villain says, when he spots his visitors, and promptly starts scowling. “To what do I owe the displeasure?”

Shouto quirks an unimpressed eyebrow at the man as he and Iida take their seats at the table across from him. “Hello, Geten. We’d like to ask you a few questions”, he says politely, loosely folding his hands on the table in front of him.

“And I’d like to get out of this goddamn hellhole, but we can’t always get what we want, now can we?”, the villain shoots back petulantly, and Shouto already feels himself beginning to sympathise with his brother.

Perhaps he should’ve taken Touya’s complaints about Geten a little more seriously.

“Wouldn’t you at least like to know the questions?”, Iida wonders, frowning at the villain in earnest, and Geten sighs noisily, leaning back in his chair and dramatically blowing a loose strand of hair out of his face.

“Fine. Shoot”, he huffs long-sufferingly.

“You once mentioned something to my brother Touya - Dabi-“

“Oh, your brother”, Geten interrupts disdainfully, his scowl growing even darker. “How is he doing? Not like he was ever down here in the pit with the rest of us vermin. Must be nice being a nepo baby. Seven years in a first-class jail cell with a crime record like his - what a fucking joke!”, he scoffs with a humourless laugh.

It makes Shouto wince a little, and his first instinct is to defend his brother - after all Touya still has five years of his sentence left and multiple psychiatrists attested him diminished responsibility for some of his crimes due to his traumatic experiences and mental health issues - but it would be naive and ignorant of him to act like nepotism through Endeavour’s money, connections and social status didn’t play a significant role during Touya’s criminal trial and subsequent sentencing.

When Shouto discussed his brother’s suggestion to talk to Geten with Momo and Iida, the three of them downloaded Geten’s criminal record and court files from the villain registry database, and there’s no denying that - objectively speaking - Geten’s list of crimes is shorter and milder than Touya’s, and yet he was sentenced to 15 years in prison with no house arrest or probation in sight. 

When Touya’s case had gone to trial, Endeavour had made sure to hire the best and most reputable lawyers in the country to represent his son in court, and his money and social status even after retiring from active hero duty clearly did their part as well.

Geten on the other hand, like most other villains, had been assigned a state attorney who was working criminal defence pro bono, and with the Himura family barely grasping at straws to try and uphold the noble reputation they once had anyway, Geten most likely had no special social standing working in his favour during his trial, nor did he seem to have any other kind of support from his family.

It’s a deeply flawed system - as is any society in which money and power trump justice - and Shouto really can’t blame the villain in front of him for feeling like he has gotten the short end of the stick.

“With all due respect, we aren’t here to talk about Todoroki-san’s brother”, Iida politely speaks up then in a clear attempt at diplomacy. “We’d like to ask you what you know about the Himura triplets.”

Geten’s eyes widen at that, and the scowl on his face makes way for a look of genuine surprise before he seemingly catches himself and schools his expression into something a little more along the lines of contemptuously neutral. “Why don’t you ask your mother about them?”, he challenges, raising an eyebrow in Shouto’s direction.

“Because we’re asking you right now”, Shouto replies calmly. At this point in his career he has been through this exact spiel far more times than he can count - people trying to get a rise out of him by bringing up his family - and it doesn’t really faze him anymore.

Sure, he can acknowledge that this particular situation might be a little different, given that Geten is technically part of his family, but provocation is provocation and Shouto is too much of a professional to let himself be baited like that nowadays.

“Ohhhhh, I see. Auntie Rei doesn’t like talking about her family, huh?”, Geten sneers. “Well, I can’t really blame her. Given the circumstances.”

Shouto can’t help but frown at that. “What do you mean? What do you know about my mother?”, he questions, eyeing the villain suspiciously.

According to his personal files Geten isn’t much older than Touya, and therefore likely wasn’t even born yet when their mother married Endeavour, but did he somehow know her anyway?

The villain laughs sardonically. “Oh, what don’t I mean? I know a lot of things, Todoroki Shouto, but if you want my help, it’s gonna cost you.”

“Nuh-uh”, Shouto blurts out immediately, shaking his head as he remembers Touya’s warning. “We’re not doing that.”

“Fine. You’re not getting anything from me then. It’s your choice”, Geten says, shrugging nonchalantly and slouching a little more in his chair.

“What’s your price?”, Iida asks then, and Shouto whips around almost comically fast to give him a surprised look. When the three heroes discussed Operation Geten before, there was a general consensus between them, that, in accordance with Touya’s advice, they wouldn’t make any kinds of deals with the villain in exchange for information, and Shouto really didn’t expect Iida of all people to be the one to throw caution in the wind like this and break their rule.

“Look, I’m at my wit’s end with this case”, he admits quietly when he sees Shouto’s bewildered stare. “Let’s at least hear him out. Perhaps it’s a concession we can make after all.”

Well. Shouto can’t really argue with that, and besides, he’d be lying if he said that Geten’s ominous comment about his mother didn’t bother him.

“Okay”, he agrees, saying it quietly to his friend at first before repeating it more loudly and gazing at the villain expectantly.

A sly grin flits across the man’s face as he leans forward to rest his elbows on the table, his pose vaguely reminiscent of a movie gangster.

“I’ll keep it fair”, he says, his tone suddenly all business-like. “File an appeal to have them consider releasing me on house arrest for the rest of my sentence.”

That…really isn’t so bad.

In fact, Shouto thinks it’s actually a pretty fair price, especially given the circumstances, and he briefly glances at his friend to reconfirm their agreement before turning back to face the villain.

“Okay. You’ve got yourself a deal”, he states, bowing his head a little, and the satisfied smirk Geten directs at him at that almost seems genuine.

“Alright, cousin. Fire away, then.”

“What do you know about the Himura triplets? And what do you know about my mother?”

The villain leans back in his chair, a perfectly crafted image of a casually relaxed stance. “Well, for starters, I wasn’t actually around for any of these things. When I was a kid I had this older cousin - who was probably my cousin in more ways than one”, he adds, wrinkling his nose in disgust, and Shouto can’t help but sympathise, “and he would always tell me these stories. He was quite a lot older than me, probably like 15 years, so he knew all this stuff that happened way before I was born. He was also really into pro heroes, so he would never shut his damn trap about the fact that Auntie Rei had gone off and married the No. 2 Hero in the country.”

He pauses to yawn theatrically.

Shouto suppresses the urge to roll his eyes.

“Pretty boring story, if you’re asking me”, Geten finally continues, “but things started to become a little more juicy, when he started adding the part where Auntie Rei had originally been spoken for to one of her triplet cousins since childhood, until the cousins - and their parents - suddenly disappeared without a trace. You see, I always liked that part of the story, because it was like a mystery and I really wanted to solve it. I mean, how do triplets just vanish like that?”

The fact that his mother likely would’ve been forced to marry one of her cousins, if she hadn’t married Endeavour, makes Shouto feel a bit nauseous. She truly was between a rock and a hard place as far as her future life options were concerned, and Shouto really can’t blame her for choosing the rich pro hero over some guy who shared a good chunk of her DNA.

“Anyhow, I was a little kid and I was curious, so I started going round and round at family gatherings, asking around if anybody knew anything about the triplets. Most people had heard of them, some even knew them before they disappeared, but nobody really knew what had happened to them. Some people who lived in the same village as that family back in the day claimed that one day they saw a fairly large group of people in expensive suits and shiny leather shoes roll up to their house, and soon after the triplets and their parents were gone. Poof. Like they never existed”, Geten explains, blowing out a large puff of air as if to demonstrate.

“Everybody thought that family had probably been trafficked, but I always thought those suits were from the Hero Public Safety Commission. Well, I suppose that’s technically the same thing”, he points out with such a twisted laugh that it makes Shouto’s insides clench in revulsion. “I’ve met aaaaall sorts of people through the Metahuman Liberation Army, and there were always stories floating around. About the HPSC, their little human trafficking business, their child soldiers. It’s like in those American comic books.”

Shouto gulps a little. He’s not too familiar with all the gory details, but he has heard some things through the grapevine here and there, especially after Hawks announced his decision to cut ties with the Commission and go freelance, and the fact that the HPSC is even still in business always makes him feel slightly nauseous. Sharing his wariness of the organisation, he and his friends have been making a point out of working as independently from the Commission as their jobs allow them to, but there’s no denying that, to a certain extent, hero society as a whole still operates under their influence and rules, and Shouto has no idea how to even begin dismantling that particular power structure from where he’s standing.

“Do you know anything about what happened to the triplets after they disappeared?”, Iida questions, readjusting his glasses on his nose.

Geten shakes his head. “No. There’s no shortage of spies, double agents and defectors with intel on the HPSC if you know your way around the criminal underworld, but no one has ever mentioned the triplets to me nor had they ever even heard of them when I asked. Either they just never made enough of a splash for people to notice them or whatever happened to them was kept so hush-hush, even within the Commission, that your average child-soldier-slash-double-agent-slash-defector never crossed paths with them.”

Shouto blows out a heavy breath at that. He’s beginning to feel like whenever they manage to get a new lead, they soon find themselves in front of yet another locked door with no key to open it, and he totally gets why his friends, who have been working this case for much longer than he has, are so fatigued and frustrated with it.

He throws a quick glance at Iida who - despite his professional aura - looks rather resigned, before redirecting his attention to Geten when another question pops up in his mind.

“Do you know when exactly the triplets disappeared?”

“40-ish years ago?”, the villain says pensively, vaguely waving his restrained hand through the air. “No one ever told me the exact year, but they must’ve been about eight or nine years old. Apparently their Quirks had been manifested for quite a while already, but they hadn’t hit puberty yet.”

Shouto perks up at that - it’s only now he realises that they haven’t even asked about the triplets’ Quirks yet, and he could kind of mentally slap himself for it. Touya was right, Geten really does know how to talk your ear off until you almost forget yourself.

From the corner of his eye Shouto sees Iida’s eyes widen a little as his friend probably has the exact same realisation as him. “Are you familiar with the exact nature of their Quirks? Or their parents’ Quirks?”, he asks attentively before Shouto can even open his mouth.

Geten shakes his head again, pursing his lips a little. “Everyone in the Himura family has some sort of frost-related Quirk - thanks to all the inbreeding that’s almost as much of a given as everyone having a nose, so people typically don’t really bother talking about Quirk specifics. You don’t discuss the exact shape and size of your missing relatives’ noses either, do you? It’s too trivial.” He smirks a bit gleefully. “Or did you and your rich little family use to sit around the dinner table and reminisce about your not-so-dead brother’s nose?”

Shouto gives the man his best unimpressed look.

How any of those PLF people thought making Touya and Geten team up would be a good idea kind of eludes him, although he supposes Geten probably didn’t hold such a personal grudge against his brother yet at the time.

Not that the same can be said for the reverse.

“Is there anything else you know, that might help us find the triplets or figure out what happened to them?”, Shouto asks, pointedly side-stepping the jab about his family.

Geten hums contemplatively. “Don’t think so. But hey, why don’t you ask your brother’s avian spy boyfriend?”, he suggests, the contempt in his voice hard to miss. “He never spilt any Commission secrets to me, but then again he was never really a true defector anyway, was he? Just avoid being in the same room with both of them at once. Ugh. Another one of many inconveniences your brother brought into my life. Like I didn’t already have enough of those on my own”, he adds, physically shuddering as he wrinkles his nose in distaste.

It takes Shouto tragically long to parse that the villain is talking about Hawks, now that the formerly-winged hero has been Quirkless for so many years, but once he does it seems like the most obvious thing in the world to him. Of course they should involve Hawks in the case, if they’re really dealing with something related to the HPSC - which there is no denying all the signs are currently pointing at.

He turns to look at Iida, silently questioning with a raised eyebrow whether his friend still has anything else to ask the villain, but Iida only shakes his head lightly.

“I think we’re done here”, Shouto says then. “Thank you for helping us out”, he tells the man at the other end of the table politely, feeling genuinely grateful for his cooperation.

It is reasonable to assume that they would have been able to get this same information from Shouto’s mother, but given her general discomfort with talking about her family and the revolting details they just learned about her personal connection to the triplets, he is incredibly glad that they were able to spare her from having to have this particular conversation.

“Thank you very much, Himura-san”, Iida says, chopping his hand through the air and bowing a little as he rises from his chair.

Geten makes a show out of rolling his eyes. “Yeah, whatever”, he scoffs, feigning disinterest. “Just don’t forget to hold up your end of the bargain.” At that he gives the heroes a sharp look that is probably supposed to seem threatening, even if they all know that there isn’t actually much Geten could do to them while he’s locked up in Tartarus.

“We’ll keep our word”, Shouto promises firmly, because if there is one thing he values it’s his integrity, and a deal is a deal.

He gets up from his chair and joins Iida on his way over to the door, where they alert the guards that they’re ready to leave.

Much like on their way in, the two heroes are escorted by a whole entourage of security as they’re led out of the underbelly of the prison, except this time they take a different route - further down the long hallway and into a different lift at the other end. As they walk past the seemingly endless rows of cell doors, Shouto can’t help but peer a little through the reinforced mirror glass windows in them.

The jail cells down here in this part of the prison really aren’t much different from the cell Touya occupied - each of the windows reveals a small main room with a twin bed, a desk, a chair and a small drawer, with a compact ensuite bathroom sectioned off in the corner, which Shouto knows contains a toilet, a sink and a shower not unlike the on-board bathroom of a camper van. The only real difference is that Touya also had a small but thoroughly stacked bookshelf in his cell, which his psychiatrist had requested be put there.

Shouto tries very hard not to let his curiosity show on his face, but he secretly finds himself wondering what all these people in the cells they pass are in prison for, what kinds of crimes they have committed. Realistically speaking, a lot of it is probably so gruesome he’s better off not knowing, but he’s also very aware that Tartarus covers a pretty wide range of crimes with its prisoners, so the question rears its head at the back of his mind anyway.

When they finally near the end of the corridor, Shouto actually ends up getting his answer - or at least in two cases.

Just a few doors away from the lift, he spots the familiar faces of Spinner and Mr. Compress as he subtly peaks through the windows of two neighbouring cells on his right.

Neither of them look much different from the way they looked seven years ago - a little more unkempt and a little more rugged, and Mr. Compress seems to have begun greying around his temples - and it’s a bit of a strange feeling, seeing them down here.

While Geten was clearly nothing more than an annoying associate to Touya, these two men here were his actual friends. They were his friends at a time and in a place, where friendship must’ve been no easy thing to come by, and Shouto feels an odd flash of sympathy for the two villains shoot through his chest.

Perhaps it’s a stupid idea, but in that moment, as he catches those brief glimpses of the only other two surviving members of the League of Villains, Shouto decides that when they file the appeal to have Geten released on house arrest, he’ll file appeals for Spinner and Mr. Compress, too. With his brother out of jail, while those two remain locked up, there’s an undeniable double standard going on, and Shouto doesn’t want to stand for it.

Rehabilitation for me, but not for thee?

No.

He refuses to be like that, refuses to be someone who only fights for the things he supposedly believes in while they’re tangent to himself.

With fresh determination energising his steps, he lets himself and Iida be led outside and escorted over to the parking lot, where Iida left his car earlier.

They quickly climb inside and Iida revs up the engine, turning up the heating against the frosty air outside, before manoeuvring out of the lot and onto the main road.

“How do you feel?”, he asks as he steers the car through the dusky winter afternoon light. “Those were some pretty rough things Geten said about your family.”

Shouto tilts his head a little, watching the trees lining the road pass them by in a blur as he assesses his emotional state.

“I’m okay”, he finally concludes. “Thank you, Iida-kun. Most of what he said didn’t exactly come as a surprise to me, and I’ve become so used to the personal digs at me or my siblings or my parents that they don’t really faze me anymore. It is what it is.”

“You know, it really shouldn’t be like that, but I’m glad to hear you are alright”, his friend says kindly, and Shouto smiles a little. “What Geten said about Hawks”, Iida muses then, “I think he is right. We should get him involved in the case. What do you think?”

“I agree”, Shouto says immediately. “If we’re really looking for a suspect with ties to the HPSC, Hawks is probably our best shot at getting to the bottom of it.”

Iida nods along vigorously. “I have to stop by at Momo’s agency when we get home anyway, so I’ll fill her in on everything. Would you mind getting in touch with Hawks later to set up a meeting at one of our agencies? You’re welcome to invite him to mine. The sooner the better!”

At that Shouto chuckles a little. “Ah. Yeah. Uh, about that…”

***

“Sorry, I’m on a tight schedule today”, Hawks says, offering Touya an apologetic smile as he slips his boots back on in the genkan after their usual two-hour morning surveillance.

“Why? Got a hot date?”, Touya leers with a raised eyebrow before he can stop himself, and instantly mentally slaps himself for it.

Smooth.

Real smooth.

The bird laughs heartily at that, his cheeks dusting a little pink. “I’m actually meeting your brother today”, he says a bit ominously, and Touya feels his eyes nearly bulge out of his head in surprise.

“What?”

Hawks laughs again, but this time Touya has the distinct feeling that the hero is laughing at him.

“It’s for a case he’s helping his friends with. Apparently they need my expertise on something”, he explains, still grinning amusedly.

“Oh, the one with Creati and Ingenium?”, Touya asks nonchalantly, although he’s pretty sure he already knows the answer.

The bird squints at him suspiciously. “How do you know about that?”

“They asked for my expertise first”, Touya replies smugly, flashing the hero a crooked smirk, which earns him not one but two raised eyebrows and a surprised look to go along with them.

“Pro hero Todoroki Touya, huh? Did I somehow end up in an alternate universe?”, Hawks teases with a grin, and Touya promptly scowls at him.

“I am not a hero”, he states a bit grouchily, but the bird just pensively tilts his head at him.

“Hmm. You see, that’s exactly what the edgy hero in a movie would say.”

“Yeah, well, this isn’t a movie and I’m not a hero”, Touya argues defensively.

“So you’re not denying that you’re edgy?”

Touya quirks an unimpressed eyebrow at the bird and his shit-eating grin. “I’m not athletic enough for those kinds of mental gymnastics”, he deadpans, and Hawks guffaws like it’s the funniest thing he's ever heard.

He sure as hell wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but Touya secretly feels deeply pleased by the reaction.

“So, what kind of expertise do they need from you?”, he bores, casually leaning against the wall and crossing his arms.

Hawks shrugs. “Dunno. Your brother didn’t say on the phone.”

And perhaps it’s a stupid idea, but on a whim and before he can stop himself, Touya finds himself asking, “Can I join your meeting?”.

The hero blinks at him, his expression somewhere between surprise and amusement. “Well”, he says after a moment of contemplation, “it’s not really my call to make, but I suppose you could ask Shouto-kun and his friends, seeing as they’ve already involved you anyway. They should be getting here soon.” He fixes Touya with a sly grin. “Tell me again how you’re not a hero?”

Touya rolls his eyes a bit exasperatedly, but pulls on his combat boots nonetheless to actually leave his flat for what he giddily realises is the very first time since he moved in here.

Even if it’s just to go across the hall.

“Just looking for some entertainment”, he says coolly, slipping his key into his pocket before pulling the door shut behind them. “And besides, I wanna know what your flat looks like, Birdie”, he adds with a grin as he follows Hawks to the door across from his.

“Well, if you wanted to come inside, all you had to do was ask”, the hero says suavely as he unlocks his door, and the blatantly lewd look he gives Touya as he gestures for him to step inside catches him so off-guard, he actually twitches in his pants.

Good fucking lord.

He quickly hurries into the genkan, busying himself with undoing the laces of his boots as diligently as he possibly can to hide his face for a moment and get his bearings, before properly stepping inside.

The layout of Hawks’ flat doesn’t appear to be much different from Touya’s, with the exception that everything seems to be mirrored. Where Touya’s kitchen is on the right of the hallway, Hawks’ is on the left, and Touya presumes the same applies to the other rooms.

“Go make yourself comfortable”, the bird says, gesturing towards the living room at the end of the hallway. “I’ll just go put on the kettle real quick. The UA kids should probably arrive any minute now.” He disappears into the kitchen while Touya obediently does as told and shuffles off to the living room.

The first thing he notices is the crimson leather couch tucked into the corner. It looks plush and expensive, and perhaps this is just because Touya’s mind is still slightly reeling from the hero’s innuendo by the door, but he kind of feels like the couch looks a bit suggestive - like the type of furniture you’d see getting defiled in a porno.

He gulps a little and pinches his thigh through the fabric of his jeans in an attempt to drag his mind out of the gutter, forcing himself to focus on inspecting the room around him instead.

It’s much more sparsely decorated than his own - the essentials are all there, and every piece of furniture looks sleek and expensive, aesthetically matching each other perfectly, but there is a noticeable lack of personal touches, and it looks more like an advertisement from a furniture catalogue than a place that actually houses a person almost 24/7. There’s a small bookshelf in the corner and a Nintendo Switch tucked halfway behind the TV, but beyond that it feels rather empty and not like someone actually lives here.

A bit belatedly Touya realises how strange it is, that he has begun noticing things like that now.

He grew up in a cold mansion, mostly devoid of life and colour and everything that makes a house a home, and the past few weeks aside, he has spent his life living between the streets, run-down villain hideouts and high-security prison.

It’s a funny little thing how quickly you can grow accustomed to actually having certain comforts and luxuries in your life, but it’s also kind of terrifying because you suddenly have so much more to lose.

“You can sit down, you know”, Hawks’ voice comes from behind him, a teasing lilt to it. “The couch doesn’t bite.”

Touya snorts at that but still marches over to the obscenely red thing and plops down on the cushions, the brand new leather creaking a little under his arse as he shifts to get more comfortable. “I was just admiring your interior design”, he says, lazily sweeping his gaze across the room again. 

From the corner of his eye he watches Hawks set a steaming pot and a couple of mugs down on the coffee table before running his fingers through his hair, tousling it a little.

The sight is a bit mesmerising, and Touya’s mind helpfully supplies him with a whole torrent of memories of how soft the blonde strands felt between his fingers, the way the hero leaned into his touch when he gently rubbed his scalp.

“Do you like it?”, Hawks asks, effectively ripping Touya out of his reminiscence.

“What?”, he questions, blinking at the hero a bit dumbly, only to find him squinting at him just a tad too knowingly.

“My interior design”, Hawks elaborates amusedly.

Praying to whoever might be listening that his embarrassment at being caught staring isn’t showing on his face, Touya ruffles his own hair a little, just to give his fingers something to do. “It looks nice. Expensive”, he says a bit noncommittally, not wanting to overstep but also not wanting to lie.

Hawks puffs out a noisy breath. “It looks like straight out of a catalogue, doesn’t it?”, he sighs as he flops down on the cushion beside Touya, subtly brushing his knee against Touya’s in a way that could, theoretically, still be written off as an accident, even if Touya is like 95% sure that it isn’t.

“I’ve never been particularly good at picking out furniture and decorating a living space, so I kinda just ordered the whole display room from this one high-end furniture shop downtown”, the bird admits then, smiling a bit dorkily. “I figured they probably knew what they were doing when they put these pieces together, so I decided to just trust them. I guess it does look nice, but I feel like there’s still something missing and I can’t figure out what.”

“Personality”, Touya states bluntly, and Hawks barks a surprised laugh.

“You might be onto something there”, the hero admits, glancing around the room. “But how do you give furniture a personality?”

“You’re supposed to give it your personality, Birdie”, Touya points out, slightly amused. “Add more things you like - stuff pertaining to your interests, photos, personal objects-“

The shrill sound of the doorbell ringing cuts him off, and Hawks jumps to his feet. “I’ll get it. Please hold that thought and let’s get back to this later. I could really use your input.”

Touya senses his opportunity and bites back a smirk, schooling his face into a smooth and nonchalant expression. “Alright, Birdie. I’ll give it to you later”, he says lowly, making his voice sound just a tad raspy and sultry because, well, two can play this game.

The hero’s eyes widen and he swallows visibly, his Adam’s apple bobbing hard, before he damn near bolts from the room.

Touya quickly slaps his hand over his mouth to keep himself from cackling hysterically.

Moments later Hawks returns, looking perfectly calm and composed, with Shouto, Yaoyorozu and their bespectacled friend on his heels and chattering amongst themselves. The kid goes quiet and blinks a bit owlishly when he spots Touya lounging on the sofa.

“Nii-san?”, he asks, clearly surprised to see him here.

Touya pushes himself to his feet and shuffles over to his little brother to wrap him in a quick hug. “Hey, baby bro”, he says, and Shouto reciprocates easily.

“What are you doing here?”

“I have to babysit him 24/7 now. Can’t let him out of my sight”, Hawks says sagely.

“He’s lying”, Touya scoffs, rolling his eyes as he releases the kid again. “I’m here because I’m bored and nosy about that Himura case and I wanna participate in your meeting. May I?”

Shouto turns to exchange a look with his friends, receiving shrugs from both as well as a weary sigh from Yaoyorozu.

“He already knows classified information anyway. Might as well”, she concedes, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Can’t hurt to have an extra mind working on this case, and I’ll have to justify involving him in my report either way, so what difference does it make?”

“Hero”, Hawks mouths in Touya’s direction, giving him a shit-eating grin, and Touya simply pretends not to notice it.

Perhaps that will get the bird to stop bullshitting.

“Right. Let’s get started then, shall we?”, said bird says then, clapping his hands. “Does anyone want tea?”

Touya settles back down on the sofa and the heroes join him, Shouto plopping down on his right while Hawks takes the seat on his left again after pouring everyone their drinks.

The kids give the bird a quick lowdown of the case, recounting the things Shouto already told Touya during his last visit as well as the tips Touya gave him, before summarising their conversation with Geten in Tartarus the day prior.

Now that he’s hearing the full story of the Himura triplets, Touya realises that some of the details actually do ring a bell in his head (although his mother’s personal connection to the triplets is news to him, too, and makes all sorts of uncomfortable conflicting feelings slosh around in his guts). He must’ve subconsciously processed them while he was sneakily staring at Hawks, even if he didn’t really bother actively listening to that irritating cousin of his.

What he doesn’t remember hearing about, though, is the ice bastard’s suspicion that the triplets were taken by the fucking Hero Public Safety Commission.

That certainly explains why Shouto and his friends came looking for Hawks’ expertise, but it makes Touya cringe a little internally, the bits and pieces of knowledge about how rough the hero’s life with the Commission apparently was all too present in his mind.

“I see, I see”, Hawks says, nodding slowly as the kids finish their story. “May I see those censored files you found?”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

Yaoyorozu quickly fumbles for her bag on the floor and pulls out a small stack of documents before moving their mugs aside and spreading the files out on the coffee table.

“These are the triplets, and these two are - presumably - the parents”, she explains, pointing at the respective papers.

Hawks curses softly under his breath, and Touya can’t help but frown a little at him in concern. 

He might be going a bit soft on the bird these days, but he thinks that, perhaps, that’s not even such a terrible thing.

“Yeah, uh”, Hawks says then, “this definitely has the HPSC written all over it. They’re the only ones with the judicial pull to override the Quirk registry like this, and this is their exact M.O. - if you had searched for my or my parents’ names in the database seven years ago, you also would’ve gotten fully redacted documents just like these, even if you had the clearance to access classified files.”

He grimaces a little, pulling one of the papers a bit closer to himself.

“So, your triplets would be 49 years old nowadays, and according to Geten they were taken when they were about eight or nine?”, he questions, furrowing his brow a little, and the bespectacled kid - Iida, as Touya has been reminded - nods. 

Seemingly deep in thought, Hawks hooks his chin in his palm while staring at thin air, and his position brings him a little closer to Touya’s side, their thighs loosely, casually, resting against each other.

Touya does his very best to remain stock still as he savours the warmth from the touch.

“Right, so, obviously that all happened way before my time with the Commission”, the bird finally speaks up after a moment, “I mean, I wasn’t even born yet”, he adds with a chuckle, “but I heard some stories. Bits and pieces.”

He shifts to lean back on the couch, but his leg stays right where it is, lightly pressed against Touya’s.

“While I was…training with the Commission”, he begins to explain, briefly pausing to consider his words, “there were other kids and teens, basically of all ages, being trained as well. We mostly stuck with people our own age, especially when it came to physical training, but every now and then there would be…events. Imagine them like school assemblies. Or lectures. Anyhow, during those kinds of events we would often cross paths with…trainees from other age groups, and we typically didn’t really talk to them much - because you see, the older kids could be really intimidating, and when you’re a teenager you’re just way too cool to talk to a bunch of primary school aged children - but if you were nosy and perceptive enough, you could sometimes listen to the conversations the other kids were having”, he says, smiling a bit crookedly.

“I was blessed with both traits, so I often just sat in my little corner and listened to what the older kids - the cool kids - were talking about. I’m not gonna lie to you, it was mostly a whole lot of trivial stuff, but sometimes they would also discuss HPSC-related things, and I remember two or three occasions where they shared stories or rumours or whatever you wanna call them, that they overheard from even older kids when they were younger. And one time they definitely mentioned triplets with really strong frost Quirks, so I think that pretty much confirms the theory.”

He pauses again, wrinkling his nose a little. “Unfortunately, that’s all I know”, he admits then, his tone glum with an expression to match it.

Even Touya, who - while not being as unperceptive of social cues as his baby brother - definitely isn’t always the best at reading people, can tell that Yaoyorozu and Iida are trying their damnest to hide their disappointment over the admission.

Shouto’s face is as stoic as ever, but Touya supposes that might just be because he doesn’t have quite the same stakes in the case as the other two, even if he is likely related to their elusive villain. After all, this case is essentially just a side quest for the kid.

“Oh!”, Hawks suddenly exclaims then, and Touya actually startles a little at the unexpected volume. It earns him a small apologetic smile from the hero, who must’ve felt him jump where their thighs are still touching.

“I know who else we could ask”, he announces triumphantly, receiving curiously expectant looks from his visitors. “You guys remember Lady Nagant?”

“Ohhh, of course” , Iida says, gesturing so wildly with his hand that it looks like he’s trying to chop up the air. “Midoriya-kun told us about her.”

Shouto and Yaoyorozu nod along in agreement, and soon the heroes are cooking up a plan to go see the former-hero-slash-former-villain - who apparently still voluntarily remains in prison to this day. Touya can’t for the life of him wrap his head around why the woman would willingly subject herself to that kind of life, but he supposes to each their own.

“I’ll have to call in a substitute for my job here, but I can totally take a day off to visit Lady Nagant”, Hawks says, absently scratching his nose. “I think I should definitely be there - I don’t think she’s got any reason to lie to us or refuse to talk to us entirely, but I imagine she might be more willing to open up about HPSC secrets if I’m there. Do you guys all want to tag along?”

“How far away is the prison she’s in?”, Iida wonders.

The bird sways his head a little in thought. “About a two hour drive? Two-and-a-half hours if you get unlucky with the traffic?”

Yaoyorozu exhales heavily at that, and Touya notes that Iida doesn’t look particularly enthusiastic about the prospect either.

“I can go”, Shouto speaks up then, shrugging a little. “You guys already have enough on your plates as is. I currently just sit at home all day if I’m not working on this case. If I sit in a car for four hours instead, I’ll at least have a purpose”, he points out matter-of-factly, and Touya has to bite back a snort at the kid’s trademark bluntness and pragmatism.

The other heroes seem to be more than happy to agree to Shouto’s plan, and soon Yaoyorozu begins to pack up her stuff, gathering the files from the table and carefully slipping them back into her bag, while Iida downs the last few sips from his mug.

“Thank you for having us, and thank you for helping us”, he says politely, jumping up from his chair and bowing his head.

Hawks lets out one of his perfectly pearly laughs, getting to his feet as well and, unfortunately, taking his warmth against Touya’s leg right away with him. “Anytime”, the hero tells his colleagues breezily, “I’m happy to help.”

“Are you leaving, too?”, Touya asks his baby brother when he gets up from the couch as well.

Shouto nods, smiling a bit apologetically. “Yeah, I’m having dinner and movie night with Izuku and Katsuki today. They both have the evening off, and Katsuki is going to cook for us”, he explains, and from the corner of his eye Touya sees Yaoyorozu eye his little brother with something between a knowing look, amusement and concern. He can’t even begin to try figuring out what that could mean, but he presumes it must be some sort of inside joke between the kids.

He pushes himself up to his feet, several of his joints noisily voicing their complaints after he spent most of the meeting sitting stiff as a corpse lest he accidentally pull away from where Hawks was touching him, and follows the rest of the little group out into the hallway and over to the front door.

“See you soon, okay?”, Shouto says when he hugs Touya goodbye, and Touya squeezes him a little in return.

“Yeah, see you, baby bro. Enjoy your date night”, he adds with a delighted grin, privately praising himself for his clearly hilarious joke and only feeling even more validated in it when Shouto promptly stiffens against him, before burying his face against his shoulder and muffling a long-suffering groan against his hoodie.

Touya cackles a little in self-satisfaction and gives the kid another squeeze before releasing him again.

The three young heroes quickly pull on their coats and shoes in the genkan, bidding their goodbyes to Touya and Hawks, and soon, the front door shuts behind the kids and a thick blanket of abrupt silence settles around them.

It’s like the second they’re left on their own, the atmosphere around them shifts entirely, buzzing with words unspoken and desires held back, the innuendos from before still fresh on Touya's mind and his thigh still tingling with the phantom warmth of Hawks' touch, and it feels like something has finally snapped, something that has been continuously wound tighter and tighter between them these past few days.

For a moment, both of them just stand there in the dimly lit hallway, halfway facing each other, and Touya’s every nerve ending suddenly feels like it’s been set on fire. The air around them is charged with an electricity so violent that he almost swears he can hear it, crackling and sizzling in the space separating them, and the way Hawks is looking at him, all hooded eyes and parted lips, instantly makes his knees turn to jelly.

“You promised me something. Earlier, I mean”, the hero says lowly, subtly taking a step closer.

Touya swallows dryly against the sudden drought in his mouth. “Did I?”, he asks, aiming for cool and unfazed, but it comes out way too breathy, and his traitorous eyes keep flicking towards the other man’s lips.

“Yeah. You did”, Hawks murmurs, looking up at Touya through his eyelashes and very deliberately running his tongue along his bottom lip, leaving it pink and glistening, and Touya feels like he might just collapse on the spot.

“I might need a reminder”, he rasps out, damn-near giving up all pretence of being calm and collected when the hero takes another tantalising step closer to him.

Hawks eyes him contemplatively for a second, like he’s trying to figure out what he is thinking, and Touya wills his body language to project the loudest and clearest “Yes! Yes, please! Yes!” it possibly can.

The hero watches him for another moment, his gaze flickering from Touya’s eyes to his mouth and back, before taking another infuriating step closer.

Not close enough. 

“I think I can help you with that”, he finally says hoarsely, before surging forward to cup the back of Touya’s head and pushing him up against the wall in one fluid motion, effectively keeping him pinned in place with the weight of his body pressed up against him.

It’s hot as hell, being manhandled and caged in like this, there’s no denying it, and Touya’s blood promptly rushes south as his heart pounds wildly in his chest.

Their faces are only millimetres apart, Hawks’ breath ghosting hotly over Touya’s lips, and it makes his head spin so viciously, Touya thinks he would probably keel right over if the hero wasn’t holding him up.

“Does this jog your memory?”, Hawks whispers, the corners of his mouth quirking up a little.

“N-not sure”, Touya whispers back a bit shakily. “I think I might need more, pretty bird.”

The hero hums a little at that, his eyes fluttering shut as he finally closes the gap between them, capturing Touya’s lips in an open-mouthed kiss.

Touya instantly sinks into it, moaning a little into the hero’s mouth as his arms come up to wrap around the man’s waist, pulling him impossibly closer. He can feel Hawks’ warmth everywhere - seeping through his hoodie and into his skin, stirring against his groin and slotting between his legs.

The hero doesn’t waste any time, pushing his tongue between Touya’s lips and licking into his mouth fervently. The hot wet slide against Touya’s own tongue is absolutely maddening, and Touya instinctively slips his hand lower, down the fabric covering Hawks’ back and over the curve of his arse, to grab a good handful and pull their hips tighter together.

Hawks gasps into the kiss and grinds forward, pressing his bulge against Touya’s, and Touya loses his last remnants of coherent thought. He breaks the kiss to mouth his way along the hero’s jaw, feeling his stubble prickle against his unscarred top lip, and down to his neck, leaving a trail of damp kisses in his wake. Hawks immediately tilts his head to grant him better access, scratching the fingers that are still cradling Touya’s head over his scalp, and Touya smirks a little against the hero’s skin before biting down and latching on to it, drawing a guttural groan and another thrust of his hips out of the other man.

He soothes the sting with his tongue while Hawks’ other hand snakes between their bodies, slipping under Touya’s hoodie across the scarred skin on his stomach and up to his chest, and Touya’s breath promptly stutters against the hero’s neck when he begins to rub and pinch Touya’s right nipple between his fingers.

Touya feels like he’s teetering wildly on the edge between “too much” and “not enough”, and for a lack of knowing what to do with himself, he tightens his hold on the hero, protectively slipping his left hand up to the back of his head, and spins them around, crowding the other man against the wall instead.

Hawks lets out a little noise of surprise at the sudden reversal of their positions, but instantly goes pliant against Touya again, untangling his fingers from his hair to wrap his arm around Touya’s shoulders instead.

Touya’s lips reattach themselves to Hawks’ neck, and he slowly kisses his way up to the hero’s ear, flicking his tongue over the shell before softly blowing air onto the damp skin. Hawks shudders in his arms, and Touya tightens his hold on him even more as he gathers up his courage.

“I wanna suck you off”, he murmurs lowly into the hero’s ear. “Haven’t been able to stop thinking about it ever since the other day on the couch.”

“Fuck”, Hawks curses hoarsely, his hips surging forward almost frantically. “Yes. Please.”

The breathy plea goes straight to Touya’s own cock, and his body grinds forward on its own accord, desperately searching for some friction, before Touya slowly slides down the other man’s torso, sinking to his knees in front of him.

“This okay?”, he asks quietly, hovering his fingers over the hero’s belt buckle.

“Yes”, Hawks breathes, both of his hands slipping into Touya’s hair - not pushing or pulling, just resting there, like he needs the contact to ground himself.

Touya kind of sympathises.

He swallows a little and takes a deep breath to gather himself before getting to work on unbuckling the other man’s trousers. He hooks his fingers into the waistband of Hawks’ boxer briefs and pulls them down with his jeans in one go, freeing that gorgeous thick cock.

The hero is already rock hard and leaking precum, and Touya subconsciously licks his lips at the sight.

“Can I touch you?”, he questions a bit shakily, and Hawks tightens his hold on Touya’s hair a little.

“Please”, he rasps out, and that’s all the encouragement Touya needs.

He reaches up to wrap his left hand firmly around the base of the hero’s cock, squeezing it the way he likes to do it to himself, before leaning forward and giving the tip a broad lick, the slightly salty taste of precum spreading across his tongue.

Touya has sucked a dick or two before in his life, and the taste of cum and precum was usually one of his least favourite things about it, but he finds that with Hawks he doesn’t actually mind. It’s just another natural part of him, and the primal intimacy of that makes it feel strangely arousing to Touya.

Hawks groans noisily above him, his finger’s tugging lightly on his hair as Touya teases the head with his tongue, flicking it across that sensitive spot right below, before finally taking the tip in his mouth. He flattens his tongue against the underside and hollows his cheeks as he bobs his head, slowly taking the hero deeper and deeper. His hand remains wrapped around the base of his dick, and he dimly finds himself wishing that he could use his Quirk to heat it up a little more - just enough to make it feel positively maddening, the way he sometimes used to do it to himself while fantasising about scenarios not unlike the one he is in right now.

That particular realisation makes a hot spark of arousal shoot through his own cock, and he unceremoniously reaches down with his prosthetic arm to palm himself over his jeans. It’s not the most pleasurable thing in the world, touching yourself with a mechanical hand, but it’s enough to take the edge off a little, and the layers of fabric in between soften the sensation a bit.

He swirls his tongue around Hawks’ cock as he sinks deeper, humming contently when his lips hit his fingers at the base, and the hero’s thighs quiver visibly in front of him.

“ Fuck, Touya”, the other man moans, and, oh, the way Hawks says his name, all raspy and needy, makes Touya’s head spin in multiple directions at once, like one of those breakdance rides they have at amusement parks.

He presses his prosthetic hand against his crotch again, because he feels like if he doesn’t he might just die.

Emboldened by the hero’s moans, Touya hums around his cock again, looking up at him through his eyelashes, and, god, is that a sight to behold.

Hawks’ cheeks are flushed bright pink and his lips are parted, breathy little gasps escaping them as he watches Touya with glassy eyes, and Touya releases his grip from the base of the hero’s dick, using his hand to hold the other man’s hips in place instead, before carefully taking him even deeper, until he feels the tip hit the back of his throat.

The groan Hawks lets out at that is absolutely obscene, and Touya can tell by the way his fingers are knotted tightly into his hair that it is taking everything in him not to thrust forward.

Touya steadily holds on to the hero’s hip as he begins to bob his head again, swallowing around the other man’s cock as he massages the underside with his tongue. 

“Wait, stop”, Hawks suddenly gasps with a harsh tug on Touya’s hair, and Touya immediately pulls off, blinking up a little dazedly as the first tendrils of anxiety begin to weave between his ribs.

Did he do something wrong?

“Just- not yet”, the hero wheezes out, apologetically rubbing his fingers against Touya’s scalp, soothing the sting a little. “Bedroom.”

Oh.

Yeah.

Touya can totally roll with that.

He nods, clumsily scrambling to his feet, and Hawks smiles a bit dopily at him, capturing his hand in his and intertwining their fingers to tug him down the hallway to his bedroom.

Somewhere at the back of his mind Touya notes that the furniture in the hero’s bedroom matches the pieces in the living room, but he doesn’t exactly spare it much thought, given that there are much more pressing matters at hand.

Hawks leads Touya to the large king-sized bed occupying most of the centre of the room, motioning for him to get on it before crawling right after him.

“Wait”, Touya says, before the hero can settle down on top of him, and quickly tugs his hoodie over his head, carelessly throwing it on the floor. “On or off?”, he asks then, gesturing at his prosthesis.

“Your call”, Hawks tells him, hungrily sweeping his gaze across the planes of Touya’s chest.

“Off then”, Touya decides, quickly unfastening the device and setting it aside as he attempts to hide the way he blushes at the unrestrained desire in the hero’s gaze.

It’s not really something Touya is used to - someone wanting him like that, all genuine attraction - and it makes his chest clench a little with a tangle of emotions he can’t quite make sense of, while his body is positively buzzing with need.

Desperate to be closer again, to feel the other man again, Touya wraps his arm around Hawks’ back and pulls him down on top of him, revelling in the warmth and weight pressed against him when the hero goes easily, diving down to capture Touya’s left nipple between his teeth.

A low groan escapes Touya at the sensation, and he arches his back a little, but it’s not enough.

Hawks is still wearing his t-shirt, but Touya wants more skin, craves more skin, so he reaches down to tug at the hem a little.

“Can you take this off?”, he asks a bit breathlessly, tilting his head forward to briefly nuzzle into the unruly hair on top of the hero’s head.

Hawks lifts up immediately. “Yeah”, he rasps out, before pulling the shirt off and throwing it to the side.

The sight of the hero’s chiselled torso actually makes Touya salivate a little as he rakes his eyes across Hawks’ body. Planes of golden skin cover perfectly toned pecs and abs, a light dusting of blonde hair peppering his chest and trailing from below his navel down to his neatly trimmed pubes.

A need to touch so ferocious, it actually knocks the breath out of him for a moment, shoots through Touya’s chest, and he quickly reaches up to wrap his arm around the hero’s shoulders and pull him down again, the stump of his other arm coming up to rest against whatever part of Hawks’ body it can reach.

The sensation of the hero’s chest pressed against his own, skin on skin with no fabric separating them, is so overwhelming for Touya, who has probably been starved and desperate for physical affection for longer than he can even remember, that a small needy whimper escapes him.

It’s fucking embarrassing, actually, and he quickly buries his face against the side of Hawks’ neck, lest the hero see him try and fail to school his expression into something a tad less vulnerable, but Hawks doesn’t seem to mind at all.

In fact, he practically melts against Touya, one of his hands coming up to bury itself in his hair again as the heat from his skin seeps into Touya’s, the feeling damn-near scorching against the unscarred patches while tingly warm against his scars.

The hero nuzzles his face against the side of Touya’s head, and as they simply lie there together for a moment, pressed tightly against each other, Touya thinks that, perhaps, Hawks is just as starved for human touch as he is.

He tightens his hold around the hero a little, beginning to run his hand across the muscles in his back, feeling the texture of the scarred skin under his fingers, when it suddenly hits him-

“I did this to you!”, he gasps out in genuine horror as memories of hurling blue flames at pretty red wings flood his mind, making him swallow thickly against the nausea rising in his throat.

“I’m so sorry”, he whispers, shamefully meeting Hawks’ golden gaze when the hero lifts his head up to look at him. His eyes are soft, and Touya so doesn’t deserve that.

“Thank you”, Hawks says lowly, cupping Touya’s cheek and leaning down to press a soft but firm kiss against his lips. “We’re okay, though. I promise. We both hurt each other that day and we both did things we can’t ever take back, but I’d really like us to move forward from all that.”

Touya swallows again, flashes of Hawks stabbing Twice in the back shooting through his mind and mingling with the memories of his own violence, and as fucked up as it may be, he does feel comforted by the fact that, in some twisted way, they’re kind of even.

“I’d like that, too”, he admits hoarsely, craning his neck a little to press his own kiss of reassurance against the hero’s mouth, and Hawks meets him halfway, gently lowering his head back onto the pillow underneath.

They kiss languidly for a moment, savouring the closeness and warmth between them, and Touya tentatively starts to trace his fingers along the hero’s scarred back again.

“Can you feel this?”, he wonders quietly against Hawks’ lips, and the other man nods.

“Yes. I still have full sensation in my scars”, he says, softly nudging his nose against Touya’s. "The Quirk-healers patched me back up fairly well at the hospital."

“Can I see them?”, Touya asks then, his heart hammering wildly in his chest, and he dimly wonders if Hawks can feel it against his own ribcage.

He isn’t entirely sure what possesses him, and perhaps it’s weird of him to even ask, but the hero simply captures his lips in another kiss, before breathing his assent into Touya’s mouth.

Hawks shuffles off of him and settles down on his stomach on the mattress beside Touya, twisting his head sideways to look at him - nervously? Expectantly? - as Touya takes a deep breath to steel himself, before pushing himself up on his elbow to look at the hero’s back.

He can’t help but suck in a sharp breath when he sees the full expanse of the damage - the damage he inflicted.

The hero’s entire back is covered in scarring, the skin a tad darker than on the rest of his body and swirling across the bones and muscles in intricate bumps and dips.

The scars aren’t like Touya’s - they’re healed properly, as far as burn scars this severe can heal, and they don’t require staples to keep them attached to the rest of Hawks’ skin - but the sight of them still makes Touya feel an odd sense of connection to the hero, a sense of communality, somewhere deep inside his heart.

He pushes himself up properly and reaches out to trace his fingers along the swirling patterns, his touch almost reverent, and Hawks looks like he practically melts into the mattress at the sensation, his eyes fluttering shut.

Out of pure instinct Touya crawls over to settle between the hero’s slightly spread legs, before slowly lowering himself down on top of the other man, his arm and shoulder trembling in protest at having to support his body weight like this. When his chest connects with Hawks’ back, scarred skin against scarred skin, Touya’s arm finally gives out under him, and the hero oomphs a little at the sudden weight dropping down on top of him.

“Is this okay?”, Touya whispers, ghosting his mouth over the shell of the other man’s ear.

“Yes”, Hawks breathes, the word slightly muffled by the way his cheek is smushed against the pillow under his head, and Touya feels his lips quirk into a little smile.

He briefly presses his lips against that sensitive spot right beneath the hero’s ear before beginning to trace another trail of kisses along the other man’s neck, all the way to the scarred skin at the back.

Hawks sighs softly into the pillow, and Touya blindly fumbles for his hand, covering the back of it with his palm and intertwining their fingers as he continues to kiss his way along the hero’s shoulders, across the top of his spine.

Their bodies are pressed together tightly again, hot skin against hot skin, and Touya thinks he can kind of feel the other man’s heart racing underneath him. The knowledge that he affects Hawks this badly makes him mildly delirious, and he suddenly becomes hyper-aware of the way his crotch is pressed against the hero’s arse, his cock promptly twitching against the confines of his jeans.

He can’t help but gasp a little against where he’s mouthing along the other man’s shoulder blade, and his grip on Hawks’ hand tightens when the hero arches his back a little and rubs himself against the mattress before pushing his toned arse up against Touya’s crotch.

“Fuuuck”, Touya groans hoarsely, the implications of that particular motion making a whole new wave of arousal crash over him, and Hawks promptly grinds up against him again.

Touya meets him halfway, rubbing his still-clothed cock against the hero’s arse, and it feels so good, but it’s also not enough yet. He’s desperate for more friction, so he grinds down harder, faster, chasing more of the sensation and pushing Hawks’ own crotch down against the mattress.

The hero groans lowly, gutturally, and tightens his fingers around Touya’s so harshly he nearly pulls a few joints out of their sockets. “I want you to fuck me”, he rasps out, his tone all needy, and Touya swears he can see stars.

“Fuck ”, he curses eloquently under his breath, burying his face into the crook of Hawks’ neck to steady himself.

God, does he want it bad.

He wants to get closer, impossibly closer, wants the intimacy of it all.

Except…

“I’ve never…”, he mumbles against the hero’s skin, hot flashes of embarrassment shooting through him, even though he knows it’s kind of stupid. It’s not like he has lived a particularly normal life so far, and even if he had, it really shouldn’t be anything to be ashamed of.

“Never topped?”, Hawks asks quietly, his voice rumbling against Touya’s chest.

Touya blows out a frustrated little breath and closes his eyes, eternally grateful that the hero can’t see his face. “No. In general, I mean.”

“Oh”, Hawks says softly, and Touya kind of wants to crawl into a hole and die. “You’re a virgin?”

“Well, not in every sense. But this way…yes”, Touya admits lowly, and he’s pretty sure the unscarred patches of skin on his face are flaming red.

Hawks squeezes his hand again, not the bone-crushing grip from before but rather a gentle, reassuring squeeze, and his other hand comes up to tangle itself into Touya’s hair, soothing fingers rubbing his head.

“That’s okay”, the hero says lightly. “We don’t have to go that far if you’re not ready.”

Touya sighs agitatedly at that. “No, I want to”, he corrects. “I just figured…you should know. Before we do anything like that.”

Hawks hums a little, rubbing his thumb against Touya’s. “I can talk you through it. If you want”, he offers, and Touya feels kind of ridiculous for it, but the hero’s reassurance really does wonders for his nerves.

“Okay”, he breathes, pressing a kiss against the warm skin underneath his lips before untangling himself and crawling off the hero’s back.

“Should I prep myself or do you want to do it?”, Hawks asks, scooting over to the bedside table and producing a bottle of lube and a condom from the bottom drawer.

“I’d like to do it”, Touya says determinedly. 

This part he feels less freaked out about - he’s not terribly experienced with it, but when the League moved into the Gunga mansion and Touya got a bedroom with a door that actually locked for the first time in his life, he tried fingering himself a couple of times (possibly while imagining his fingers were a certain hero’s instead), so he doesn’t feel like he’s going into it completely blind.

Hawks offers him such a soft, open smile as he shuffles his jeans and boxers down his legs, that Touya promptly blushes and quickly gets to work on peeling his own trousers off to hide his face.

From the corner of his eye he can see the hero sweep his gaze across Touya’s legs, the patchwork on his thighs, as he reaches for a pillow to prop up his hips and settles down on his back.

“C’mere”, he murmurs, and Touya exhales a bit shakily as he crawls between the hero’s legs, leaning over him to capture his lips on a deep, sensual kiss to ground himself, shuddering at the sensation of their cocks brushing against each other. Hawks’ hands settle on Touya’s hips, his fingers hot against the unscarred skin, and he reciprocates the kiss eagerly, sliding his tongue against Touya’s like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do.

“Do you know how to do this?”, he finally asks lowly against Touya’s mouth, and Touya nods, pushing himself up to kneel down properly between the hero’s spread legs.

For a moment he just lets his eyes wander appreciatively across the other man’s body - the flushed dick resting against his stomach, the smooth expanse of his inner thighs, and his tight, pink hole.

“Like what you’re seeing?”, Hawks teases with a crooked smirk, and in lieu of an answer Touya briefly bends down to sink his teeth into the soft skin on the inner side of the hero’s left thigh, which earns him a surprised gasp and a breathy laugh.

“I’ll take that as a yes”, the other man says contently before picking up the bottle of lube and unscrewing the cap.

“You’re well prepared”, Touya notes amusedly as he holds out his hand for the hero to squeeze a generous amount of the liquid onto his fingers and spread it out. “Did you anticipate anything like this happening?”

Hawks promptly goes pink at that. “Not really”, he says, sounding slightly evasive, which makes a whole barrage of questions rear their heads at the back of Touya’s mind. “This is mostly just, uh, for myself. Not like I was going to get out much when I took this job, so I figured I’d have to make do”, he admits, laughing a bit nervously, and fuck, the images of the hero alone in his bed at night, fucking himself on his fingers or perhaps a toy, that flash through Touya’s mind go straight to his cock.

“Smart thinking”, he comments, sounding much cooler than he feels, before taking a deep breath to steel himself, rubbing his lubed up fingers together a little. “Are you ready?”

“Yes”, Hawks says hoarsely but firmly, spreading his legs even further in a clear invitation.

Okay.

This is fine.

Touya knows how to do this.

Wracking his mind for the memories of how it felt to do this to himself, he begins to trace his fingers across that pink hole, and Hawks quivers a little under the touch.

“It’s okay”, the hero breathes in encouragement, and Touya finally, carefully slips the first finger inside.

Tight, scorching heat engulfs him, clenching around his finger as he slowly pushes it in deeper.

“Okay?”, he asks, blinking up to catch Hawks’ gaze, and the hero nods, sucking his bottom lip between his teeth. 

“Yes. Keep going.”

Touya does as told, moving in deeper as he slowly feels the other man relax around his finger, until he finally finds what he’s looking for. Hawks gasps, half in surprise, half from pleasure, when Touya hooks his finger a little and rubs against that sensitive little bundle of nerves deep inside.

The hero’s dick is steadily dribbling precum onto his stomach, and Touya’s own neglected cock is throbbing with need at the sight in front of him.

“More”, Hawks pleads raspily. “I can take more. Please.”

Touya lets out a string of curses under his breath before carefully slipping a second finger inside, scissoring the hero’s hole open as he feels for his prostate again.

Hawks slowly begins to unravel into a babbling mess underneath him, gasping and moaning at each stroke of his prostate, and soon Touya is adding a third finger, until the hero’s hand comes to wrap around his wrist.

“Please. I’m ready. Need you inside”, he says insistently, and his voice sounds absolutely wrecked.

“Fuck”, Touya grunts at that, withdrawing his hand and carelessly wiping it on his leg. “Yes. Okay.”

“Does this position work for you? Or should I get on top?”, Hawks asks lowly, reaching for the condom package and the abandoned bottle of lube.

Touya contemplates that for a moment, chewing on his lip a little. He kind of has a feeling his arm wouldn’t be able to support his entire weight for long enough, and he doesn’t really want to wear his prosthesis for this.

“I think we should switch”, he finally concludes, and Hawks nods, readily pushing himself up and making space for Touya to lie down.

The hero settles down on top of him, straddling Touya’s thighs as he rips the condom wrapper.

“Can I…?”

Touya nods and promptly lets out a groan when he feels Hawks fingers on his aching cock as the hero rolls the condom onto him.

He squeezes a generous dollop of lube into his palm and begins to pump his fist around Touya’s dick to slick him up, and Touya has to pinch himself hard on the hip, lest he come on the spot from finally, finally being touched after so long.

When Hawks deems his work done, he wipes his fingers on the bedsheets below them before shuffling up to hover above Touya’s hips.

“Okay?”, he questions, and Touya nods vigorously, reaching down to line himself up with the hero’s hole, as the other man’s hands come to rest on his chest for support and he begins to lower himself down onto Touya’s cock.

The moment his dick breaches the rim of Hawks’ hole, Touya’s eyes roll right back into his head and a deep, guttural moan escapes him at the sensation. The hero sinks down onto him slowly, impossibly tight heat engulfing Touya’s cock inch by inch, until he is finally fully seated, gasping a little at the stretch, his fingers digging into Touya’s chest.

“God, you feel so good”, Hawks breathes, and Touya’s hand comes up to grab the hero’s hip, desperate to hold onto something. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, are you?”, Touya rasps, shuddering a little when Hawks’ fingers find his nipples again, lazily rubbing the hard little nubs.

“Yes”, the hero affirms. “I’m gonna start moving, okay?”

Touya nods, biting down on his bottom lip as Hawks lifts himself up, those toned thigh muscles flexing visibly. The slow drag along his cock is absolutely maddening, and he tightens his grip on the other man’s hip as the hero shifts forward a little to change the angle and get more leverage before sinking back down all the way in one swift motion, clenching tightly around Touya as he presumably nails his prostate.

“More”, Touya chokes out, and Hawks doesn’t need to be told twice. He lifts himself back up, and this time Touya fucks upwards to meet his next thrust, successfully punching a needy whimper from the hero.

It makes Touya’s head spin like crazy, and he feels like his heart might just beat right out of his chest as the two of them begin to settle into a rhythm, Hawks fucking himself steadily on Touya’s dick and Touya thrusting up to meet him halfway.

He’s pretty sure he’s not going to last very long - that coil of pleasure at his core is already wound ridiculously tight, and when Hawks shifts the angle again to lean forward and capture Touya’s lips in a frantic kiss, their teeth clacking together as they clumsily try to lick into each other’s mouths, he knows he’s going to fall over that ledge very soon.

“‘M close”, he mumbles breathlessly against the other man’s mouth, and Hawks swallows the words hungrily.

“Me, too”, he groans, slipping a hand between their bodies to take hold of his neglected cock.

Touya cannot stand for that, so he lets go off the hero’s hip and wraps his own hand around Hawks’ dick, nudging the other man’s hand away. “Let me. Please”, he breathes, swiping his thumb over the wet tip.

The hero obediently withdraws his own hand, using it to hold himself up above Touya instead, and ups the tempo of his thrusts. It only takes Touya a second to catch on, and he quickly assimilates while beginning to pump the other man’s cock at a matching speed, squeezing and twisting his hand just the way he knows feels good.

It doesn’t take much longer - a few more expertly thrusts from the hero, his inner walls clenching around Touya, and the coil in his abdomen finally snaps, scorching waves of pleasure radiating out into his body and whiting out his vision as he spills into the condom.

He’s pretty sure he actually whimpers, but he’s far too gone to care, the buzz of pleasure effectively numbing out his overthinking capabilities. All he can do is to continue pumping his fist, and with two more angled thrusts Hawks follows him right over the edge, groaning loudly as he clenches around Touya’s spent dick and comes all over his stomach.

“Fuck”, Hawks curses, fully collapsing on top of Touya and burying his face into the pillow beside his head. Touya deeply sympathises and slips his hand from where it’s trapped between their bodies, bringing it up to wrap his arm tightly around the hero’s back as they both try to catch their breaths.

For a moment they just lie there together, uncaring about the stickiness between their bodies, the only sounds in the room their rattling breaths and Touya’s own heartbeat rushing in his ears, but soon the feeling of Hawks still clenched around Touya’s softening dick becomes a little too much, and he reaches down to pull himself out, hissing a little from sensitivity at his own touch.

“How do you feel? Was that good for you?”, the hero finally speaks up by Touya’s ear, his voice low and absolutely fucked out.

“Yeah. Really good”, Touya confirms similarly hoarsely, twisting his head to press a kiss against the side of the other man’s head. “How do you feel? Are you okay?”

Hawks huffs out a soft laugh at that, his breath tickling Touya’s cheek. “I am splendid”, he says, the grin evident in his voice. “I’m probably gonna feel you for days after this.”

Even after everything they’ve just done, the suggestiveness in his tone still manages to make Touya’s cock twitch weakly inside the soiled condom.

“You’re a menace”, he says gruffly, which draws another laugh from the hero as he slowly pushes himself up, sitting back on Touya’s thighs.

They’re both filthy as hell, stains of cum and lube smeared between them, but Touya absolutely dreads the thought of having to get up to wash himself right now.

“May I?”, Hawks questions, his fingers hovering over Touya’s crotch, and Touya nods tiredly.

The hero carefully removes the condom, tying it up before chucking it into the bin in the corner of the room. Then, he crawls over Touya to reach for his trusty bedside table and produce a pack of wet wipes from the bottom drawer.

Grateful as he is, Touya can’t help but snort at that. “You really are prepared for everything, aren’t you?”, he teases.

“Well, sometimes you just really don’t wanna bother with getting out of bed again”, Hawks huffs, smiling a bit crookedly as he pulls out a wet wipe and begins to clean Touya’s stomach, his movements gentle and careful around his staples.

Touya feels like he should probably be doing this himself, or at least help the other man, but Hawks doesn’t seem to mind at all, humming a little as he moves lower, and Touya’s limbs feel so pleasantly heavy in his post-orgasm haze, he allows himself this - allows himself to be taken care of.

After he has finished cleaning Touya, the hero quickly wipes the cum and lube stains off his own body, before throwing the dirty wipes into the bin.

For a moment, Touya starts to wonder how they’re supposed to proceed now - should he leave? He kind of really doesn’t want to, but he’s not really sure what the protocol is here - but Hawks thankfully puts him out of his misery before he can even begin to spiral. 

The hero tugs on the soft duvet underneath them, nudging Touya a little to lift up, before pulling it over both of them and lining himself up by Touya’s left side.

“Is this okay?”, he asks lowly, hesitantly resting his palm against the centre of Touya’s chest, and Touya - still desperate for more warmth, more touch - nods, wrapping his arm around the hero’s back and pulling him in properly.

Hawks goes easily, his head coming to rest on Touya’s chest as he fully throws his arm across his body, tangling their legs together under the duvet.

Somehow, even after everything they’ve just done, the position still makes Touya’s heart rate pick up noticeably, and he wonders if the other man can hear it where his head is resting.

He doesn’t feel the need to admit it out loud, but this is another first for Touya - cuddling like this, and especially naked cuddling - and the sheer intimacy of it makes his skin tingle all over.

Hawks’ hand comes up to Touya’s sternum, and the hero’s fingers begin to trace light, swirling patterns across his chest. The touch is gentle, like Touya is something worthy of being cared for, and that thought makes him exhale a slightly shaky breath into the other man’s hair.

“Can I…can I ask you something?”, Hawks suddenly speaks up then, his voice quiet and slightly muffled against Touya’s skin. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

Touya furrows his brow a little. “Ask away.”

“How come you’ve never…you know…before?”

Touya breathes out a heavily at that, rustling the unruly blond strands at the top of the hero’s head.

That is one hell of a loaded question.

He supposes he could just take the out Hawks gave him before he even asked, but does he really want to do that?

Mere minutes ago, the two of them were physically closer than Touya has ever been to another person in his life, and the hero trusted him enough to - quite literally - let him inside like that.

It’s a bit uncomfortable and embarrassing and, quite frankly, scary, but deep down Touya feels that he wants to reward that trust with honesty.

He takes a deep breath to steel himself, grateful that Hawks can’t see his face right now, and tightens his hold around the other man a little.

“It’s…for multiple reasons”, he starts then, his voice sounding a little foreign to his own ears, but he bravely soldiers on.

“For starters, if you live your life on the streets or in run-down villain hideouts, you rarely even get an opportunity for something like that. You live with the constant knowledge that there could be danger lurking around the corner right in this moment, so you kinda have to stay vigilant at all times and avoid making yourself too vulnerable”, he explains a bit hoarsely while Hawks continues to run his fingers across his skin soothingly.

“It’s fairly simple and straightforward to go down on someone in the backrooms of some abandoned building, or to put your hand down someone’s pants in a dark alley - if something happens, you just zip yourself back up and get the hell out of there. You also don’t make yourself too vulnerable to the person you’re with, because coming by someone you can trust enough to risk putting yourself at their mercy like that is damn near impossible in the criminal underworld”, he adds a bit drily, remembering all too well how many horror stories he has heard from people, who weren’t careful enough while hooking up with another villain and had it backfire massively on them.

He pauses for a moment, briefly trying to sort out his next words, before continuing.

“Also…sexual attraction has never really come easily for me”, he admits quietly. “It just…it kinda takes a lot for me to actually be attracted to people like that, so there haven’t really been a whole lot of people I’ve even wanted to do anything sexual with in my life. In a world, where your options are already limited anyway, it really doesn't help if something like that reduces your pool of potential sexual partners even more, and then, of course, there’s still no guarantee that those people will even want you back. I know I’m not exactly conventionally attractive- no, don’t argue”, he cuts in when Hawks gasps against his chest in clear protest.

“I know I’m not conventionally attractive, okay? I don’t look the way most people do, and I get that someone like me isn’t necessarily everyone’s taste.”

“Well, no one looks the way most people look, and I think you’re hot as hell”, the hero huffs indignantly, pressing a firm kiss against Touya’s sternum, and the sheer petulance of it draws a genuine laugh out of Touya.

He lifts his head up a little to kiss the crown of the other man’s hair, holding him a little closer before settling back down on the pillow.

He supposes he could just leave things at that - “yeah, I was a 31-year-old virgin up until today because sex is dangerous as a villain and the few people I’ve even been attracted to didn’t always want me back” - but that wouldn’t be the whole truth, would it? And he wanted to be honest.

He briefly closes his eyes, taking another deep breath.

“When you suddenly end up on the streets”, he says quietly, “with no money, no possessions, no connections, absolutely nothing to your name, you sometimes…have to do things. To survive.”

He feels Hawks stiffen a little against him and quickly tilts his head to press another kiss into his hair, perhaps just as much to soothe himself as to soothe the other man.

“Doing stuff like that with random strangers you’re not even attracted to, just to get some cash, is one hell of a libido killer”, he spits out a bit harshly, swallowing thickly against the lump that’s beginning to form in his throat as glimpses of memories from several lifetimes ago flash through his mind.

It’s not something he did often, just a small handful of times when he was so down on his luck, with no place to go and no one looking out for him, he simply didn’t know what else to do anymore, but it sure as hell wasn’t a pleasant way to have your first sexual experiences, and for quite a while it left him with very little desire to even explore himself - even on his own or with one of the few people he actually felt attracted to.

“I’m so sorry”, Hawks says softly, his voice sounding pained, and perhaps a little guilty, and his hand leaves Touya’s chest as he wraps his arm around him properly, squeezing Touya a little. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

Touya exhales heavily at that, squeezing the hero back and tucking what’s left of his right arm against Hawks’ to hold him in place. “That’s all there is to it, really”, he huffs out lowly.

“Thank you for trusting me with this”, the hero whispers against his skin. “If there’s ever anything I can do, or if you ever feel uncomfortable with something, please don’t hesitate to tell me.”

Not entirely trusting his voice, Touya just holds the other man a bit tighter, lightly rubbing his fingertips against his skin, and closes his eyes against the way they have begun to sting with phantom tears. He’s pretty sure the seams underneath are oozing a bit of blood, but it’s not like Hawks can see it right now, so Touya just lets it be.

Lets himself be held, savouring the warm, grounding sensation of having the other man pressed so tightly against him, and feeling the most human he thinks he has ever felt in his life.

Chapter Text

When Touya dazedly blinks his eyes open, his first thought is that he must’ve slept in way longer than he normally does. The angle at which the sunlight is filtering into the room and hitting his face is all wrong, and his tongue feels absolutely parched.

He hums a little and nuzzles his nose into the pillow under his cheek, dimly registering that it smells differently than his own but only really processing that information when he realises there’s a warm, heavy weight plastered against his back and an arm thrown across his waist, holding him in place right where he is.

That’s right.

He is in Hawks' bed.

They must’ve both dozed off while they were cuddling last night, and apparently they have shifted so much in their sleep that the hero is now spooning Touya, holding onto him tightly like he’s some sort of oversized plushie. Hawks’ palm is resting against Touya’s chest, and, well, in the soft, sleepy atmosphere of the morning Touya simply can’t resist shifting his arm so he can cover the hero’s hand with his own, pressing it down a little.

“I can feel your heartbeat”, the other man suddenly murmurs into Touya’s ear, his voice thick and low with sleep, and Touya startles a little, aforementioned heart promptly jumping in his chest.

He had assumed the hero was still asleep.

Hawks huffs out a small laugh. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” He shifts a little behind Touya, craning his head to press a quick kiss to his temple. “Sleep well?”

Touya can feel that the hero is sporting a semi, pressed up against him as he is, but he doesn’t appear to be interested in doing anything about it right now, so Touya just squeezes the other man’s hand a little and hums affirmatively. “Thirsty as hell, though”, he says, his voice scratching and creaking in his throat as if to underline the point. “You?”

The other man chuckles. “A bit sore. In a good way, though”, he assures quickly, nuzzling into Touya’s neck.

For a moment, they just continue to lie there in the soft cozy cocoon of the hero’s bed, the rays of the winter sun dancing across their skin, both of them rather unwilling to leave the warmth and comfort of the other’s touch, until Touya’s stomach grumbles noisily, reminding him that they completely skipped dinner last night.

“Breakfast?”, Hawks asks a bit amusedly, and Touya lets out a long sigh.

How inconvenient it is, to have physical needs.

“Yeah”, he finally concedes, reluctantly letting go of the hero’s hand.

They untangle themselves from each other a bit awkwardly before crawling out of bed and picking out their clothes from the messy pile on the floor. Touya reattaches his prosthetic arm, trying not to ogle the hero as he gets dressed, but still catching glimpses of soft skin and defined muscles from the corner of his eye as he pulls on his own clothes.

A quick glance at the clock on the wall tells them that it’s just after 9 AM.

“I think I really need a shower”, Hawks admits, grinning a bit crookedly as he runs a hand through the blond mess on top of his head. “Meet you at yours at 10, like always?”

Well. Touya really can’t argue with that. He’s feeling quite sticky himself, and his hair is probably a catastrophe, so he could really use a shower, too.

“Sounds good, Birdie”, he says as they make their way out of the bedroom and into the hallway.

“See you at 10, then”, Hawks chirps breezily, and for a moment they just stand there, staring at each other awkwardly, and Touya has no fucking clue what he’s supposed to do now.

Kiss the hero goodbye?

High-five him?

Just turn around and leave without doing anything?

In the end, the other man takes the decision out of his hands and offers him a truly, painfully clumsy wave, chuckling a bit nervously, and, for a lack of better things to do, Touya simply waves back at him, feeling like the biggest fucking loser on the whole damn planet, before calling out a “see you” and hurrying out through the door.

As soon as he is back in his own flat, he buries his face in his hands to muffle a long-suffering groan.

He doesn’t really know what he expected - actually, perhaps the fact that he didn’t expect anything specific is really the problem here - but the hero’s behaviour confuses the living hell out of him. He doesn’t even know what exactly the two of them are now - former-enemies-turned-reluctant-friends with benefits? He supposes that’s probably the closest description for it, but it’s not like he’s got any noteworthy experience with that sort of thing, even if you ignore the part where they’ve kind of almost killed each other in the past - and he can never fucking tell where the lines are. 

It would be easier, if they had only ever indulged in the “benefits” in a strictly sexual context, but the way they fell asleep last night and woke up together this morning clearly went beyond just sexual benefits, so how the hell is Touya supposed to figure out now, when it’s okay for them to kiss or touch each other intimately and when it isn’t?

Realistically speaking, he could probably just ask. He’s pretty sure Hawks wouldn’t fault him for not knowing how exactly these kinds of things work, especially given the fact that he’s aware of Touya’s relative lack of experience in this department now, but Touya kind of feels stupid for not knowing, and he really doesn’t want to embarrass himself even further by admitting it out loud.

He groans into his hands again for good measure before pushing his matted hair from his forehead and shuffling off towards the bathroom. If he’s going to have a crisis about his lack of social skills, he might as well have it while getting himself clean.

He quickly strips out of his clothes before stepping under the warm spray from the rain shower head, sighing a little at the sensation on his skin. It can’t quite compete with the soft warmth of Hawks’ bed, but it’s pleasant nonetheless, and he hums a little as he begins to soap himself up.

While he runs his hand across his body, his mind helpfully supplies him with all those fresh memories of what it felt like to have Hawks touch him like that.

It was good. So good.

The closeness, the intimacy.

The feeling of being taken care of like that.

Cherished.

Touya dimly finds himself reminded of how inappropriate everything they’ve done technically is, given their respective positions in each other’s lives, but how is he supposed to be concerned about that when it felt so good? Clearly Hawks has no qualms about acting more than just a little unprofessional in his job, or else he wouldn’t have initiated what happened between them last night, so why should Touya care?

Perhaps it’s stupid of him to trust the hero like this, considering his traitorous past, but he really doesn’t think that Hawks is going to tell on them, and he’s certainly not planning to do so himself.

So, what the hell. Might as well indulge in this whole thing between them as long as they’re both into it.

And, god, is Touya into it.

It’s by far the best sex he’s ever had in his life, although his points of reference are admittedly pretty limited, given that his rather few genuine sexual encounters of the past can be roughly summarised as sucking dick in shady alleys and eating pussy in abandoned buildings.

The memories of images of Hawks coming undone from his mouth and on his fingers, the way he felt around Touya, all hot and tight, are enough to make Touya’s dick perk up in interest as he lathers himself up, and he supposes there’s really no reason why he shouldn’t anymore now, so he takes hold of himself with his soapy hand and begins stroking himself to full hardness.

He replays the night before in his mind as he jerks off, closing his eyes as he recalls the feeling of being pinned against the wall by the hero, so strong and firm yet mindful to make it pleasant for him.

The way Hawks intertwined their fingers as he led him to his bedroom.

The noises the other man made as Touya fingered him open, massaging his prostate with every thrust of his fingers.

A small gasp escapes Touya when the sudden desire to feel that particular type of stimulation again overcomes him, and he squeezes himself firmly at the fierce wave of arousal rushing into his cock, his insides aching with a phantom emptiness, a need to be filled up.

It has been a very long time since he last did that to himself. Prison really didn’t provide the space or privacy to do anything beyond a quick wank in the tiny bathroom to release some pressure (unless you were some sort of exhibitionist who didn’t mind the guards watching you through the security cameras), but Touya supposes now that he has his own flat there’s really nothing stopping him from ordering a few supplies and exploring himself like that again.

Hawks certainly seems to be indulging in that sort of stuff, if his magical bedside drawer is anything to go by, and the mental image of the hero alone in his bed, fucking himself on his own fingers or a toy, sends another hot spark through Touya’s core. 

He groans a little, twisting his wrist and picking up the pace, aiding his pumping fist by fucking into it the way he did to meet Hawks’ thrusts last night, and the phantom feeling of the hero clenching around him is what finally sends him over the edge. He paints the tiled shower wall with streaks of cum, the evidence quickly being washed down the drain by the warm spray from above, as his muscles contract in blissful pleasure, his thighs quivering a little with the effort to hold him upright.

He allows himself a moment to catch his breath and let the fog in his brain clear up before he quickly finishes washing himself and gets out of the shower. The bird will probably be here soon, so Touya hurries to brush his teeth and get dressed in fresh clothes before fluffing up his damp hair a little, lest the wavy strands air-dry in some really unflattering shape.

(Does he put on that blue hoodie that brings out his eyes so well again?)

(Possibly.)

(Potentially.)

(Perhaps.)

(Piss off.)

By the time 10 o’clock rolls around and the doorbell rings, he feels clean and presentable and has just begun preparing a lazy breakfast.

Hawks shows up on his doorstep looking slightly pink, his hair similarly damp and a fresh peach-y smell wafting around him. Touya tries not to be too obvious about the way he inhales the enticing fruity scent as they make their way to the kitchen and settle down on the bar stools together.

They go through their typical morning spiel - with the exception that this time Hawks eats something as well - and everything seems perfectly normal, as far as their standards are concerned, apart from the fact that at some point, in the middle of a discussion about the merits of free public museums, the hero’s socked foot finds its way over to Touya’s to hook their ankles together.

Hawks doesn’t even blink, just continues babbling about how providing everyone with equal access to educational spaces might even promote exchange and foster friendships between people from vastly different walks of life (which Touya fully agrees with), and Touya once again finds himself deeply confused about the exact nature and framework of the benefits between them, but he’s certainly not going to complain about the touch, so he keeps his own foot right in place, resting against Hawks’, and simply continues drinking his coffee like it’s nothing out of the ordinary.

Perhaps he should just let the hero take the lead in these kinds of things for now until he has managed to figure out the unwritten rules by himself.

***

It’s just a little before noon, when Shouto pulls up outside the building his brother and Hawks live in. When they had planned their visit to see Lady Nagant at the older hero’s flat the other day, Shouto had agreed to take on driving duties for the trip, given that Hawks apparently doesn’t even own a car and described himself as a “slightly unconventional driver” during their meeting, which had Touya promptly slap his hand over his mouth in a rather unsuccessful attempt to suppress a snicker.

Shouto really doesn’t mind being the driver, in fact he actually quite enjoys driving, but he kind of doesn’t really do it all that often these days since he usually either hitches a ride in Katsuki’s fancy sports car (“passenger princess” is what Katsuki sometimes calls him a bit exasperatedly, and Shouto preens at it every single time) or takes a taxi to avoid having to deal with the absolutely horrid parking situation downtown.

He turns off the engine and picks up his phone from the console to text Hawks that he’s here, before leaning back in his seat a little as he waits for the other hero to come outside.

“Sorry to keep you waiting”, Hawks apologises a bit breathlessly as he climbs into the passenger seat about ten minutes later. “Your brother made me finish playing our Magic match before he let me leave. Said you wouldn’t mind.”

Shouto snorts a bit drily at that, because of course Touya would say that.

And, well, he supposes he’s kind of right. It’s not like Shouto has anything else to do at the moment.

“It’s fine”, he says placidly, starting the car again and pulling back out onto the road. “So you’re into Magic, too, now?”

Hawks chuckles a little. “Well. Let’s say your brother taught me how to play, and I think it’s pretty fun. I definitely can’t compete with his level of obsession- I mean expertise, though.”

“I see”, Shouto laughs.

Perhaps he should give that whole Magic thing a shot, too, some time.

“Hey, do you mind if I put on some music?”, the other hero asks then, pulling his phone from his pocket and dangling it in the air a little.

“Go ahead”, Shouto says, throwing a quick glance at the console display. “The bluetooth should already be on.”

From the corner of his eye he sees Hawks smile a little as he connects his phone to the car stereo and begins to scroll through his music library until he finally seems to settle on something.

The fairly distinct opening notes of a song Shouto actually recognises - even if he can’t quite figure out from where - start blaring through the speakers, and he can’t help but blink a little in surprise. “I don’t know what I expected your music taste to be, but I didn’t really think it would be this”, he notes with a slightly amused glance at the other man.

Hawks barks out a laugh at that. “Too heavy?”

“Something like that”, Shouto admits with a chuckle.

The other hero laughs again. “I’m pretty open-minded”, he explains, shrugging lightly. “But also, from what I’ve gathered, your brother really likes this band, and I figured if I got to know a couple more songs, perhaps I could leave a good impression. Or stun him a little”, he adds mischievously.

Oh.

Yes.

That’s right.

Now Shouto finally remembers where he knows the song from.

Touya likes this band, yes, but it was Jirou who showed this particular song to him a while ago. It’s a collaboration with a famous Japanese all-female metal band, which Jirou had been really excited about.

“Are you cool with this?”, Hawks asks then, and Shouto promptly frowns in confusion.

“You trying to make a good impression on my brother? Or stunning him?”, he questions bemusedly.

“No, the music”, the other hero elaborates, chuckling a little. “Although perhaps I should ask for your blessing with the other thing as well…”

Shouto, for his part, can’t even begin to try making sense of whatever the other man’s thought process behind all that could be, but he certainly doesn’t want to stand in the way of Hawks’ musical education or his plan to surprise his brother a little.

“You have my blessing”, he says, briefly glancing over his shoulder before switching lanes to drive onto the highway. “For everything.”

If he weren’t so focused on driving, perhaps he would see the way Hawks’ eyes widen almost comically at that, but, as it is, he is none the wiser, and the two of them continue passing the rest of the drive with trivial conversations to the soundtrack of modern metalcore.

Shouto had been slightly apprehensive about spending so much one-on-one time with Hawks, not to mention in such a small space, because he wasn’t really sure whether they’d even have anything to talk to each other about, but the other hero is such a natural chatterbox that Shouto’s concerns were entirely unwarranted, and the two-hour drive goes by much faster than he expected.

Soon, he finds himself pulling into the visitor’s parking lot outside a large complex of grey modern buildings, and the two heroes quickly make their way over to the main entrance. It’s notably warmer here than it is back home and the feeling of walking across regular pavement instead of slushy snow is almost unfamiliar to Shouto at this point.

He supposes the aftereffects of their frost villain’s Quirk don’t reach this far out, and he makes a mental note to share that particular bit of information with Momo and Iida later.

“Pro heroes Hawks and Shouto. We’re here to see Lady Nagant. I called ahead yesterday?”, Hawks greets the receptionist at the entrance, offering him his trademark winning smile.

“IDs, please”, the receptionist says, sounding thoroughly bored.

Shouto fumbles both his personal ID and his pro hero ID out of his wallet and slides them across the reception desk. The clerk picks them both up, noisily chewing on a piece of gum as he eyes the photos closely before squinting up at Shouto and right back down at the ID cards in his hands. He repeats that particular spiel three times before finally handing the IDs back over and waving Shouto through the gate.

“Sorry. You just have such nondescript features”, the guy says, still sounding deeply disinterested.

Shouto can’t help but stare a bit dumbly at the man as he blindly slips his IDs back into his wallet, while the receptionist gives Hawks and his IDs a brief once-over, waving him through almost immediately, and Shouto’s eyes nearly fall right out of his skull in surprise.

He’s certainly not opposed to people not knowing or caring who he is, but “nondescript” is, objectively speaking, really not the word he would use to describe his own appearance, and he can tell by the near-hysterical look Hawks gives him as they head over to the security checkpoint that the other hero is inclined to agree.

They make it through security without any major incidents. The metal detectors briefly go off for both of them because of their ear piercings, but those are quickly explained, and soon the two of them find themselves being escorted to a lift and through a couple of corridors with cell doors lining each side.

At first glance this place isn’t all too different from Tartarus, but at second glance it becomes glaringly obvious that this is just a regular prison, rather than the extremely high-security detention centre that Tartarus is.

For starters, this place isn’t underground.

The cell doors lining the walls are also notably thinner, and instead of having a whole entourage of specially-trained security guards flank them, they are simply being led around by two regular prison guards.

“We unfortunately don’t have the capacities to provide you with a one-on-one visiting room at the moment. We need those for openly hostile prisoners who can’t really be in the same room with others, and Tsutsumi-san isn’t like that, so we have to put you in one of our larger communal visiting rooms”, one of the guards explains as she gestures for Shouto and Hawks to step through the door she’s holding for them into a smaller side corridor. “Of course, you will still have your own private table there.”

Shouto frowns a little at that. They’re probably too far away from home to have anyone with a personal interest in their case eavesdropping on them, but given the rather sensitive and classified nature of what they’re here to talk about, it’s still definitely not optimal. He glances at Hawks, who is chewing on his bottom lip in a way that tells Shouto he’s probably mentally running through similar security concerns as him.

They continue down the hallway until they reach a wide glass door revealing a large room - kind of reminiscent of an office building cafeteria with tables strewn all about - behind it. There are people milling about between the tables, visitors, guards and prisoners alike. The prisoners are all dressed in dark blue sweatshirts and sweatpants with metal cuffs around their wrists.

“Please take a seat over there”, one of the guards tells Shouto and Hawks as they step into the room. “Tsutsumi-san will be with you any minute. We’ll be keeping our distance to give you your privacy, but if you need assistance or you’re ready to leave, just give us a shout.”

The two heroes nod dutifully as they march over to the small table the guard indicated for them and sit down next to each other.

“Not the best place to have a private conversation, is it?”, Hawks notes quietly, his gaze wandering around the room.

“Not really, no”, Shouto agrees, grimacing a little. “It’s a good thing we’re so far away from home, but we should probably still really try to keep it down.”

Hawks nods. “Yeah, we should definitely play it safe. I’m not overly concerned about the prisoners here, but who knows what all these other visitors get up to in their free time.”

“Do you think Lady Nagant will cooperate like that?”

The other hero tilts his head pensively at that. “Probably”, he says after a moment. “I believe that exposing the HPSC for whatever she can to whomever she can is definitely a top priority for her, but I don’t think she would do it at the cost of sabotaging our chances at catching someone who’s been going around killing innocents. That wouldn’t really be justice.”

Shouto hums a little. He doesn’t really know much about Lady Nagant, mostly just the things Hawks and Izuku have told him about her, so he’ll have to take the older hero’s word for it.

They’re kept waiting for another five minutes or so until another prison guard finally escorts the purple and pink haired former-hero-slash-former-villain to their table, chaining her handcuffs to the thick metal ring on the surface before stepping out of earshot.

“Hawks. And…Shouto? I presume?”, Lady Nagant greets them, looking at them curiously.

Shouto nods quickly.

“What brings you here? And how are you doing?”, she asks, specifically addressing Hawks with the second question. “I heard you fully cut ties with the Commission. Good for you.”

“I did, yeah”, Hawks confirms, smiling a little. “Doing good. How are you?”

Lady Nagant huffs out a small laugh and leans back in her chair a little. “Oh, you know. Prison life. It’s not particularly exciting, but I’m getting free food and around-the-clock security service. Things could certainly be worse, and this place is definitely much more comfortable than Tartarus.”

She genuinely seems satisfied with her living situation - or at least as satisfied as someone living in a jail cell can be - and Shouto can’t really wrap his mind around it, but he supposes with life experiences like hers, you really might consider a place, where you are being guarded 24/7 and never have to worry about shelter or where your next meal is going to come from, a pretty sweet deal.

“Glad to hear you’re doing alright”, Hawks says amicably.

“So”, Lady Nagant starts then, her tone knowing, “what can I help you with? Or are you really just here for a chat?”

Hawks chuckles a bit. “Eh, you caught us”, he admits good-naturedly. “We have a couple of questions we’d like to ask you. It’s for a murder case we’re trying to solve.”

“Ohhh. Tough stuff. Fire away. Can’t promise I’ll be able to give you the answers you want, but let’s give it a shot”, Lady Nagant says, looking at the heroes with genuine interest.

Hawks glances over at Shouto, apparently indicating that this is his cue, so Shouto clears his throat a little and switches to his slightly more professional hero persona.

“Right, uh, so basically, we’re after a villain with a Quirk that allows them to freeze pockets of air very rapidly. Our investigation so far has led us to a set of triplets from the Himura family and we are currently operating under the belief, that they were taken in by the Hero Public Safety Commission about 40 years ago, but unfortunately that’s essentially where our lead ends”, Shouto explains lowly, glancing around a little to make sure nobody is paying attention to their conversation.

“Their Quirk registry files are almost entirely redacted in typical HPSC-fashion. I remember hearing some very vague stories about them back when I was training with the Commission, but unfortunately I don’t know anything about what happened to them. Or even their given names. That was all way before my time”, Hawks adds, absently rubbing the stubble on his chin.

Lady Nagant nods slowly. “I’m assuming you’re trying to keep this all hush-hush?”, she asks, the corners of her mouth twitching a little.

“Yeah”, Hawks confirms, laughing a bit nervously.

The former-hero-slash-former-villain nods again. “Gotcha. Well, you’re in luck”, she says quietly then. “I knew the Himura triplets personally.”

Shouto promptly has to clench his fist in his lap to avoid punching the air in triumph at that. He had this gnawing worry all day that they were about to chase down yet another dead end with this little excursion, and he feels deeply relieved at the fact that it wasn’t all for nothing after all.

“They were a few years older than me, so they had already been with the Commission for a while when I joined, but we’d cross paths semi-frequently since we’d typically get hired for similar types of jobs”, Lady Nagant explains, wrinkling her nose in disdain. “Their names were Touji, Mafuyu and Fuyuki. They all had that rapid freezing Quirk. ‘Frostbite’, it was called. Very useful Quirk for an assassin, I’ll tell you that.”

“What happened to them?”, Shouto asks bluntly before he can stop himself.

Lady Nagant grimaces again. “There was a training accident. You see, the triplets usually only trained amongst themselves, since they couldn’t unleash the full power of their Quirks in the presence of anyone without a genetic cold resistance. You’d be a dead icicle within seconds. Well, maybe not you”, she corrects with a slightly awkward look in Shouto’s direction.

“They rarely ever used their full powers for missions since they apparently incapacitated them, too. Turned them into blocks of ice themselves, except they had the physical constitution to survive like that until someone melted them out again. Still, they would often practice using their full abilities on each other to try increasing their tolerance. The HPSC valued them so highly that they built them their own specifically thermo-insulated gym to train in.”

She grimaces a little.

“Except they cut some financial corners during the construction, and the materials they used weren’t actually equipped to withstand such excessively low temperatures, so one day, while the three of them were all standing frozen to the spot, one of the large supporting metal beams in the ceiling broke off and crushed Mafuyu and Fuyuki to death. Like, imagine dropping a car onto an ice lolly. That’s what happened to them.”

Shouto gulps a little at the graphic images flitting through his mind. By his side, Hawks pulls an expression of disgust that Shouto finds mirrors his own feelings pretty well, while Lady Nagant is staring grimly at the table between them.

“What about Touji?”, Hawks asks carefully.

“He was standing far away enough that the metal beam missed him. Got all splattered with frozen chunks of his brothers, though”, Lady Nagant continues, and Shouto has to swallow again.

“He was pretty messed up after all that - understandably so - and refused to believe it was just an unfortunate accident, like the Commission claimed it was. He asked me for help, and I was already so done with the Commission by that point that I happily went digging with him. We ended up finding out that the HPSC specifically instructed the construction company to use cheaper materials for the gym to save a few yen, even though they knew it would be a security hazard. Touji didn’t take that well at all and tried confronting the higher-ups about it, but they kept denying it all, of course. And it’s not like he had anyone to go to about it in the outside world anyway. The HPSC were already the highest possible authority, and back then the general public was still fully in the dark about their, well, questionable modus operandi. So Touji decided to make a grand exit - swore he’d get them to own up to what they did one day, and then disappeared without a trace.”

She noisily blows a shaggy purple strand of hair out of her eyes.

“They never managed to find him, not even to this day as far as I’m aware, and that’s honestly one hell of a feat on Touji’s part, because for the first few years they kept sending all of their best spies and investigators after him. Eventually they had to give up because it was costing them too many resources, so they noted him down as ‘presumed dead’ and called it a day”, she finishes her story, and Shouto kind of feels like he’s going to need a moment to process all that.

Hawks exhales heavily. “Fucking hell”, he says, scratching his neck a little. “Did you ever hear anything from or about him after that?”

The former-hero-slash-former-villain shakes her head. “No. I was one of the people the Commission sent out to search for him, but I never found him and he never contacted me again. I also never heard anything about a villain with a Quirk like Frostbite until today. If your villain is really Touji, he probably hid and lay low for all those years. I have no idea why he'd choose now to become active again, though”, she muses, frowning a little.

It’s a valid question that Shouto thinks they’ll definitely have to ponder once they’re in private again.

Even if this is all part of Himura Touji’s plan to make the HPSC own up to how they got his brothers killed all those years ago, it still begs the question why he waited so long and why he is currently just killing random innocents with his Quirk.

Motive and execution don’t quite add up yet, but he supposes at least they have properly identified their main suspect now.

“Thank you for cooperating with us”, he tells the woman across the table with an earnest smile.

She flashes him a slightly crooked smile in response. “My pleasure. Although I do have to ask something of you”, she adds, her expression turning more serious again, and Hawks nods at her to continue. “If your villain really turns out to be Touji, will you ensure that he gets a fair trial and a chance at rehabilitation, and won’t just be thrown into Tartarus to rot for the rest of his life?”

Shouto doesn’t even have to think about that. “Yes”, he promises, and he absolutely means it.

No more double standards.

Next to him Hawks nods in agreement, and Lady Nagant lets out a small sigh of relief at that.

“Thank you”, she tells them. “I’ll get in touch with you if I hear anything through the grapevine in here, but in all honesty this place here really doesn’t trade much information, and especially not niche stuff like this.”

Hawks laughs softly at that. “Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing”, he points out lightly, and Lady Nagant acknowledges it with a nod and a quirk of her lips.

“Still, thank you, though”, Hawks adds then a little more seriously. “Take care, alright?"

“Yeah, you too.”

Shouto quickly says his own goodbyes to the former-hero-slash-former-villain while Hawks informs the prison guards that they’re done here, and soon the two of them find themselves being escorted out of the visiting room, various pairs of eyes staring after them curiously as they’ve presumably been recognised, before making their way back to the main entrance of the prison.

They’re quickly run through another security check and have to leave their signatures with the clerk at the reception, who still looks like he’s suffering through the most boring day of his life, before they’re released back outside into the golden afternoon sunlight and almost confusingly warm air.

“Pretty successful mission if you’re asking me”, Hawks notes contently as they stroll back to the visitor’s parking lot.

“Definitely”, Shouto agrees, fumbling for his car keys in his coat pocket. “Momo and Iida are probably gonna be extremely relieved that we finally have a proper lead.”

The other hero hums his assent, tilting his head upwards to let the sun hit his face while Shouto unlocks his car, before they both climb inside. Wordlessly, Hawks points at the radio display with his phone, raising a questioning eyebrow at Shouto.

“Sure. Go ahead”, Shouto tells him as he starts the car and puts it in reverse.

This time Hawks puts on a band that sounds a little more like what Shouto would perhaps expect the older hero to like - something a little more upbeat, a little more pop-y. The singer’s voice actually sounds kind of familiar to Shouto.

“I think I know this band”, he notes as the crunchy main riff of the first song blares through the car speakers.

“Yeah, it’s another one your brother likes, I think. I’ve seen one of their vinyl records on his shelf”, Hawks explains with a slightly awkward laugh. 

“Is this also part of your plan to impress Touya?”, Shouto wonders in earnest as he pulls out onto the main road.

The other hero promptly bursts into a violent coughing fit, and Shouto blindly fumbles for the water bottle he put into the cup holder earlier to hand it to him.

“Are you okay?”, he questions, frowning a little.

“Yeah”, Hawks croaks out, gratefully accepting the water and guzzling it down. “I’m not trying to impress your brother. Just trying to make a good impression. There’s a difference”, he explains a bit defensively once his voice seems to be somewhat steady again.

Shouto feels his frown deepen as he keeps his gaze focused on the road ahead of him. He had always assumed those two were kind of the same thing, but he supposes he’ll just have to take Hawks’ word for it right now.

“So”, he asks then, changing the topic, “do you think Lady Nagant was telling the truth?”

The other hero hums a little as he seemingly contemplates the question for a moment. “I think so, yeah”, he finally says. “I can’t see any reason why she would lie to us about this. Do you think Himura Touji really is the guy you’re looking for?”

“He’s certainly our best lead for now”, Shouto replies a bit noncommittally. “The personal details all line up and we have a very severe lack of other potential suspects, but I can’t quite figure out why he appears to be on a rather random murder spree now”, he admits. “The motive for villainy in general is certainly there, and I suppose the murders could be part of his grand plan to make the HPSC pay for what they did, but I don’t get why he waited until now to do it.”

“Good point”, Hawks concedes. “For what it’s worth, I also think he’s your best lead right now. My only guess would be that he waited so long, because either A) he didn’t want to pull off his plan while All For One and the League of Villains were active and taking up pretty much all the attention in this country or B) he was hoping the general public would start seeing the cracks in the facade the Commission likes to put up and swoop right in there with his masterplan to expose them. Perhaps he figured that me publicly cutting ties with the Commission and your generation of pro heroes kinda limiting your cooperation with them was the best he was going to get in this department. It’s not like he’s getting any younger, after all.”

That’s actually a pretty decent explanation - and possibly the best one they’ll be able to come up with until they finally manage to arrest the guy - so Shouto happily accepts it as a working theory.

“I’ll stop by Momo’s office when we get back and share this all with her - do you wanna come with or should I drop you right back off at home?”, he asks then after a quick glance at their ETA displayed by the GPS.

“If you don’t need me for the meeting, I should probably head straight back home”, the other hero says with a chuckle. “I always feel a bit weird about having a substitute babysitter for your brother lounging in my flat. Not that I don’t trust them or anything”, he adds hastily, “but it still feels a bit strange, and I’d rather be the one keeping an eye on everything anyway.”

“Ah, that’s fine”, Shouto assures him. He would probably be a bit uncomfortable with leaving his home in the hands of a fleeting acquaintance, too, and he certainly understands the urge to stay on top of your job.

God, he misses his job.

It’s not that he doesn’t enjoy doing detective work - quite the opposite really - but he still misses being able to move around 100% freely, to jump in properly when there is someone in need, to use his Quirk on a larger scale.

Only a bit over a week left, he reminds himself sternly.

It’s not much, but it’s enough to keep that restless energy inside of him at least a little bit in check.

Their drive back into town goes down without a hitch. After they finish listening to the first album Hawks put on, he presses play on another one by the same band, and the two of them discover that they actually know the first song from the radio, subsequently proceeding to sing along to it both semi-decently (Shouto) and terribly off-key (Hawks). It’s pretty fun, and Shouto is kind of beginning to understand why his brother seems to like spending time with Hawks so much. The other hero is very easygoing and enthusiastic, which reminds Shouto a little of his friends from Class A, and he really appreciates that sort of energy.

Soon, they find themselves back in town, driving down the familiar slush-covered roads, and Shouto pulls up to the curb right outside the building Touya and Hawks live in.

He quickly says his goodbyes to the other hero and promises to keep him updated about the case, before restarting his car and taking off again to pay Momo a visit.

If he were paying a little more attention to his surroundings, perhaps he would spot the black car pulling up on the other side of the street right after them or the curious eyes watching Hawks disappear into the building through dark-tinted windows, but as it is Shouto is thoroughly distracted, humming the song he belted out with Hawks earlier and weighing his dinner options for the night as he drives off.

The first thing he notices when he steps into Momo’s office about 20 minutes later is the fact that it is messy.

Well, for most people’s standards it’s still pretty neat and tidy, but with various papers strewn across the desk and four empty mugs keeping each other company, it is practically the epitome of messiness for Momo’s standards.

The woman herself is sitting crouched in her chair in a position that simply cannot be good for the human back, but jumps up hectically to greet Shouto when he closes the door behind himself.

“Hello, Shouto-kun. Come here, sit down”, she says a bit frantically, gesturing towards the visitor’s chair across from her. She simultaneously looks exhausted and like she’s about to buzz right out of her skin, and Shouto eyes her a bit concernedly as he takes his seat.

“Are you okay? How much caffeine have you had?”, he asks with a frown.

Momo just waves him off dismissively with a jittery hand. “Oh, I’m fine. I had a few cups today, but it’s fine. I was just up pretty late last night working on the itinerary for the fundraiser”, she explains, unceremoniously shoving the empty mugs aside. “Needed a bit of an energy boost for today.”

Somehow, that doesn’t quell Shouto’s worries at all.

They had a pretty long video conference to plan the specifics of the fundraiser event for their mental health foundation about a week ago, which Shouto - freshly grounded from work - attended from the comfort of the couch with his laptop in his lap and no trousers on - because that’s how video conferences from home are supposed to work, right?

During the conference they brainstormed the logistics of the event and assigned tasks to everyone, and Shouto, who was tasked with writing a brief welcome speech and renting a photo booth, finished his part of the preparations days ago already. He’s pretty satisfied with how the speech came out, and he managed to find a company that rents out photo booths with a whole stack of silly exchangeable photo backgrounds for a pretty reasonable price, so all he has left to do now is look forward to the actual event.

His friend, however, is clearly not having such a smooth-sailing experience with her own tasks.

“How far along are you with the itinerary?”, Shouto wonders.

Momo heaves out a weighty breath. “Not very far. I kept dozing off last night, and eventually Kyouka made me stop and come to bed”, she admits, and it sounds like she’s almost a bit embarrassed by it.

It’s pretty awful to hear - it isn’t entirely uncommon for Momo to overwork herself every now and then, but Shouto feels like it’s getting a little out of hand, and he imagines Jirou is probably having a hard time trying to handle it as well at the moment. He doesn’t really think encouraging words will work on his friend right now, so he does the only other thing he knows will help.

“Let me take care of the itinerary”, he says, making it sound more like a friendly command than a question.

Momo gives him a wide-eyed look for a second before shaking her head firmly. “No, no, it’s fine. You have your own tasks to care of and I’m already loading so much of this Himura case off on you and-“

“I’ve already finished all my tasks for the fundraiser, and this case is a welcome distraction from having to sit around at home all day”, Shouto interrupts her kindly. “I won’t be allowed back to work until after the fundraiser anyway, so I still have more than enough time to kill. Please let me help.”

He stubbornly gives his friend his best no-arguments-allowed look until she finally heaves out another sigh. “I hate this, but…okay. Fine. Thank you”, she concedes quietly, and Shouto offers her an approving smile. “I’ll e-mail you the materials later.”

“Good”, Shouto says with a nod. “Now, I also have some good news about our case.”

At that Momo’s face actually lights up a little, and Shouto quickly relays everything Lady Nagant told him and Hawks about the triplets and Himura Touji in particular to her. When he finishes, Momo looks a bit like she wants to cry from relief.

“Oh, thank you”, she says earnestly. “This is finally something really solid. God, I’m so glad this part of the plan worked out, because I have absolutely no idea what else we could’ve done if Lady Nagant had turned out to be another dead end.” She laughs a bit humourlessly. “I mean, we still have to catch the guy, but now we at least know who exactly we’re looking for. And we have a potential motive. I’m seeing Iida tomorrow anyway, so I’ll discuss this with him and then we can start working out a plan.”

Shouto offers her another smile. “If you need my help with anything else…”

“We’ll give you a shout”, Momo promises, chuckling a little. “I think this is the part where our investigation will become more physically active, but I think especially given the nature of our suspect’s Quirk we might need your help anyway, once you’re medically cleared to go back on active duty.”

She definitely has a point, and the thought already crossed Shouto’s mind earlier today as well. Without support items or other protective gear, any hero without physical cold resistance would probably have a rather hard time trying to detain someone with a Quirk like Frostbite.

Hell, Shouto isn’t even sure if he has enough cold resistance to survive Frostbite at full power, but he supposes he could always use his fire to thermoregulate and balance it out.

The bottom line is, unless someone has a natural resistance to extremely cold temperatures or some sort of heat-generating Quirk, they’re likely a rather bad Quirk match-up against Himura Touji, but Shouto certainly won’t mind stepping up should he be needed.

He assures Momo again that he’ll be there to help, before excusing himself.

“I’ve got plans with Katsuki and Izuku tonight, so I should probably head out”, he says a little apologetically, but his friend just smiles at him in a suspiciously knowing way, and Shouto feels the sudden urge to crawl under her desk to hide.

Does she know…?

“No problem”, she tells him, still smiling, and Shouto pretends to have to fluff up his overgrown fringe, just so that he can hide his face a little from her pointed stare. “Have a nice evening.”

“Yeah, thanks, you too. Don’t overwork yourself too much, okay?”, Shouto replies hastily, more than happy to swerve the focus away from his evening plans and the way he secretly feels about them. “See you on Tuesday?”

At that Momo’s face shifts into an expression of genuine confusion. “Tuesday?”

“Kouda-kun’s birthday?”, Shouto elaborates, and his friend promptly slaps a hand over her mouth.

“Oh my god, I nearly forgot it’s already this week. This case is really killing me”, she says, laughing awkwardly. “Thank you for reminding me. Yes, see you on Tuesday.”

She pulls Shouto into a quick hug, before he makes his way out of her office and back to where he parked his car a little further down the road.

He spends the entire drive home overthinking the possibility of Momo - or anyone else for that matter - actually knowing about his feelings for Izuku and Katsuki. Those weirdly knowing looks and smiles, hell, even Touya’s “date night” joke the other day. At first Shouto thought it was just his brother being his brother and trying to mess with him a little, but what if he actually said that because he somehow managed to read it all on Shouto’s face?

All those feelings he’s been keeping locked away, the way he wishes it had been a “date night”.

What if Momo has figured it out, too? 

The possibility kind of horrifies Shouto.

He supposes Touya knowing isn’t technically that terrible - sure, it’s embarrassing as hell that Shouto is so hopelessly pining after his two best friends, but it’s not like his brother is ever around to witness Shouto making a fool of himself in Izuku and Katsuki’s presence or, god forbid, give him pitying looks.

With his friends, however, it’s different.

They constantly spend time together with the three of them, and the thought of having his every word and move scrutinised or interpreted way too accurately by everyone else in the room every time they hang out in a group kind of makes Shouto want to crawl into a deep dark cave and never come out again. His only solace is that no one has ever actually brought it up to him thus far, and he sure as hell isn’t going to do it himself, so, technically speaking, he can just continue believing that nobody knows until they clearly indicate otherwise.

Some people would probably refer to this as “denial”, but Shouto prefers to view it as not jumping to premature conclusions before having clear confirmation of the facts.

Determined to remain cool and calm, he parks his car in the underground garage beneath their building before making his way up to their flat.

“Hey, shortcake”, Katsuki greets him, when he steps into the living room with a totally breezy “tadaima”.

“There are leftovers in the fridge. The nerd just went to take a shower, so no need to rush”, his friend tells him from where he’s crouched down on the floor and playing with Shimo, dangling one of his toys in front of him and letting the cat happily paw at it.

The sight makes Shouto feel all sorts of warm and fuzzy feelings in his chest, so he quickly turns away and gets to work on heating up aforementioned leftovers, lest Katsuki read anything on his face.

That would be even worse than any of their friends knowing.

Shuddering a little at thought, Shouto settles down at the kitchen island to eat his dinner, and it’s just as he finishes his last bite, that Izuku emerges from the bathroom, his green curls still damp and his cheeks flushed pink.

“Oh, Shouto, you’re here!”, he exclaims happily when he spots Shouto shuffling into the living room.

“Right, let’s do this then”, Katsuki says, giving Shimo one last head scratch before scrambling to his feet and plucking the TV remote from the coffee table.

During their movie night the other day the three of them watched the first two instalments of a popular fantasy film series, and the plan for tonight is to watch part three.

Shouto makes his way over to the couch, plopping down next to Katsuki who is already scrolling through their streaming library, while Izuku wanders over to the thermostat.

“I’m gonna turn the heating down a little, yeah? I feel like I’m melting in here”, he notes, laughing a little as he begins tapping away on the little touchscreen display.

“What the fuck?! No, it’s cold as hell in here!”, Katsuki protests immediately, twisting around to scowl at Izuku. “You just feel this way because you turn the bathroom into a fucking sauna when you shower.”

“No one likes a cold shower, Kacchan”, Izuku replies matter-of-factly, carelessly continuing to adjust the temperature settings.

“Stop that”, Katsuki growls, which earns him a long-suffering sigh from Izuku.

“Fine. I wanna sit on Shouto-kun’s right then”, Izuku says a bit petulantly.

“Fine by me”, Katsuki shoots back pointedly. “I wanna sit on Icyhot’s left side anyway.”

“Good. Glad we’ve got that sorted”, Izuku states with an indignant sniffle before unceremoniously sitting down right next to Shouto on the couch, their arms and thighs casually pressed together. 

And as if this is some sort of competition, Katsuki immediately scoots closer to Shouto’s left, curling up against his warm side like a cat.

Privately, Shouto finds it rather amusing how the two of them never even considered to ask him what he thought about this whole arrangement, apparently just taking his acquiescence for granted, but, well, they weren’t exactly wrong to do that, and Shouto is most definitely not going to complain about being sandwiched between the two men he is kind of, sort of in love with for the duration of an entire movie.

Instead, he simply relaxes against both of them, feeling their warmth seep through his clothes and into his skin, and leans his head back against the couch as Katsuki presses play.

Chapter Text

Several people have told Shouto in the past that arriving at a party a bit later than the official starting time is something like an unwritten social rule, and that some people might even consider it rude if you get there on time.

Shouto, for his part, has never understood that. Why tell your guests it starts at 8 PM, when you actually want them to arrive 30 minutes later? Just tell them it starts at 8:30 PM then.

It really doesn’t make sense.

Still, as a working adult with a certain public reputation to uphold, Shouto has spent most of his life more or less adhering to that particular social rule, lest people begin to think him rude or disrespectful.

On Tuesday, however, while Katsuki and Izuku are still at work, he eventually finds himself going so mad with cabin fever that he decides to forgo unwritten social convention, hails himself a taxi and finally arrives at the building that houses Kouda and Shouji’s shared flat with perfect punctuality.

He’s fairly certain that neither the birthday boy nor his flatmate will be particularly bothered by his early arrival anyway, but he also feels secure enough in their friendship that he assumes things would be fine even if they did mind.

As he rides up to the floor his friends’ flat is located on, he gives himself a quick once-over in the mirrored walls of the lift, fluffing up his fringe a little and tugging his sleeves into place. He’s wearing a slightly more edgy outfit tonight, at least for his standards - his black skinny jeans are artfully ripped around the knees and thighs, and he’s wearing them tucked into plain black platform Dr. Martens with a flowy white silk shirt and a sleek black fitted leather jacket on top. His shirt is only buttoned up about halfway, revealing the silver cross necklace resting against his chest, and he has pinned the left side of his hair back a little to show off his ear piercings.

Looking at his full reflection, twisting and turning around to catch a few glimpses from different angles, Shouto thinks he looks quite hot in his outfit, and he’d be lying if he said he isn’t hoping that his two best friends will feel the same way when they get here later.

With one last glance in the mirror he exits the lift and makes his way down the hallway to Kouda and Shouji’s flat. When the birthday boy opens the door for him, it turns out there was no need to be concerned about arriving too early in the first place - the genkan is already housing a few pairs of shoes that definitely don’t belong to either of the residents of the flat, and there’s upbeat pop music blaring from the speakers in the living room.

“Oh, hello, Todoroki-kun! Come in, come in”, Kouda greets him with a happy smile, gesturing for him to step inside.

“Happy birthday, Kouda-kun”, Shouto tells his friend, pulling him into a quick hug. “Full disclosure: I did bring a present, but it’ll have to wait until Izuku and Katsuki get here.”

Kouda laughs at that as he leads Shouto down the hallway and into the living room. “That’s alright. Midoriya-kun just texted me a couple minutes ago, saying he and Bakugou will probably arrive in about an hour. Apparently they had to deal with an attempted burglary right at the end of their patrol shift.”

Shouto tries very hard to keep his cool and not buzz right out of his skin at that particular piece of information. He wishes he could finally work overtime shifts again, just because something came up at the last minute.

Perhaps he should reevaluate the healthiness of his attachment to his job some time.

When he steps into the living room, he finds a couple of their friends already milling about with drinks in their hands and chatting to each other. Apart from Shouji, obviously, he spots Tokoyami, Ashido, Kirishima, Uraraka, Aoyama, Asui, Ojiro and Hagakure, and Kirishima, who is leaning against the wall and chatting to Ashido and Tokoyami, immediately waves Shouto over, his beer sloshing around dangerously in his cup.

“Oi, Todobroki! How are you doing? Recuperating well?”, he asks when Shouto joins the little group.

“Yeah, I’m doing good”, Shouto affirms with a nod. “Kinda going crazy from having to sit at home all day, though.”

“Ohhh, poor Todoroki! How much longer are you grounded from work?”, Ashido wonders, putting a consolatory hand on his shoulder.

“I have a doctor’s appointment next Monday, and if they clear me I’ll finally be allowed to go back.”

“Aww, see, that’s not even that long anymore!”, Kirishima points out. “And the weekend will probably be a blur anyway, what with the fundraiser and all. Man, I can’t wait for that! How are rehearsals coming along?”, he asks then, turning to address Tokoyami.

“They’re going pretty well”, the other man replies, nodding sagely. “Jirou’s original songs are really good, and we’re getting the hang of the covers we’ve picked out as well now. There are still some kinks we need to iron out, but I think it’ll be fine.”

“Good, good”, Kirishima replies, heartily patting Tokoyami’s shoulder. “Gonna need a nice soundtrack when I let people beat me at arm wrestling.”

They continue chatting about the fundraiser for a while until Shouto excuses himself to the kitchen to grab himself a drink. Kouda has set up a DIY cocktail bar on the counter and Shouto hesitates for a moment, remembering the incident at the Hero Winter Ball the other week a little too well, but eventually decides that there’s really no harm in indulging in one or two fruity little drinks. It’s not like his father is going to make an appearance here, and even if something goes wrong, this is just a private event with his friends.

He’s safe here.

With a strawberry margarita in hand - topped off with a little umbrella of course - Shouto makes his way back into the living room, which has begun to fill up a bit more as more guests continue to arrive, and starts wandering around a little, stopping for brief chats about this and that with various of his friends. 

Uraraka and Asui make a bit of a fuss about him when he joins them on the couch, and it turns out that they were also watching the livestream of the fight where he got injured. Apparently it freaked them out pretty badly, and Uraraka actually ends up patting down Shouto’s knee and shin, as if to confirm for herself that he is really still whole, and Shouto just leans back and lets her do her thing while trying very hard not to twitch at the way her fingers press into his knee.

The fact that Shouto is ticklish as hell is a well-kept secret, and he’ll be damned if it doesn’t remain that way. 

After Uraraka has finally discharged him from her slightly unconventional medical check-up, Shouto gets back up to his feet to continue his round around the room, but instantly gets distracted when he spots Katsuki and Izuku by the door.

They’re both dressed very nicely - Katsuki in all black with a loose slightly transparent button-up, while Izuku is wearing dark blue jeans and a fitted yellow shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The colour should look offensive and absolutely atrocious on anyone, but Izuku somehow manages to pull it off, the yellow contrasting nicely with his green hair, kind of reminiscent of his yellow hero cape.

Between Izuku’s toned arms peeking out from his sleeves and Katsuki’s see-through shirt leaving very little to the imagination, Shouto doesn’t even know where to look, and his head is kind of spinning as he approaches his friends.

“Shouto-kun!”, Izuku shouts excitedly when he spots him, his eyes widening a little.

“Hello”, Shouto says a bit dumbly, his gaze flitting back and forth between his two friends.

Both of them also smell irresistible, a mixture of expensive cologne and fruity shampoo, and Shouto kind of feels like his plan to make them lose their minds over him in his edgy outfit backfired completely, because, clearly, he is - once again - the one losing his mind here.

“Hey, shortcake”, Katsuki greets him, his voice a bit hoarse as his eyes flit up and down Shouto’s body. “You been here long?”

“About an hour?”, Shouto replies, feeling a bit naked under that intense red gaze, until he suddenly remembers. “Oh, I brought our present. Should we give it to Kouda-kun now?”, he asks, pulling the envelope out of his jacket pocket, more than happy to provide a distraction.

His friends both nod their assent, and the three of them quickly begin their search for the birthday boy until they find him in the kitchen, restocking the fridge with beer. 

There’s an extremely exclusive conference for people who work in animal-related fields, such as biologists and vets, that takes place in Tokyo every summer, and Kouda has expressed interest in attending it many times before, but the tickets always sell out within seconds.

Coincidentally, Izuku saved a guy from a burning building a few months back, who knew one of the organisers of the conference and helped Izuku buy two early access tickets as a thank you.

“Wow! This is amazing! Thank you so much!”, Kouda exclaims happily when he pulls the tickets out of the envelope, staring at them with wide eyes. “How the hell did you manage to get these?! I’ve been trying for years and it never worked out!”

“Ahhh, I met someone who knew someone”, Izuku explains vaguely, flapping his hand around a little and smiling up at their friend.

Kouda laughs at that. “You always seem to just know all sorts of people”, he says, which draws a hearty laugh from Katsuki.

Shouto feels his own lips twitch, too. Kouda does have a bit of a point there.

Izuku promptly flushes pink. “I don’t know how this always happens…”, he says a bit weakly before trailing off.

“Well, in this case it’s a good thing it did”, Kouda notes kindly. “Really, thank you so much for these.” He waves the tickets around a little, and Shouto is just about to open his mouth to say “you’re welcome”, when an electric storm of blonde hair suddenly bursts into the kitchen.

“We’re about to play Truth or Dare, guys! Just like in the old days! You have to join!”, Kaminari yells excitedly, bouncing around them wildly.

“Do we really have to, Pikachu?”, Katsuki asks, sighing and rolling his eyes exasperatedly.

Kaminari comes to a halt in front of him, an unmistakable sparkle of mischief in his eyes. “Well, technically, you don’t have to. But if you don’t, that just means you’re scared and not up for the challenge”, he points out faux-innocently.

Oh, that is mean.

Shouto has to bite his lip hard to hold back a cackle, and by his side Izuku seems to be struggling similarly.

Katsuki’s temper may be far from what it used to be when they were teenagers nowadays, but everyone knows that he is still very easily baited into doing things as long as they’re framed as a challenge he can’t really back down from.

“Fine”, he grunts like clockwork, scowling at Kaminari, who instantly breaks out into a triumphant grin.

“Awesome!”, he says, clapping his hands contently. “You three don’t need more convincing, do you?”, he asks then, turning to address Shouto, Izuku and Kouda.

Izuku huffs out a laugh at that. “Guess I’m in”, he concedes, and, well, what can Shouto do but join as well?

“I have to restock some mixers first, but I’ll join you in a bit”, Kouda says, waving an empty juice bottle through the air.

Kaminari whoops at that and unceremoniously throws an arm around Katsuki - who looks thoroughly disgruntled and grumbles something undecipherable to himself - while grabbing Shouto and Izuku with the other one, and leads them all out of the kitchen and into the living room.

Someone has pushed the couch out of the way to make space on the large carpet at the centre of the room for everyone to sit down in a circle, and Shouto feels distinctly reminded of weekends in the common room of their UA dorm. During their second year they had begun to throw proper parties whenever someone from their class managed to get their hands on alcohol from god-knows where, and they certainly contributed to their arsenal of slightly more normal teenage experiences.

The four of them join the circle on the floor, Iida scooting aside a little to make space for Shouto, and Kaminari excitedly claps his hands again.

“Alright, everyone ready? I’ll start”, he announces, leaving little room for protest. “Bakubro - truth or dare?”

Katsuki heaves out a sigh. “Should’ve expected this”, he mumbles under his breath, before raising his voice. “Dare.”

“Okay. I dare you to ruffle Todobroki’s hair”, Kaminari says, grinning gleefully.

“What are you, fucking 13?”, Katsuki asks, giving the electric blonde a thoroughly unimpressed look before crawling around Izuku to kneel next to Shouto. “Sorry, if this ruins your hairstyle, princess”, he says lowly before reaching up and running his fingers through Shouto’s hair and mussing it up a little.

It feels pretty nice, if Shouto is being honest, and he has to try very hard to keep himself from leaning into the touch.

“Happy?”, Katsuki asks then, giving Kaminari a long-suffering look as he crawls back to his spot in the circle.

Kaminari nods, still grinning. “Now you have to pick the next person.”

Katsuki sighs again. “Alright. Oi, Eyebags. Truth or dare?”

Shinsou blinks up from where he’s kneeling next to Kaminari. “Are you trying to punish me as a stand-in for him?”, he asks, pointing at his boyfriend as he squints at Katsuki a bit suspiciously.

“No. You just happened to be in my line of sight.”

Shinsou doesn’t seem 100% convinced, but finally gives a short nod anyway. “Fine. Truth, then.”

“What really happened that night in third year when you, Pikachu and that theatre kid from Class B disappeared for hours and came back all soaked in red stuff?”

“Oi! We can’t just tell that story without Monoma’s consent!”, Kaminari interjects affrontedly, but his cheeks look suspiciously pink.

Shouto only remembers the night in question rather vaguely (the reasons for that are between him and a bottle of coconut rum), but now his interest is most certainly piqued.

“Bullshit”, Katsuki scoffs, “that’s not how this game works, and you were the one who dragged me into it in the first place, Sparky. You reap what you sow. Or whatever.”

By Shouto’s side Izuku snickers a little into his hand as Kaminari turns even pinker.

“Come on, it’s not that bad anyway”, Shinsou tells his boyfriend placidly, grabbing his face and pressing a quick kiss to his temple before settling down on the carpet a little more comfortably.

“Basically, what happened was that Monoma wanted to practice copying our Quirks, and specifically switching rapidly back and forth between them since they’re so extremely different from each other”, he explains. “It was a nice summer night, and we wanted to make the setting as natural as possible, so we snuck out of UA and started strolling around town. At first it was going pretty well, but eventually the rapid switching started getting to Monoma. He started getting sloppy, and as we were walking past this tiny little supermarket, he accidentally brainwashed Denki into breaking in.”

Kaminari promptly blushes even darker.

“The lock was really old and rickety, so it was pretty easy to crack. At that point I kinda started freaking out and tried to stop both Monoma and Denki, but they were freaking out, too, so I accidentally ended up brainwashed as well, so now Denki and I were both breaking into that shop, and Monoma was coming after us. It was pretty dark in there and the aisles were really narrow, so when Monoma finally reached us and shoved us hard to try and break us out of the trance, we both stumbled backwards into one of the shelves. Like, full force body slam.”

At that Kaminari actually buries his face in his hands, groaning lowly as Shinsou continues his story.

“The supermarket was an international one - lots of different European products - and the shelf we stumbled into was stacked all the way to the top with Italian pasta sauces and pesto glasses. You can probably guess the rest”, he says a bit drily. “Everything came tumbling down, and when I say ‘everything’ I really do mean everything. Half of the glasses shattered and we got absolutely drenched in tomato sauce.”

“We didn’t know what else to do, so we called Aizawa-sensei”, Kaminari says, grimacing as he finally makes his own contribution to the story-telling. “He was soooo pissed off. Made us clean our classrooms every afternoon for two weeks straight.”

“Oh! I remember that!”, Izuku blurts out. “I had no idea it was related to that night, though. I kinda assumed you had done something else to piss him off.”

“Thanks”, Shinsou deadpans, which promptly makes Izuku flush pink while Shouto has to bite back a snort.

“Alright, I think I’ve earned the right to torture someone else now”, Shinsou says then matter-of-factly, sweeping his gaze across everyone gathered on the carpet.

“Ashido - truth or dare?”

They play a few more rounds, during which Ashido has to do a one-minute handstand (which she accomplishes with ease), Izuku has to do three tequila shots in a row (his skin colour suspiciously matches his hair for a while afterwards, but he seems to recover eventually), Iida has to reveal the wildest place he has ever had sex (the beach, apparently) and Kaminari has to try fitting as many gummy bears as he possibly can into his mouth (he makes it to 17), before it’s finally Shouto’s turn.

He’s deeply concerned about being asked something a little too personal about his love or sex life, so he picks dare. So far the dares have been fairly tame, so how bad could it even get?

“Okay, I dare you to hug Midoriya for one minute”, Kaminari says, that gleeful grin from earlier back in place.

“What the fuck?”, Katsuki pipes up at that. “Another one of those middle school sleepover dares?”

“That’s just how this game works”, Kaminari explains sagely. “It’s quite literally the ultimate embodiment of a middle school sleepover game.”

Shouto definitely wasn’t playing Truth Or Dare in middle school, but he also didn’t really have any friends, not to mention sleepovers, so he’s probably not a great judge for this particular stuff. Still, it could be far worse - he’d much rather hug his friend than do several tequila shots in a row or attempt a handstand (both of which would probably end catastrophically for him).

“So, do I just start now?”, he wonders, turning around to face Izuku, who is already smiling at Shouto with a light dusting of pink colouring his cheeks. “You okay with this?”, Shouto asks him a bit more quietly.

“Of course”, Izuku assures him, his smile growing just a tad wider.

“Yeah, you can just start, I’ll time you”, Kaminari announces, like he’s some sort of sports referee.

And, well, what else is there for Shouto to do but to wrap his arms around Izuku’s shoulders and pull him in?

His friend goes easily, his arms coming up to wrap around Shouto’s waist, and Shouto subtly inhales the lingering scent of his cologne and shampoo. He dimly registers that perhaps it’s a little weird to be kneeling on the floor and hugging like this for a whole minute straight while nearly 20 pairs of eyes are watching them, but he supposes stuff like this was probably an essential middle school experience for a lot of his friends, so he’s kind of just playing catch-up right now.

With Izuku’s warm, solid form pressed against him, the minute goes by incredibly fast, and soon they are breaking apart again. Returning back to reality like that actually does make Shouto feel a little flustered, and he quickly reaches up to readjust his fringe in a subtle attempt to hide his face before he feels grounded enough to pass the Truth or Dare torch on to someone else.

“Kirishima - truth or dare?”

“Ohhh, if I pick dare, will I get to hug someone, too? Or will I have to do shots or something? There’s a really large spectrum of possibilities here”, the redhead muses, rubbing his chin a little. “Well, I guess, I’ll risk it. I pick dare.”

Shouto contemplates that for a moment. He doesn’t really want to pick anything mean, but he also doesn’t want it to be too boring. “I dare you to arm wrestle with Satou. No Quirks allowed”, he finally decides, feeling like that will keep their little group thoroughly entertained.

“Ohhh, good one, Todobroki!”, Kirishima exclaims excitedly, jumping to his feet to make his way over to the coffee table, Satou right on his heels.

They kneel down across from each other, placing their elbows on the table and clasping each other’s hands as Sero takes on ref duties and briefly inspects their positions for rule violations, before greenlighting them and giving them a countdown to start.

It’s a tough match - if they were allowed to use their Quirks, Kirishima would likely win with ease, given the stability his Hardening provides, but without Quirks they’re both just muscular young men, and things could really go either way. In the end, Satou narrowly manages to win, the length of his arm compared to Kirishima’s giving him a mild advantage, but, as expected, Kirishima is nothing but a good sport about it.

“That was so manly, bro!”, he states, clapping Satou on the shoulder as they make their way back to the carpet circle.

“Alright, my turn now. Hey, Satou - truth or dare?”, Kirishima asks then, and Shouto takes that as his cue that his job here is done for now.

He has kind of needed to pee for a while already, but kept putting it off to keep playing the game.

“What are you doing?”, Izuku asks when Shouto gets to his feet.

“Bathroom”, he says, which Izuku accepts with a quick nod before shifting his attention back to the game.

Shouto quickly makes his way to the bathroom, does his business and freshens up a little at the sink, using a bit of water to rearrange a few unruly strands of his hair, before heading back out and straight into the kitchen.

It’s been quite a while since he finished his first strawberry margarita, and surely a second one can’t hurt.

As he mixes his drink, he is joined by Jirou at the DIY bar.

“Hey, I really wanted to thank you”, she says casually as she begins to mix what appears to be a mojito. “I know how much you have been helping Momo out recently - with the Himura case and the fundraiser preparations and everything - and it really means a lot. She has been overworking herself so terribly these past few weeks, and I’ve been feeling pretty helpless, because I couldn’t really seem to get through to her or take any of her workload off her, since I’ve been working on a pretty complicated case myself, so I’m really grateful that you’ve been helping out so much.”

Shouto’s heart aches a little at that - he already suspected Momo’s stress was probably really eating away at both her and her girlfriend, but having it confirmed like this just makes him feel even more sympathetic.

“I’m sorry it’s been so rough lately”, he says, leaning back against the counter and stirring his cocktail a little with his straw before taking a sip.

Damn, is he good at mixing these.

In case the whole hero thing doesn’t work out anymore one day, he’ll definitely have a useful back-up skill at hand.

“I was hoping I could make things a bit easier for you guys, and I’m really underworked at the moment, so I’m more than happy to help out”, he admits, huffing out a small laugh, and Jirou flashes him a smile, plopping a straw into her own cocktail and joining him in leaning against the counter.

“Pretty crazy case you’ve been working on, though”, she notes. “I’m probably technically not allowed to know all the details, but eh, you know how it is.”

She grins a bit crookedly, and Shouto damn-near snorts his drink out through his nose.

“I’m sure a fellow pro hero knowing about the case is much less inappropriate than my former-villain brother actively working on it”, he points out a bit drily.

“That’s true”, Jirou agrees, chuckling. “Hey, how is your brother? Are his piercings healing well?”

Shouto tilts his head a little. “He’s doing well. He hasn’t mentioned anything about the piercings, so I’m assuming they’re healing well, too. I can ask him next time I talk to him, though.”

“Oh, you can also ask him if he has listened to those Bring Me The Horizon albums I recommended to him”, Jirou adds before taking a large sip from her cocktail.

“Will do”, Shouto promises with a mock salute. “I actually listened to that one song with Hawks the other day. The one with Babymetal”, he remembers then.

“Kingslayer”, Jirou says helpfully, nodding approvingly. “Good one. Didn’t think Hawks would be into metal, though.”

Shouto laughs at that. “I thought the same thing, but he said he’s pretty open-minded.”

He doesn’t mention the part about Hawks wanting to impress, sorry, make a good impression on Touya, since something tells him that was shared with him in confidence.

“Hmm, well, that I can believe”, Jirou admits. “God, I’ll have to tell Tokoyami about that, he’ll probably love to hear it.”

“Oh, yeah, for sure”, Shouto agrees amusedly around his straw.

“Hey, wanna head back in?”, his friend asks then, hooking her thumb in the direction of the living room. 

“You go ahead. I think I need to raid the fridge for snacks first”, Shouto says, grinning a bit dopily, which earns him a hearty snort from Jirou.

“Gotcha”, she laughs, “see you in a bit then.”

“Yeah, see you”, Shouto calls after her before making his way over to the fridge to inspect the food selection. When he spots a large bowl of soba and various dipping sauces inside, he actually gasps a little in excitement.

Okay, he squeals, but that’s a bit embarrassing, and there’s no one there who could prove it happened, so Shouto is sticking to referring to it as a gasp.

He grabs one of the fresh bowls set out next to the fridge and fills it up before returning to his spot at the counter and shovelling the deliciously cold noodles into his mouth. In his eagerness to get out of the house earlier he kind of forgot to have dinner at home, and he’s eternally grateful that Kouda decided to make sure his guests are not only well-hydrated but also well-fed.

Shouto hums a little as he chews his food, and soon he has finished his bowl. He briefly contemplates getting a second helping, just because it tastes so good, but ultimately decides against it, since the bowl of soba in the fridge isn’t that large, and he doesn’t want anyone else to have to go hungry just because he got a bit too greedy, so he puts his bowl into the sink, picks up his cocktail from the counter and contently strolls back into the living room.

It’s only when he sees how much the scene there has shifted, that he realises how long he’s been gone.

The music has definitely been turned up a couple more decibels, and instead of using the free space at the centre to sit in a circle, people have repurposed it into a dance floor. There’s a pretty colourful mix of both dance moves and dancing skills going on, and Shouto can’t help but giggle a little when he spots Iida dancing like a robot. 

Those who aren’t currently using the carpet as a disco are strewn about the rest of the room - Shouji and Tokoyami are sitting on the couch and appear to be deeply entrenched in an animated discussion about god-knows-what, Kirishima, Ashido and Sero are off in a corner doing shots, with Kaminari and Shinsou hovering near them, and in the other corner next to them Katsuki and Izuku are-

No.

No way.

Shouto actually physically feels his heart come to a stop in his chest as a vicious wave of nausea crashes onto him, and his drink nearly slips from his fingers. 

Katsuki’s back is pressed up against the wall - Izuku has him pressed up against the wall - and his hand is resting on Izuku’s waist while Izuku kisses him.

Izuku and Katsuki are kissing each other.

Shouto’s heart begins to beat again, but it’s too rapid, too arrhythmic, too broken, and it fucking hurts.

It fucking hurts so bad that Shouto feels like all the air has been punched out of his lungs. His stomach clenches tightly around the soba he just wolfed down and the entire room feels like it’s spinning and Shouto-

Can’t fucking look at it anymore. Can’t fucking be here anymore.

He needs to get out.

Leave.

Now.

Without another look back or a word to anyone, he sets his glass down on the nearest flat surface and practically bolts from the living room and out into the hallway. He frantically slips into his boots in the genkan, only haphazardly doing up the laces and forgoing his coat entirely as his brain buzzes with nothing but thick, heavy static, and then he is out through the door. He’s too agitated to even wait for the lift, he needs to get outside now, so he takes the stairs instead, bounding down two steps at a time, and it is only with a grand amount of self-restraint that he manages to resist using his Quirk to speed up his descent.

When he finally reaches the bottom floor, he rushes out of the building and into the biting cold night air. For a moment he just stands there on the pavement, inhaling the icy air and letting thick heavy snowflakes settle in his hair and on his clothes as he tries to slow down the swirling mess of thoughts in his head.

It’s not enough, though, so he aimlessly begins to walk, utter horror and dread flooding his veins and coagulating into a heavy sluggish mass.

He wants to cry, but his adrenaline levels are sky high and his body simply refuses to produce any tears as he heaves out a few dry sobs. Frustratedly, he digs the balls of his hands into his eyes while he continues to walk down dark empty streets he’s only semi-familiar with.

Katsuki and Izuku kissed each other. The realisation slams into Shouto like a freight train, sending another wave of nausea through his guts as his chest aches viciously.

It’s exactly what he was so afraid of - that the two of them might have feelings for each other, but not for him. It’s what he suspected at his own birthday party a few weeks ago, why he asked Touya for advice.

And, logically speaking, it makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

Katsuki and Izuku are childhood friends. They’re two sides of the same coin. They’ve always had a special place in each other’s lives, no matter the nature of it, and everyone knows it. Logically speaking, it just makes sense that it would be the two of them in the end. Hell, Shouto has only known them since they were 15 years old - how could he ever try to compare to what they have in each other?

It stings badly, and the fact that it just seems to confirm Shouto’s fears and suspicions makes it even worse.

How the fuck is he supposed to cope with this now?

What if the two of them get into a relationship with each other? Will Shouto just be the strange little third wheel then?

How will it affect their living situation? How will it affect their work?

There are so many awful questions rearing their heads in Shouto’s mind, but none of them can compete with the utter heartbreak he is feeling in every fibre of his being.

Because, at the end of the day, all the materialistic stuff doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s people, feelings and personal relationships that matter. And up until now it was perhaps not optimal, but still fairly easy to live with it all.

The limbo state, where Shouto assumed that Izuku and Katsuki didn’t feel the same way about him as he did for them but never had it truly confirmed to him, made it easier to pretend that perhaps things weren’t actually that hopeless. Perhaps there still was a happy ending in store for all three of them, and perhaps Shouto’s terrible suspicions were wrong.

Living between denial and daydreams likely isn’t healthy, but it’s much more comfortable than the alternative, and once you’ve been dumped into the cold hard reality of the situation, there’s no going back anymore.

It’s terribly overwhelming, and Shouto simultaneously feels like even his own skin is too oppressive right now and like he wants to curl up into a tiny little ball within himself to hide from the world.

He doesn’t know how long he continues to wander around aimlessly through the heavy snowfall, and he barely even bothers to regulate his body temperature against the frosty night air, almost welcoming the numbing effect it has on his physical sensations, but eventually his adrenaline surge begins to even out, and the images of Katsuki and Izuku together like that are painfully persistent as they replay themselves in his mind over and over again.

His throat feels tight and his eyes are burning violently with the urge to cry, to sob his aching heart right out of his chest, but he is still drifting through the city, like a small dinghy lost in an ocean, and he knows the inevitable crash is going to come eventually.

He needs a safe place to go, and he sure as hell can’t bear the thought of going home to their flat right now.

***

Touya is dreaming about golden eyes and pearly white teeth, a bright warm laugh and soft fluffy hair, when a sudden shrill noise rips him out of his sleep and makes him shoot up into a sitting position so rapidly, he nearly topples over and falls right out of his bed.

Old habits die hard, and so do old instincts, so his very first thought is danger.

Almost without thinking he tries to summon up his Quirk and thoroughly starts to panic when he comes up completely empty.

Did All For One somehow manage to steal it?

It’s only a second later, when the sleepy haze in his mind finally begins to clear, that reality starts to settle in around Touya again.

He is in his bed at his own flat. He is wearing a Quirk-cancelling wrist cuff. The shrill noise…was the doorbell.

He takes a moment to get his breathing under control, then fumbles for his phone on his night stand to check the time.

The fact that it’s past 2 AM does make the whole door bell situation kind of concerning - what if it’s Hawks? What if something’s wrong?

But no, Hawks technically has a spare key to Touya’s flat, so if there really was an emergency he would most likely use that to get inside rather than rely on the doorbell.

Still, Touya can’t quite parse why someone would ring it after 2 AM on a Wednesday morning, so he quickly puts on his prosthesis - just to diminish his physical disadvantage against whoever ends up waiting for him out there in the hallway - before shuffling out of his bedroom and over to the genkan.

He physically and mentally braces himself for a fight as he carefully opens the front door, but when he spots an unmistakable head of half-red, half-white hair, he immediately drops his defensive stance, and a whole different flavour of concern floods his veins.

“Shouto?”, he asks a bit tentatively as his brother kind of just stands there in the doorway, unmoving and staring at Touya with glassy eyes. “What are you doing here? Are you okay?”

“I-“, is all Shouto says, his voice small and hoarse, and Touya feels a sharp sting shoot through his chest.

“Fucking hell, come inside”, he breathes, unceremoniously grabbing the kid by his shoulders and steering him into the genkan, so that Touya can close the door behind him.

“What’s wrong? What happened?”, he asks then, gnawing at his scarred bottom lip as all sorts of horrible panicked thoughts flit through his mind, while he watches Shouto mechanically untie his laces and slip out of his boots.

He’s sopping wet as well - melting snow dripping from his hair and leather jacket, and Touya kind of feels terribly overwhelmed by the whole situation.

If only the kid would at least say something.

“Come on, take that off. I’ll grab you a hoodie. Let’s go sit down, okay?”, Touya babbles and starts tugging on that drenched leather jacket, just to give himself something to do. Shouto obediently stretches his arms out and lets Touya slide the jacket off him, before wordlessly following him to the living room and sitting down on the couch.

“I’ll be back in a second, okay?”, Touya tells him nervously. “Just gonna get you a hoodie.”

Shouto gives a nearly imperceptible nod at that, and it at least makes Touya feel a tiny little bit of relief in his chest as he quickly hurries off to his bedroom to pluck a fresh hoodie from his closet before returning to the living room and handing the dry piece of clothing to his brother.

“Thanks”, Shouto says quietly as he accepts it, pulling it on and then going right back to sitting stock still on the cushions.

Touya feels himself frown deeply as he sits down next to the kid, turning a bit sideways so he can face him better.

“What’s going on?”, he asks insistently. “Look, you’re really freaking me out here. If you don’t wanna talk about it, or whatever, that’s fine, but please give me something to work with here, because otherwise my brain will just come up with all sorts of horrible shit to fill in the gaps”, he admits, huffing out a humourless laugh and running his hand through his hair, anxiously tugging on the wavy strands.

“I saw Izuku and Katsuki kiss each other”, the kid finally says, his voice so quiet it’s barely above a whisper, and his tone somewhere between matter-of-factly and utterly broken.

Oh.

Well, if he’s being honest, that doesn’t really surprise Touya. Every time he has seen those two together, they seemed deeply codependent on each other in some way, and Touya always kind of assumed there was some sort of romantic or sexual factor playing into it.

What does surprise him is that Shouto seems so deeply upset by it.

As far as he is aware, the kid has always been very happy and supportive whenever any of his UA friends started dating each other, so Touya would’ve thought his brother would be overjoyed for Deku and Explodo-Boy, too, given that they’re his best friends, but looking at Shouto now makes it awfully clear that something is very wrong.

“Forgive me for asking, but why is that bad?”, Touya inquires as tactfully as he can possibly manage, attempting to keep his voice low and soft. “Or why are you upset? Did anything else happen?”, he adds then as it occurs to him that maybe that wasn’t the whole story yet.

The kid’s lower lip begins to wobble dangerously, but he stubbornly sinks his teeth into it to keep it still as his eyes fill with tears, and Touya’s chest aches at the sight.

“I’m in love with them”, Shouto whispers, and-

Wait. Hold on. What?

“Both of them?”, Touya blurts, because he’s not entirely sure he heard that correctly.

“Yes.”

Ah.

Touya can see how that’s a problem.

At the admission the dam finally breaks and Shouto’s tears begin to spill over, and Touya feels so deeply, overwhelmingly out of his depth.

The only time he has ever comforted someone with a broken heart before was way back in primary school, when Fuyumi had a crush on this boy from her year but saw him holding hands with another girl in the hallway after class one day. That afternoon she showed up to meet Touya at the school gate, so they could walk back home together like every day, barely able to contain herself, and when they finally made it into the house, she started crying in earnest.

Touya, aged nine, figured the best thing he could do to help was to make her a large mug of hot chocolate with extra cream on top, put on a series she really liked at the time, and sit next to her on the couch until she was finally feeling better, smiling at the TV with a whipped cream moustache adorning her mouth.

Something tells Touya, aged thirty-one, that hot chocolate and Sailor Moon aren’t quite going to cut it for Shouto, though, so he does the next best thing he can think of and wraps his arm around the kid’s shoulders, pulling him into a tight hug.

It’s a bit stiff and awkward with the way they’re sitting next to each other, and Touya kind of doesn’t even fucking know what he’s doing, but Shouto instantly melts against him, burying his face against his shoulder as he begins to heave absolutely gut-wrenching sobs into his t-shirt.

It hurts Touya’s heart to listen to the broken sounds, and he feels utterly helpless because there’s nothing really he could do to make it better or take the kid’s pain away, is there? That’s just how love works - sometimes you fall for someone but they don’t love you back, and there’s nothing you can do but sit with the pain and wait until it finally passes.

Not that Touya has a lot of personal experience in that department. Hell, he’s pretty sure he’s never even been in love with anyone before, because, surely, his little teenage crush doesn’t count.

But he has been on this planet for over three decades now, he has talked to a lot of people and he has seen a lot of things, and practically the most widely accepted truths about love, no matter who you ask, seem to be the fact that it hurts, that it isn’t fair, and that it can be a real bitch.

So, perhaps it’s really for the best that Touya has never got his own taste of it before.

For a while, they just continue to sit on the couch together, the only sounds in the room Shouto’s sobs and sniffles as Touya holds him up against himself. He doesn’t really know what else he could do right now, so he just lets his brother cry his heart out, until the tears finally appear to slow and his sobs begin to quiet down.

Touya rubs the kid’s back a little as his breathing slowly evens out. Eventually Shouto untangles one of his hands from where he was clutching at Touya’s back and lifts his head from his shoulder to wipe his eyes.

“Sorry”, he rasps out. “I got snot all over your shirt.”

Touya huffs out a small but genuine laugh at that, relief flooding his chest.

“That’s fine. I’m pretty sure that has already happened before when you were a toddler anyway”, he notes, reaching for the tissue box on the coffee table with his prosthetic arm to hand it to his brother.

“Thanks”, the kid says hoarsely, the corners of his mouth twitching with the tiniest ghost of a smile as he dabs at his eyes before noisily blowing his nose.

“Do you want some water?”, Touya asks then, furrowing his brow. “I could also make you tea.”

Shouto nods a little. “Water would be nice, I think. Thank you.”

“Gotcha.”

With one last squeeze Touya untangles his arm from around his brother’s shoulders and hurries off to the kitchen to grab two glasses and a bottle of water. He also quickly refills the kettle and flicks it on, just in case, before heading back to the living room and pouring their drinks.

Touya wasn’t the one crying fluids into his t-shirt, but the emotional weight of the whole situation still has him feeling quite parched, and he sympathises deeply when Shouto drains his own glass in one single go.

“I’ve also put the kettle on, if you want tea after all?”, he half-says-half-asks, and the kid gives him another small nod.

“Yes, I think I’d actually like some tea”, he admits, his voice still weak and wobbly, but slightly less croaky than before.

Touya offers him a quick smile before putting his own water glass down on the coffee table and making his way back to the kitchen.

A moment later he returns to the living room, carrying two steaming mugs, and Shouto accepts his with a small quirk of his lips.

“Thanks.”

Touya sits back down next to him, close enough for their shoulders to touch in a small gesture of comfort, curling his fingers around his hot drink as he contemplates how to tactfully ask if the kid wants to talk more about what happened.

Because that’s the next move here, isn’t it? To give the other person the space to vent their feelings if they want to?

Finally, Touya takes a quick sip from his tea and clears his throat. “Do you want to talk about it?”, he asks a bit hesitantly.

Shouto swallows visibly at that, and Touya is convinced that he’s going to say no, but then he gives a small nod, leaning a little bit harder against Touya’s shoulder, but that’s okay. Touya can hold him up. After all, Shouto did the same for him all those years ago, at ground zero in Kamino.

“I…I don’t really know where to start”, the kid admits, huffing out a frustrated little breath, making the surface of the liquid in his mug quiver.

Right. Touya didn’t really think that one through, did he?

“Well, uh, you could start with what happened today? Or talk about your feelings for them? How long you’ve had them and stuff”, he suggests a bit clumsily.

His brother gives another little sniffle at that, and Touya already begins to fear that he said the wrong thing, but then Shouto speaks up again.

“It’s been a few years. I think”, he says quietly. “I first started to realise there was something there, when we were still in school.”

Touya can’t help exhaling heavily at that. That is a pretty long time to be pining after your two best friends.

“But they got stronger over the years, and especially after we all moved in together. I think it kind of helped me delude myself into believing that maybe, one day, things would work out for us after all, and that there was actually hope for me”, the kid admits, wincing a little at his own words, and yeah, ouch.

Constant proximity sure doesn’t help you get rid of any inconvenient feelings you might have for others in your life, even if people seem to love deluding themselves into thinking it will.

On that matter Touya can actually speak from personal experience.

Even if his inconvenient "feelings"  for Hawks are of a different nature, obviously, and actually ended up being reciprocated.

“I’m sorry”, Touya says a bit hoarsely, not really sure what else to say.

The right corner of Shouto’s mouth twitches a little at that, and he takes a big gulp from his tea before continuing his vent.

“What happened today was, basically, we were all at Kouda’s birthday party-“

“Kouda?”

“Anima.”

“Ah.”

“So, we were at Kouda’s party, and at first we were all sitting in the living room together, playing Truth or Dare-“

Touya blinks a bit owlishly at that. “Truth or Dare? Really?”, he questions, slightly amused.

Shouto snorts a bit drily. “Kaminari’s idea.”

“Kaminari?”

“Chargebolt. He actually ended up having to put as many gummy bears in his mouth as he could manage. He got to 17.”

Touya blinks again, because that…is so not what he expected grown adults playing Truth or Dare to be like. Stuffing your mouth with sweets is the kind of dare his friends would come up with when they played the game as kids, but Touya kind of thought Adult Truth or Dare would be a little… different.

“So, anyway”, Shouto continues then, “we were playing Truth or Dare and everything was fine, but then I left the room for a while, and when I came back everyone had dispersed, and Izuku and Katsuki were in a corner together and…”

He sniffles again at that, and Touya gently nudges his shoulder with his own.

“So it came completely out of nowhere?”, he wonders.

The kid nods, frustratedly wiping a fresh tear off his cheek. “At least I’ve never seen them do anything like that before.” His eyes widen a little. “Oh god, what if that wasn’t even the first time and I just didn’t know?”

Shit. Yeah. There’s no way of knowing, really, except for outright asking them.

“Have they ever given you any indication before that they might have feelings for each other?”

Shouto grimaces at that, sucking his bottom lip between his teeth. “Maybe”, he admits quietly, brokenly, after a brief pause. “Remember when I asked you about how you can tell if people are in love with each other?”

Oh, fucking hell, yeah, Touya does remember that, and now he feels like he sees that entire conversation in a very different light.

“I do”, he confirms, feeling a bit stupid for not realising before that there was probably more to it than the mere question. Perhaps, if he had known earlier, he could’ve done or said something to soften the inevitable blow.

“I had noticed that they kinda look at each other in a certain way that was really similar to the way the couples in our friend group look at each other, but I wasn’t sure if perhaps I was just misreading it. I’ve historically been really bad at recognising and interpreting that sort of stuff”, Shouto explains, wincing a little.

“I see”, Touya says sympathetically. The difficulties with reading social cues sure run in their family, but he knows Shouto probably got the worst of it.

“The thing is”, the kid says then, sounding just as lost as he looks, “I just really don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.”

Touya blows out a long breath. That is a very good question, and if he’s being honest, he isn’t too confident in his ability to give an adequate answer to it, but he tries anyway.

“It might sound stupid, but the best thing you can do right now is probably just to wait and see how it unfolds”, he muses, tilting his head thoughtfully. “They’ve kissed, but there’s absolutely no way of knowing for sure right now, whether that’s even going to lead anywhere for them. And if it does end up leading somewhere, there’s no telling where right now. So with all these uncertainties still on the table, it’s probably best not to do anything really, until you’ve actually seen the aftermath.”

He briefly pauses to drink from his mug as Shouto watches him with sad but attentive eyes.

“I’m not gonna lie to you; depending on where this all goes for them, this whole thing could significantly impact your living situation, your personal dynamics with each other and also your work.”

The words feel harsh on Touya’s tongue, even though he speaks them kindly, but he generally believes that being realistic about things will spare you more hurt in the long run than optimism ever could, so he feels like he owes his brother this slice of honesty.

“But there’s no point in torturing yourself with what-ifs and could-bes when nothing is set in stone yet. It’s a fucking shitty situation to be in, I know that, but if you wait to see what happens, you’ll only have to find a way to deal with one of the options, instead of driving yourself mad now with the whole boatload of possibilities.”

“You’re right”, Shouto agrees quietly after a moment. “I’m really scared of all those what-ifs - about our friendship and home life and work - but worrying about all of them now doesn’t really make sense. It’s just…”, he trails off again, agitatedly running his fingers through his fringe, “I don’t even know how to face them right now”, he finally admits, suddenly looking terribly young and vulnerable. “Like, the thought of going home and seeing them there together genuinely horrifies me.”

“You can stay here tonight”, Touya immediately offers, because that’s what his guest bedroom is for, isn’t it?

“And in general, if you want or need to. But especially tonight. I’m not letting you go back out there on your own right now, and I can’t exactly walk you home and make sure you get there safely.”

Shouto’s eyes flood with tears again at that, and he furiously wipes them away. “Thank you”, he says a bit shakily. “I was really freaked out about going back home tonight. I, uh.” He pauses, smiling a bit awkwardly. “After…what happened…I kinda ran away from the party and walked around town for a bit, because I didn’t know where to go until I realised I was just a few blocks away from here.”

“Well. You’re always welcome here, baby bro”, Touya tells him seriously, throwing his arm out to give the kid’s shoulders another squeeze.

Shouto’s smile softens into something a little more natural. “Thanks. Can we, uh. Can we do something else for a bit? I think I could really use a distraction”, he admits, looking slightly embarrassed about it, even though there’s really no need for it, and Touya hopes damn well he knows that.

“Sure”, he replies, smiling a bit crookedly. “Wanna explore my Animal Crossing island? I’ve already done quite a bit of work on it.”

At that Shouto’s eyes actually light up a little, and he immediately nods his assent.

Touya quickly turns on the TV and his Switch before pressing the controller in his brother’s hands and settling in a little more comfortably on the couch, leaning back against the pillows and pulling his feet up on the seat to wrap his arms around his legs.

“Knock yourself out”, he tells the kid with an encouraging nod at the controller in his hands.

Touya has no idea what time it is, and he also has no idea how long they play Animal Crossing for (well, Shouto plays, while Touya sits curled up on the couch and watches, and they chat about the things he’s doing, the challenges Touya has already completed in his game, and the fish and bugs he has already caught), but eventually he feels his eyes begin to droop and his brother is starting to look quite sleepy, too.

“Ready to go to bed soon?”, Touya asks, semi-successfully suppressing a yawn.

Pointlessly so, because suddenly Shouto yawns, and it’s so contagious that Touya’s own yawn forces its way out right along with it after all.

“Yeah, I think so”, Shouto confirms, huffing out a soft laugh. “Do you have pyjamas I can borrow and a spare toothbrush, perhaps?”

“Sure”, Touya says, and they quickly switch off the electronics before heading out into the hallway together.

Touya briefly disappears into his bedroom to grab a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt for Shouto, and while the kid heads off to the guest bedroom to change, Touya makes his way to the bathroom to search his cabinets for the pack of fresh toothbrushes he definitely saw somewhere the other day.

By the time he finally manages to find it, Shouto has popped up by his side, dressed in his borrowed sleepwear and blinking a little against the bright lights.

“Here”, Touya says, handing him a new toothbrush.

They make their way over to the sink and quickly brush their teeth standing side by side, and something about it gives Touya almost visceral childhood flashbacks.

He’s not even sure he ever brushed his teeth together with Shouto like this when they were kids, but he definitely used to do it with Fuyumi and Natsuo when they were all sent to go to bed around the same time. They would stand next to each other at the sink, just like Touya and Shouto right now, and try to outdo each other with their toothbrushing diligence, white toothpaste foam dribbling down their hands and chins.

It makes a mix of fond nostalgia and bittersweetness swirl around in Touya’s heart, and he supposes even if he and Shouto never did this together when they were kids, at least they get to do it now.

He chances a glance to the side as he spits the leftover toothpaste into the sink, before rinsing off his toothbrush and mouth. Apart from the lingering sadness, the kid’s expression is as unreadable as ever, but then again Touya is fairly certain Shouto probably never got to have this experience with Natsuo and Fuyumi either, so there’s probably nothing for him to feel nostalgic about or like he is belatedly having a childhood-essential bonding moment with his oldest brother.

“This reminds me a little of living in the UA dorms”, the kid muses then after spitting out the remains of his toothpaste, and Touya can’t help but bark out a laugh at that.

“What?”, Shouto asks, frowning at him bemusedly.

Touya cackles again. “Nothing, nothing. Sorry, I was just trying to figure out what you were thinking, and I didn’t expect it to be that.”

Shouto huffs out small laugh of his own. “We had these large communal washrooms, and every morning and every night you were in there brushing your teeth with at least five other people”, he explains as they make their way back out into the hallway.

“Must’ve been pretty chaotic. Dorm life, I mean”, Touya notes, memories of living in hideouts with the League floating through his mind. Even that was already chaotic as hell sometimes, and god forbid you needed to use the bathroom right after Twice had been in there.

“It was sometimes”, Shouto says, a fond little smile playing around his lips. “Really fun as well, though.”

Touya hums a bit amusedly at that as they come to a stop outside the guest bedroom.

“Are you gonna be okay for now?”, he asks a little more seriously then, and Shouto gives a slightly wobbly but reassuring nod.

Touya’s heart still hurts for him, so he reaches out and pulls the kid into another hug, squeezing him like that’s going to magically make all his pain go away.

“Sleep well”, he says when he finally releases his brother again, offering him a sympathetic smile.

“Thanks. For everything”, Shouto replies, returning the smile, and Touya waves his hand through the air a little.

“Of course. Now go sleep”, he says, jokingly shooing the kid towards the door, and with a small chuckle Shouto disappears into the guest bedroom.

Touya quickly shuffles off to his own bedroom and falls into his bed like a dead weight. Even though his mind is still firing chaotically, trying to process the events of the night, his exhaustion crashes over him so forcefully he quickly drifts off into deep slumber anyway.

…Only to be ripped right out of it by the now familiar shrill sound of the doorbell again after what feels like barely five minutes.

With a loud groan Touya blinks his eyes open against what’s definitely daylight streaming in through the window.

He feels like his brain is stuffed with cotton, and his eyes are dry and heavy with the urge to go right back to sleep, but Touya bravely resists and clumsily reaches for his phone. The display tells him that it’s 10 AM, so that means…

Hawks.

That must be Hawks outside the door, here for their usual morning routine.

After staying up until arse o’clock last night it’s no surprise that Touya slept in much longer than he usually does, and it’s also no surprise that he feels like that still wasn’t nearly enough rest.

With a long-suffering sigh he climbs out of bed, puts on his prosthesis and quickly changes into a fresh pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt before shuffling down the hallway to open the door.

“Morning- oh, wow, what happened to your hair?”, Hawks greets him, eyes widening in amusement as his mouth stretches into a matching grin.

“Hm?”, Touya replies dumbly, the cotton in his brain clearly still slowing down his cognitive functioning significantly.

Hawks chuckles. “It’s all messy”, he elaborates, stepping a bit closer, and suddenly his hands are in Touya’s hair, smoothing out the tremendous bedhead he apparently has going on.

Hawks’ fingers feel nice and soothing in his hair, and Touya dimly thinks that if he were a cat, he would probably start purring right now.

“Are you okay?”, the hero asks then, frowning a little as he takes in Touya’s full appearance and demeanour.

“I just woke up”, he explains, yawning as if to underline his point. “I was up pretty late last night.”

“Oh, how come?”, the bird wonders, falling into step with him as Touya makes his way over to the kitchen.

He takes a moment to contemplate his answer. “Shouto stopped by after a party last night. We hung out and lost track of time”, he finally settles on. It’s not a lie, but it also doesn’t reveal anything about the personal nature of Shouto’s visit. “He’s still asleep in the guest bedroom.”

“Oh, I see”, Hawks says, instantly dropping his voice to a whisper, which draws a slightly muffled laugh out of Touya.

“Birdie, I think if not even that devilish doorbell managed to wake him up, your voice definitely won’t do it either”, he points out amusedly as he begins to whip himself up a quick breakfast.

They go through their usual morning spiel - Touya eats and takes his medication (a bit belatedly, but it’s still within the permitted time frame), while Hawks sips his coffee from that atrocious mug with his own eyes on it. Touya kind of wants to sink into a deep dark hole every time he sees that awful thing, but the bird seems to think it’s absolutely hilarious and keeps insisting on using it, and, well, who is Touya to deny the man his wishes?

(That might be worth doing some introspection about some time, but Touya is exceptionally good at avoiding this sort of stuff.)

Just as Touya finishes up his own coffee, his brother traipses into the kitchen, dressed in his party clothes again and yawning against his wrist.

“Morning. Oh, hello, Hawks”, he says, his voice still a bit hoarse, but he manages what seems to be a genuine smile. Touya gives him a look, attempting to communicate an “are you okay?” to the kid, and Shouto gives him a small, nearly imperceptible nod. It makes Touya relax a little.

“Hello, Shouto-kun”, Hawks sing-songs, seemingly completely unaware of the silent exchange between the two brothers. “I already heard you guys were up pretty late last night.”

Shouto promptly looks like a deer caught in the headlights, clearly overwhelmed by the idea of having to come up with an evasive answer on the spot, so Touya quickly jumps to his rescue.

“We were playing Animal Crossing”, he says breezily, and instant relief washes over the kid’s face.

“Yeah. Animal Crossing”, Shouto affirms, nodding a little before walking over to the cupboard to grab a glass.

Hawks, still perfectly in the dark, laughs at that. “I see, I see. Maybe I should give that a shot, too, some time.”

“You definitely should”, Shouto says, genuine enthusiasm lacing his words as he pours himself some water.

It makes Touya chuckle a little. “You want some breakfast?”, he asks then, but the kid shakes his head.

“No, I think I should head back home and, uh…face the music”, he explains, grimacing a little. “I’ll grab something from the bakery on the way.”

Touya stares at him for a long moment, trying to figure out what exactly is going on in that white-and-red-haired head. 

“It’ll be okay”, Shouto adds pointedly, meeting Touya’s gaze unwaveringly and offering him a small reassuring smile. “I’d have to do it eventually anyway.”

“Why? Is someone forcing you to go to the bakery?”, Hawks asks bemusedly, furrowing his brows as his eyes flit back and forth between the brothers suspiciously.

It’s so silly but so refreshingly hilarious after all the emotional heaviness of the night before, that Touya can’t bite back the hearty guffaw that forces its way out of his mouth at that.

Shouto doesn’t seem to be faring much better, rather unsuccessfully stifling a bout of giggles against his palm.

“Did I miss something?”, the bird wonders, clearly bewildered, but chuckling along with them as if infected.

“It’s an inside joke”, Touya eventually explains a bit half-heartedly, still cackling.

Hawks snorts. “I see.”

“Well, I’m gonna head out now”, Shouto announces then, putting his empty glass into the sink, and Touya slides off his bar stool to walk his brother to the door. 

“I’ll be in the living room”, Hawks announces. “See you, Shouto-kun!”

“Yeah, see you.”

“Are you really gonna be okay?”, Touya asks quietly once they’re alone, still not 100% convinced, but Shouto nods firmly.

“Yes. I’ll have to go home and face them eventually either way, and it’s like you said - there’s no point in worrying about the what-ifs right now, if I don’t even know what exactly is going to happen yet. I don’t want this to ruin my friendship with them, so I’ll have to try and continue behaving normally with them anyway”, he explains as he laces up his boots and pulls on his leather jacket.

Touya hums a little at that. “Alright”, he concedes a bit hesitantly. “If anything goes wrong, you know where to find me. Also, text me when you’re home safe, okay?”

“I will”, Shouto promises, smiling a little. “Thank you again.”

This time it’s the kid who pulls Touya into a hug, and Touya feels like there’s suddenly a bit of an odd role reversal going on where Shouto is trying to reassure him, even though it should really be the other way round right now.

“See you soon, okay?”

With that his brother disappears through the front door, and Touya is left standing by the genkan on his own, fruitlessly trying to organise the one million different thoughts in his head a little, before finally giving up and heading to the living room to join his pro hero babysitter.

“Hey, is everything really okay?”, said pro hero babysitter asks concernedly the moment Touya plops down next to him on the couch.

He sighs a little. “Yes, Birdie, it’s fine. I promise. It’s nothing to do with me and nothing you need to worry about”, he assures, because Hawks clearly didn’t fully buy their excuses from earlier, and Touya feels like they’re a little past the point of lying to each other like that anyway.

After all, far more delicate truths have already been shared between them.

The bird still looks a bit uncertain, but finally appears to accept Touya’s answer, his expression softening.

At that Touya relaxes a little more into the couch and promptly yawns. “Hey, Birdie, do you mind if I take a quick nap? I think I’ve gotten too old to stay up that late at night”, he admits, grimacing a little at himself.

Hawks chuckles, clearly amused. “Sure, old man”, he says innocently, and Touya flashes him a lazy scowl.

“You were literally born the same year as me”, he deadpans, scooting over a little on the couch so he can put his feet up and curl up on his side.

“But aaaaaall the way at the other end of it”, the hero points out cheekily. “Hey, why are you lying down like that? Don’t you want a pillow?”

Touya blinks up at him from where his head is resting on the seat next to Hawks. “I’ve slept in places you wouldn’t even believe. A couch cushion is, by far, one of the most harmless ones”, he states drily, and perhaps his sleepy mind is just playing tricks on him, but he thinks he sees a flash of something pass across the hero’s face, before his expression settles back into its natural state of up-to-no-good.

“Well, that doesn’t mean you have to be uncomfortable now”, he says, before lightly patting his own lap. “Come here.”

“What?”, Touya blurts out dumbly, and he’s pretty sure his eyes are physically bulging out of his head. 

“Use me as a pillow”, Hawks elaborates, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. “Unless you don’t want to?”, he tacks on then, his tone just a tad more tentative, contrasting the nonchalant confidence in his demeanour.

“No, no, I, uh, I want to”, Touya quickly scrambles to say, because of course he fucking does, before clumsily lifting himself up a little from the couch and giving the hero another questioning look.

Hawks encouragingly pats his lap again, and Touya swallows a bit drily before carefully lowering himself back down on his side and placing his head on the hero’s thighs, facing away from him. 

Touya instantly feels warmer, and he can’t help but nuzzle his nose a little into the other man’s leg. Above him Hawks chuckles softly before slipping a hand into Touya’s hair, gently starting to rub his fingers across his scalp.

“Is this okay?”, the hero asks quietly, and Touya nods a little against his lap. 

“Yes”, he breathes.

Once again, he has absolutely no idea what this means in the context of their beneficial dynamic with each other, but he’s way too cozy and sleepy to contemplate it any more deeply right now, so he simply allows himself to relax into the warmth and the sensation of the other man’s touch as he feels himself begin to doze off.

Chapter Text

Shouto is an idiot.

An absolute, utter, grade A idiot.

What kind of person promises their friend to help them out with their work, only to leave what’s arguably the most important part of it until the very last minute?

The fundraiser is only two days away now, and Shouto - the idiot - has been poring over the goddamn itinerary he promised Momo he’d write for the past two hours without actually having accomplished anything.

Well, he has already finished writing the schedules for the various events and attractions they’re setting up on the large outdoor convention grounds they’ve rented out, but apart from the fact that it will start with his welcome speech, he hasn’t managed to get the main stage programme in order at all so far. They’ve got a whole bunch of people lined up to give speeches and info talks over the course of the day - mental health professionals, people from difficult backgrounds who were lucky enough to get the support they needed, as well as a few sponsors and supporters of the foundation they’re planning to set up - and the general idea is to have them interspersed with live performances from the band to keep up a nice balance between music and talking segments over the course of the whole day.

So far so good.

However, for some reason, everybody agreed that the person creating the schedule should also write the setlist for the band to make sure the mood of the songs and speeches won’t clash too badly. At the time of their video conference that also seemed like a very reasonable idea to Shouto, but now that he has been tasked with getting these things in order, he is kind of losing his mind.

He has already created a playlist with all the songs Jirou told him the band had been rehearsing, and he has been listening to it attentively all day to familiarise himself with the songs, but he still feels completely in over his head with the task. He really shouldn’t have put it off until today, but the past few days weren’t exactly easy for him and he simply wasn’t able to focus on anything.

Seeing Izuku and Katsuki for the first time since the incident at Kouda’s party when they returned home from work on Wednesday afternoon hurt like hell. They didn’t seem to act any differently with each other - or with Shouto for that matter - than they normally would, and Shouto is fairly certain he did a decent enough job of pretending that everything was fine, but the moment he managed to disappear into his bedroom after claiming to need a little afternoon nap, the tears started flowing again, and he had to throw himself face down onto his bed to muffle his sobs into his pillow.

It took him a pathetically long time to calm himself down after that, and by the time he finally dared to leave his bedroom again to make himself dinner, his friends already seemed to have gone to sleep.

In a way, the upcoming fundraiser has been a welcome distraction since then - the band members have been using virtually every free minute to rehearse in the studio they rented out downtown, so Katsuki has barely been home, and Izuku has been holed up in his bedroom, adding the final touches to the massive interactive hero trivia quiz event he has been organising, so Shouto hasn’t really seen much of either of them these past few days.

It has definitely helped him live with the reality of what happened a bit better, but deep down he knows it’s likely just the calm before the storm. He still doesn’t know where the two of them stand with each other now, and the fundraiser will be over soon. They will all start seeing each other a lot more again, and surely there will be some sort of consequences.

For now, however, Shouto is more than happy to simply continue living in his little bubble of, well, not denial but definitely avoidance. Even if, on some level, it has clearly been affecting his functioning anyway, if his inability to write this goddamn schedule is anything to go by.

He isn’t even sure what exactly his problem is. He knows all the songs, he knows what all the talks and speeches are about, so, surely, he should be able to figure out how to put them in a fitting and decently balanced order, shouldn’t he?

But perhaps he’s just not enough of a music person for this. He really likes music and - thanks to his friends - he also knows a lot of music nowadays, but he didn’t exactly grow up with it the way others did, and he feels like his own perception of a specific song might not always line up with the way most other people would perceive it.

Maybe that’s why he isn’t really cut out for this job. If only he could ask someone for advice, someone who really understands music…

When it finally hits him, he actually smacks his palm against his forehead.

Of course!

He should ask Touya for help.

Hell, his brother might even get a kick out of it. Shouto is pretty sure he’d like a lot of these songs Jirou and the rest of the band have picked out.

He quickly pauses the playlist he had on in the background and searches up his brother’s number in his contacts.

“Hey, baby bro, how are you? Is everything okay?”, Touya greets him after a few rings, an unmistakable note of concern lacing his voice, and Shouto feels a bit bad about worrying his brother like this.

Touya has been incredibly supportive throughout this whole thing - from taking Shouto in the night of the party and staying up with him to comfort him to checking in on him every day since via text - and Shouto honestly doesn’t know what he would’ve done without him.

“Hello, nii-san. I’m okay”, he assures him quickly. “What are you up to?”

“Oh, you know. The usual”, Touya says, chuckling a little. “Engaging in my silly little indoor hobbies. Hanging out with my babysitter. Actually, the bird just left. Apparently he still needs to add some ‘final touches’ to that talk he’s supposed to give at your fundraiser this weekend, but I’m pretty sure he actually hasn’t even written most of it yet.” He cackles a little, and Shouto has to bite back a snort.

The fact that he doesn’t seem to be the only one who kept putting off their task until the very last minute makes him feel at least marginally better about himself.

“Actually, that’s kind of why I’m calling”, Shouto says.

“The bird’s procrastination habits?”, Touya asks a bit incredulously.

This time Shouto actually does snort. “No, my own. Well, kind of at least. I still have to finish something for the fundraiser as well, but I’m totally stuck and I thought perhaps you could help me out?”, he explains a bit awkwardly.

Touya hums on the other end of the line. “What are you working on?”

“Uhh, well, I have to write a schedule for our main stage programme. We have a bunch of speakers lined up - that’s also where we’ll have Hawks on video call to give his talk - and our live band is going to perform before, after and between the speeches. I’m supposed to get all this stuff in order, which includes writing the setlist for the band, and I think I’m completely in over my head with that. I have a list of all the songs they’ve rehearsed and I’m supposed to organise them in a way that will flow nicely and feel thematically appropriate in conjunction with the speeches, but I don’t feel like I’m cut out for that at all”, Shouto elaborates, blowing out a frustrated breath. “I’ve been poring over it for hours now and I haven’t gotten anywhere with it. I figured, since you’re such a music connoisseur, you might be able to help me.”

“‘Music connoisseur’, huh? I guess I’ll take it”, Touya notes amusedly, before turning a little more serious. Shouto can practically hear him furrowing his brows through the phone. “Well, I can’t promise you anything, but I can try. What kinds of speeches do you have lined up? And can you send me the song list?”

“Thank you, even trying is better than nothing at this point”, Shouto replies, grimacing a little. “I put all the songs in a playlist. Hold on, I’ll send you the link. As for the speeches…”

He sets the call to speakerphone and starts tapping away on his phone to send his brother the playlist link while he gives him a quick summary of the types of speeches they’ve got planned. Touya oohs, aahs and hums his way through it, and soon after he is telling Shouto which songs he thinks would go well with which speech, as well as which song and speech combinations he should probably avoid.

“Oh, they probably shouldn’t play that one right after the talk from the substance abuse counsellor. It’s a metaphor for doing drugs, and when I say ‘doing drugs’ I mean it’s all about the trippy hallucinogenic stuff. The lyrics glorify it pretty heavily, so you’ll probably wanna keep that one as far away from the substance abuse talk as possible. Catchy song, though. The audience will probably love it”, he notes, and Shouto quickly scribbles it down in his notes, nodding along even though his brother can’t actually see him.

“Have you ever done drugs, nii-san?”, he wonders then offhandedly as it occurs to him that they’ve never talked about that particular topic before.

“Nothing stronger than weed or medically prescribed stuff”, Touya replies casually. “When you’re out on the streets you need to watch your back at all times, so it’s much safer to remain fully lucid. And you can’t exactly carry out your villainous little missions while you’re high as a kite. Also, drugs are expensive as shit.”

Shouto hums a little. That definitely makes sense.

“Have you ever done drugs, baby bro?”, Touya bores then, his tone curious and almost a bit stern, and Shouto vaguely wonders if that’s what his teenage life would’ve been like if he had grown up in a normal family. Being told to stay away from drugs. Getting reprimanded for partying a little too hard. Normal teenage things.

“Only alcohol and weed”, he assures his brother. Even if it’s a bit ridiculous, considering that Shouto is a 23-year-old grown adult by now, he finds he really doesn’t mind the concept of an older family member looking out for him like this. It makes him feel refreshingly ordinary, but also pleasantly cared for.

“Good. Don’t even try any of the harder shit. I’ve seen what it can do to people."

“I won’t”, Shouto promises, and Touya seems to be satisfied with that, acknowledging it with a hum.

They continue to work their way through the lists of songs and speeches, and slowly but surely the setlist and schedule actually begin to take shape. At one point they’re briefly interrupted when Katsuki returns home from his patrol shift, greeting Shouto with his usual “hello, shortcake” as he walks past where Shouto is sitting on the couch to get to the kitchen.

“Is the nerd home?”, he asks, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge and plopping down on the armrest of the couch next to Shouto as he unscrews the cap.

It takes everything in Shouto not to wince at the sudden proximity. “Yeah, he’s working on the hero quiz in his bedroom again”, he explains as nonchalantly as he can manage. “Said it’s still top secret, so no one is allowed to come inside.”

Katsuki snorts heartily at that. “Of course it is”, he notes with dry amusement, taking a couple of sips from his water. “What are you doing?”

“Finishing up the schedule for the main stage programme. Do you have rehearsals again today?”, Shouto asks then, because he can totally play this cool and act like everything is normal.

Katsuki nods. “Yeah, I’m about to head out again. Just wanted to grab a quick drink.”

“Ah, then you can tell Jirou that the setlist is almost done now and that I’ll send it to her later”, Shouto says, lightly tapping his pen against the papers on the coffee table in front of him.

“Gotcha”, Katsuki chuckles with another nod before getting back up to his feet. “Well, I’m off again. See you later, princess.”

“Yeah, see you”, Shouto calls after him - totally breezily - as his friend disappears into the hallway, waiting to hear the telltale noise of the front door falling shut before picking his phone up from the table.

“Touya-nii? Are you still there?”

“Yeah, still here. Didn’t wanna interfere with that, but, uh, I kinda heard everything”, Touya says a bit ominously on the other end of the line. “Forgive me for asking, but…Explodo-Boy calls you ‘princess’?! Did I hear that correctly?!”

Shouto feels himself blush a little at that, even though he really has no business to do so. After all the nicknames clearly don’t mean anything - at least that he knows for sure now.

“Yeah, he does sometimes. He calls me all sorts of nicknames”, he explains, pointedly ignoring the painful twinge in his chest.

“That’s…interesting…”, Touya remarks slowly.

Shouto frowns. “Why? You call people nicknames, too. I know you always call Hawks ‘Birdie’”, he points out a bit bemusedly.

On the other end of the line Touya makes a choked off noise that’s somewhere between a scoff, a laugh and a cough. “Yeah, but I don’t call him ‘princess’”, he finally wheezes out. “That’s different.”

Shouto feels his frown deepen. “Is it? I figured it was all just friendly teasing.”

“Uh. Yeah. You’re right. Of course it is”, his brother concedes a bit stiffly. “Just friendly teasing.”

“I mean, I used to think maybe it meant more-“

“What?!”, Touya cuts him off, and his voice sounds oddly high.

“I used to think maybe it meant that Katsuki… liked me. You know?”, Shouto elaborates, punctuating his words carefully. “Are you okay?”, he wonders then. “You’re sounding a bit squeaky.”

“Me?!”, Touya promptly squeaks again before clearing his throat. “Me?”, he repeats then, his tone somewhat more normal. “Nah, I’m fine. Just. Uh. Got an itch in my throat. Maybe I need to do some dusting here.”

“Oh, there’s this really great duster we recently bought for our flat. Best one on the market right now, hands down. I can send you the link later”, Shouto remarks excitedly. That duster has truly been a game changer for their household maintenance.

“Right. Uh. Sounds good. Thanks”, Touya replies, and Shouto thinks he doesn’t really sound convinced yet, but he’s absolutely certain that his brother will get it as soon as he has actually tried that duster out for himself.

“Shall we finish up the setlist then? If you really wanna send it to Jirou by tonight, we definitely still have some work to do.”

“Oh, yes, please”, Shouto agrees immediately, forcing himself to redirect his attention to the notes on the coffee table in front of him.

It does end up taking them quite a bit longer to finish the schedule than he had expected, with Shouto eventually feeling confident enough to bring in more of his own ideas as well, but as promised they do manage to complete it by the the time evening rolls around, and Shouto contently takes a photo and sends it over to his friend.

“Thank you so much for helping me with this”, he tells his brother very earnestly, running his fingers through his hair in relief. “I have no idea what I would’ve done without you. Actually, uh, with the… other thing this week as well.”

“‘Course”, Touya mumbles on the other end of the line, his tone slightly awkward but genuine. “This was actually quite fun anyway.”

Shouto huffs out a laugh at that. “Glad you consider my personal horrors entertaining”, he says lightly, which earns him a chuckle from his brother.

They quickly say their goodbyes, and after hanging up the phone and cleaning away all the pens and papers he scattered across the coffee table while he was working, Shouto realises he is absolutely starving. He shuffles over to the kitchen, fills up Shimo’s food and water bowls and fondly watches the cat tuck in for a moment, before he makes his way to the fridge to inspect his dinner options. 

Another side effect of everyone in their flat being so busy with fundraiser preparations is that they’re constantly running kind of low on groceries, and today is no different. Shouto briefly considers hurrying to the nearest supermarket before it closes for the night, but then decides that he’s feeling too lazy and exhausted after the mental strain of the day, so he settles on ordering himself takeout instead, which he ends up devouring on the couch while watching the newest episode of an adventure series he’s been following.

He can still go grocery shopping tomorrow.

***

Touya has been having a rather slow and quiet day, but if he’s being honest, he doesn’t actually mind it all that much.

Today is the big fundraiser for Shouto’s foundation, and pretty much every single one of Touya’s personal contacts is busy with it - his baby brother, obviously, but Fuyumi and Natsuo are also attending the event, and Hawks has been on video call standby in his own flat all day.

Apparently he’s not only supposed to call in to give his talk, but also contribute to various attractions and events across the convention grounds via livestream over the course of the day. He even did his morning check-in with Touya half an hour earlier than usual today, and they postponed their daily two-hour surveillance hangout to the early evening when the bird’s job at the fundraiser is supposed to be done.

So Touya has been on his own pretty much all day so far, and he has kind of been using the opportunity to pamper himself a little. After a rather extravagant breakfast he took a long relaxing bath - this time he used a blue bath bomb that kind of reminded him of his flames - and even worked this moisturising cream for wavy hair he found on the internet when he was shopping for new bath bombs into his damp hair before letting it air-dry, because why the hell not? He actually thinks it really has made his waves a little more defined and a little more shiny, so he supposes at least he didn’t totally waste the money he spent on it.

After he finished pampering himself in the bathroom, he curled up on the couch in his cosiest clothes with a steaming mug of tea on the coffee table and a colourful selection of books scattered around him, ranging from classic literature to his fantasy series to his One Piece manga. He wasn’t really sure what exactly he was in the mood for, so he figured he’d spare himself the effort of having to get up from his comfortable little couch nest just to grab another book, in case he wasn’t really vibing with his first pick.

About a hundred pages later he took a break from reading to cook himself a healthy lunch with the fresh vegetables Hawks’ assistant had gone out to buy for him yesterday before settling right back down on the couch to eat, picking up his phone to scroll a little through social media and watch some music videos.

And that’s where he’s at right now - still curled up on the couch, content and sated from his lunch, scrolling on his phone and watching Instagram stories from his siblings and other pro heroes attending the big fundraiser.

He must admit he is quite curious about the whole event and he allows himself to indulge a little in a silly daydream about what it could be like, if he were allowed to go outside and actually attend something like that himself.

The fact that his mere presence there would likely be a publicity disaster for the heroes aside, he wonders what it would be like to watch Jirou’s band perform live on stage. What it would be like to participate in Deku’s little hero quiz or try to beat Red Riot at arm wrestling. What it would be like to buy street food from one of the seemingly countless food stands and stroll across the convention grounds, looking at the different attractions and trying not to spill his food all over himself as he walks.

The whole concept is so viciously foreign to him, but deep down in his heart he finds there’s a little part of him that really wants to experience things like that.

Normal things normal people do.

He wants to take dumb pictures in a photo booth, and he wants to stand in a crowd and sing along to some popular stadium rock anthem, and he wants to ride the stupid ferris wheel and maybe kiss Hawks when they reach the top and-

Woah.

Hold the fuck up.

How the hell did Hawks suddenly appear in that fantasy? And why the hell would Touya kiss him at the top of a ferris wheel? Surely, that’s not what their friendly benefits entail.

Scratch that, why the hell would Touya even ride a ferris wheel in the first place? He’d probably just end up getting motion sick on that damn thing.

He physically shakes his head, as though that might expel those strange thoughts from his brain, and forces himself to snap back to reality.

The reality where he is on house arrest and won’t even be allowed to leave this damn building for another five years.

Even without taking his recognisability as a former villain into account, there are most definitely no festivals, fundraisers or amusement fairs on the horizon for him in the near future, so there’s no real point in entertaining all those kinds of thoughts anyway.

The realisation is a bit sobering, but Touya has acquired more than enough self-awareness through his nearly seven years of therapy to quickly remind himself of how lucky he is to even be here, in this flat, at all right now. Most people with a criminal record like his get locked up in Tartarus for a much, much longer time than him, and many never even make it out alive at all anymore. Touya is clearly in no position to feel sorry for himself just because he can’t stuff his face with street food and then make himself sick on a ferris wheel right now.

He does, however, find his thoughts circling back to Hawks, who has been barred from attending the fundraiser in person due to his babysitting duties, wondering whether the hero is upset about having to miss out on the event. 

Touya’s thoughts often tend to do this these days - circling right back to Hawks from seemingly anything and everything - which totally isn’t a problem, though, because it’s clearly just due to their heavily increased physical proximity recently. They haven’t actually had sex since that night at the hero’s flat the week before, but they’ve been rather touchy with each other in non-sexual ways - sitting close enough for their sides to be pressed against each other, lingering for notably longer than necessary whenever their fingers brush by accident, Touya napping with his head resting in Hawks’ lap and the hero’s fingers carding through his hair.

Touya still doesn’t have a grasp on where exactly the lines are in their friends-with-benefits dynamic - when he’s allowed to touch and when he isn’t, what kinds of touches are allowed - so he’s been leaving it up to the other man to initiate things between them.

Of course, he never says no to any of it - he wants all those things, wants them badly even, but he simply never knows whether he’s actually allowed to have them, and by this point he’s kind of both afraid and embarrassed to ask. Afraid of making himself vulnerable like that, admitting how much he craves affection, how much he craves it specifically from Hawks, and embarrassed because he feels like he might be making way too big of a deal out of it.

So he doesn’t ask and simply waits for Hawks to make the first move every time. But perhaps that’s why they haven’t had sex again. Perhaps Hawks is waiting for Touya to initiate something for a change.

Technically speaking, he was the one to initiate their very first kiss that time on the couch, but the hero was practically taunting him into it, so he doesn’t really feel like it counts, and last week, when they had sex, it was Hawks who made the first moves, so to speak.

Maybe it really is Touya’s turn now. Maybe he just needs to get the fuck over himself and make a move on the bird.

What’s the worst that could happen? Hawks could say no. And Touya can’t really lie to himself - a rejection like that would probably hurt his stupid sensitive feelings, but it also wouldn’t exactly be the end of the world. And there’s also a reasonable likelihood that Hawks would actually say yes.

And that’s all he wants, isn’t it?

Still trepidatious but with a new boost of determination fuelling his heart, Touya finally resolves to wait for the next appropriate moment and then try shooting his shot with the hero. After all, if he’s lucky, he might just get what he wants.

Perhaps the right moment will even already come around this evening. Hawks is supposed to come over at 6 PM, and with a quick glance at his phone Touya notes that he still has about an hour to spare until then, so he decides to abandon his cozy loungewear and change into something a little more fashionable, just in case it might increase the likelihood of the hero wanting to have sex with him again.

He doesn’t even bother feeling embarrassed about his eagerness as he hurries over to his bedroom and pulls on the tightest pair of black jeans he can find in his wardrobe, even if they’re probably going to be an absolute bitch to take off again if he actually does end up getting some tonight. He knows his legs could probably be considered quite nice, so he has to work with what he’s got. He also puts on a plain white flowy muscle top with a fairly low-cut neck, just low enough to reveal the edges of that unscarred patch of skin on his chest, and his black leather jacket, before spritzing on just a tiny splash of cologne. During his villain days he never really wore cologne since he had to be extremely careful about getting potential irritants anywhere near the fragile seams of his scars, but nowadays with the patchwork of his body in a much more stable condition there aren’t any open wounds anymore, so there’s no harm in spraying a little bit of perfume onto his skin.

When he finishes putting together his outfit and fluffing up his hair a little in the mirror, he still has way too much time left to kill, so he heads to the bathroom to brush his teeth and put on some chapstick.

Perhaps he’s overdoing it a little, considering that their sexual encounters so far always kind of happened on a whim without anyone getting all dolled up beforehand, but damnit, he’s feeling nervous as hell at the prospect of what he’s planning to do, and he’d much rather keep himself busy like this than wait around doing nothing.

Still, in the end, that’s kind of exactly what he ends up doing once he finishes everything he can think of to freshen himself up with still another 30 minutes left to kill.

He alternates between sitting down on the couch, bouncing his leg so viciously the coffee table in front of him actually vibrates with it, and pacing up and down the living room like a wild animal trapped in a cage, and by the time 6 o’clock finally comes around, he’s about ready to jump out of his own skin with nerves.

Except the doorbell doesn’t ring, nor does anyone knock or let themself in with their spare key. And at first Touya doesn’t really think anything of it. The hero probably just got held up with his fundraiser duties.

But then ten minutes pass and there’s still no sign of him, and Touya nervously starts chewing on his bottom lip as he paces around the room a little harder.

He is just arguing with himself about how this really isn’t like Hawks - how he wouldn’t just be late when they’ve made plans without at least giving Touya a heads-up via text - when he suddenly hears a dull clattering noise echo through the walls of the building, and a hot flash of panic shoots through him.

Something’s wrong.

Years of living on the streets and in the criminal underworld have sharpened Touya’s senses into recognising danger with great precision, and even more than half a decade later he can still tell the moment he hears the noise that something bad is happening.

Adrenaline surges through his body, and he barely even knows what he’s doing as he rushes to the genkan to pull on a pair of boots before bursting out through the door and skittering across the hallway to Hawks’ flat.

“Birdie?”, he shouts, violently hammering on the door with his prosthetic hand. “Hawks?”

A loud thudding noise rattles the wall in front of him, followed by more clattering, just like glass shattering, and now Touya knows for sure that the noises are coming from the hero’s flat.

Another sharp burst of panic erupts in him, making his guts lurch nauseatingly, and he knows he probably isn’t supposed to do this, but he really doesn’t give a fuck right now, so he unceremoniously grabs the door handle with his prosthetic hand, flips the little switch at the wrist to lock all the mechanical joints in place, and forcefully twists what’s left of his arm to break the lock right off the door.

It clatters to the ground noisily, and Touya quickly releases his prosthetic joints again before kicking the door open and stepping into the hero’s flat.

It briefly crosses his mind that he’s probably being really stupid and reckless right now, considering that he can’t even use his goddamn Quirk, but any thoughts of caution or rationality are currently being overshadowed by his worry for the stupid bird, so he simply continues on his way, marching down the hallway and glimpsing into every room he passes - the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom, only to find them empty. He is just about to open the door to the guest bedroom, when he suddenly hears Hawks’ voice drifting over from the living room.

“Who are you? What do you want?”, he asks assertively, his tone all confident pro hero, but Touya actually knows him well enough now to be able to detect the subtle shakiness to it. Hawks sounds surprised, and perhaps slightly fearful, and it makes Touya’s chest clench viciously with the urge to storm in there right there and then, but he forces himself to practice restraint. 

As long as Hawks is talking like this, he can’t be in immediate life-threatening danger, so Touya should probably keep himself hidden and devise some sort of attack plan, in case the hero needs his help. 

But first he needs intel, so he clamps his hand over his mouth and nose to muffle his laboured breathing as he strains his ears over the sound of his own frantic heartbeat to listen to what’s going on in the living room.

If only he could also position himself in a way so he can watch what’s happening, but he doesn’t know where whoever is in that room with Hawks right now might be standing, so if he moved from his spot right now to peak inside, he might risk being spotted.

“You really don’t know that?”, an unfamiliar voice scoffs - a male voice, Touya notes, rather smooth-talking, and with just a hint of a Kansai dialect. “Take a good look at me.”

“I don’t like judging people based on their looks. I prefer them telling me who they are”, Hawks replies calmly (or at least calmly to the untrained ear - Touya can pick out a hint of irritation, mixed in with that shakiness from before).

The stranger laughs coldly, and something about it sounds eerily familiar to Touya, but he can’t for the life of him put his finger on it.

“How about I show you instead, hero?”

A sudden pained gasp from Hawks reaches Touya’s ears at the same time as a wave of icy cold air washes over him, and just like that it hits him like a prime All Might punch to the face.

Frost Quirk.

Kansai dialect.

The eerie familiarity.

It must be the Himura villain.

And if that’s the case, that means Hawks is in great danger right now and an absolutely terrible power match-up against the other guy.

“You’ve been snooping around too much, Commission pet. I mean, talking to Lady Nagant about me? Really? Don’t you realise how badly that could sabotage my mission?!”, the villain snaps, raising his voice angrily as the air around Touya drops down another few vicious degrees and Hawks makes another small pained noise.

And Touya can’t fucking hold himself back anymore.

Before he can even think about what he’s doing, his body is already moving, rushing into the frosty living room.

One of the windows has been smashed to pieces, countless tiny shards of glass scattered across the hardwood floor, and one of the chairs at the dining table has been knocked over. There’s a middle-aged man clad in rock climbing gear standing at the centre of the room, and there’s absolutely no doubt that he’s a Himura. His hair looks unkempt and thinning, but it’s long and white, and the man has stormy grey eyes that almost make Touya nauseous to look at with how familiar they feel.

A thin layer of frost covers nearly every surface in the room, and under different circumstances it would probably even look quite pretty, but then Touya finally spots Hawks, curled up into a tight shivering ball in the corner of the room, bleeding from a large scrape on his cheek as his lips are slowly beginning to turn blue.

Without a second thought, and much to the surprise of the villain, Touya rushes over to the hero, feeling the air cool down even more the closer he gets.

“Birdie? Birdie. Can you move?”, he asks sharply, crouching down by Hawks’ side and pulling off his leather jacket to put it around the hero’s shoulders, like that’s somehow going to protect him from the dangerously cold air surrounding them.

Touya can perceive the icy temperature on his skin, but it doesn’t affect him at all, even in his sleeveless top.

Who would’ve thought that damned cold resistance would actually be genuinely good for something one day?

“What the hell are you doing here?”, the Himura villain demands, scowling at Touya from a few steps away, seemingly uncertain about whether he should approach. “You’re that crazy Todoroki kid from a few years ago! Shouldn’t you be in jail? Or dead?”

Touya snorts derisively at that. “Trust me, you’re not the first one to think that”, he says drily before quickly redirecting his attention to the freezing hero by his side.

“Birdie, can you stand up? I don’t think I can carry you out of here”, he admits frustratedly as Hawks’ immovable body is wracked by another bout of violent shivers.

“N-no”, he wheezes out, his voice barely above a whisper. “K-key. P-pocket.”

“What?”, Touya asks, frowning in furious confusion as he searches the hero’s eyes for an answer.

“W-wrist c-cuff. Q-quirk”, Hawks presses out, and Touya briefly feels like he’s going to keel right over when he finally understands what the hero is saying. 

“Are you sure?”, he questions shakily as he slips his fingers into the other man’s pockets, digging around them one by one until he finds what he’s looking for. He pulls out a small, plain-looking key and stares at the hero a bit incredulously for confirmation.

“Y-yes”, Hawks says, his blue-ish lips trembling. “Em-mergency.”

Touya breathes out heavily to steady himself, a dizzying cocktail of trepidation and excitement cursing through his guts as he slips the key into the little lock on his Quirk-cancelling wrist cuff and unlocks it.

A fervent buzzing floods his veins the second the cuff clicks open, and Touya can’t help but gasp a little from the overwhelming sensation of actually being able to feel his Quirk again for the first time in nearly seven years.

He doesn’t get much time to revel in it, though, because the Himura villain promptly sends another vicious wave of cold air in their direction, effectively snapping Touya back to reality and the true gravity of the situation.

And just like riding a bicycle, entirely on instinct, Touya easily summons up his flames, leaving them to simmer just under the surface to make himself radiate heat to warm the still-trembling hero by his side back up.

“What the-“, the Himura villain exclaims, his eyes widening in unrestrained panic as the heat from Touya’s Quirk begins to flood the living room, effectively banishing the frosty air and making the thin layers of ice on the furniture melt away like ice cream in the sun.

The white-haired man twists around on the spot and starts bolting towards the shattered window, and Touya barely has a millisecond to think about what he does next.

He forces himself to remember the way it felt when he summoned up his ice for the first time to copy Shouto’s Phosphor move, the way he drew it right out of his core and centred it around his heart, and attempts to recreate it again - except this time he doesn’t summon his flames to his core. He simply leaves them simmering in his limbs, heating up the space around him like a furnace as he tries to grab hold of the ice gathering around his heart and pushes it forward, right through the centre of his chest.

He really doesn’t know what he’s doing or how to control it properly, but a powerful wave of ice suddenly comes crashing out of him, effectively ripping his shirt apart as it propels itself forward until it reaches the villain, wrapping itself all around the man’s body and encasing him in a large block, freezing him right to the floor before he can make a break for it through the window.

Touya’s ice wave keeps rolling further undeterredly until it reaches the window and Touya finally manages to shut it off.

“C-cuff him”, Hawks rasps by his side, his voice still weak and shaky, but when Touya turns to look at him, the bluish tint of his lips seems to have receded and his skin is looking slightly flushed.

“Are you okay?”, Touya asks, eyeing him concernedly. 

The hero lets out a soft chuckle. “I’m gonna need a m-moment but I will be. You should put your c-cuff on this guy, just in case, until we get back-up here. Just put it around his wrist and c-click it shut. It’ll lock and activate automatically”, he explains hoarsely, shifting his still trembling body a little.

Touya bites his lip and nods obediently, picking up the cuff from where he let it clatter to the ground earlier before marching over to the frozen villain, who is hurling muffled curses against the insides of his ice block.

Touya grimaces a little as he summons his flames into his hand to carefully melt the guy’s mouth and wrist out of the ice.

“You son of a bitch”, the villain spits disdainfully the moment he can breathe properly again, but Touya doesn’t even bat an eye at it.

Not like he hasn’t heard that one before.

Instead he simply fastens the Quirk-cancelling cuff around the man’s hand and then leaves him there, frozen to the spot, as he hurries back to the corner Hawks is still huddled in.

“C-could you grab my phone from my pocket, so I can call this in?”, the hero asks, the corners of his mouth twitching into the ghost of a smile as Touya settles down on the floor next to him, pressing closely against him as he continues to let his flames simmer under his skin.

“Sure”, he says, fumbling around Hawks’ arse a bit awkwardly until he manages to pull his phone from his back pocket. “Does this thing even still work now?”, he wonders, frowning dubiously as he places the device in the hero’s outstretched icy fingers.

“T-temperature resistant casing”, the other man explains, the hint of a smile on his face growing a little more crooked. “Standard issue for pro heroes.”

Touya huffs out a laugh. “I see.”

He watches the hero clumsily unlock and tap around on his phone, and he’s kind of tempted to offer his assistance, but something tells him Hawks might need this remaining bit of control and professionalism right now, so Touya leaves him be and simply continues to transmit his warmth into the other man’s freezing body.

“The police and paramedics will be here in ten minutes”, Hawks announces after he finishes the call, another shiver wracking his body.

“Hey, um. Can I-“, Touya starts awkwardly, clearing his throat a little before trying again. “Can I take this off you and, uh, hug you?”, he asks, pretty certain that his ears would be turning flaming red right now if they weren’t so scarred, and tugs a little at his leather jacket that is still resting around the hero’s shoulders.

Hawks’ gaze softens immediately. “Y-yes, please.”

“Okay”, Touya says, exhaling a little before removing the jacket and discarding it on the floor, leaving the sweatshirt-clad hero shivering even more heavily.

Touya quickly scoots even closer, as close as he can possibly get without actually crawling inside the other man, and wraps his arms around him, pulling him tightly against his chest and turning his heat up a little more.

“Hmm. You’re warm”, Hawks mumbles as he wraps his arms around Touya’s waist and buries his icy nose against his neck.

“Is this comfortable for you?”, Touya asks against the other man’s hair. “I can turn it up or down a bit, if you need me to.”

“N-no, this is perfect”, the hero says, shifting a little so he can throw a leg over Touya’s, and Touya just thinks “what the hell, might as well” and reaches down with his prosthetic hand to hoist the other man properly into his lap so that he is straddling Touya’s thighs, their fronts pressed together closely.

Hawks goes easily and holds on to Touya a little more tightly, sighing contently against his skin. 

“Wait, are you okay like this, though? Using your Quirk, I mean”, the hero suddenly says, moving as if to sit up, but Touya just tightens his hold on him, keeping him right there in place.

“I’m fine”, he assures, nuzzling his nose against the other man’s head. “It doesn’t hurt me when it’s this low-level.”

It does feel a bit odd, though. Being able to use his Quirk again for the first time in such a long time. Touya is pretty sure that odd feeling isn’t physical, though, so he keeps it to himself and simply continues to warm up the bundle of frozen bird in his lap, holding on to him tightly as he discreetly inhales the peach scent of his shampoo.

After a short while there’s a noisy commotion out in the hallway, and with an unhappy sigh Hawks separates himself from Touya before scrambling up to his feet a bit stiffly. Touya picks up his leather jacket and shrugs it back on, suddenly feeling a bit too naked in his ripped up top.

“Uh, sorry, I kinda broke your lock to get in here”, he confesses a bit awkwardly as four police officers and three paramedics enter the living room.

“Worth it”, Hawks says, huffing out a soft laugh and subtly nudging his hand against Touya’s before assuming his professional hero stance to greet the newcomers.

Touya is left standing a bit dumbly in the corner, not really sure what he’s supposed or even allowed to do in this situation, especially considering that he isn’t currently wearing his Quirk-cancelling cuff. He switches his Quirk off entirely, just to make sure nobody can accuse him of anything, and busies himself with glancing around the room.

The shattered window and knocked over chair aside, the encounter with the villain hasn’t actually wreaked that much havoc on the place - if you ignore the frozen villain and spiky ice wall stretching from the corner of the room all the way to the window.

Touya can’t help but eye the product of his ice Quirk curiously, and it takes everything in him not to step forward and trace his fingers along the spiky edges. It looks quite similar to Shouto’s ice output - just smaller and definitely much less controlled, but that may just be a matter of practice.

Looking at it now kind of makes all sorts of funky feelings bubble up in Touya’s chest - pride for his own abilities, pain and regret for the fact that he didn’t discover he had them much, much earlier, and a mild queasiness over the fact that he just used his Quirk to stop a villain and save someone.

Just like a hero.

It overwhelmingly reminds him of how he felt when Shouto got injured, and he’s more than grateful for the distraction when one of the paramedics suddenly approaches him, gazing at him with a mix of timidity and curiosity.

“Todoroki-san?”, she asks carefully, offering him a small smile. “Would you mind if I performed a quick medical check-up on you? Just to make sure we don’t miss anything.”

“Sure”, Touya says politely, still sharply aware of the fact that he isn’t wearing his wrist cuff. He tries to make himself look as non-threatening as possible as he follows the paramedic over to the couch where she gestures for him to sit down.

From the corner of his eye he can see Hawks talking to two of the police officers while the other two are using some sort of electrical heater to melt the villain out of Touya’s ice block.

“Would you mind taking your jacket and shirt off?”, the paramedic asks, digging through her medical case.

Touya nods obediently and shrugs off his jacket, before pulling the ripped up remains of his top over his head.

“Just wanna take a quick look at your staples”, the paramedic explains kindly as she crouches down in front of him and begins to run a latex-gloved hand over the stapled seams on his chest and stomach. “Hawks-san just mentioned you summoned the ice through your chest, so I wanted to check…ah, yes. You ripped a few staples here”, she notes then, furrowing her brow a little as she pulls a pair of pincers from her bag. 

“Is it bad?”, Touya wonders, glancing down to check, but the paramedic’s hand is obscuring his view. 

“No, you’re barely even bleeding. I’m just going to remove the loose ones and put new ones in instead”, she assures, and with three quick sharp tugs she pulls the old staples out of his skin. “This is probably going to sting a little, sorry”, she says then, giving Touya a sympathetic look before placing a stapler gun against his chest and shooting three new staples into his skin.

It does sting, obviously, but it’s not like the feeling is anything new to Touya, so he simply grits his teeth and clenches his fist a little by his side as he bears the pain.

“Done”, the paramedic tells him then, offering him a slightly crooked smile. “I’m gonna put a small bandage on them to stop the bleeding for now, but you can remove it yourself later. Just be careful while showering and changing your clothes for the next few days.”

“I will”, Touya promises dutifully. “Thank you.”

“Alright, let me just get a quick look at your back and hand as well, and then you can put your clothes back on.”

Touya nods and twists around a little on the couch to give the paramedic better access to his back as she stands up and moves to his side. He feels her run her gloved hand across his seams there as well, but she quickly concludes that they’re all still intact.

“Do you feel hurt anywhere else? Or do you have any other symptoms?”, she asks as she picks up his hand from where it’s resting by his side, inspecting the staples on the back and across his palm.

“No, I’m fine”, he says, and it’s not even a lie. Physically he’s perfectly well - emotionally he feels a bit shaky, and he’ll probably have to unpack some of that later, but he’d much rather do that on his own, away from the watchful gaze of police and paramedics and his, uh, distant uncle.

“Alright, you can put your clothes back on then. Everything seems to be fine”, the paramedic finally concludes, letting go of Touya’s hand, and Touya is more than happy to put that ripped up shirt and his jacket back on.

He really doesn’t feel like being perceived by so many strangers right now, and the clothes at least provide a little bit of a shield.

When the paramedic has finished repacking her bag and left to go speak with her colleagues, one of the police officers who were talking to Hawks earlier makes his way over to Touya.

“Hello, Todoroki-san. Hawks-san has informed us about your heroic actions today, and we would like to formally thank you for what you did. Hawks-san has declared that he takes full responsibility for removing your wrist cuff as it was an emergency, so there will be no legal consequences for your Quirk use here today”, the police officers explains politely, and Touya has to try very hard to hold back the sigh of relief that wants to force its way out of his mouth.

“We are legally required to put the cuff back on now, though”, the police officer adds then, and, well, of course Touya knew that was bound to happen, but he still doesn’t feel particularly happy about it. He only just got his Quirk back, only just got to try out his ice again, and he kind of wishes he could just leave the cuff off, so he can practice using it more.

The feeling of using his Quirk at such a powerful level without causing himself any harm (the loose staples aside) was incredibly pleasant and exhilarating, and he really doesn’t want to give up on that again right away.

Still, realistically speaking he knows that his best option now is to cooperate. It’s his best shot at actually tasting real freedom again five years from now.

“I could put the cuff on you now, or Hawks-san could do it once he’s been medically cleared, if you prefer that. Technically, you’re his responsibility, not ours”, the police officer points out then, and Touya promptly glances over to where Hawks is sitting on a chair and getting stitches on the cut on his cheek.

“I’d prefer Hawks doing it”, Touya says without even really thinking about it. He doesn’t even really want to be perceived by anyone right now, so he most definitely doesn’t want some stranger touching him to put a form of physical restraint on him either. 

The police officer gives him a polite nod. “Understood. Please wait here then.”

Well, it’s not like Touya has anywhere to go anyway.

He absently picks at the seam of his jeans as he watches the paramedic who re-did his staples finish stitching up Hawks’ cheek, while the other two paramedics are giving the now doubly handcuffed villain a quick check-up.

“Hey. Hot Stuff. You okay?”, Hawks’ slightly lowered voice suddenly reaches his ears, and Touya blinks to find the hero standing right in front of him. He must’ve spaced out for a moment.

“Yeah, I’m good. How are you, Birdie?”, he asks, eyeing the bandage on the other man’s cheek.

Hawks flashes him a small but genuine smile. “I’m okay. Still cold, but apparently nothing they’d have to take me to the hospital for. They just told me to take a hot shower, drink tea, bundle up, use a heating pad, the usual, until I feel properly warmed up again”, he explains, and Touya exhales a little in relief.

“I, uh. I do have to put your cuff back on, though”, the hero says then, sounding a bit stilted and grimacing at his own words. “Sorry, I feel like that’s kind of a cruel thing to do after everything that just happened, but I’m legally obligated to do it.”

Touya sighs, steeling himself a little. “It’s fine, Birdie. I get it.” He dutifully holds out his arm for the hero, and Hawks carefully places the silver metal cuff around his wrist, touching him with gentle fingers as he clicks the lock into place, and Touya immediately feels the low-level buzzing from his Quirk in his veins die down. Instead an odd wave of emptiness crashes over him, and it leaves him feeling kind of sad and hollow, like part of his essence has been carved right out of him.

Which is kind of ridiculous, because he barely even spent an hour without the cuff on after living with it for nearly seven years, but he can’t seem to fully shut down the way everything feels a little more grey all of a sudden.

He doesn’t remember feeling like that the first time they put him on Quirk-suppressants, but then again he was heavily injured at the time and still very unstable mentally, so perhaps it was just a tiny drop in the ocean of negative feelings back then, something barely even noticeable.

“Hey. Are you okay?”, Hawks’ voice rips him out of his musings, the hero looking down at him with his brows furrowed in obvious concern.

Touya gives him a quick reassuring nod. “Yeah, just…feels weird”, he says a bit noncommittally, glancing at the cuff around his wrist.

Hawks grimaces again as his eyes follow Touya’s gaze. “I can imagine. I’m sorry.” He quickly squeezes Touya’s hand - so quickly Touya nearly has to wonder whether he actually just imagined it - before turning around to address the other people in the room.

“We’re all done here. The cuff is back on and we’ve been medically cleared. If you don’t mind, I’d like to escort Todoroki-san over to his flat now”, he says politely, but with an underlying assertiveness that leaves very little room for anyone to argue against it.

“That’s alright. We’re almost done here as well. It’s just, uh, well…”, one of the police officers starts, scratching his neck a bit awkwardly. “We don’t think we’ll be able to get anyone to fix your window or lock before tomorrow afternoon. We’re very sorry, Hawks-san. If you want to spend the night somewhere else, we can station a few officers around the building overnight-“

“You can stay at my place. If you want”, Touya blurts out before he can think any better of it, looking up at the hero a bit nervously from where he’s still sitting on the couch. Hawks’ eyes widen a little, and from the corner of his eye Touya notices the surprised faces of the police officers, so he quickly tacks on, “I have a guest bedroom”.

“Ah, well, that would certainly make our job easier”, one of the police officers admits, grunting out a small laugh.

Hawks’ eyes are still wide, and Touya kind of begins to fear that he said the wrong thing, but then the hero gives a decisive nod, flashing Touya one of his stupidly attractive crooked smiles. “Works for me”, he says lightly. “Just need to pack an overnight bag real quick then.”

Touya promptly has to suck his bottom lip between his teeth to bite back the triumphant smile that is threatening to break out on his face and scrambles to his feet. He and Hawks quickly say their goodbyes to the police officers and paramedics, earning themselves another string of muttered insults from the restrained villain, before heading out into the hallway. Touya leans back against the wall in what he hopes is a cool and casual stance as he watches the hero flit back and forth between his bedroom and bathroom, throwing clothes and hygiene products into a small gym bag before announcing that he’s ready and gesturing for Touya to lead the way.

They head over to Touya’s flat in semi-comfortable silence, neither of them speaking up until the front door is safely shut behind them.

“Well, uh. You know where everything is”, Touya says a bit awkwardly, vaguely gesturing towards the guest bedroom and bathroom, and Hawks gives a similarly awkward nod. 

“Yeah, uh, I’ll just…go set my stuff down”, he replies, chuckling a bit nervously.

“Do you want to take a hot shower? I can cook some dinner and make you tea in the meantime”, Touya offers then, feeling his stomach grumble as he notices how the hero is still slightly shivering.

Hawks’ smile shifts into something a bit more genuine, a bit less stilted, at that. “God, yeah, that would be awesome. I still feel like I just took a hike in the snow while wearing shorts and a t-shirt”, he admits, and Touya sympathises, even if he doesn’t really know how that would feel to someone without genetic cold resistance. 

It’s not that Touya has never felt uncomfortably cold before, but as far as he can tell that only ever happens to him when it’s due to some sort of internal reason, like being sick or sleep deprived or underfed or, hell, even just being sad. He doesn’t really know what it’s like to feel negatively impacted by external cold temperatures, though.

“Go knock yourself out”, Touya says, tilting his head towards the bathroom. “There are fresh towels on the shelf by the sink.”

“Thanks”, the hero replies, flashing him another smile before scurrying off to the bathroom, his gym bag still in hand.

Touya exhales heavily once the door has closed behind him and makes his way over to the kitchen to get started on their food. He can’t really be bothered to make anything more complicated, so he quickly boils a pot of soba noodles while preparing a dipping sauce and cutting up some green onions, before cooling the noodles in a bowl of ice water. A little belatedly he realises that maybe he should’ve gone for hot food instead, given how cold the hero still seemed to be, but he hopes the tea will be enough to balance it out, and he has already checked his thermostat to make sure the heaters in the flat are all turned up to a pleasantly toasty degree.

By the time he has finished setting the dining table in the living room, Hawks reemerges from the bathroom, a cloud of hot steam swirling around him and his skin flushed bright pink.

“Feeling better?”, Touya asks as he sits down at the table, gesturing for the hero to take a seat as well.

Hawks nods, smiling a little. “Much better”, he confirms, wrapping his fingers around the steaming mug in front of him.

“I hope you don’t mind cold soba. I kinda realised a little too late that maybe I should’ve cooked something hot instead”, Touya admits, grimacing a little as he fills up his bowl.

“Oh, I’ll take any food I can get”, the hero quickly assures him, loading up his own bowl to the brim. “I’m absolutely starving, I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast. Didn’t really get around to making myself anything while I was on video call standby for the fundraiser.”

“How did the fundraiser go?”, Touya wonders around a mouthful of noodles, more than happy to talk about something a little more light-hearted than the events of the evening so far.

“Pretty well, I think. I mean, you’ll probably have to ask your brother for the details, but the parts I was involved in went down really successfully”, Hawks explains eagerly, and Touya thinks perhaps he’s also glad for the distraction. “My talk was very well received, and Midoriya-kun’s hero trivia quiz was a lot of fun.”

“Did you get to listen to the band via livestream?”

The hero shakes his head, gathering up a truly ungodly amount of noodles between his chopsticks. “No, but they recorded it all. They also filmed the other attractions and they’re planning to edit it into some sort of vlog or short film, but if you ask Shouto-kun he’ll probably be able to get you the raw tapes from the concert.”

He dunks the gigantic batch of noodles into the sauce and shoves it into his mouth, actually managing to fit it all in there, and Touya dimly wonders if the other man is somehow able to unhinge his jaw on command, which then opens the floodgates for a whole lot of non-dinner-appropriate thoughts, so Touya quickly busies himself with his own mouthful of noodles - even if his own is nowhere nearly as obscene as Hawks’. 

They finish their meal over more harmless trivial chatter before clearing the table and loading up the dishwasher together.

“Hey, um. Thanks for dinner and…thanks for all of it. Today, I mean”, Hawks says, sounding a bit bashful, as Touya finishes adjusting the dishwasher settings and presses “start”. When he looks up, Touya finds that the hero is actually blushing a little, which is tragically endearing to Touya, but he tries very hard not to let it show.

“‘Course, Birdie. Glad you’re okay”, he forces himself to say before he can chicken out - even if the fact that he feels this way is probably blatantly obvious to anyone with a working pair of eyes.

“Yeah, me too. I mean, I’m glad you’re okay”, the hero quickly corrects himself, with an awkward little laugh, and for a moment they just stand there in the dimly lit kitchen, staring at each other intently, the air around them suddenly crackling with an electricity Touya remembers all too well from the week before.

Still, given the circumstances of the day, he finds he doesn’t feel quite brave enough to make a move himself right now, so he simply continues to hold the hero’s gaze, willing him to initiate something.

“Well, uh, I guess we should head to bed then”, Hawks rasps out after a beat, reaching up to scratch the back of his neck and huffing out a small chuckle.

Touya promptly feels a sharp pang of rejection shoot through his chest, even though there wasn’t even an offer on the table, but he tries not to let his hurt and disappointment show, putting on what he thinks is a reasonably cool and calm facade as he nods and offers the hero a lazy smirk.

“Yeah, could probably use a good night’s sleep after all that”, he agrees nonchalantly, leading the way out into the hallway and flipping off the light switch.

“Uh. Yeah. Exactly”, Hawks replies, and even with his moderate lack of social skills Touya can tell that it’s stilted as hell, but in staying true to aforementioned lack of social skills he has no fucking clue what he’s supposed to do about it.

“You, uh, you can use the bathroom first. If you want”, he says, almost equally stiltedly, because he can’t think of anything else to say right now.

“Oh. Yeah, uh, thanks. I’ll be quick”, the hero promises, and with that he damn near dashes away from Touya and disappears into the bathroom.

Touya winces as he suddenly finds himself alone in the hallway, before heaving out a sigh and heading to his bedroom to change into his sleepwear. Barely five minutes later Hawks reappears from the bathroom, bringing with him a vaguely minty scent.

“I’m done. You can go in, if you want”, he informs Touya, and for a moment they’re both locked in place again, standing in the hallway and staring at each other like they’re trying to read each other’s minds, before Touya finally manages to shake himself out of it.

“Right. Okay. Great, uh, good night then”, he says, and it sounds so painfully clumsy he kind of wants to bang his head against the nearest wall.

Hawks swallows thickly, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Yeah. Good night”, he rasps out, furrowing his brow a little as he continues to stare, and this time it’s Touya who practically bolts to the bathroom, lest he do or say something he’ll most definitely regret later.

He quickly uses the toilet, brushes his teeth and dabs on some more chapstick, because why the hell not, before unlocking the door and peaking outside to check if the hero is still there. The hallway is perfectly abandoned, though, so with a silent sigh of relief Touya quickly tiptoes outside and over to his bedroom, shutting the door securely behind himself.

He removes his prosthesis and climbs into his bed, curling up on his side and pulling the covers all the way up to his chin as he nuzzles his face into his pillow.

His mind is swirling violently with thoughts, feelings and impressions from the day, and now that he’s finally truly on his own he can’t help but actually explore them.

It’s a wildly tangled up mix.

There’s the euphoria about having been able to use his Quirk again, about discovering how much he could actually do with his ice. There’s the sadness about having gotten a little taste of what it could be like but having to give it up again almost straight away. There’s the queasy awareness of the fact that his body - once again - moved on its own, and this time he actually genuinely did what could be considered a heroic deed. He used his Quirk to save a life and incapacitate a villain without actually causing him any serious harm, so that the police could come and arrest him.

It makes him wonder if he’d also have this sort of behaviour in him if the person in need was a mere stranger, someone he didn’t have any personal attachment to, rather than his baby brother or Hawks, who-

Well. Touya would be an utter idiot, if after everything that happened today he still refused to admit to himself that he cares about the stupid bird.

Of course he fucking cares.

The hero could’ve died today if Touya hadn’t made it there in time. If Touya’s Quirk hadn’t been such a perfect match-up against the Himura villain’s Quirk.

That harsh reality weighs heavily on him. It already weighed heavily on him when he found out who Hawks was up against earlier today, but in that moment instinct and adrenaline far outweighed his fear and kept him able to function.

Now, however, as he is lying in the dark, hidden away from the world, the full magnitude of it really crashes over him, and the utter weight of it almost makes him sob into his pillow. He wraps his arm around his chest, hugging himself tightly against the way his heart clenches in his ribcage with a mix of belated horror and overwhelming relief.

He really doesn’t know how he would’ve coped if something serious had actually happened to the stupid bird.

He wonders what Hawks is up to right now in the other bedroom, just a few metres away from his own. Is he asleep already? Dreaming about things no one else will ever have the privilege to see?

Or is he still lying wide awake, too? Overthinking the day’s events, perhaps even thinking about Touya?

He wonders if, maybe, if he had dared to make a move earlier, the hero would actually be by his side right now instead of in the other room.

Should Touya have made a move? Back in the kitchen when the air was charged and sizzling between them, when they were holding each other’s gaze like that? Was Hawks waiting for him to initiate something for a change?

God, Touya feels so fucking stupid. He really just never knows for sure what the bird wants from him, expects from him, and the constant uncertainty might just drive him mad one day.

Groaning a little at his own idiocy, he flips around to lie on his other side, pressing his nose into the cool opposite edge of the pillow as his thoughts begin to dance merrily around all those little moments from the past week where Touya wasn’t sure whether he should make a move on the hero or not.

It’s absolutely infuriating, and if the events of the day were keeping him wide awake before, this new helter-skelter of thoughts most certainly is.

He doesn’t know how much time passes, but eventually he decides that he’s had enough. With his mind spinning around like this he’s never going to fall asleep, so he might as well get up again and play Animal Crossing or something, until his brain quietens down and he can finally go to sleep.

He throws back his duvet and climbs out of bed, running his fingers through his hair a little as he shuffles to the bedroom door, before pulling it open and-

Finding himself face to face with Hawks, one hand raised in a fist, like he was about to knock.

Touya’s heart rate instantly picks up and his guts lurch a little.

“I can’t sleep”, Hawks states breathily, his eyes wide as they stare right into Touya’s, blazing with something that makes his skin tingle all over.

“Neither can I”, Touya rasps, reciprocating that fiery stare unwaveringly and taking a tentative step forward, shrinking the distance between them to a mere few centimetres.

For a moment they just continue to stare at each other, the air between them vibrating almost audibly, and this time Touya decides to finally take the plunge. He reaches out to cup the hero’s cheek - the uninjured one - and leans in, just as Hawks surges forward and crashes their lips together.

It’s clumsy and uncoordinated, and their teeth clack together a bit painfully with the sheer force of it, but Touya doesn’t give a single flying fuck as he stumbles backwards and pulls the hero right across the doorstep with him.

The kiss is hungry, desperate, Hawks’ lips searing against Touya’s, and Touya slips his tongue past them, absolutely aching to feel that soft wet heat of the hero’s mouth again.

Hawks’ goes along with it easily, parting his lips a little more to grant Touya better access and meeting him halfway, his tongue eager and positively maddening as it slides against Touya’s.

A low groan escapes Touya as he continues to stagger back towards the bed, and the other man’s arms wrap themselves firmly around his waist to hold him steady as his legs hit the edge of the mattress and he lowers himself down, pulling the hero right on top of him.

They break apart for a breath to scoot up on the bed, and then Hawks’ mouth is on Touya’s again, the hero settling between his spread legs and pressing their sweatpants-clad groins together.

A hot spark of arousal shoots through Touya’s core and right into his dick as the other man grinds down against him, and he gasps needily into Hawks’ mouth. The hero swallows it eagerly, grinding his hips down again, and Touya’s hand slips from the other man’s cheek, wandering over the broad expanse of his back and all the way down to the hem of his t-shirt. He dips his fingers underneath, trailing them gently over scarred skin, and Hawks immediately gets the message.

He breaks the kiss and lifts up a little, making Touya whine involuntarily at the sudden loss of contact, but the sight of the hero pulling off his shirt and revealing all that beautiful golden skin and those toned muscles more than makes up for it.

“You, too”, Hawks says a bit breathlessly, his hands slipping under Touya’s own shirt, and Touya nods frantically, pushing himself up into a sitting position so that the other man can tug his t-shirt over his head and discard it somewhere in the darkness of the bedroom, right along with his own shirt.

“God, you’re so-“, the hero rasps, wrapping his arms around Touya to lower him back down onto the mattress, settling on top of him again and capturing Touya’s lips in another heated kiss.

“So what?”, Touya whispers into his mouth, wrapping his own arm around the other man’s back to pull him tighter against himself, revelling in the sensation of warm skin pressed against his own.

Chest to chest, pounding heart to pounding heart.

"Beautiful”, Hawks breathes, swiping his tongue along the seam of Touya’s upper lip, and Touya fucking swears the hero must be able to feel the way his heart stumbles violently in his chest at the admission.

His stupid throat closes up a little, but he stubbornly swallows against it and instinctively bucks his hips upwards, rubbing up fervently against the bulge in the other man’s joggers, not knowing what else to do with the tidal wave of emotions that surges through him, desperately searching for an outlet.

Part of him wants to argue, but another, more dominant part of him thinks that Hawks wouldn’t just say something like that in a situation like this, if he didn’t actually mean it. He is too heroic, too good to tell such a cruel lie in such a vulnerable moment, and so Touya replies with the only thing he can think to say, the only thing that rings true and appropriate.

“So are you.”

He says it quietly, hoarsely, but it draws a whimper from the other man all the same, and Touya finds himself being held just a little tighter.

Hawks’ lips leave Touya’s, and his mouth quickly travels down Touya’s jaw and neck, until it finds the patch of unscarred skin on his chest.

“Which staples did you rip?”, he asks softly, glancing up to meet Touya’s eyes.

Touya untangles his arm from the other man’s back and takes hold of one his hands, guiding it to the seam at the lower end of his sternum. “These three”, he says lowly, carefully manoeuvring the hero’s fingers to trace along the new set of staples.

Hawks furrows his brow a little, concern evident on his face. “Do they hurt?”

Touya shakes his head, briefly squeezing the other man’s hand in his own. “No. I didn’t even notice they were loose.”

The hero hums a little before beginning to kiss a gentle path along the stapled seam, carefully forgoing the freshly injured area, before moving up in search for a nipple. Touya closes his eyes and lets out a stuttering moan, slipping his fingers into soft blond hair, as the other man alternates between sucking, biting and licking at the hard little nub.

Touya’s cock is absolutely throbbing, leaking precum into his boxers and practically begging to be touched, and he grinds his hips up against the hero’s stomach, desperate for any kind of friction he can get.

Hawks doesn’t seem to be faring much better than him, and Touya can feel him grind down between his legs, rubbing himself against the mattress and oh-

With the position they’re lying in, Hawks’ crotch is just a tad lower than Touya’s, and the way he grinds down between his thighs makes the hero’s bulge nudge against his perineum, making a whole different kind of desire erupt inside of him.

He physically shudders with the ferociousness of it, and for a moment he feels stuck in the empty space between trepidation and pulsing, desperate need. 

The thought of baring himself like that to someone, allowing another person to have this level of power over him, kind of terrifies him, but he also finds that he wants it badly.

He wants to feel Hawks inside of him.

Wants to be on the other end of that intimacy and raw primal connection he felt when the hero let him fuck him. 

Wants to feel that deep electric pleasure he knows is buried somewhere inside of him.

“Are you okay?”, Hawks’ voice suddenly permeates the whirlwind of thoughts in Touya’s head, gentle and just a tad concerned. “You’ve gone a little tense.”

Touya blinks his eyes open, looking down his chest to meet the other man’s gaze. 

The hero is looking at him so openly, so earnestly, his features soft like all those walls he has built around himself over the years have come down, and it’s the vulnerability in Hawks’ face that allows Touya to be brave.

“I want you to fuck me”, he breathes, the words a little rushed and jumbled, and he’s pretty sure the patches of healthy skin on his face are blushing violently, but he steadily continues to hold Hawks’ gaze as the hero’s eyes widen and a wild succession of emotions flits across his face, too fast for Touya to even attempt reading any of them.

“Are you sure?”, the other man finally asks, his voice hoarse and a bit shaky.

Touya nods. “Yes. If you want it, too.”

For a second Hawks just stares at him, and then suddenly he is crawling up Touya’s chest to seal their mouths together in a kiss, heavy with unnamed and unspoken emotions.

“Yes”, he whispers against Touya’s lips, accentuating it with a slow roll of his hips against Touya’s, and Touya can’t help but whimper into the other man’s mouth, too far gone to even be embarrassed by it.

“Do you have…supplies?”, Hawks asks, almost shyly, and Touya presses another quick kiss to his lips before he answers, feeling himself smirk a little.

“Yes. Bedside table. Bottom drawer.”

The hero huffs out a soft laugh, his hot breath ghosting over Touya’s face as he lifts himself up to reach over to open the drawer.

“Woah”, he blurts out when he sees its contents, and Touya can’t help but cackle a little.

After the events of last week, Touya did a little bit of online shopping and ordered himself lube, condoms and even a small collection of toys that were on sale as a bundle. He had never used a toy on himself before and he didn’t really know what he might like, so he figured getting a selection of different things wasn’t such a bad idea.

He hasn’t actually tried any of the toys yet, though, always too busy hoping something would finally happen again between himself and the hero.

“I, uh, take it you have done this on yourself before then?”, Hawks questions a bit breathlessly as he returns with a bottle of lube and a condom in his hands, his face flushed so pink that Touya can even see it in his moonlit bedroom.

It’s ridiculously attractive.

“Only with my fingers so far”, Touya admits then, which promptly draws a curse from the other man.

Touya chuckles a little and quirks an eyebrow at him.

“Just, uh. That mental image…”, Hawks says a bit shakily, his voice trailing off into thin air, and, well, Touya deeply sympathises.

“C’mere, pretty bird”, he mumbles, grabbing the hero’s neck and pulling him down for a reassuring kiss. Hawks goes easily, his fingers trailing down Touya’s chest and stomach until they hook under the waistbands of his sweatpants and boxers.

“Off?”, he rasps, and Touya nods a bit frantically, releasing him to let him scoot down his body and tug his pants down his hips, finally freeing Touya’s aching cock from its confines.

He can’t help but reach down and briefly wrap his fingers around himself, squeezing a little just to get some relief as Hawks pulls his sweatpants and boxers over his ankles and carelessly chucks them into the dark void behind him.

“Do you, uh, want to prep yourself or do you want me to do it?”, the hero asks then, running his warm palms along the lengths of Touya’s thighs and making him quiver a little under the touch.

“Will you do it?”, Touya breathes out, trying very hard not to make it sound like he is pleading. 

“Fuck. Yes”, Hawks replies immediately, letting go of Touya’s thighs to palm himself over his sweatpants (why the fuck is he even still wearing those?) before reaching for the lube and squirting a generous amount onto his fingers. He rubs them together for a moment, warming up the liquid, before kneeling down between Touya’s legs.

Intuitively, Touya reaches for a pillow and shoves it under his arse to prop himself up and give the hero better access as he spreads his legs a little further in invitation.

Truth be told, he is nervous as hell, his heart threatening to beat right out of his chest and his fingers jittery where they’re resting on the mattress by his side.

“Relax, baby”, Hawks coos soothingly, leaning forward to press a few soft kisses against the unscarred skin above his crotch, right next to where his dick is resting against his stomach. Touya kind of questions whether that’s really the right place to kiss him in order to get him to calm down, but that goddamn term of endearment is what does it for him.

Yes, he is so nervous he could probably buzz right out of his skin, but this is just Hawks.

Hawks, who has already let Touya do this to him.

Hawks, who thinks Touya is beautiful.

He takes a deep, slightly shaky breath and forces his muscles to relax, reaching out to card his fingers through the hero’s hair as his lips still hover over Touya’s lower abdomen.

“I’m okay”, he promises a bit hoarsely, and Hawks lifts his head up to meet his gaze, offering him a soft smile.

“Tell me if you want me to stop. Or if it hurts.”

Touya gives a quick nod at that, sucking his bottom lip between his teeth, and the other man shuffles backwards on his knees a little before reaching out and finally, finally brushing his slick fingers against Touya’s hole.

Touya twitches a little at the sensation, half in surprise and half in arousal, and Hawks soothingly rubs his other hand over his thigh again.

“Ready?”

“Yes”, Touya affirms, bracing himself before the hero carefully slips the tip of his finger inside.

Touya immediately clenches against the intrusion, but he forces himself to breathe deeply and relax as his body adjusts to the somewhat foreign yet still vaguely familiar sensation. Hawks’ fingers are a bit thicker than his own, but Touya has used up to three fingers on himself before, so he knows he can take it.

“Okay?”, the other man asks softly.

“Yeah”, Touya breathes, tangling his fingers in the bedding underneath him, just to give himself something to hold on to. “You can move.”

The hero offers him another small smile before slowly pushing his finger in further, and Touya resists the urge to clench around the sudden fullness again, until the other man finally strikes gold, the pad of his finger rubbing right against Touya’s prostate and making a fierce surge of electricity shoot through his core.

“Fuck, right there”, he gasps as his cock dribbles precum against his abdomen.

“There?”, Hawks asks innocently as he crooks his finger inside Touya and rubs the sensitive spot again, making Touya’s vision burst with stars, another hot spark rushing through him.

“Yes, fuck”, Touya moans, arching his back a little as the hero begins to move his hand in earnest, brushing up against his prostate with every thrust.

Touya quickly feels himself unravel around the other man’s finger, and soon it’s not enough anymore.

“More”, he rasps. “I can take more.”

The hero chuckles a little but obliges immediately, carefully slipping a second finger inside, and the added stretch is definitely a lot, but Touya bites his lip and pushes through it as his muscles slowly relax.

It certainly helps when Hawks crooks his fingers against that bundle of nerves again, the sudden burst of pleasure overshadowing the discomfort as the hero begins to move again, slowly scissoring his fingers to open Touya up more, and Touya dimly wonders if he could come just from this, the surges of pleasure from deep inside pulsing through him continuously and making his neglected cock throb with need.

It takes him a few more thrusts to adjust to that second finger, and by the time he asks the other man to add a third one, he’s practically begging for it.

“Please, more. I need more”, he babbles, desperate for the hero to get on with it, desperate to finally feel him properly soon.

Thankfully, Hawks appears to be nothing but receptive to his wishes, dutifully slipping a third finger inside, and with the coil of arousal twisting at his core, Touya barely even notices the stretch, his fingers wound tightly into the bedsheets as the hero continues to open him up, massaging his prostate relentlessly.

Touya feels like he might just die if he doesn’t get to feel the other man’s cock inside of him soon, so he unwinds his fingers from the bedding and places his hand on Hawks’, right where it’s still rubbing against his thigh.

“I’m ready. Please. I need you”, he gasps out, squeezing the hero’s fingers between his own.

“Fuck”, Hawks curses breathlessly, twisting his hand around to squeeze Touya’s fingers right back. “Okay. Yes.”

He pulls his fingers out, carelessly wiping them on his own leg, and Touya can’t help but whine a little at the sudden gaping emptiness inside of him.

“Shh”, the hero soothes, giving Touya’s hand another squeeze before letting go to finally take off those damned sweatpants of his, shoving his boxers down right along with them and throwing them both to the floor.

His dick is hard and flushed, the tip glistening with precum, and Touya subconsciously licks his lips a little at the sight, remembering the way that cock felt in his mouth, all hot and heavy. The way it tasted.

With visibly shaky fingers Hawks fumbles for the lube and condom, ripping the wrapper and rolling the rubber onto himself, gasping a little at his own touch, and Touya has to reach down and squeeze himself again as he watches the hero lube himself up before wiping his fingers on his thighs and crawling between Touya’s legs again.

He lowers himself down over him, supporting his weight on his elbows, and Touya’s arm immediately comes up to wrap itself around the other man’s shoulders.

“You sure?”, he whispers again, his lips ghosting over Touya’s mouth, and Touya cranes his neck a little to capture them between his own, kissing Hawks with the full fervour of his desire.

“Yes”, he breathes against his mouth, softly but firmly, and Hawks gives a jerky little nod at that.

“Okay. Okay”, he repeats breathlessly as if to steady himself, before shifting his weight onto his left arm and reaching down with his other hand to line himself up with Touya’s hole.

“I’ll go slow, okay?”, he promises lowly. “Tell me if it hurts.”

Touya nods, tightening his hold around the other man’s shoulders. “Okay.”

He forces himself to remain loose and relaxed as he feels the slick tip of the hero’s dick nudge against his rim, even if his own cock twitches needily at the promise of what’s to come.

Slowly, carefully, Hawks pushes in, allowing Touya to adjust to his girth before moving any further, and Touya can tell it’s taking everything in him not to thrust forward, the other man’s breathing laboured above his face, but Touya is grateful to be given a moment.

Hawks’ cock is thick, and Touya has never felt so stretched in his life before, his own shaky breaths mixing with the hero’s as he wills his body to relax and take it.

“Is this okay?”, the other man asks, his voice hoarse and strained as hell.

Touya sinks his teeth into his bottom lip and nods. “Yes. Keep going.”

Hawks lets out a low grunt before slowly pushing in further, filling Touya up inch by inch, until he’s fully inside, his biceps trembling with the effort of holding himself up above Touya’s body.

It feels…deeply intimate.

No one else has ever touched Touya this way, no one else has ever felt him like this, and the sheer emotional weight of that realisation kind of knocks the breath out of his lungs. 

He tightens his hold around the hero and tugs him down on top of himself, trapping his dick between their bodies and gasping a little at the sudden friction against Hawks’ stomach as the other man lets himself be pulled down, so that they’re chest to chest again, sweat-slick skin against sweat-slick skin.

“You can move”, Touya rasps out, and the hero muffles a curse against his neck, shifting a little to get more leverage and slowly pulling out, the drag of his cock against Touya’s inner walls absolutely maddening, before thrusting back in and nailing Touya’s prostate dead-on, punching a broken moan out of him.

“Fuck”, he gasps. “Hawks.”

“Call me Keigo”, the other man pleads hoarsely, lifting his head to meet Touya’s gaze as he bottoms out again, before thrusting back in, sending another surge of arousal through Touya’s core.

“Keigo”, Touya damn-near whimpers, meeting that intense gaze head-on and drawing a choked off moan from the hero, his eyes glistening a little in the dark.

“Fuck, Touya”, Hawks- no, Keigo grunts, thrusting his hips again, and this time Touya meets it halfway, rolling his hips a bit experimentally, and promptly making himself see stars again when the hero’s cock hits his prostate at a different angle.

“God, you’re so fucking tight”, Keigo groans, dropping his head down to lick between Touya’s parted lips, and Touya reciprocates immediately, sliding his tongue against the other man’s. It’s clumsy and sloppy as hell, spit dribbling down the sides of Touya’s mouth, but he really couldn’t care less as they continue to rock their hips against each other.

Touya feels so fucking full, and it’s like this hollow broken space inside of him that he didn’t even know existed before has finally been filled up and mended.

Like this is how it’s supposed to be.

“Keigo”, he moans into the other man’s mouth, earning himself a particularly pointed thrust against his prostate. “You feel so good inside of me”, he admits breathlessly, slipping his hand down the hero’s back and clamping it onto his arse, squeezing the toned flesh between his fingers.

“Fuck”, Keigo gasps. “You feel so good, I’m not gonna last much longer”, he says, huffing out a shaky little laugh.

“‘M close, too”, Touya grunts, twisting his hips a little to give his neglected cock a little more friction against their stomachs, and Keigo instantly shifts to snake a hand between their bodies, wrapping his fingers firmly around Touya’s length and swiping his thumb over the tip to gather up the precum he’s been leaking.

The hero uses it to lube him up before beginning to pump his fist in sync with their thrusts, twisting his hand in absolutely dizzying ways every time he nails Touya’s prostate.

It’s almost too much - the hot sparks of pleasure from deep within his core and maddening waves of arousal from his cock mingle in his abdomen, the feeling so overwhelming he can’t do anything but continue to roll his hips and breathe into the other man’s mouth as his fingers dig into his arse, desperate to cling onto something.

That tight coil inside of him pulses viciously with the need for release, and when Keigo rasps out “come for me, baby”, accentuating it with a particularly deft thrust of his hips, it finally snaps and Touya careens over the edge, searing hot pleasure bursting out from his core and flooding his every fibre as he spills all over the hero’s hand and onto both their stomachs.

“Keigo”, he moans brokenly as his vision whites out for a moment, and it only takes a few more thrusts for the other man to follow him over the edge, collapsing right on top of him as he spills into the condom and fucks himself through his orgasm.

“Touya”, the hero whimpers against his lips, and Touya releases his death grip on the other man’s arse to grab his neck and crash their mouths together in a breathless kiss, desperate to be as close to him as he possibly can.

The kiss is uncoordinated, and they’re both more breathing into each other’s mouths than anything else, but it feels right, and one of Keigo’s hands comes up to cradle Touya’s head as they attempt to catch their breaths together.

Touya feels a bit like he’s floating on a white fluffy cloud somewhere high up in the sky, thoroughly fucked out and more blissful than he has probably ever felt in his life before.

Keigo buries his face in the crook of Touya’s neck, and his body is a dead weight on top of him, but Touya just holds onto him tightly as he slowly comes back to himself, the only sounds their laboured breathing and Touya’s own racing heartbeat in his ears.

“Are you okay?”, the hero asks after a moment, his voice muffled against Touya’s skin.

Touya nods, twisting his head a little to press a kiss against the other man’s hair. “Yes. I feel good. Do you?”

Keigo huffs out a soft laugh. “Very”, he affirms, before shifting a little to reach down and pull himself out, leaving Touya strangely empty.

“Shh”, he soothes when Touya lets out a small involuntary whine at the loss, lifting his head to press a soft kiss on the unscarred skin next to his nose. The movement makes the hero’s stomach rub against Touya’s hypersensitive softening cock, and he hisses a little at the overstimulation while becoming dimly aware of the sticky mess between their bodies.

“I’m gonna go get a washcloth, okay? I’ll be right back”, Keigo whispers against his skin, and Touya can’t do much but nod a bit dazedly, lifting his chin to press a kiss against whatever part of the hero’s face he can reach, unshaven stubble prickling a little against his upper lip.

The hero carefully detangles himself from Touya’s embrace and sits up, leaving him feeling strangely cold in his absence. Touya shivers a little, protectively throwing his arm across his chest as if to brace himself against the chill, even though realistically speaking he knows it can’t be an external thing.

“I’ll hurry”, Keigo promises as he scrambles off the bed and tiptoes out of the room, leaving the door ajar. 

Distantly, Touya can hear the other man puttering around in the bathroom, the noises mixing with the sound of running water, and it briefly crosses his mind that he should probably invest in his own pack of wet wipes for his nightstand.

He still feels a bit floaty, and now that he’s all by himself also a little shaky, but after a short while the hero returns with a washcloth in his hands, the condom discarded and his cock soft between his legs. He crawls back onto the bed and kneels down by Touya’s side, beginning to wipe him down with gentle hands.

The damp washcloth is warm, but it’s Keigo’s touch that finally makes Touya stop shivering, a pleasant warmth tingling under his skin wherever the other man’s fingers brush against him.

The hero works diligently but quickly as he cleans the cum stains and lube off of Touya’s body, before discarding the filthy washcloth and lying down by Touya’s side, tugging the duvet over both of them.

“C’mere”, he murmurs, opening his arms, and Touya goes immediately, shifting onto his right side and pressing up against the other man’s body, carefully placing his head on his chest.

Keigo’s arms close around him to pull him more tightly against himself, and Touya throws his own arm across the hero’s stomach as he settles in more closely.

The other man’s body heat seeps into him, warm and soothing as it smoothes out the jittery sensation in his nerves, and Touya exhales contently, nuzzling his nose against that patch of blond hair on the hero’s chest as his eyes begin to feel a little heavy.

“Will you stay?”, he asks quietly, almost a bit timidly.

He doesn’t really think Keigo would leave him like this right now, but he feels the deep urge to make sure anyway.

“Of course”, the hero mumbles immediately, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head and tightening his hold around him a little more.

“Good”, Touya sighs, touching his lips to the other man’s sternum and tangling their legs together for good measure.

Keigo chuckles softly into his hair, and Touya can hear the unrelenting beating of his heart beneath him, so alive and so human, and it might just be the most comforting thing he has ever experienced.

The steady rhythm of it slowly begins to lull Touya to the edges of sleep, and he feels the beginning of a deep-seated ache growing in his muscles, but as he drifts off into the world of dreams, he finds he really doesn’t mind.

It’s just a physical reminder of how good Keigo can make him feel.

Chapter Text

Thundering applause and cheers ring in Shouto’s ears as he hurries off the stage after delivering his welcome speech at the fundraiser.

“Well done, Shouto-kun!”

“That was great!”

“You were awesome, Todobroki!”

“Nice work, shortcake.”

His palms are clammy, and he discreetly wipes them on his jeans while his musician friends greet him with big smiles and pats on his shoulders and back.

“Thanks, guys”, he says, chuckling a little. “Good luck out there!”

“Oh, we’re gonna rock your world, baby”, Kaminari replies with a salacious grin.

“Move it, Sparky”, Katsuki grunts, unceremoniously shoving the other blonde onto the stage before turning to flash Shouto a winning smirk. “We’re gonna blow your ears off, princess.”

Shouto pointedly ignores the little stab he feels in his chest at the nickname and offers his friend a quick smile. “I’m sure you will”, he says, and, well, that’s not even a lie.

Stepping aside a little so he won’t be seen from the audience, he watches as his friends take the stage and set up their instruments, checking the tunings one last time before exploding into the opening song, an hymnic stadium rocker Touya claimed everybody would know.

It seems his brother was right - the crowd instantly erupts into excited cheers and whoops when Tokoyami plays the unmistakable opening riff, and by the time Jirou is belting out the chorus the entire audience is singing along.

As far as event openers are concerned, Shouto would deem this one a roaring success.

He kind of wishes he could stick around longer, but as one of the faces of their foundation - so to speak - and the current no. 2 hero in the country his mission for the day is fan service and publicity. He isn’t particularly convinced that he’s the right person for this kind of job, but with his popularity as a hero and Momo and Jirou being occupied with the concert, he has to admit it makes sense that the task has been delegated to him.

And it’s really not the worst job in the world either - essentially what he’s supposed to do is to spend the day moving around the convention grounds, obviously signing autographs and taking pictures, but also talking to the visitors, answering their questions about the project, and encouraging people to participate in the various games and attractions they have set up all across the grounds. 

So, all in all, it should actually be quite fun.

And besides, the band is so loud he’ll probably still be able to hear them all across the premises anyway.

He fluffs up his hair a little before making his way out of the backstage area, grabbing his coat from the wardrobe by the door and pulling it on as he steps outside into the cool winter air.

The convention centre they rented out for the event is basically a very huge plaza with various small buildings strewn across, housing visitor bathrooms, storage rooms and seminar halls, but they have set up the majority of their attractions outdoors to accommodate for larger participant numbers. One of the small seminar buildings functions as their backstage area, while they’ve set up the actual stage next to it outside, a de-iced meadow doubling as the standing pit for the crowd.

When they planned this whole thing, they did go back and forth a little about the downsides of holding an outdoor event like this in the middle of winter, but ultimately came to the conclusion that Christmas markets also take place during the coldest time of the year and everybody seems to love those, so surely people wouldn’t mind layering up a little to come to their fundraiser.

As Shouto begins to stroll around the grounds, he is pleasantly surprised by how right they turned out to be with that assumption. It isn’t even noon yet, and there is already a sizeable amount of people milling about, many of them clutching steaming paper cups from the refreshment stands they’ve set up all over the place.

Thankfully - despite the cold - it’s a clear and sunny day.

A lot of the early visitors appear to be families with younger kids, and it doesn’t take long until the first curious eyes spot Shouto and he is roped into his first round of signing merch and crouching down to have his picture taken with the little ones. He smiles dutifully into the various smartphone cameras pointed at him before wishing the families a nice day and giving out recommendations for attractions they definitely shouldn’t miss while they’re here.

Once he’s on his own again he pulls out his phone and snaps a picture of the crowd gathered in front of the stage, the ferris wheel they’ve rented blinking with colourful patterns in the background, before uploading it to his Instagram story, geotagging the location and adding a little text to encourage people to stop by if they happen to be in the area.

Smiling contently to himself, Shouto pockets his phone again before continuing his stroll across the grounds, briefly stopping to answer a few questions about the foundation here and there.

“And if I wanted to leave an additional donation? Where exactly would I do that?”, a very small elderly lady wonders, looking at Shouto expectantly.

“Once you’ve paid for your entry ticket everything here is technically free, but we accept both cash and electronic donations at all of our attractions and stands”, Shouto explains. “Just ask one of the pro heroes in charge and they’ll show you how it works.”

The old lady nods in understanding. “Thank you, young man. This is a very good cause you are fighting for, and I’d like to lend you my support. My niece married a nice man who had a rather difficult childhood and ended up in a support programme out of sheer luck that ended up saving his life. Every child should have access to something like that, should they need it”, she says, smiling at him with a determined look on her face, and Shouto’s heart twinges a little in his chest, because that’s exactly it.

“Thank you very much. We all really appreciate your support”, he tells the woman earnestly, and she gives him another nod before scuttling off to Satou’s cake stand.

Shouto chuckles a little and buries his hands in his pockets as he continues to walk around and take in the fruit of their labour.

There are various smaller carousels scattered around the grounds, and as Shouto continues his tour he passes a bouncy castle, a trampoline area overseen by Miruko and the haunted house Shinsou, Monoma and Kuroiro have set up. He makes a brief stop at the tea stand run by Uraraka and Asui, who after so many years of being friends with Momo felt more than confident enough in their abilities to take on tea supply duties for the event, to get himself a hot drink of his own - not that he needs it with his Quirk, but he likes the coziness of it and he’s kind of thirsty anyway - before continuing his stroll.

One of the largest attractions on the ground must undoubtedly be what Shouto would loosely dub the “Physically Active Competition Zone” or "PAC-Zone", and the hordes of visitors gathered around the area certainly speak to its popularity.

There is Kirishima’s arm wrestling booth overseen by Tetsutetsu, who doubles as his substitute so that they can take turns and get each other food, and as Shouto gets on his tippy-toes to peak above the heads of the people standing in front of him, he catches his friend pretending to lose against a kid who can’t be any older than eight years and promptly looks like he just took out All For One all by himself when he realises that he just beat Red Riot at arm wrestling.

Shouto can’t help but smile as he sweeps his gaze across the other competitions his friends are running. There’s Ashido’s dance-off and Sero’s bouldering area, while Ojiro is off at the back, teaching kids and adults alike safe and beginner-friendly martial arts techniques, and every single one of them has people queuing to give it a shot themselves.

Shouto supposes the idea of getting to face off against your favourite pro heroes must be pretty thrilling to most people.

“Oh, look, it’s Shouto!”, someone suddenly exclaims, and before Shouto can even blink he suddenly finds himself surrounded by a group of tweens, babbling excitedly amongst themselves and bombarding him with questions.

“Will you sign my phone case?”

“Can we take a selfie together?” 

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Obviously he doesn’t, I mean look at him!”

“Well, a boyfriend then?”

“You can’t just ask people that!”

“Will you do the dance-off with me?”

“How is your cat?”

For a moment Shouto kind of just stands there a bit dumbly as he is pelted with an absolute mayhem of questions he can barely even process this quickly, until it occurs to him that he should probably just start answering some to make the kids take a breather.

“My cat is doing very well”, he interrupts mildly, smiling a little as he remembers how cutely Shimo purred at him when he gave him his morning head scratches today, and the tweens immediately quiet down and focus their attention on him. “And we can absolutely take a picture together and I can sign your stuff.”

He pulls the sharpie he’s been carrying around for this exact purpose out of his pocket and promptly finds himself faced with four different phone cases as well as a trading card and a little keychain figure of himself.

“Right”, he says, blinking a little at the sudden onslaught before starting to make his way through the objects, signing each one of them carefully to avoid smudging the ink.

“So no girlfriend then?”

“Or boyfriend?”

Stay cool, stay cool, stay cool.

“I’m here alone, aren’t I?”, Shouto points out a bit stiffly, his publicist’s voice at the back of his mind telling him to present himself as “vaguely single but kind of mysterious about it” to the public. He’s not really sure why he’s supposed to act mysterious about it when he really is single, but he’d much rather have people thinking he’s enigmatic than read the fact that he’s in love with not only one but two other beloved pro heroes right on his face, so he dutifully goes along with his publicist’s advice.

“Stop asking him that! It’s rude!”

Yes, please, Shouto thinks as he finishes signing the last phone case.

“Will you do the dance-off with me?”, the girl from before asks a bit shyly again when Shouto hands her the phone back.

“I don’t think I’m cut out for dancing”, he huffs out a bit amusedly.

“Neither am I, and I really don’t wanna embarrass myself alone”, the girl admits, grimacing a little as she absently begins to pick at her nails, and Shouto feels a little pang of sympathy for her.

“Well, I was recently injured in a fight and I haven’t been medically cleared yet for that sort of thing, but I could go over there with you and cheer you on?”, he offers. “Pinky is very nice, I’m sure she’ll make it fun for you, too.”

The girl contemplates that for a moment, tilting her head a little, before nodding slowly. “Okay”, she says, and Shouto gives her his best encouraging smile. 

“Anyone else wanna come along?”, he asks, turning to face the rest of the little group, but they all shake their heads in unison.

“I’m just here to watch”, the girl who told her friends off for pestering Shouto about his love life explains.

Fair enough, Shouto thinks.

“Alright. Shall we then?”, he suggests, gesturing for the shy girl to lead the way over to where Ashido is currently taking a break to drink some water.

“You know, the girl with the pink backpack - the one that told the others to stop being rude?”, the shy kid says lowly once they’re out of earshot from the rest of the group.

Shouto nods.

“I, uh. I kinda have a crush on her, and I’m only doing this to impress her”, the kid admits, picking at her nails again. “She’s really into watching dance competitions and stuff.”

“Hmm, I see”, Shouto replies, making sure to keep his voice low as well. Unfortunately, he can relate to the sentiment much more than he’d like. All of his fingers wouldn’t be enough to count the times he has done something - oftentimes pathetically silly - just to try and impress Izuku or Katsuki in the past.

It appears to be a widespread phenomenon.

“I’m sure she’ll think it’s cool that you’re doing this”, he tells the girl because, well, just because it never really worked out for him, doesn’t mean it has to go the same way for this kid.

“Hopefully”, she says, huffing out a small laugh, as they approach Ashido.

“Ooohhh, Todoroki-kun! To what do I owe this honour?”, she greets them, flashing Shouto a teasing grin.

“I’m just here for cheerleading duties, but I’ve got a competitor for you”, he tells his friend amusedly, and the tween girl steps forward to bow a little to Ashido.

“Hello, Pinky-san”, she says politely. “I’d like to participate in the dance-off.”

“Hello, nice to meet you! What’s your name?”, Ashido asks, offering the kid a warm smile as she leads her over to the main dance floor.

Not sure what else he’s supposed to do with himself now, Shouto sits down on the little bench by the refreshment area, so he can watch the competition and cheer the girl on as promised. While his friend and the kid seem to be deeply entrenched in a discussion about dance moves and music choices, Shouto pulls his phone from his pocket to film a short panorama video of the PAC-Zone and adds it to his Instagram story.

Since he already has the app open, he lazily clicks his way through a couple of his friends’ stories, too, most of them doing similar advertisement for the event as him. He also finds a video on Natsuo’s close friends story of him and Fuyumi singing in the car on the way to the fundraiser together, his sister - the driver - seemingly unaware of the fact that she’s being filmed, and Shouto snorts quietly at his brother’s very enthusiastic but absolutely terrible rendition of a famous pop song from their childhood. The story was posted about half an hour ago, so Shouto presumes the two of them should be getting here any time soon.

A short while later he is ripped out of his social media scrolling trance by the sound of an upbeat pop song, which Shouto is pretty sure is performed by a popular Korean boy band, and he quickly pockets his phone again to focus his attention on the dance floor in front of him.

He, admittedly, really doesn’t know much about dancing, but it appears that Ashido has taught the tween girl who is trying to impress her crush a simple choreography, which - combined with Ashido’s own dance moves - makes it look like they’re facing off against each other, kind of like when the opposing teams in a musical try to battle each other in a dance.

Considering how quickly they put the performance together it looks pretty cool, and Shouto dutifully whoops and cheers along with the rest of the crowd gathered nearby to watch.

Once the song ends and the dancers have given their bows, the tween girl quickly hurries over to thank Shouto for supporting her before happily skipping away to where her crush is waiting for her at the edge of the crowd with literal stars in her eyes.

Shouto smiles a little to himself and gives a quick wave to Ashido before getting to his feet and heading out of the PAC-Zone to continue his stroll around the premises.

The number of people milling about and queuing at the food stands has probably nearly doubled since earlier in the day, and Shouto feels a distinct sense of pride unfold in him about the fact that they have actually managed to rack up such a sizeable amount of visitors already. Their main source of income - both for the foundation funds and to finance the fundraiser event - is the fee every visitor has to pay to enter the premises, and since they wanted to make sure it would be accessible for as many people as possible, they decided to keep the price fairly low. As a consequence, however, they’re relying pretty heavily on drawing in a large crowd to actually make enough money from the event.

With it only being around noon and so many people already gathered around, Shouto feels quite hopeful that their gamble will work out, though.

For a while he just continues to walk around a bit aimlessly, sweeping his eyes across the grounds and taking in the atmosphere, the chatter and laughter from the visitors around him mixing with the distant sounds of the music and speeches from the big stage, until suddenly a strong arm is thrown around his shoulders and Shouto damn-near freezes the person attached to it to the ground out of reflex.

“Woahhhhh, easy there, little bro”, Natsuo’s familiar voice booms by his ear, and Shouto immediately relaxes.

“Sorry”, he huffs, twisting around a little to offer his brother an apologetic grin. 

“I told you not to startle him”, Fuyumi scolds as she appears by Natsuo’s side before unceremoniously shoving his arm away to pull Shouto in a hug. 

“Oi!”, Natsuo squawks indignantly, and Shouto can’t help but snort a little as he hugs his sister back. 

“I’m happy you guys made it”, he says when Fuyumi releases him again and his brother practically yanks him away from her to engulf him in one of his bear hugs. Shouto supposes as the baby of the family he should probably just let his siblings do their thing, so he simply allows himself to be fussed over a little.

It’s not like he minds it.

“Nice car concert, by the way”, he says, trying to hold back a grin, when Natsuo lets go of him again.

“What car con- Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. Did you record that?!”, Fuyumi screeches, staring at her older younger brother in pure horror.

In lieu of an answer, Natsuo quickly scurries to duck behind Shouto, and Fuyumi’s horrified stare turns into a glare.

“Don’t worry, you sounded good in it. He only embarrassed himself”, Shouto remarks placatingly, holding his hands up, and while still scowling his sister’s lips twitch with the hint of a smile.

“Tch. I was singing badly on purpose”, Natsuo huffs, and Shouto twists around a little to quirk an unimpressed eyebrow at him.

“It was a bit! I was doing a bit!”

“Sure”, Fuyumi comments, the smile finally breaking through as she loops her arm through Shouto’s and begins to tag him along, seemingly heading for the food stand run by Amajiki and Fat Gum.

Still looking a little disgruntled, Natsuo hurries after them, and soon the siblings find themselves munching on takoyaki as they start to wander around the convention grounds together. It’s only after he takes his first bite that Shouto realises how hungry he actually is.

“Soooo. Any attractions you would recommend we check out while we’re here in particular?”, Natsuo asks around a mouthful of his own food, earning himself a slightly disgusted look from Fuyumi.

Shouto, polite as he is, makes sure to swallow before he answers. “Well, the stage is definitely worth checking out from up close. We have a few really informative talks and speeches still coming up, and the band has prepared a lot of great songs. Actually, Touya-nii helped with writing the setlist for the show.”

“Oh, that must’ve been right up his alley”, Fuyumi notes, chuckling a bit fondly.

Shouto nods, smiling a little. “I thought so, too. That was why I even asked him in the first place.” He takes another bite of his food before continuing. “The PAC-Zo-, uh, area with all the physical competitions is pretty fun, too. There’s arm wrestling, dancing, bouldering, martial arts-“

“Oh, I’ll have to do the arm-wrestling”, Natsuo interrupts excitedly . “Who’s running that?”

“Kirishima and Tetsutetsu. They’ve been letting the kids win, but I’m not sure they’ll go that easy on you”, Shouto points out a bit amusedly, but his brother just offers him a confident grin.

“I’ll accept the challenge”, he announces theatrically, and Fuyumi snorts a little into her food.

“There’s also Izuku’s big hero trivia quiz, which I’m actually expected for in about”, Shouto says then, quickly glancing at his watch, “20 minutes.”

He still doesn’t really know all the details about the quiz, but apparently the final few rounds consist of several sections about different heroes, and the heroes in question are supposed to ask the trivia questions about them themselves. Shouto was a bit wary of the whole concept at first - mainly because he has no clue what kind of trivia questions he could even ask about himself - but Izuku assured him that he had already prepared all the questions and Shouto would just have to read them out loud, so Shouto - of course - decided to trust his friend and leave it up to him.

“Are you going to participate?”, Fuyumi wonders curiously.

Shouto shakes his head. “No, I’m supposed to ask questions about myself. I don’t really know the details, though.”

“Well, that sounds fun”, his sister replies, smiling a bit crookedly. “Why don’t we start heading there and watch a little? What do you think?” She turns to give Natsuo a questioning look and he answers with a shrug.

“Fine by me. I don’t think hero trivia is my kinda thing, but it’ll probably be entertaining to watch”, he concedes, and so Shouto begins to lead his siblings towards one of the small seminar buildings.

The hero trivia quiz is set up right outside the building as they’ve borrowed chairs and desks from inside, and there’s already a large gaggle of people gathered around the area, be they spectators or participants. It appears that the current trivia section is about Hawks and Lemillion as the formerly-winged hero is pulled up on a big screen via video call, while Togata is standing beside it, grinning at the contestants, and when Izuku, who is overlooking the whole thing from a little off to the side, spots Shouto his face lights up immediately, and he waves at Shouto excitedly.

Even if he wanted to, Shouto wouldn’t be able to stop himself from smiling at his friend and offering him a silly wave right back as he and his siblings come to a stop a little behind the crowd to get a better look at the makeshift stage.

They watch as Hawks and Togata take turns asking all sorts of harmless trivia questions about themselves, enthusiastically either confirming or denying the answers the contestants buzz in, and Shouto notes from the background on the screen that Hawks is in his living room. It makes him wonder what Touya might be up to right now, just across the hall from the hero, and a small part of Shouto feels a bit sad that his oldest brother can’t be here with them right now. Obviously, he knows how unrealistic the whole concept is, but he still feels like it would be really nice if they could all attend events like this together.

Surely, Touya would get a kick out of the live music and food stands and probably even some of the sillier attractions.

“I wish Touya-nii could be here, too, right now”, Fuyumi suddenly says quietly, as if she’s been reading Shouto’s mind, and Natsuo immediately nods.

“Yeah, me too”, Shouto admits, keeping his voice low. The fact that his siblings feel so similarly as him makes his chest ache a little, and he briefly nudges his arm against Fuyumi’s, receiving a nudge back almost right away, while Natsuo squeezes his shoulder for a moment.

The three of them continue to watch the rest of the quiz section in companionable silence, and soon Togata struts off the makeshift stage while Izuku closes down the video call with Hawks before hurrying to stand in front of the big screen himself, a microphone in his hand.

“Right, uh, that was fun, wasn't it? Everyone, give it up for Lemillion and Hawks!”

He pauses for a moment to let the crowd cheer and applaud, grinning a bit crookedly, before lifting his microphone up to his mouth again.

“Are you ready for the final round?”

More excited cheers erupt around them, and by Shouto’s side Natsuo whistles loudly.

“Because our final round will be about none other than…”, Izuku takes a deep breath, playing up the theatrics a little, “Shouto and All Might!”

Oh.

Shouto had no idea he was supposed to share a section with All Might, of all people, and he’s not entirely sure he’s worthy of being put in the same category as him, but he’s certainly not going to complain about it.

Izuku’s gaze meets his from across the room, and Shouto feels a little stab in his heart at the unbridled pride and admiration his friend is looking at him with as he waves him over to join him on stage.

“Good luck!”, Natsuo says with a grin, giving Shouto a good-natured nudge, and Shouto takes that as his cue to move his arse over to where his friend is waiting for him.

The crowd’s cheers go almost deafening when All Might suddenly steps up by Izuku’s side, and Shouto can barely hear anything anymore by the time he joins his friend and former teacher on stage.

Izuku presses a small stack of cardboard cards each into Shouto’s and All Might’s hands, mouthing something that looks like “just read these”, and Shouto nods obediently, swallowing a little to calm his nerves. 

After all, as long as he only has to read things out loud, he can’t really commit any social faux-pas, right?

“Todoroki-shounen, are you ready?”, All Might asks warmly by his side as the noise of the crowd begins to die down, and Shouto finally feels himself relax at the reminder of the former no. 1 hero’s presence.

“Yes”, he affirms, giving his former teacher a quick nod, before Izuku hands All Might his microphone and scuttles off stage again.

“Hello. Watashi ga kita!”, All Might announces into the microphone, smiling a bit crookedly, and Shouto can tell he instantly has the crowd in the palm of his hand. “Is everyone ready? Let’s get this show on the road then, shall we?”

While All Might asks the contestants his first trivia question, Shouto takes a moment to skim over the questions Izuku has prepared for him. 

His favourite food, his favourite animal, a couple of questions about his most famous fight moves, some specifics about his Quirk - all in all very harmless and trivial things as Izuku promised, and as Shouto takes turns with All Might to ask the participants their questions, he finds that it’s actually quite fun to watch people try to out-buzzer each other in an attempt to talk about the fact that his favourite food is soba and that the move that creates his cold flames is called Phosphor.

He also slightly amusedly notes that he’s able to answer every single one of the All Might trivia questions correctly in his head, and he’s pretty sure that can be directly attributed to his friendship with Izuku and - to an extent - Katsuki.

By the time they finish up their section of the quiz, the people gathered around erupt into booming applause and cheers again, and Izuku jogs back on stage to take the microphone off of them while Shouto and All Might give their bows to the crowd.

“Thank you very much to All Might and Shouto for gracing us with their time and presence here!”, Izuku says enthusiastically, bowing a little to the both of them, and Shouto can’t help but smile widely at his friend before heading off the stage and promptly finding himself greeted by Kaminari.

“Nice work, Todobroki”, the blonde remarks, thumping Shouto on the back and grinning at him excitedly.

Shouto huffs out a laugh. “Thanks”, he says. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with the band?”, he wonders then, frowning a little.

Kaminari shakes his head. “Nah, we’re on break right now. They’ve got two talks back-to-back on the main stage right now, so I came to watch the award ceremony here”, he explains with a chuckle, and Shouto promptly redirects his attention to the stage, where Izuku is currently handing out surprise goodie bags to the winners of the quiz.

“Ohhh, that’s some nice stuff, would love to get my hands on one of those as well”, Kaminari comments with an appreciative whistle when the contestants begin to pull all sorts of rare pro hero merch out of their bags, cooing and gasping at the much sought-after items.

“Cool, right?”, Izuku agrees, smiling happily as he joins the two of them by the side of the stage. “I’m so glad this whole thing went down so well”, he adds then with a relieved little chuckle.

Kaminari nods fervently. “Totally!”, he affirms, giving Izuku two thumbs-ups. “Oh, hey, listen. Would you two mind helping me out with something real quick?”, he asks then, turning slightly more serious. “When I walked over here, Satou asked me if I could get some people to grab a few more of those beer garden benches from the storage rooms for the cake stand. Apparently he’s being absolutely swarmed, but there aren’t enough seats in the area and a lot of the visitors are elderly folks.”

“Oh, yeah, sure”, Izuku agrees immediately, and Shouto nods right along.

“Awesome! I knew I could rely on you two”, Kaminari replies, grinning at them contently before leading them off to one of the nearby buildings.

When they step inside, they find themselves in a short hallway with two doors lining each side. The doors on the far end of the hallway are closed, but the front two are ajar, and when Shouto curiously peaks inside, he finds a whole bunch of technological equipment - loudspeakers, cables and what seems to a sound engineering mixing desk - in one of them, while the other one is completely empty.

“Right, uh. I’m not sure which one of those has the benches, so maybe you guys can check the one on the right and I’ll check the one on the left?”, Kaminari suggests, scratching his neck a little as he frowns at the two closed doors.

“Sure”, Shouto says, walking over to the door on the right with Izuku on his heels, and when he opens it, after giving his eyes a moment to adjust to the relative darkness inside, his lips curl into a satisfied smile.

“They’re in here!”, he calls, stepping inside to march over to the opposite wall, where a whole bunch of benches are stacked on top of each other.

“Do you think we can carry multiple at once?”, Izuku wonders as he follows Shouto into the room, experimentally lifting the edge of one of the benches up a little to test the weight. 

“Probably”, Shouto muses. “They don’t look too he-“ He cuts himself off bemusedly when the light that was flooding into the room from the hallway suddenly disappears, and before he can even register what’s happening he hears the unmistakable click of a lock closing.

“What the-“, he blurts, blinking furiously to try and make his eyes adjust to the sudden darkness surrounding him. The room doesn’t have any windows, so the only source of light is the neon red exit sign above the door, painting everything nearby in a subtle red hue.

“Did someone just lock the door?!”, Izuku asks incredulously, and Shouto, who had briefly forgotten that he wasn’t alone in the dark room, promptly startles, accidentally knocking his elbow against the stack of benches.

“Fuck”, he curses, shaking his arm out against the sudden sharp burst of pain around the delicate bones.

“Are you okay?”, Izuku questions, concern evident in his voice, and with his eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness, Shouto is beginning to be able to make out his silhouette a few metres away from him.

“Yeah. Just bumped my elbow”, he quickly assures, rubbing the aching spot a little. “Let’s go check the door”, he suggests then, walking towards the red exit light and fumbling around for the door handle, before pressing it down and rattling on it a little to no avail.

“It really seems to be locked”, he notes, blowing out a frustrated breath. “Why would anyone do that? Do you think it was Kaminari?”

“I don’t know…maybe…”, Izuku says behind him, and Shouto can practically hear that analytical mind of his run its way through possibilities and explanations.

He heaves out another sigh before twisting around to lean against the door and face his friend, except woah.

He may have miscalculated a little how close Izuku was standing behind him and suddenly finds himself face to face with him, mere centimetres separating them, and Shouto can’t help but gasp a little in surprise as he stares into those big round eyes in the dim red neon light.

“I-“, he starts a bit hoarsely, grappling for words as his stupidly useless heart begins to hammer wildly in his chest and his brain fills with static at the sudden proximity. Shouto’s back is already pressed against the door, so the only way to put some distance between them would be to slip past Izuku, but Shouto feels like that might just make it weird, so he wills himself to remain cool and calm as he continues to stand frozen to the spot, holding his friend’s gaze.

Izuku makes no move to step aside either, instead looking at Shouto with wide eyes and slightly parted lips, and Shouto can’t even begin to try and read the expression on his face in the low, coloured light.

They’re so close Shouto can feel soft wisps of warm breath ghosting over his face, and he subconsciously licks his lips as his traitorous eyes flick down to his friend’s mouth - just for a second, a second of weakness.

Izuku’s breath audibly hitches, and suddenly there’s a warm hand cupping Shouto’s cheek, a gentle touch he automatically leans into, before he feels the light, hesitant press of soft lips against his own.

It takes Shouto’s brain a moment to process what is happening, and just as Izuku begins to pull away again, Shouto finally kicks into action, reciprocating the touch with similar tentativeness but unmistakable intent, and apparently that’s all Izuku was waiting for. He steps forward, closing the remaining distance between their bodies, and captures Shouto’s lips in a proper kiss.

Shouto privately thanks the heavens that he’s currently pressed up against the door, because his knees promptly turn to jelly as he feels Izuku lightly flick his tongue against his bottom lip, and Shouto brings his hands up to rest on his friend’s waist - just in case - as he parts his lips more to grant him better access.

It’s only when he feels Izuku’s hot wet tongue slip into his mouth and slide against his own in such an intoxicating manner it makes Shouto let out a small involuntary moan, that he realises what’s actually happening right now.

He is kissing Izuku.

He is kissing Izuku.

He is kissing Izuku.

Izuku, who is Shouto’s best friend. Izuku, who Shouto has been in love with for years. Izuku, who-

Izuku, who kissed Katsuki at a party less than a week ago.

Katsuki, who is also Shouto’s best friend. Katsuki, who Shouto has also been in love with for years.

Katsuki, who is Izuku’s childhood friend.

Shouto kind of feels like he’s going to keel over right where he’s standing, and suddenly it’s not in the fun, dizzying way from being kissed anymore.

He can’t do this.

“Wait. Stop”, he rasps out, twisting his face away a little and gently pushing against Izuku’s waist.

His friend immediately lets go of him and stumbles a few steps backwards. “Shit. Fuck, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that, I completely misread-“

“No, you didn’t”, Shouto interrupts, swallowing thickly against the nauseating ball of tangled up emotions lodged in his throat. “You didn’t misread anything”, he clarifies a bit shakily, because fuck, admitting it is absolutely horrifying, but the thought of letting his friend think he was doing something Shouto didn’t actually want is way worse.

“It’s just. Uh”, he continues, digging his fingernails into his palms. “Aren’t you…with Katsuki now?”

God, it fucking hurts to say it out loud, but Shouto kind of doesn’t have a choice, does he?

“What?”, Izuku squeaks, staring at him with nearly comically wide eyes. “What makes you think that?”

Shouto frowns a little at that. “I saw you two kiss at Kouda’s party”, he explains, his gut clenching uncomfortably at the graphic memory.

“You… oh. Oh, no”, Izuku groans, burying his face in his palms. “No, you’ve got it all wrong. That was a dare. Remember how we were playing Truth or Dare? I guess you were gone for a while, but we still continued to play and then Kaminari dared me to kiss Kacchan. And I was already drunk out of my mind - remember those tequila shots I had to do? Yeah, I kinda ended up doing a few more with Kirishima and Ashido while you were gone. Absolutely terrible idea, I can tell you that much, but anyways”, he rambles, the words coming at Shouto at what feels like supersonic speed. “Kaminari dared me to kiss Kacchan, and I was so drunk I was like ‘whatever, sure’ and, well, you know how Kacchan will never back down from a challenge - and especially when it’s coming from Kaminari - so we kissed while Kaminari and Shinsou watched us to make sure we were doing it properly, and that was it”, he finishes his explanation slightly breathlessly before furrowing his brows a little and taking a tentative step closer to Shouto again.

Shouto’s mind is swirling viciously, trying to process all the information he was just bombarded with, and he can’t really do anything but stand there stupidly and stare at his friend.

“Was that why you didn’t come home until the day after that night?”, Izuku asks then, his voice a bit softer, and his hand twitches a little by his side as if wanting to reach out to touch Shouto but then deciding against it. “I’m so sorry we didn’t look for you when we left the party that night. At the end I was so drunk I couldn’t even walk on my own anymore, so Kacchan physically manoeuvred me into a taxi and rode home with me, and when we got to the flat he was gonna go back for you, but then, um”, he says awkwardly as he averts his eyes, grimacing a little and reaching up to scratch the back of his head, “I kinda started throwing up? Seriously, never ever do tequila shots with Kirishima and Ashido, they will kill you. But anyways, so I started throwing up and, like, I only remember this kinda vaguely, but Kacchan ended up staying with me, because we assumed, at worst, you were probably just passed out somewhere in Kouda and Shouji’s flat, so we figured you were safe.”

He grimaces again, clearly embarrassed and ashamed of himself, and Shouto’s heart kind of aches with the urge to reach out to comfort him, but he isn’t sure whether that would be appropriate right now, so he forces himself to keep his hands to himself.

“I’m so sorry, we really should’ve gone back for you. And that was all my fault, because I got so drunk I needed a babysitter. Kacchan wanted to go back for you, so please don’t be mad at him!”, Izuku adds hastily, and this time Shouto finally does reach out - just for a moment to touch his friend’s arm before pulling away again.

“It’s okay”, he assures, his voice sounding a bit foreign to his own ears. “I’m not mad at either of you. I’m glad Katsuki stayed with you to make sure you were okay. I spent the night at my brother’s place, so I was safe”, he explains, carefully avoiding the part where he spent an indefinite amount of time wandering around aimlessly through the snowy night first. He does, however, wince a little internally at the memory of sobbing his eyes out on Touya’s couch.

“Wait, which brother?”, Izuku questions, frowning a little.

“Touya”, Shouto elaborates, and it’s only then that it occurs to him that perhaps his friend’s definition of “being safe” might not necessarily extend to staying overnight with the brother who has tried to kill him multiple times.

Izuku, however, just breathes out a little sigh of relief. “Oh, I’m glad. I was worried you might have taken public transport all the way out to the suburbs to Natsuo’s that late at night”, he admits, chuckling softly, and Shouto can’t help but smile back a little.

“But, wait”, he asks then as a sudden realisation hits him, and he feels a bit stupid for how badly he seems to have misread one of these particular situations once again. “Does that mean you didn’t actually want to kiss Katsuki?”

At that Izuku quickly looks away, his hand coming up to scratch the back of his head again. “Well, um”, he starts awkwardly, and Shouto’s heart already begins to twinge in his chest again, because as terrible as he might be at reading people, he can sense that the other shoe is yet to drop.

“Actually, uh, I kinda wanna kiss both of you?”, Izuku confesses then, and he rushes it out quickly and breathlessly, and the twinge in Shouto’s chest tightens.

“What, like, to experiment or…?”, he questions a bit stiffly, because somewhere deep inside of him a tiny flicker of hope is beginning to mix with the churning discomfort and anxiety in his heart, and he really doesn’t want to allow himself to get his hopes up only to be hurt again.

“No, uh. I, uh, kinda have feelings for both of you?”, his friend says, his gaze flickering up to meet Shouto’s, and Shouto’s soft little heart promptly starts to pound violently against his ribcage.

“What-“

“Oh god, sorry, I really shouldn’t be doing or saying any of this right now”, Izuku starts to ramble then, pinching the bridge of his nose a little, before Shouto can even get his thoughts in order, not to mention get a word of his own in.

“Fuck, I really didn’t think this through. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have kissed you like that, not when I haven’t even figured myself out properly, and-“

“But I wanted you to kiss me”, Shouto finally cuts in then, keeping his tone gentle but firm. His mind is still reeling, and he can barely form a coherent thought in his head, but that much he knows.

He wanted that kiss.

“And, uh. I want Katsuki to kiss me, too”, he adds then, feeling himself blush at the admission, but even if his friend could see it in the dim red neon light, it’s not like it would matter anyway at this point.

“What?”, Izuku questions, and his voice sounds a bit wobbly as he stares at Shouto with a look that kind of feels like he is seeing all of his own complicated feelings reflected in his friend’s eyes.

Well. No time like the present to finally go all in, right?

“I also kinda have feelings for both of you”, Shouto admits, and it’s like a heavy weight he hadn’t even realised was there is being lifted from his chest. It’s kind of terrifying to confess something like this, but it also feels so good to finally put it out there in the open after all these years of keeping it a secret and holding his feelings so close to his heart.

Izuku isn’t the only one who should be hearing Shouto’s confession, but for now it’s already a great relief to be able to tell at least one of them.

“Holy shit”, Izuku breathes, and it sounds half incredulous and half euphoric, his eyes glistening suspiciously in the dim light, and without thinking Shouto steps forward to close the distance between them and pulls his friend into a tight hug, nuzzling into the crook of his neck and inhaling his familiar scent.

Izuku reciprocates immediately, his arms coming up to firmly wrap themselves around Shouto’s back as he buries his face against Shouto’s shoulder, and for a moment they just stand there, locked in a dark storage room and holding onto each other tightly. 

For the first time ever, Shouto allows himself to channel the full magnitude of his feelings for his friend into the embrace, and with the way Izuku is clinging to him, he thinks his friend might just be doing the same thing.

“What the hell do we do now?”, Izuku asks after a while, his voice quiet and muffled against Shouto’s shoulder, and Shouto tightens his hold on him a little, because that’s the big question, isn’t it?

And no matter how Shouto tries to twist and turn it in his head, regards it from different angles and perspectives, he always ends up circling back to the same answer.

“I think we have to tell Katsuki how we feel”, he says softly, a dull ache pulsing through his chest. “Because no matter how you and I feel about each other, we can’t really…move forward, while we both also have feelings for Katsuki that have never been addressed”, he points out a bit nervously, and this time it’s Izuku who tightens his hold a little before reluctantly releasing Shouto, so that they can face each other again.

“You’re right”, he agrees then, sounding slightly wobbly, but his eyes seem to stay dry. “It also wouldn’t really be fair towards Kacchan, especially since this will end up affecting him as well one way or another.”

Shouto grimaces a little, remembering the similar worries he had when he thought there was something going on between Izuku and Katsuki, and nods his assent.

Regardless of how he feels about the two of them, Katsuki deserves to get a say in this whole situation, too.

“God, I just can’t ever tell with Kacchan, you know?”, Izuku admits then, running his fingers through his hair and ruffling it a little as he chuckles awkwardly. “I’m not even sure if he does romance at all. I mean, I don’t think he had ever even kissed anyone before me!”

Well, Shouto knows for a fact that that’s not true. One Saturday night in third year a very drunk Kirishima confessed to him that he and Katsuki had kissed once, because they felt like they “owed it to each other” to test if there was more between them but quickly realised that they were really just friends.

Shouto decides to keep this to himself, though - it’s not his story to tell, after all - just like he decides not to mention the fact that until just now his own experiences with this sort of stuff were essentially limited to kissing Uraraka and making out with Iida once.

The kiss with Uraraka happened at the end of another one of their dorm parties in third year. Somehow, the two of them had ended up sitting next to each other at the bottom of the staircase, a nearly empty bottle of sake between them, and Shouto was having a little bit of a crisis.

This was shortly after he had found out about Katsuki and Kirishima, and then on that particular night a rather juicy round of Never Have I Ever had led to Izuku revealing that he had had a bit of a thing with Rody Soul back in first year when they were on the run together in Otheon and Klayd. Subsequently, Shouto - who was still a long way away from understanding how he really felt about Izuku and Katsuki, and that those feelings were probably the real reason those stories bothered him so much - had kind of begun to feel like everyone was having their first romantic or sexual experiences but him.

He proceeded to pour his heart out about it to Uraraka, admitting how he had never even kissed anyone before, and she just looked at him with big sad and sympathetic eyes before confessing that she was kind of struggling with similar feelings, except in her case it was because every time she tried to open herself up to someone new, all she could ever think about was Toga Himiko.

Ultimately, they were both sad and lonely, Shouto and Uraraka, and one moment they were looking at each other inquisitively, and the other they were kissing.

They both knew that it didn’t mean anything, and they were also both perfectly aware of the fact that Shouto was gay by that point, but that didn’t really matter.

Unsurprisingly, there were no racing hearts, no electricity, no butterflies, and the kiss tasted strongly of cheap alcohol, but Shouto didn’t really mind. At least he knew what it felt like to kiss someone now, and there was a certain comfort in the intimate touch.

He’s pretty sure Uraraka felt so, too.

Shouto’s kiss with Iida also happened during one of their third year parties. Iida had confessed to Shouto - his resident gay friend - that he was kind of questioning his sexuality and didn’t really know what to do about it. Shouto had wisely suggested he try kissing a boy to see how it felt, but then Iida complained that he didn’t even know who he could kiss, and Shouto, ever the good and helpful friend, unceremoniously offered himself up.

Iida had to contemplate that for a moment until he finally decided to give it a shot, and the two of them snuck off into a dark empty hallway. His friend was visibly nervous and Shouto, emboldened by his recent kissing experience with Uraraka, simply cupped the other boy’s face and pulled him in.

The kiss was different. Very different.

It still wasn’t this earth-shattering, world-stopping experience everyone was always talking about, because it was Iida, and Shouto simply didn’t feel that way about him, but as a concept it felt very right.

Kissing a boy felt very right. 

Where Shouto’s kiss with Uraraka was merely a sad, comforting press of their lips, this kiss was more active. Their lips moved against each other, there were hands cupping cheeks and fingers burying themselves in bi-coloured hair, and at one point there even was a bit of tongue, and when they finally pulled away again, Iida blinking at Shouto all flustered and pink-cheeked, it wasn’t just his friend who got his confirmation that he definitely liked boys but also Shouto, who felt very solidified in his self-identification as gay.

It was after that experience that Shouto started to wonder how it would feel to kiss his other male friends, just out of curiosity, which was what finally set him onto the path of discovering his not-so-strictly platonic feelings for Izuku and Katsuki.

But Shouto doesn’t tell Izuku any of that right now.

“I can never tell with Katsuki either”, he says instead before snorting a little at himself. “But I can never really tell with anyone, apparently”, he adds, and that draws a small sympathetic chuckle from Izuku, too, as he reaches out to briefly squeeze Shouto’s hand.

Shouto wishes he could just interlace their fingers and keep his friend’s hand right there in his, but he feels like as long as they haven’t spoken to Katsuki, they shouldn’t really be crossing any of those lines, and it appears that Izuku agrees as he reluctantly pulls his hand back.

“I suppose we won’t know until we talk to-“

Shouto never gets to finish his sentence, because suddenly the door lock clicks behind him, and he only just so manages to jump out of the way to avoid having the door rammed against his back as someone opens it and the nearly painfully bright light from outside floods the room.

“What the hell are you doing here?”, a familiar voice asks, and when Shouto spins around, blinking a little at the jarring brightness, he spots Shinsou’s purple hair accompanied by a simultaneously bemused and amused expression.

“Someone locked us inside”, Izuku explains, stepping forward to stand by Shouto’s side.

“Pretty sure it was your boyfriend”, Shouto adds helpfully.

A look like he just solved a frustrating puzzle in his head passes over Shinsou’s face, and he heaves out a long-suffering sigh. “Of course it was”, he says drily, before quirking an eyebrow at the two of them. “You know you can unlock this door from the inside, though, right? There’s a switch on the underside of the handle”, he explains casually, the corners of his lips twitching as he reaches around the door to demonstrate, and Shouto suddenly feels very stupid.

“Uh. I didn’t realise”, he admits awkwardly, rubbing his neck.

At that Shinsou finally breaks and cackles a little. “Well, what are you waiting for?”, he asks then, gesturing for Shouto and Izuku to step outside into the hallway, and Shouto throws a quick glance over at Izuku.

“You, uh. You go ahead. We’ll be right there”, Izuku says, and Shouto is pretty sure he’s trying to sound casual, but even to his own ears it’s kind of sounding anything but.

Shinsou promptly raises an eyebrow at them in clear surprise. “Right. Okay. See you later then”, he replies, giving them a mock-salute, before spinning around and disappearing down the hallway. As he walks away, Shouto is pretty sure he can hear him mutter something that sounds a lot like “that bastard” and “can’t believe that actually worked” to himself.

“Sorry, uh, I hope that was alright?”, Izuku asks then, laughing a bit nervously and instantly redirecting Shouto’s attention to him. “I just figured we should probably…you know…finish our conversation first.”

“Yeah, no, definitely”, Shouto agrees, huffing out a small laugh of his own. “I guess we should just…talk to Katsuki as soon as we get the chance.”

Izuku nods, gnawing on his bottom lip a little, and Shouto has to force his mind away from the thoughts about how it felt to kiss that lip, how plush and soft it was, how Izuku’s tongue felt against his own, how-

“How are we gonna do that, though?”, his friend effectively rips him out of his musings, and Shouto surreptitiously pinches his own thigh a little to keep himself focused.

He tilts his head a little as he contemplates the question, but in all honesty he can’t really come up with anything particularly clever. “We just tell him the truth? About what happened today?”, he suggests then, because it’s the only thing he can think of that makes sense.

Izuku huffs out another laugh. “I guess you’re right. It just seems so…daunting”, he admits. “But at least we’ll be doing it together.”

Shouto nods. He can certainly sympathise. “It’ll be okay”, he assures, even though he really has no way of knowing that, and the reassurance is probably as much for himself as it is for his friend, but Izuku immediately offers him one of his wide sunny smiles and Shouto feels like he might just melt like ice cream underneath that warmth.

“Shall we, then?”, he says, clearing his throat a little to get his bearings and gesturing towards the door with his head.

Izuku nods. “Yeah. They probably need us out there”, he remarks, drawing a chuckle from Shouto, and just before they step out into the hallway he grabs Shouto’s hand again, giving it a gentle squeeze, and Shouto feels his own smile grow just a tad wider.

When they finally join the festivities outside again, it turns out that no one had even noticed that they were gone - or at least not for long enough to actually start to wonder where they were. Shouto quickly resumes his patrolling of the premises while Izuku joins Satou at his cake stand for candied-apple-duties, and the rest of the fundraiser thankfully goes down without a hitch.

By the time the band finishes performing their final explosive rocker to close the show on stage and the various stands and attractions begin to shut down one by one, the visitors are slowly streaming out through the main gates accompanied by animated chatter about how great the whole day has been, and Shouto can’t help but smile a bit proudly to himself as he stands off to the side and oversees the whole scene.

Some time later, once the crowds have cleared the premises and the gates have been shut, the pro hero organisers of the event gather in one of the seminar halls to close out the day with a large order of takeaway pizza, and as everyone sits around munching and chatting Shouto can’t help but throw the occasional glance at Izuku and smile a little every time he finds his friend already looking back at him. He also notices the way Kaminari watches them curiously until Shinsou elbows him in the side and whispers something to him, making his eyes widen as a triumphant grin threatens to split his face in half.

What Shouto doesn’t notice is the way another blonde also watches them with similar curiosity but notably less glee.

***

The first thing Touya notices when he wakes up the next morning is that he’s sore.

It aches, but the knowledge of why it aches actually makes him shudder a little as pleasure mingles with the pain in an intoxicatingly appealing way. His head is still resting on Keigo’s chest, the hero’s heartbeat steady under his ear, and Keigo’s arms are still holding him, warm and safe.

Actually, perhaps a little too warm. They’re both a bit sweaty, all pressed up against each other under the thick duvet.

“Morning, sunshine”, Keigo’s voice suddenly rumbles through his chest, thick and raspy with sleep, and fuck, is that hot.

Touya shifts a little to crane his neck and look up at the hero, who is smiling down at him lazily, his blond hair mussed from sleep and his eyes like honey in the morning sunlight. The movement makes Touya’s cock brush against the other man’s hip, and he lets out a surprised hiss at the sensation, drawing an amused chuckle from the hero.

“Someone’s happy to see me”, Keigo notes, his smile turning a little more mischievous as he twists his hip to rub against the semi Touya has woken up with.

“Shut up”, Touya huffs as his cock promptly twitches with interest, burying his face into the hero’s chest hair to hide the flush that’s probably spreading across the unscarred areas of his skin right now.

Keigo chuckles again, tightening his hold around Touya a little. “You know, I could help you with that”, he points out innocently, and Touya, who is a weak, weak man, instantly twitches again.

“I’m sweaty. I need a shower”, he states evasively, the words muffled against the hero’s skin, embarrassed by how badly he really just wants to say yes.

“I could help you with that, too”, the other man says lowly, and god, how the hell is Touya supposed to say no to that?

“Okay”, he breathes, shifting a little to detangle himself from the hero’s arms and sit up, his joints creaking and popping in protest.

Keigo quirks an amused eyebrow at him. “Old man”, he teases, and Touya - the perfectly mature and grown 31-year-old adult, thank you very much - unceremoniously smacks him with a pillow.

“Ow!”, the hero laughs as Touya scrambles away snickering. He pushes himself up from the bed and glances at the other man over his shoulder, sticking his tongue out at him for good measure before skittering away to the bathroom, cackling almost hysterically at the affronted look the bird gives him before following right after him.

“What’s gotten into you?”, Keigo asks with a laugh when he finally catches up with Touya by the shower, pushing into his space and pinning him up against the tiled bathroom wall.

“Good mood”, Touya admits with a slightly crooked grin, capturing the hero’s lips in a deep kiss - morning breath be damned - before winding himself out of his grasp and grabbing his hand to tug him into the shower with him.

He really isn’t sure what the hell is going on with him this morning, but he feels stupidly giddy right now, and he has more than enough life experience to know that you should always make the most of moments like this and never ever take them for granted.

After all, there’s really no harm in being a little silly if you’ve got someone by your side to hold your hand through it.

The bird huffs out another laugh as he lets himself be pulled along, and Touya turns on the rain shower head, sticking out his foot to check the water temperature before pulling the other man right under the warm spray with him.

Keigo’s arms come up to wrap themselves around him, and his mouth quickly finds Touya’s, seemingly not giving a flying fuck about morning breath either as his tongue slips inside and slides hotly, sensually against Touya’s.

Touya groans a little into the kiss, pressing his groin forward against the hero’s and feeling the other man’s cock harden against his own.

“Fuck”, Keigo grunts, rolling his hips maddeningly as he breaks the kiss before slowly beginning to mouth his way down Touya’s neck and collarbones until his lips find the healthy patch of skin of his chest.

“Can I suck you off?”, he asks lowly against Touya’s sternum, and Touya has to suppress a whimper when a sharp spark of arousal zips right through his cock at the suggestion.

“Fuck”, he breathes. “Yeah.”

His fingers slip into Keigo’s wet hair as the hero mouths his way further down Touya’s body, sinking to his knees right in front of him. He places his hands on Touya’s hips, steadily holding him in place, before beginning to leave an infuriating trail of feather-light kisses along the unscarred skin on his lower abdomen and groin area, all the way down to the inner sides of his thighs, purposefully avoiding the place where Touya needs him the most.

“Shh”, he soothes when Touya quivers in his grasp, mouthing upwards again to nuzzle into the patch of white hair above his dick, the side of his face brushing up a little against the base.

“Please”, Touya practically whimpers at the touch, tightening his hold on the hero’s hair, and Keigo finally has mercy on him, darting his tongue out to lick a broad stripe along his length, all the way up to the tip.

“Fuck, Keigo”, Touya curses when the other man sucks the head into his mouth - that dizzyingly hot and soft mouth - and prods that sensitive spot right underneath with his tongue.

Touya is eternally grateful that the hero is holding on to his hips so tightly, because he’s pretty sure otherwise his knees might just give out under him. Slowly, Keigo takes him deeper into that wet heat, and Touya lets out a low groan at the sensation, his eyes torn between falling shut and remaining open to watch the other man’s lips stretch obscenely around his cock.

They finally settle on continuing to watch, the sight simply too enticing to look away.

“You feel so good”, Touya breathes, scratching his blunt fingernails across the hero’s scalp, and Keigo hums happily around him, the sound reverberating through his dick and making it ridiculously hard to resist thrusting forward.

The hero continues his slow descent until finally, finally, Touya feels himself hit the back of his throat and a broken gasp tears itself out of him. The other man hums again, blinking up at him with a cheeky glint in his eyes, and it’s so fucking hot Touya doesn’t even know what to do with himself anymore.

He sucks his bottom lip between his teeth as Keigo slowly pulls off, swirling his tongue along the underside of his dick, before taking him all the way again and swallowing around him like it’s nothing.

“Fuck”, Touya chokes out, his head spinning viciously as that hot pressure at his core throbs with the need for release. The hero’s grip on his hips tightens a little, his fingers digging in so hard Touya thinks they might actually leave bruises, and that realisation turns him on so badly he nearly comes right on the spot.

“‘M close”, he warns as the other man continues to bob his head, licking and sucking and swallowing around him, and Touya gives a light tug on his hair to underline his warning. “Hey. You hear me?”

Keigo just gives another hum and looks up at him intently, pointedly flicking his tongue over the tip of Touya’s cock, probably tasting his precum there, before sinking all the way back down on him, and there’s only so much a man can take.

“Fuck- Keigo-“, Touya curses again as his pelvic muscles tighten and that pressure inside of him finally bursts, sending waves of pleasure through his body as he comes down the hero’s throat, the other man greedily swallowing every last drop.

“Fuck, come up here”, Touya wheezes out breathlessly, tugging on those blond strands, and Keigo obliges immediately, pulling off him and scrambling to his feet. He has barely managed to find his balance when Touya already crushes their lips together.

He fervently licks into the other man’s mouth, desperate to taste himself on his tongue.

Keigo goes easily, burying one hand in Touya’s hair while the other one wraps itself around his waist, pulling their bodies flush together as he parts his lips a little more to give Touya better access. 

“That was so fucking hot”, Touya babbles stupidly into the hero’s mouth, and the other man huffs out a pleased laugh as he grinds his own still hard cock against Touya’s hip.

This imbalance is something Touya simply cannot allow to stand, so he lets go of Keigo’s hair, pressing the stump of his right arm against his shoulder to hold onto him in some other way, while snaking his left hand between their bodies, stopping just short of touching the other man’s dick.

“Can I?”, he asks lowly, and the hero nods frantically, pushing his hips forward in encouragement.

“Yes”, he rasps, and that’s all Touya needs. He reaches down and firmly wraps his fingers around that thick heavy length (that was inside of him last night, he realises with a sharp jolt of… something).

Keigo gasps so fucking prettily at his touch that it spurs Touya on like nothing else as he begins to pump his fist, squeezing and twisting it in the most maddening ways he knows. The hero clings to him tightly, and Touya soaks up every moan and every grunt that escapes his lips until the other man is positively unravelling against him.

“Touya- “, he groans brokenly, and without warning he spills all over Touya’s hand, the gentle spray from above slowly washing it away.

“So hot”, Touya whispers against his lips as he jerks the hero through his orgasm, feeling him shudder against him.

“Fuck”, Keigo rasps, resting his forehead against Touya’s shoulder as he catches his breath, and Touya soothingly runs his palm up his side before wrapping his arm around his back, pulling the other man tightly against himself.

Keigo reciprocates immediately, tightening his hold around Touya and burying his face in the crook of his neck. Touya follows his example, nuzzling his nose against the hero’s skin, and for a moment they just stand there, holding each other in a fierce embrace, their bodies pressed together from head to toe as the warm water continues to fall around them, and Touya’s heart clenches tightly in his chest at the innocent intimacy of it all.

He has never felt this close to another person before in his life. It’s different from the sexual intimacy of what they did last night - or even just now - and for some reason it makes his eyes sting a little with phantom tears. He’s pretty sure his seams actually leak a few drops of blood as he feels them trickle down beside his nose, but they’re already in the shower anyway, and it’s not like Keigo can actually see them right now, so he simply leaves them be, pressing a firm kiss against the hero’s neck.

“Can I wash your hair?”, the other man suddenly speaks up, lifting his head from Touya’s shoulder and sliding one of his hands up Touya’s back to comb his fingers through the wet strands at the nape of his neck.

Touya lets out a soft sigh at the sensation and detangles himself a little from the hero, so that they’re face to face again, praying to whoever might be out there listening that the water has already washed the evidence of his bloody tears away from his face.

“If you must”, he says with the fakest indifference he has ever mustered up in his life, and Keigo promptly huffs out a surprised laugh, his breath ghosting over Touya’s face.

“Okay”, he replies, still smiling as he pulls Touya under the spray to soak the mussed up strands and smooth them off his forehead. 

Touya obediently lets himself be manoeuvred around like a rag doll and closes his eyes as the hero uncaps his shampoo bottle. A moment later he feels gentle fingers massaging the product into his hair, a subtle coconut scent wafting around him, and he hums a little as he relaxes into the touch.

Keigo is very diligent with his ministrations, making sure to cleanse every last inch of Touya’s scalp before carefully rinsing the shampoo out, holding his hand against Touya’s forehead to keep the suds from getting into his eyes. 

“Your turn”, Touya announces, opening his eyes and smirking a little as the other man removes his hand from his forehead.

The hero grins at him unabashedly at that, picking up the shampoo bottle again to squeeze a generous amount of product into Touya’s outstretched palm.

“How do you do this when you’re on your own?”, he wonders, spinning around on the spot to give Touya better access to those blond waves. “One-handedly, I mean.”

Touya chuckles a little as he begins to work the shampoo into the other man’s hair. “I have my ways”, he says ominously, earning himself a snort from the hero. Truth be told, he probably looks pretty silly when he uses his chin and shoulder to hold the bottle and squeeze the product into his hand, but whatever, it works. 

Although having a pretty hero here to help him out definitely works, too. 

In fact, it works tremendously well for him. 

Said pretty hero hums contently as Touya scrubs his fingers across his scalp before motioning for him to tilt his head back under the spray to rinse it. The wet strands feel ridiculously smooth against Touya’s fingers, and when he deems the job done, the other man spins back around to face him, smiling at him so happily that Touya can’t help but smile back - a proper genuine one without any of his usual cheek or teasing.

“May I?”, Keigo asks softly, reaching for Touya’s shower gel and lathering up his hands before hovering them above Touya’s shoulders.

Touya’s breath gets caught in his throat a little as his brain processes what the hero is suggesting, and he sinks his teeth into his bottom lip and gives a slightly shaky nod. At that the hero steps forward to press a soothing kiss against the corner of his mouth before carefully beginning to soap up Touya’s skin.

Touya can’t help but make a wobbly little noise in his throat as the other man’s hands glide over him, starting at his neck and shoulders and slowly working their way down his body, across his back and chest and down his stomach.

Keigo’s touch is impossibly tender, like Touya is something precious, something that needs to be treated with utter care, and Touya’s chest constricts a little with the sudden onslaught of emotions that realisation awakens in him. He gasps softly and closes his eyes as the hero’s hands move lower, always mindful of his staples as he washes every plane and crevice of Touya’s body. 

There’s a poignantly pure intimacy to the way the other man’s fingers touch Touya’s soft cock without any sexual intent, the way they brush over his hole, and Touya has to bite his lip hard to suppress the sob that is suddenly threatening to tear itself out of him at the feeling of being touched like this.

“Hey”, Keigo says softly, cupping Touya’s cheek and semi-discreetly swiping his thumb underneath his eye. “All done.”

Touya clears his throat a little, not entirely trusting his voice, before speaking up. “Can I do you? I mean-“, he quickly tries to amend when he realises his double entendre, but the hero just huffs out a laugh.

“Yeah, you can”, he cuts in, his smile growing just a little lewd. “In both senses.”

“Idiot”, Touya scoffs, rolling his eyes exasperatedly to distract from the fact that he is definitely, 100% blushing.

Keigo just flashes him a grin, the pink tip of his tongue poking out a little between his teeth, before squeezing a dollop of shower gel into Touya’s hand. “I’ll take it”, he says with a little shrug, and Touya huffs out a begrudging laugh of his own as he begins to lather the soap across toned golden skin, both soft and firm against his palm.

He makes sure to keep his touch tender, too, as he carefully cleans the hero’s body, revelling in the way he relaxes into it.

It’s kind of intoxicating - having someone trust him like this. Having someone want him like this. Not just to get off, but also for such a simple and innocent thing.

Touya isn’t entirely sure if he deserves it, but it makes him feel valuable, like he’s more than just his dark past and terrible crimes. Like he’s an actual real person, just as complex and multidimensional as everyone else.

It feels really good.

Once he finishes washing Keigo, they quickly rinse each other off before finally stepping out of the shower to towel themselves dry. The hero helps Touya fluff up his damp hair a little before the two of them move over to the sink to brush their teeth, standing side by side with nothing on but the towels around their waists.

“Breakfast?”, Touya suggests after rinsing out his mouth and putting his toothbrush back into the cabinet above the sink.

“God, yes, I’m kinda starving”, Keigo agrees a bit theatrically, and Touya lets out a dry snort as they step out into the hallway together before parting ways and disappearing into their respective bedrooms to get dressed.

When they reconvene in the kitchen, the hero insists on making tamagoyaki for the two of them, and while Touya isn’t entirely sure whether the other man should really be trusted like that in the kitchen, he supposes there’s no harm in sitting back on a bar stool and watching him cook.

If something goes wrong, he can always easily interfere.

As it turns out, while definitely somewhat unconventional in his methods, the hero does manage to successfully prepare their breakfast in the end, and the two of them settle down at the kitchen island together to eat.

“I’ve gotta hand it to you. This is really good”, Touya admits around a mouthful of egg. “Even if I kinda thought you were about to burn down my kitchen when you fried the oil to hell like that.”

Keigo squawks indignantly at that. “Excuse me? I always cook like that and I’ve never burned down a kitchen before.”

“Woahhh, don’t jinx it, Birdie”, Touya warns faux-dramatically, and the hero unsuccessfully attempts to suppress a snort, briefly nudging his knee against Touya’s.

It’s fascinating, Touya realises, how easily they can go from what they did last night and earlier this morning right back to their usual banter and bickering.

He kind of likes it. How - despite everything that has happened between them - they’re still able to act like this around each other, to hang out like this without things feeling weird or awkward between them.

But it also kind of stresses him the fuck out, because it always puts him right back to square one when it comes to figuring out where exactly the lines are in their dynamic. Just an hour or two ago they were wrapped up in each other and their own little bubble, touching each other more intimately than Touya has ever touched or been touched by anyone else, and now they’re sitting side by side, bantering over breakfast like they’re just two regular mates.

Touya has no fucking clue what he’d be allowed to do right now. Would Keigo go along with it if he tangled their legs together right now? Would he let Touya lean against him? Hell, Touya isn’t even entirely sure if he’s allowed to call him Keigo right now or if that’s only reserved for sex and other intimate moments.

It’s kind of infuriating not to know, but here in the light of day, without the cushion of nudity softening the potential blow, Touya simply doesn’t feel brave enough to ask, and so he continues to go along with the chatting and joking around, acting like everything is perfectly normal. 

They slowly finish up their coffees, Keigo noisily slurping the last sip from that horrendous mug with his eyes printed on it, when Touya’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out, noting that it’s kind of low on battery before opening the new text message he just received.

Hello nii-san, Momo called me and told me what happened with Himura Touji last night - are you okay?? Is Hawks okay? Also, the doctors have just cleared me to go back to work again! -Shouto 

“Shouto asks if we’re okay after what happened last night”, Touya says casually without looking up from the display as he pulls up the keyboard to type out a response.

“What?”, Keigo blurts a bit squeakily.

Touya blinks up at him, raising an amused eyebrow. “He means the villain attack”, he elaborates calmly, his lips twitching with the urge to laugh.

The hero promptly flushes bright pink. “Right. Of course. I knew that”, he replies stiltedly, and Touya finally can’t take it anymore, bursting into a fit of unrestrained cackling as the other man scowls at him cutely.

“Should I tell him that we’re doing very well?”, he teases, poking his tongue out between his teeth.

“Sure”, Keigo responds innocently. “I mean, you’re the one who will have to answer potentially uncomfortable questions from your nosy little brother, not me. So, by all means, go ahead.”

He smiles sweetly, but the glint in his eyes tells a different story, and Touya promptly grimaces before turning his attention back to his phone screen.

“Fine. I’ll just tell him that we’re okay”, he concedes, scrunching up his nose a little as he types out his reply. 

Next to him, the hero heaves out a sigh. “Speaking of last night, though - the villain attack”, he adds pointedly, “I should probably head back over to my place. They’re sending people around to fix my lock and window soon, so I had better be there when they arrive”, he muses, slipping off his bar stool to put his dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and Touya quickly hits “send” before pocketing his phone again and following his example.

They clean up quickly before Keigo disappears into the guest bedroom to gather his stuff while Touya goes to pick up the clothes they abandoned on his own bedroom floor last night. Slightly awkwardly, he hands the hero his dirty sweatpants, t-shirt and underwear when they meet again in the hallway, and Keigo promptly goes red in the face, hastily stuffing the clothes in his gym bag before closing the zipper.

“Right. Uh. Guess I’ll be heading out then”, he says with a nervous chuckle, scratching his neck a little before spinning around to put his shoes on in the genkan.

“Uh. Yeah”, Touya replies, standing there a bit dumbly as he watches the other man get ready to leave, once again unsure about how to proceed. 

He watches the way the muscles in Keigo’s forearms flex when he hoists his bag up on his shoulder. Watches the way those soft blond waves fall into his face as he leans down to tie his shoelaces, remembering the way it felt to run his fingers through that hair and wishing he could just do it again right now.

The hero looks so pretty like this, all soft and unguarded in the lingering morning sunlight, and Touya feels like he might just go mad with the knowledge of how it feels to touch him. To be close to him.

He watches the way Keigo’s eyes shine golden like maple syrup when he looks up at Touya and flashes him one of his trademark crooked smiles, and all Touya wants to do is to kiss him. To hold him. To ask him to stay, to tell him he loves him, and-

Oh.

Oh.

Oh fuck.

Touya feels like someone just pulled the floor out from underneath his feet, his stomach plummeting right through his arse as the sudden lurch knocks all the air out of his lungs, and his head begins to spin violently. He feels like his heart is going to pound its way right out of his ribcage, and it takes everything in him to keep himself from keeling over right there and then.

“You okay?”, Keigo’s voice - Keigo’s voice - reaches his ears, muffled by the way he can hear his own blood rush through his veins and the thrumming white noise in his brain.

“Yeah”, Touya presses out, his voice awfully hoarse and shaky. “Sorry. Spaced out a bit.”

The hero furrows his brows, regarding him with something between suspicion and concern, and Touya forces his expression into something perfectly calm and neutral, lifting the corners of his mouth into what he hopes will look like one of his usual lazy smirks.

Keigo is still frowning at him, but after a moment of contemplation he seems to accept Touya’s explanation, offering him a lazy smile of his own.

“Alright. I’ll probably check in with you later once they’re done with my flat, okay?”, he says casually, and Touya gives a quick nod.

“Sure. See you later, Birdie”, he replies, and it definitely sounds stilted, Touya can tell by the way the other man’s brows twitch again, but thankfully the bird leaves it be and disappears through the front door with one of his silly waves.

The moment the lock clicks shut behind him, Touya sinks to the floor like a sack of potatoes, right where he’s standing, and buries his face in his hands, wishing he could just magically make himself disappear.

He is so fucked.

And an utter idiot right on top.

Now that the thought has crossed his mind, everything makes perfect sense - the way he craves the hero’s proximity, not just sexually but also in every other possible way, how he never seems to be able to get enough of it.

The way the bird has always gotten under Touya’s skin in a way no one else ever really has, practically making him buzz with the electricity of it.

The way Touya has wanted to open up to him about things he has never really wanted to tell anyone before, let him do things Touya has never felt safe enough doing with anyone else before.

That raw, unbridled panic that overcame him when the other man was attacked by that goddamn Himura villain and his deadly frost Quirk.

Touya loves Keigo.

Touya is in love with Keigo.

It explains everything.

And it’s probably the worst possible thing that could’ve happened to him at this point in his life.

Because what the everloving fuck is he supposed to do with that realisation now?

How is he supposed to just continue living like he has for the past few weeks when he has to see the hero every single day and pretend everything is perfectly normal, even though his absolutely useless heart has decided that, after 31 years on this planet and doing totally fine without it so far, it was finally time for him to fall in love with someone?

And not just anyone, no, of course he had to go and fall for his pro hero babysitter, who also happens to be his former enemy and traitorous contact person that he kind of tried to murder.

Eight billion people in the world, and his stupid heart had to choose Takami Keigo.

Touya heaves out a heavy sigh and pulls his knees up to his chest, hugging his legs tightly right there on the hardwood floor of his hallway as his head swims nauseatingly. 

The sexual attraction was one thing. Touya is not an animal, he can control his urges, and even if it’s frustrating as hell to want someone like that, at worst it might sting a little if they don’t want you back. 

Love, however, is different.

Love hurts, everybody knows that. Hell, Touya just saw it the other day when Shouto got his heart broken and showed up on Touya’s doorstep, looking like a zombie, before crying his eyes out against his shoulder.

Touya does not want to feel like that. He has had more than enough pain and hurt in his life already, he really doesn’t need more of it. But it’s kind of inevitable now, isn't it? Because now that he is aware of his feelings for Keigo, it’s really only a matter of time until his precious little bubble bursts and the harsh reality comes crashing down.

There’s no way in hell that the hero feels the same way about him, because why on god’s green earth would he? The physical attraction Touya can buy, because yeah, he might be rather unconventional looking, but objectively speaking he knows he also has some physically appealing features. His self-esteem about his own appearance may not be the greatest, but he’s not stupid enough to deny that he’s somewhat tall and lean, or that his eyes are a pretty striking colour.

But sexual attraction and romantic attraction lie far apart, and even if Touya has been tried and punished for his crimes - is still being punished for them - it’s just utterly inconceivable that someone like Keigo, who has made it his life’s mission to make the world a better place, would ever fall for someone like Touya, who has wilfully and cruelly taken lives and lent his power to someone who wanted to destroy that world Keigo wants to protect so badly.

So where does that leave them?

They’re friends with benefits now, but that’s not going to last forever, is it? And how the hell is Touya even supposed to keep having casual sex with the hero if he feels like this about him? But, also, how the hell is he supposed to say no to him when all he wants is to be close to him?

Part of Touya desperately wishes he could fool himself into believing that, somehow, Keigo feels the same way about him, despite every good reason why he obviously never would - because it’s tempting as hell, and so fucking easy when the hero always touches him with so much care.

The thought makes Touya’s heart ache dully in his chest, and, fuck, isn’t that ironic?

Love really does fucking hurt.

He hugs his legs a little tighter, as if that might quell that stupid ache in his ribcage.

The thing is, it really would be painfully easy to convince himself that everything that has happened between them has actually meant more to the other man, too.

None of the other people Touya has hooked up with in the past - not that there were a lot of them - treated him the way Keigo does, none of them were so tender and considerate with him, but then again, perhaps that’s just the difference between being with a hero and being with a criminal. Perhaps it’s the difference between hooking up in a dark alley, where you always have to watch your back, and doing it in the privacy and safety of your own home.

Or perhaps that’s just what Keigo is like in bed. Hell, Touya doesn’t even know how much experience the other man has - both sexually and romantically - but he presumes it must be more than he has. Surely, he has had significantly more opportunities and options than Touya.

Either way, he really, really shouldn’t allow himself to get his hopes up, even if the hero always touches him so fucking gently, but god, is it tempting.

He closes his eyes and buries his face against his knees for a moment, revelling in the pitch black darkness and the way it drowns out some of that incessant noise in his head.

A little part of him wishes he had someone he could go to for advice, even though just the thought of having to reveal all these deeply personal feelings to another person kind of makes him feel ill, but his situation isn’t like Shouto’s. He isn’t just a normal guy (all things considered) in love with his best friends and flatmates - he’s a convicted criminal on house arrest, and the guy he’s in love with (verbalising it like this physically makes him shudder) is the pro hero guarding him.

If what they’ve been doing somehow gets out, there will likely be real legal consequences for both of them, and even if Touya tells his therapist - who is bound by doctor-patient-confidentiality - she will probably still ensure that Keigo is removed from his current job, and Touya - as masochistic as he might be for it - really doesn’t want that.

He wants Keigo to stay, wants to spend more time with him, because fuck, Touya loves being around him.

The hero is fun, clever and open-minded, easily amused and practically down for anything Touya suggests - however ridiculous it may be - and he’s one of the few people in the world who Touya feels like are actually an even match for his own wit and snark, one of the few people who can keep up with him when he goes off on a strange tangent. And he makes Touya feel like the things he has to say are actually interesting and worth listening to.

Keigo makes him feel valuable in more ways than one, and Touya is so deeply and utterly fucked.

Chapter Text

A new day comes and goes, and Shouto kind of feels like his brain is continuously inching closer to the verge of violent combustion. The events from the fundraiser - the kiss with Izuku and their subsequent confessions and conversation - already take up more than enough space in his mind and heart, making his veins buzz with a dizzying cocktail of emotions ranging from excitement and euphoria all the way to trepidation and terror, but on top of it all the morning after, on the way to his doctor’s appointment, Shouto got a call from Momo to inform him that their elusive frost villain Himura Touji came to attack Hawks, and as if that wasn’t enough already, apparently Touya ended up being the one to save the hero’s life and stop the villain with his ice.

Shouto is pretty sure his eyes grew wider until they threatened to bulge right out of his head with each twist and turn of that recount of events, and it took him so long to digest the information that when his doctor cleared him to go back to work the next day, he didn’t even have the mental capacity left to get properly excited about the good news.

It took him a few hours as well as a reassuring text from Touya that he was doing okay and that Shouto could stop by to check for himself some time this week to come to terms with the whole Himura Touji situation and the fact that his brother used his ice on such a large scale - and not only that but to save a life - and it was only later that afternoon that he was finally able to feel properly joyous about the prospect of returning to work the next morning.

Still, the nerves and swirling thoughts about his love life - about the conversation he and Izuku would still have to have with Katsuki, about the way Izuku’s lips had felt against his own, about the fact that all this time Shouto’s feelings for Izuku hadn’t actually been unrequited - kept him up late that night, tossing and turning in his bed while his mind stubbornly refused to quiet down, so he’s kind of dead on his feet during his first day back at work, and when he returns home from his morning shift he face plants straight onto his mattress and dozes off for a much needed afternoon nap.

When he finally comes to again some time later, he doesn’t exactly feel well-rested, but he certainly feels more alert and energised than before. Stretching out his stiff limbs and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he sits up on the edge of his bed and picks up his phone to check the time, only to find it blinking with a new message from Izuku.

I’m bringing home takeout for dinner after my shift x Should we do IT tonight? I just checked the schedule at the office - we’re all off work until at least tomorrow afternoon, so we’d have some time to…process…whatever happens.

Shouto cringes a little at the slightly ominous and not entirely optimistic wording of his friend’s message, but of course, realistically speaking, he knows that they should probably mentally prepare themselves for a less than optimal outcome, and it’s just reasonable to make sure they all have the time and space to stew in their feelings for a bit, should the conversation end on rather undesirable terms.

He sucks his bottom lip between his teeth, chewing on it nervously as he types out an affirmative reply to his friend, before putting his phone down again to simply sit and stare at the wall for a moment as the persistent low-level anxiety in his guts begins to spike at the prospect of what they’re planning to do, making his palms sweat and his heart flutter frantically in his chest.

He’s pretty sure Katsuki is at home right now since they had the morning shift together, but Shouto can’t possibly face him like this, lest he accidentally set himself on fire or blurt out something he should really wait for Izuku to get home for, and he desperately needs to find a way to keep himself busy until his other friend finally arrives.

Not wanting to risk running into Katsuki in the living room, Shouto ultimately decides to take a long, hot shower - even if he already showered at the agency after his patrol earlier in the day. It’s a surefire way to avoid Katsuki until Izuku gets home, and perhaps the warm water and self-care rituals will even help Shouto calm down a little.

He quickly gathers up a fresh change of clothes before peaking out into the hallway to make sure he doesn’t end up crossing paths with Katsuki after all. The blonde is nowhere to be seen, though, so Shouto quickly hurries over to the bathroom and locks himself safely inside, breathing out a small sigh of relief. His heart is still pounding unsteadily in his chest and his hands are a bit jittery as he strips out of his clothes and turns on the tap in the shower, waiting a moment for the water temperature to adjust before stepping under the pleasantly warm spray.

For a moment he just stands there with his eyes closed, letting the water pelt down onto his head and drip from his hair onto his nose and shoulders. The sensation of the warm gentle massage on his skin instantly makes him relax a little, the tense muscles in his limbs unclenching as his heart rate slowly begins to settle into something a little more steady. His thoughts are still racing, and he is buzzing with nerves in every fibre of his being, but overall he finally feels a bit more in control of his own body again, and he breathes out a long heavy exhale before reaching up to brush his wet fringe out of his eyes and smooth his hair back.

He still has more than enough time to kill until Izuku will get home - especially if he really goes to grab takeout first - so he decides to indulge in a little pampering, just to give himself a bit more to do.

He washes his hair diligently, carefully massaging in this apparently super fancy and expensive conditioner Camie sent him for his birthday before gently rinsing it out, smoothing the product out of the strands with his fingers. Once he deems his hair done, he washes his face with a hydrating cleanser and applies exfoliating scrub to the rest of his body before washing himself with regular soap. 

Eventually, he kind of runs out of things to do in the shower, so with a small sigh he shuts off the water and towels himself dry before applying moisturiser all over his body, allowing it to soak into his skin while he uses his Quirk to dry his hair. Once he doesn’t feel sticky anymore, he pulls on his fresh clothes (a light blue knitted jumper and a pair of black skinny jeans, because he feels like he should be dressed properly for the conversation he’s about to have tonight rather than show up in his loungewear) and applies scar cream to his burn and chapstick to his lips, just in case.

A quick glance at the clock on the wall tells him that Izuku should be getting here some time soon-ish now, so with one last look in the mirror Shouto takes a deep breath to steel himself before leaving the bathroom to make his way to the living room.

He kind of fully expects to find Katsuki lounging around on the couch, but as it turns out the blonde isn’t even there, and Shouto can’t help but feel a little relieved as he walks over to the kitchen to fill up Shimo’s food and water bowls.

The cat greets him with a few little meows, happily rubbing up against Shouto’s legs, and Shouto crouches down for a moment to run his fingers through that fluffy white fur before resuming his food preparation task. Once served Shimo tucks in hungrily, and Shouto goes to pour himself a glass of water before heading over to sit down on the couch.

He briefly considers turning on his Switch or picking up a book, but he feels way too antsy to focus on gaming or reading, so instead he pulls his phone out of his pocket and starts to mindlessly scroll through his socials, letting the algorithms feed his brain with just enough distracting content to keep him sane while he waits.

After what feels like a small eternity, he finally - finally - hears the front door unlock and promptly attempts to pocket his phone so hastily he nearly drops it on the floor.

“Tadaima!”, Izuku calls from the hallway. “I come bearing edible gifts!”

A bit stiffly Shouto gets to his feet and makes his way out into the hallway to help his friend carry the food inside.

“Hey”, he says, smiling a bit nervously when Izuku’s eyes meet his.

“Hi”, Izuku replies, his cheeks turning a little pink as he smiles back at Shouto, and Shouto suddenly feels overcome with the urge to kiss him again, but stubbornly forces himself to stay cool and practice restraint.

“Let me help you with that”, he offers instead, nodding towards the large plastic bag his friend is carrying.

Izuku blinks at him before looking down, as if it had only just occurred to him that he was even holding something in his hand. “Oh. Yeah, sure. Thanks”, he says then, chuckling softly as Shouto takes the bag from him.

“Are you ready for-“, he begins to ask then, but never gets to finish his sentence, because suddenly Katsuki’s bedroom door opens, and the blonde steps out into the hallway, his brows furrowed a little as his eyes flit back and forth between Shouto and Izuku, and for a short panicked second Shouto wonders if he already knows.

But no, that’s ridiculous. How would he even know?

Mentally shaking himself out of his stupor, Shouto begins to make his way back to the living room to put their food on the dining table.

“Did you get the extra spicy version?”, Katsuki asks Izuku as the two of them follow after Shouto.

“Yes, I even asked twice to make sure they didn’t forget about it”, Izuku confirms sagely, and Katsuki huffs out a small grunt that is probably supposed to be a reluctant laugh. Shouto is like 95% sure about it.

Izuku briefly disappears to go wash his hands while Shouto and Katsuki unpack the food containers from the bag in somewhat companionable silence, distributing their orders to their respective seats at the table, and when Izuku returns the three of them sit down and begin to chow down their dinner.

They still don’t talk to each other, and Shouto is starting to feel like perhaps the silence isn’t all that companionable after all, but even as he pensively munches on his soba, he still can’t for the life of him figure out what the issue is.

He does exchange a few weighty glances with Izuku over the course of their meal, and he briefly wonders whether the odd tension in the air comes from the changed dynamic between the two of them and their plan for tonight, but that doesn’t really explain why Shouto is getting such a strange vibe from Katsuki, too.

Even when he still thought there was something going on between Izuku and Katsuki, things didn’t feel this weird with either of them, and it makes his guts clench a bit uncomfortably around his dinner.

They probably really just need to address the elephant in the room soon, don’t they?

Despite the mild queasiness churning inside of him, Shouto forces himself to finish his meal, and by the time the three of them are packing up their empty plastic containers and discarding them in the garbage, they still haven’t spoken a single word to each other.

That definitely isn’t normal.

He throws another glance at Izuku and finds his friend already looking at him. When their eyes meet, Izuku gives a small nod as if to say “I’m ready, let’s do this”, and Shouto quickly nods back before the two of them turn to face Katsuki.

“Hey, um, Kacchan”, Izuku starts a bit stiltedly, wringing his hands in front of himself. “Can we, uh. Can we all go sit down for a moment?”

Katsuki squints at Izuku suspiciously, and Shouto is pretty sure there’s something else in that look, something deeper, more vulnerable, but he can’t really tell what.

“We just wanna talk about something”, Shouto clarifies, because he thinks perhaps that look in the blonde’s eyes is simply confusion.

“Okay”, Katsuki agrees a bit hoarsely after a brief pause, his gaze flitting over to Shouto as though searching his eyes for an explanation, before he turns on his heel and shuffles over to the couch, Shouto and Izuku quickly hurrying after him.

The three of them sit down next to each other, Shouto and Izuku sandwiching Katsuki between them in an unspoken agreement, and Katsuki immediately begins to look back and forth between them again, his fingers folded tightly in his lip.

“Right. Uh”, Izuku tries again, huffing out a nervous chuckle, and Shouto feels like he should probably jump to his aid, but he is kind of freaking out himself and Izuku is far better at social stuff than he is, so he’d much rather let his friend take the lead in easing them into this conversation.

“Okay, what the fuck is going on?”, Katsuki asks then, his voice rough and tense, making Shouto wince a little. “Did something happen?”

“Well, um, yeah. Kind of”, Izuku confirms shakily, ruffling his hair a little. “Basically, uh. So the other day - at the fundraiser, it happened at the fundraiser - Shouto-kun and I, we, um. We kind of. Kissed?”, he stammers out, and a flash of something awfully raw passes across Katsuki’s face as his eyes widen a little before his expression settles into something carefully neutral.

“So, what, just for fun? Are you guys fuck buddies now or…?”, he asks sharply, and Shouto winces again. Something tells him this whole thing is really not going particularly well so far, but as much as he’s practically buzzing out of his skin with unspoken words and feelings, his brain is kind of filled with nothing but crackling grey static, and he suspects he might not even be able to construct a coherent sentence right now.

Izuku catches Shouto’s gaze, giving him a slightly helpless look, but Shouto feels very much useless right now, so he just grimaces a bit apologetically at his friend.

“No, we’re not…we’re not fuck buddies”, Izuku amends then, shifting a little in his seat to be able to face Katsuki better, and Katsuki quirks an eyebrow at him.

“So you just, what, decided to test it out once?”, he bores, his tone still harsh, before averting his gaze to stare at his hands in his lap. “Or do you…have feelings for each other?”, he adds after a moment, his voice quiet and so raw it makes Shouto’s heart clench painfully in his ribcage.

He opens his mouth to answer, even though he has no clue what he even wants to say, but Izuku is faster than him.

“Yes, uh. We do. Have feelings for each other”, he confirms, sounding shaky and breathless, and as Shouto glances over to look at him, he finds Izuku looking at Katsuki with slightly glistening eyes. 

Shouto’s heart promptly clenches again.

“Oh, great”, Katsuki comments drily, jumping up to his feet. “I’m so fucking happy for you”, he adds, but it sounds like he means the exact opposite, his voice rough and the words choked up, and when he finally looks up to face them the badly restrained hurt Shouto can make out in those beautiful red eyes is what finally makes him spring into action.

“Yes, we do have feelings for each other”, he says, jumping to his feet as well to meet Katsuki’s gaze at eye level, and he barely even knows what he’s saying - hell, he doesn’t even know if it’s the right thing to say right now - but he blindly continues to charge ahead. “But we both also have feelings for you.”

At that Katsuki’s eyes widen in genuine surprise, and his lower lip begins to wobble a little. “What?”, he questions, and it sounds so hesitant, so fearful yet hopeful, that Shouto feels his own eyes start to burn a little with the threat of tears.

“Shouto-kun is right”, Izuku affirms then, pushing himself up to stand beside Shouto facing Katsuki, who is stubbornly biting down on his bottom lip to keep it still, even as his eyes look unmistakably shiny.

“We do have feelings for you, too. And we felt like we needed to tell you before we made any further decisions and-“

“Fuck! Why didn’t you just say so from the start, nerd?”, Katsuki chokes out, scowling at Izuku while furiously wiping at his eyes.

Izuku blinks at him, the motion making a few tears escape his own eyes, and Shouto feels like he might just combust with the need to grab them both and hold them tightly.

“You fucking made me think you were about to tell me that you were dating each other!”, Katsuki exclaims frantically before shifting his attention to Shouto and pointing an accusatory finger at him. “And you! You really could’ve opened your mouth a little earlier there, you half-and-half-bastard!”

The crass nickname stings a little, but Shouto supposes he kind of deserves it for how uselessly passive he acted during that whole ordeal just now. “I’m sorry”, he says, his own voice shockingly hoarse in his ears, because he doesn’t really know what else he can do right now to make it better.

“Don’t- don’t fucking apologise!”, Katsuki growls, and for a moment he just stares at Shouto, his brows furrowed and his eyes swimming with unshed tears and emotions, before suddenly surging forward to grab Shouto’s neck and pull him into a bruising kiss.

Shouto gasps a little into it in surprise before bringing his hands up to Katsuki’s wrists, holding onto them gently but firmly as he reciprocates the kiss. 

Katsuki’s lips are soft despite the forceful nature of the kiss, and Shouto finds that not only does he smell a bit like caramel but he also tastes like it, and he’s kind of desperate to explore that a little deeper, but he’s still vividly aware of Izuku’s presence by his side, so he isn’t sure whether right now would be the appropriate moment for it.

With one more insistent press of his lips against Shouto’s, Katsuki finally pulls away again, his pupils blown wide and his lips a bit pink as they stare at each other for a moment, their hot breaths mingling between them, before Katsuki carefully lets go of Shouto’s neck and turns a little to face Izuku.

“Kacchan-“, the other man starts, the name wobbly but so heavy on his lips, but Katsuki doesn’t let him finish.

“Shut up”, he breathes a bit exasperatedly before grabbing Izuku’s face and crashing their lips together.

For a moment Shouto doesn’t really know what he’s supposed to do - should he look away? Give them some privacy? - but then it occurs to him that Izuku was just watching him and Katsuki, too, so why shouldn’t Shouto do the same?

So he ends up kind of just standing there beside the two of them, watching as their lips move against each other, their eyes closed and their brows furrowed a little with emotion, and it’s strange.

Last week, when Shouto saw the two of them kiss each other at Kouda’s party, it hurt. It really fucking hurt, and Shouto could barely stand looking at it, but now it feels completely different. Watching them kiss each other now almost feels normal to Shouto - like it’s just another aspect of life, something that is simply supposed to be - and it doesn’t even make him jealous or feel like he’s being left out.

In fact, the longer he continues to look at them, it actually kind of begins to turn him on, and his first instinct is to nip that particular feeling in the bud right away, but then he realises that there’s nothing really wrong with it anymore now, is there? Both of them have kissed him, so clearly the attraction is mutual.

So instead of trying to quell it, he simply watches the two of them with interest, feeling his skin tingle with arousal at the sight of these two men Shouto is so deeply attracted to together.

After a moment, however, Katsuki breaks the kiss, and the two of them kind of just stand there for a breath, gazing dazedly into each other’s eyes, before Katsuki’s flit over to Shouto again.

“For the record”, he rasps out lowly, “this means I also have feelings for both of you.”

“Fuck”, Izuku curses sharply at that, and it’s so unusual to hear this level of blunt vulgarity from him that Shouto can’t help but huff out a small shaky laugh, earning himself an amused look from Katsuki while Izuku’s head snaps around to stare at him in surprise, and suddenly Shouto finds himself moving on instinct.

He steps forward, reaching out to cup Izuku’s jaw and tilt his head upwards a little before leaning in to seal their lips together. Izuku makes a small noise at the back of his throat, bringing his hands up to rest them on Shouto’s hips as he kisses him back, the feeling of his lips against Shouto’s almost a bit familiar now.

Just like with Katsuki before, Shouto is absolutely desperate to taste more, but he feels their conversation probably isn’t entirely over yet, so with one last peck he forces himself to pull back again.

From the corner of his eye he can see Katsuki watching them, and Shouto may not be the best at reading people, but he’s fairly certain that the blonde’s dilated pupils and slightly parted lips are probably not exactly a sign of disapproval.

“Fucking hell, that was hot”, he remarks hoarsely, and Shouto’s dick promptly twitches in his boxers at the unmistakable note of arousal in Katsuki’s voice. 

Right beside him Izuku sucks in a sharp breath, and for a moment the three of them kind of just hover around each other, right there at the centre of their living room, the air around them sizzling with electricity and anticipation.

“We should probably, uh, talk about this. More, I mean”, Shouto finally says a bit stiltedly, and Katsuki blinks at him owlishly, as if trying to clear the haze from his mind, while Izuku clears his throat a little.

“Right. You’re right. We should”, he agrees, even though his voice speaks of a different tale - one involving a lot more physical proximity and a lot less talking.

Shouto deeply sympathises, every fibre of his being absolutely aching with the need to touch, to be touched, but he has been keeping himself in check for so many years now, he knows he’ll be able to manage for just a bit longer.

It’s not like he’s got any personal relationship experience to base this assumption on, but he feels like a situation like theirs - as complex and delicate as theirs - probably requires a little more negotiating, and he really, really doesn’t want them to get this wrong.

“Maybe we should, uh, sit down again”, he suggests, shuffling back over to the couch to sit down, and Izuku and Katsuki follow after him, settling down next to him, each on one side as if in unspoken agreement.

They all sit close together, their sides pressed up against each other, and perhaps that isn’t exactly how you’re supposed to have these kinds of conversations, but Shouto simply can’t seem to find any real issue with it - especially not when it feels so good to be able to fully relax against the two of them, now that he knows his touch his wanted - so he just leaves it be.

“Um”, he starts eloquently then, trying to sort out the whirlwind of thoughts blowing through his mind and leaving utter chaos in its wake. “How exactly…is this gonna work?”, he finally asks, and he feels a bit stupid for it, but beyond the fact that he has been in love with two people at once for several years now, Shouto has never actually really had any real contact points with polyamory before, so he really has no idea what the rules are.

“Well. Do you want a relationship?”, Katsuki questions, his voice much softer than earlier, and on reflex Shouto nods immediately, almost a bit embarrassed by his own eagerness.

“I do, too”, Izuku confesses, and the words sound similarly soft as Katsuki’s. “Do you, Kacchan?”

“Yes”, Katsuki replies without hesitation, and Shouto’s heart skips a little beat at the admission. He already knew Izuku wanted a relationship, but getting the confirmation from Katsuki as well now kind of makes him feel ridiculously giddy.

“So I think that makes it pretty straightforward then, doesn’t it?”, Izuku muses, leaning a bit harder against Shouto’s side, and Shouto revels in the warmth that seeps through his clothes from the close proximity.

“We all have feelings for each other and we all want a relationship. I think we should just…follow our hearts then”, Izuku adds, blushing a little, and on Shouto’s other side Katsuki snorts softly.

“Very poetic”, he teases lightly as he lifts his arm to wrap it around both Shouto and Izuku, his hand coming to rest on Izuku’s shoulder to squeeze it a little.

Shouto instinctively leans into the firm warm touch against his upper back.

“You’re right, though”, Katsuki agrees then. “I think we should just…go for it. I mean, what else could we even do? It’s either we pretend none of this ever happened, or we move forward and try to actually make it work.”

That does sound very reasonable to Shouto, and god, does he want it. He wants the two of them to be his partners - not just as heroes but also in life.

“I have no idea how any of this stuff works”, he admits a bit awkwardly, “but I really wanna try, too. I really wanna be with you. Both of you”, he adds, and it feels so incredibly good to finally say it out loud.

To finally speak the whole truth, to finally get all these feelings he’s been bottling up for so many years off his chest.

To simply let the fire blaze within him, instead of trying to suffocate the flames every time they grow just a tad too hot.

“Does this mean I get to call you two my boyfriends now, then?”, Izuku wonders, a soft smile playing around his lips, and oh, Shouto really likes the sound of that.

Boyfriends.

“You are so fucking cheesy”, Katsuki scoffs, rolling his eyes exasperatedly before tightening his hold around Shouto and Izuku a little. “Yes, you do.”

Izuku’s smile promptly grows into a full blown grin at that, and he lifts up a little from where he’s resting against Shouto to lean over him instead and tug Katsuki into another kiss, right in front of Shouto’s face, and Shouto blindly fumbles for something to hold onto, finding Izuku’s hand and Katsuki’s thigh, as he watches them kiss each other deeply.

He can see the moment Izuku slips his tongue into Katsuki’s mouth, and when Katsuki moans lowly in his throat at the sensation, Shouto’s dick twitches again in his pants and he tightens his hold on the two of them a little.

When they break apart again, they both turn to look at Shouto, pupils blown and lips kiss-swollen, and Shouto has to swallow thickly against the sudden wave of need that crashes over him.

“Hey, princess”, Katsuki murmurs lowly then before leaning in to capture Shouto’s lips in another kiss, his free hand coming to rest on Shouto’s thigh, the tips of his fingers teasing along the inner seam of his jeans just high enough to drive Shouto mad with the possibilities that lie beyond, while Izuku squeezes his hand, his fingers warm as he rubs his thumb over Shouto’s knuckles.

This time Shouto doesn’t hesitate to dive in deeper for a taste, swiping his tongue along Katsuki’s bottom lip, and the other man gets the message immediately, parting his lips to grant Shouto better access.

His kiss with Izuku in the storage room and that one make-out session with Iida aside, Shouto isn’t particularly experienced with this part, but he simply does what feels right when he slips his tongue into Katsuki’s mouth, experimentally rolling it against the other man’s, assuming that if it feels good for him, it will probably also feel good for Katsuki.

The blonde certainly doesn’t seem displeased with Shouto’s kissing technique, if the little groan he releases into his mouth is anything to go by, and Shouto dimly thinks that if Katsuki and Izuku weren’t holding onto him so firmly right now, he would simply disintegrate into puddle of goo.

Katsuki’s hand on his thigh slowly wanders higher, making Shouto’s blood rush south violently, and when Izuku suddenly untangles their fingers only to place his own hand on Shouto’s other thigh - so high up it accidentally brushes against the growing bulge in his jeans - Shouto breaks the kiss with a surprised gasp as a hot spark of arousal shoots through his cock.

“Was that okay?”, Izuku asks breathlessly, looking at Shouto with big nervous eyes, and Shouto nods frantically before leaning in to kiss him.

Izuku’s tongue immediately flicks against his lips and Shouto parts them obediently to allow him inside, revelling in the hot wet slide of the other man’s tongue against his own.

Izuku and Katsuki taste very different from each other, but both of them are deliriously intoxicating to Shouto and so very them, he can barely even think straight anymore, sandwiched between them as he is with both of their hands so close to where Shouto needs them the most.

“Can I touch you, shortcake?”, Katsuki rasps lowly by Shouto’s ear, the sound of his voice making him shudder a little, and he carefully nudges his hand a little higher up on Shouto’s thigh as though to underline his point.

With his mouth currently too preoccupied to speak, Shouto reaches for the blonde’s hand instead, grasping it firmly in his own as he moves it up all the way until Katsuki’s palm is pressed up against his crotch, the feeling of it through his clothes nearly making Shouto thrust forward a little in desperate search for friction.

“Fuck”, Katsuki curses, squeezing Shouto a little through his jeans, and Shouto can’t help but moan into Izuku’s mouth.

Izuku swallows the noise hungrily before pulling away just an inch, his breath hot on Shouto’s lips.

“Can I touch you, too?”, he asks hoarsely, squeezing Shouto’s thigh a little.

“Yes”, Shouto affirms, his own voice sounding embarrassingly wrecked in his ears, and Izuku’s hand promptly slips up higher, joining Katsuki’s hand on his crotch and lightly rubbing Shouto through his jeans.

“Oh, fuck”, Shouto chokes out, the sensations so good but not nearly enough. He blinks down, and the sight of both their hands on him is so fucking dizzying he can’t help but jerk his hips forward a little, needily thrusting into their palms.

“You want more?”, Katsuki taunts quietly, mouthing along the side of Shouto’s neck, his hot breath ghosting over Shouto’s ear and making him tingle all over.

“Yes, please”, Shouto damn-near whimpers. He’s dimly aware that he must be coming off as pathetically desperate right now, but fuck, he’s been waiting for years for something like this to happen, so no one can really blame him for his eagerness, can they?

Katsuki huffs out a soft chuckle before fumbling for the zipper of Shouto’s jeans, while Izuku begins to leave a hot trail of kisses along Shouto’s jaw and neck, his hand still stroking him through his jeans.

Shouto barely even knows what to do with himself anymore, so he simply closes his eyes and clamps his hands onto the other two men’s thighs while they kiss and mouth along his ears and neck and jaw as they work open his jeans before finally, finally freeing him from the confines of his boxers.

That first touch - the first touch without any fabric separating them - makes such a vicious wave of arousal wash over Shouto that he almost worries he might just come on the spot right there and then, and he can tell by the size of the hand gripping him, the smoothness of the palm, that it belongs to Katsuki.

“Fuck”, he gasps when a second hand - a smaller, slightly rougher hand - wraps itself around the base of Shouto’s dick, covering what the first hand can’t quite reach, and Izuku and Katsuki begin to jerk Shouto off together, squeezing him just the way he likes it best.

Shouto knows he’s probably not going to last very long like this, the coil of arousal at his core already wound ridiculously tight with years of pent up desire, but for a moment he simply allows himself to feel good.

No more underlying guilt for letting himself fantasise about something like this.

No more deep-seated hurt or sadness about the seemingly unrequited nature of his feelings accompanying the physical pleasure.

Both Izuku and Katsuki feel the same way as he does - and both of them want to be here with him, doing this with him, and it makes Shouto feel like the weight of a lifetime has been lifted from his ribcage, leaving more space for frantic breaths and rapid heartbeats from the building pressure in his abdomen.

When the other two men twist their hands particularly deftly, all Shouto can do is tighten his grip on their thighs, and Izuku promptly shifts his body a little to press his own hard bulge against Shouto’s hand in an unmistakable plea.

Shouto obliges immediately, cupping him through his jeans and subconsciously licking his lips at the hard and heavy length of him.

“You can touch me, too, if you want, princess”, Katsuki murmurs against Shouto’s skin, and well, Shouto certainly doesn’t need to be told twice. He slides his other hand up higher until he finds Katsuki’s crotch, the blonde promptly groaning lowly against his neck at the touch, and Shouto begins to rub and squeeze him over his sweatpants, just like he would do it to himself.

Katsuki teasingly swipes his thumb over the tip of Shouto’s cock, gathering and spreading the precum he’s been leaking, and Shouto feels the pressure at his core tighten dangerously, until Izuku gives his cock a particularly tantalising squeeze while Katsuki’s fingers nudge that sensitive spot right underneath the head and the pressure finally bursts, sending Shouto careening over the edge as white hot pleasure floods his veins and he spurts hotly over Katsuki and Izuku’s hands and onto his own jeans.

He really couldn’t care less about the filth, especially when he feels both of them press needily into his hands, and when he finally opens his eyes again, his breathing still laboured and unsteady, he finds both of them looking at him with expressions somewhere between smug and desperately turned on.

“Bedroom?”, he suggests hoarsely, his voice sounding so fucked out he barely recognises it as his own, and his friends- no, boyfriends, nod frantically as they unceremoniously wipe their hands on Shouto’s already soiled jeans before scrambling off the couch.

Shouto’s knees feel a bit wobbly as he clambers to his feet, but Katsuki and Izuku immediately interlace their fingers with his to steady him, and as the three of them hurry off to the first bedroom they can reach, Shouto’s heart beating wildly in his chest with the sheer magnitude of his feelings for the two of them, he thinks that as long as he has his partners by his side, nothing and no one could ever hurt him.

***

It hurts.

Touya’s stupid heart hurts.

It has been three days since his detrimentally life-changing realisation about his feelings for Keigo, and he has not been having a great time since then, to put it mildly.

For a lack of knowing what else to do, he has been putting on the performance of his life - well, okay, his dramatic identity reveal during the war with the Paranormal Liberation Front might still take the cake there - pretending that everything is perfectly normal and totally fine for every single minute he has spent with Keigo ever since they said goodbye in Touya’s hallway that portentous morning.

Nothing has happened between them since that day - Keigo hasn’t initiated anything and neither has Touya, although he has definitely noticed the hero giving him these looks, like he’s willing him to make a move on him, but Touya has done no such thing.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to - god, he wants it so badly his entire body is practically aching for it, aching to feel the hero again, and perhaps even more so since he realised how much he really cared about him - but he kind of feels like he’d be betraying the other man’s trust if he initiated anything sexual between them while keeping his feelings a secret, and every time he tries to picture himself in any sort of intimate scenario with Keigo now, his traitorous brain helpfully reminds him that it’s most likely all just physical for the hero, and no matter what kind of deep emotional attachment Touya may feel for him, it’s probably unrequited.

So Touya has been stubbornly resisting the desire to be reckless, keeping all his feelings locked away in his heart and stewing in them silently instead.

Keigo’s brief evening check-in after they finished fixing his flat on that fatal Monday aside, they have only seen each other for their usual two-hour daily surveillance hangouts, engaging in harmlessly trivial chatter about everything and nothing or trying to kick each other’s arses at video games, but every minute Touya has to spend sitting next to Keigo - so close it would be awfully easy to reach out and touch him - and acting like everything is normal, like the hero’s mere presence by his side doesn’t make his stupid heart race infuriatingly in his chest, feels like utter torture to him.

Today is no different, and Touya’s only solace is that Shouto, who texted him earlier that he would stop by at noon “bearing good news”, arrives with utmost punctuality, effectively preventing Keigo from staying any longer than he absolutely needs to.

The hero follows Touya into the hallway when he goes to open the door for his brother and busies himself with putting on his shoes in the genkan as Shouto steps inside, carelessly kicking his own off before tackling Touya in an uncharacteristically boisterous hug.

“Woahhh, what’s gotten into you?”, Touya asks, huffing out a surprised chuckle as he attempts to regain his balance, clinging tightly to his baby brother - who is apparently big enough now to easily knock Touya over like a wispy little tree in a tempest.

“I’m really happy”, Shouto says against his shoulder, and Touya can actually hear the bright smile in his voice.

He chuckles again, giving his brother a squeeze before releasing him again, only to find the kid beaming at him like he’s the actual sun personified.

Touya quirks a curious eyebrow at him.

“I’m, uh, I’m gonna head out then”, Keigo suddenly speaks up, laughing a bit thinly, and Touya’s heart promptly skips a beat, because for a brief moment he had actually kind of forgotten that the bird was still here.

“Yeah, uh, see you tomorrow, Birdie”, he says a bit stiffly, trying to cover for it with a lazy smirk directed at the hero.

Golden eyes meet his, and for a moment they just hold each other’s gaze, right there in the hallway while Shouto watches them with furrowed brows.

The air around them feels charged, but not in the fun pleasant way. No, it just feels terribly awkward, like Touya’s unspoken feelings are hovering somewhere above them like a thick grey rain cloud on the verge of bursting and drowning them in the consequences of the mess they’ve made - the mess Keigo isn’t even aware of.

The bird’s eyes search Touya’s intently, like he has picked up on the fact that something isn’t right, but can’t for the life of him figure out what and hopes to find the answers written in blue, and Touya desperately wills himself to keep them hidden behind jet black walls.

After a short moment that lasts for a small eternity, Keigo finally seems to shake himself out of it, and he plasters on a bright and breezy smile that is so obviously fake that it actually makes Touya wince internally.

“Yeah, sure, see you tomorrow!”, the hero sing-songs, stepping through the open front door. “Bye, Shouto-kun!”

“Bye, Hawks!”

And with that Keigo disappears into the hallway, the door falling shut behind him, and Touya kind of just stares after him a bit stupidly, a dull ache curling in his chest.

He really wishes things were different. Wishes they were different people in some different, far-off universe - a universe where they could just be two regular guys, no heroes or villains or complicated pasts, and fall in love with each other the way normal people do.

The concept of living a normal life - right from the start, without abusive fathers or broken homes, without burning and death - is so utterly foreign to Touya the thought seems kind of ridiculous, and he’s pretty sure Keigo would feel similarly in that regard.

Still, on some level, it’s a nice notion to entertain.

“Nii-san?”, Shouto’s voice suddenly snaps him back to the less than fortunate reality. “Are you okay?”, he questions, frowning at Touya a bit concernedly, so Touya forces his mouth into something vaguely resembling a smile and gives the kid a reassuring nod.

“Yeah, just spaced out for a moment. Now, wanna go sit down and tell me what’s got you in such a good mood?”, he suggests then, gesturing towards the living room - not just to evade any further questioning, but also because he’s genuinely curious.

The kid immediately starts to beam at him again, and after a quick stop in the kitchen to make tea, the two brothers head over to the living room together and settle down on the couch, steaming hot mugs on the coffee table in front of them.

“Alright, what’s going on?”, Touya asks then, shifting a bit to face Shouto, because he can tell his brother is practically bursting with whatever’s got him so giddy.

“I have two boyfriends now”, he announces excitedly, his smile so wide it must hurt his cheeks and his eyes sparkling with something Touya has never seen there before.

“You what?”, he asks, blinking a bit bemusedly, because he’s definitely going to need a bit more explaining than that.

“I’m in a relationship with Izuku and Katsuki now”, Shouto elaborates, nothing but genuine happiness written all over his face, and Touya finally feels his own lips stretch into a smile at the sight and the - presumably - good news.

“Congrats, baby bro”, he says earnestly, reaching out to pull the kid in a brief one-armed side hug. “You’re gonna have to explain to me how that happened, though”, he adds then, giving his brother a pointed look.

After all, it has only been a little over a week since the last time they sat on this couch together, and that particular situation seems to have done a full 180 since then.

Shouto huffs out a short laugh, scratching his nose a little, before launching into a tale of misunderstandings and happy endings.

He tells Touya about the fundraiser - about how that electric blond friend of theirs apparently physically locked Shouto and Deku in a dark room together in what appeared to be some sort of misguided attempt at matchmaking, and - the most ridiculous part of it - how it actually worked. Apparently Deku kissed Shouto in that dark storage room, and then the two of them had a little heart-to-heart about their feelings for each other as well as their explosive friend, except when they finally got around to telling Explodo-Boy how they felt, they almost accidentally broke the poor kid’s heart instead.

“But then we told him that we also have feelings for him”, Shouto says, the words almost slurred together with how fast he’s talking, “and, uh. Then we kissed and decided to give the whole relationship thing a shot and then we, um-“ He cuts himself off sharply, snapping his mouth shut as his face turns suspiciously pink and he averts his gaze, making Touya promptly pinch the bridge of his nose.

He so doesn’t want to hear about any of that, but he also feels like as the kid’s oldest brother it’s kind of his duty to at least say something to him.

“Just, uh. Make sure you’re being safe. And stuff”, he presses out stiltedly, clearing his throat a little.

“I’m 23!”, Shouto squawks, affronted, and from the corner of his eye Touya can see his face turn another few shades darker.

He grimaces a little and pinches his nose again. “I’m just saying. How should I know whether the old man ever gave you the talk? And hell, even if he did, he surely never considered the possibility of you being with men, so-“

“Okay, okay, I get it! Stop! I’ve been given the talk. I know what I’m doing”, the kid interrupts him frantically, and Touya thinks he kind of looks like he wants to plug his ears with his fingers and sing “la la la la la” to drown him out.

He deeply sympathises, so he holds up his hands in a placating gesture. “Alright, alright. Just doing my job here”, he points out, offering his brother a slightly crooked smile, and while still pink from embarrassment Shouto does seem to look appeased.

“I’m really happy for you, though, baby bro”, Touya says then, his smile turning more genuine.

Shouto’s face instantly morphs back into that sunny expression from before. “Thank you, nii-san”, he replies with a wide grin. “I’m really happy, too.”

Touya can’t help but chuckle a little at that. It’s nice to see the kid so joyous, especially after the events of the previous week, and Touya is really glad that Deku and Explodo-Boy didn’t actually end up leaving his little brother behind to ride off into the sunset together.

Not just one but two boyfriends, huh?

Good for him, good for him, Touya thinks.

Suddenly, a realisation crosses his mind and he feels his smile twist into a delighted grin. “You’re definitely gonna have to bring your boyfriends around here, though. I need to tell them what exactly will happen to them, if they dare to hurt you”, he explains gleefully, and the kid promptly squints at him inquisitively.

“Are you gonna threaten to kill them?”

“That will be between me and them”, Touya replies ominously, but when his brother raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him, he sighs a little and reaches out to ruffle the kid’s hair, purposely getting the red and white all mixed up at the crown of his head.

“Only as your brother, not as a villain”, he admits, rolling his eyes a little. He doesn’t regret swearing off homicide, but it is a bit annoying how his brother doesn’t even pretend to believe him capable of murder anymore.

His frighteningly villainous reputation has really gone down the drain, huh?

“Thanks for looking out for me”, Shouto says then in that bluntly earnest tone of his, and it makes Touya’s heart clench a little.

“Sure thing”, he replies a bit hoarsely, nudging the kid’s arm with his elbow before picking up his mug from the table.

For a short while the brothers simply drink their tea in silence - a comfortable one, not the kind that is begging to be filled with words - until Shouto breaks it again.

“Have you ever been in love before, nii-san?”, he wonders casually, and Touya, in all his pathetic glory, instantly chokes on his tea, shakily setting the mug with the sloshing liquid inside down on the table while breathlessly hacking up his lungs.

“Are you okay?”, the kid asks, eyeing him concernedly and thumping him on the back a little.

“Yeah”, Touya croaks out between coughs. “Wrong pipe.”

“Here”, Shouto says, frowning as he grabs a half-full glass of water from the table and hands it to Touya.

Touya is pretty sure the glass is actually Keigo’s from earlier in the day, but fuck it. He’s had not only Keigo’s tongue but also his dick down his throat. Drinking from the same glass is practically nothing in comparison, so he gratefully accepts it and takes a few sips of the cool liquid, willing his lungs to fill with air again.

“Thanks”, he rasps once he’s fairly certain he’s not going to die anymore the moment he tries to speak. “Why did you ask that?”, he questions then, because he can’t ever fucking leave well enough alone, can he?

Shouto stares at him bemusedly for a second before realisation dawns on his face and he seems to recall what brought this whole near-death experience on in the first place.

“Oh, I was just wondering, because it occurred to me that you’ve never told me anything like that about yourself before”, he explains, brushing his fringe out of his eyes. “Except for the story about your first crush, I mean.”

Ah. Right. If you look at it this way, Touya can certainly understand why the kid would be curious.

Except…

“Well, I haven’t. Been in love before, I mean”, Touya lies stiffly, because fuck, up until very recently that even would’ve been true, and he absolutely cannot tell his little brother about his feelings for his hero babysitter, not to mention their goddamn affair.

He prays to gods he doesn’t believe in that Shouto buys the lie and leaves it alone, but Touya is perfectly aware of how he just sounded, and the fact that he literally choked on his drink at the question probably really doesn’t speak in his favour either.

Unfortunately, the kid seems to choose this particular moment to suddenly become uncharacteristically expert at reading people and stares at Touya doubtfully, his brows furrowed a little. “You have, haven’t you?”, he bores, and Touya tries very hard to school his expression into something calm and neutral.

“I know I’m pretty shit at recognising this sort of stuff most of the time, but you’re kind of easier to read than other people”, Shouto adds then, grimacing a little at himself before offering Touya a slightly crooked smile. “Maybe it’s because you’re my brother.”

Touya feels like his eyes might just bulge out of his head, and he obstinately keeps his mouth clamped shut, lest he accidentally say something to give himself away even more. Why the fuck was he cursed with such a nosy little brother, who has apparently become scarily proficient at decoding his demeanour?

“So, who was it?”, the kid charges on, his infuriating nosiness clearly piqued. “Was it someone from the League? Was it Shigaraki?”

“What?!”, Touya screeches before he can stop himself.

This is so not where he expected this conversation to go.

“What the fuck makes you think I was in love with Shigaraki?!”, he asks, staring at his brother incredulously. “And besides, didn’t I tell you that Shigaraki and Spinner had a thing?!”

Shouto shrugs, undeterred. “Well, he was just the first League member to come to mind”, he explains calmly. “Hm. I guess it wasn’t Spinner either, then. Oooh, was it Twice?”

“No!”

“Mr. Compress?”

“No!”

“Kurogiri?”

“No!”, Touya says exasperatedly, running his fingers through his hair. “I wasn’t in love with anyone from the League, okay?!”

Shouto raises a contemplative eyebrow at him for a moment, but finally appears to accept that answer. “Okay. Someone from the Paranormal Liberation Front then?”, he muses, and Touya’s traitorous breath hitches in his throat, because technically…

“Oh, it was, wasn’t it?”, Shouto exclaims triumphantly, offering Touya what can only be described as an absolutely shit-eating grin. “Hmm, okay, let’s see. Who did you always spend time with there? Do I know them? I guess you mostly stuck with members of the League, but…”

Touya kind of wants to crawl under the couch and hide. He knows he could theoretically just jump in and claim it was some random person from the PLF that Shouto never knew anyway, but he kind of doubts the kid would actually buy that.

And if he’s being really honest with himself, a small and quiet part of him somewhere deep inside almost wants his brother to figure it out.

Because if Shouto figures it out by himself, it won’t be Touya’s fault, and perhaps, it would actually give him the opportunity to talk to someone about how those feelings are eating away at him, and how he’s utterly clueless about what he should do with them.

Without actively having to rat himself and Keigo out.

Without actually having to voice the feelings out loud to another person.

Shouto is looking at him quizzically as his mind seems to run through all the members of the PLF that he’s aware of, crossing them off his list of suspects one by one.

Touya doesn’t have the heart to interfere, so he just sits and watches, until suddenly the kid’s eyes widen a little and a look of realisation passes across his face.

It instantly makes Touya’s heart rate spike with anxiety, but he forces himself to maintain his semi-cool exterior while the kid seems to be contemplating something.

“…is it Hawks?”, he finally asks tentatively, and Touya’s guts lurch as he quickly averts his eyes to his lap.

Last chance to deny it. Last chance to back out.

He doesn’t do either.

He also doesn’t answer, though, simply continuing to stare down himself instead, tucking his hand between his thighs to keep it from trembling.

“Oh my god. It is Hawks, isn't it?”, Shouto questions, his tone notably more tactful than before. “The way you look at him…The nicknames! Oh my god, the nicknames!”, he exclaims then, slapping his hand against his forehead.

“I told you those could also be platonic!”, Touya cuts in defensively, and his voice totally doesn’t sound higher than usual.

It doesn’t.

“Yeah, but you use them on him the same way Katsuki uses them on me”, the kid points out matter-of-factly. “And that turned out to be anything but platonic.”

Argh.

Nearly eight years since that unfortunate kidnapping incident and that explosive blond brat is still giving Touya stress headaches.

“You also always talk about him like he really gets on your nerves, but in a way that makes it sound as though you like it”, Shouto continues, and Touya has to resist the urge to bury his face in his hands and heave out a groan.

Is he really that obvious?

Fucking hell, what if Keigo has also noticed something? But no, surely he would’ve said something if he had, right?

“I’m right, aren’t I?”, the kid asks then, his tone back to something a little more sympathetic, and this time Touya does bury his face in his hands while giving a quick, awfully stilted nod.