Pro Hero! Izuku And His Chubby Assistant Who Has To Reach Up On Your Tippy Toes To Help Him Put On His

Tumblr don't you DARE

They are fully clothed!

(but Tsu'tey my man watch your leg)

That leaf ain't gonna save her

I had a ton of figure skating videos pop up on my FYP on TikTok and I couldn't stop imagining Bakugou falling for a figure skater after only seeing them skate one time.

The music I was listening to while writing this was "Schindlers List"

_________________________________________

Showing up to the rink early for his hockey practice hoping to get some warm ups before the rest of the team only to find you alone on the ice, known to him that you had rented the rink for an hour to practice your short program.

The music playing over the speakers had a chorus of violins playing, the softness of your arms catching his eyes as you glide effortlessly across the ice, white skates moving in a dance like sequence as you performed a triple lutz triple toe loop combo and landing it perfectly, skating backwards.

The gentle smile on your face as you slid across the ice, eyes flickering over to the tall, muscular blonde who you knew as your Colleges Hockey Captain, Bakugou Katsuki. You usually practiced after his team, but decided to get an earlier practice in before your competition tomorrow.

Red meeting your eyes as you held eachothers gaze gaze for a moment before you turned to preform a scratch spin, your program coming to an end as you spun fast in the center of the rink before stopping on a dime the same time the music ended as the silence rang out in the almost empty rink.

Bakugou couldn't take his eyes off of you as you ended your routine, suddenly feeling very warm in the cold building. He didn't know who you were or why he'd never met you before, but he was curious and when his interest is peeked he's going to follow through to the end. You weren't leaving that ice without his number and he wasn't gonna let you go anywhere without him from that point forward.

Beautiful Sounds

Neteyam x Metkayina!Deaf!FReader

Summary: Neteyam finds a way

Warnings: Fluffffffff for daayyys, angst 👀 we are caught up in our feelings, not proof read

A big thank you to @iikatsukii for this idea! I hope you like it, I tried my best 😭😂

Part 2 to this little beauty:

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Hear Me

Neteyam x Metkayina!F!Deaf!Reader Summary: Neteyam thought you were the most beauitful thing in the world, yet you never seemed to respond

Neteyam thought he could never love anything so much until he met you. Learning your clans ways brought new insights to how the world can be so different but still beautiful. You were an example of that.

Even though you couldn't hear, you learned how to dance with elegance from the vibrations in the sand, he saw the patience you had with children, taking the time to guide them and understand what they needed, sometimes better than their own parents.

What really took his heart was how you found the simple joys of everyday life. The look of bliss on your face when the ocean sprays you with its salty mist, the contempt in your eyes as you looked at your family and friends. The love you expressed through your hands and body when you hugged or kissed him.

He thought you deserved to hear more than anyone, which is why after two months of communicating and deliberation with Norm and Max, they finally made the first set of hearing implants for Na'vi. A beautiful aqua to match your skin tone, and water proof so you could hear underwater as well.

As Neteyam watched from the shoreline as you raced your sister on Ilus, he couldn't help but feel nervous. He's practiced so hard with you and the others with sign language and yet he still continued to mess up sometimes. You never got angry or upset, just flashed your beautiful smile and repeated what he was trying to sign so he could practice again.

He'd especially been practicing for something special to you when the time came right, of course getting past Tonowari and Ronal wouldn't be easy. Taking one last glance at your figure, he turned and headed for the Marui pod that he knew your family resided in.

~.~

Ronal hissed and threw a shell at Neteyam which he ducked out of the way of, "You dare ask me such a question! That demon device will ruin her!" Tonowari just shook his head at his mate, she was nearing the end of her pregnancy and was very cranky.

"It'll help her hear! She can finally here all of you and everything around her!" Neteyam raised his hands in the air, trying to calm the angry pregnant woman. "Ronal, maybe she should give it a chance," Tonowari reasoned, Ronal growling lowly.

"You want to change her? You asked us mere days ago to mate and now you want this!? I pray to Great Mother to have the strength to not bury you alive! Skxawng!"

"No I don't want to change her! I want her to experience things that I know she longs for," Tonowari placed his hand on Ronal's shoulders giving her a look to calm down. Ronal did so, but not happily.

Both turned towards the young man, which he took as a continuation, "I promise, I love everything about her. The way she looks at the horizon with longing, wanting to go there and explore. The way (Y/n) wants to join in on everything everyone is doing but knows she can't hear everything, you may not have seen it, but I can. I hate that she cannot experience the wonderful sounds of the world, but if I could help her make one thing...The thing I know she may long for the most happen, I would crawl through viper thorns to do so, so please, let me try this," he begged at this point, taking a knee before the leaders of the clan.

Glancing at eachother, Tonowari spoke for both, "Very well, if she wants to try it, you have our blessing," Neteyam grinned, thanking them as he ran out the Marui pod to find you.

"You know he would never hurt her, Ronal?" Tonowari smiled at his mate gently, who rolled her eyes in annoyance, "Maybe Eywa will give me strength to not bury you, Tonowari,"

~.~

You huffed air laughing as Neteyam grabbed your hand, dragging you through the trees that surrounded the island.

Tapping his hand, he turned to you so he could watch, 'Where are we going?'

'Somewhere private' he replied, your smile wide as you let him carry on guiding you.

Coming to a beach front, your eyes saw a wonderful sight of a hand weaved blanket on the beach with some delicious fruit you adored. The sun was almost the horizon, the beauitful shades of orange and pink beginning to shine on the clouds and sky.

He led you down and helped sit you on the blanket, his eyes holding nothing but love for you. You returned the gaze, hand caressing his face as he lightly pecked your lips.

"I have something, for you," he gestured, you nodding, eyes staring at his figure so you wouldn't miss anything.

Pulling out a blue box from his hip bag, he opened it to reveal two small, weird looking devices. Your eyebrow furrowed, glancing up at him confused. Was this a forest thing? Why did it look like something sky demons made?

"Oh right, um," Neteyam mumbled to himself, licking his lips as he put the box down, hands moving slowly as he thought each sign out.

"These," points to the box, "help you, hear," he tried to keep it short and to the point. Yet this only confused you more.

"I cannot hear, how can these help me?" Your hands were moving quickly, 'I don't understand-' he took your hands into his, holding them close to his chest to try and regain your attention, your eyes narrowed with unease and confusion.

He let go slowly, his hands moving the same time as his lips, "These go in here," he gestured to your ear, "and when turned on, they let you hear," you slowly nodded, Neteyam picking up the box and holding it to you, the sunset reflecting of your eyes as you nodded to him.

Closing your eyes as you felt his hand gently place the small things in your ears, the other holding your cheek in reassurance.

He pressed on something, a small high pitched noise filled your ears which made your eyes shoot open. You looked around frantically, hands covering your ears and the devices from the shock of hearing something for the first time.

Neteyam placed his hands over yours, holding your head as your eyes turned to him with fear. He breathed in and out, eyes trained on yours as you began to copy him, slowly relaxing.

You both moved your hands, your ears twitching as you heard something else. A soft roaring and crashing sound that made you look to the water, eyes filling with tears as you signed, "waves?" His face lighting up and nodding, taking your hand as he helped you up.

You stared out into the giant mass of blue, the sound of the waves flooding every sense you had. The distant calls of birds and animals soon followed, all overwhelming but yet so majestic in your eyes.

Your hands came to cover your mouth and muffle your sobs as you began to cry. The world sounded different than you had ever thought, it sounded better.

Neteyam wrapped his arm around your shoulder to comfort you. Your shoulders slowly stopped shaking as you gazed up at him.

"(Y/n)" he whispered, your face morphing into one of disbelief. He sounded as gorgeous as he looked.

You tapped his lips, a grin on your face as you turned your body to face him completely now. "You can hear me?" He asked, your smile wide as you nodded. "There's something I want to ask you. I thought I would ask like this, but I want to ask you in your own way," he gently caressed your face as you nodded, feeling a small rush of adrenaline from all the excitement.

You never thought he would go through all this trouble for you, this just showing you how much he truly cared.

He held your hands, giving them a squeeze before taking a step back to see your whole body. Also incase he had to run from rejection.

'You are so beautiful,' he started, your eyes narrowing in curiosity, wondering where he was going with this. You were very flattered though as you shyly shuffled.

'When I look at you, I think of home' he started fumbling a little bit, but you smiled at him which gave him strength to keep going. "I want to spend the rest of my life, with you,'

Your mind suddenly went blank, realizing what he was asking, 'Will you be my mate?' He finished with a shy smile, but you were only staring at him with a blank expression.

A cold shiver ran down his spine, you weren't saying or doing anything. Just starting at him.

"(Y/n)?" He asked softly, taking a step forward to grab your fingers, but you jerked back suddenly, your ears flattened as you turned and ran.

Neteyam could only stare heartbroken as you disappeared from view, the sun now down below the horizon.

~.~

'You did what!?' Tsireya signed, but you didn't see it as you were hiding your face in your hands in shame. Tsireya tapped you, your glossy eyes looking at her disbelief ones. 'You left him without an answer? I thought you loved Neteyam!' 'I do!' You began, teeth gritting together, 'why would he want me?' You sobbed, tears begging to flow passed your waterline, Tsireya looking at you in empathy. 'I cannot hear, I cannot talk well, I only babble like newborn baby,' you began to hiccup, 'He gave me these to help me hear, I wish to talk to him like he can with me, but my voice is ugly,'

Tsireya grabbed your shoulders, her look fierce as she shook her head, "No! Your voice is beautiful and unique!" She knew you didn't take the sky peoples devices out, so you could hear her.

And hear her you would.

"Neteyam begged mother and father for weeks before they agreed! He planned these hearing devices for months. He loves you, all of you!" Tsireya exclaimed, your whimpers making her hug you close. "If you wish to speak to him, we will help you," Tsireya declared, her heart breaking for her older sister.

(Y/n) spent her whole life looking after others, even with the loss of hearing. Tsireya felt a few tears slip through her own eyelashes as she's never seen you this upset before. You were always smiling for everyone, the first one out and the last one in. You never told anyone how you truly felt.

Tsireya promised to Eywa she would make it right.

~.~

You avoided Neteyam for days, diving out of sight when you caught a glimpse of the oldest Sully sibling, your heart filled with guilt. You never meant to hurt him, but how could you face him before you were ready.

The Sully siblings, aside from Neteyam, knew what you were doing and tried their best to help both sides, but they still felt bad for their oldest brother.

Your own siblings helped you morning and night in getting your words more precise and clean, the pronunciation being the hardest as you technically never had to speak Na'vi or English before.

You sat in that beach shore cove Neteyam had brought you to only days prior, your eyes clenched in frustration as you tried again.

"oil ngatee kameee," the simple phrase of 'I see you' fell from your lips as you groaned in your throat. You were never going to get it, they sounded slurred together and it was hard to understand.

Taking a deep breath, you closed your eyes and tried again, "oel ngati kameie," this time it sounded better, but you really had to think and enunciate with your lips.

Head falling into your hands, you felt a few tears slip out. Why did Neteyam choose you? There are better girls, ones who weren't at a disadvantage like you were.

Standing up, you turned to see Neteyam right behind you.

You gasped inwardly, taking a few steps back. Neteyam only stared at you with a inquiring look, but you could see the hurt in his eyes too.

'I'm sorry,' you signed, looking down so your bohemian knotless braids covered your face. You couldn't face him. 'I'll leave now,' you made to scurry past him when he grabbed your hand, your breath hitching as you were frozen in place.

He carefully walked around to face you, his face looking solem at your stiff body. 'Why?' He questioned, you feeling tears staring to build up. 'Many girls better than me,' you answered, his shocked expression taking you off guard. 'No one is better than you, I only want you, now and forever,' he signed passionately, your tears streaming down your face as you shook your head.

'I sound like a baby, I cannot talk like an adult,' you desperately tried to get him to see, but he only shook his head at you.

'I have never heard your voice, but your quiet huff bring music to my ears. My heart yearns for yours so that they may beat together. Make their own sound, together. As one," Neteyam emphasized, never seeing you look so down heartened as you did right now.

Lo'ak had finally cracked and told him that you'd been practicing your voice and speech so that you could be better. Better for him. When all Neteyam wanted was you. He was so lost these last few days, never seeing you and his thoughts running wild on why you rejected him.

'Please, I stand here with my heart for you. I only want you, (Y/n)," he whispered, pressing his forehead to yours, his eyes closed in pain as he wished you could see yourself how he does.

"Neteyam," you whispered, his eyes shooting open as your lips twitched. "Yes," you said answered, his face changing rapidly between emotions.

"Y-yes? Yes you'll be my mate?!" He exclaimed, his eyes turning glossy as he realized you'd just spoken to him. You laughed and nodded, Neteyam cackling as he picked you up and spun you around.

"She said yes!" He yelled out, both of you now laughing like idiots as he fell back, both of you landing in the sand.

You rolled over, lips connecting with his with urgency as he gave it right back. Both of you in each other's embrace, fitting perfect together like a puzzle.

'I love you,(Y/n)' he signed, eyes filled with adoration cause you to smile back shyly, "I love you, Neteyam,"

Even though Neteyam had given you the blessing of being able to hear, the most beauitful sound you'd ever heard was his voice.

You couldn't wait to listen to it for the rest of your life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

@eywas-heir @jimfiqs @minkyungseokie

@bealone-prm @thecrazyswamp

@he110hon @urforevermore

@iikatsukii

Why am I sobbing 😭💙🖤💙🖤

Antecedent 

tags: AFAB reader (referred to as ‘mama’), established (kinda toxic) relationship, canon divergence: secret family au (post arrest), spoilers for touya backstory and chapters 349 onwards, hurt/comfort, original child character (‘Kaiyo’; he is your shared biological child), parent todoroki touya, mentions of canon attempted suicide and canon child abuse, themes of generational trauma, family feels, todoroki family centric, villain rehabilitation, dealing with trauma and recovery, second chances

wc: 16k+

You shouldn’t have come. 

There are crowds of press, packed so tightly that getting any closer would be futile, all of them a cacophony of questions and accusations. You’re standing atop a small brick wall encasing a flower bed of hyacinths outside of the hospital, a head above the sea of cameras, watching as a group of heroes — Endeavor and Shouto included — slowly lead Touya towards an armoured van. 

Relief floods through your system for a few precious seconds, overwhelming the hopelessness in your stomach. He was alive. 

One little rumour from a patient in your clinic, an unsure whisper of I heard they’re moving that Dabi kid from the ICU to villain corrections had led you here. It’d been two long, devastating weeks since the final battle. Two weeks with no word from him, two weeks of reading every article you could find about the ‘elusive first son of Endeavor’ and learning nothing. 

The media blackout that came thereafter was the only thing that kept you hoping that he was okay. The Todoroki family, though disastrous and complicated, held some influence in Japan. And though Touya would vehemently try to reject it, they could not allow their surviving first son to be fed to the wolves. 

And wolves they were; yelling obscenities and insults with spitting anger. Legal justice was one thing, but the court of public opinion was another thing in its entirety, a fragile and fickle thing that held the power to sway even government policy. 

Kaiyo stirs in your arms at the noise and you soothe him, rubbing your hand along his back until he quietens, then you tuck away the stray red hair that has fallen loose from beneath his hat. Truthfully you never intended to bring him here, but given recent events it has been hard for him to separate from you, cheeks still slightly pink from his earlier tantrum. 

It’d been damn near impossible to prevent the four year old from learning about the broadcast a few months prior, paired with the sudden less than frequent visits from his father, he knew something was deeply wrong and he didn’t understand it. 

Touya is scanning the crowds lazily, expression impassive to everyone but you. You could see was exhausted, more gaunt than you last remember, but his disinterest only fed into everyone’s fury. 

“Villain!” they’re bellowing at him, fingers pointed and words sharp, “don’t you care about the suffering you’ve caused?” 

He cares, you think, more than anyone could ever understand. 

You cannot look away as Shouto lingers by his brother, the other sidekicks giving them a wide berth. Endeavor is tucked away beside the van speaking with an armed officer, his shoulders hunched forwards in an uncharacteristic manner. He appeared to be ashamed. 

Good, the thought bitter and weighing heavily in your chest. 

Touya shuffles along obediently, wrists out and pressed together against his pelvis. Quirk suppressing cuffs, you assumed. They were bulky, and no doubt uncomfortable. You hold Kaiyo a little closer as you ache, distantly wondering if he’s cold without his quirk. 

After today it was entirely possible you’d never see him again, that your son would grow up without his father.

Nobody knew of your connection to him, something both of you doubled down on after your pregnancy came to light. There would be no way for you to visit or contact him now without suspicion being cast upon your little family. Law enforcement will without a doubt assume you were aware of his intentions, and worst case they would believe you to have played a part in them yourself. 

He couldn’t allow that to happen. And yet, here you were. 

You just needed one last look at him to know he was breathing, living flesh and blood, to know that the only thing you would have to mourn was your relationship. More than anything you needed him to be ok. And he does look different – better, in some ways. The new skin grafts hug his jawbone comfortably, and the rings that once kept him together are gone. 

Being alive meant he still had a chance. 

Touya tilts his chin up, squinting against the flare of the sun, and the corner of his mouth crooks into a smile. It’s the irony, you think, as your own lips twitch. The heavens should have opened by now, rain should be soaking your clothes to your skin, influenced by the utter misery flooding throughout your body. Instead, the day is bright.

As if he can feel it, he turns, and his gaze immediately falls on your figure in the distance. You’re close enough to see the abject fury flit across his features, eyes wide and unblinking as they stare back into your own. 

The hand you have rested against Kaiyo’s back slides up over his hat to cradle his head, his small fingers curled tightly into the fabric of your shirt, drawing Touya’s attention to the boy. 

To his son. 

The anger dissolves like sea foam, it washes away to give space for his grief. This was it, the final goodbye. You couldn’t find it in yourself to hate him for his choices, because it was something he had told you he’d do from the start. 

In hindsight, you can only curse your naivety. 

You’d met Touya a few months after your eighteenth birthday while shadowing one of the senior nurses in the clinic. The place was small, run down and barely funded, but it was valuable work and they were kind enough to give you the extra experience.

He’d been brought in unconscious by a concerned passerby. The skin of his arms has been rough, raised and pale pink, inflamed where they’d been burnt. Barely nineteen at the time, it was nothing compared to what he would do to himself years later. 

“Watch him until he wakes up,” they’d told you, and you did so dutifully until his eyes flew open in alarm. 

Back then his identity as Dabi was makeshift, fresh and unrefined. With the glue still wet between the cracks it was unsurprising that he would slip. Touya. That was how he introduced himself to you on that first day, under the hazy influence of painkillers.

The memory stuck with you throughout your relationship. You’d see it now and then — you’d see Touya plainly behind the veil. Sometimes you said his name as if it was a dare, and he’d hated it so much that he loved you. With you there was no need to exert effort in maintaining his bravado, he could just be. And that was dangerous, or so he’d insisted.

He would disappear for weeks at a time. He always had a myriad of excuses, from expressing concern for your safety to spitting that you were nothing but a good fuck. You could no longer count on one hand the amount of times you’d heard the ‘I’m a villain, you shouldn’t be with me’ speech. 

Touya would leave, and yet you’d still come home to a receipt on the counter, or to your clean sheets unmade. It was laughable, and you loved him. 

The pregnancy was… unexpected. Difficult. If his emotions were a switch on the wall, your growing baby was a finger flicking it up and down incessantly. Mornings full of nausea and nights full of reassurance. You offered him an out, a door that would always be left open, and he refused it. 

Stay and be a bad father. Leave and be a bad father. Those were the only options he thought existed for him. And maybe you should’ve believed him when he told you Kaiyo’s birth wouldn’t change a thing about the path he’d set for himself. 

But you couldn’t accept it. Not as he’d held your boy in his arms, not as the apprehension and fear in his eyes softened into love. Not as he’d laughed and told you, “guess I needed to give one good thing to the world before I die”. 

Sometimes the adoration would become overcast with anguish. There were days he couldn’t even look at Kaiyo because of how much he loved him, reminded only of how little he had been loved by his own family — but he never let Kaiyo see it. 

“Just because he’s too young to understand now doesn’t mean he won’t later”.

The only small mercy is that your son remains asleep, blissfully unaware of what he is losing, and unperturbed by the noise around him. His light, shallow breaths against the skin of your neck are a warm comfort. 

Touya can’t say anything for fear it will draw attention to you both, and you think that alone is punishment enough. 

Shouto stands beside him in silence, surveying the surroundings and eventually following Touya’s line of sight to you. Instinctively you step backwards into the soft soil of the flowerbed, your thoughts offering an apology to the hyacinth flattened beneath your shoe. 

With the realisation that his youngest brother has noticed you, Touya turns and lunges in Shouto’s direction with his teeth bared. It could almost be comical if not for the unpleasant murmurings of the crowd. In the short moment that Shouto is distracted, you jump down from the brick wall and slip away. 

You don’t look back. 

A small part of you had hoped your role in the story had ended, that you now might just move forward as best you can. Instead, you were shadowed by an overwhelming sense of dread everywhere you went. There was little to do besides work and walk, yet you couldn’t help but feel watched. The cashier at your local market, your neighbour, Kaiyo’s teacher, the food vendor on the corner; with just one look you can’t help but to think that they must know, that any day now this false peace will collapse onto you like a tonne of bricks. 

The anxiety keeps you up at night, counting the glowing stars stuck to the bedroom ceiling to pass the hours, tension threading itself into your muscle fibres. Kaiyo was warm where he laid curled at your side, but the loneliness — in all its violent emptiness — made the night colder. Despite it all, you missed Touya, your eyes still searching for him across the futon. 

Remnants of him are still scattered throughout the apartment. Should anyone come looking, there would be plenty of him to find. He’d hated having his picture taken, yet always gave in to you quickly, and you never needed to ask him for anything twice. There were photographs of his lips pressed to your hair, of his smile tucked against your neck, of his arms holding the baby; hand cradled around the crown of his head, his purpled scars a stark contrast to Kaiyo’s soft skin. 

He had treated fatherhood like he was a dying man, a clear red flag that you can only now see with hindsight. He had spoiled the two of you with his time and effort, no matter how uncomfortable it made him, because he knew any day might be his last. Touya was born with inherited wounds that were left to fester. To him, his failure was terminal, and no amount of love would undo that. 

The wood panels are cool beneath the soles of your feet as you pad your way through to the bedroom, bending at your knees to pick up stray toys and socks left throughout the hallway. There’s still an ache in your cheeks, the strain of smiling too long through all the tears and questions from your son that morning before school. You wish you had answers. 

Your shared room looks much emptier with the large futon hung over the balcony to dry. You find a small star in the centre of the room that has fallen from the ceiling. Held between your fingers in the daylight it is dull, a pale yellow, much different to the green glow it emits at night. Touya had bought them for Kaiyo after a series of bad dreams, lifting the boy onto his shoulders and letting him stick them wherever he pleased. 

Another piece of him. As you are slipping the star into your pant pocket, you hear a knock on the front door. You weren’t expecting anyone — rent had been paid, Kaiyo was with his sitter and your neighbours were at work. It sounds again, reverberating throughout the apartment, and the soft hair on your arm lifts in anticipation. 

There is a sense of embarrassment somewhere within you as you creep towards the entryway, keeping your body low and your steps light. You can hear muted, muffled voices through the cheap wood, fingertips carefully lifting the peep hole cover to look through. 

You hold your breath, stunned. There are two women just an arms length from you, both of them beautiful and horrifyingly familiar to you. Rei, Touya’s mother, stands with her head held high despite the nervous fiddling of her hands. Fuyumi, his sister, is clasping the strap of her shoulder bag with a white knuckled grip. 

“Mother, are you sure this is the place?” she asks, her eyes darting anxiously over the surroundings, “maybe Shouto made the wrong assumption”.

Rei is lovely, you think, even with the air of sadness  Her smile is gentle, and her expression softly determined. “The worst outcome to this is that he misunderstood the situation,” she replies, “but if this person is important to Touya then they’re important to me”. 

Fuyumi nods, shifting her weight between each foot. You inhale shakily through your nose, blinking back the dryness in your eye as you continue to watch through the lense. 

“He said… there was a child”. 

Your forehead bumps against the door as you startle, cursing under your breath, lungs tightening as the dread floods your system. The two women freeze alongside you, observing the door cautiously, glancing at one another in silent conversation. 

“If you’re there, we aren’t here to hurt you,” Rei lifts her hand, and rests it against the door in a show of reassurance, “I believe you know my eldest son. We only want to talk”. 

The push and pull of guilt, relief and fear forces the weight of your body to sink forward, drawn to the sincerity in her voice. There is no amount of time or distance that would dilute the loyalty you felt towards Touya. Letting them in would be a betrayal. 

“Please,” Fuyumi’s voice is wet, thickening with tears, “he’s my older brother. He’s refusing to talk about you or— or anything! We just want to—”

Rei turns to soothe her, and you’re reminded of your own parenthood. If something ever happened to Kaiyo you might just scorch the earth in your attempts to find him. It’s hard to swallow the swell in your throat as you watch his sister turn into the touch, seeking that comfort. 

Touya had loved his mother, a difficult thing for him to stomach but true all the same. He’d grieved the attention he never received from her, but you knew he didn’t blame her, and it is that which leads your hand to the door handle. 

Time feels like it’s in suspension. To see them standing so clearly before you without the film of dirt from the glass is still a shock to process. Behind you is a home filled to the brim with evidence of your own criminal involvement, the first photograph they’ll see hung in the hallway is of their grandson.

Kaiyo deserved his chance at having a family. 

“Please come in,” your fingers are trembling where they sit in your pocket, curled around the divots in the star. Please forgive me, you think. 

You step backwards to allow them through, both accepting with a short bow and a quiet thank you. It’s unnerving and tense, their stares lingering along the walls and shelves, the mother and daughter now hand in hand as they take a seat on your couch. 

“Would…” a blunt point of the star sinks into the thickest part of your palm, the sensation acting as your tether, “…can I get you anything to drink?” 

“Some tea would be wonderful,” Rei concedes, her voice full of earnest and so light it’s almost wistful. As you steep the leaves you can’t help but get the feeling she knew you needed more time.

The ceramic cups are old, stained with time and well loved. You fill them with hot water, tendrils of steam billowing warmth across your face, and place them atop the coffee table before kneeling onto the floor. 

Beneath your mug is a clumsily drawn cat, the marker permanently stained into the wood. There are others, too, little marks left by mistake. Faint lines of kanji where the ink had seeped through the paper, hearts and stick figures and stars. Rei reaches her hand out to trace a finger along them, lips pressed thinly in a sad smile. 

“I apologise for our unexpected intrusion,” she tells you, “I’m Himura Rei and this is my daughter, Todoroki Fuyumi".

“Believe it or not I’ve been waiting for someone to find us,” your hands wrap tightly around the hot cup, incognisant of the sting to your skin, “it was beginning to eat away at me a little bit”.

“Then Shouto was right,” Fuyumi mirrors you, keeping her voice soothing and calm as she speaks even as her eyes are tearful. You recall Touya telling you she was a teacher, and you can see why. 

“You did know him,” she says, “it looks like he spent… a lot of time here”.

You hear yourself laugh breathlessly at her tiptoeing of the subject, “he practically lived here until he decided to join the league. After that he stayed away for our safety, I suppose”. 

She nods, seeming to accept your answer, glancing then to her mother in a silent plea for assistance. “Could you tell us what he was like?” there’s a mellow, apologetic tone in Rei’s words, but to whom she was apologising you didn’t know.

“Could you tell us all the things we missed?”

So you sip your drink to smooth the dryness in your throat and it’s scalding against the roof of your tongue, and you tell them everything you know. 

After your first meeting you’d thought about him every day for a week, haunted by the intensity in his eyes and the marks on his skin. You had talked and talked and he had done nothing but listen. While you thought you'd never see him again it wasn’t long at all until he came back to your dingy clinic, this time of his own accord, in need of painkillers and suturing. 

He’d gone straight to you, rudely bypassing the doctors with any qualification in the ward, and shoved some money into the palm of your hand. He was still young, his attempts at carrying himself like a man seemed more like puppetry to you, but still you entertained it and attended to his wounds. 

“Since I’m still not fully trained you’ll need to sign this,” you remember holding out the clipboard to him, your supervisor lingering by the curtains, the impatient tap of her foot echoing in your ears. 

“Touya—” 

Back then his aversion to hearing that name was much greater. Every time it’d passed through your lips was as if you had pressed your thumb on a fresh bruise, and he’d lash out in kind. 

“Don’t call me that here!” 

“Why? Are you running from something?” 

He’d laughed at you with eyes that glittered like he was about to cry, but the tears never came, they never could. “Running implies that someone is looking for me,” his skin pulled uncomfortably taut as he smiled, “there’s no one to run from”.

“He dyed his hair black soon after that,” the mug held between your trembling hands grows cold, your tea mostly untouched and leaving a faint brown ring around the ceramic, “sometimes he would visit me all soaked with rain, and the colour would run down the back of his neck”. 

You pause every so often to offer them a chance to ask questions, but the two women remain quiet, listening raptly to your story. Their genuine trust and willingness to believe you bore a sense of unease, or perhaps guilt that you’d had him to yourself while they’d mourned. 

“Then things eventually progressed to… more,” even with the air of melancholy, you couldn’t help but take refuge in the normalcy of being timid around your partner's family, sheepish as you recount your relationship. 

“Did you love him?” Rei asks, and though not unkind, her question makes you feel unspeakably lonely. 

Loving Touya had felt nothing like a free fall, there was no moment in which you woke up and realised your feelings. It’d been no great feat to love him, no grand prize or climax at the end of a long battle; you saw all the worst parts of him and it didn’t change a thing. Even with all his flaws your feelings only deepened until they hollowed you out. 

Despite it all, you had walked into it knowingly, each step forward towards him a purposeful choice. 

You have only your own hunger to thank. Your eighteen year old self had been fiercely persistent, and however much he denied it, you knew he was drawn to your sympathy. Even though he was never entirely honest you pursued him with the small truths he did offer, motivated by the selfish wish to see him happy. 

“Yes,” in sickness and violence, in struggle and fear; you’d loved him through holidays and birthdays, through time spent apart and nights spent alone, “I love him”. 

“And the little boy, is he your son?”

Kaiyo. An unexpected yet happy accident. Named after forgiveness and the spitting image of his father, a red haired cherub, you both already knew the answer. “You can say it, Ms. Himura,” your smile strained as you run your thumb along the handle of your mug, “he’s our son. Mine and his”. 

Fuyumi exhales shakily, slumping forward like the fight left her body along with it. You can see the moment your confession truly registers, misty eyed and sparing a glance between one another. Turning on your knees, you reach into the shelves of the TV cabinet, grasping the framed photo of your son as an infant. 

Rei takes it from you delicately as you offer it to her with an outstretched hand and traces her fingers across the glass pane, circling the swell of Kaiyo’s pink cheek. It’s a personal favourite of yours — his arms are held above his head in triumph, the lower half slightly blurred from the excited kick of his feet. He’s grinning widely, so much so his eyes are squinted. 

Touya had been the one to take that photo, making ridiculous noises from behind the camera, the ghost of their intermingling laughter still ringing in your ears. 

“His name is Kaiyo and he’ll be turning four soon,” you watch warmly as Fuyumi leans over her mothers shoulder to get a better look, hand clutching at the fabric of her knit sweater, “the pregnancy was unexpected. We didn’t… I told Touya I would raise him myself, but he insisted on taking responsibility”. 

As you recall, the very notion that he wouldn’t stick around had offended him. He loved his son. He’d even cried over the baby scans, dry blood still smeared across black and white where they sit in your bedroom drawer. But you could see how the fear had eaten away at him throughout those nine months, restlessly doting on you and bringing home stolen things for the baby every few days but never being able to touch your growing bump. 

“Then, why did he join the league?” Fuyumi asks, but you were intuitive enough to see the real question between the lines. Why wasn’t any of this enough? Why did he leave this behind, too? 

You’d guessed from the beginning that his relationship with his family was, at best, a strained one. In reality it was worse than you could’ve imagined. The small pieces to his past that he let slip every now and then would always fill you with distress, at a loss for words. 

The reveal of who his father had been all you needed to understand the secrecy, of both his identity and of your relationship. 

“Stain,” you cross your arms over the surface of the coffee table, knees folded beneath it, and resist the urge to hide your face, “he continued to use his quirk so his condition was worsening, and his anger towards Endeavor had been festering for years”.

You ignore their plaintive wince at the mention of the pro, blunt nails curling into your inner wrists as you continue. “Touya felt his death didn’t matter. It didn’t change a thing,” and he had to watch his world move on without acknowledging it, “everything Endeavor did made him susceptible to Stain’s cause”.

Stain’s temporary reign of terror over Japan was the first time he’d ever heard anyone criticise hero society so blatantly. You remember the vengeful kindling in his eyes as he recited the vigilante’s words, your son sound asleep in his arms and none the wiser. 

It was that night, and every night that followed, that the stress had started to gnaw at your chest until you felt your lungs collapse under the weight. Panic gripped you each time he returned home with a new injury, the smell of smoke suffocating and clinging to the futon covers no matter how much you washed them. He carried a feral sense of excitement and restlessness that left you helpless — something had breathed new life into him, and it had not been you. 

Fighting had been pointless, your pleas like water to a ducks back. He loved you, he loved his son, and somehow he had rationalised that burning himself and the world would give rise to a better place.  

“He already died once,” your smile is tight but not as tight as your throat,  “and it did nothing. So this time he’d do it where it couldn’t be hidden, where everyone would have to look right at his self immolation and know their part in causing it”. 

It's then that Rei carefully places the photograph on the table as she lowers herself onto her knees, the frame remaining upright with the support of its stand. With her hands resting one atop the other, she leans forward into a full bow in front of you. 

You’re stunned with arms suspended in the air as you hesitate to reach for her, a swell of tears lining your eyes at her softly spoken apology. Your son watches over the exchange, his presence poignant even through an image. 

“Ms. Himura, please lift your head,” you shift towards her, close enough to thread your fingers over her own, feeling the peaks of her knuckles against your palm. 

“I failed him as his mother,” she says, overturning her hand to hold yours and squeezing, “it was those failures that led to your own suffering. I’m sorry”. 

In your peripheral you see Fuyumi as she moves to mirror her mother, sitting close beside you, fingers ghosting a chill along your forearm where she comes to entangle with the two of you. 

“Please don’t take responsibility for my pain. Besides, it wasn’t always terrible,” you stare at the knot of limbs, comforted by the gentle warmth of their touch, “I don’t think… I’ve ever met anyone who loves as much as your son does”. 

Rei’s eyes fall shut, a faint pinch between her brows, sorrowful as she replies: “I know”.  

Her expression is so full of regret it’s almost contagious, drawing you in and reminding you of your own mistakes. There’d been so many opportunities that you could’ve fought him, could’ve said something, but didn’t for fear of pushing him further away. 

“How did you find me?” 

Your voice cuts through the plaintive silence and you shrink under their gaze as their eyes lift. Fuyumi speaks in place of her mother, her thumb rubbing back and forth over your wrist. 

“Shouto saw you as Touya was being transferred, and in all honesty he didn’t think anything of it until Touya attacked him to keep the attention on himself,” she explains with an amused lilt, “he appeared to be very protective of you”.

Idiot, you think fondly. 

“I assure you he only told my mother,” Fuyumi squeezes your forearm once again as if to comfort you, “he was concerned and wasn’t sure if he just misunderstood. But we wanted to look for you to make sure”. 

“Then, the authorities aren’t aware?” 

“No,” Rei murmurs. 

You’re surprised by just how much you were being upheld by stress, shoulders sagging forward in relief, sinking your teeth into the soft inside of your cheek to withhold a whimper. 

“Thank you,” you say hoarsely, and you repeat it again and again until the two women have swaddled you in their arms, surrounded by the gentle scent of lavender and detergent. 

“You’re family to Touya, therefore you’re family to us,” Fuyumi reassures you, “you don’t have to do this alone anymore if you don’t want to”. 

Family. The prospect almost seemed too good to be true, an enticing offer laid out only to trap you at the end. You couldn’t risk Kaiyo’s safety or wellbeing, but their sincerity is so palpable it’s stifling. 

“How is he?” you ask instead, “is he safe?” 

“This knowledge isn’t available to the public, but he has been moved into a private villain corrections centre,” Rei looks at Kaiyo’s picture as she speaks, and you wonder if she sees Touya looking back.

“He will be undergoing rehabilitation with the hopes of one day joining us for a period of probation,” she continues, turning to you with a soft smile, “rest assured we have no intention of removing his autonomy. Touya consciously chose to carry out his actions and he should take responsibility for it…”

Her voice breaks, “… but we had our own part to play in his creation, and believe he deserves a second chance”. 

It’d sound like a perfect dream if you did not know Touya as intimately as you do. You’re unable to repress the grimace that crosses your expression. 

“He won’t be happy about that,” your eyes fall closed momentarily as you exhale, “he won’t see it your way. You already took his autonomy by removing his choice to die, that’s what he’ll think”. 

“You really do understand him, don’t you?” Fuyumi laughs mournfully, “he’s refusing to cooperate. He was relatively fine in police custody but since the transfer he’s become more hostile”.

The room grows a little smaller with every word. “Do you think it’s because I was there?” 

“Shouto asked twice who you were and Touya attacked him both times. It’s a big part of why he came to me about it, and why we knew we had to find you,” Rei says. 

It would make sense. Touya always smothered his anxiety with anger, a response that allowed him some control or imitation of power, and power meant safety. You knew he found common ground with his youngest brother, that being the reason he ultimately lost to him, but that didn’t mean he trusted Shouto. The thought of him restlessly wondering if you and Kaiyo were in danger causes your chest to tighten. 

“Maybe if you’re able to tell him we’re okay, he’ll start responding to treatment?” 

“Maybe,” Rei nods and then the apartment is veiled in heavy silence. It wasn’t unlike sitting at his wake. You wished he could bear witness to how much love you all felt for him. 

Suddenly, a muted beeping sounds from the thin, mint coloured watch clasped around Rei’s wrist. She sighs and pressed her lips into a thin, displeased line. “I’m sorry but we can’t stay longer. They still get a little nervous if I’m out too long,” she says. 

Right. She too had spent time locked away in a hospital. It must be difficult, you think, to have a mistake follow you wherever you went. A perfect recovery did not mean other people would forgive, or forget. 

Maybe one day, Touya would see that he and his mother are more similar than he realises. 

“That’s fine, Ms. Himura,” you bow forward towards her, and then again while addressing Fuyumi, “I’m grateful to you both for finding us”. 

“And we’re grateful you gave us a chance,” Fuyumi lifts her arms in an aborted motion as if to hug you, but decides against it, “we’d like to leave you with our contact information. If there’s anything you need or… if you’d like Kaiyo to visit, please don’t hesitate to call”. 

Their touch lingers long after they leave. The evening moves on, sun dipping below the seam of the horizon as it always does as if nothing had changed, an unintended reminder of how minuscule your problems really were. Kaiyo is returned home by his sitter, excitedly babbling about his day, rushing throughout the apartment with bare feet padding over the spot where his grandmother had been seated only hours before. 

You’re reminded of how intuitive he is when he curls himself around your thigh, asking you if you’re okay, if you were feeling sick or sad. There’s a guilt there that can only come with parenthood, your depression smothered like a wet blanket as you pull forward a smiling mask to wear, hoping it will placate his worry. 

“I’m okay baby,” you tell him with fingers combing through unkempt red hair, his eyes wide and bright and distinctly your own, “I’m just a little tired”.  

There is an anger that accompanies the insurmountable love you feel when you look at your son. It is difficult to accept his abandonment, to know you will have to be the one imparting that pain into him. So gentle, excitable and considerate of those around him, qualities taught to him by his supposedly villainous parents.

Despite his mistakes and doubts, Touya tried to be a good father, he’d wanted to be one. You suspected a lot of it came from a place of wishfulness, parenting his child in a way he’d wanted for himself, as painful as it might’ve been to realise just how little he’d mattered to his own. And you can see it now — Touya’s inherited wounds are steadily present on Kaiyo, a passing of the torch, and all you can do is try to stop the bleeding.

If you truly thought about it, you could say your whole relationship had carried a disquieting dark shadow beneath its skin, something of a spreading blood wheel. You overlooked it anytime he was callous and unruly, you’d cry and ache but it pleased you to know he still cared enough about himself to be angry. 

Soon after joining the league he’d gradually plateaued, urges satisfied, and you should’ve noticed. 

“Mama, look,” Kaiyo appears and lifts a thin sheet towards you, paper wrinkling under his chubby fingers, “I drawed dad!”

“Drew,” you warmly correct, cradling his cheeks as you duck to press a kiss to his forehead. The drawing is that of three stick figures, each one distinct with features. Touya’s figure has his black spiked hair, and across the lower half of its face is a purple shadow. His scars, you assume. 

It was all perfectly normal to Kaiyo; the sutures and rings, the burns, the ever present smell of smoke. From the moment he could open his eyes, they would follow his father with love and excitement. The admiration would sometimes unsettle Touya, too familiar, too much like looking into a reflection. 

“It’s brilliant, baby,” you tell him, gentle as you take it from his grasp, “shall we put it on the pinboard along with the others?”

He huffs, incensed by your request, “but I want to show my friends!”

Therein lies the dilemma. You wonder how often this problem will crop up in the years to come, how quickly you might run out of acceptable excuses as he becomes old enough to understand. Dabi was too easily recognised, even in your son's amateur rendition of him. 

“I really love this one though Kai, it has all of us,” you twist your lips into a cartoonish pout, pulling the sweet sound of a laugh from him, “please can I keep it?”

His childish glare withers as he fights a smile, the restrained happiness plain on his face and entirely contagious. “Ok mama, I guess,” he relents, innocent and forgiving, head tilted and cheeks pink under your praise. In moments like this, you can truly understand a parent's wish to freeze time. 

You recall Touya’s claim of putting good into the world before his death. You too could hardly believe that you’d raised such an unequivocally good little boy. But as you watch your son appraise his art with an excited wiggle, you’re reminded that children are not a tool for redemption. 

“I love you,” I promise I’ll be better for you, “and dad loves you too. How about we draw him another picture? I’ll do one aswell". 

“Okay!” he takes your hand and begins to pull you along the hallway towards his room, your back bent uncomfortably to lessen his reach. Halfway to his destination, Kaiyo pauses, pulling anxiously at the hem of his metallica shirt. 

“When… When is dad coming back from work?” 

That’s right. Work in Okinawa, you’d told him. A terribly flimsy excuse given in a moment of panic. At the time you just wanted him to have a reason to hold onto, to reassure himself with, but it was slowly coming back to bite you. 

“He still has a lot to do baby,” an understatement if you’d ever heard one, “it’ll be a little while. But we can be patient, can’t we?”

His lips purse into a pout, eyes shimmering with unshed tears as he bravely nods, and the thought of Rei’s phone number waiting in your contacts lingers in the forefront of your mind. 

Truthfully it haunts you throughout the rest of your week, stomach lined thickly with guilt. You eat, you work, you walk Kaiyo to school with eyes on every corner. You sleep in Touya’s most recently worn hoodie and pretend it’s his skin, his hands, too attached to his scent to wash it. 

Kaiyo continues to draw, to write and create. He brings graded homework back from school to keep in one of your old folders along with his other keepsakes; just in case Touya comes back, just so he can show him. 

You were looking over some of the old home made cards the night you finally called Rei, reliving another time and wondering if it ever really had been better, or if it’d just been a figment of your imagination. 

It can be difficult to know when a memory has been altered by nostalgia. 

“What’s this?” Touya had said as Kaiyo handed him a Father’s Day card, the inside lined with confetti and star sequins that toppled into his lap when opened. 

“I— I made it for you,” Kaiyo had explained nervously with eyes wide, hands flexing at his sides, “see… that’s you and— and me!” 

“Those potato shaped things are us?” Kaiyo had visibly deflated even with Touya’s playful tone, “this is pretty fuckin’ cool if you ask me”. 

“Freakin’,” you’d gently chided, lacking any heat for it to sound truly scolding at the time, too pleased by Kaiyo’s excited dancing. You recall the relaxed smirk on Touya’s lips and how he’d pressed a kiss to your shoulder, a rare moment of him being truly at ease and present. 

“And the heart, why s’it blue and not red?” 

“Because of your fire, dad!” Kaiyo grinned as he lifted his arms, mimicking the pose of a hero, “I hope I have blue flames, just like you”. 

Fragile. You'd watched on as Touya’s expression became strained, closing the card and setting it on the table, “I guess we better keep it somewhere safe since you worked so hard on it”. 

Into the folder it went. 

You decide to make the leap the following morning, allowing Kaiyo to sleep a little longer while you sift through your shared wardrobe for a suitable outfit. Work had happily allowed you a day off — even though they were chronically short staffed, you didn’t often call in sick so they were glad to give it to you. 

Usually Kaiyo would be dropped off with his sitter, an older woman known in the neighbourhood for fostering children. She’d been around for a long time, had seen and worked with many a criminal, and she understood young people more than you could comprehend. You trusted her with your son, trusted that even if he unknowingly slipped up she wouldn’t say a thing. 

But today that wasn’t necessary. You feel the fabric of the small knitted sweater between your fingers, frowning at the aggravating itch. He wouldn’t wear this, too scratchy, but it was also the closest to nice clothing he had. 

It isn’t like you’re living in poverty, but one mistake and it could very well be a truth for you. Clothes were fine as long as they fit — Kaiyo loved the little band tees his father would bring him more than anything, he didn’t care much for formal wear. 

The unbidden image of Touya’s displeased scowl flashing through your thoughts is enough for you to put the sweater back. Forcing Kaiyo to conform for the sake of his wealthier relatives, indicating that your own reality was something lesser, is something you wouldn’t do. Something Touya would hate you for. 

A small lump curled up beneath the futon covers begins to move. Kaiyo stirs, almost as if he can feel your turmoil, sleep lined eyes searching for you. 

“Ma?” 

“Mornin’, handsome,” a smile pulls naturally at your lips and warmth unfurls in your chest when he reaches for you. Half of his hair is pressed flat to the side of his head where he’d laid. 

He blinks slowly from your lap, his fathers nose wrinkling as he surveys the clothes you’d been mulling over. It’s an unspoken question. 

“I have a surprise for you so I wanted to find something nice for you to wear,” you tell him, hand rubbing along the length of his back. He perks up noticeably, foot kicking out against the sweater you’d just been holding. 

“Don’t like that one,” he says. You laugh, eyes closing for a moment to silently send thanks to Touya, even if he had just been a fleeting piece of your imagination. 

“Thought so,” you murmur, leaning forward to move it aside, “pick something for yourself, then. Make sure it’s something you’ll feel good in, because we’re going to meet some new people today”. 

“Who?” he asks, mouth wet and shaped into an ‘o’ as he fists his hands into another one of his dark coloured t-shirts. 

“You know how a lot of your friends have more than just a mother and father?”

He mumbles a dejected ‘yes’. 

“Well, I know you’ve been missing dad so I thought we might be able to connect with him in a different way,” you explain, helping him lift his pyjama shirt over his head and refraining from pinching his belly. 

“What would you say if I told you… I was going to take you to see your grandma right now?” 

“Grandma?!” he squeaks from behind the clean shirt you loop over his head, frowning then as you help him push his arms through the sleeves, releasing a small noise of complaint. 

“That’s right, your dad's mother,” — your smile dims slightly while he insists on dressing himself, reminded of how quickly the time has passed, how much he was growing — “I guess he didn’t talk about his family a lot did he?”

Kaiyo shakes his head excitedly, bouncing on his toes as he struggles to tug his pants over his clean underwear. He relents and allows you to do up the fiddly top button of his trousers. 

“That’s not all…” 

“More?!”

“You have an auntie and two uncles,” you tell him, and his hands fly to cover his mouth as he begins to dance with excitement. His joy is contagious, you feel it fill you and spill over as you pull him back into your lap, holding him tightly. 

Rei and the siblings, that had been the deal. No Endeavor. Touya may forgive the former, but never the latter. You wouldn’t do that to him.

It isn’t strenuous getting him out the door, but it is taxing to get him to the station, hair once again tucked under a knitted beanie despite the day's warmth. He jumps over the cracks in the pavement, follows the pattern with his feet, stops to greet every stray he sees. 

And you let him. Because his happiness is your own, and you dread to imagine him without it. Maybe it was selfish for you to cover his ears to the cruelty around him. He knew of fear, pain and crime, he knew that people sometimes did bad things to others. But it had never been personal to him, not yet. 

Perhaps the biggest question as a parent was just that — at what point do you expose your children to what may hurt them? 

You had told Rei the cover story ahead of time, embarrassed by your own lies, but she’d been understanding. Gentle. Somehow it only left you more ashamed. 

You wanted to preserve the innocent lense in which he viewed the world, wanted to encase the image he held of his father in amber. Because when you’re a child, the power of those traumas stay with you, chemically alter you; they become the epicentre of your nightmares, they shape your convictions and morals, they fuel your will. Touya knew that more than anyone. 

You observe Kaiyo while he watches the surroundings change, clutching the backrest of his seat as he looks out the train window, propped up on his knees and ignorant of the glare from the elderly woman beside him. Folded on her lap is the morning newspaper, a grainy black and white photo of flames and the words ‘Where is Endeavor’s Villainous Son?’ printed across the front. 

You adjust the hat, his eyes fixed on the moving landscape. He’d never been this far out of the Kanagawa prefecture, Touya’s unease with regards to your safety always taking precedence over the freedom to explore, so you let him press his nose to the glass and laugh as his voice begins to vibrate with the train. 

“Do you remember the names I told you?”

“Yumi!”

“Fuyumi,” you emphasise, tucking the tag by his neck back into the confines of his shirt, “who else?”

He holds out his fist, fingers unfurling one by one as he counts, seeking your praises as he goes. “Fuyumi… Shouto… Natsu…o… Natsuo!”

The two hour journey passes in what feels like a minute. With one blink the train arrives in Shizuoka, slow as it pulls up to the second platform, the anticipation knotting thickly like yarn in your gut. Kaiyo, as perceptive as he can be, is bubbling with too much enthusiasm to notice your inner turmoil. 

You hold him on your hip, arms pressing him close into your chest as the sliding doors part, and step into the throngs of people waiting to board the train. As if you’d been in a soundproof bubble the noise of the city amplifies, a cacophony of voices and cries and whistles echoing uncomfortably in your ears. There are suits everywhere, hats tipped over eyes, too many unknowns in such a crowded space. 

The relief of stepping out onto the clear street almost buckles you. Kaiyo is squirming in complaint, wanting to be put back on the pavement but you hike him up a little higher. You couldn’t let him down, couldn’t let him out of reach, couldn’t let anyone take him. 

“Sorry baby, you can walk soon. I just need to find the car first—”

You’re interrupted then by a low, nasal voice, startling you to pivot on your feet. Behind you stands a large figure, bowler hat held politely to his chest as he bows forward. Kaiyo shrinks into the crook of your neck at the sight of a stranger, sensing your unease. The man repeats your name, the well groomed moustache sitting on his top lip moving as he speaks, curled into spirals at either end. He’s formally dressed, wearing a three piece suit and a large black topcoat. 

“That is you, correct?”

Grappling at your thoughts, you recall the riddle that you had given to Rei after her suggestion of having you picked up. She hadn’t wanted you to make your own way there, adamant that the family staff would drive the two of you to her home, and you gave in only at the promise of a safeword.

You inhale to steady yourself. “What is it that, given one, you’ll have either two or none?”

His eyes soften considerably but it does nothing to soothe the tension, only when he gives you the answer do you let yourself relax. “A choice,” he says, “my apologies. I should have been more considerate of your circumstances”. 

Circumstances. What a kind understatement. 

“My name is Ono Hiroki, I’m under the service of Ms. Himura and will be your driver,” he continues with a well meaning tilt to his head as he leans towards Kaiyo in greeting, “and what is the young master's name?”

You feel your son shift beneath your chin, presumably to look up at Hiroki, but he remains stubbornly quiet. “This is Kaiyo,” the grip he has on your shirt lessens at the sound of your voice, “we appreciate you coming out here to meet us but… please don’t refer to him with that title”. 

Touya would turn his nose up if he heard. You can almost imagine the shiver that may have run down his back just now, wherever he may be, and the thought forces you to hide a smile into Kaiyo’s knitted hat. 

“Of course,” Hiroki assents, and he begins to lead you towards the car. You cringe at how obviously it stands out amongst the more common models, clearly something owned by someone with great wealth and status. Even with having chosen your best outfit, the clothes on your back suddenly felt like straw, cheap and unfit for the occasion. 

The drive is smooth, though your sense of time becomes warped — had someone asked you how long it took to arrive, you wouldn’t have an answer for them. Kaiyo, just as he had done on the train, pressed his nose and fingers to the window; leaving behind murky smudges against the glass. 

As the car pulls to the curb you’re left feeling alienated by the neighbourhood. Worse, Hiroki steps out and speeds around to your door, opening it for you with a reflexive bow. 

It feels… uncomfortable. 

The property itself is walled off from the street and the building is large, though you’re sure that’s only in comparison to your own homes. You’re drawn in by the greenery that surrounds it, though the trees were likely put there for the sake of privacy the garden was clearly a labour of love. 

It appears to be a single story house, the roofs tiled dark brown with broad waves and an exterior hallway that frames around each room. You could picture Rei tending to her garden while her children sat on the veranda in the summer months. 

It was beautiful. 

Hiroki slowly leads you up the path, the gravel between each step crunching beneath your shoes. The pace can be attributed to Kaiyo’s adamance in standing on each individual stone, which the man kindly indulges. 

The entrance is made up of a large sliding door with plaster slitted windows. Hiroki pushes it across and moves aside to allow you into the house. You murmur in wonderment at the width of the genkan, the wall above the shoe cupboard  lined with traditional calligraphy. 

“Yes— it’s fine! I’ll bring them through…”

A sweet, familiar voice echoes throughout the entryway. Kaiyo tucks himself against the back of your knees as Fuyumi rounds the corner, socked feet slipping slightly on the wooden flooring in her excitement. 

Her lips part to greet you, the words caught in her throat as her gaze is drawn to the movement behind your legs. Typically Kaiyo could be quite rambunctious around others, loud and eager to befriend others. Here you can feel his anxiety, how small he must feel in this large, unfamiliar place. 

Fuyumi, too, is at a loss for words. A little pale, teary eyed as she blinks, visibly composing herself in front of you both.  “It’s good to see you again, Fuyumi,” you say as the silence stretches on, taking pity on her. 

Her demeanour lightens, and she appears grateful. Somehow her awkward loss of words and your son's hesitance lent you courage even if you, too, did not have your footing. 

“How about we take off our shoes and make proper introductions?” the question ends with a soft hum, a gentle verbal push, reaching back to pluck the hat from Kaiyo’s head. 

His hair is mussed, cowlicks pointed in all directions after being pressed beneath the yarn. You run your hand through it, wetting the pads of your fingers to flatten some of the more unruly curls down until they’re neat. The red is brighter in the sunlit genkan, and Fuyumi does well to conceal her sharp inhale. 

Kaiyo steps forward, nervously wringing out the material of his t-shirt, and Fuyumi lowers herself to his height as if approaching a cornered animal. Tender with her motions, she reaches out to still his anxious tic, ducking her head to smile where he can see it. A teacher, you remember. 

“It’s so wonderful to meet you Kaiyo. I’m your aunt Fuyumi,” she says. He turns over his wrist and takes three of her fingers into his fist, head nodding forward in what you know to be a bow. 

“Nice to meet you, aunt Fuyumi,” he replies. 

“Don’t worry about formalities, sweetheart,” she uses her free hand to straighten out the hem of the shirt, her eyes flickering over the logo with some recognition, “you can call me ‘Yumi. You are my nephew, after all”. 

Kaiyo straightens his back, overjoyed by the privilege, and looks up to share the feeling with you. If you could read his thoughts you’d guess it was something along the lines of told you her name was ‘Yumi, mama. 

“Natsuo isn’t here yet as he stayed overnight at his girlfriend's dorm,” Fuyumi continues as she rises to her feet, still keeping a firm hold of Kaiyo’s hand, “but mother and Shouto are in the tatami room. She likes having all the doors open on a day like this while we sit together, would you like to meet them?”

“Yes!”. In his excitement he pushes up onto the tip of his toes, shedding his timid attitude and grinning so wide his cheeks begin to pinken. It’s infectious, Fuyumi brightening considerably at his sudden comfort in her presence, and she begins to guide you both through the house. 

Soft spoken murmurings become louder as you approach the open sliding door into what you presume is the tatami room. Kaiyo pauses a few steps before, hidden behind the panel, waiting until you’re close enough for him to wrap an arm around your thigh. 

“You’re ok, baby,” you whisper warmly, “let’s go in together”. 

You enter the room with an awkward gait, slowed by the weight of your son against your leg, the matts firm beneath your feet. Immediately you are embraced by the scent of earth and autumn bellflower. Rei is seated on a pale green cushion across from Shouto, cross legged and holding a steaming cup of tea with both hands, on the table between them is a vase blooming purples and blues. You garner their attention, self-consciousness twisting uncomfortably in your chest as they appraise you and Kaiyo, a part of you always ready to jump to his defences. 

But the two, despite the cool air and unreadable expressions, only seem to thaw as their eyes fall to your son. 

The light knock of Shouto’s mug levelling atop the table surface brings you above water. “Greet your grandmother properly, sweetheart,” you step further into the space and lower to your knees, Kaiyo mirroring your actions with caution, facing Rei with his hands resting politely on his knees. 

You bow forward, thank you for having us Ms. Himura, and watch with fond exasperation as Kaiyo leans until his forehead is touching the tatami in your peripheral. “It’s nice to meet you, grandmother. It’s— it’s nice to meet you, uncle Shouto,” he recites, “my name is Kaiyo!”

You smile at the force behind the words, as if he’d practised them in his mind repeatedly before arriving. Rei appears to come to the same conclusion, returning the words and beckoning him to sit beside her, and Fuyumi ushers you to take a seat by Shouto.

In closing the distance Rei appears mystified, eyeline wet as she blinks back the tears, hands lifting to cradle your son's face in her palms. Kaiyo tenses for a moment on contact, shoulders relaxing as her thumbs graze over the swell of his cheeks. You wonder who she was truly seeing as she looked at Kaiyo, a little boy almost identical to her own. “My hands are a little cold, aren’t they?” her voice is soft, weak. There’s an intonation of grief, of regret, and an apology in her eyes. 

And your son, ever loving and perceptive, covers them with his own as if to tell her it doesn’t bother him in the slightest. Then he shifts closer on his knees until he’s tucked against her chest, her chilled touch running along the length of his back as she holds him. At your side you feel Shouto exhale a short, hot breath of emotion. 

“Tea?”

You look to see Fuyumi has set out more cups, now with a pale cream teapot in her grip, unphased by the temperature as tendrils of steam wisp and dance from the spout. Along the curve of her jaw is a single tear, and she tilts to wipe it on her shoulder with a weak sniffle. You feel it too, pulling the sleeves of your shirt over your wrists to conceal the trembling, lifting your chin to keep the emotions behind your eyelids.

“That’d be great,” you nod, accepting the cup that Shouto slides towards you, “thank you”. 

You’re tempted to thank Fuyumi again as you bring the ceramic to your lips, a slight sting to the skin of your palms and your lower lip, breathing in the potent scent of green tea. This family must enjoy it a little stronger, steeping the leaves for longer, the bitterness heavy on your tongue. There is at least some respite in the distraction it provides — you could not talk if your mouth was busy. 

Kaiyo ignores the silences, leaving his grandmother's lap to squeeze himself next to Shouto. You try not to laugh, the youngest at a loss for what to do as your son looks up at him in wonderment and admiration, though it is hard to restrain yourself at the barrage of questions Kaiyo targets him with. 

“Are you really going to be a pro hero, uncle Shouto?”

“I am,” he replies solemnly, “I’ll be a hero that my family can rely on. Do you want to be a hero?”

“Hell no!” 

“Kaiyo—”

“I’m going to go to space,” he barrels on without a care, too wrapped up in his own passion to recognise the informality, but with Rei’s quiet laugh you realise there was no need to worry. As Kaiyo stumbles over his words about asteroids and comets, about how the sunset on mars is blue and isn’t that so cool, Shouto seems to relax even further. 

“He doesn’t think he’s good at talking to children,” Fuyumi whispers at your side, “believe me, Kaiyo is doing him a favour”. 

Even as the time passes Shouto’s tea remains steaming in his left hand while yours begins to cool, and Rei observes their back and forth with an autumn bellflower petal between her fingers, gently as she handles it like it were something precious. There’s no tension, any growing pains soothed as Kaiyo soaks up the attention, the beating heart of the room. 

“I’m gonna go to space an’ clean up all the junk,” he announces. A goal that you’d heard many a time, manifested in his fathers arms one evening as they’d sat together watching a pre-quirk era documentary about space travel. 

“Pro heroes came along and suddenly we forgot everything that used to be important to us,” Touya muttered, “going to space is—”

“—a hero's job in its own right,” Shouto says. 

You do well not to drop your drink as Kaiyo launches himself into Shouto’s lap, one of his arms outstretched to not spill his own while the other steadies the boy to his chest. Gleeful, childish laughter wells throughout the room, paired with the balmy sun and the whistle of a Japanese tit flitting through the gardens. 

“Dad told me that too,” you feel as the mother, the sister and the brother all hold their breath at the mention of Touya, the one topic they weren’t sure if they could even touch upon, “do you really think so, uncle Shouto?” 

“I do…” he shifts, hugging Kaiyo only after glancing at you for permission, “...and you don’t need to prefix my name with ‘uncle’ every time. You can be casual”. 

“Prefix?” 

“A word that comes before another,” you interject gently, “he means you can just call him Shouto, baby”. 

In that instance your back straightens at the sound of another voice ringing throughout the house, low and distant. “I’m home,” they shout with familiarity, “sorry I’m late!”.

Fuyumi jumps to her feet, leaving to meet the new arrival, and Kaiyo watches her go with a chubby fist curled into Shouto’s sweater. He pats his hand awkwardly to Kaiyo’s thigh in reassurance, “don’t worry, it’s just Natsuo. He’s my other older brother”. 

Kaiyo lessens his grip, tentative as he watches the open doorway, and you can’t help but to reflexively reach out to pinch his cheek. “It’ll be fine,” you murmur. 

Your first impression of Natsuo is that he’s much bigger than his siblings. He must’ve inherited his build from his father and his demeanour in spite of him, because even with the chill that he brings, his grin is refreshing. The type of person that sets you at ease and wordlessly invites you in, that actively wants you to feel welcomed. 

“Wow, you’re really here. You’re really…” Natsuo's throat bobs as he swallows his next words, silenced by Fuyumi’s encouraging touch. Rather, he hastily greets his mother with a kiss to the cheek, and then he settles down at the table facing Kaiyo. 

A litany of emotions flicker through his face, like he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel. Even so, his smile doesn’t waver as he introduces himself to you, nervously rubbing his neck as he bows. 

“And you must be Kaiyo. I’m Natsuo, I guess that makes me your uncle,” he inhales deeply, chest expanding and falling, “you… you really do look like your dad”. 

He sounds mournful. Kaiyo senses the change in atmosphere, though he doesn’t understand it, and the anxiety settles into his restless fingers as they pick a thread loose from Shouto’s sweater. 

Fuyumi lightly swats at him: “Natsuo, you’re freaking them out!” 

He gives a wounded complaint, dramatic only in a way you can find with siblings as he clutches at his bicep, and Kaiyo laughs. Like it was called upon, the sun moves from behind a cloud and brightens the room. 

“Sorry, buddy. I didn’t mean to be awkward, I was just surprised,” he says. 

Kaiyo slides down from Shouto’s lap, the youngest briefly forlorn at the loss before schooling his expression once more. “It’s ok, mama said I look like dad too. That’s why I’m so handsome,” he grins triumphantly. 

Your chest knots tightly at the spotlight it shines on your relationship with Touya, thoughts running amok with assumptions of what they must think of you, whether they approve of how you have raised Kaiyo. But despite your inner conflict the family don’t flinch, in fact — they smile with him. 

“Touya was indeed a beautiful little boy,” Rei briefly looks at the purple petal still held between her fingers, “I have a lot of pictures here. Would you like to see?” 

Kaiyo scrambles, almost knocking the table as he stands, “yes please, grandmother!”

There’s an air of nostalgia as she leans down to take his smaller hand into her own, in the way he looks up with love, height falling just short of her hip. The last time she had seen her children this size had been before she was sent away. You can’t even begin to comprehend such a loss.

“Just 'grandma' is fine,” she assures, and Kaiyo bounces with each step as they leave to find the photographs. 

You realise, then, that you are left alone with the siblings. Fuyumi pours more tea, the sound of running water loud in your ears, Natsuo’s words barely audible to you. 

“I wanted to thank you,” he says, cup in hand with his thumb anxiously tapping the rim, “for being there for Touya when we couldn’t be. For bringing Kaiyo here even when you have every right to distrust us”. 

The words pick away at the composure you’d maintained throughout the morning, their gratitude, while completely genuine, feels undeserved. In the grand scheme of things your relationship to Touya had not changed much at all, perhaps he’d staved off his mission for a while to play house with you, but the outcome was the same. 

“It isn’t you that I distrust,” the ‘Endeavor’ goes unspoken, “I wanted Kaiyo to keep his connection to his father. And you don’t need to thank me, I didn’t…”

Didn’t help him. Didn’t save him. Didn’t stop him. You only loved him. You laid with him in darkness and thought if you held him tight enough that something might crack, that the light might get in. 

“What I did wasn’t enough,” you tell them, the words broken with your wet exhale, “it was your actions, your dedication to understanding him. It’s… it’s you I should thank, Shouto”.

“Still,” Fuyumi is tender as she speaks, her hand resting between your shoulder blades, “knowing that all that time he wasn’t alone, knowing that he had you, it means a great deal to us all”. 

Even if he hadn’t been alone for those few years, there was still a rotten past from before he met you that he wouldn’t touch. Touya, stone faced and eyes narrowed, watching you from beneath the sheets of his hospital bed as if he were a wounded animal. Your slow, telegraphed actions, promising respite. That’s why despite wanting to stay away from you, he couldn’t — because you saw who he was, and you still loved him. The burning flesh, the distended skin, the smoke and the blood. You saw the bodies on the news, you saw the flames across the city, and you still loved him. 

Maybe that was the only thing you got right; because there isn’t much else worse than someone loving the potential of who you could be, or loving someone you’re not. In the end, you think, we all want to be seen first and loved second. 

“I do think he’s worried about you,” Shouto interjects plainly, “ he’s not directly asking about your wellbeing because he doesn’t want to reveal your identity, but the staff say he’s restless”. 

“You can be quite perceptive, Shouto,” Fuyumi says. 

“A friend of mine has told me that before,” there’s a flicker of a smile pulling at his lips and it warms his expression. If you needed to attach a word to it you’d pick fond. 

“Though he also said I make all the wrong assumptions about what I’m seeing,” he exhales through his nose in what you think might be a laugh, “that’s why I went to my mother first. This seemed… too important to be wrong about”.

“I’m truly grateful for your discretion,” you wipe a tear along the heel of your hand, ignoring the sting in your sinuses, “and for your acceptance of us”.

“You’re our family now,” Natsuo’s grin widens, “and I can’t say I wasn’t curious ‘bout the kind of person my brother fell in love with”.

You knew what Touya would say to that. You're too good for me, I don’t want to hurt you. You should’ve seen through it then, with every premature apology. People only say those things when they know they’re going to hurt you. 

Over your thoughts you hear the siblings begin to talk again with affection, your eyes drawn to the empty end of the table. You should be here, you think, I wish you were here. 

Kaiyo returns excitedly with a large picture frame held to his chest, the paint worn and flaking, encasing an old school photograph of Touya. His uniform is buttoned to the top, face youthful and pale, not a scar to be seen. You recall his discomfort with high collared clothing, always irritable against his sutures. 

Following behind is Rei with an album of family pictures. Some of them have been awkwardly cut, some burnt along the edges, some faces notably scribbled over with a pen almost out of ink.

“Mama look, he really does look like me. And dad’s hair was white! Did he colour it like that, too?”

“No sweetheart,” you murmur with gaze fixed to the page as it turns in Rei’s lap, the siblings all gathered around to look, “remember, he told you he had red hair like yours, but it changed like magic”. 

“So cool,” he mumbles in awe under his breath, “dad is so cool”. 

Rei stiffens minutely. Maybe that, too, was uncomfortably familiar. 

The conversation continues into the late afternoon, moving only to sit beneath the clear skies and stretch your legs, Rei guiding you along her well loved flowerbeds. They tell Kaiyo stories of his father, diluted but true for the most part, their smiles tightening with the memories. It feels odd, wrong, mourning a man that is very much alive. You give them a piece of him and in exchange, they offer one back as the hours pass. You come to know another Touya — their Touya — and when you line him up aside your own you find that they aren’t all that different.  

As Kaiyo’s confidence grows with his newfound family he begins to wander. Natsuo lifts him into the air and he laughs joyfully, a sound you wish you could solidify and keep by your breast, and they take off to hide in the house with Fuyumi close behind. 

“Are you sure it’s ok for him to play indoors? I’d hate to leave any mess—”

Rei smiles. The light reflects against the crown of her head forming something of a white halo and Shouto is at her side, eyes softening at his mothers happiness. 

“I assure you it’s alright,” she says, “truthfully I think I’ve missed the mess”. 

You think of toys left astray, crayon smudging cheap wallpaper, juice rings staining the coffee table. Marks of your little boy left all around the apartment. Touya cursing as he steps on a building block, hopping on one leg theatrically to make Kaiyo laugh. Touya spilling the warm bottle of milk as he falls asleep and Kaiyo on his chest, exhausted from a day without rest. 

“I know what you mean,” you reply. 

Shouto only blinks. You couldn’t imagine that he was allowed to make much of a mess at all, and that thought alone makes you ache. His brow furrows then, and anticipation settles in your gut. 

“There was something we wanted to ask of you now Kaiyo is distracted,” he seeks Rei’s support as he talks, and she nods gently before turning to face you. 

“As we’ve told you… Touya is not being cooperative to treatment. In all honesty, we are getting anxious that he will be removed from the programme,” she says with regret, “you are free to refuse. But as you suggested when we first met, I thought he might benefit from knowing you’re safe”.

It feels as if the ground beneath your feet has steepened, a weightlessness flooding through your chest, and you reach for the closest pillar on the veranda to steady yourself. 

“You’ll let me visit him?” 

“Strings can be pulled to get you a visitor's pass,” Shouto confirms sagely, “typically it is for professionals or family. Which you now are”.

You hadn’t even let yourself entertain the idea of being able to see him again. The possibility of hearing his voice, of holding him again, felt too good to be true. 

“And Kaiyo? Where will he stay?” you ask, “I can’t take him with me, I don’t want him to see his father like that—” 

Approaching you from the house is the soft, pitter patter of socked feet. You feel a weight fall on your back, Kaiyo interrupting to wrap his limbs around your waist and neck, giggling into your nape. Natsuo lands unceremoniously on the tatami matts, leaning himself against the inside of the sliding door panels with pink blossoming on his cheeks, “damn, kid. You’ve got too much energy”.

“Your house is so big, grandma,” the words carrying a little embarrassment as Kaiyo says “ours is a lot smaller”.

“Sometimes houses are too big,” Natsuo reassures as he slumps forward to rest his chin against his fist, “you can get lost and feel lonely in a big house. I bet at your place, you can always find your mama, huh?” 

He nods, bouncing on the balls of his feet and rocking your body forward with the motions, “does that mean dad was lonely in the big house?” 

Rei’s hands wring tightly in her lap, the question pulling a forlorn atmosphere over the three, and you’re quick to try and rectify it. “Even if he was, he won’t be anymore because he has you,” you say as you twist your body to pull him into your arms, squirming as your touch curls against his ticklish stomach, “isn’t that right?” 

“Yes,” he stammers between deep inhales, giggles tumbling from his lips and ringing across the garden. Rei reaches to thread her fingers through his hair, the red stark against her skin.

“You are both free to sleep in my guestroom tonight,” she offers warmly in response to your earlier concern, “we will watch him while you’re busy tomorrow”. 

“We can have a sleepover!” Natsuo shouts, the excitement forcing him to sit straight and eyes gleaming. Kaiyo gasps, mirroring his uncles enthusiasm as he clings to your shoulders. Shouto, however, remains plain faced as his gaze flickers between the two. 

“Is it really that fun?” he asks. You hide your abrupt laugh into Kaiyo’s hair as Natsuo’s expression settles into disbelief. 

“What? You’ve never had a sleepover in the dorms?”

“We have a curfew,” Shouto shrugs, and Natsuo guffaws.

“What the f… heck is wrong with your school—”

As they bicker you observe contentment settle around Rei. A gentle breeze passes through the shrubbery and you hear the leaves rustling, light breaking through the canopy above and dancing along the grass. Fuyumi calls everyone back into the house as the scent of curry is coaxed out into the open, and you all make your way to the dining area. 

The night comes sooner than you expect. Kaiyo whines at the full feeling in his stomach, cheeks orange and smattered in sauce. Apparently Rei brought over all the childrens things during her move — everything, from toys to certificates to baby clothes, and you’re offered the hand me downs with a wistful smile. 

Aside from the red sleeves the shirt is white, a flame embroidered into the centre and the word fire written below it. Then you’re given an old blanket, slightly thread bare and clearly well loved. It is a light purple, faded after years of being washed, and dotted with stars. It’d belonged to Touya, she’d said, he always loved stars. Kaiyo clutches it tightly to his chest where he lay across from you on the guest futon. 

“Did you have fun today?”

The covers shift, a tell tale sign that he’s kicking his feet. “Yes mama,” he mumbles, nose wrinkling as he fights to keep his eyes open, “I feel really happy”. 

“I love you baby,” you hum fondly, leaning over to needlessly readjust the covers once more, if only for an excuse to kiss his forehead again, “are you sure you’ll be alright while I’m gone tomorrow?” 

Kaiyo nods, cheek turned against his pillow, jaw already slackening as he succumbs to sleep. It isn’t home, there’s no glowing iridescence on your bedroom ceiling tonight, but the space across from you feels empty as it always does. 

“Watching you two sleep soundly together was the happiest I’d ever been,” he’d said. You have no doubt in your mind that he had been telling you the truth. 

When you're pulled into consciousness it happens gently, the house so quiet that it’s unsettling. You were used to rousing with voices in the streets, car engines spluttering as they passed, thuds from the apartment above your own. Here it’s peaceful, a reality that you never thought you’d come close to, and for a moment you can hardly believe you’re awake. 

The staff offer to make the two of you breakfast but you politely refuse, a possessive twist in your stomach. Accepting help never came easily to you, a deeply buried seed of insecurity in your heart that first leapt to defensiveness. You could feed your son just fine on your own. 

Rei joins you soon after tending to her potted plants, Kaiyo pushing up onto the tip of his toes to kiss her cheek as she holds her dirtied hands away from his clean clothes, passing by you to wash the soil from between her fingers. “Grandma, will you have breakfast with us?”

“Of course,” she smiles. 

The rest of the family slowly trickles into the dining room with slow, sleep leaden movements. A full table, a full heart, a full stomach. Breakfast tastes all the better in their company, even Kaiyo seems to have soaked up the serene atmosphere as he quietly recounts a strange memory he had to Fuyumi. 

Still, the dread begins to settle, your knee bouncing restlessly and concealed by the table cloth. Hiroki enters the house with a deep bow and a lanyard around his wrist, your ID badge clipped securely to the end. “It’s best we leave now to avoid any run-ins with the press,” he tells you apologetically, “the likelihood is low. But I’d like to completely mitigate the chance, if possible”. 

Kaiyo lingers in the genkan, shifting on either foot, fiddling with the strings on his sleep shorts. “I’ll be back later, baby,” you hook your pinky around his and squeeze, “I promise”.

He presses a wet kiss to your cheek and you do not wipe it away, the morning air cooler on the skin where the imprint is left. An off duty officer waits by the curb to follow behind Hiroki’s vehicle — another safety precaution, they say — and he opens the side door on your behalf. 

“What will happen once we get there?” you ask, stare fixed on the streets as they speed past, flocks of people continuing with their days as normal. The thin, plastic card in your hands feels like lead. 

“Upon arrival the officer will escort you to the reception as I am not permitted to enter the building,” he explains while subtly adjusting the rear view mirror to watch you, “you will sign yourself in and then you’ll just have to wait. I’m afraid Master Touya isn’t aware that you are his visitor, so it’s entirely possible he’ll refuse to see you…”

Eventually the words become muffled, a disjointed hum in your ears, and your fingers tighten around the lanyard. You play out every hypothetical in your head, try to script questions in preparation, explanations and excuses. But you come up empty. 

Anything that you think of would be rendered useless as soon as you laid eyes on him. 

Pulling in, you survey the land. The facility is double fenced, double gated, and for all intents and purposes it looks to be a prison. There are patients spread out across the grounds, some lounging in the shade while others gathered under staff supervision. 

Surprisingly you are hesitant to part ways with Hiroki, the man bidding you goodbye with a bow and with promise to pick you up as soon as you’re done. The click of your shoes echoes throughout the building as you walk, the accompanying officer striding ahead of you and silent, beckoning you hastily through the security scanners.

A man stands incredibly tall behind the desktop screen situated atop the main desk, large auburn jackrabbit ears protruding from the crown of his head, paired with two large antlers. As you approach his nose wrinkles. 

“Pass?” he asks, interrupting any chance of you greeting him. You swallow the agitation in your chest and show him the ID card, to which he scans with a handheld device and waits until it beeps. Satisfied, he hands you a clipboard detailing a list of names and tells you to find yours. 

“Write your signature in the arrival slot, and when you leave write it in the departure slot. Wait to be called upon in the seating area”. 

You exhale shakily as you sink into your chair, taking in the room, unable to describe it as anything other than impersonal. You had spent a good deal of adulthood working in a clinical setting, and yet this place only seems to make you uneasy. No colourful posters, no informative leaflets, no magazines for people to read. No stickers by the doors, no colour in the staff uniform, guards posted at every entrance. 

Eventually a red light above the doors to the wards flashes red, a loud buzz cutting through the silence and startling you so harshly your chair scrapes against the tile. A doctor calls your name from the doorway, all eight of her beady eyes observing closely as you get to your feet. 

“The patient is being given forty milligrams of quirk suppressant every four hours while he acclimates to his skin grafts. So rest assured he will not burn you,” — you quickly smother your anger at her insinuation — “since you have a high ranking family pass, contact has been allowed, but if anything goes awry there are guards posted at the door”. 

You’re barely given time to process her explanation or the new information as she abruptly comes to a halt, almost stumbling into her back. All eight of her eyes blink at you expectantly as the door clicks open, inclining you to enter. 

“Thank you,” you mutter as you pass, flinching when the door once again clicks shut. You steel yourself with a deep inhale, lungs ballooning to expend the anxiety spiking throughout your chest, and lift your head. 

The air remains there, held in your mouth so as not to make a sound. Touya stands across the threshold with his back to you, facing the wide barred up windows and observing the other patients. He’s in a loose fitting t–shirt and pants, all white and blending into the rest of the room. Where the collar dips below his nape you can see pink, inflamed skin, and for a moment you are reminded of your first meeting. 

“Finally decided to come look your failure in the eye, did you?” his voice is harsh, like talking through gritted teeth and lilted with sarcasm. You’re frozen in place, muscles tensed as if you were bracing for impact, throat swelling just from hearing him speak again. 

“Hate to say it but there’s no cameras here,” he laughs, a hollow and dry sound as he begins to turn, “so you can drop the fuckin’ act—”

The anger dissipates as soon as he meets your gaze, his seething grin slipping until his jaw slacks in surprise. Even as your eyes sting you cannot blink for fear that he’ll disappear, a wishful figment of your imagination. He’s really here, a few feet from you, flesh and blood and breath. 

Closer now, you can clearly see there are lines of scarring where his previous body had been sutured together. No longer held by staples and rings, the patchwork skin fitting the curve of his cheeks without pulling taut and tearing. He doesn’t wince in discomfort as his expression contorts into disbelief, as his brows pinch and he starts toward you. 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?” 

Even with the obvious ire behind his words you aren’t frightened by him. Your legs carry you to meet him halfway, reflexively reaching out for him in all the ways you had longed to over the past few months, only for him to catch you by your wrists. His grip tightens in warning, answer me he snaps, but his demand goes ignored. You’re focused entirely on how cold he feels, sharp around your forearms, just like his tongue. 

“You’re freezing,” you whisper.

He huffs in exasperation, a sound you never knew you could miss. “I know,” he says, dropping your arms as his hold loosens and you silently mourn the loss, “it’s like this all the fuckin’ time now”. 

“Because you don’t have your quirk?” 

He nods curtly, lips twisting in disdain, the confusion in his eyes sinking through realisation and settling on betrayal. “You’ve been getting cosy with my family, haven't you? It’s the only way you would’ve been able to get in here,” he sneers.

You rub away the chill from your inner wrist, following him further into the room as he walks away from you, pleading with him to listen before he makes any assumptions. “Touya, it isn’t what you’re thinking—”

“Don’t call me that!”

Your own anger steers you then, frustrated by his refusal to hear you.  “Touya. Touya. Touya. Touya,” you repeat childishly until he spins on his heel to glare at you. I’m going to keep your name in my mouth until my last breath, you think.  Arguing, scowling, you’ll take anything in this moment as long as he keeps looking at you. 

“Your mother and sister tracked me down, I didn’t go looking for them—” your own fault, you shouldn’t have been there “—they wanted to help me. They wanted to look out for your son!”

He hums like he doesn't believe it, and the forced amusement in his smirk irritates you, crawling hot through your chest. “I bet you’ve been enjoying all that bastard's money, right? He’s got plenty to throw at you and keep you quiet”.

You almost forget to breathe with how his accusation takes you by the throat, the regret crossing his features being the only thing keeping you in the room. It’s hard to handle his vitriol when it is directed at you, hard to see him like this, so wounded and cornered. In his mind you have gone behind his back, you have sought help from the people who hurt him the most, and you are only here on their orders. 

It’s a cycle he cannot break from. He’s gone again, tethered still to the world, but they are all moving on without him. He’s gone again, tucked away where no one needs to look at him, and they are all better for it. 

“I have not met Endeavor and I have made it clear that Kaiyo will not meet him either,” you tell him firmly, “I have not, and will not, accept financial help from that man. You… I’d never do that to you”. 

He wilts then, partially limbless as he sinks back against the hospital bed frame tucked beneath the barred window, covers still spotless and unused. As you glance up at the star-less ceiling, you wonder if he manages to get any sleep at all. 

“Why are you here?” he asks again, no fight left in his words. Without the bravado to keep him up he looks exhausted, torpid. You join him cautiously, settling yourself on the edge of the mattress. 

“To reassure you that we’re okay. That we aren’t in any danger,” you murmur, splaying your hand out in the space between your bodies, “we’re worried about you, Touya. Why aren’t you talking to them?”

He rests his hand beside yours, stretching out his pinky to hook over your own; the one you’d linked with Kaiyo only two hours before. “What good would that do?” he says, “I’m defective and this is just a waste of taxpayers money. Why let me live in the first place?”

The worst part of it all is the grating monotony in his tone, the total disregard for his own life and wellbeing. “Don’t say things like that,” you rasp, “it isn’t true. You have a real chance to do better now”.

“Fuck you,” he snorts without malice, giving a light shake of his head as he continues, “I was always going to end up here. You knew the path I was going to take from the start”. 

“And so did you, Touya!” 

The words come hoarse as they catch in your throat, heavy where they press against your nerves. Around you the room becomes smaller, stifling, and yet he is still miles from your reach. You’d do anything if only it meant wiping that look of indifference from his face. 

“You knew, and you could have made the effort to change. Don’t act as if this was predestined for you, it was your own choices that led you here—” 

“This wouldn’t be happening if you just hadn’t come looking for me!”

“Of course I looked for you,” you pleaded with him, “what would you have had me tell Kaiyo?”

“That I was dead,” he replies plainly, “he would’ve been better off”.

“You…” fatigue floods your system and you feel yourself sink back against the bed frame “…you truly believe that”. 

You don't sob, don't let yourself whimper, you simply let the salty burn overtake your vision and clog your throat, thick and cloying. “Don’t cry,” he murmurs, “you know I’m bad with crying”. 

“You’re crying too,” and he laughs humourlessly, eyes still dry. Amongst the quiet you can hear people outside talking, the window panel slightly ajar to let in a continuous breeze, carrying in the scent of spring. You shiver, and when his icy touch begins to move away you upturn your hand, interlocking your fingers together to keep him there. 

You can feel him watching you as you appraise his belongings. No character, no personality, everything looks brand new and unused. Compared to your stingy one bedroom apartment tucked away in the sparse Yokohama neighbourhoods, this place was completely lifeless. He must hate it here, waking up in yet another unfamiliar place against his will, treated as if he were something to fix.

Though after everything he’s been through, it must be a relief to do something bad and be punished for it, rather than to be punished for all the things you couldn’t do. 

“How is he?” he asks, ending the drawn out silence. 

“He knows something isn’t right,” you say, feeling the chill along your wet cheeks, “he wants to see you”.

He makes a sound of acknowledgement as he strokes his thumb along the back of your hand. You tighten your grip, still habitually cautious of the sutures that are no longer embedded into his skin. “What a kid wants isn’t always what’s good for them”.

“That’s priceless coming from you,” you huff, and he knocks his shoulder against yours in response. Bittersweet, you recall how you sat beside him on a hospital bed just like this five years ago, IV hooked into his veins to ward off infection. Hair white, skin mottled, growing accustomed to your freely given affections. 

You breathe, the exhale long, and lean your weight into his side. Your hands, still interwoven, rest together in your lap. “We just wanted to be closer to you,” you tell him, your apology unspoken, “Kaiyo misses you. I miss you. Even if I’m angry with you, don’t ever believe that we aren’t thinking of you”. 

The word sorry does not come naturally to Touya, it never has. Remorse was best shown through action, overbearing attention and unnecessary gift giving that only ever left you wondering who he’d stolen from. When he rests his cheek atop your head, nuzzling softly into your hair, you know he’s trying to apologise as well. 

So you recount everything that happened over the past two weeks. Of nightmares and paranoia, of old photographs and starless ceilings, of autumn bellflowers and cultural dissonance. You rush each story, unsure of how much time you would be allowed in this place, nor how often you would be able to visit. And he listens, slowly sagging against you the more you speak, your bodies two beams upheld by the other. 

“Oh, and the driver called him ‘young master’ at first,” a small grin pulls at your lips at his amused snort, the only sign that he was still awake, “I know. I told him right away not… not to call him that. I knew you’d hate that”.

His muscles tense then as an intrusive knock reverberates throughout the room, a white knuckled grip on your hand at the interruption. The doctor from before steps into the threshold and is followed closely by one of the guards, eight eyes blinking simultaneously as she takes in the scene, her expression unreadable. 

“Your allotted time for visitation is up,” she says, her voice softer than before and perhaps even tinted with regret, “I’ll give you a few moments to say goodbye and notify your driver”. 

A part of you wishes that the wordless goodbye you gave back at the hospital by the hyacinth beds had been your last, because this time around it is impossibly harder. If his expression is anything to go by you think, if he could, Touya would freeze your hands together in an eternal block of ice. 

“Touya,” he begrudgingly meets your gaze, “what happened to you was undoubtedly a tragedy. Still you— you hurt people, and you need to accept that. I’m not going to tell you to forgive anyone, you don’t have to, but…”

You lean forward, pressing your forehead to his “…even if others can’t, I want you to forgive yourself”.

“For who I was or for who I wasn’t?” he mutters, so close you can see the stray white stripes in his eyelashes. The doctor clears her throat quietly where she lingers by the door, and so you get to your feet. His throat bobs as he swallows, expression suddenly pleading as you let him go, and you take his face between your hands. 

His cheeks are rough, the sore skin raised under the pads of your thumb. “For all of it,” you say. 

You’d always thought that love didn’t need to be so complicated. Sometimes it was as simple as I see you, and I understand you. Sometimes it was dirtying your hands to make their life a little easier. Sometimes it simply took the form of an illusion, and all you needed was for someone to point out the tangled lines, the true image irreversibly seen. 

“We love you. If that means anything to you, then take advantage of this second chance and let yourself be better”. 

Afraid of testing their patience, you step away from the bed, heading towards the door where your guide awaits. While only four strides, it feels like a lifetime, and you find yourself dragging your feet to stall for time. The thought of leaving him here made your stomach sink, an invisible magnetism tied to your spine and begging you to turn around. 

You startle as the guard suddenly steps forward, recounting Touya’s patient number with warning, but the doctor holds her hand out to settle him. You’re tugged back against a firm chest, familiar if not for the deathly temperature, arms circling firmly around your waist. 

Their presence falls away as he kisses you, and the sensation is new. No awkward angle, no need to be aware of his sutures, no copper tang left on your tongue as you pull back. Once, twice, and thrice — Touya kisses you without regard for time he was wasting, for the people who were waiting to take you home, and you give him every extra second you have. 

“Tell Kaiyo I’ll be out by the time he starts his training at JAXA,” he murmurs. You laugh wetly, finally forced to take your leave. 

“Better make that ten years sooner, you hear me?” 

The door begins to shut behind you and he’s crying again, eyes dry as he calls out to you.

“No promises!”

Out There

Neteyam x Reader, Ao'nung x Reader,

Summary: How do you tell your child the reason you fear the world now, that's where Ao'nung helps fill in the pieces.

Warning: Mentions of character death, Neteyam and Readers daughter is basically Moana from Disney, Ao'nung is stepfather, angst, depression mentions, Post Partum Depression is mentioned,

Note: Was requested from @lazyfnafvideogamesparty I hope you like it!

When you had first met Neteyam as children, you felt the universe pull you two together. Your eight year old self could remember the silly crush you had on him, merely from watching him practice and train with his father and brother.

You found the way he drew his bow back to be an art form, the way his body stood still like a statue waiting for the perfect moment before letting a breath release and the arrow go flying to hit its target dead center. You yourself were training to be a warrior, making the perfect excuse to talk to him and ask for 'tips' when really you would waste the day away laughing and goofing off other.

Neteyam never thought he had to be perfect around you, just himself. The way you would grin while flying your Ikrans together, the breeze blowing your hair back to show him the beautiful face you possessed made him go crazy. The nights you two would sneak under the stars and in the forest, whispering anything and everything to eachother.

Eywa had shown a blessing on you two when under the starry night at seventeen years old, two seedlings had drifted in front of you both. Both seeming to do a dance as they twirled around you and Neteyam, bringing eachother closer, eyes meeting in love and infatuation with one another.

That night you both had mated in front of Eywa, his family and yours happy for the both of you, knowing you two were the best Warriors the clan had to offer, you completed eachother.

However, when the war started back only a year later and forced you to flee to the ocean islands, did everything change for the worst. You and the siblings had to learn the way of water to survive, Neteyam making it bearable as you would work hard during the day but at night you would sneak off together to have a moment of peace and forget everything.

Neteyam and you had impressed some of the warriors in the water clan, showing your strength and bow skills, you were a power couple. Ao'nung would even praise you, even if he tried to play it off as, 'Average for Forest Dwelers,'.

The friendship you three had was something many longed for in their lifetime, Ao'nung and Neteyam had become like brothers during the hard times, leaning on each other in times of doubt and sorrow. You were always there to lift your mates spirits, Ao'nung feeling happy to know you and Neteyam fit eachother perfectly.

Only if it could last forever.

When you had found out you were pregnant, you couldn't wait to tell Neteyam, the grin on your face had you practically glowing. When you began to search for Neteyam, a horn had sounded, calling warriors to action as the Sky People had began another assault.

Pregnant or not, you were going to fight. Sky People weren't going to scare you away, not now, not ever.

Flying into battle, you let out a war cry as you pulled your bow back, firing arrows and taking out Sky People machines left and right. Smoke rising from the part left crashed into the sea and rocks by your hand.

Glancing to your left, you spotted your beloved firing arrows the same as you, causing a cheerful yell escape which caught his attention. You both raised a hand to signal excitement to one another, only for the world to freeze as a bullet shot through Neteyam.

A Sky Person had taken a shot at him with their last breath, your smile quickly morphing into a shock filled gape. The air couldn't escape your lungs, and you couldn't see clearly past the tears that fell rapidly down your face.

Landing your Ikran, you sprinted towards Neteyam who laid on the ground surrounded by other Na'vi. "Neteyam! MaNete!" You cried, falling to your knees beside him on the rock as he gasped for breath.

"Ma(Y/n), I'm sorry," he coughed out, body going ridged from pain and slowly losing oxygen. "No! Not like this! We have so much to do, I love you Neteyam!" You felt your voice waver as you brought his hand to your face, cradling to your cheek as your eyes strained on Neteyams beautiful yellow.

Neteyam could only stutter out one last saying, "I love you," before he suddenly lost eye focus, body going slack and his hand that was in yours going limp.

"NO!" You screamed, ears pinned back and tail whiping wild as you felt your soul break. "Neteyam!" You wailed, "Please Great Mother, not him! Not Neteyam!" You begged, Ao'nung appearing to freeze at the sight.

His best friend was gone, you now grief stricken. He could only lay a hand on your back in comfort as your screams and wails echoed up to Eywa.

Neteyam will never know his child, never know he even had one. All because of the damn Sky People and their greed.

~.~

Sixteen years had passed since that horrible day, your own vibrant life had been ripped away from you. You felt hollow inside, the only warmth you held was for your child and Ao'nung, who stepped in to help raise her.

When your daughter was born, you could only cry as she looked just like her father. Many commented that she would be a great warrior like him, but you would die before she ever saw war. You vowed to protect her, to never let her see a Sky Person or the death and turmoil that was associated with them.

"Unipey! Where are you going?" You asked, watching your daughter try and sneak off. "Mama, I'm just going for a ride, I will be back before Eclipse!" "Not today, there were some sights of Sky People, you will remain here where I can keep an eye on you!" You ordered, watching the frustration build up on her face.

"So what? I have trained, I know how to handle myself," Unipey was so tired of being treated like a child, she was one trial away from adulthood and yet you made it seem like she would break with one wrong step.

"I do not care, you will not leave this Island, go help the weavers make baskets or the healers with their herbs," Unipey pinned her ears back, frustration brimming under her side eye glare but she nodded, stomping back to the way you both had just come from.

When she disappeared from view, you let out a sign, "You're being too tough on her, you can't protect her forever," Ao'nung came up behind you, his hands coming to rest on your shoulders. You felt yourself lean back into him, looking for support.

When Unipey was born, you had fallen into a depression, Ao'nung was there everyday to help. It felt like betraying Neteyam, but Eywa had sent a sign that you both could rely on eachother. It wasn't until Unipey was almost a toddler that you allowed yourself into Ao'nungs arms every night.

"She will be fine, I need her to understand why I need her close by," you gazed up at him, feeling a rush of emotions, "she is all I have left of him. I can't lose her too," you whispered, head nuzzling into his chest as he allowed you to silently cry.

"Would you like for me to talk to her? I don't want to stress you out," his hand placed on your stomach, where you were beginning to show from another life inside. One you and Ao'nung had created.

"Please, before Great Mother doesn't stop me from snapping her teeth that she keeps barring at me," you hiccuped, feeling lost and confused with what to say to your daughter. Unipey really was like Neteyam, always head strong and knew what to do. Fearless too.

~.~

"Mama doesn't know what she's talking about, I know how to handle myself! Boys and other girls younger than me can go out on hunting parties and recon trips, but I'm stuck at home like...like a toddler!" Unipey ranted, pacing back and forth in front of the beach. Her toes just barely touching the water and foam.

"Unipey, come sit," Ao'nung appeared, taking a seat on a nearby rock and patting a spot beside him, beckoning her over. Unipey groaned, trudging through the sand and ploping herself down next to him.

"You know what your Mother does, she does-" "with love, yes Papa, you've told me, like, a hundred times," her yellow eyes couldn't roll any further back, Ao'nung silently chuckling as the face she made reminded him so much of Neteyam.

"Unipey, your Mother was once like you, always wanting to venture out and see what there was to see," Ao'nung paused for a moment, "Even your father would go-" "Why do you have to bring him into this? I don't even know him, I know of him, but i..don't know him," Unipey looked down, ears twitching in sadness.

Unipey has heard her whole life what an amazing person her father was, yet she would never get to experience that. She's heard many a tale about how both of her parents were the best warriors around, but her mother only acted like a scared guppy.

"Because he is the reason your mother protects you how she does," Ao'nung firmly stated, Unipey looking up at him with slight doubt.

"Your Mother used to fly into battle with the world on her shoulders, so free and wild. Many would yell in excitement knowing that she would be there to protect them and help guide the way to victory. Your Father was always beside her, both a view of fearlessness and ferositicy," Ao'nung couldn't help but think back to those good days, the days when you three would tear havoc in battles side by side.

"But your mother, she couldn't save your father," Ao'nung felt his tail twitch with anxiety, his eyes feeling the pressure of unshed tears. Unipey felt every muscle tense up, she had never heard that before.

"Sky People had come, your Mother had just found out about you. (Y/n) was so excited, she tried to rush to tell him but was called to fight, they saw eachother on the battle field, but the Sky People bad taken your father from before her eyes," Ao'nungs voice cracked, a small tear rolling down his face as he remembered the wails that had escaped your mouth that day.

"So you see, she can't lose you too. I think you both are wrong in your ways of going about this whole thing, but your Mother just doesn't want to go through that pain again," Ao'nung looked to Unipey who's eyes held tears, a crushed look on her face.

"Mama, is scared not of war, but to lose me?" Unipey felt her world crashing down, she had held so much anger and resentment toward her Mother, but now all she felt was regret and guilt. Regret for the days she cursed her mother to the air around her, wishing for nothing more than her mother to go away. Guilt for being selfish and not asking why.

"You both long for the thrill of battle and war, but she had experienced the rough side that you haven't yet, so not hate her for trying to keep you safe," Ao'nung brought Unipey in for a quick hug before shooing her off to you.

~.~

Unipey rubbed her hands together, peering around the corner to see her Mother packing away the fishing nets that were used for the day. "Mama?" Unipey called out, you turning to see your daughter standing with an almost scared yet shy stance. "Yes my love?" Unipey found herself drawing a blank, not knowing what to say next.

You stood, walking towards your child with a quick step, "What's wrong? If it's about earlier than-" Unipey threw her arms around you, her head tucked into your chest as she began to cry softly.

"I'm sorry Mama, I didn't know before," you brought your hands to caress her head, confusion closing your mind.

"What are you talking about? Are you hurt?" You pulled back, eyes scanning your daughters face for injuries but all you saw was a broken child needing comfort. "I didn't know about Father, about what you went through with him, I'm sorry for not listening," Unipey thought you would be upset with her, but she saw tears line your own eyes, as you brought her back in and hugging her to your body.

"No, no, it was not your fault. I never should've been so hard, I'm just terrified to lose you, war can be dangerous and it doesn't pick sides," you ran a hand through her hair, a specific bead braided in that was Neteyams. The one from when you both became mates, giving it to your child help remind you who she came from and who you two created.

"I just wanna be like Father, I've heard all these stories and I'm always compared to him, " Unipey sniffles, looking up to you from your embrace, "Please Mama, let me show that I'm my Father's Daughter,"

Ao'nung appeared behind your daughter, giving you a quirked eyebrow causing you to smile softly and nod.

"Alright, come. We will prepare for the next raid together," you took Unipeys hand, leading her to the pod your family resided in.

"What do you think Father would say if he was here?" Unipey wondered, looking to you, catching a small shift in your eyes as you thought back to your first love.

"That he's proud of you," you whispered, pressing a kiss to your daughters head.

I'm a damn mess 😭😭 this was so beautiful but so damn painful 🧡😭😭

Synopsis: Your worst nightmare comes to life after you receive a call well after midnight that isn't from your husband Bakugou but about him. Rushing to the hospital you're thankful to find him alive but when he comes to he asks to see his wife despite you standing there.

Warnings: Angst

A/N & wc: just something quick I whipped up, 3.6k

This is what you wanted isn't it?

All along you begged the Gods for this.

Asking with hot tears streaming down your face that you wished that you weren't here. Not dead but that you never truly existed at all. That no one could remember you and it would be that much easier to be nothing in the wind.

The Gods have a cruel sense of humor, granting your wish, much to your dismay, at an extremely shitty time in your life.

The call comes in the middle of the night, another fear you've had since you married him. Worry clawing up your stomach as your clammy hands reach for the phone. It's Kirishima, it's just Kirishima. He just wants to chat right?

At 2am he just wants to ask about your day doesn't he?

Deep down in the very marrow of your bones you know that's not true. Not even able to fool yourself for a second as your groggy voice shakes with a weak "H-hello?"

Kirishima comes out and just says it. Explains it all but it's as if he's speaking a different language. You barely make out Bakugou and the name of the hospital before the ringing in your ears is deafening. He goes on for what feels like hours as your mind plays out grotesque, horrifying images of what may be left if your husband.

He never got hurt.

Ever.

He promised.

He fucking promised he'd be okay. He always does when he kisses you goodbye. When you say stay safe and he affirms with a hum and "I will. For you I will."

But you didn't say stay safe this time did you? No you spat insults at him, hormonal, pms fueled rage over something he couldn't even control.

He was a superhero. He should be able to control everything.

"Sweetheart, I'm fuckin late." Is what he growled and when he leaned in for a kiss. You leaned away.

"That's it. I'm coming to get you." Kirishima hisses about to hang up when you tell him you're fine. That you'll be there and he can go home to his own worrying and extremely pregnant wife.

You use your quirk, illegally, flying at the speed of light to get to the hospital. Rushing out the syllables of your new last name, Bakugou in such a rush the nurse asks you three more times before you spy Kirishima's hands running through his red mane as he steps outside an ICU room.

Pushing past the nurse, biting your tongue as you rush towards Kirishima. Ignoring his warning as he tries to catch you as you slip under his large arms. Through the heavy door and pulling past the curtain.

It's worse than you imagined and yet still not as bad. He's unconscious, an oxygen mask over his face but thankfully no tube snaking down his throat. You launch yourself at his side, the slow beep from the monitor by your head reassures you he was still breathing.

Still alive.

Your palms are clammy again as it all comes rushing into focus. With each beep comes new information piled on top of the other. First is the pungent smell of cleaner. Disinfecting anything and everything until it's bleaching the lining of your lungs. Then comes the cold, thick plastic of the bed handle beneath your hands. Groaning from your grip as your heart rate increases.

Beep

The stiff blankets, they're scratchy and all wrong. Bakugou doesn't like this type of "cheap shit". He's more high maintenance than you. He likes tightly woven or soft down comforters.

Beep

Red, the bandages on his chest are weeping red. So much fucking color clashing with the white gauze. That can't be right. It'll get on this stupid scratchy blanket. The sharp inhale brings in more sanitation, your breath becomes more shallow. Teeth grinding and competing with the sound ringing in your head.

Beep

It's dark, it's so fucking dark in here you can barely see. Where are his eyes? Why won't his eyes open? You're whispering his name so softly like you do when he's worked overnight and you're leaving for work by mid morning. His crimson eyes always open. Always crinkle when he says goodbye. Why can't you see his fucking eyes?

Beep

Why

Beep

Is he gonna..

Beep

"Hey." A solid hand clamps onto your shoulder pulling you out of your spiral. Bringing you to shore with his rough grip, "Are you sure you'll be okay?"

At some point Kirishima has pulled up the reclining chair for you, offering it silently with one of those stupid, shitty scratchy blankets. You feel your skin crawl and not from the low thread count.

Eyes flickering back towards your husband of three years.

Three whole years and he's just going to leave like this? Like a candle snuffed out by…by

By some damn extra?!

Kirishima watches your labored breathing, he is never going to go back on the promise he made his best friend and the one Bakugou made in turn.

"She's stubborn. Look after her if something fuckin happens."

"I'm staying with you. I'll ask the nurse to-"

"No!" It comes out too quick, too loud as you turn on him like a wild animal. For just a moment you can see it. Dully reflected in his eyes in this damned low light, your reflection. What he sees.

A scared little girl who's about to lose her shit.

You clear your throat, straightening your back before you breathe out deeply.

"Your wife is going to pop any minute. You need to be available for her." You say sternly, pretending this was something so much more mundane. Like you've missed the bus or the taxi Bakugou sent for you.

A small inconvenience, yea that's all this was. You were just going to be late, late to see Bakugou and-

"You're sure?" Thunderous voice threatens to crack, looking over his friend, making it harder on you.

"Yes. You're injured, yourself. Besides your paternity leave starts the second she goes into labor and as office manager I do have a say on that. In fact it starts now." There it is, there's that stern voice he's used to. The light scolding you've always given him and Bakugou for the last five years.

Kirishima seems to give it some thought, a lot of thought.

"Eiji, please I'll be okay." You smile up at him, lips twitching at how difficult it is to turn them upward when all you want to do is scream. Scream until the burn of bleach is replaced from the raw emotion that's bubbling up your throat.

The large man shifts his weight, debating giving you a hug and when he sees your body closed off, hands white knuckled on the bed frame he thinks better of it.

"You better call me if you need anything. At least give me that okay?"

"Okay." You appease him, still forcing the smile and hoping he'll get the fuck out.

Finally he does, staring you down with a soft goodbye and a stern I mean it that you wave off. Until finally he shuts the big, scary door.

Leaving you alone with that sound that is both reassuring and yet nauseating.

Beep

Beep

Beep

And this time you can't hold back the tears.

Crying enough tears to fill up two weeks. Almost drowning in the amount shed as the doctor reassures you he'll wake soon. He has healthy brain wave activity and he's breathing on his own.

"All good signs. Try more of his favorite music."

It's all they can say. All they can give you to cling onto as you replay your last words to him.

Hateful, cruel things.

Over the stupidest fucking fight.

"It's because you're still in love with her!"

Throwing insecurities in his face and for what?

Suddenly his heart rate monitor beeps loudly, quickly chirping the increase in speed as you watch his eyes move beneath his long lashes.

Before they flutter open, looking over at you with… with

With disgust.

Your heart hammers in your chest. Was he? Was he still mad at you?

"H-hey Suki." You go to reach for the hairs that cling to his damp forehead only to be caught in his deadly hot and tight grip, "Katsuki, you're hurting me."

His free hand rips the mask from his face as he looks over at you with harsh set eyes. The intensity weakened only by his groggy state.

"Don't use my given name." A threat that has your eyes watering, "I don't even fuckin know you."

He tosses your hand back into your lap as if you were trash, eyes narrowing to slits.

"Where's my wife?"

"I am your -" But he cuts you off.

"Where the fuck is Momo?!"

Momo, Bakugou's first wife, comes quicker than you'd like. Wrapping her arms around you, sickeningly sweet perfume chokes you out, almost drowning out the harsh chemicals of the room. She came straight from the movie set, long lavish dress fit for the Mafia Princess character she was playing in some new film.

The same very ex wife who you claimed Bakugou wasn't over. Gritting your teeth as she fusses over you, as if you were a delicate thing that could break any minute and not Bakugou who lies under that itchy blanket.

"Momo, darlin." He croaks and she visibly flushes. Rushing to him, spying the blanket as well before she's using her quirk to make something more to his liking.

"Baby why weren't you here?" You can hear the strain in his voice, the emotion he's biting back as she looks down at him confused, "Are you still filming that dumb super hero movie?"

"Bakugou-"

"Katsuki." He corrects sharply, even moving his mask that the doctors fought to put back on to make sure she heard it. Momo looks over her shoulder cautiously to gauge your reaction.

"Katsuki…" It feels odd to form the syllables on her tongue, "I finished that movie seven years ago…"

"Wha-what?"

"I'm also…Ba-" His glare causes Momo to correct herself, "Katsuki, doll, we aren't married anymore. We divorced. You're married to her now."

Momo pulls you into view and Bakugou stares at his ex and "current" wife.

A long, heavy moment of silence passes before the heart monitor beeps furiously. The smell of caramel permeating the room much too quickly before the doctor rushes in.

Just as Bakugou takes in a breath to start yelling, pulling at the mask and almost ripping out his IV his body goes slack. The doctor was barely faster than him, injecting him with something to lull him back to sleep.

Especially since explosives and oxygen did not mix well.

The doctor blinks rapidly having just caught the tail end of the conversation. Memory loss was normal, expected, but possibly six years or more…

Well that wasn't, even with his long history of concussions.

With the quick assessment he turns to the two women in the room. Debating on just how to go about this as bedside manner wasn't always his strong suit.

"What I'm about to say may be difficult for you two however keep in mind this is what is going to be best for the patient and his recovery. Since he is experiencing amnesia we will have to go along with what he thinks is true right now. Just like one would when someone has dementia. There will be less stress on his body if we indulge in his perceived reality."

"For how long?" Momo asks tentatively. Doctor Yashido takes a sharp inhale.

"Until his memories return."

"And how long will that take?" Two different tones ask in unison. One a frustrated bark the other laced with deep concern.

"Could be weeks. Could be months." He swallows thickly, Yashido never was good at delivering bad news and this was almost as bad as it gets, "If they ever return at all."

The hospital floor falls away from beneath your feet. Causing you to plummet into the deep dark depths. Questions buzzing in your head battling alongside the screaming. The sound echoes in your mind whipping up the thoughts of Bakugou having never loved you. Of Bakugou thinking so little of you, of finding you so fucking annoying, like the gnat you were he went and forced himself to forget the last three years of your marriage and taking it a step further by going back far enough to forget you existed at all.

Isn't this what you wanted? What you wished for that night? That you'd wake up and you hadn't existed at all?

Beep

This wasn't about you. Fuck this was about him. Would he be happier with Momo? He never really did say why they broke up. He always said it was "just mutual" and left it at that.

Beep

At least he was alive right? You could watch him from afar again. Watch the star rise as your feet stayed firmly planted on the ground.

Beep

You could forget he ever brought you up in the night sky to dance along with him. It would be easy right?

"Love." Momo calls for the third time, manicured hands on your shoulders, "Why don't you go home for some rest. And a shower."

You stare up at her blankly, at the doctor who gives a curious look before you slowly nod.

"Yea….yea that's a good idea."

Returning the next day proves painful as you see Momo has changed, stunning even in leggings and a cropped shirt. Even took the initiative to alter the decor of his ICU room. Soft yellow string lights, a humidifier, soft fluffy blankets and silky sheets that Bakugou might bleed on anyway if he didn't stop moving around so much.

It's awkward to stand in the corner and watch them interact. To watch everyone else interact with the man you so desperately wanted to see.

And wanted him to see you in return.

But he can't now, he doesn't even know your name. And everytime you come close to the bed he stares at you with such discontent, with suspicion as if you were the dirty liar in the room.

Kirishima falls back, bumping his shoulder into yours gently. You look up at him with deep bags under your eyes.

"Mina is worried about you, ya know. She says you can stay at our place if your apartment is too…much." He offers with a strained smile, you place another lip twitching half assed smile on your own mouth.

"I'll be fine."

Yet the late hours of the night, all alone in your too big apartment, curled into his pillow that is slowly losing the smell of him haunt you the most.

A few more weeks pass and even with Bakugou's restlessness the doctors argue with him about downgrading his stay to general admission. They instead move him from the ICU to the neurology floor, making this the longest Bakugou had ever been in the hospital to date. Meeting even more doctors that now talk to both you, for legal reasons and Momo, for Bakugou's fantasy, about his brain damage.

How there is hardly any and that there were many things about the brain that we as humans had yet to understand.

But that was his whole fucking job wasn't it? To study the brain and unlock its god damn mysteries. Not tell you you were shit out of luck and non-existent to your very real husband who was in such a twisted reality.

It's baffling to see his scans, to hear nothing is wrong. Painful to see the love in his eyes that shine for Momo and not a spark for you.

How odd it is to share your husband with his ex wife.

Sometimes you're brave enough to sit closer to him like you are today. Steeling your nerves against his harsh interrogation as if you were the nasty villain that put him here in the first place. Sitting second to Momo who holds his hand or smooths down his blanket. Watching the days bleed together as her once, almost forced and polite smile turns into something else.

Turns real, genuine.

It makes your stomach churn.

"The fuck are ya still doing here extra?" He hisses at you when he wakes from a nap, Momo shushing him. Scolding him about being rude and he counters.

"What's rude is that she fuckin exists! Why is she fuckin here, Sweetheart?" Your heart falls into your stomach. Throat closing up as your body rejects this.

Rejects everything, especially the sound of his nickname for you aimed at someone else. At someone you're stupidly jealous of. At someone whose fault this could never be and who has only ever shown you kindness.

Sent your flowers on your birthday.

Avoided hero galas the two of you went to.

"Katsuki!" No correction on his name now, Momo having settled into his given name once again and quickly at that.

"No, it's okay. I'll- I'll get us some coffee, Momo." You say abruptly getting up. Wanting comfort from no one but the man that just cut you with his sharp tongue.

He's just groggy. It's cause he's hurting. It's the meds that are saying that.

The same excuses echo through your head as you walk through the halls, air thick with intangible weight as you trudge towards the sludge machine painted in coffee labels.

You wondered what exactly the air was thick with. Grief most likely, of lives forever altered resting on the shoulders of sobbing loved ones who could barely hold themselves up but were now expected to carry the weight of the world.

Or maybe it was resentment, festering anger. Angry that this happened. Angry at God or the Gods or at no one in particular that let this happen to their loved one.

All you knew was that the air was thick with it. Smothering you with every futile breath you took.

Somehow you make it back to the room, muscle memory must have guided you back here. Toeing open the door that you left slightly ajar quietly.

Only to find a sleeping Bakugou, breathing even and heart rate lazy, slow. Momo sighs softly as she pushes his ash blonde hair away from his forehead murmuring ever so softly.

"Why'd I leave again?"

The paper cups in your hands crush easily. The scalding liquid burning in your hands as Momo startles from the sound. But nothing burns as badly as the angry tears you're holding back.

Maybe you should leave. Give these two their happily ever after.

Maybe everyone was right. Bakugou was a lot to handle. Mitsuki had said so herself. Saying you'd never be good enough for her son as long as you stayed weak willed.

Weak hearted.

"You won't last four years with my son. Mark my words. You'll give up on him because he's too good for you, Momo was the better fit."

She muttered them to you as she pulled the veil over your blurring vision before you walked down the aisle to her son.

You never did tell him. And now you never would.

Mind made up as you storm from the hospital room. Biting your lip until you tasted blood as you held yourself back. A war raging inside your head.

He's just lost his memories, that's all this is. No you fucking idiot his love for Momo was stronger.

Soon you're marching up the stairs to your shared apartment, almost snapping the key off in the lock from the sharp turn of your wrist. Rushing inside without bothering to remove your shoes as tears cloud your eyes. Threatening to fall in fat drops as you rummage through the closet for your suitcase. Stacking it haphazardly with random items in the room. A small painting, your charger, random clothes and jewelry. All the while murmuring to yourself before you bully your way into the en suite.

Gathering things here and there before you see it. The box catching your eye that has you instantly nausted.

It's quiet for a moment. The buzzing in your throat and head silenced by your intense concentration.

Before erupting with a raw scream shoving everything off of the granite in one foul swoop.

Shattering his expensive cologne and your pricy perfume onto the wood grain tile. The scents meld together reminding you of hot dinner dates the two of you never made it to. Too busy fucking on the vanity counter, staring at one another in the mirror. Now all that stares back at you is a ghost. Hollow eyes and a heavier heart.

Biting your lip you stare at the black box on the floor, torturing yourself by picking it up. The rectangular shape feels different in your hands, the rounded edges feel sharp as you gently unwrap the gift as if you didn't know what sat inside.

Two white tests. Neatly capped and set in tissue paper. Two solid pink lines on one test and the other written clear as day in digital text Pregnant

With finality you slam the box into the trash with such force the can falls over. The other several tests toppled out indicating the same thing. Confirming what your blood tests results in your voicemail echoed back to you from your OBGYN

Congratulations!

The sound of her voice rings in your head. Was it a "congratulations", was it really?

This is what you wanted right? A baby?

To not exist? To fall off the face of the earth?

Fate is a twisted and cruel thing, giving but always taking its hefty price as tears burn your eyes, bags packed leaving the once shared apartment.

The universe only gave you what you wanted right?

So congratulations, you got exactly what you wanted.

You were finally forgotten.

All of us Thirsty MotherFuckAAASSSS

GOT ME KICKING MY FEET AND WANTING A WHOLE 3 SEASON 23 EPISODE SERIES

b.katsuki + lava Quirk!wife (both Pro Heroes)

☆—a.n; i woke up today feeling feisty lol not really xd just wanted some "i'm crazy as you are" type of love today lmao✌🏼🖤

Bakugou Katsuki is obsessed with you.

And he doesn't even try to hide it.

You're his sidekick. You had trained in his Agency since you were a mere brat doing your internship your first year at UA. Of course, there were literally counted the times you had encountered him in person. The other Heroes that joined his Agency were the ones in charge of the kids. They had told you how Dynamight hated when babysitting time came every year, he wouldn't even participate in those actually. So they would advice to not cross his path.

From time to time, Dynamight would watch their sparrings sessions, gave them a bit of advice–more like mean criticism yell at them. But he had better things to do, people to save, villains to get their asses destroyed by him. He was not going to waste his time with annoying brats like you.

He had heard of you, of course. The one brat that could control and handle freaking lava like it was fucking nothing. Of course when he saw you, he thought his sidekick had pulled a prank on him, joking to see if would be excited about the idea of having someone with that type of Quirk in his Agency. You couldn't be the one with the lava quirk. You looked... normal. Quirkless even–if this were other times and if he would judge people about it. He had changed, okay? Thank you very fucking much. But he did think it was impossible that you were that amazing brat the other heroes were talking about. They had even compared you to him, in witty and determination to become the number one Pro Hero on the ranks, in strength and no mercy against villains, or other heroes and classmates.

When he stood right in front of you one day, towering almost three heads over you and almost one more person's size to the side, Dynamight laughed. You looked like a little bunny caught red-handed, terrified by everyone around you–especially by the size of him–and skittish, almost like what Deku had been as a kid.

That should have been a first warning for Bakugou–never judge a book by its cover.

You have trained in his Agency the three years you had been in UA, and he has never once seen you nor your Quirk on display, nevertheless in real action. He had only heard how good you were in trainings from the other heroes. But he didn't care enough to actually sought-after. He was already fighting Deku for the number one spot on the rankings, he didn't have time for brats like you.

Until one day, a dangerous villain, that created enormous monsters of metal almost to the size of a ten flour building, was causing too much disaster appeared. It was more than chaos, it had been a destruction like no other.

Dynamight nor Deku could contain the motherfucker.

He was bruised, his hands beat with agony at the amount of times he had used his blasts and the push to keep going, his body muscles were screaming for him to stop. A quick glance to his side where Deku was, and the guy wasn't better than him, breathing like his lungs couldn’t no more. Every other hero in the scene was in the same shape.

They were fucking losing.

And then, like an angel sent from heaven–or better said, a demon sent from the deepest hell for the way you fucking looked, you appeared in all your majestic glory, lava making you slide in between them, surrounding you like it was nothing, like strings coming from inside your body, and began a new fight with that fucking villain's monsters.

Bakugou saw –an enamored expression on his face– how you your whole demeanor changed, your skin, your eyes, everything in you became so menacingly, so evil looking, so freaking scary, that if you weren't training to be a Hero, he thought you would be one the most terrifying villains of all times –even more than that piece of shit AFO.

The lava was visible in all your body, and you fought, a crazed smile and eyes opened wide, enjoying the damage you were doing to the metal monsters; your joy was shining bright for everyone to see, as you yelled, "DIE, YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT!" as the monster melted under your hands and body.

He was captivated, fucking spellbound, by the sight in front of him. He fell to his knees, watching you melt every single one of the monster in one more movement of your hand, as lava flowed towards them, capturing and melting them as you stand straight, the expression on your face serious and deadly. You then walked towards the source, the main villain who was creating this chaos, and the guy literally fell to the floor in fear, trying to crawl away from you in tears. When you stood before him, you crouched to his level, and smiled devilishly.

The villain pissed his pants.

And Bakugou's cock twitched.

He then murmured, "I'm gonna marry the shit out that woman."

Deku chuckled, shaking his head and letting his body fall to ground in tiredness. Everything was okay now.

From then on, you were by Dynamight's side all the time. The second you graduated –Bakugou Katsuki of fucking course attended the graduation ceremony– he offered a job on his Agency for you. And you said yes, even though you had options like Deku's Agency, or Hawk's, and even Endeavor had offered you a big place on his, trying to win you by saying that most of his sidekicks were fire-like Quirks and that his mother had a Quirk similar to yours, he could ask her for advice for you. Bakugou's stomach turned thinking he might had won you over that. But before he could finish the sentence, "Would you like a spot on my Ag–", you exclaimed a big YES, smiling warmly and eyes shining in excitement.

He had to clear his throat and look away at your expression, making something tingle in his chest. Was that his heart?

You became his partner then, in missions, in interviews, in meetings with other Agencies when some big villain appeared and they had to join forces. You were always there, not behind him but next to him.

In interviews he would always let you speak about how everything went and thank every body who helped. But Katsuki would look at you. Look as the lava started to dissipate from your skin, slowly turning down the temperature and going back to your normal color. Your hair that became liquid lava slowly became the color of greyish-black rock and then smoothed its way to your normal texture and color. He always felt mesmerized watching the process, and he would look at it any opportunity he got.

It wasn't until one night out with his old friends that Pikachu said, "Dude, tone down your thirst a lil' bit," in between laughs with Raccoon Eyes and Shitty Hair.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

Kirishima patted his back, shaking his head, "Your sidekick, man. The lava girl?"

"What?"

"What we are trying to say," Mina smirked, "is that everytime you look at her, its almost palpable the way you want to eat her."

Bakugou gulped. "Shut the fuck up. I don't look at her like that."

Mina winked at him, "If you say so..."

That night he searched on the internet in his phone for interviews, desperately. Fuck, his friends were right. He did look at you with a fascination and hunger he had never saw himself do. He remembered thinking about marrying you back in the days, but that had been the heat of the moment, right? This annoyed the shit out of him. But watching you again in those videos, as you smiled so kindly to the reporters or other Hero friends or to even civilians while looking so freaking scary when your Quirk was activated, made something stir inside his belly.

Fuck, you're gorgeous. You're everything he didn't know he wanted.

And that's when he decided he would not hide his feelings for you anymore.

So now, a few years after, when you are married to number two Pro Hero Dynamight, people always talk about how your husband always looks at you. How he always encourages you in your fights to "kill those fucking piece of shits, baby!!" as he is very close to you fighting his own set of shitty villains and you encourage him saying "show them who is the number two hero, love!" He looses it then, a blast that ends it all.

They talk about how he would always kiss you after a fight, even after all that adrenaline that makes him want to bury himself deep inside your warmth, he only holds your face gently, gloved thumbs caressing your cheeks lovingly, eyes locked onto each other like the world doesn't exist outside that moment, and he kisses you softly, a simple touch, a cute press of lips that lasts a millisecond so he doesn't burn the skin of his face and lips. And then he pulls one of your hands with his up in victory.

He didn't only win the battles, he won you each and every time he got to simply look at you, be next to you, kiss you.

He is obsessed with you, and he doesn't want to fucking hide it from the world.

I need to call my husband 🫠🫠🫡

Bakugou loves the pitiful whine you make against the curve of his neck when you get tired riding him. Your arms unable to hold yourself up any longer as you press your chest to his, thighs tighten on either side of his hips as you trap the building heat between your bodies.

He loves the way you feebly roll your hips, tired from the exertion as you continue to seek out that delicious friction. The movement barely enough as you throb around his cock, huffing as he lets you sulk a little longer. Strong, calloused palms stroke your thighs as he presses a kiss to the side of your face.

He loves it, because it means you need him to help get yourself off— because you can’t do it without him. No matter how many fingers you shove inside your drooling cunt or how fast you spin circles against your puffy clit it can never compare.

“Please, Katsuki.” You breathe against his neck, warm lips pressed against his pulse point as he finally decides to take pity on you. His hands smooth along your skin before he wraps his arms around you, holding you to his chest as he plants his feet on the bed.

“Can’t even cum without me, hah?” He grins against the side of your face as he starts a brutal pace, skin echos against skin as your nails claw at his shoulder blades, “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ve got you. You just need someone to take care of ya, don’tcha?”

And what Bakugou loves more than anything else is the pretty face you make when he makes you cream all over his cock.

He rasps, “I got you pretty girl, just cum for me—”

And you always do.

Ugh my heart 😭 ❤️❤️

EVERY CORNER OF THIS HOUSE IS HAUNTED. (1)

Synopsis ! Jake had taken you as his own after Tsu'tey's passing, leaving no one to care for you. Things had been good before your relationship with him had blurred along growing of age. You and him fought all the time; argued each other's ear off and tonight was no different-- except words have been said, severing the already damaged bond. Content & warning Jake sully x Daughter!Reader, Sully kids x Sister!Reader Neytiri x Daughter!Reader. (wc; 3104)

Jake knew a saying; held onto it ever since he had resided amongst Na’vi– every person is born twice. While he believed that it meant that the second time is when you earn your place here in Pandora, Eywa had a clever way of broadening the idea. His very children were proof of it.

He thinks it’s the great mother’s way of compensation, perhaps a second chance for him to do better– to do his very best to keep them alive on behalf of those he lost. 

While Kiri was a special case enough, you too were an odd one. 

You are Tsu’tey's daughter. Turns out, he had someone in secret while he trained to become olo’eyktan– when he was supposed to take Neytiri for himself. It was taboo– absolutely wrong to become unfaithful to one’s mate. But following the carnage of the great war, when Tsu’tey had so selflessly sacrificed his life, only then did Tsi’ewa came forward; told everyone of their love and what could have been. She was a simple songstress along Ninat, but it was her round and bulging belly that caught everyone’s attention.

It caused an uproar and understandably so. After all, Neytiri had only announced her rebellion with Jake not long before, but when the people connected the dots themselves and both stories had become one, they understood that their hearts merely yearned for another and no one should have ever dictated otherwise. Arrangements had been made and condolences were exchanged— everyone can only look back and wish that things could have been different.

Jake was supposed to take you under his wing as a way of honoring him– he owed Tsu’tey his life and perhaps an apology as big as so. But after your mother had unfortunately died during your birth, he knew to himself that he had to take you in; not as a responsibility, but as his own blood and flesh. His first daughter.

You were the loudest baby, he recalled. That day, Jake had rocked your body back and forth in his arms frantically, while Mo’at and Neytiri did everything within their power to help Tsì'ewa. Your cries were ear-splitting, enough to wake the whole clan up. 

“Just what do I do with you,” He muttered under his breath, eyebrows knitted in frustration– just where do he hold you? Is he doing it right? Are you hurt? Why are you crying so loud?

“Jake, the baby!” Neytiri’s shout from inside had cut his train of loud thoughts, snapping back to your bawling. He wasn’t doing such a good job. 

“I’m trying, Neytiri– this thing won’t budge.”

Neytiri had emerged from the hut, stomping her way to Jake with a scowl. "That is not a thing, you skxawng!" she exclaimed before gently scooping you up from his arms, cooing softly to you– though it was more like mocking him instead. “Does Jake here make you cry?” She said, patting your thigh soothingly. “He’s not at all pleasant to look at, but you have to get used to it.” 

Almost in an instant, your cries had died down. You babbled along with her, like you were agreeing with her every word. He slowly pulled himself closer to Neytiri, eyes wide with curiosity as he watched your small hands playing with her long braids. “Heh, she has Tsu’tey’s eyes,” He whispers, unable to look away. 

The flap of the hut swinging open was the only thing that got their attention, momentarily away from yours as they looked at Mo’at with anticipation. With a single shake of her head, sorrow surged their hearts, eyes traveling back to your innocent ones. They mourned for you; an unknowing child should never have to carry such grief. They had to make a choice– A responsibility they weren’t expecting to have so early. 

Jake mindlessly trails his finger down your stomach, gently, like you were the most fragile thing. Your little hand wraps around it and it was like you had binded his scattered thoughts into one big understanding. 

Sully. You’re one of them now.

Jake releases a breathless chuckle as he gazes upon his lover and you with a newfound clarity, a perspective so bright it illuminated in his very eyes. Then came an idea– the desire of having children of their own. Perhaps that’s why Neteyam came after only two years. You were quite the ploy; the push they needed to start a family.

You were truly blessed– the genius of your age was undeniable, your remarkable talent soon earning you the admiration of all who had seen it. By the time you turned six, you had already mastered many of the abilities that a hunter would need– your skills with a bow were unrivaled by most of the children your age, let alone those who were much older than you. They'd marvel at your accuracy each time you took aim with an arrow. You could never miss. You had to make sure you didn’t. 

By the age of 12, you had already accompanied Jake in hunts. You had developed a knack for planning, coming up with routes and back-up plans that were often surprisingly effective. You have proved to be helpful plenty of times. You were quick, silent– full of poise. They often wondered if you were an old, seasoned soul trapped inside a little girl’s body. 

But as quickly as the spotlight had shone down on you, it left almost as soon as it had come.

(“What you did today was reckless, y/n.” Jake settles his bow on the table aggressively, emitting a sharp thud. You were just as frustrated, throwing your satchel down the floor of the hut. 

The mission had gone rather wildly, with things not going along the plan. There was another airship– one that no one was aware of. Your instincts jolted your body, immediately throwing an explosive towards it which had it blowing all over the place– its pieces crashing and causing a wildfire. 

Jake argued that there could’ve been a more safer way. One that didn’t have to risk more of our resources and supplies; one that didn’t have to injure the other warriors. Of course you knew to yourself that you did the right thing. You did what you had to do. 

 ‘You could’ve been hurt and got others killed! Just what were you thinking?” He continued to berate you. You jest that if this went on, there’d be steam visible above his already heated head. 

“I had to take a risk– not everything goes to plan and this is proof of it.” You answered back with a scowl, “If I hadn't, there would’ve been more casualties.” 

“That’s not a call for you to answer to! Jesus Christ,” Jake runs his palms down his face, grunting, before looking back at you– expression suddenly tired and soft. “Come on kid, where’s that sweetheart who always listened to what I said?” 

You had scoffed, a hurt forming on the pits of your stomach. “That sweetheart once had a place in plans before.” You said, eyes unwilling to look at him. It weighed in your heart heavily– why did people assume that you were the only one who changed? You didn’t understand. “Pretty sure the Jake before was a good listener too.” 

The wrinkle in between his eyebrows deepened in confusion, but he never was one for confrontation. With a single dismissive grunt, he turns his back against you. “I’m way past your attitude. You’re grounded. Go.”)

As you grew, the resemblance to your father became ever more apparent. Jake started noticing the many similarities between the two of you; the way you walked– how you sauntered confidently through a crowd. Your braids would move along your heavy steps (and perhaps, that’s where Neteyam got his mannerism of swaying his too.), shoulders wide and proud. You even had his signature snarl, something Tsu’tey was known for that unfortunately seemed to have been passed down to you too. 

However, it was more than how you brought yourself. You were strong-willed– stubborn. 

There was another thing about you too. You didn’t call Jake dad anymore. It hurt him– left a heavy feeling on his chest every time you regarded him so distant. It was unfair that you still called Neytiri mom, why did it have to change with him? He didn’t have the heart to address it. Couldn’t ask you what went wrong. 

Because he knows damn well why. 

Lo’ak was enough of a headache, but you were a different kind of royal pain in the ass, more like a personal problem. It was tiresome. Petty. There was not a day that you and Jake wouldn’t argue and bite each other’s ass off– and yet, there was never a day where you two would talk it out. The fights would blur itselves out and before they knew it, things would be back to normal, only for it to fall out again over something small. It was routine. The only thing normal for you both. 

He missed you– missed his baby. Just when did you grow to become so distant? When did he start to overlook you?

You’ll admit, you might have indulged in the folk’s gossip. They always had a story for everything and they have plenty about your father. Tsu’tey was a fit olo’eyktan. He had proved so in his training and determination. Of course it was a low punch in the gut when the throne had been passed to an outsider– a demon, most of all. It was unfair, he knew it wasn’t right. A washed up marine had taken something he had worked for like it was nothing. Like he was nothing. 

You pitied your father and you feared you’d be like him– like nothing. 

And history might just repeat itself. You weren’t clueless– wasn’t blind to the fact that Jake had trained your brother more. He adored him so much that the very moment he was in the right age to train, you were off to fend for yourself; trained all alone while Jake went over the routine with Neteyam like he did with you. You remembered waiting for him every afternoon because he promised that he’d make time– that time was yours and yours only. But as the light bled and neared eclipse and you were too cold to wait outside, you learned never to wait again. 

They would come home soon after– smiles on their faces and a handful of apologies for you. 

Soon enough, your suspicions proved you right as the people started to talk again; Neteyam– the golden child. He would make a good olo’eyktan. 

Perhaps that would explain the drift between you and Neteyam too. Could they blame you for it? You had lost their attention so early– while you still needed them. You weren’t their kid and you were reminded of it everyday. In times when you didn’t know if you had space in the family hammock while they sat together, telling stories under the starry sky. You pretended to have fallen asleep everytime; back against them as you listened. In times where the family was growing and growing, until the small table wasn’t big enough for everyone anymore– or in this case, for you. 

(“Come on, ma’ite, what are you doing so far from here?” Neytiri had called for you when she noticed how distant you were from everyone. You silently scooted beside her, wooden bowl in your lap. “Look, I prepared your favorite.” 

It wasn’t. You hated it. You hated the tangy taste of it so badly. But you had decided to eat what was left on the table after everyone had gotten their meals and there wasn’t usually enough for you. Neytiri thought nothing of that– didn’t think that you eating only scraps and dried fruit was because there wasn’t anything else for you to have. She simply thought that it was your favorite and had been making it for you ever since.

You didn’t have the heart to tell her. Not when she thought she had been doing well with preparing it. You kissed your teeth, smiling tightly as you lifted the food to your lips, eating silently. “Thank you, it’s good.” You muttered under your breath after.) 

But you were family; they said so themselves. When they tucked you in to sleep, when they patted your head. They were still present now, just not in the way you wanted– not in the way you longed for. It seemed like making them angry was the only way you could have their attention– particularly, your dad. You could never make Neytiri mad. She tries to understand you, she does. Explaining now just seems so.. Petty. So childish, you decided to push her away instead. 

What do you tell her? That you only let dad blow a fuse or two was because you missed him? Because you didn’t know what went wrong? 

So there goes your routine. 

“I just don’t understand why I can’t be olo’eykte.” You had brought up again, lips in a familiar snarl. “You tire me and for what? Kiri is already training to be Tsahik– just what would my place in this clan be?” 

“We are not having this conversation again, y/n. Not tonight.”

Jake had just returned from a particularly bad hunt; went home empty-handed and with a patience as thin as a strand of hair. He continued to sharpen his dagger, movements almost aggressive. Everyone immediately went out of his way, not wanting to be on the end of his temper– not you though. You could never get a hint, it seems.

“Yes, tonight! My ceremony is almost near, sir. I have been waiting.”

It wasn’t like he had a reason anyway. Jake couldn’t tell you because he had no reason as to why. Why couldn’t you be olo’eykte? You had all the skills to be one, even more so. But in the back of his mind, a thought so deep and petty that he couldn’t bear to say, tells him that the name he carried was something to gift his eldest son. Olo’eyktan was a privilege reserved for Neteyam. He never thought to have you so early– he always dreamed of having a son first. 

“Wait more.” 

“This is insane– sa’nok!” You had turned to Neytiri, eyes pleading. She quickly grasps your arm and tries to tug you back towards the exit, speaking in a soft but firm voice as she tries to soothe the tension.

“Ma’ite, why don’t we go out for a walk?” She whispers. To be frank, she was tired of this– never of you, no. But at the way things had been. Parents aren’t parents automatically just because they have had children of their own. It’s a skill they have yet to muster– to truly understand. She didn’t know where the line between you and her had blurry along the years. Didn’t know where this constant need of yours to be seen came from. 

You jerked your arm away from her, almost too harshly. It tugged on her heartstrings, not knowing what was going on with you. “I cannot wait anymore.” You said, taking two steps towards Jake with an unreadable anger– an anger he didn’t know when had stemmed from. 

“Is it because I’m not your daughter?” 

His eyes widened. A flash of vulnerability visible in his gaze, momentarily softening his glare. “You stop this right now, y/n.” He had stood up, tucking the dagger back to his loincloth. Jake’s larger frame towered over you, telling you to drop it– to leave the conversation. But you weren’t backing down. 

“I am your eldest–! You trained me earlier than Neteyam, I have been here long enough–”

“You aren’t ready!” He had shouted with the same fierceness, earning a dirty look from Neytiri.

“Why won’t you see me?” Your voice had softened, borderline begging– just a bit, but enough for his ears to flatten in response. He knew that beneath those few simple words lay many layers of underlying meaning; emotions that have yet to be spoken. 

But he turns his back against you dismissively anyway. “Neytiri, get her out of here.” 

Neytiri grabs you by the arms again, although a bit forceful now, but just enough for her to touch you– to have you in between her arms. She embraced you, like she was trying to keep the words from escalating. She feared one of you would say something out of line; something you both would regret. 

But on the brink of the tension– the severity of the situation, you had muttered. Your voice was muffled, but it was clear. The message was oh so crystal. “You took everything from my father.” 

Jake grunts, “Yeah? Well maybe your father wasn’t enough either.” 

“Jake!” Neytiri hisses and although Jake couldn’t see her, he knew very well he was getting quite the conversation with his mate too. 

It was a low blow. Unnecessary. A straight strike to the gut. It was a pain so bitter, you didn’t want it to linger any longer– you were nauseous. You wanted no more than to vomit everything that spiraled out of your stomach. 

“You want to lead so badly and you can’t even control your temper. No clan wants a hot-head for a leader.” But he kept going– relentless and cruel. “You ought to be someone else’s shadow.” 

“But I’m your daughter,” Your tone had softened, almost cracking as the lump in your throat grew. Tears blurred your vision, threatening to escape as Neytiri held you close. 

“And yet you never listen to me— because I’m not exactly your father, yeah?” With one last glance, he stepped out, passing his children who stayed just outside the door, listening. Jake opens his mouth, desperate to ease the tension– the discomfort written in their faces, but he quickly shuts it and continues to walks out. He had said enough for tonight. There was nothing saving his face from this. It was best if he left instead. 

“Oh, ma’ite.” Neytiri rocks her body along yours, drawing soothing circles on your back but the embarrassment settles in your chest– gnawing at your body. You catch a glance of the pitiful looks from your siblings as they try to enter the hut silently. 

How could you make a mess out of yourself in front of them? Why had you let this blown over?

You retracted slowly from your mother’s hold, wiping your tears before running the opposite way from where Jake had gone to. It was better if you left instead.

mauve here! finally done writing this after racking my head for weeks. wanted it to be relatable (??) as much as possible, idk why. there is just something therapeutic w writing about your past issues <3 but i hope this one's alright!!! really excited to finally post this heheh

lots of kisses!