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The festival is nice, this year. Even he can admit that, the deal sweetened by the feeling of his knuckles brushing against Toshinori’s occasionally as they walk side by side, sun hot on his dark hair and shining brilliant on his partner’s. It smells like frying starches and sugar, and he turns his head as a first year waves to them, offering two sleeved pastries fresh from the smoking pan.
Toshinori cringes away from them - the fish shaped treats and student - with his hands up in an apologetic little refusal. Hurried, tripping over his words as his hip bumps into Shouta in the jerk of his quick movement away from the red and yellow stall. “Ah, no thank you!”
He looks up at him curiously once Toshinori’s handsome face is turned away to admire the next, brightly decorated stall, waving at the second years manning it and hawking their yakisoba with ferocious intensity. It’s odd to see Toshinori react like that. A full body recoil from someone offering him something, even food that he absolutely can’t eat; rather than his usual gentle apologies - and the times Shouta’s caught him suffering through some handmade little cake, sugar on his lips and a hand already pressed over his roiling upper belly accompanied by a sheepish look. But it’s clear he doesn’t like taiyaki, for whatever reason - is vehemently opposed to them, in fact - and Shouta waves away the offered treat in a strange form of solidarity.
Toshinori’s happily eating a plain handful of orange segments, turning his face up to the sun as Shouta eventually presses the question to him. Well, states the thought that he’s been toying with for over two hours as they ambled around the festival, checking in on their students; as they sat down on a bench - completely out of range of the scent of frying batter.
“You really don’t like taiyaki,” he says mildly, and follows Toshinori’s gaze to the soft cirrus clouds drifting over the blue, distant and insubstantial.
Toshinori’s face drops, shoulders hunched. “I should go and apologize. I was rather rude, doing that -”
“You’re okay,” he tells him firmly, and then softens his voice. “But you had an unusual reaction to them.”
Toshinori hesitates, chewing his orange piece for twice the time he took for any other. Shouta waits, even as he grinds it into a juice, sweet and sticky on the corner of his lips before he swallows.
“I - my associations with them aren’t great.” His mouth twitches, blue eyes scanning.
Having conversations with the ex-Number One - and an underground hero, to boot - requires boundaries, for the health of their burgeoning relationship. Aids to get over unstable terrain, a clear and shared language between them. An everyday safeword - Toshinori had chuckled at that, over their pillow - to guide them both through the moments that threaten to become too much, too fast. One of them backed into a corner, prone to snapping at the closeness neither of them are used to. Yet.
“New topic?” He lays his hand down on the bench, open for Toshinori to take. Sticky orange fingers and all.
“New topic,” Toshinori agrees gratefully, and he switches the conversation smoothly, a bland comment on their students’ questionable stall-building skills that Toshinori laughs at easily, protesting that they’re simply having fun. Always the soft hearted one, proud as a mother hen over his expansive brood.
*
“I had a plate of taiyaki flung at my head, once.”
He doesn’t react with anything more than a tilt of his head, a slight repositioning of his feet to show he’s listening. Keeps rubbing the cloth in circles over the plate, half submerged in hot water and dish soap and cleaning away traces of sauce he’s already half-cleaned with his fingertip, scooping it up to lick it off.
Toshinori has that pensive quality to his voice as he gathers up the remnants of their dinner into containers for tomorrow’s lunch. And if there’s one thing he’s always known as an underground hero; it’s that silence needs filling.
“And I don’t know - it scared me. I mean - I don’t have a reaction to being punched, or fighting, or even needles. Classical conditioning would certainly back up a fear of needles with all I’ve got to conflate them with - and aren’t all of those more reasonable things to end up averse to?”
He puts down the plate in the drying rack, leaning back against the sink with his hands braced on the edge. “We don’t pick what sticks with us.”
“Mm.” His hand wraps around Shouta’s shoulder, gentle and warm as he leans over to put their glasses away. “I wish my issue wasn’t a pastry, though. I quite liked them as a kid.”
“Yeah?”
Toshinori’s brow creases in calling the memory back, and Shouta waits quietly for him to finish replaying it.
“My - mentor. She was coming back from picking up food in the centre, one day that I ran into her. Before she agreed to train me. And she gave me one of the taiyaki in her bag, still a little warm from the vendor. I found out that she didn’t eat them, though - that was her partner, another proper hero. And when I started living there with them, he’d sit down with me and help me through coursework after she’d finished training with me. And we’d eat some. Red bean, only - none of that chocolate or custard crap.” His chest heaves with a short laugh. “I liked that.”
“And the plate?”
Toshinori’s shoulders slump almost imperceptibly, unconsciously. It’s startling, just how small a man of his stature can make himself look. “He got angry when I tried to bring him a plate one evening, just to ask if we could eat them together. For - to feel a little normal again.”
He rests his hand on Toshinori’s wrist. “After she died?”
“Yeah. It hit here,” he traces over his left shoulder, thin fingers trailing, “but it broke on the ground. I had to clean - ugh, hot red bean paste off my feet in the dark before I could get the plate bits out. And I can’t look at red bean without thinking about blood mashed into it. But he didn’t tell me to go on my run for the three days after that, so I suppose -”
“That’s not remorse,” Shouta can’t help but cut in. “That’s not kindness.”
“I know.” Toshinori breathes, two sets of his calming pattern, and lays his forehead against his broad collarbone, bending his back into a curve to make the angle work. “I know. But I - had a purpose to fill. And he had no more time for treating me like a child.”
Shouta bites his tongue, puts the plates away, and tries not to think about how many small human comforts Toshinori believes he doesn’t deserve.
*
The topic is left aside for three days. Set down for both of them to think about and dance around, both hesitant to broach it again and painfully aware of that shared sentiment.
And when Shouta sits up in bed, restless in the early morning he’s accustomed to patrolling during, he looks down at Toshinori. Sleeping, nose buried in the pillow and blonde bangs falling over his face, one hand lifted up and curled loosely at his slightly parted lips. He looks at him, strokes his hair back out of his closed and dream-moving eyes. He can wait. His curiosity isn’t worth Toshinori’s discomfort, he reminds himself. It’s an old and well-worn instinct to pry, but Toshinori deserves to come to him on his own terms.
They’re leaning over the balcony of the gym when Toshinori does, voice barely raised over the squeak of shoes and sound of yelling; the occasional flare of an explosion, huffs of breath from winded students as they work on fighting around the structural integrity of a building.
“I used to train here.” Toshinori sounds thoughtful.
“With your class?”
“No. Just me and Gran.”
He hasn’t actually said Gran Torino’s name yet. Somehow, it feels significant, and Shouta draws closer, leaning forwards to match him and setting his notebook aside.
“What was he like, as a trainer?”
“Harsh. A lot of hard lessons, more endurance training. Taught me how to take a punch. A lot of punches.”
He hesitates. “Did he train anyone else?”
“No. Not after Nana. He devoted himself to my training.”
One teacher - one hero - turning all of his attention and rage on one student. A child. It’s a recipe for disaster if he’s ever heard of one. Shouta keeps his eyes on his partner; on the drawn look painted over Toshinori’s face as he stares down at the floor, voice kept forcefully low and his words coming fast.
“We used to spar for hours. Over and over again until I got it right or I couldn’t keep going. I got -” he points at a corner of the wall, freshly painted white, “blood on that wall, once. Took ages to clean out with peroxide, all that terribly uneven surface. They smoothed it out since then, painted it up. He - I got flung into it, and my nose snapped. Smeared over the wall, and Recovery Girl had to reset it for me. She was furious that I’d waited before coming to her, though, and she let me know all about it! She and Gran used to fight all the time, you know. She refused to heal him for about three weeks after an argument, I think.”
That exam, when Toshinori pummelled Bakugou and Midoriya into the ground. It feels like so long ago, impossible when he looks at Toshinori; thin, puttering around their dorm. The papers for their students neatly stacked, laboured over with little scrawled encouragements at the end of each one.
But maybe he understands a little more. How someone so gentle and kind could think it appropriate to drive two students to vomiting, breaking bones, slammed into the asphalt -
“And I used to vomit so much from him getting me in the gut that my throat burned, all the time. And the protein shakes - ugh, they used to make my stomach feel like crap to begin with.” His fingers are tightening around the rail. Voice slipping into that quick, almost-angry cadence with so much cold-sweat adrenaline, Shouta can feel it prickling on his skin too.
“Toshinori?”
“I’m sorry.” Toshi drops back heavily into the plastic molded seat, knuckles whitening on his lap where he grips his knees, wrinkling that endearingly tacky yellow fabric. “I’m sorry. I - I’ve been thinking about it too much. I hate it.”
He hates himself for prying. But years of training - they make him want to slip a chisel under those cracks, snap away the plaster until he can get at the root of the issue. “Midoriya once mentioned that you were afraid of him.”
Toshinori exhales, mouth turning down. “A mentor never should show their student that they’re scared. That was - that was wrong of me.”
That’s - a topic for another day.
“But you trusted him to teach your protegée?” It’s not a condemnation. It’s not. But he has to ask. He trusts Toshinori with the safety of their students, even if he made it clear when they first met that he didn’t have that faith in him. He was wrong. So wrong, and he tells Toshinori as much regularly.
“Yes.” Toshinori sets his shoulders, as if to ground himself, steady his voice and defend that choice. “He wouldn’t - he has no ire towards Midoriya-shounen, no reason to go beyond normal training. It’s just - me. And I get it. I’m a constant, walking and talking reminder of his partner dying. I took her place, essentially - but I never lived up to her.”
That statement alone is one of the sharpest parts of this story; the most delicate to turn over in his head and try to understand. He - does understand, he supposes. Doesn’t mean he likes it.
“How could you not live up to - anyone? You’re -” he casts for a term, anything - “you.”
The whistle blares, snapping the tension of the space they’ve built. A few cheers come from the ground, and Toshinori peers over the railing to beam down at the students, calling encouragement and praise as he sits back, trying to shake off the twisting in his gut.
How often was Toshinori actually praised by the people he would have longed for it from most? A dependable parental figure that he knows Toshinori never really had before - and for that man to reject him after he lost the woman Toshinori sees as a mother.
He’s so bright, so upbeat when he leans out with his hands gripping the rail tight enough that it could almost bend, creak under the grip of his fingers and give way to his strain. “Wonderful work, Ashido-shoujo! You spotted that keystone in excellent time!”
How long has he wanted it for, and supplemented that need with his care for others?
*
Toshinori keeps a photo on his bookshelf in a simple wood frame. On some days, Shouta’s come to his dorm to see it laid face-down, only to be gently righted the next day. There’s rarely dust on it, but for the tiny curves that build up in the edges, settling where he can’t wipe it away with a cloth alone. His younger self, standing aside from the rest of his graduating class and looking supremely uncomfortable. Smiling, his hair not fixed quite right in the All Might style. Huge and muscular and painfully alone on the day that even he had his family and friends there for.
“He sent you away, after UA. Or was that a decision you made?”
Toshinori’s making dinner tonight, hesitant in his experience and weighing every single component to the gram. Fretting at the stove, moving the food in the pan so often that Shouta has to wonder if it will actually cook.
“The idea was to have me out of All for One’s reach. I expected -” Toshinori coughs, turning his face away from the stove and into his elbow “- I thought that maybe he would come with me. But he, um, didn’t. It was kind of...up to me to learn. To try and learn English and find people to teach me. But I did, and I met some wonderful people.”
“You did.” He rests his temple against Toshinori’s shoulder, turns the heat up slightly under his mixed vegetables. “And they got to meet you.”
“You’re in a sappy mood tonight,” Toshinori laughs, wrapping a long arm around his waist. “How very sentimental.”
He shrugs, enjoying the solid weight of Toshinori’s hand on his hip. “Mm. You inspire me with your romantic notions.”
The dinner progresses a little more successfully with his guidance - ‘blind leading the blind’ comments aside - and they manage to get it to the table with minimal burns or overseasoned rice. It’s nice, this normalcy. He can see how Toshinori relishes it, eyes darting up shyly as if to check that Shout’s still there, still sharing a meal with him. Visibly relishes being asked to pass a dish, apologising between mouthfuls for the time it takes him to chew down each bite to a consistency his ruined digestive system has some chance of breaking down. He never minds, and it’s become a routine of sorts for him to have a coffee at the table with Toshinori as he finishes his meal, to retire to the sofa together for a moment of creature comfort.
“Sometimes I wonder if All Might was enough. If I was worth it all, to him. Nana dying to protect me. Resigning from UA. Knowing - that there were subsets of heroes who criticised his methods, people who used to be his comrades.”
Toshinori combs through his hair with his fingers, guiding his head down to his lap while they watch the evening news report. It’s delightful, and he shoves down the urge to purr like a cat and roll to show his belly.
He speaks, instead. “You’ve done more than any other hero. I don’t think anyone else could have become the Pillar of Hope like you did.”
It’s difficult to know how to reply to the things Toshinori says, sometimes. But that’s what the safeword’s for - and right now, he doesn’t want to use it. It’s taking so much of Toshinori to try and explain his life to him; the shades of abuse that he will deny and yet recoils from the idea of treating any one of their students in the same way he was ‘taught.’
“Mm.” He keeps stroking gently, mouth twisting. “He didn’t like when I tried to step into her role outside of carrying on her mission against All for One. He hated me cooking - she wasn’t much of a cook either, I have to add! We ate a lot of prepackaged meals. But he didn’t want me touching her stuff. Any of it.”
“She was your mo - you mentor too, though.”
Toshinori swallows, lifting his other hand to pick up the remote, switch to a music channel in time with the ending chime of the newsreel. Pretending not to notice his slip, clearly. “But not her partner.”
“He loved her?”
His hand stops in Shouta’s hair. Lays there, warm and gentle. “I think so. She was easy to love. He was, too. When he was being the fun parent, with the pastries and the swimming in the river. Pretending it was t-training, taking the blame when Nana scolded us.”
He reaches up to cup Toshinori’s face, thumb resting right under the dampness of his left eye. He gets it, now. Just a little more. How Toshinori’s struggling to reconcile a father with a man who ended up resenting him; who would throw back every part of their relationship in his face in his own pain. With sharpened edges on each, lashing out at a child grieving the loss of two parental figures.
He doesn’t hate Gran Torino any less for doing that to him. But he understands it a little more.
He stands up, holds out his hand. Drops his voice into the gentler, softer cadence of being at home with Toshinori. Sharing a home and peaceful space with him. Loving him. “Want to go to bed?”
Toshinori doesn’t hesitate before taking his hand.
*
They’ve got good sexual chemistry; and figured it out early in their relationship. Not just compatible interests and kinks and positions, but genuinely aligned approaches to sex that he’s never realised he’d enjoy so much. It’s comfort. It’s a soft indulgence at the end of a hard day, a little boost of endorphins when one of them is aching or tired or worn out. On their more energetic days, it’s kinky and rough and delightful, teeth bared in grins and little shows of strength to make each other gasp and writhe. It’s fun, often; and loving, always. They don’t psychoanalyse each other for their more atypical interests, either, and he’s grateful for it.
Toshinori’s lips press down against the top of his thigh, right along the line between the crest of his hip to his cock; and he smiles as he brushes his hand through that thick blonde hair to hold his head close, breath hitching when Toshinori’s fingers spread just a little further inside him.
He pushes his own head back into the pillow, free hand gripping the sheets at his side until they pull up in the wake of his fingers. “Mm -”
“More lube?” Toshinori murmurs into his skin, and he shakes his head slowly, clenching around Toshinori’s fingers to enjoy the knobbly length of them.
“N-no, I’m good. So good, Toshi -”
Another kiss, moving down that tortuous line, and Toshinori’s slipping a third finger in to ease him open, rub over his prostate in maddening little circles. But it’s the weekend, after all, and they’ve got all the time they need to enjoy each other. Toshinori’s bottomed the last few times - not to mention how they’ve been enjoying a lot of grinding and blowjobs lately - so he’s just a little tighter than usual. Just a little tighter, and he gasps when Toshinori ducks down, lifts his leg to lick around the press of his fingers, lapping at his stretched rim and the lube that trickles down.
“Ah! Oh, fuck, keep - keep doing that,” he begs, hugging his leg to his chest with one arm, staring down along the flutter of his abdomen to Toshinori’s blond head down between his thighs, one tanned and scarred hand holding his cock gently, stroking with his thumb.
Toshinori hums into him in agreement, and he arches his chest up to let out a deep, thrilled moan.
He loves him. Loves him enough that the idea of him hurt at any point in his life is sickening, even with all of the shit he’s waded through in his time. They’re heroes. Hurt and injury is part of the package, but the image of Toshinori - young, bright, full-cheeked like he is in the photo he keeps by the bedside - being beaten down in the process of chasing his dream of being a Symbol -
It’s a painful, smeared mess, and his hand strokes over the scars that lead down from the nape of Toshinori’s neck. All of that - a shitty childhood, a fucked-up mentor and a dead one, and he’s still the man he is now. Self-sacrificing, to a fault. Kind. Gentle, and earnest.
Toshi’s running his hands over his thighs right down, stroking and squeezing as he rides him in the dim light of their room. It’s slow, and so lovely. Taking that perfect cock deep, feeling Toshinori’s gasping appreciation for his thighs and ass; milk-pale in this light, muscle bunching as he rises and falls.
“So hot,” he praises, blue eyes bright and beaming up at him, “ah, I love your -”
He flushes, keeping his chin tilted up. “Thick thighs? Oh, I know you like groping them, Toshi. Gonna slap my ass, see it jiggle on your cock?”
He gets not one, but two; a smart smack to one cheek, and then a quick repeat to the other as he whines, grinds down further. “U-uh, fuck -!”
“Does my cute kitten like his ass spanked red, mm?” Toshinori’s grinning up at him, fingers pressing in over the hot patch on his ass, palming it and pulling that tingle back to the original flush until he whimpers and bounces on his cock faster.
“Y-yes - shit, Toshi -”
Toshinori was shy, suggesting this at first. Too used to being the big man doing the work, performing and giving his partners the fantasy of All Might. The pinnacle of the human form, fucking his lucky bedmates up against the wall, slow and powerful and porn-perfect.
“You’re amazing,” he moans. “So fucking good -”
He likes him like this. Relaxed, moaning and chasing his orgasm with little thrusts of his slim hips, admiring him and running his hands down his sides as he flexes his quads, rises up and down on Toshinori’s cock and pins him to the bed. Takes his hands, too, and interlaces them on either side of that bright blond head, narrowing down the outside world into a straight line of focus on each other, on the hiss of breath from between Shouta’s teeth and Toshinori’s soft pants, lips red and wet from kissing and biting and sweat building up between them in their shared, giant height-accomodating bed.
“I love you so much,” he murmurs, sucking a breath in, and Toshinori’s breath hitches. “You’re wonderful, you know.”
There’s a beat, two more circles of his hips on that thick and perfect cock.
“Are you trying to make up for the lack of affirmation in my childhood?”
He shrugs, unrepentant, and leans forwards to change the angle, to drive his hips back down on Toshinori’s cock with a shiver. “Better late than never.”
Toshinori’s brow furrows, a tiny crease right over the bridge of his nose. The glabella, he remembers Toshinori saying once. He has so many of those random little facts that he holds in to rattle around the inside of his clever mind, bestowing his little cherished tidbits during fits of excitement like a young child. He shutters immediately, and it’s taken months to coax him not to ball up like a scared little creature; but to expand and give more information, trusting in the attention and appreciation of the people around him.
“You deserve praise. And it makes me happy to give you that, unless you find it uncomfortable.” His hips slow, easing himself down to sit on Toshinori’s cock, ignoring the urge to squirm and press the curve of it against his prostate.
Toshinori sighs, but he’s smiling. Just a little, but it’s genuine. Lays his thumbs into the twin lines of Shouta’s hips, and looks up at him. “You find the strangest times to bring up deep topics, you know.”
“Okay.” He leans down, close enough to press a kiss to Toshinori’s face, aiming blindly when his hair falls between their faces. It’s not the full phrase, but he’ll respect any element of their safeword. It’s a gentler thing for Toshinori, too - still so hesitant to force out an actual ‘no’ or ‘stop’. “Can I continue?”
Toshinori bites on the inside of his cheek, eyes skittering like he’s ashamed. “I - um. I get teary, sometimes. It’s stupid.”
“At praise?”
Toshinori’s hand, large and warm, settles down over his own where it cups his thin and lovely face, fingertips resting over his high cheekbone. “I’m sorry,” he says, and Shouta’s gut twists.
“But is it okay if I say it? The truth?”
A nod, small and shy.
“You’re beautiful.” A kiss to his cheek, another to his thin lips. “You’re so kind. The students and all of your cowokers love you so much just as you are, you know.”
“Shou -”
He sits back to stroke over Toshinori’s smooth chest; the thickened ropy skin of his scar. His collarbones, sharp and flowing under his skin when he traces his palms over them in some approximation of a massage; a show of earnest appreciation.
“You’re one of the best people I’ve ever known. And you deserve to be happy,” he murmurs. “You deserve to know how much you’re loved.
Toshinori keens . Presses his thin hand over his mouth as if to stifle any noise, and looks up at him with his eyes wet, throat working quickly. Fuck, his heart aches for him like someone’s shoved their hand in there through his ribs and viscera; and he lays his hand down over Toshinori’s heart, feeling the quick, regular beat of it thrumming through skin and bone.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, eyes red and fat tears rolling over his cheekbones. “I - I’m being silly.” Tries for humor, brightens his voice in trembling falsity - “I mean, we’re meant to be having sex!”
“You don’t need to be sorry. And you're the furthest thing from silly.” He leans down to press a kiss right on Toshinori’s hairline. Just where he can reach, curving his back and feeling Toshinori’s big hands stroke over his bare sides, down over his ribs and over his hips, holding on the safe familiarity of his thighs. “Are we okay?”
Toshi clears his throat, nodding slowly before he answers. “We’re good. I don’t want to - make you - have you think you need to take care of me.”
“You’re not.” He kisses him, gratified when Toshinori returns it. Catches his breath, accepts the kiss Toshinori presses to his throat mid-motion as he lifts his head to look him in the eyes. “And I don’t do things I don’t want to do, remember?”
Toshinori bites down on his lip in a way that looks just shy of painful, eyes squeezing shut against a new wave of tears. And he breathes with him. Feels him. Slim legs between his own; a ruined and strong chest under his hands to support him. A beautiful face that he loves, looking up at him like he’s something unbelievable.
Toshinori’s face is hot, when he traces his thumb over his cheekbone. “Can I touch you?”
It’s a ragged gasp, when he gets his answer. But it’s acceptance, and something that sounds like an old blockage being chipped away at.
“Yes. Please - I love you.”
*
Meetings with outside heroes often feel strange - the older generation, in particular, who always have their criticisms as to their training methods, the quirks they consider hero-course worthy, the grants for all of the students who don’t happen to have parents on the boards of companies. It’s exhausting in its own right; and the tension rising between the man at his side and the man across from him is nothing short of excruciating .
Hizashi - always sensitive to social situations - has nudged him more than once with a pleading look, and all he can do is open his hands in a helpless gesture on his lap as Toshinori and Gran Torino attempt to stare holes through each other.
His partner had been silent, averting his eyes in the presence of his old mentor, legs jumping under the table - until the dour, sarcastic comment was made regarding workplace fraternization. And thus began the ocular warfare.
And now he’s chasing Toshinori up the stairs to the next level as he tracks down Gran Torino, stomping down the corridor towards him.
“Are you ever going to apologise? For what you did to me?” Toshinori calls it down the narrow hallway, bordered in one glass wall and another of classrooms, and the older retired hero turns with a sour expression.
He’s been building to this. All of the nights spent snarling and sobbing in turn about those months under his training; conversations they’ve both had to tap out of. And now - he’s got him right in front of him, blinkers formed by the structure of the corridor, and his teeth bared.
“I made you a hero, you know. I could have found someone better and had you give them -” Torino looks at Shouta, scowls - “your place. You really want to have this talk in front of him ?”
“I used to admire you.” Toshinori’s voice is steady, and now it’s Shouta’s heart that’s beating fast. “I used to think you were the kind of man I wanted to be. And I’ve lived my life trying not to be that person who wallows in his own grief and punishes a child.”
“You were not a child,” Torino scoffs, and Shouta resists the urge to throttle him.
Toshinori’s hand taps at Shouta’s shoulder - a silent, firm little ‘ let me handle this’ - and he steps back, around the corner. Out of sight, but still well in range if Toshinori needs him. Leans his head back against the slight give of the blue bulletin board, his back against the cool paint of the wall. Clenches and relaxes his fists, making himself breathe regularly as he listens to Toshinori lay into his mentor.
“I was seventeen! ” Toshinori’s voice bellows out. And for the first time - fuck, the older hero looks small beside him. Shrunken and weighed down and grey, with Toshinori - Toshinori, slowly regaining some small portion of his weight and his health and brightness under the care of the people who love him - standing over him. “And I deserved more than that. I lost my mother too, and you never respected that because you were too arrogant and self-absorbed to imagine that anyone else could mourn her the way you did!”
“Your job was to -”
“You told me I was pathetic.” Toshinori’s voice is icy. “You told me that my only worth would be to end All for One, and that anything else was a needless indulgence. And I know that you’re wrong. I became a hero and a partner and I’m a caregiver to children, and you had nothing to do with those last two. You carried out Nana’s wishes, through a shitty method, and I won’t deny that you set me on the path to being a hero. And you know what? You taught me how not to be an abusive asshole.”
He’ll give Torino this - he would have cut and run by now. That cold fury, one vein twitching in Toshinori’s forehead and the huge, thin frame of him - he looks about as gentle and passive as a tsunami of dark, frigid water.
His phone screen flashes, and he tilts it to check the message from Nemuri. Hound Dog wants to know what the hell’s going on up there? He can hear yelling?
Old argument, he types back. Peeks around the corner, and comes back quietly proud and slightly intimidated. It’s okay. Toshi’s winning.
“ Ab - you’re an ungrateful shit, you know that?”
“Fine! Better than being a sad, lonely old fucker with nobody around him who’s only necessary for the occasional case!”
There’s a moment of nothing but harsh breathing, and Shouta honestly wonders if this is about to end in a fistfight in the middle of the corridor, briefly considers ducking back around the corner and interceding. Toshinori coughs, once - one of his bloody ones, judging by the quick retch that precedes it.
“You broke my leg to teach me a lesson about being quick on my feet. You stood over me, grabbed my foot to lift it, and you put your weight into it.”
His stomach cramps. Toshinori hadn’t told him that part yet.
“Do you remember? Because I taught that lesson three weeks ago. And I showed my student how to practice running over uneven terrain and how to train with side hops in the floorspace he’s got.” It sounds like finality, when he wipes over his mouth with the rustle of his sleeve, and his once-mentor’s cane drags on the ground nervously. “The least you could do is recognise how wrong you were, Torino -san. ”
Toshinori rounds the corner in long strides, and Shouta falls into step with him to walk back down the stairs. It’s gratifying when Toshinori immediately takes his hand - less so, when his lip wobbles and he rubs the heel of his other palm over his eyes furiously.
He itches with the need to check in on him; but waits until they reach the side door and start heading for the dorms under the thick green canopy of dense sycamore to ask. “Are you okay?”
Toshinori blinks, eyes down on the pavement like he’s watching his own feet eat up the ground. “I think so. Just - shaky. But I’m glad I said it.”
“You were brave,” he says quietly, and holds Toshinori’s hand a little tighter, rubbing his thumb over his swollen knuckles. “I love you.”
His partner swallows, and holds his head a little higher under the chinks of light pushing down through the trees to scatter gold and light green over the track he runs on every morning, always glad to have Shouta join him before they eat breakfast together. Shower together, sometimes, kissing under the spray of the rainfall fixture that fits them both. Taking that moment, that boost of energy and appreciation for the day.
“I love you too. And - thank you. For caring.”
*
Toshinori wakes him up at eight on a Friday morning two weeks from then; his old and worn cotton shirt hanging off his shoulder as he sits up in the bed, phone in his hand.
Stares down at him with his brows furrowed, mouth open and the starts of sentences flitting behind his eyes while Shouta rubs the sleep from the corners of his own, rolling over in the tangles of the sheets to look up at him, to worm his hand up from the snag of the duvet and rest his hand on Toshinori’s sharp hip.
“Everything okay, love?” His voice is rough in the morning, and he clears it as he blinks up at him in the morning sun.
“He emailed me.” Toshinori sounds amazed - and looks so achingly beautiful, in the soft rise of the light and drift of golden dust motes in those rays. “He - he said he was wrong, and named the things he did wrong. For each thing, all of them. He remembers.”
“He should.” His thumb moves over the tan of his skin, the soft silver lines over the angle of bone. “And how do you feel?”
He considers it for a moment, sitting upright in their bed. Wearing Shouta’s old clothes, both hands cradling the phone his students chipped in to buy him as a gift after watching him poke at the screen of a smaller one with too-large fingers. “A little better. I think. It’s - nice, to imagine - that he understands how I felt, at least partly. How I feel now. That he added -” his thumb traces the glow of the screen, tentative - “a ‘sorry’. At the bottom.”
“Sounds logical, to feel like that” he murmurs, and buries his face into Toshinori’s side, right into the trim curve of his waist. “Are you okay?”
“I am,” Toshinori says, and his hand comes down to stroke the hair right behind his ears. “I think I am.”