Work Text:
How Shouta had ended up with this particular gig, he still hadn’t exactly figured out. It was easy enough to blame on Hizashi though, so that’s what he did.
It wasn’t that being a professor didn’t pay well, or even that he necessarily had an excess of free time- No, it was nothing like that. Simply put, Shouta just had trouble sleeping. Every night, he’d eat dinner, grade papers, drink some newly discovered tea that should knock him right out! And three hours later, he’d be lying in bed staring blankly up at the ceiling, wide awake.
Hizashi had mentioned it in passing; how he could use a hobby, how he needed a break from work, a creative outlet or something like that. He’d gone on and on about the wonders of the internet, how people could really share their talents and hobbies and stuff like that, bring some community and meaning into their life or whatever.
Shouta wasn’t sure if he’d necessarily meant that Shouta should become a reader, but… He liked it. It was easy, rewarding, entertaining. It quieted his mind a little, and from the comments he got from his constantly growing audience, it helped them too. And a little extra cash never hurt anyone, as far as he knew.
So, yeah. He read things, anonymously, on the internet. He had a YouTube, but he also had a blog on a domain he’d purchased for shockingly cheap, and an account on a slightly more… niche site, and he’d amassed quite the following.
He’d started by reading whatever he had around; not the dense philosophy texts from his classes, of course, but anything somewhat more interesting than that, anything with a narrative. He recorded at night when he couldn’t sleep.
He had some nice audio equipment from when he’d had to record classes for a virtual course last summer, so he pulled it out and adjusted his camera settings until the screen was almost pitch black, with only the barely discernible silhouette of his shoulders, the edges of his black shirt dimly lit by the warm low light of his bedroom lamps. It was simple, unintrusive, easy to ignore even in the dark.
He was just reading because… he liked it, really. That was it. He liked it, and he remembered reading late into the night as a little kid, hiding the clunky flashlight under his covers and flicking it off when he heard his dad’s footsteps coming down the hall. He’d read until his eyelids felt like lead, and his parents would find him in the morning face down in his book, flashlight tucked awkwardly under his little body.
It had been a long time since he’d read like that. A long time since he’d slept like that. But he remembered the decline, when reading became a chore instead of a treat, when he started staying up late for school and work instead of pleasure.
He read, because he hoped he might reach others who’d left behind their books for some reason or another, who missed the feeling of falling asleep mid sentence, only to have to reread the last four pages in the morning because their brain had shut off before their body. He hoped that he might help some people sleep.
At first it was just YouTube, and he began to build a little following there. A few people at first who watched his videos regularly and repeatedly. Then more, and he began to get requests: “takashi hiraide, please, eraser-sensei!”, “would you read a light novel?”, “Eraser-san, could you read this: www.the-boy-wh…”, “can you read gl? i’m so lonely TT”
Since Shouta didn’t really care what he read, and he was bound to run out of decent stories eventually, he decided to do them. If someone asked for a specific book or author, he’d read that. If they asked for a genre or a particular vibe, it’d take him a little time to find something he thought would work, but then he’d read that as well.
His following grew and grew, and he realized that he started looking forward to his evenings, instead of dreading the inevitable hours spent alone and awake in the dark. It gave him something to do, sure, but, as Hizashi had said, it also gave him… a little community. Well, little at first, anyway. It seemed that people really liked his voice.
They liked it so much, in fact, that it was only a matter of time before he started getting different requests: “eraser san can u read erotica plz”, “Doesn’t sensei have a sexy voice… I want to hear him read other things too…”, “eraser reading those things would be too much fkekjdkw i want to sleep not…”
And, well. Shouta was well on his way to fifty—well, six years away, but some days he felt much older—and he was no stranger to sex—hell, he’d been a professional dominant for a while in his thirties, back when he had the energy—so…
He made his blog the next week with the help of an ungodly number of coding tutorials and lurking through just about any popular blog he could find for inspiration.
It was simple, just like his videos. He wanted people to be able to listen at night, even if they had to have their phone screen on next to them, so the site was a dark brown-black, just warm enough to not be glaring, and the text was small and plain, ivory to be readable but not too bright.
It took him a few days to get his videos uploaded, oldest to newest, with the story titles and some information on the genre and vibe, and then he began to link the blog under all his videos. It didn’t take long at all for the numbers to start showing up there too. And then, once he had all that set up, he made an account on a different site—audio only—and recorded his first erotic read aloud.
After that, the rest was history. He had everything linked on his blog, but the NSFW recordings were locked behind a paywall, so he’d just post little snippets and tags so people could decide which ones to purchase and which to skip.
He still took recommendations, both for erotic and regular readings, and he still posted plenty on YouTube, and it was only a matter of time before he’d made quite a name for himself in the market. People genuinely loved Eraser-sensei, and it was nice.
It was nice, and it was absolutely not what Shouta ever expected to be doing. But what the hell; it was kind of fun, and he had this little group of people who followed him from platform to platform and always left comments telling him how much they appreciated his work. Sure, they were strangers on the internet, but it made Shouta smile a little when he saw the comments they left.
There was one person in particular who always caught Shouta’s eye. They hadn’t been around since the very beginning, but they were one of his older followers and they were very vocal and consistent in their support, so they were more recognizable than most.
Shouta obviously didn’t know much about most of his followers—sure, there was the occassional person whose YouTube was under their full name, and a few middle aged women who would regularly leave very lengthy paragraphs (specifically on his NSFW readings) about their sex lives and their husbands and their youths; all sorts of stuff that Shouta would glance over with the curious disinterest of an old gay man reading an advice column about some young girl confronting her cheating boyfriend—but he didn’t know them.
But blueflame_dabi was… different. For one, Shouta was pretty sure that they were actually a he. At least, in his mind he was. Dabi, as Shouta had taken to calling him in his head, was one of the only people who requested queer stories, both erotic and not, but he was set apart further by the fact that when Shouta read gay love stories or erotice, Dabi wouldn’t leave comments squealing about how cute, how hot, or anything like that. No, he left comments full of so much longing, Shouta could all but feel it through the screen.
Shouta was pretty sure that, like himself, Dabi was a gay man. And maybe also like himself, he was terribly lonely.
Beyond that, it was kind of hard to get a read on him. From the way he wrote his messages, full of acronyms Shouta had to look up and phrases that could only be references because there was no way they made sense otherwise, Shouta thought that Dabi might be… significantly younger than him, maybe in his twenties (he refused to humor the thought that Dabi was a high schooler, or worse), but he seemed to have his share of life experience. Someone naive to the realities of the world wouldn’t talk about things like Dabi sometimes did.
For some reason, though, out of all his followers and all his supporters, Shouta found himself always searching for Dabi first. When he posted a new video, he’d check the very next evening to see if Dabi had left a comment. After uploading a new NSFW audio, he’d check his email regularly to see if he’d received a payment from Dabi showing he’d bought it. When he ran polls or Q&As on his blog,, he always looked for Dabi in the comments first.
He wondered if it was because, in his mind, he saw himself as a kind of role model to the stranger. After all, when he was young there hadn’t been maybe older gay men for him to look up to or learn from. So maybe… Maybe he was sort of taking that role for Dabi?
It was a little unconventional, sure, to take on that role for a stranger that listened to him read porn out loud on the internet, but stranger things had happened, surely. At the very least, Shouta could say that his attention sprung from an appreciation for a loyal fan, especially one who requested such good queer lit Shouta often hadn’t read before.
There was an unfortunate side effect to the whole situation that Shouta didn’t really know what to do about, and that was that whenever Dabi requested erotic stories with an older man and a younger man, Shouta’s wires got a bit crossed and he began to imagine himself as the older character, and some faceless boy as the other. The attributes of the younger were always left to the story’s discretion, but in Shouta’s mind, it was always Dabi. Which, he had to admit, was fucking weird and he didn’t exactly know how to stop.
But it was fine. That was his evening life, the hidden liminality of his nights and earlier mornings. No one had to know. Not even Hizashi, who had inadvertently caused all this in the first place.
Speaking of Hizashi-
“Shouta,” he called, too loud as always as he poked his head into Shouta’s office. His long blond hair was in a low bun, silky strands slipping all around his face in a much more angelic version of Shouta’s own tangled black knot. “The Todoroki boy’s here again.” Shouta took a deep breath and let it out in a long, laborious sigh. Hizashi laughed at him and waved a hand towards his desk. “I’ll tell him you’ll be free in five.”
Shouta took his glasses off and dropped his face into one hand, massaging the bridge of his nose in an attempt to get the tension out before it got infinitely worse.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like the boy; Todoroki Touya was a good kid, if a little… troubled. From what Shouta knew, he’d gotten into some serious shit as an actual kid––gangs, drugs, violence, the like––and in the past few years finally gotten himself out. He was trying to get his life together. It was admirable.
It did mean that he was a good four or so years older than, like, 90% of the other kids in his intro classes, but he didn’t seem to mind too much.
Shouta wondered, though, if he’d made any friends. Aside from the age difference, he still looked like a delinquent. There was no hiding all those tattoos, after all––Shouta was pretty sure he kept getting more, actually, squeezing them in where Shouta was convinced there wasn’t any space left to spare. He was an odd one, certainly.
Still. He was a nice kid. A good one even, although he sometimes casually said things so far removed from normal life that Shouta felt his fingers itching to do something, like he was in any position to undo the past ten or so years of whatever this boy had had to endure.
He was a nice kid. He was just… a lot.
Shouta respected the drive to do well, especially given Touya’s particular circumstances, but, god, did he have to come to office hours every single day?
Apparently, his time was up, because there was a familiar knock on his door: familiar in that it was too loud and too late, a noisy little beat against his door frame as Todoroki Touya strolled right on in, and Shouta had to plaster his professional what-can-I-do-for-you expression on before he outed himself as a tired old asshole of a man.
“Hiya, sensei,” Touya greeted, sauntering in with that slouchy little walk of his, a walk that was probably left over from what Shouta secretly called his Deep Shit Era. It was the walk of someone who was being watched, scrutinized for a weakness. The walk of someone who had to show that they had none. Calm, relaxed, confident. A little predatory. A little like a panther.
“Todoroki. I was wondering if you’d show up.”
The boy smiled at him, baring all his teeth as he dropped into one of the armchairs opposite Shouta’s desk, pushing it sideways towards the wall as usual. He did it in class too: positioning himself towards the door in whatever room he was in, his back to a wall, or a corner if he could manage it. The kid was riddled with issues. Shouta wondered if he had a therapist. “‘Course! Can’t let you get bored without me, you’d lose your edge.”
“God forbid,” Shouta said with a weary sigh, moving some books out of the way. “What can I do for you today?”
Touya grinned and pulled a big stack of papers out of his beat-up leather messenger bag. “About the reading from last week and the assignment due on Thursday, I had a few things I wanted to run by you.”
Shouta eyeballed the pile on his desk and blinked tiredly up at Touya, who was watching him with those electric blue eyes. He took a deep breath, and let it out in resignation.
“Fine.” He dragged the papers over and began to flip through. “What’s on your mind?”
Shouta went live on his YouTube sometimes. If he found a good book he thought he could read fully, and if he felt awake enough to spend several long hours reading, then sometimes he’d jump on live and let people jump in if they wanted. He’d picked up a novella today, a twisty little sapphic sci-fi he’d seen popping up all over the internet lately, and after leaving appropriate warnings in the video description, he started the stream and began to read.
He’d estimated something like four or five hours for this story, so he’d be on for a while. Usually his subscribers joined him pretty quickly, and then after about an hour or so he’d have a different audience altogether.
People came and went as their schedules allowed. He hoped some of them were going to sleep. Most people that watched his videos (or at least commented) were clearly native Japanese speakers, so he figured they were all in the same time zone usually. It did make him feel a little bad when people were still on the stream with him at three or four in the morning, but… It also made him feel a little less lonely. He hoped he did the same for them.
As usual, when he started the stream, he kept checking the screen with every notification of someone joining. Until he saw blueflame_dabi show up with a “what’d i miss?” and then he could focus again on his book.
Occasionally he’d look up between chapters or when taking a break for a sip of tea (which always sent his chat into a commotion over his hands for some reason), and Dabi was always right there in the comments with something to say about the story or Shouta’s voice or how nice it was to be read to.
Shouta never replied to comments, not out loud or during streams at least. Stories were immersive, and he tried to keep his listeners in that sort of bubble, even if they were doing other things in real life. That didn’t mean he didn’t try to read them as much as he could.
It gave him a way to keep track of who was around and when they came and left. For example, Dabi came no more than ten minutes into his stream. He stayed until the very end, when it was just some last few stragglers around, most of whom had hopped in much later in the story. Almost every time Shouta did a long, late night stream, Dabi would be there from start to finish, active in the chat the whole time. Shouta wondered if he ever got any sleep at all, or if he was like Shouta, napping throughout the day in fits when he could.
Maybe it was a sense of pity, or even guilt, that had him going to his blog when the story was over and he ended the stream, thanking everyone (the few left) for listening, and wishing them a good night. He had private messages enabled on his blog, which people normally used to send requests in when he didn’t have a poll up. There was a chat there with Dabi, one-sided until now.
He wrote slowly, drumming his fingertips on the keyboard as he thought of what to say––how to say it without coming off… weird.
Apologies for the sudden message, you can ignore it if you want. I wanted to thank you for your support. I hope this doesn’t come across as intrusive, but I notice you in the chat throughout my live streams regularly. While I’m glad that you seem to enjoy my audios, and I certainly don’t mind the company, I hope that you’re not like me and that you can get some sleep at night. This may be presumptuous of me, but I hope you aren’t staying up to watch my streams when you could be sleeping.
Please take care of yourself.
He sent it, and stared blankly at the chat, at the new message breaking the stream of story requests from the other side. He felt a little… foolish, maybe. Sending a message to some young man who followed him, feeling responsible for a stranger like this.
Dabi wasn’t even the only one who stayed up late with him, though he was probably the most regular. Still, Shouta would never send a message like that to any of the others. So why… Why Dabi? God, he must be going delirious, staying up every night with this complete stranger for company.
As he zoned out, staring blankly at his computer stream, a message suddenly popped up followed by a few more in quick succession.
oh wow, never thought i’d get a pm from eraser-sama, what a surprise eheh
are you worried about me? you shouldn’t be lol, i’m basically your target audience!
i sleep sometimes, when my body gives out ;) but i’m young and etc., it’s fine for me
eraser sensei’s the one who should sleep more, aren’t you old?
Hmm. Charming. Against his better judgment, Shouta scoffed and replied.
I’m hardly in a nursing home. Somewhere between parent-ordained bedtime, and nurse-ordained bedtime. You too, I hope, seeing as you listen to my adult audios as well.
Please enlighten me if you would, what’s my target audience?
The text box came up and disappeared a few times as Dabi typed. Then his answer came through.
ahaha i think you’ve got a few years on me, but don’t worry, you won’t catch a case for reading those things to me, i’m definitely an adult
i’m in my twenties if that makes you feel better
your target audience? insomniac, isn’t it ? just like you
I’m not an insomniac
Shouta said, like a liar.
I’m just a bit nocturnal, according to some.
so you sleep during the day then?
I try, anyway.
hahaha that’s what i thought
nocturnal, diurnal, it doesn’t really matter does it? if you can’t sleep, we’re all on the same boat
And you?
Shouta kicked himself a little as he sent the message. There was no need for him to know those kinds of things. No reason, really, for him to be having a conversation here in the first place. He should have just left it at that first message. But his fingers were still moving anyway.
Are you nocturnal?
i guess, by profession for a bit. i’d be happy to sleep all night though
I doubt spending your night on my streams chatting helps you sleep.
Dabi took a long while to respond, and Shouta almost worried that he’d said something wrong, overstepped or insulted him. Then a message finally came through.
doesn’t hurt
i can’t sleep anyway
nightmares and shit haha
hmm a little lame of me probably as an adult
it’s nice being read to, though. reminds my of when i was little
Shouta actually got that a lot. There was a safe, nostalgic comfort in being read to, according to the comments he regularly received on his videos. The SFW ones, anyway.
There’s nothing lame about that. Do you think you outgrow fear as you age?
Your brain grows up as you do. Your nightmares do too.
ahh of course you don’t just read well, you’re all wise and shit too
eraser sensei is giving me life advice hah
how unexpected
do you get nightmares too? is that what keeps you up?
Not quite.
Not nightmares, really, just other things, I guess.
There’s always something, isn’t there?
mmm just vague enough to keep me guessing lol
you don’t have to chat with me if you don’t want btw
i appreciate the concern anyways but i won’t keep you
I don’t mind.
It feels like you talk to me a lot with how much you comment. This seems more fair.
oh i see
and your other listeners?
some people really tell you (and the internet lol) everything
you check in on them too?
Shouta huffed a breath out through his nose and his fingers hesitated over his keyboard for just a moment.
If you don’t let it go to your head, you’re different from the others.
He didn’t really know how that would come across to a stranger across computer screens, but he didn’t see a point in being opaque about it. He was well into his forties, he could stand a little honesty.
oh????
is this a shounen?? i feel like the chosen one haha
different how?
Shouta contemplated how to tactfully say I think you’re a young gay man who wants someone who understands him, and I sympathize or something. He couldn’t really figure it out, so instead he said:
I like the stories you ask for, and your comments when I read them
I don’t mind the BL stories some people ask for, but the ones you request are a bit more raw.
More honest.
honest?
True. Real.
The others are sweet, there’s nothing wrong with that.
But the world’s not always so pretty. I think you know that.
It only took Dabi four or so minutes of typing and deleting to respond.
are you gay?
Shouta snorted at his forwardness, but knew that on the other end, Dabi was probably biting his lip, weighing the chances that he’d just offended a creator he admired, so he answered quickly.
Quite.
I thought it might be obvious by my thrilling enthusiasm reading bodice rippers.
i thought that was just the shitty writing
really?
Why would I lie about that?
dunno
didn’t expect it i guess
Yes, well, even your wise and respectable YouTube elders like sucking cock I guess.
Christ. Shouta let out a weary sigh at his own lack of a filter. This wasn’t Hizashi he was messaging, it was some (adult) kid on the internet. He should know better.
Apologies, that was inappropriate.
This may come as a shock, but I’m a bit sleep deprived.
Pretend I didn’t send that.
no no, i don’t think i will lolol
wow this is so ahahahah
oh man you’d break so many married old women’s hearts if you came out on your blog djkdsl
Don’t be ridiculous.
oh i’m not
those ladies are thirsting something fierce
you know they get off to your porn clips right?
Don’t call them that, they’re hardly porn.
they’re… very much porn
Fine, but you make me sound like a porn actor.
porn actor, porn voice actor… what’s the difference?
For one, I’m not fucking anyone.
Much less a woman.
and for two?
I don’t think I need one, point one is sufficient.
Besides, don’t act like you’re any better than them.
You buy almost all of them too.
Even the “shitty” bodice rippers.
eheheheh
sue me, i have something of a praise kink
all that “you’re so good for me, darling”
really does it for me ;))))
Shouta shouldn’t be doing this, should he? No, certainly not.
That’s quite different from what you personally ask for.
i’m multifaceted lol
praise + degradation + a little slapping around?
i may have some underlying issues, but they lead to some great sex lol
And listening to some old man read erotica on the internet fulfills all that for you?
unfortunately, finding suitable partners isn’t always as easy as it should be
a boy’s gotta have some standards, you know?
eraser sensei’s porn is good enough for me
besides, it’s nearly sunrise on a weeknight, who else wants to be up with me?
Please don’t call it my porn.
i’m just being honest, old man
You don’t even know me and you’re calling me old man already.
You are forward aren’t you?
says the man who started talking about sucking cock ten minutes into a perfectly innocent conversation
Conceded.
It is quite late––or rather, quite early––now. Perhaps you should try to sleep.
is eraser tired?
Hardly.
But I should be. I have work in a matter of hours.
You’ve also been on for far too long. Young or not, you need your rest.
hahah we’ll see
you were right about nightmares, you know?
i used to be afraid of the dark
now, it doesn’t really matter. they still come in the daytime
Put on a video of mine, if they help you. In my experience, if the daylight doesn’t stop them, some company does.
ah yes, my bedtime porn
what would i do without it
May I suggest literally anything else?
you may, but i won’t listen
you know you’re actually less emotive in your m/f porn than you are reading your sfw stories?
they make great white noise
and being told i’m a good girl as i’m falling asleep does great things to my ego ;)
Shouta chuckled out loud, which was admittedly a little embarrassing.
Whatever helps you sleep at night
he said, and meant it.
Or in the daytime.
Sleep well, Dabi.
dabi?
hah cute
sleep well eraser
or, do your best ! i guess you don’t have bedtime stories do you?
well i’ll listen on your behalf
thanks for the company
see you next time ;)
That was the first time they talked. It was not the last.
Sometimes after one of Shouta’s late night streams, sometimes in the middle of the night when Shouta was lying awake in bed or editing audios. They never talked in the daytime, but at night it became something of a regular occurrence.
Shouta didn’t mind––he rather enjoyed the company, and Dabi was… interesting, certainly––but he wondered if he was doing himself any favors staying up online chatting like a teenager. Still, whenever he thought of the sleep he could hypothetically (but not realistically) be getting instead, he thought about some faceless young man sitting awake in his dark bedroom, alone and plagued by nightmares. So he didn’t mind, not really.
It did mean he was a little more tired during the day, but he’d long ago gotten used to that. It was like second nature to him to navigate the world half asleep. He could teach his classes, grade his assignments, procure nourishment (sometimes in the form of pure coffee) and more without ever utilizing his full brain power.
The only time he really had to be on was when Todoroki Touya came to his office, all blazing blue eyes and interminable requests. The boy was a menace. A bright menace, with plenty of potential, but damn annoying sometimes.
And then one day he showed up noticeably dimmer than usual.
Shouta almost didn’t notice at first, beyond noting his decreased volume with relief. He’d had a long and late night of his own the night prior, starting with a four hour livestream, and then talking with Dabi for nearly twice that. Nightmares again. Worse, somedays, than others.
He’d told Shouta once that it wasn’t typical nightmares, it wasn’t stress dreams or anything like that, not really. PTSD, apparently. Shouta thought he was terribly young to be suffering so much, but he supposed things like that didn’t care about your age. He did what he could, which was just… text the boy. Read more of his requests, since no one else had to know he was doing it for him. Keep him company when the nightmare-memories felt like they were closing in.
All was to say, he’d gotten even less sleep than usual, and he found it hard to take his usual catnaps throughout the day when he wouldn’t know how Dabi was doing until late evening at best, so he didn’t immediately notice the way Todoroki Touya slunk into his office a bit less like a panther and a bit more like a kicked dog.
The boy offered a cheeky greeting as usual, but it lacked its usual spark, and when he pulled his seat back, he pulled it until his back was truly up against the wall, his eyes flicking lazily around the room and always circling back to the door. He ran a hand through disheveled hair that looked like it had already been sufficiently tousled today. The black was growing out a little, and Shouta was somewhat surprised to note that the roots were snow white.
Touya pulled something out for Shouta to help him brainstorm, but he wasn’t rattling off questions like he usually did. He was diminished a little, a candle flickering at every passing breeze instead of his usual bonfire-in-a-drought type of rampant energy.
Shouta frowned at him, but it was hard to tell what was wrong. Maybe he looked a little sallow? But the boy was pale, as always, and his eyes always had smudged black eyeliner around them, so it was hard to see if those were bags under his eyes or just messy makeup. His hands shook sometimes, but Shouta had seen him smoking around campus enough that he could rack it up to a smoker’s twitch. It was a nasty habit, Shouta thought, but he figured there were worse things. Touya had probably done worse things.
Still, he tried to pay more attention, noticing the lag in Touya’s responses, the way he took a minute to ask his questions, the way he missed multiple opportunities to be cheeky as fuck when Shouta was clearly in no position to scold him for it today. Finally, after Touya ran his chipped black nails through his hair for the millionth time in the last hour, Shouta cleared his throat and pushed the book in front of him away.
“Todoroki, what’s the matter with you?”
Touya startled slightly at the question, blue eyes widening as his head snapped up to Shouta’s, and- yeah, those were definitely bags under his eyes, almost bruise-like from lack of sleep. It took a second for him to process that he was being asked, and then his face seemed to close up into an expert mask. His lips bared into a familiar practiced grin, but his eyes were as unreadable blue as the center of a torch. “Nothing at all, sensei,” he lied perfectly. “Just a little tired. Maybe not the best day to discuss Zizek, is it?”
No, it definitely wasn’t. “I see,” Shouta said because it wasn’t his business to pry where he wasn’t wanted. “Why don’t we call it a day then? You can go… rest.” He still wasn’t sure Touya’s trembling fingers weren’t from a need for nicotine.
Touya took another moment to process that, and this time when he smiled, it looked a little disappointed. “Yeah. Sure. Guess we’re not getting much done anyway.”
Shouta studied him a little longer. He thought of his own sleepless nights. Thought of Dabi, alone with his nightmares unless he was talking or listening to Shouta. “Or,” he offered without really thinking, “you’re welcome to stay here and take a nap if you want. Office hours are technically over. No one will be coming by.”
Touya startled. Stared at him a little. Then his fingers began to move again, drumming an anxious little rhythm on his knee. “You want me to nap here?”
Shouta forced a casual shrug. This was certainly unusual, but he was sympathetic. “I don’t care one way or another,” he said simply. “But I don’t care if you do. I only need this lamp on, we can turn the damn big light off. As long as you don’t snore, I can keep grading.”
Touya looked oddly conflicted. His eyes flickered to the door and lingered for a moment, then up to the too-bright ceiling light. “You sure?”
Shouta let out a tired sigh. “This isn’t a test, Todoroki, there’s no right or wrong answer, I’m not grading you. Stay and sleep, or go and sleep, it doesn’t affect me in the least.”
“I’ll stay,” Touya said quickly. He forced himself up and crossed quickly towards the lightswitch. “You don’t mind?”
“Not at all,” Shouta said honestly, the overhead already giving him a faint headache. “Feel free to shut the door too, the hall lights are out of my control.”
Touya looked relieved, and he shut the door before he even hit the lights, fingers hovering over the lock for a moment before falling away. When the light turned off, the room was immediately cast in warm amber shadows. The blinds were shut, the evening sun making them glow a faint orange, and the room looked half its size like this, the corners lost to the darkness.
Touya, more silhouette than boy, lingered for a moment by the door. Then he glanced back at Shouta, like a stray worried that one misstep might cost them their dinner, and when Shouta didn't immediately change his mind and force him out, he slouched over to his chair and collapsed into the worn leather.
“Do you mind if I listen to something?” He was already pulling out a pair of earbuds, dingy plastic things with a black cord connecting them, plugging into his equally dingy black phone. For a Todoroki (because Shouta knew the family, knew the kind of money they had, the kind of money they’d begun donating to the university since Touya started), it was horrifically low-tech. He didn’t seem to mind though.
Shouta waved a hand dismissively. “As long as I can’t hear it,” he said, and he caught a glimpse of white teeth in a little smile as Touya popped the earbuds in one by one. Then he pulled one out and looked at Shouta a little more seriously. His smile lingered, but only on the surface.
“Don’t touch me,” he said lightly, “if I’m sleeping. Just call my name, or throw a paper ball at me or something if you need to wake me up.”
A gentle reminder, Shouta thought, of the fact that he was letting a sort of feral beast into his space and expecting it to behave. He nodded in weary agreement and waved him off. “Sleep, if you’re going to, and let me work.”
If Touya had anything else to say, he chose not to, and tucked in his earbud again as he leaned back in the chair. His blue eyes, bright like twin flames, stared sternly at Shouta for a long time, and he pretended to ignore them. Eventually, when he looked up from the paper he’d been grading, he realized that at some point, they’d fallen shut, and Todoroki Touya was asleep.
He did snore, just a little. Shouta didn’t actually mind it much at all.
It became something of a thing after that: Touya coming in for office hours and staying for a nap. He tried to disguise it at first, but when Shouta didn’t put up a fight, he became a bit more shameless, as he was in all other things.
Honestly, Shouta didn’t really hate it at all. Touya always had good questions when he came in, good ideas, but Shouta was tired, and Touya sometimes demanded more than Shouta had to give in the moment. But now, Touya would come, crack his jokes, ask his questions, and promptly pass out in Shouta’s arm chair, the lights low, the door firmly closed, and Shouta keeping watch.
It let Shouta work, it gave him a reason to stay awake, and, maybe most importantly, it let Touya sleep.
He didn’t know if it was something like what he struggled with, or maybe something like Dabi, or if Touya’s particular brand of sleeplessness was something else entirely, but at the end of the day, he didn’t really care. He knew the body didn’t either: sleepless was sleepless, no matter the cause. Shouta knew that, so he let Touya sleep.
He wondered sometimes if it might help him, too. Having someone around. Someone to keep watch. But he didn’t have a troubled past like Touya, or nightmares like Dabi. There was nothing to guard him from, other than memories. Grief. Loneliness. All those vast, weary concepts that were too river-pebble smooth to grasp. He didn’t need a protector, he just needed… something that made things feel like they were worthwhile.
Shouta shook his head to clear it. His own needs were secondary right now. As they had been for a long time. But he could help, he could give to others what he couldn’t get for himself. So he graded, and Touya slept.
“His mouth left her lips, traveling with a trail of fire down her neck to her breast, and breathlessly Nicole whispered, ‘Don't, please, Christopher, don't do this to me.’”
Shouta lowered his voice again. This was a boring book, and the English names were clunky on his tongue, but it had won the poll on his blog, and he lived to please.
“He stopped and stared up at her, beguiled and enchanted by the beautiful features so near him. ‘Stop?’ he muttered thickly. ‘I cannot. You say you do not want me. But you lie, Nicole, you have always lied. If you did not want me, this would not happen.’”
His listeners would eat that up. He’d get at least two dozen comments from women in their fifties crooning about the fierce and passionate lover they never had, about how much they liked his voice when it dipped low like that, about what a genius the author was to string words together in exactly the way they wanted to hear.
Shouta really didn’t mind reading these. It made them happy, and to him it was just another story, so what did he care? He just let his mind wander, which was easy when the reading at hand was so… simple, and he thought about other things instead.
He thought about things like: men, with their skin tanned and rough, their limbs thick or lean with muscle. Things like: sex that read like a fight, bodies warring with the desire to take, and not gently. Things like: holding someone warm and solid, hot and wanting.
Sometimes he thought instead about a boy, somewhere, sleepless, who kept his voice for company. Another boy, also sleepless, except for when he was around. He thought about himself, sleepless, with nothing to show for it but a frankly ridiculous number of strangers on the internet who liked his voice and a crippling caffeine addiction.
So, his thoughts weren’t all male models and bedsheets, sue him. It wasn’t like the adult romances he read for all his lovely lady followers did anything to put him in a wanting state of mind––the love interests sometimes caught his attention, but then they’d say something about how women’s tits were like pearls, and their cunts like… oysters, or something equally crass and off putting, and he’d quickly lose interest again.
Usually, he kept himself amused by thinking of Dabi listening to whatever smutty little story he was reading. He wondered, absentmindedly, whether the boy jerked off to stories like this, or whether he tried, but ended up laughing too much when Shouta had to read things like steaming, velvety, hot rod in a low and serious voice. Then he thought that maybe it was inappropriate to think about things like that, so he did his best not to, but the slight smile stayed put on his face.
the membranes
chi ta-wei
have you read it?
I have not. Is this you asking me to?
asking?
this is a threat
And would you like this threat in audiobook format, or just a nice little discussion?
Are we starting a book club?
my god, you’re bursting with attitude today sensei
whats got your panties in a twist?
I’m afraid any inquiries about the state of my panties are out of your budget.
so you do do porn!
what makes you think i have a limited budget
sensei’s panties must be very in demand
I’m certain they’re not.
And I don’t do porn.
i just don’t agree
[audio attached- 0:14]
Shouta pressed play, his stomach doing something weird inside him- and was treated to the sound of his own voice, low and almost comically sultry: “‘You’re beautiful, my love,’ he encouraged, one hand tenderly cupping her lively breast, ‘let me be inside you, let us become one.’”
I’ll take away your adult privileges if you act like a child about them.
Do you make a habit of saving clips of these stories?
only the ones where i think you’re probably exceptionally tortured reading them out loud
is everything ok though?
not to pry into your great and mysterious life ofc
it feels like we’re always talking about me
“how did you sleep” “did you like my steamy pirate porn” “how much coffee can someone drink before they start hallucinating”
okay that last one was actually about you but you get the point
Have you considered that ASMR erotica might not be enough? What about therapy?
i laughed
chortled, even
tried that, still can’t sleep
Forget the sleep, I’m more concerned about your obsession with my audio porn.
No, that was not admitting that I do porn, that was simply quoting you.
heh
if you say so sensei
You don’t have to call me that, you know?
hm? sensei?
Yes. I’m not your teacher.
you’re the one you made your name eraser-sensei
i thought you had a fetish for it or something
ahahha don’t be mad i’m kidding
it feels like a nickname, sort of
you call me dabi, don’t you?
I suppose.
would you rather i called you something else?
Shouta hesitated for a while, debating. And then, because why the hell not:
Shouta.
Dabi was silent for a long time, not even a box to show he was typing. Shouta stared impatiently at the screen. Finally:
okay
i hope you don’t expect my real name in exchange
I’m already getting you to not call me sensei, what more could I possibly want?
ahahaha
if you hate it so much why’d you make it your dn?
I don’t hate it. I don’t mind if people use it in comments.
It’s different like this though.
And I’m a teacher, which is why I chose it, but it also means that I don’t need a little cretin like you making it out to be a fetish thing.
i was kidding i was kidding hehehe
why am i not surprised that you’re actually a teacher hah
for what? preschool? i bet you sit all the kids down for story time at least twice a day
University. So basically the same thing.
no shit !! i’m in university haha
i wish my professors did story time :(
You must be graduating soon?
ah no
late start haha
you know, what with the trauma and whatnot
Oh yes, how could I forget.
Too traumatized for an education.
you’re lucky i get your sense of humor because someone else would cry because of that
Then cry.
you’re insufferable kfjdlsk
are you avoiding the question?
Not well enough, if you’re still asking.
and here i thought your only trouble was lack of sleep
what is it ? work troubles?
i’d say money troubles but you could probably retire early and live on your porn alone at this rate
I don’t make porn.
loooove troubles~?
“i don’t make porn i just read it out loud for money”
I guarantee I haven’t had any of those in a long time.
oh sad
well isn’t that trouble enough?
does shouta need a boyfriend~~~
????
How are you saying it’s sad for me when you’re clearly single too?
hhhaahhaha the ???? is so young of you
next thing you know you’ll be sending emojis and everything
I use emojis.
???????
prove it
I really don’t need to do that.
And I don’t like the default ones.
….
shouta do you use line stickers
oh my god
do you buy sticker packs
I like cats.
oh my god
oh my god what am i supposed to do with this information
i feel like i have to tell people
if i had friends i would be busting down their doors right now ahahahah
If?
why are you making this about me again?
aren’t you the one who’s upset bc you’re all alone or something?
yes ‘if’, the aforementioned trauma and the sleep schedule and my generally charming attitude make things complicated
back to you
You’re so persistent.
Maybe I don’t want to talk about it.
then tell me to fuck off
It’s not love troubles. I’m used to being alone, I prefer it.
for some reason i don’t believe you
Brats don’t get confided in.
it’s too late for that i already know you buy catmoji sticker packs on line
And I’m the insufferable one?
we both are
it’s why we’re such good company ahaha
Anyway.
Sometimes I think it gets to me.
Are you ever envious?
Of people who can sleep.
oh
i mean i think i’m envious of everyone for everything all the time
you had a good childhood? you never did drugs? you have friends? you go home for holidays? you sleep normally? eat normally? you’ve been in love?
so yeah
i think that’s normal
There’s someone I know who I think is like us. Can’t sleep well.
They’ve started to, though. Naps, as far as I know, but sleep.
And it helps them if I’m there, I think, and I sit there while they sleep and I’m glad, I am.
but you wish you could sleep too?
I don’t even remember what it feels like to be well rested. I’m exhausted all the time.
I know I’m old
Older
But I feel like I have more left in me. Or I would, if I felt like I could do anything at all.
you’re not that old, old man
distinguished maybe
grouchy mostly
but you shouldn’t feel bad about that
i’ve been getting some sleep lately during the day
somewhere i’m safe, with someone i trust
it’s not enough. i think i could sleep for a year and it still wouldn’t be enough
but it helps, it really does
do you resent me for it?
It isn’t like that. I don’t resent him.
oooh a boy
Insufferable.
Of course I don’t resent him, or you. But it makes me wonder if I’m missing something, if there’s something I could be doing that would make it all easier.
it doesn’t really help to think like that does it
you know better
it’s not something you can control or you would have fixed it by now
I know that.
I know and still
I still think about it, I try not to.
well don’t feel bad about that either
what does it to do be mad at yourself for it ?
it’s shit not being able to sleep
and it’s shit not being able to do anything about it
but the last thing you need on top of that is to treat yourself like shit for things that are out of your control
it’s not selfish to want things like that
it doesn’t make you a bad person
I can’t believe I’m getting a lecture from you right now.
I never thought I’d live to see the day.
even old men like you need advice sometimes
and besides
i think i’m qualified to give a little lecture here and there
i might not be as old and wise as eraser sensei
but i’ve got a bit of life experience
and therapy ahahahha
I see.
I know we make light of my age and yours, but I hope you don’t believe that I think any less of you because of it.
???
I take you seriously, is all.
Even if you didn’t have all your
Life experience
There are people older than me who you couldn’t pay me to respect, and there are plenty of people younger who I admire.
I don’t want you to think that I’m ever just humoring you or patronizing you.
oh
i mean that’s nice to hear and i appreciate it
but also people don’t usually… humor me lolol
some of them look down on me because of my appearance or my past, but i don’t give two shits about them really
and before
when i was even younger and involved in shit a bit less pleasant than listening to porn on the internet
let’s just say people respected me in other ways
i’m… used to being respected
or at least feared a little haha
but thanks anyway
and for what it’s worth, i don’t typically respect old people
but you’re not half bad
God, what a thrilling testimony.
I should frame it and hang it beside my diplomas.
ehh if you want an award i’ll make you one
but it’ll be for “best porn & story time”
For some reason, I think I’m alright without that hanging in my office.
But I appreciate the thought.
Though I don’t do porn.
sure you don’t !
You know, you are special.
I was having a bad day, and somehow, you made it worse.
i’ve been told it’s my hidden talent
you’re so welcome
What would I do without you.
Tell me about this book you want me to read to you.
oh? is that a no to our bookclub?
and you’d probably wither away in your misery, reading that ice monster alien porn story to women in menopause
Is that your way of asking me to read the sequel?
And I’m not implying that you’re illiterate, but I find it very, very difficult to believe that you’d prefer reading a physical book to having me read it to you.
Judging from the way you manage to pay for my groceries with your erotica addiction.
ok for 1 it’s hardly an erotica addiction
if anything it’s a shouta addiction ;))
and for 2 ???? the implication wasn’t even there until you said it ???
do you think i write to you with voice to text ?????
(and ofc i have no skin in the matter… but if you did… i’d buy it)
You’re so annoying.
I should give you a discount.
help ?!??!?!
i mean i won’t say no, but ???!/
It was never there to turn a profit, not really.
It just makes it easier to ensure the people consuming my adult content are actually adults.
It’s not foolproof, I’m sure, but it’s an added inconvenience that helps keep it adult-only.
It does come in handy though. I’ve been able to upgrade my equipment and buy the books people request.
But I could probably put a long term listener discount into place
ehhh so it’s not just me being special :(((
i’m sure all your fans will be thrilled
Greedy.
It’s not enough that I message you every day, or that I read everything you ask for, or that I let you tiebreak polls?
Besides, as long as you don’t announce it, I don’t see why I wouldn’t just make yours free.
god you’re so
ughhh
i never know with you
Know what?
hah
i wish i knew
Touya showed up to class in a pair of fitted black slacks, a black button down shirt, loosely tucked and only mostly buttoned, and a shocking lack of piercings. His eyeliner was neater and lighter than usual, only smudged out a little on the outer edges, giving his eyes a distinctly sharp look, and the only metal left on him were his first lobe piercings, a slim silver chain around his neck, and the dimple piercings Shouta imagined were probably a pain to remove. He still had on his beat up black boots, the thick soles scuffing the carpet as he walked to his seat in the back corner and dropped into it.
He looked nicer and neater than Shouta had probably ever seen, and yet also distinctly like he’d wrapped himself up in a storm cloud that threatened to strike anyone who got too close. He didn’t meet Shouta’s eye as he settled down. He didn’t even take out his materials, which was a shock in and of itself.
Throughout the whole class, he just sat there, fidgeting uncomfortably, pulling at his sleeves—rolling them up to his elbows, pulling them back down over his tattoos, pushing them back up again—bouncing his knees, chewing mercilessly on his lips. Sometimes he would suck in one cheek, and Shouta had a feeling he was toying with the back of his piercing, rolling it around his tongue- That was none of his business.
Still, when class ended, Shouta cleared his throat. “Todoroki, come see me for a moment.”
Most of the students had run out the second Shouta dismissed them, but the few that took their time leaving glanced back at the dark, menacing beast that was Todoroki Touya and began to mutter nervously amongst themselves as they hurried to escape.
For his part, Touya didn’t show a hint of surprise. He just sulked in the back of the room, waiting for the last of his peers to get the fuck out, and then, when the door finally closed on him and Shouta, his eyes flickered up.
He looked terribly sad.
Shouta didn’t know whether he should go over to him or not, so he settled on crossing the room about halfway and finding a desk to settle against, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his head to one side. “Is something wrong?”
Touya’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t snap at him, though it looked like it took some effort. For a while, Shouta wasn’t sure he’d even respond, which would be fine. It wasn’t like Touya owed him an answer.
“I’m having dinner with my family,” Touya said after a minute. He sort of forced the words out, like he’d been choking on them. “I don’t know if you know-”
“The Todorokis? Yes, I’m familiar.”
Touya scoffed out a bitter laugh. “Right. Daddy dearest probably signs your paychecks.” A complicated look crossed his face. “Guess not just anyone gets to take a nap in your office, do they?”
Shouta frowned. “I can assure you that you’re not allowed to do that because your father donates to the school.”
Touya’s lips twitched up a little, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Sure. Doesn’t really change things. You know them, though. Us,” he corrected, seemingly as an afterthought.
“Of them,” Shouta offered. “I can’t say I’ve ever met any but you. I don’t know that I necessarily want to.”
At that, Touya did offer a little smile. “The younger ones aren’t so bad,” he conceded, a little unwillingly. “Enji…”
“Your father?” Touya nodded. Shouta must have made a face, because then he snorted slightly and nodded in agreement. “Yes, he seems…”
“He is,” Touya agreed quickly. Then he deflated a little, and whatever humor had sparked up for a moment was lost. “He’s- We have a lot of history,” he said, spitting ‘history’ out like poison. “He’s making amends. Trying to, anyway. But I know he just feels guilty. Or pities me. I don’t know if there’s a difference anymore. And-” He broke off, slouching back and tugging at his sleeves some more. His nails, Shouta noticed, were painted black, but freshly done. Neat, no chips. “My mother will be there.”
Todoroki Rei, If Shouta remembered correctly. There was a chance he didn’t, considering it had been a few years since the name had been plastered in the news— Business Mogul Todoroki Enji’s Wife Suffers Mental Break: Where Has She Gone?— but he at least had an idea of what it might mean. After all, he’d also read the other headlines— Todoroki’s Eldest Son Dead in Tragic Fire, or more recent, Todoroki Touya, Back From The Dead?: The Secret Life of The Former Heir.
Shouta never read those things; he had no interest in being a voyeur in other people’s private matters just because they happened to be rich and famous, but there hadn’t really been any escaping the stories. He simply did his best to take them with a generous heap of salt.
“I see,” he said. “You don’t want to see her?”
Touya hesitated, and then shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s been… a long time. She’s- Well, you probably know. ‘Unstable,’ all that shit. Not really, not the way they make her seem in the news—at least, not anymore—but… Delicate, I guess. And I’m. I’m a touchy subject.” His lips curled into a bitter grin. “They don’t really want me around her.”
“They?”
Touya waved a hand in a loose, unassuming gesture. “My father. Natsuo. Fuyumi too, though she won’t say it. The only one who doesn’t care is Shouto, but I don’t really know if he cares about anything at all sometimes. They think I’ll set her off or something. Disturb her.”
“I see. Is that what this is about?” Shouta waved a hand towards Touya, his neat, mostly fitted clothes and lack of piercings. “Trying to make a good impression, show you’ve changed?”
Touya’s jaw tightened. “I don’t have to make a good impression. She’s my mother.”
“And he’s your father, and they’re your little siblings. You can’t help if you care what they think.”
Touya had this look on his face like he wanted to be angry—like he was angry, at himself anyway—and his shoulders curled in a little. It looked a little unnatural on him: smallness. He spent so much time exuding, making himself take up space for the simple purpose of being seen. Shouta wondered when he had last let himself be small, or weak, or vulnerable, or if his whole life had just been 23 years of putting on a front and pretending nothing could touch him. He wondered what it meant that Touya was shrinking on himself now, in front of Shouta; alone with Shouta.
“They know… what I did. Sort of. They know enough. But even with- Even though I’ve done so much- That’s all they see when they look at me. I’m not saying I’m not that person anymore, because I just- I don’t think you leave that shit behind you. I didn’t. It’s still a part of me, so I can’t say that it’s not me anymore, but I- I’m trying. I’ve been really fucking good lately. I just don’t want them to look at me like…”
“Like you haven’t changed?” Shouta offered when Touya trailed off. The boy shrugged. Shouta let out a sigh and uncrossed his arms, leaning himself back against the desk he was resting on.
He couldn’t pretend to know the extent of what Touya had done or been through before coming here, but he could attest to the fact that since then, he hadn’t done anything worse than snap his teeth menacingly at a passing (younger) freshman who’d been giving him a look while he’d been smoking outside the library one day. Not to Shouta’s knowledge, anyway, but… he felt pretty confident in his assessment.
“Todoroki-”
“Can you- Not call me that. Please.” Touya looked tense as anything, and Shouta relaxed a little at his outburst.
“Touya,” he said firmly. “Changing yourself to make them acknowledge you won’t do anything. If all it takes is a clean shirt and pants that fit, then they aren’t seeing how you’ve really grown, they’re just concerned about how you look to them. Things like that—like how many piercings you have, or how you like to dress—those have nothing to do with whether you deserve their respect or not.”
Touya wouldn’t meet his eyes. He stared firmly at the desk, his lashes—dark with what Shouta had come to realize was mascara or some kind of stain, since they were probably as white as his hair was under that pitch black dye—shadowing the bright teal of his eyes. His father’s eyes, Shouta thought, having seen enough of the older man on TV and magazine covers.
“It’s not that simple,” Touya finally said. “I know they won’t just… trust me. So, so what if they mind me less if I’m dressed like a fucking bartender? It’s still…”
Shouta understood. It wasn’t a matter of convincing his family that he was better than he used to be, or even that he deserved a second chance. It was simply that he wanted to go to a dinner with his family, with his father and mother and his kid siblings, and not be stared at like they wanted him gone. That was all.
Not for the first time, Shouta ached a little for the boy in front of him, who’d been through more than he should have and was still paying the price.
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Shouta told him, though he didn’t really know why his opinion would matter in something like this. But still. “But, Touya, it’ll take time. Things like that don’t happen overnight. I don’t know how your family is, so I can’t say that they’re also trying their best, but I do know that if you try to meet them where they are right now, you’ll never give them a chance to prove that they can be better too. I know it’s easier to just skip it all, put on an act, and let them feel comfortable, but it won’t last, and you don’t deserve that either. You should go, have a nice dinner with your family, and then keep proving that you aren’t the person they think you are. They’ll see eventually, if you keep showing them.”
“Yeah,” Touya said tersely. And then again, “Yeah,” with a sigh. “It’s just been a long time. And I…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but Shouta had a feeling he knew how it ended. Probably something like I want my family back, or I deserve to be loved too, even if Touya couldn’t bring himself to say something like that outloud.
Shouta pushed himself off the desk. “It’s one dinner,” he said.. “One night, for now. Take some flowers or something, for your mother. Don’t let them rile you up over little things. And it’s just the start, remember. If it doesn’t go well this time, it’s not the end of things. You have the rest of your life, and they do too.”
Touya toyed with his piercing again, from the inside, and Shouta forced his eyes away.
“Come on, you look good,” he offered, heading back to his desk to pack up. “I’m sure your mother will be charmed. You even brushed your hair for this, what a treat.”
Touya snorted out something like a laugh, and Shouta hid a smile. “Don’t talk to me about hair brushing,” Touya grumbled, and though the worry wasn’t gone from his voice, he didn’t sound quite so despondent.
Shouta scoffed and tugged his elastic loose from his hair. He ran his fingers through it and- Sure, it was a little tangled, but it was soft, and untangled easily under his touch. He turned back toward Touya and tilted his head to the side. “I don’t need to make a good impression,” Shouta drawled. Touya looked at him for a minute, at the black curtain of waves that fell past his shoulder.
“Right,” he said finally, standing and grabbing his bag. He hesitated as he tossed it over one shoulder, and Shouta watched him flush a little, his face turned towards the door, away from Shouta. “Sorry,” he said after a moment, “for not paying attention today. I’ll get notes from… someone.”
“Don’t bother,” Shouta dismissed with a wave of his hand. “I’ll send you the presentation, and you’ll come to office hours anyway. Have a good dinner.”
“Yeah. Thanks, sensei.”
Shouta just nodded, and Touya left; a rigid set to his shoulders, but no more storm cloud hovering around him. Shouta genuinely hoped he had a good night. Or at the very least, a short one.
are you streaming tonight?
Hello to you too.
I didn’t plan to. Would you like me to?
ah
no
i mean, you should do whatever
i thought that maybe
…
..
…
This again. Shouta watched the bubbles come and go, Dabi typing and erasing on his end of the chat. It wasn’t late yet, not by their standards anyway, and Shouta certainly hadn’t expected to open his blog to a message from Dabi, but he’d needed something to occupy him after getting home. He couldn’t stop wondering how Touya’s dinner had gone: if it had been okay, if his mother had been happy to see him, if his siblings had been welcoming, if his father had appreciated the effort he’d put in.
He’d resigned himself to simply not knowing, since there was no way for Touya to tell him tonight, and even when they did see each other in person, there was no way for him to ask about it. Touya could tell him, if he wanted, but for Shouta to ask would be overstepping. More than he already had, that was.
Finally, another message came through.
you can say no
you probably will
i mean i shouldn’t ask, but i could pay if you want, if you’re willing
Dabi.
Just ask.
I won’t be mad, whatever it is. Even if I say no.
ok
would you talk with me
like a call
Shouta froze. Blinked at the chat screen. It was still there, Dabi’s request to call. He didn’t really know what to make of it.
On one hand, hadn’t they already crossed all kinds of boundaries with their normal chats? Shouta didn’t necessarily know the details of Dabi’s life, but he knew other things, more important things, like how well he slept and the things that kept him up, and what he wanted from life, and what he felt he’d been robbed of. Shouta hadn’t made any effort to keep those things a secret from Dabi either, when it came to himself.
He knew Dabi craved companionship like something physical, he needed it like air or water or sleep. He knew he was lonely; lonelier even than Shouta was at night. And he knew he was… Special. To Shouta. In ways that maybe he shouldn’t be. So there was really only one answer, at the end of it.
Yes.
Right now?
oh
i didn’t expect you to say yes
Surprise !
wtf
are you trying to cheer me up?
Do you need cheering up?
no
well
it couldn’t hurt ahahha
Bad day?
idk
i’m tired.
i thought talking to you might just
be nice, i guess
I never set up a voice call feature on here. How would you like to talk?
line ?
haha maybe i can finally see your cat stickers
Haha.
[Link Attachment]
…
i can’t believe your id is literally mediumcat
BigCat was taken.
and smallcat?
I’m not very small.
…
You know damn well that’s not what I meant.
lol
okay i guess… whenever you’re able ?
Shouta thought it was funny, sometimes, how afraid younger people were of making calls, even to people they knew. Though he supposed that maybe he didn’t really count as someone Dabi knew yet. Still, he didn’t hesitate to press the call button.
It rang, and then kept ringing, and just when Shouta thought it might go to voicemail, Dabi answered.
He was silent for a moment, and then he spoke. His voice was low, and a little raspier than Shouta had expected. A little rough, like he hadn’t spoken in a few hours, and quiet, like it was the middle of the night and he didn’t want to break the silence.
“Hi.”
He sounded young. Not young like a child, but young like someone who shouldn’t have to be so awake, so tired, so worn. Shouta let out a long sigh of a breath.
“Hi,” he replied. He didn’t moderate his voice the way he did for his recordings, but he found himself matching Dabi’s low tone, quiet like he might disturb his empty apartment if he dared to speak at a regular volume.
Dabi was silent for a minute, and then he let out a wild chuckle, like he hadn’t really expected that Shouta would be right there on the other end. “God, this is- If my father knew I was calling strange old men from the internet, he’d disown me all over again.”
“I’ll give you a free pass for ‘strange old man,’ but only because there’s clearly something else bothering you.”
Dabi was quiet again. “Did you know you talk just like you type? Like, I’m definitely going to be hearing you reading your messages from now on.”
“Unlike your generation, back in my day, we did write how we spoke. Why you all felt the need to turn everything into acronyms and reaction memes is beyond me.”
“Says the man who uses cat stickers to communicate.”
“They’re not to get my message across,” Shouta corrected, “they just set the mood.”
“Set the- What mood, old man?”
“You’re a pervert, do you know?”
“You’re just a prude.”
“Changed your tune, hmm? I thought you said I was a pornstar.”
“You’re the one who keeps denying it. Prude.”
“You wanna tell me what you want to talk about, or do you want to make fun of what a whorish old prude I am?”
Dabi let out a rough, quiet laugh. “I like the way you say whorish,” he said. Then he paused, and Shouta let him, of course, because he already knew Dabi hadn’t called just to tease him. After a minute, he finally spoke again, and he was back to that half-hushed voice, like he couldn’t even summon more volume if he tried. “I don’t know if I wanna talk about it, not really. I just had… a long day, and a lot on my mind, I guess.”
“You can keep making fun of me, if it makes you feel better,” Shouta offered.
Dabi laughed again, and it was a sweet laugh, really. More innocent than his voice, like the rest of him had aged without it. “Nah, it gets old,” he sighed. “Just like you.”
“I’m getting mixed messages,” Shouta drawled, “pick a side.”
“Hey,” Dabi said suddenly, unprompted. “You don’t- It’s still okay if I call you Shouta, right? Even though you’re older? You don’t mind?”
“I don’t mind,” Shouta promised. “You’ve disrespected me enough already, what do I care?”
“Shouta,” Dabi murmured, as if Shouta hadn’t just offered him an out, “have you ever been in love?”
Shouta remembered a conversation they’d had some time ago. Remembered, faintly, Dabi implying that he had not, and he envied people who had. “I have,” Shouta said steadily. He listened to Dabi breath for a moment. “Do you want to hear about it?”
“Would you tell me?” Dabi asked quietly. “I mean really, not just the good stuff, or some your time will come bullshit.”
“If you want,” Shouta said after a moment. “But, kid, it’s not a happy story.”
“I don’t believe in happy stories,” Dabi said tiredly, and Shouta felt his heart break for him a little more, but he acquiesced anyway.
“I was younger than you. It was in high school, some… God, thirty years ago now. Fuck, really?”
“Don’t have a crisis on me now,” Dabi drawled, mostly teasing but a little bit desperate.
“Alright, alright,” Shouta huffed, setting the counting aside for some other time. “High school. I had two best friends. One of them is still my best friend to this day. The other one, I fell in love with. He was just… so bright, back then. He was shameless and ridiculous and one of those people who saw everything going exactly their way. He had the world at his feet, and we were all convinced of it. I knew even then that I shouldn’t fall in love with him. He was all that, and I was always… the opposite, really. It didn’t seem fair, or right. Not to mention, the three of us were always together, and I never wanted Hi- my best friend to feel alone.”
Dabi interrupted quietly. “Is it bad? To be so different that the person you love?”
“Bad? No,” Shouta hummed in thought. “I don’t know if there’s anything inherently bad in love, really. But it can make things harder. I worried about it all the time, because I didn’t want to drag him down. I think, looking back, there’s no way I could have. If anything, he’d have just dragged me right up with him.”
“What happened?” Dabi asked. “Did you stop being friends because of it? Because you couldn't be with him?”
The questions he asked, the way he asked them… He sounded so innocent, so genuinely lost. Shouta ached for him. “No. We got together anyway. My other friend could tell how I felt. He tried to convince me to make a move, but I wasn’t willing to risk it all. Oboro—the- the boy I loved—he was much braver than me, and, for some reason, he wanted to be with me too. So at some point during our second year, we got together.”
“What about your other friend? Wasn’t he left out?”
“Well we weren’t inviting him to fuck,” Shouta conceded dryly, “but at the end of the day, not that much changed. All three of us were still just friends, even Oboro and I. We were also just… more, on top of that. I felt like, maybe, with him, I could really do anything. I had so much faith in him, like you wouldn’t believe. If he’d told me he could walk us to the moon and back, I’d have followed him without question.”
“And then?” Dabi prompted, because innocent as he was, he wasn’t naive.
“Then he died,” Shouta murmured, feeling the old pang just as sharply as he always did. Dabi was quiet for a long moment.
“How?” he finally asked, sounding terribly defeated.
“How all young people die, I guess,” Shouta whispered. “Very suddenly.”
After a long time, Dabi finally huffed out a small breath in the shape of a humorless laugh. “Well, I feel better, I guess. I feel like that’s probably worse than never having loved anyone at all.”
“Is it?” Shouta wondered aloud, because even when he laid in bed at night and ached with rage and mourning, he could never bring himself to regret it. “I don’t know.” Dabi was silent, so Shouta took it as his turn. “Why did you ask? About love.”
“I don’t know,” Dabi said quickly. Lied. And then, “There’s someone- There’s this guy-”
He didn’t say anything else, and Shouta tried to wait him out, but he felt… oddly something at the admission. “You love him?”
“No. No, I don’t… I guess I don’t know. I wouldn’t know, even if I was.”
“You would, I think,” Shouta told him. “You would probably know.”
“Maybe,” Dabi whispered. “I don’t know if I want to.”
“Why? You think he’ll die on you too? I hate to say it, but at the end of it, someone’s gotta do it.”
“No, idiot. I mean, sure, now I am, a bit, but- But no, it’s just that… Like you and Oboro. We’re different. And I don’t want to drag him down. And I don’t think he’d want me to either. I don’t think he’d want me.”
“I didn’t think Oboro would,” Shouta repeated. “I was sure I’d ruin everything.”
“It’s different,” Dabi insisted. “It’s different. You were best friends first. You knew each other, really, and you were the same in other ways.”
“The same? How could you know that?”
“The same,” Dabi insisted. “Same age, same hometown, same friends.”
“And this guy you like… You’re not the same? Not in any way?”
“I don’t know,” Dabi admitted with a weary sigh. “I don’t know, and isn’t that even worse? I don’t even know him enough to lo- to like him like this, and even so, I’m worried that before I even have to leave, I’ll fuck things up and lose him on my own.”
“You’ll have to leave?”
“I’m in university,” Dabi told him, which Shouta knew already. “When I finish, that’s it. Hell, maybe when I’m done with the year, or the semester.”
“Sounds to me,” Shouta said slowly, “like you have nothing to lose.”
“That’s not-”
“Oboro was half my life before we ever got together,” Shouta interrupted. “If I had ruined things by liking him, I would have lost it all. And I wouldn’t have been able to cut ties and move on even if I tried. Like you said, same hometown, same friends.”
“It’s not that easy,” Dabi argued, “there’s more to it than that.”
“There always is,” Shouta admitted, “and I’m not saying it’s easy. If nothing else, your heart is on the line, isn’t it? But a broken heart’s not the end of the world, kid, take it from me. I’m not telling you what to do, but I don’t think you should be afraid to let yourself have this.”
“I can’t,” Dabi said after a moment. “I can’t have it, I’m not allowed.”
Shouta paused. “What do you mean? Don’t tell me he’s a child, or I’ll-”
“No, God, you’re a fucking nightmare,” Dabi hissed. “He’s… older. And that’s part of it, but it’s just… I have a bad past, you know that. That’s not the kind of shit you bring to the table. That’s the kind of shit you keep to yourself, and do your best not to hurt anyone else with it ever again,”
Shouta pondered that. “That sounds like a very lonely way to live.”
“I don’t really want lectures on loneliness from you,” Dabi murmured. “I’m the only one who knows what I’ve done and what I deserve.”
“You know, research has pretty much proven that punishment is worth jack shit when it comes to righting wrongs. I don’t know what you’ve done, or if there’s forgiveness you need, but if there is, that’s up to the people you’ve wronged. Self-flagellating because you regret what you’ve done doesn’t make you a better person.”
“God, I thought you were going to make me feel better, not worse.”
“I’m not your mother,” Shouta drawled, “it’s not my job to coddle you. I just think that the best thing to do when you’ve made a mistake is to keep living. Learn from it, don’t do it again. Be better, and keep going.”
Dabi was quiet for a long time, and Shouta wondered whether he’d overstepped, before dismissing it. They’d built this whole strange relationship on overstepping. “My mistakes aren’t the kind you move on from,” he finally said, and he sounded even more tired than before. “Sorry, I do- I get what you’re saying. I think it’s true, for other people. Not for me.”
“Because you’re so special?” Shouta asked softly.
“Because I’m so much worse,” Dabi answered, just as soft. “It’s not that simple.”
Shouta let out a long exhale. “If you called for me to agree that you aren’t worth forgiving or that you’re not allowed to move on and have a life, I’m the wrong man.”
“I know, I know,” Dabi huffed. “I know you aren’t. Maybe that’s why I wanted to talk to you?”
“Are you asking?”
“I don’t even know anymore,” Dabi sighed dramatically. “What was I even thinking, calling an old man like you to solve my problems?”
“I wasn’t aware I had to be fixing anything,” Shouta drawled, “I’m sorry, can we start over? Give me another go. I believe your line was ‘Oh, Shouta, my life is in ruins, won’t you-’”
“Eh? Why the hell did you give me your damsel in distress voice?!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t lie to me, you filthy rat, I’ve listened to enough of your storytimes-”
“I think you’re projecting,” Shouta chided. “Be honest, are you feeling like a damsel in distress, Dabi-kun?”
Dabi went quiet for a moment too long, and when he spoke, his lighthearted tone fell flat. “And if I am?” he asked. “Would you come rescue me?”
Shouta shut his eyes, let himself focus on the distant, quiet sounds of Dabi breathing. “Of course,” he murmured. “It’d be the responsible thing to do, wouldn’t it?”
“Even if- Even if I wasn’t worth it, would you come?”
“Are you in trouble?” Shouta asked gently, because he’d been wondering for a while. “I will. I really will come get you if you need to get out. I’ll help you.”
“No- No, it’s not like that. Not anymore, at least. It’s just-”
“The nightmares?” Shouta offered.
“Yeah.”
“The loneliness?”
“Mm.”
“The crippling guilt and self-deprecating thoughts that drive you into the chat log of a strange old man who lives in the internet?”
“Yea- God, I hate you. I feel like I’m getting emotional whiplash tonight, you should be ashamed of yourself.”
Shouta grinned to himself. “It’s my special tactic,” he admitted. “Keep the floor open if you still want to talk. Make you laugh a bit if you don’t.”
Dabi snorted a little laugh. “Whatever.”
“Is it working?” Shouta asked. “Do you feel better?”
Dabi sighed quietly. “Fuck, I mean. Yeah, a little. It was… It’s just been a long night. I’m tired, and I know I won’t be able to sleep. But I’m glad… I’m glad you let me call you.”
“You have my contact now,” Shouta told him. “You can use it.”
“Yeah,” Dabi murmured. “Yeah, thanks. Uh, I offered earlier but- Should I pay you for this? I mean, it’s kind of like a private stream, I know some people wouldn’t just-”
“Christ, Dabi, am I your friend or your dealer? You don’t pay to chat with me, why would I make you pay for this?”
“Oh. We’re friends?”
Shouta let out the most frustrated sigh he could summon while feeling horribly, terribly bad for the boy and whatever had made him this way. “I would say so,” he said dryly, “but apparently you see me as some voice-kink prostitute.”
Dabi let out a laugh that was more relieved than amused, and Shouta bit his tongue. “Okay, sorry, I apologize. Sorry.”
“Sure,” Shouta dismissed. They fell into a moment’s silence, both of them weighing words before they said them. Shouta was the first to speak, gently so as not to scare him off. Dabi was more skittish than he came across in his messages. Less sure of himself. “Do you want me to read to you? Maybe you’ll be able to sleep.”
Dabi sucked in a shuddery breath. “Really?”
“Sure,” Shouta said, already walking over to his bookshelf and browsing through for a nice story. Something light. “I was probably going to record something anyway, but I don’t mind if it’s just for you.”
Dabi was quiet again. And then: “You’re really shameless, you know that, old man?”
“Kid, if you haven’t grown out of shame at my age, there’s no hope for you.”
“You always talk like you’re a week from keeling over, but you forget the whole internet has seen your hands. You can’t possibly be that old.”
“You’re all so strange,” Shouta muttered, pulling a short, mostly-autobiographical novel off the shelf and eying the colorfully illustrated cover. “I don’t know why you all freak out anytime I take a second to drink something or flip a page.”
“Liar,” Dabi accused. “Dirty, dirty liar. You know exactly why, and you encourage it. You read way too much shitty erotica to not know how much a good hand can drive people insane. And you have good hands.”
Shouta smirked slightly, smug at knowing that Dabi—a random, still anonymous stranger on the internet—liked his hands. “That’s neither here nor there. Do you know Gerald Durrell?”
Dabi paused. “Sorry?”
“Gerald Durrell,” Shouta repeated, slower, in his thoroughly mediocre English. “I have a book to read you.”
“Oh,” Dabi murmured. “No, I don’t know him, but I don’t care. You’re really gonna read to me?”
“If you can hold yourself back from making lewd comments about how my fingers look holding a water bottle.” Shouta sighed, “I know that’s a lot to ask, even when you can’t see them.”
Dabi giggled, and Shouta didn’t let himself comment on it, just in case it made him stop. “I’ll do my best,” Dabi promised solemnly. “Let me just… lie down, and you can start.”
Shouta waited, willing himself to not picture anything (because when he did, he saw long, muscular limbs scrolling with dark ink, furiously blue eyes with smudged black liner and deep purple shadows beneath, black dyed hair, ears gleaming with piercings-), until Dabi let him know he was ready, his voice low and content, a little rough. Shouta wondered absently if he was a smoker, and then he thought of Dabi’s occasional cigarettes between classes and forced himself to stop thinking at all.
“To my mother,” he started, reading the simple foreword. Then he began. “Chapter one. The speech for the defence.”
The next day, Touya came into his office, offered him a smile that revealed absolutely nothing about how his dinner had gone, and immediately went over to the armchair—more often off to the side than in its rightful place, what with the frequency of Touya’s visits and the infrequency of his other students’—to rest.
Shouta would have felt more disgruntled by the whole thing if he hadn’t spent some four or five hours straight reading to Dabi the night before. The brat had refused to fall asleep, and Shouta hadn’t felt right leaving him. He was lucky they’d started a little earlier than his usual streams, but he still hadn’t gotten any significant rest to speak of. It looked like Touya hadn’t either, but at least he got to curl up in Shouta’s chair, shitty earbuds in, and take a nap.
Shouta had debated a few times about asking him what he was listening to. Maybe he could try it, see if it sent him to sleep so quickly and deeply. He never did.
Things fell into a strange and unexpected routine after that. Touya still showed up to his office most days—sometimes to learn, but usually to sleep—and Dabi called him most evenings, if there wasn’t a stream. Shouta had the unsettling feeling that he was becoming known, and by two separate people at once, which made the whole ordeal a bit overwhelming. Shouta had believed he had better control over himself than that, but apparently tired young men with fierce personalities and a good sense of humor were enough to make him embarrassingly open and inadvisably attached. There was no helping it, really, but he was also in the position of being fully incapable of acting on precisely any of his complicated feelings about it all, considering… the circumstances.
Still, he was an adult. A grown man with enough life experience to navigate unexpected, unknown things like this.
Touya clearly had a rough past, both with his family and with whatever he had gotten into between them and now, and he trusted Shouta, felt safe with him. Yes, he was handsome and witty and oh so smart, and yes, knowing that he felt safe in Shouta’s care fed into some sort of complex that Shouta had ignored for a long time; but he was still a student, still a troubled young man who undoubtedly saw Shouta as some kind of… perhaps not a father figure, per se, but someone who was there to guide him, help him, nothing more.
And Dabi- Well, Dabi was more complicated on account of being a random person from the internet, but Shouta knew just enough to know he was in the same kind of trouble. Dabi was young and feisty, and achingly vulnerable at times, and Shouta didn’t know if he’d ever talked to anyone the way he talked to Dabi, not even Hizashi. He didn’t know what he looked like, obviously, but while he couldn’t have the physical attra- admiration he had for Touya, what he felt for the boy on the other end of the phone was… something else. Something more; much more than Shouta could afford to examine.
But Shouta was bigger than that, bigger than the weird feelings and the pretty boys and that lightness he felt inside when Dabi or Touya laughed a little, even just a little, because of him. It was great, sure, but Shouta was bigger, and he didn’t need it to be anything more than it already was.
So time, as it was wont to do, trickled on by, a blur of classes and sleepless nights and a dark shade of a boy asleep in his office and a half-existent boy awake on his phone. Shouta was so taken up with it all that he was shocked when Hizashi cornered him over drinks one night.
“You’ve been weird lately,” he said, but he looked all concerned about it, all decent and good. “You’d tell me if something was wrong, right? You’ve just been so… different recently.”
“It’s nothing” Shouta had told him, because how could he say: I have feelings that shouldn’t be so complicated for people I shouldn’t have feelings for at all, and I feel like every day I’m sinking deeper. “Just tired,” he said instead, “you know how it is.”
Hizashi agreed, though they both knew very well he’d never been tired like Shouta was. But he knew, at least, what Shouta was talking about, and he didn’t press, which meant Shouta got to spend another day ignoring… everything else.
And then the semester came to an end. Shouta’s office hours became busy with students who hadn’t shown a lick of interest all year (or, in some cases, hadn’t even shown up all year) and desperately wanted to pass their exams. That meant very little Touya lingering in his office, curled unnaturally small into his armchair or looking uncomfortably pretty as he asked his questions. Thankfully, Dabi seemed to take up more of his time at nights, all lonely and clever and witty and sad.
Then exams came and went, and students went home for the holidays, including a reluctant—and oh so nervous, though he’d never say it—Touya, and Shouta was left behind with forty papers to grade and the unshakable feeling that he’d just let something precious slip through his hands.
He told Dabi as much.
I think I made a mistake.
Or, it’s not that I did anything at all, really.
I’m afraid I made a mistake by doing nothing at all, and I might have lost something very important to me.
oh
why didn’t you do something?
It wasn’t my place.
It wasn’t
Allowed.
then did you really make a mistake? maybe you were taking other things into account?
It doesn’t matter. If I lost him anyway, it doesn’t matter.
him?
It. If I lost it.
too late, my friend
who is “he” ???
Dabi, I mean it when I say don’t ask. Please do me the favor.
fine, fine, that’s all you had to say
you wanna talk about your mistake?
I don’t know.
alright well
if you do, i’ve been told i’m a pretty decent listener
I have the receipts to prove it.
Something like 180 hrs of porn paid for since I started.
well you’re hardly one to judge, mr. porn reader
I’m just making a living.
bullshit, you’re making a buck, and maybe even a quick nut at the end of the night if you’re lucky enough to have one of my reccs on the list
Oh? You think you’re that much better ?
me? no
the stories i send of hot men having steamy desperate sex w each other ? you tell me
No, I can’t say they do it for me.
I prefer my steamy, desperate sex with hot men outside of books, to be honest.
are you bullying me for being single
Do you want me to slap you in the face?
In a non sexual way.
Be honest.
the way you’re so funny And use proper punctuation makes me dizzy, i want you to know
If you read more proper literature, you’d be able to handle it.
i’ve told you multiple times i’m in university, right? i promise i read plenty of lit
Yes, yes, I’m sure you aced all your exams.
we’ll see
hey no you’re doing it again
weren’t we talking about you ???
“i made a terrible mistake”
????
I don’t recall.
bullshit you’re such a liar
Fine.
I didn’t say I made a terrible mistake, I said I might have made a mistake.
And honestly now I’m thinking it was probably for the best anyway.
I was getting
Too attached.
It’s better to end things like this than drag them out.
huh
you sound so much like a coward right now
:kitty_shrug:
don’t try getting out of this using cute cat stickers you fucking weirdo
I’m not trying to get out of anything. I wasn’t in anything in the first place.
don’t try to distract me with unexpected sexting either, you rascal
I really can’t stand you sometimes.
not even a little bit true
i bet i’m the first person you want to talk to when you wake up
at 4 am bc you’re an insomniac
I’m not an insomniac.
right, my bad, just an old man who literally doesn’t sleep
:kitty_suspishus:
Are you really in a position to judge me?
i’ve actually discovered i’m able to judge people from almost any position
doggy does pose some difficulties on account of not having full visibility, but i can usually get a good feel for technique
Oh? Suddenly the pure and innocent boy whose only relief comes from buying erotica from his online friend is out getting fucked?
Color me shocked.
and horny, right ?? :wink_wonk:
Mostly indifferent, I’m afraid.
mostly? and what about the rest?
Wondering what kind of person doesn’t like doggy.
don’t put words in my mouth i think doggy’s fine
sometimes even better actually if i can’t see their face
Should I be paying for this conversation?
Fair is fair, after all, and you pay for my naughty stories.
fjfhdj you’re insufferable
besides i bet you wouldn’t let me pay for any irl naughty stories would you :ugh:
I don’t kiss and tell.
Unless they ask me to.
i’m trying so hard to guess the context but that’s not enough to go on
Don’t worry about it.
i will literally never stop worrying about it
:kitty_smug: :kitty_bleh:
i can’t believe i tried to comfort you earlier
should’ve just stuck to listening to your porn
you’re a nightmare
:kitty_loser:
fuck whatever mistake you think you made, your real mistake was investing in those fucking stickers
Shouta did think that it was good. Touya leaving. Not being around him all the time, or watching over him when he came to the rarely interrupted cavern of his office to rest. Not seeing him smoking outside the library, hiding in the eaves of the building when it rained. Not watching him scribble down thorough notes in his barely intelligible scrawl during class.
It was good, undoubtedly, to get some distance from the kid. After all, he was just twenty three. He was a student. He was going through things right now, had been for his whole life probably. It’d be improper, at the very least, for Shouta to- to-
To what?
He didn’t even really know what he wanted from him. To keep talking to him, he guessed. To keep him close enough that he could help him sleep. To see the way his gritty facade melted away when it was just them, showing the unpolished wit underneath, the excitable and eager kid who’d probably been forced away a long time ago.
God, Shouta liked him. He did, so much, and that was without even getting into the fact that Touya was, undoubtedly, one of the most attractive people Shouta had ever seen, with his white hair dyed black, and his lashes long and dark with mascara to match. His eyes, so bright and quick and watchful, stayed burned into the back of Shouta’s mind like a blue-hot brand. His long limbs and slim build, and his crooked, roguish grin, and the way he adorned himself with ink and silver, like a walking work of art.
Shouta almost couldn’t stand it.
And he couldn’t stand the fact that, despite all that, he often found himself watching Touya and thinking instead of some faceless, nameless young man who stayed up at night and talked to Shouta when he was just as sleepless.
Because Touya was everything that Shouta liked in a person, everything that caught his eye and drew him in, made him want to know more. But Dabi was something else. With the weight of identities off their shoulders, they knew each other in ways you didn’t just know people. Touya was everything that got his attention, but Dabi… Dabi was everything that made him want to stay.
The overlap in his mind where one became the other in fleeting moments—the sharpness of Dabi’s laugh on the phone, the sleepy frown on Touya’s face when he woke up, like he’d rather sleep for another decade, their similar senses of humor, their mannerisms (generational, no doubt)—it had to end. Shouta couldn’t afford to muddle things up like that.
So it was good, then, that Touya, at least, would be gone for a bit. It gave Shouta time to screw his head on right. And then… Well, then it would be a new semester, and Touya would have different classes, and different professors, and he’d have to find somewhere else for his midnight naps. That or… Or he’d just stay up, like Shouta and Dabi. Another one for the club.
He spent his break finishing his grades as quickly as he could, recording so many new stories for his followers, doing his best to sleep, and talking with Dabi.
Dabi, a university student like Touya, had also gone home for the holidays, and didn’t seem thrilled about it, but he wouldn’t elaborate much. That was fine, though, they’d never bartered in specifics. Instead, he’d send a thank god that’s done. can you disown your parents? Or a do you have siblings? no? count your blessings old man. Or even an i’m trying so hard i swear i am, why is it never enough? and Shouta would do his best to comfort him, distract him, from so far away.
They didn’t call much because Touya shared a room with his younger brother, apparently, but he still listened to Shouta’s streams. Shouta made sure to stream almost every other night, reading until his throat hurt, so Dabi wouldn’t feel too alone in his family home, surrounded by people who would never really understand him, not like… Not like Shouta did.
On Christmas, Shouta went out for dinner with Hizashi, Nemuri, Toshinori, and some other friends, and he wondered if Touya or Dabi had anyone to celebrate with, or if they were both at home with their complicated families. He sent Dabi a picture of a little Christmas tree outside an izakaya, its plastic boughs dusted with snow. Merry Christmas. :kitty_surprise:
Then New Years came and went, and he and Dabi exchanged pictures of their fortunes. Shouta got a small blessing, and beneath it: one’s wish or desire. Dabi got a great blessing, which he told Shouta he’d never gotten before. It read: a person being waited for. Shouta tried to picture him, holding his small paper slip in his soft woolen gloves. He pictured snowflakes melting in black hair, and the flash of silver in cheeks when he smiled, and forced himself to stop trying.
Then the holidays ended and it was time to return to work. For Shouta, it didn’t change much beyond the fact that he had to actually change out of his fuzzy black cat pajamas Hizashi had gotten him for Christmas and into more respectable slacks and a black button down shirt, his unofficial uniform. Feeling oddly restless, Shouta even added the black suspenders Nemuri had gotten him. He felt a little ridiculous, like a cop in a drama (or maybe a stripper dressed as a cop in a drama), but he could acknowledge that he looked good. Hot, even, which wasn’t really his goal when he was going to teach a bunch of late-teens/barely-adults how to think, but it never hurt.
He was well practiced at all the first week drudgery, so his classes were simple and expected. Some of the students ogled him a little, but while he certainly wouldn’t encourage anything (especially not with the young women who twirled their hair at their desks or hiked their skirts a little shorter when they stood), he’d found that a bit of a healthy crush sometimes encouraged them to try just a little harder in his class. Of course, the novelty of him usually wore off once they saw his hair less brushed, or realized that the bags under his eyes were, in fact, not going anywhere.
Despite the easy routine of his first classes, Shouta was still exhausted when he dragged himself up to his office to start organizing the first assignments. He froze, jacket slung over one arm, worn out briefcase hanging from the opposite hand, when he saw the smudge of a person slouching outside his office door.
Todorokoi Touya hadn’t touched up his hair, maybe since he’d left for home a month ago, and there were almost two centimeters of pure, snow-like white roots peeking through his disheveled black hair. His hands were shoved in the pockets of his coat, a long, black cape of a thing made of sort of sherpa fabric, with a high collar that brushed his ears and lots of pockets with bright silver zippers. He looked at once impossibly charming and absolutely untouchable.
Knowing his issues with being surprised or snuck up on, Shouta cleared his throat from where he stood stopped outside the elevator doors. Down the hall, Touya perked up a little and lifted his gaze. Vibrant, blazing blue met Shouta’s own dark, bloodshot eyes, and Touya smiled widely, his dimple piercings catching in the light.
“Hiya, sensei,” Touya called, and he sounded so relieved. Shouta took a moment to collect himself before he did anything stupid, and then trudged down to meet him. It wasn’t often that they were both standing next to each other, and Shouta was surprised to find that he was actually quite a bit taller, some six or so centimeters between them. Touya was so lean and long, and he carried himself like he could look down on anyone, so he seemed to only grow and grow in the eye of the beholder. But he wasn’t very large at all. In fact, lean and limber as he was, and shorter than Shouta, he seemed.. small, especially wrapped up in that big fuzzy coat of his.
“Didn’t expect to see you here,” Shouta commented, offhanded, like it didn’t matter too much one way or another. He switched his coat into his other arm and dug his keys out of his slacks with his free hand. “Didn’t forget something here over break, did you? Tell me it was those shitty earbuds, and tell me you bought new ones.”
“Good to see you too,” Touya said cheerily, following Shouta into the dark office without hesitation, shutting the door behind them. Shouta didn’t even bother with the overhead light, heading for the lamp on his desk instead. “Didn’t leave anything, just missed your lovely face and sunshine-y spirit.”
“My apologies,” Shouta drawled, setting his briefcase down and tossing his coat over the back of his chair, smoothing the top with his palm before slumping into his seat. “Professor Yamada is down the hall. 604, if I recall correctly.”
“Well, he’ll have to wait his turn,” Touya chuckled, dragging his own armchair off to the side and falling into it like a long awaited hug. He seemed to melt into the smooth leather, eyes fluttering shut, head tilting back. His jewelry caught the orange glow of the lamp, and for a second it looked like he was blissfully on fire. Then one blue eye cracked open and caught Shouta watching him. Touya smiled, but it was more soft than challenging. “Hey, sensei. It’s my birthday tomorrow.”
Oh. It was, Shouta recalled. The 18th of January, just like his student profile announced. “Yes, congratulations. I assumed your family celebrated with you before you left?”
Touya let out a weary sigh and let his eyes close again and his head fell against the armrest. “Yeah, I guess. You’ll be thrilled to know that I got some new headphones. I would’ve given them back, or way, but I figured you’d be thrilled by the new development. And it’s nice hearing- Hearing things in HD, you know?”
“Touya-san, I don’t need to know what kind of porn you watch.”
Touya’s cheeks darkened in the dim room, but he laughed loudly and genuinely anyway. “Well, that too, I guess, but not at all what I was talking about.”
“Whatever you say,” Shouta said placatingly, because it had been minutes, just moments really, and the lines in his brain were blurring again. He almost wanted to call Dabi, just to prove to himself that he was going crazy.
“Are you gonna give me anything for my birthday?” Touya asked cheekily. “You know, you’re my favorite professor. I would totally get you something for your birthday.”
“You didn’t,” Shouta mentioned, pulling out the books he’d be using the semester to compile his lessons. “It was in November.”
Touya, when Shouta spared him a glance, looked outraged. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t know I was supposed to. If it helps, that day, I’m pretty sure you came in and went right to sleep, giving me the greatest gift of all: peace and quiet. Speaking of which, don’t think I don’t know why I’m your favorite. Isn’t it past time for your daily nap?”
“You have no idea,” Touya groaned. “I haven’t slept in a month.”
Shouta knew the feeling all too well. He softened a little as he looked up to the boy, still wrapped up in his big coat, his chin tucking into the collar all the way up to his nose. “You can sleep,” he told him. “I’ll be here for a while. It’s alright.”
So ignoring Todoroki Touya was not an option, and maybe it never had been, but at least Shouta got to text Dabi that night and let him know: The mistake didn’t matter after all. It seems he’s still around.
Touya showed up to his office hours like he’d never stopped, though it wasn’t usually for school-related questions anymore. He did sometimes bring work from another class though, if he wasn’t going straight to sleep, and he’d sometimes ask for Shouta’s opinion on something, or tell him all about some exciting new thing he’d learned in another class.
Shouta had his own work to do, but he could always do it while Touya was sleeping, or late at night when he wasn’t, so when Touya talked, excited enough to lean forward in his chair, hands waving around, eyes bright, Shouta paused and listened. Touya had this passion for learning new things, for questioning everything he already knew and hungering for more, and it was one of the qualities that made him so dangerous for Shouta. How could he not admire that?
He’d taken to complaining about it to Dabi, who always laughed at him and told him how old and lame he sounded. My almost-mistake is going to get me fired. I never get any work done when he comes around, and his eyes- Shouta hadn’t been able to finish that one, and Dabi had given him hell for it.
And of course, all along, Dabi was right there. He watched his streams and videos, left his usual comments professing his love for the story and respectfully thirsting over Shouta’s voice, and then he texted or called, and they talked until the sun started to come up.
Shouta felt like he was in the kind of trouble he knew much better than to get it. And yet.
Hizashi didn’t know about the specifics,but when Shouta went to his house on a weekend with two bags full of beer and sake, he drank with him and patted him soothingly (if a bit excessively) when Shouta’s head slumped down onto the table and he buried his face in his arms.
“That’s right, buddy, let it all out. You’re going through it, aren’t you? You’ve got that look, like someone has you right by the balls.”
Shouta had only groaned and downed some more sake to drown the injustice of it all.
It was well into the second semester now. The sakura trees would probably bloom soon, though it was still brisk out, occasionally cold. Shouta was doing his best to keep his feelings under control, to not say or do anything stupid with either of them, but he felt a little bit like he was going insane.
Then one day, Hizashi knocked on his door and poked his head in. “Todoroki kid’s here,” he announced. “I’m heading out, see you tomorrow?”
Shouta waved him off, and Hizashi blew him a dramatic kiss as he left. A few seconds later, Touya showed up and shut the door behind himself. Shouta had already turned the desk light on, but Touya didn’t turn the big light off. In fact, he looked so excited he may as well have been glowing himself.
“You like cats, right, sensei?”
“Cats?” Shouta thought of his sticker packs, of Dabi teasing him for them. “Yes, they’re my favorite animal. Why?”
Touya lit up. He bypassed his chair entirely and leaned forward across Shouta’s desk, pulling out his phone. “I got one,” he said, in an overly excited whisper. Shouta’s interest piqued. He leaned forward too, ready to look whenever Touya found what he was looking for. Hopefully a picture, or maybe even a video.
It took a moment, but finally Touya made a delighted noise and turned his phone around. Sure enough, there was a picture on his screen of a shockingly ratty looking cat, its pale gray fur all clumpy and missing in some places. Its ears looked like they’d been chewed up a little, and it’s tail should have looked full and majestic with how long the fur was, but it looked a little threadbare, like a dirty duster. Its eyes, reflecting the light, looked fiery red.
“Isn’t he perfect?” Touya said, smiling so hard it looked like he’d split right open. Shouta felt impossibly fond.
“Touya, that cat has diseases,” he told him after clearing his throat.
“Oh, he really does, but it’s okay! No one wanted him because medicine can be expensive, but I don’t care about that. If Enji insists on sending me pity money, I might as well use it, right? I named him Tenko.”
“That’s an interesting choice,” Shouta smirked, admiring the absolutely mangey little cat. Those problem cases always tugged at the heartstrings, even when they looked like actual demons. “You think he’ll live up to it?”
“Why not?” Touya answered confidently, pulling his phone back to stare at the picture some more, a proud smile on his lips. ‘With me as a dad, he can be anything.”
“He’ll definitely be a nuisance,” Shouta conceded. “Probably more well rested, too.”
“Do you like him?” Touya asked, looking up with a bright, happy expression. How anyone could deny that face was an honest mystery to Shouta.
“I do,” he said, meaning it. “It might be nice for you to have something to take care of.”
“I think so,” Touya said quietly, smiling down at his phone. “I need to get him some things, a cat tree and stuff like that. I don’t think he knows how to play honestly, so far he’s just tried to cuddle and scratched the shit out of my arms, but I’ll teach him. We’ll figure it out.”
Shouta didn’t miss the we. He wondered if little Touya had gotten a chance to play before- before. “I’m sure you will,” he murmured. “I’ve had cats before. If you need advice with anything, feel free to ask.”
“I see,” Touya drawled, tucking his phone away and straightening off the desk. “When I have questions about school, it’s all ‘Touya, I teach philosophy, not game theory economics,’ or ‘Touya, I have midterms to write, do your homework in silence,’ or ‘Touya, go take a nap before you make me rip my long, luscious hair out,’ but when it’s about cats, you change up, don’t you?”
Shouta sighed and pulled out his work, straightening his papers and pointedly not meeting Touya’s gaze. “Touya, I am quite busy, so unless this is important…”
“I see, you ruthless old man. I guess, since you’re so busy, I won’t bother you with any future Tenko things. Unless it’s an emergency, of course. Wouldn’t want to distract you from all your work.” Smug as a cat himself, he scooched his chair off against the wall, put his new over-ear headphones on, and refused to acknowledge Shouta’s glare for the rest of the evening.
That night, Shouta thought nothing of it as he talked to Dabi on the phone while editing some audio for his blog. He’d gotten, in his opinion, much better at keeping the two separate in his mind. Or rather, really good at shutting himself down when he started to think of them at the same time. There didn’t need to be any overlap between the two of them, he’d decided. Not even incidental.
And then the next morning he got a text.
omg he was hiding last night and i forgot to tell you
but look !!!
[Image Attached]
he’s mine!
It was, undoubtedly, a picture of Tenko. Touya’s cat, Tenko. The Tenko that Touya had shown him just the night before.
Shouta stared at his phone, a vague sense of nausea rising, until he had to put a hand over his mouth to will it back and get himself under control.
Touya?
…
..
.
…
..
Shouta watched the bubble appear and disappear for several long minutes before finally disappearing. Dab- Touya didn’t text him back.
Despite the unshakable feeling that the world was collapsing a little bit around him as he tried to make sense of all the missed connections and ignored coincidences, Shouta still had to go to work. He pulled on his slacks—black as always—and a shirt—soft cerulean blue, because it was the first thing he grabbed from his closet, no other reason—which he topped with his suspenders he’d taken something of a liking to, and a mid weight wool coat that went down past his knees. He hoped that maybe looking put together might distract people from the fact that his mind was grinding together like two rusty gears, useless and messy and grating.
He wished he could say it didn’t make sense, but there were too many moments when the lines had blurred between Dabi and Touya, when their tone or their past or the fleeting glimpses Shouta got of their lives just seemed… too similar. And he’d ignored it all. He’d gone out of his way to ignore it. And now look what had happened.
He should have never let it come to this, he knew that from the very start. Not on either front, not with Dabi, and certainly not with Touya. And now he was in a shit-show of a mess, and he had all these feelings that had been forced separate before, but now were starting to mix together and- and, God, when they came together like that, it felt too much like something more, like something much, much bigger that Shouta should absolutely not be feeling.
He made it through his day on autopilot, somehow. He trailed to his office like a ghost, barely even tapping on Hizashi’s door as he passed, and when he finally made it to his desk, he buried his head in his hands. He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes and raked his fingers back through his hair, tugging it painfully out of the half-bun it was in, and he tried to figure out why he felt like if he opened his mouth he might scream or sob or be sick, and he didn’t know which.
Touya hadn’t texted him still, and Shouta wanted to call him, wanted to hear that voice—Dabi’s, which was just like Touya’s if Touya were sleepy and quiet and vulnerable, or Touya’s, which was just like Dabi’s if Dabi were playing the role of the charismatic delinquent or overly eager student. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Firstly, he had no idea what he’d even say. What did he want to say? Who did he want to talk to? How was he supposed to make sense of any of this?
But most importantly… Most importantly, he didn’t know if Touya would want to talk to him again, or even see him. Shouta had just found out that the attractive young student he’d been admiring was the same person as the boy who’d started off as his fan (from reading stories, including erotica, online) and eventually become his closest companion in years in many ways. Touya, on the other hand, had just learned that the older professor who he went to for advice and because he trusted him enough to sleep around was the same person as the close, queer friend he’d made online… by first being a fan of his stories, including erotica.
He had undoubtedly drawn the short end of the stick, and Shouta felt almost ill at the thought that he might never even see him again, not even to apologize or reassure him that he hadn’t known, not really.
In the end, he didn’t have to worry about that, though.
It took Shouta an embarrassingly long time to collect himself, but he felt almost ready when Touya appeared, brandishing his phone like a flag as he stormed into Shouta’s office, eyes blazing blue and wild.
“It’s you,” he accused, the door slamming shut behind him. The room was quiet otherwise, but it felt like there was static thrumming through the air.
Shouta, still sitting behind his desk, simply nodded. He couldn’t take his eyes off Touya— Dabi— so he just watched, wondering how the pieces had taken so long to fit together, how neither of them had known until this morning. They had been talking for… how many months now? Long enough for one semester to end and another to begin, long enough that somewhere along the way, they had become an intrinsic part of each other’s lives… both of them.
“It was always you.” Touya stood still by the closed door, staring like he couldn’t make himself move any closer than that. “How long-”
“I didn’t know,” Shouta said quietly. “There were… things that made me question. The two of you blurred in my mind sometimes, since you- Dabi didn’t have a face, and you behaved so similarly sometimes. But I didn’t know until today, until you sent the picture.”
Touya looked paler than Shouta was used to, the dark circles under his eyes more pronounced than usual. Shouta realized with a shock that he had no makeup on, not even mascara to darken his wispy white lashes. It made him look young. And afraid.
“You told me your name,” Touya murmured out loud, like he couldn’t even believe it.
“It’s a common name,” Shouta said quietly, still frozen, staring up at him. “You couldn’t have guessed based on that alone.”
“But it wasn’t that alone,” Touya snapped. He was bristling with tension, every part of him on a knife’s edge. “Eraser-sensei, a college professor. I listen to you talk in lectures, I should have-”
“It’s different than reading stories,” Shouta interrupted gently. “You should know that. I read to help people-”
“Sleep, yeah, I’m- I’m very aware. Fuck.” Touya fell heavily against the door, looking the same mix of sick and confused and dizzy that Shouta had been feeling all day.
“I never lied to you,” Shouta said after a moment, because he didn’t know where else to start. “Everything I ever told you-”
“That’s not- Fuck, I know that, Shou- sensei.”
“You can call me Shouta,” Shouta offered when Touya cut himself off and froze awkwardly, more unsure than Shouta had ever seen him in either form. “I mean, I’m not your professor anymore, anyway. And you already do. Have.”
“Shouta,” Touya repeated. His face grew dark and he looked away, and Shouta stared at him because he couldn’t bring himself to do anything else. “I know you didn’t lie to me,” Touya finally forced out. “I know- I know you. At least, I thought so.”
“You do,” Shouta confirmed. “Probably better than anyone by now.”
“Even Professor Yamada? He’s your best friend isn’t he? Hizashi. It was you, him, and Oboro.”
Shouta’s eyes finally wrenched away from him and down to his desk, where he’d been fiddling with the pen in his hands since Touya came in. He hadn’t even realized he’d been digging the little nub of it into the meat of his fingers, leaving angry red divots smeared with ink in his wake.
“Yeah,” he forced out. “Hizashi, Oboro, and me. But Hizashi knows me in a different way. He could tell you all about my life, sure, and he could probably guess my next moves before I even knew what they would be, but…”
“But not the inside,” Touya finished. “Not the things you don’t tell.”
Shouta shrugged helplessly. “I don’t usually hide things from him, but it’s not the same as being honest. Not like I’ve been honest with you.”
Touya took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When Shouta glanced up at him through his lashes, he found him with a hand pressed over his face, his head tilted back against the door.
“Touya… I’m sorry. I really am. I know it must be distressing to find that someone you considered a friend was someone else entirely, one that holds a very different role. If I’d known-”
“What?” Touya rasped weakly. “You wouldn’t have talked to me? You wouldn’t have let me sleep here? You wouldn’t have read to me at night? What would you have done differently?”
“The way I talked to Dabi, to you, is hardly an appropriate way for a professor to talk to his student,” Shouta explained. “You have to know how many boundaries I crossed.”
“You didn’t cross any of those boundaries as my professor,” Touya argued. “You crossed them as a normal adult talking to another adult. It doesn’t matter.”
Shouta opened his mouth to protest, comments about being nearly twice Touya’s age poised on the tip of his tongue, but then he processed Touya’s words and froze. “You’re not… mad?” For some reason, this hadn’t been a possible outcome in his mind when he’d envisioned this conversation.
“Mad?” Touya laughed bitterly. “Fuck, I feel like such an idiot, you have no fucking clue. But there’s nothing to be mad at you for. If anything, I fucking owe you. If I’ve slept at all in the past year it’s been because of you, in one way or another.” He suddenly seemed to piece something together in his head, and he straightened where he stood, eyes snapping to Shouta’s. “That time, last semester, when you asked me—Dabi—about being envious of people who could sleep. It was about me. It was about me sleeping here.”
It wasn’t a question, he’d already pieced two and two together, but Shouta nodded anyway. “I’m glad, though,” he admitted. “I was always glad I could help you sleep.”
Touya heard him, but he seemed to be entirely distracted with something else, like puzzle pieces had suddenly started falling together in his head.
“Your mistake,” he suddenly said, slowly, and Shouta stiffened. “Your almost-mistake. It was me, wasn’t it?”
Souta didn’t want to nod, because that would mean admitting so much more than he should, and certainly so much more than he should be allowed, but he didn’t want to lie now, after everything. So he nodded once.
Touya’s next inhale was sharp and pointed. “What,” he demanded, “didn’t you do.”
Shouta turned his head away. He felt ridiculous, at forty-four years old, with years of experience as a professor, as a literal dom, thorough that was so long ago now, being frightened of a whippet of a boy, barely over half his age and teeming with issues. But, God, he didn’t want to lose him, not now.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I- I liked you. It was superficial, but not insignificant. Like it could grow into more. I wanted to see, if we had the chance, if it could. But that wouldn’t be-”
“If you say it wouldn’t be appropriate one more time, I’m going to walk out right now. Look at me, do you think I’ve ever given a shit about what’s appropriate in my life?”
Shouta glanced up at him, painted in shadows with only the desk lamp illuminating the gleam of his piercings, the dark scrawl of his tattoos. “Yes,” Shouta murmured. “When you went to eat with your mother.”
Touya flustered for a moment before making a wordless sound of frustration and all but throwing himself in his side-facing chair. “You liked me? You liked… my body?”
Shouta rubbed a hand over his face, rubbing his temples for a moment before answering. “I- I guess, yes. And more than that. But I- The one I really liked, much more than any physical kind of attraction I held towards you,” he said with a loose gesturing wave, “was Dabi.”
Touya was quiet for a long moment, which Shouta chose to interpret as a good thing since he hadn’t gotten up and left yet. And then: “Liked? Past tense?’
“I- I don’t know, Touya,” Shouta sighed, “I’ve had less than twelve hours to even process the fact that you’re the same person. All I know is that it makes it impossible to separate… the attraction I had for you, Touya, and you, Dabi.”
But,” Touya said slowly, “you liked me. Both of me. That didn’t just go away. Did it?”
Shouta sighed and set his pen down, rubbing his thumb over the marks he’d left on his hands. “Touya, this is so-”
“Don’t fucking say-”
“I’m not. I’m saying that…” He let out a long breath and looked wearily over at Touya, who was looking back at him with those blue eyes all aglow between his ghostly lashes. “I’m saying that I care about you, I value you as- as a friend, as someone I want the best for and want to keep- to keep. Are you listening? I don’t want to ruin this, Touya.”
Touya blinked at him. His cheek was sucked in, the silver ball of his piercing wobbling where his dimples would be if he were smiling. Finally, he asked, “Why would you ruin it?”
Shouta wanted to tell him you know why, but did he? Touya hadn’t gotten the chance, growing up, to experience things like friendships and crushes and first loves. He’d never navigated things like this. God, this was so much more fucked up than Shouta had initially thought.
“No,” he said instead, “it didn’t go away. I like you still, more than I did before. How could I not? But I don’t want you to… to leave because of that, and I certainly don’t want you to mistake… whatever you feel for me—either me—for something more just because of what I feel.”
Touya’s eyes hardened a little, though the effect was so minimal compared to his usual black-rimmed glare. “You think I can’t handle your feelings?” he demanded. “You think that because of- You think I can’t know my own?”
“Touya, I don’t know.” Shouta sat back and ran a hand through his hair, pushing back the strands that had fallen in his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re feeling, I don’t know what you’re… equipped to deal with.”
“I’m not a child-”
“You’re twenty-three-”
“I ran a fucking gang, Shouta,” Touya snapped. “I’ve seen and done things that people three times older than you couldn't even imagine. You all feel like children to me, you’re all so fucking innocent. Don’t tell me- Don’t tell me that-”
“It’s not that,” Shouta interrupted firmly. “It’s not about how much trauma you have, or what horrible decisions you’ve made. Listen to me, Touya. It’s about the fact that you’ve never had a fucking friend before. It’s about the fact that you don’t know how to navigate your own family, and that you feel like the whole world is out to get you. It’s about the fact that you’ve never been in love. I just- This is messy, Touya, it’s too complicated, and you deserve to experience those things in a normal way, like a normal twenty year old, with someone your age, someone who isn’t… who isn’t everything to you. Because I am, right now. Tell me I’m wrong.”
Touya’s eyes were fierce and bright and- and wet. Big, slow tears were slipping from lashes like spiderwebs and falling down his pale cheeks, and Shouta’s heart broke just looking at him. He looked so trusting, so open, and Shouta knew he was the only person in the world, probably, who’d ever seen him like this.
“Touya,” he murmured. “Just… I don’t want to ruin this. I don’t want-” to ruin you.
Touya didn’t even wipe his tears, he just glared at Shouta through them, defiant and angry and unwavering. “Isn’t that what love is?” he asked. “Tell me I’m not everything to you.”
“It’s not- It’s not what love should be,” Shouta said. “And I have- I have friends, I have Hizashi-”
“I have a family,” Touya shot back, “I have- I have a future now. I have a- a fucking cat. I’m not going to die without you.”
God, he said it with more conviction that Shouta would probably have been able to manage. “It’s not healthy,” Shouta protested.
“Was Oboro healthy?” Touya snapped. “You told me yourself, he was everything to you. Tell me Shouta, was that so wrong?”
“Oboro is dead,” Shouta spat, losing his threadbare control. “And it ruined me. Do you understand? He was everything to me, and when I lost him, I didn’t love anyone again until-” He broke off. Touya looked victorious, in a heart wrenching way.
“Until me,” he finished for him. “And you’re scared you’ll lose me and it’ll ruin you again.”
Shouta shut his eyes and rubbed his hand over his face. “It’s more complicated now,” he said quietly. “I didn’t get the chance to ruin Oboro. But you- Touya, you don’t even know how breakable you are. It’s not good, this- this thing between us. It’s not healthy.”
Touya silently dug in the pocket of his hoodie, and a second later tossed something towards Shouta. It landed on his desk with a hollow plop. A pack of cigarettes.
“I promise,” Touya said quietly, “this would be the least bad thing I’ve ever done.”
“Christ,” Shouta muttered, and he couldn’t help himself. “Come here.”
Touya threw himself across the small office and Shouta rolled his chair back just enough to meet him, and then Touya was in his lap, knees forced in around Shouta’s hips, and his cheeks were flushed and wet and his eyes were so blue, and Shouta held his face more gently than he’d ever held anything before, and kissed him.
Touya made a sound, wrecked and desperate, and Shouta just pulled him closer, one hand lowering to wrap tightly, possessively around Touya’s waist, dragging him flush against him. He kissed him hungrily, tasting the salt of his tears, the faint mint of his mouth. Just having him so close felt like it was forbidden, but it soothed something in him that Shouta hadn’t even realized had been aching.
This wasn’t just Touya he was holding after all. This was Dabi, who he’d stayed up with so many nights, who he’d read to and shared secrets and histories with. This boy was- He was everything to him, and Shouta was terrified, but he was too greedy to be scared now. He just wanted to give Touya everything; wanted to take everything: take his nightmares and his worries and his doubts, and hide them somewhere out of his reach.
And Touya kissed him just as desperately. Shouta knew he’d kissed before, fucked before—he wasn’t inexperienced in every way—but the urgency of it all turned him sloppy. Or maybe he was always sloppy when he kissed, messy and frantic and helpless. Shouta wouldn’t mind, not when he got to be so fucking close to him after all this time, getting lost in him like he hadn’t it… ever, maybe. Even with Oboro, nothing had ever felt as intense as this single kiss.
Shouta hissed when Touya’s teeth bit down hard on his lip, and the hand cupping his cheek moved on instinct, moving under Touya’s jaw and pressing right between his molars on either side, forcing his mouth open. Touya let out a wet moan and went limp in his hands, and Shouta felt a thrill when his finger brushed polished steel.
“Stay,” he murmured, eyes dropping to Touya’s open mouth, red and slick with spit, his tongue resting on his bottom lip, just outside of his mouth. Shouta didn't let go of him, despite his order to stay and Touya’s apparent willingness to listen. He just dipped down, open mouthed, and met Touya’s waiting lips softly. He didn’t kiss him, not really. He just let his tongue in, with no resistance from Touya’s, and searched, digging his fingers in just a little deeper—Touya moaned at the pressure, mouth falling wider to accommodate. And then he found it.
Hot, hard, and smooth, the inside of the piercing was pressed in close between Touya’s teeth, and Shouta groaned as he finally let his tongue circle it the way Touya must when he was nervous or worried or bored. Touya, realizing what Shouta had been after, realizing what he was doing, shuddered so hard his teeth almost clenched around Shouta’s tongue, if not for Shouta’s fingers forcing them open.
Shouta took his time exploring Touya’s mouth, teasing one piercing and then the next, until Touya, unable to close his mouth, was drooling between them, his breath coming quick and hot and heavy, weak sounds of pleasure and need escaping him. When Shouta finally drew back, feeling equally wrought with desire, he slowly took in Touya’s wrecked expression and realized right then that he would absolutely not be able to let him go.
“Fuck,” he muttered, slowly letting his fingers fall from Touya’s cheeks, stroking the reddened skin with his knuckles, admiring the mess he’d made of himself. “Fuck, you don’t know how handsome you are. Look at you.”
Touya raised one hand, tucked into the cuff of his hoodie, and wiped at his chin, at the corners of his mouth. When he smiled, it was with swollen lips and a faint pink on his cheeks. “Does this mean you’ll let me? You want me?”
“Damnit, Touya. You never even said how you feel, I don’t even know what you want.”
“Yes, you do,” Touya whispered, his body close; close enough to feel the stiffness of his erection, the quick beat of his heart. But he didn’t mean physically, and Shouta knew it. Because he did know what Touya wanted. Or rather, Dabi. He wanted to be in love. He wanted someone who knew him, and trusted him, and understood him. Someone to touch him and hold him, to make him feel good, make him feel wanted. He wanted to sleep with someone beside him. He wanted- He wanted-
“And you’re sure?” Shouta said softly. “You’re sure you want it with me?”
Touya slipped forward to kiss him again, but not quite as wildly as before. “Who else?”
“Don’t say that. Don’t say that, you don’t have anyone else. I won’t-”
“I’m not going to run off and leave you when someone else comes along,” Touya drawled impatiently. “Also I’ve been… maybe making a friend. He’s around my age, and he’s handsome and sweet… And I still want you.”
“Who?” Shouta asked, feeling…. some kind of way about the fact that he (either him) hadn’t ever heard about this.
“You know him, probably. The barista at the library shop?”
Shuota frowned. “The blond one?”
“His name is Takami Keigo, and he’s in one of my classes. We’ve run into each other at the cafe sometimes, and he told me I should go there to study, and he’ll trade me free drinks for some help on our assignments.”
“He’s flirting with you.”
“He’s not,” Touya said, his lips curling into a mischievous grin. “You know, for someone who was so worried about me not having friends, your face right now is not very happy.”
Shouta smoothed his expression. Or tried to, at least, though the snort Touya let out wasn’t very promising. “It’s good,” Shouta ground out. “You should have friends. Especially your age. He’s attractive, isn’t he? Very… fit. Blond.”
Touya clicked his tongue and leaned closer until they were nose to nose. “Careful or it’ll be my turn to get jealous.”
“I’ve been surrounded by attractive college students for the past decade,” Shouta said, “I promise they don’t tempt me.”
Touya practically preened at that. “Except for me,” he said.
“You have Dabi to thank for that,” Shouta told him, only mostly honestly. “I never would’ve done anything with you if I didn’t know.”
“Liar,” Touya murmured. “You wanted to ask me out at the end of last semester, didn’t you? Just Touya.” He turned his head and got closer, until his lips were brushing the top of Shouta’s cheekbone, right by his ear. “You like my eyes. And I see you looking at my tattoos, at my piercings. You wanted to taste them so bad. Was it as good as you thought it’d be?”
“You don’t need to remind me of how attractive you are,” Shouta drawled, “I am well aware.”
“I think you are too,” Touya whispered a moment later. His arms looped around Shouta’s neck, one hand going up to play with his hair. “I know how people see me. I’m either the troublesome delinquent or the mysterious, edgy bad boy. But you really have no clue how you look.”
“Like I was too lazy to brush my hair?” Shouta offered, tilting his head back when Dabi started to kiss down to his jaw and then further. “Like you’re lucky I don’t show up to work in my pajamas?”
“You look so classic,” Touya told him, which Shouta honestly couldn’t tell whether or not it was a jab at his age or not. “You’re so tall and sexy, and you look strong, and your hair looks like it’s just made for-” His hand tightened into a fist and he pulled a little, dropping his lips to Shouta’s throat when his head jerked back in response. “And these suspenders,” he groaned, “I don’t know where they came from, but they make your chest look so good.”
“You certainly have a lot of thoughts about my appearance.”
“Obviously,” Touya conceded easily. “I’m thinking about you all the fucking time. Thinking about how your hands would feel on me, what your voice sounds like during sex, what you like unbuttoning your shirts, or just rolling the sleeves up a bit.”
“I roll my sleeves up all the time,” Shouta protested.
“And I think about it all the time,” Touya repeated. “Gets me right back to your big hands. You can see how it might be a little distracting, in the end.”
“You’re sure you don’t just have daddy issues?” Shouta said dryly. He froze for a second, because it was the kind of thing he’d say to Dabi, not necessarily Touya, but… they were one and the same, so…
“Don’t worry,” Touya dismissed, a toothy grin on his face, “I have plenty of those too, but I think this is more of a… Shouta complex. I just think everything you do is… You know.” He rocked his hips just a little, and Shouta let out a low, satisfied noise at the press of his hard cock.
“You couldn’t pick anyone else?” Shouta muttered, though the effect was lost when he found the high point of Touya’s barely exposed clavicles and decided to make better use of his mouth there. “Someone younger? The blond barista?”
Touya raked his fingers through Shouta’s hair, scratching at his scalp as he let him kiss up his throat teeth first. “If it were up to us,” he sighed, “you’d be the one to find someone else. Wouldn’t you?”
“If I had a choice? I’d have picked not falling for some anonymous young man on the internet, yeah.”
“Shame, because you were the best fucking use of Enji’s allowance. So you fell for me? You really are classic.”
“Yes, how antiquated of me,” Shouta drawled, taking advantage of Touya’s tilted head to find the small hoop he wore in his first lobe piercing, take it between his teeth, and tug. “Apologies for skipping the courting. Should I ask your father for his blessing?”
“Some people write letters, we stay up all night reading porn and other stories together and occasionally spilling all our biggest secrets. Same thing, right? You could even count all those very generous tips as courting gifts. Hmm, was I the one who wooed you? Shouta, do you only like me for my money?”
“Yes,” Shouta deadpanned. “As you can tell, I have a very particular palette and refined tastes. I obviously need a man who can provide for me.”
Touya laughed, and Shouta got to feel the vibration of it under his lips as he left open mouthed kisses up along Touya’s Adam’s apple. “Stroking my ego is very good, but you’ll get even further if you stroke other things instead, you feel me?”
“You know,” SHouta said, ignoring him completely, ‘I gave you gifts too.”
“Good grades on my assignments don’t count,” Touya interrupted, “I worked hard for those.”
“Obviously, and you bothered me the whole time you did. No, I’m talking about my stories. Obviously I didn’t start it for you, but you have to know some shameless amount of them are either because you asked or I thought you would like them.”
Touya let out a soft, breathy moan. “I thought we were just fucking around,” he said, sounding flustered and happy and superficially annoyed, “You didn’t need to get serious about it.”
“I’m a very serious man,” Shouta told him, pushing his tongue into the little dip at the base of his throat.
“Oh, don’t I know it,” Touya purred. “That’s what actually did it, you know? When in the middle of a vulnerable and honest discussion, you’d suddenly send a kitty pout sticker. Mm, really gets me going, just how serious you are.”
Shouta’s lips curled into a grin, and he was glad he had his face pressed to Touya’s neck, both so he didn’t have to be seen and so he could feel the quickening of Touya’s pulse when he felt the smile against his skin. “Don’t laugh at me,” Shouta directed with a sharp nip of his teeth. “And stop grinding on me like a teenager, you’re going to come in you pants without me ever touching you.”
Touya groaned, long and much louder than he had any right to in a not-very-large office in a not-even-a-little-bit soundproofed old building. “Fuck, come on, that’d be so hot. That or if you fucked me over the desk, I think. Against the door too, but I’d be too worried about your old man joints.”
“Don’t be,” Shouta grunted distractedly, “I could do it. But I won’t.”
“Hah, why not?!”
“Basic decency,” Shouta listed, “considering we’re in a shared office space of my coworkers and peers. Also, just because I could doesn’t mean that fucking against the wall is a comfortable position for anyone involved. Next, because any of said peers, not to mention another student, could easily try to come in, and then what?"
“Then they’d get the show of their lifetime,” Touya said arrogantly. “They wouldn’t even be able to get in with both of us leaning up on it. Besides, who’s even here at this hour? You know, some people actually sleep at night.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Shouta dismissed. “You’re desperate, aren’t you?”
“Didn’t I tell you that I haven’t gotten laid in ages? I'm practically gagging for it, but especially from you, come on.”
Shouta finally drew back to look up at him. Touya’s tone was obviously teasing, joking around over the undertone of pleasure as he let himself be kissed and marked, his hips still pushing incessantly against Shouta’s stomach. But his eyes, wild and hazy, told a different story.
“Stand up,” Shouta murmured, and something in his tone, something that didn’t sound at all like stop, had Touya scrambling awkwardly and gracelessly off his lap and onto his feet, stuck between Shouta and his desk. Shouta’s lips twitched up at the corners at the sight of the bulge in Touya’s slim black jeans, now a little below eye height. “Turn around.”
Touya’s breath hitched as he did just that, spinning on a dip to face the door, his upper thighs pressed to the edge of the desk. Shouta didn’t bother with more directions, he just stood up and got close behind him, once again relishing their differences in build.
He traced his hands lightly up Touya’s sides, just to see him shiver, and then positioned one hand on the nape of his slim neck, the other on the outside of his ribs, and pushed him right down over his cluttered desk. Touya let out another too-loud noise, and Shouta tsked in disapproval even as he stepped closer until his hips were flush against Touya’s ass.
“How do you expect to get fucked in here when you can’t even keep quiet for this?” Shouta murmured, rocking his own hips forward and letting out a quiet breath at the faint friction. With both of them fully dressed, it hardly compared to anything real, but fuck if Shouta could bring himself to care. Touya’s tight little denim-clad ass was right in front of him, and his own erection was straining at the zipper of his slacks, and there was pressure to be had there, if nothing else.
“I’ll be so quiet,” Touya lied shamelessly. He was smiling; Shouta couldn’t see it, but he could hear it in his voice. “You won’t even know I’m here.”
“Likely story,” Shouta said, holding him in place as he began to grind against him, “and the more you talk, the less I’m convinced.”
“I’ve literally never said a word in my life.”
“You’re such a little shit,” Shouta drawled, giving in just enough to pop his fly and pull his cock out of his bunched down briefs. Touya heard the zipper and began to wriggle like he wanted a peek, moan like he was getting off on the simple knowledge that Shouta had a cock, and it was out and bare for him. Shouta held him down with the hand on the back of his neck. “Come on, you don’t mind if it’s like this, do you? You would come just from sitting on my lap and having me kiss you. I bet you can come from this.”
There was something filthy about grinding his swollen cock against the seam of Touya’s tight jeans. Filthy, and undeniably hot, and Touya seemed to agree if the sound he let out (though he visibly tried to muffle it) was any indication.
“Come on, you can just-”
“I’m not going to fuck you on my desk, Touya,” Shouta chided, moving his hand from Touya’s side down to his own cock, spreading his fingers into something of a cage to hold it down, to really get that gritty, dirty friction he needed. Not that he would be hard pressed to come anyway, after having Touya in his lap writhing like some needy little thing, after kissing him like they should have been kissing all this time, after seeing—hearing—just how much Touya wanted this. Honestly, he wouldn’t last long, but that was kind of the point.
“Why not,” Touya hissed, trying his best to push back against Shouta’s cock like that might give him more friction through that stiff denim. “This is basically”
“It’s nothing like fucking,” Shouta said, punctuating it with another roll of his hips that only he would get ay real gratification from. “This is me proving that you’d be way too loud to fuck in here, and also-” His hips sped up unwittingly- “getting myself off, because I can. Whether you want to or not, that’s up to you.”
“Oh, God,” Touya moaned, his hips kicking forward and a pained hiss escaping him. Shouta’s mouth became a feral sort of grin when Touya’s hips began twitching, accented with weak moans and sharp breaths. He was rutting against the hard edge of Shouta’s solid wooden desk, too desperate to care about gentleness or care, just aching for pressure, friction.
“There you go,” Shouta murmured. “Chasing what you want, good for you.”
“God, I hate you,” Touya groaned, “I want you to fuck me so bad, you old bastard.”
Shouta leaned forward with a hum, lining himself up along Touya’s spine, rucking his hoodie and shirt up with him. “What If I come on you? Right here,” he let his fingertips trace the line where Touya’s waistband met the tattooed skin of his back. Tattoos Shouta hadn’t yet had the pleasure of memorizing. But he certainly intended to. “Would that help?” He was close to it, his cock leaking slowly, probably soaking into the seam of Touya’s jeans. He was also fucking sensitive, the rough almost-burn of the denim making every thrust just this side of too much.
“How would that help?” Touya hissed, but his skin broke out in goosebumps at the touch. “Do it.”
Who was Shouta to say no, after all this? He pushed his hips flat against Touya’s ass, slamming him a little unkindly against the desk, took himself in hand, and in a few quick strokes, he came. It was a fucking sight, the thick streaks of cum painting over the dark ink of his tattoos, speckling the black fabric of his shirt and jeans and quickly soaking in. And, of course the way Touya absolutely shivered with it, tensing and relaxing and tensing again like he was-
“Fuck, I’m so close- Shit, Shouta, I can’t, not without-”
“It’s okay,” Shouta told him, tucking his own messy cock back into his briefs and pulling his slacks back into place, tucking his shirt back in and zipping them back up. When he was put together again, he pulled Touya’s shirt back down, hiding the puddles of cum smeared across his skin, and pulled him back up to standing with an arm across his ribs. He looked down over Touya’s shoulder and found his jeans were doing a piss poor job of concealing his erection. He kissed the nearest spot of bare skin softly. “You don’t need to come now.”
“Fuck,” Touya muttered, knees wobbling a little under him. Shouta caught him, slotting back in behind him and wrapping his arms around Touya’s slim waist. “Fuck, you’re insane, you’re fucking demented.”
“I happen to know what you like,” Shouta reminded him offhandedly. “And I already told you I’m not going to fuck you here. So if you want to, you’re free to come over.”
Touya groaned loudly, head falling back against Shouta’s shoulder, and then he froze. “I- I can’t.”
“Can’t?”
“I, uh. Tenko. I need to take care of him, and I feel bad leaving him alone for too long. He’s already been alone for a while, you know?”
Shouta had thought, honestly, that realizing he felt for one person everything he had originally felt for two would be kind of the peak of his feelings, and yet here he was, dick softening in his slacks, heart pounding in his fucking ears, and falling somehow more in love than before.
“Your place, then,” Shouta murmured, kissing his temple, his eyebrow, the outer corner of his eye, white lashes fluttering shut under his touch. “I bet it’s fancy as shit with all daddy’s money.”
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Touya said, turning in Shouta’s arms and tilting his head up to catch him in a real kiss. “In-unit laundry. Washer and dryer.”
“Well, fuck,” Shouta hummed into the kiss, “when can I move in?”
And then they were just standing there, kissing, hugging—holding each other like real fucking lovers—in the middle of Shouta’s office, and Shouta felt the instant rush of relief. Relief that after all this, he’d somehow managed to hold on to him. Relief that he hadn’t let himself be afraid, not too much. It was too early to feel so relieved, maybe, but just holding Touya like this was enough to let him know that the other option, any option that would have led to him not being here, like this right now, would very possibly have become his biggest regret in life.
“Shouta,” Touya said, breaking the silence, and their kiss, with what was probably becoming Shouta’s favorite sound. Not that he’d tell Touya, or his head would probably explode from trying to hold in his ego. “If I don’t come as quickly as we are physically fucking capable of getting to my place, I am going to die. And I will do very bad things to you first. I am very good at doing very bad things.”
“Yes, yes,” Shouta placated with a quick peck, “you’re very scary.”
He grabbed his virtually unpacked briefcase in one hand, his coat and keys in the other, and began to leave, leaving Touya scrambling for his own things to catch up. He made a show of looking down at his watch as Touya finally exited his office, a whole six or so seconds behind him, and only barely managed to lock the door before they were off.
It turned out that as quick as physically fucking possible, in regards to the commute to Touya’s little (but fancy) townhouse was a shockingly close seven minutes in a taxi that had pulled up outside. Shouta pretended not to be ogling the cars in the driveways they passed, because it wasn’t that he cared, per se, but it made him reevaluate what he knew of the Todoroki family’s wealth, and Touya pretended not to notice him ogling, though that probably had more to do with the way he kept squirming in his seat, arching his back and wiggling around like he could feel the cum trickling down the divots on his spine, or maybe it was tacky or flaky at this point, a constant reminder of what had happened and what was coming.
No matter the reason, the second he paid for the cab (Shouta had no plans, actually, of paying for jack shit—unless, of course, it was something special, something from him—as long as Touya had probably unlimited reserves of wealth to dig into) and they got through the door, Touya was on him.
With no care for whatever he might have in it, Touya tossed his backpack into the corner of the genkan, already stripping his and Shouta’s coats off with needy hands, trying very hard to get them as naked as he could as quickly as Shouta would let him.
Unluckily for him, he had a marble floor in his genkan, and it felt way too cold to be getting naked, so Shouta pushed him off as soon as he toed his shoes off, and stepped into the warmer and…. cozier (though maybe that wasn’t the right word) house.
“So boring,” Touya hissed after him, only to sweep past him, already pulling his shirt and hoodie off as he walked. “Only wants to do missionary, in bed. Sheets on, lights off, is that right? Fuck classic, you’re fucking vintage. Modernize a little, maybe?”
“I’m not fucking you against any doors, you ungrateful brat. And you already know some of my thoughts about fucking from behind, at the very least, so try not to insult me.”
“Whatever,” Touya muttered, hopping clumsily up the stairs as he tried to tug his skinny jeans off at the same time. Shouta kept one hand firmly on the railing and the other outstretched in case he had to catch the idiot before they ever made it to bed. But they made it up eventually, leaving behind a breadcrumb trail of Touya’s clothes as they made their way to his bedroom. And then: what a fucking bedroom it was.
Tall ceilings, like the whole house had, and perfectly clear floor-to-ceiling windows along a balcony that faced out, it seemed, to a backyard. There were elegant shoji screens that lead to what Shouta could only assume was a massive and severely under-filled closet, and so much space that there was a sofa and two arm chairs around a coffee table facing a television on the wall. There was another door, probably to a bathroom, and the bed was so much bigger than one person could ever hope to fill.
Everything looked expensive, but comfortable, and Touya, still being a young, single (or, rather, formerly-single) college student, didn’t exactly keep the cleanest house, but it was honestly better than Shouta would have expected.
He had also spent far too long studying Touya’s room, when he should have been studying Touya: his inked skin and long limbs, the curve of his muscles and the jut of his joints, the way he pulled of his boxers and revealed a cock so hard it looked almost purple, and a bush of white hair that trailed all the way up to his belly button, covering his tattoos like a wisp of cloud.
He was moving impatiently towards his bed, sending Shouta a glare that seemed to say get naked now or I’ll set your clothes on fire; with you in them, and Shouta really didn’t care that much about what his room looked like, not right now.
Touya watched him, eyes gleaming like beacons in the cast of the… ambient light that the room seemed to emit? It came from behind the big flatscreen, from under and behind the bed, lighting the room with a diluted golden glow, and Touya looked absolutely stunning bathed in it.
Shouta didn’t have a poor opinion of himself, but he knew, as he unbuttoned his shirt and pulled the suspenders off his shoulders, that he could never come close to painting a picture like Touya did, all ivory and onyx, alabaster and ink. Still, the way Touya stared at him, just as hungry, just as reverent, Shouta felt like it didn’t matter.
There was still a voice in the back of his head reminding him that this was a bad idea, that this thing between them was more complicated than they’d had time to unpack before- well, before this, and they’d have to come back to it sooner or later. It also whispered that there were so many reasons why they were so poorly suited for each other, why this wouldn’t last, why it would do more damage than good if it ended-
Shouta ignored it. He was no stranger to bad thoughts, and he knew Touya certainly wasn’t either, but he had enough years behind him to know that they were just thoughts. Nothing was certain, nothing was done until it was done, and Shouta had something in front of him right now that was good, and important, and even if it was fleeting, he wanted it. And he didn’t want it—he didn’t want Touya to be fleeting—but even if it was, could he regret it?
His answer was obvious as he crossed the distance to the bed, clothes abandoned on Touya’s bedroom floor. Touya was waiting for him, his chest rising and falling with shaky, eager breaths, and his eyes grew wider as they looked up to Shouta’s face, locking on his own in a silent, vulnerable plea for- for closeness? Safety? Touch? Shouta didn’t care what he was asking for, all he knew was that he wanted to give it to him.
“You want it this way?” Shouta asked as he climbed on the bed and over Touya, glancing down between their naked bodies and admiring the middle tone of his tanned skin against the light and dark of Touya’s skin and ink. “Me on top?”
Touya’s eyes, which had followed his down, snapped back up. “You want me to fuck you?”
Shouta huffed out a laugh. “I meant me on top like this, Mr. missionary with the lights on. But sure, if you want to. Are you any good at topping?”
Touya sent him a fully ineffectual glare. “Obviously,” he said, like the insinuation that he’d be bad at any kind of sex was insulting. “And just because you’re on top doesn’t mean we have to do missionary.”
Shouta leaned down and brushed his lips against the corner of Touya’s mouth. “I bet you secretly like it, don’t you?” He kissed the divot beneath Touya’s lips. “I bet you like being this close. Does it feel good, being pressed into the mattress, kissed while you’re fucked, looking into someone’s eyes?”
Touya’s mouth opened and closed silently for a moment before he made an indignant noise and tilted his head to meet Shouta’s lips straight on. Shouta pulled away right before they could kiss.
“Tell me,” he said, “I just want to do what you like.”
“Fuck off,” Touya muttered, drooping back into the sheets. His head turned to the side, eyes flickering away towards the wall, down to the bed. “I don’t know, I never fucked like this.”
This time, Shouta pulled away for real, looking down at him in surprise. “Never? Missionary?”
“Never,” Touya snapped, his bristly defenses coming up. Shouta soothed them easily, running his knuckles along Touya’s cheekbones until he sighed and softened, eyes looking back up towards Shouta.
With those bright blue eyes and angelic silver lashes, all trusting and vulnerable, he looked like the exact image of all of Dabi’s late night worries and confessions, and remembering once again that they were one and the same made it impossible to not lean down and kiss him.
“Feels…. too much,” Touya whispered, arms coming up to Shouta’s shoulders, the back of his neck, the ridge of his spine. “When it’s with people I don’t know, I don’t want-”
“But now?”
“With you?” Touya asked, long eyelashes fluttering against Shouta’s cheek as they stayed close, so achingly close. “It’s good, yeah. You’ve been- You’ve been closer. I think.”
God, he had. He’d seen all there was to see of who Touya was. Not the specifics, not all the details, but they’d been laid bare for each other for a long time. This was just another progression of that, but it was probably not the most intimate they had been, thinking back on the late nights they spent talking, on Touya handing himself over to Shouta’s care while he slept, on Dabi asking Shouta about love, about life. They’d been closer, Touya was right.
But Shouta wanted to be closer still. Some part of him wanted to make up for all the distance. Some other, louder part of him was just greedy to have Touya in any way he could, in any way Touya would let him. He’d wanted him, in so many ways, for so long now, and having him like this…
Touya sighed in the sliver of space between their lips. “Also, you already came all over my back. Gross, by the way. Fucking hot, but super gross, I’m gonna have to throw my shirt away, probably.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Shouta chided, kissing him again just because he could. “A good wash and you won’t even be able to pick it out from a line-up of all your other plain black tee-shirts.”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” Touya breathed, “I had to spend the whole drive feeling it dry on my skin, I thought I was going to come just from the way it dripped down my spine.”
“Filthy,” Shouta murmured, slipping his tongue into Touya’s mouth in a show of appreciation for his filthiness. “You didn’t even bother washing up when we came in. It’s going to get all over your sheets.”
Touya grinned a bit. “So is a whole lot more, if you ever get on with it.”
“Is this what you’re going to be like? Bullying an old man until he fucks you?”
“Old man? I only bully my pornstar professor. But he fucking likes it, I can tell.” At that, he lifted his hips off the mattress and up against Shouta’s, trapping their erections between their stomachs in a slick, hot show of momentary pleasure. “Ooh, look at that, he’s all hard from it.”
Shouta snickered at the teasing, because it was so very Dabi that it made him… fuck, all warm and fuzzy inside. He was really so gone for this kid, it was unbearable. “Do you want me to fuck you or not?”
“It’s that, or a bedtime story. Your pick.”
Shouta dropped his hips down and bit Touya’s bottom lip. “I pick your cute little ass. I hope you brushed up on all your favorite bodice rippers, because I’m about to not do literally anything they have written.”
“Oh, Shouta,” Touya keened, so sudden it was almost convincing, “won’t you feed your piping hot, velvety, iron rod into my gaping cavern of desire?! I need it so badly, I’ll certainly die if you don’t plant your seed in my hungry, fertile womb right this very minute!”
It made Shouta laugh—a huff of air at first that very quickly devolved—so unexpectedly that his actual cock wilted a little bit, the blood probably rushing up to his cheeks as he hid his face in Touya’s shoulders and wheezed a little. He could feel Touya’s chest shaking with laughter too, and it made his heart feel impossibly full,
“I’ll accept the blame for that,” he finally said when he’d composed himself a bit, though he couldn’t wipe the smile from his lips. “I shouldn’t have brought them up now.”
“At a time like this? What were you thinking?" Touya agreed cheekily.
“Lube,” Shouta directed, thinking that he might actually die if he didn’t get to fuck this ridiculous boy with his gorgeous eyes and his horribly timed jokes. “Condoms.”
Touya let go of him with one arm to reach out to the side, but quickly realized they were further inside the bed than he’d thought, so he just slapped the mattress uselessly and motioned towards the nightstand. “I hope you’re not allergic to licorice.”
“Licorice?” Shouta wrinkled his nose, but dutifully reached over and rummaged the messy drawer for a big bottle of silicone lube and a box of… licorice flavored condoms. His face must have done something outside of his control, because Touya broke into a fit of giggles. “Why the hell,” Shouta asked, disgusted, “do you have licorice condoms? Why do they even make these?”
“Don’t yuck my yum,” Touya said, beaming up at him like an absolutely shameless maniac. “They’re fucking disgusting, but, God, it’s so funny every time. One guy actually liked them, but… a little too much, if you know what I mean.”
“I really don’t,” Shouta said, face twisting unpleasantly. “I don’t think I want to.”
“He almost started nibbling on my dick,” Touya told him, ignoring his wishes for a normal and sane sexual experience. “I sent him home with a roll in exchange for not coming back. I think he put them on and tried blowing himself. Very strange guy.”
Shouta raised an eyebrow. “Yes, he’s the weird one.”
Touya snickered. “If you stick around, the shock value will wear off eventually. By then, you’ll either be used to them, or it won’t be funny to use them anymore and we can get something better. like cookie dough.”
“Is this a generational thing?” Shouta asked, ignoring (for now) the fact that Touya was openly implying their lasting relationship beyond, at the very least, the duration of this box of condoms. “Do you all use flavored condoms? Is it an attention span thing, like… that app, you know the one. With the videos.”
“That was the most embarrassing thing you’ve said in all the time I’ve known you, so I’m going to ignore it. And no, of course not. As always, I’m a cut above the rest,” Touya said with an equally cutting smile. “Most other losers use flavorless. You could say… they don’t have taste.”
“And I’m going to ignore that,” Shouta said, “on account of it being not funny at all.”
“Whatever,” Touya dismissed, “No one’s making you taste one, so why don’t you just get that thing on and fuck me?”
“Don’t even want to wait for prep,” Shouta tsked, “the youth these days.”
“If you don’t pick up the pace at least a little bit, I’ll be checking you into a nursing home and riding you in your wheelchair,” Touya drawled.
“You’d fucking like that, you little pervert. That’s exactly what you wanted in my office.”
“I wanted you to fuck me against the door,” Touya corrected, opening his legs to the side as if encouraging Shouta to move. “I’d have settled for the chair out of convenience more than anything.”
“I’m sure it’d be a terrible hardship for you,” Shouta lamented, snapping open the bottle of lube and dribbling it out onto one hand. In repayment for his treatment, he pressed his fingers to Touya’s hole without bothering to warm the lube at all. Touya hissed, the furled muscle twitching at the touch, but then he relaxed again with a shuddering moan.
Shouta himself needed a moment, sitting up on his knees and admiring, to just… absorb the fact that this was really happening. Touya, who was also Dabi, and who he was at least halfway, if not well over fully, in love with by now, was underneath him, cock pink and hard against his stomach, dribbling slowly onto his pearlescent white curls. He had finally, finally, gotten to touch him. Kiss him. Hold him. He had marked his skin up with bruises that would turn as dark as his tattoos, he’d had those cerulean eyes fixed on him with so much honesty, so much desire. And now, he was going to fuck him until the world collapsed and there was nothing but the two of them. Until the sun rose, and the night had been eclipsed by whatever became of the mess of them.
“Since you’re so impatient,” Shouta said softly, testing the give of Touya’s furled little hole with the tip of one finger, and then immediately pushing in with two. Touya moaned, loud and unabashed, and Shouta bit his own lip at the feeling.
Touya was tight and hot inside, which Shouta had expected, and the lube made him so slick, so slippery, it was almost impossible not to fuck his fingers in and out of him. Touya didn’t seem to mind the rush. In fact, his cock looked even fuller, a health shade of pink, and he was already rocking his narrow hips back on Shouta’s hand as if he couldn’t get enough.
Of course, Shouta thought with a smile, he’d been on the edge for a while now. First grinding against Shouta in the office, then frotting painfully against the edge of his desk, and then that drive home with Shouta’s cum dribbling down his back. He was probably aching.
“You should come whenever you want,” Shouta told him, grinning at the way Touya’s eyebrows immediately furrowed in focus, his whole body clenching as if he suddenly had to focus on not coming. “I’m just saying,” Shouta explained casually, “I won’t stop if you do.”
“What a gentleman,” Touya ground out, taking deep breaths and holding still as he seemingly tried to regain control of himself. “Fuck, just- How much longer do you need? Can’t you just fuck me already?”
“Touya, darling,” Shouta drawled, “it’s not my tight little hole we’re waiting on. If you would just relax a little…”
“I’m relaxed,” Touya hissed, clenching impossibly tight around him. “Don’t call me darling or I’ll come, and die, and be reborn just to come again.”
“Gross,” Shouta hummed, crooking his fingers inside until he found what he was looking for and Touya let out a sob of unexpected pleasure. “Loosen up just a little more,” he promised, voice low. “Just a little more, and I’ll give you whatever you want.”
Touya gasped for air, and then tried to steady himself. Slowly, with Shouta’s knuckles dragging back and forth through the tight rim of his hole, he began to relax. Shouta lazily massaged his prostate on deeper thrusts of his fingers, and Touya moaned lewdly every time. Shouta, naturally, was hard as could be between them, his cock heavy and full against the crease of his thigh, precum beading at the tip of his glans, the foreskin pulled taut over the edge of his dusky tip.
God, even in their cocks, they were as opposite as could be. Touya wasn’t small, but his cock was proportional, cut, and a little on the longer side of average, a decent girth, and a slight bend to its shape. It was as pale as the rest of him—or it would be, if it weren’t flushed so red—and Shouta was honestly a little surprised to find that he didn’t have any piercings there as well. Meanwhile, his own cock was…. well, large, yes, but also dark, thick, a bit wrought with veins (Touya’s was so smooth, almost silky), and his hair was a bit wild since the last time he’d trimmed it, an unruly black bush that trailed up his stomach, matching the coarse black hair on his chest (and arms, and legs, and- Well. Touya had it easy, with hair as fine and fair as his skin).
For a moment, fingers knuckle deep in Touya’s ass, Shouta had to bite back a laugh. “You know,” he said, “if I were a pornstar, this would sell like crazy. Big, Hairy DILF Fucks Skinny Goth Twink. I think you can guess who’s who.”
Touya snorted unattractively. “Can you not, for just a minute?” He sounded amused, but mostly just strained, horny. “I need to come, and I really wanna come on your fucking cock because I’ve been thinking about it for fucking ever and I feel like I might- Oh-”
“Oh, good oh?” Shouta asked nonchalantly, as if he weren’t using the slick fingers that had just been in Touya to slip on a condom, and- “Fucking- Touya, we’re throwing these out.”
Touya immediately started laughing, pushing himself up onto his elbow to get a look. At the sight of the deep purple condom darkening Shouta’s dick, he just cracked up harder. “It’s-” he wheezed, “It’s so fucking funny every time. Fuck, oh God. Fuck me with your licorice dick, daddy!”
“Stop it,” Shouta muttered, stroking his rubbered cock with some more lube, “I’m getting soft, damnit.”
“You’ll get over it,” Touya cackled. “You won’t even see it once you’re really fucking me. Come on, aren’t you ready yet?”
“Christ, you’re so impatient,” Shouta scolded, and then he was lining himself up, doing his best to ignore the fact that his cock was the color of a fucking bruise, and pushing in. Touya could have used more stretching if it had been up to Shouta (instead of Touya, in collaboration with Shouta’s dick), but he didn’t seem to mind at all, which meant that Shouta didn’t mind. Not that it was easy to mind anything at all once Touya’s tight fucking hole was sucking him in. Shouta wasn’t ashamed to admit that he had a pretty one-track mind once he was inside.
“Oh, fuck,” Touya moaned. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. That’s good, that’s- Oh- kay, okay-”
“You’re greedy,” Shouta rumbled, because when he tried to pull out a little to ease the way, Touya’s hole clenched around him like it wouldn’t fucking let him go. “You want this so much.”
“I’ve been- I’ve fucking been telling you, old man,” Touya gasped.
“No need to throw a fit now,” Shouta huffed, forcing himself out of Touya’s wet heat just a little and pushing right back in, “I’m fucking you, aren’t I?” He felt so good inside, tight and hot and soft, molding around Shouta like he was meant for it.
“Hardly,” Touya snapped. “And this isn’t even missionary.” His cheeks were warm and pink, and his eyes firmly fixed down between his legs. Shouta let out a quiet laugh and moved, almost leaving the delightful warmth of Touya’s ass as he laid himself down over Touya’s smaller frame, holding himself up with one arm and urging the boy’s legs up with the other.
“Wrap your legs around me,” he told him. His lips brushed the soft skin of his jaw, and he felt Touya’s breath shudder, but he complied. Shouta himself inhaled sharply when those strong, lean thighs came up to bracket his waist, Touya’s slim ankles crossing beneath Shouta’s ass. “Like that,” he said approvingly, and Touya made an embarrassed, pleased noise.
“It’s…” Touya spoke so quietly, like he couldn’t make himself be any louder when they were so close, and Shouta realized that that rasp he always associated with Dabi was just his quiet voice, like the smoker’s lungs only showed their colors when he whispered. “It’s a lot like this, right?”
Shouta had fucked missionary before, of course. Who, other than Touya, hadn’t? It had always been neutral to him, basic and expected. But he also couldn’t deny that Touya was right. It was a lot, being so near to him, fucking him from between the cage of his legs, feeling every breath leave his lungs, every stutter of his heartbeat. “Yes,” he murmured, taking advantage of it all to kiss Touya right on the lips. “But not always. It’s a lot, with you.”
“Oh,” Touya murmured, and then, probably more because he'd been holding back for so long and less because Shouta had just said something excessively… romantic, he came. “Oh,” he choked out, “Shouta-!”
Shouta had no excuse to come yet, having already come earlier, having a hideous purple condom dulling his sensations, having almost fifty years of control to fall back on- But, God, he came dangerously close with Touya clenching around him, calling his name in that rough and ready voice of his.
He managed to rein himself in at the last minute, hips jolting to a stop. It bought him a minute to admire the rapid heave of Touya’s chest, the way his cum shot hot and pearly all over his ivory pubes and inked stomach. Touya was making these little sounds, and Shouta couldn’t even think straight, he just wanted to- to-
He settled for kissing him, leaving his mouth free to keep making those sweet noises while he took the liberty to mark up his chest below the collarbone and slowly resumed a gently pace, rocking slowly and incrementally in and out as Touya rode out the last of his orgasm in shakes and shivers.
He was probably too sensitive, but Shouta had told him he wouldn’t stop, and Touya didn’t seem willing to end just yet anyway. “You’re perfect,” Shouta whispered against a line of black ink that settled into the dip of Touya’s clavicle. “God, Touya. Dabi. You’re so-”
“Yeah?” Touya moaned, legs tight around Shouta, fingers digging into his back. “Fuck, I don’t- You’re wrong, you’re so wrong, but, fuck, I like it, I like it.”
“Perfect for me,” Shouta told him confidently. And he was—confident, that was—despite everything that should prove the opposite. “Touya, you’re so perfect for me, just look at you.”
“Shouta,” Touya keened low, hole clenching so tight around him, hips grinding back on him even as his cock went soft on its bed of white curls. “Shouta, Shouta- You were right, you were- You’re fucking everything to me, you are.”
“I know,” Shouta rumbled, though his stomach clenched impossibly at hearing Touya say it. “And I’m a filthy fucking hypocrite,” he ground out, fucking into Touya a little harder, a little faster, “because you are to me, too. And I’m not fucking losing you, I won’t.”
“Oh God,” Touya moaned. “Fuck, you were- Fuck, Shouta, stop, it’s too- It’s too much-”
His hands clawed at Shouta’s shoulders, and Shouta stilled immediately, lifting his face from Touya’s shoulder to meet those hazy blue eyes of his. “Tell me,” he prompted when Touya stared at him, eyes wild, mouth open. “Come on, darling, what do you need.”
Touya shivered, full bodied, and blinked slowly. “Turn over,” he breathed after a moment. “I need to turn over, it’s too much.”
Shouta liked fucking like this, with Touya all wrapped around him, with every piece of him pressed impossibly close, his stunning face right there to kiss and admire. But he nodded and lifted up, stroking his hands gently down Touya’s flank as he eased his cock out. “Alright, go ahead.”
Touya stared at him for a long second, as if memorizing him, before nodding frantically and flipping himself face down in a tragically appealing mess of limbs. He didn’t bother with doggy style or anything like that; he just laid himself belly down right where he’d just been, hissing at the sudden pressure against his soft cock, and lifted his hips up ever so slightly, arching his back.
He was a fucking sight from the back too, unsurprisingly, all inky black on pale skin, and though Shouta already missed his face, he could certainly appreciate this view too—especially the little flakes of cum long dried to the small of his back. And Touya, despite needing the physical boundary of his back to Shouta, still turned his face against the pillows to look back at him, eyes wide and pleading. Shouta let his lips curl up at the corners, and made quick work of holding Touya’s pert ass open with one hand and sliding himself back in with the help of the other.
And then he lowered himself right back down, sinking into Touya at the same time as he lined his body up along the length of his knobby spine, kissing the back of his neck and pressing his chest to his back. He wanted Touya to feel his heartbeat, his every breath, even if they weren’t face to face anymore.
Touya whimpered softly when Shouta bottomed out, his weight heavy on his slim back, but there was nothing pained about it. Shouta found his shoulders with his hands, traced them down to his sharp elbows, and further still to his long fingers and rough knuckles. He traced them once with his thumbs before pulling them out in front of them, lacing his fingers through Touya’s as he moved them, his palms flat against the back of his hands.
Even like this, they were as close as they could possibly be. Shouta’s lips brushed the shell of Touya’s ear as he spoke, his hips grinding deep inside of Touya in a slow chase for relief. “Some day,” he murmured, “I’m going to fuck you to sleep.”
Touya let out a loud, shaky breath. “Yeah.” he moaned. “Fuck, I want- I want you to be there when I wake up from- When I can’t sleep. Even if you’re sleeping, I won’t bother y-you, I’ll just- Fuck, I’ll just ride you until I pass out. You’d let me, tell me you would-”
“You know I would,” Shouta growled, hips snapping hungrily. “You can use me however you need. I love that you can sleep around me. I love it when you sleep around me.”
“I always- I always listen to you,” Touya spilled in a rushed confession. “In your office, I listen to your stories to fall asleep.”
Shouta had pieced that together when he’d figured out that Touya and Dabi were one, but hearing Touya admit to it like some kind of carefully kept secret just made it that much more precious. “I’ll read to you whenever you want,” Shouta told him, promised. He could feel himself getting close. Embarrassingly, in his case, it probably had less to do with the fact that Touya felt so damn good (though that, of course, played a role, and a bit more to do with the fact that the things they were saying were, in their own way, excessively romantic.
“There are so many things I want,” Touya whispered greedily, “so many things I wanted you to read to just me. Fucking- Fucking love poems- God, I just wanted you so much- I want you-”
“You have me,” Shouta told him, burying his face in the back of his neck, and letting out rough, heavy breaths as he felt his orgasm start to catch up with him again. Let it, fcuk, let it; he wanted to come, wanted Touya to know just how good he made him feel, just how much he overwhelmed him. “Fuck, Touya, I’m-”
“Yes,” Touya hissed, hole clenching tight, and that did it. “Yes, yes, yes.”
Shouta spilled inside him, inside his ridiculous, purple, licorice flavored condom. He groaned and panted against Touya’s spine, his body dropping impossibly closer, his fingers tightening possessively, longingly around Touya’s own. He felt it rush through him like a full bodied fucking shock of pleasure, tearing through every untouched place of him and lighting him up. It was the orgasm, surely, that did it, but it was also just… Touya. The fact that it was Touya, that he was with Touya. It was quickly overwhelming, and he suddenly understood why Touya had needed to turn over.
“I’m pulling out,” he warned when he caught his breath, and Touya just grunted softly in response, though he winced a little when Shouta slowly withdrew. He clenched so hard when Shouta’s cockhead pulled loose that he trapped the full tip of the condom inside for a moment, pulling it a little bit off. The image of his ass holding on to the little cum-filled condom was enough for Shouta to moan again and drop his head to Touya’s back.
When he finally pulled himself and his disgusting (in every way) condom free, tying it in a knot before wrinkling his nose and dropping it to the sheets beside them, he collapsed beside Touya and waited for his face to turn in his direction. It did, and Toya’s big blue eyes, sleepy and gorgeous with his fluffy white lashes, blinked over at him.
“Touya,” Shouta murmured, simply because he could, and because it was still settling in his brain: Touya and Dabi, and Dabi and Touya, and both of them with Shouta, and- and- “We need to change the sheets. And shower.”
Touya processed the words slowly, and then wrinkled his nose. “Right now?”
“Right now,” Shouta told him firmly. “This is disgusting. You’ve had cum drying on your back for an hour now.”
“That’s literally not even my fault,” Touya grumbled, “and I don’t care.”
“It is your fault because you were the one who wanted to fuck in a public place.”
“It’s hardly public, it’s your office-”
“Which is in a university building, and if they told me tomorrow to pack my things and find a new office, I’d have to pack up and go.”
“And, I wanted to fuck in your office, not have you get off against my clothed ass and come all over me.”
“I didn’t see you complaining.”
“Well, obviously, Shouta,” Touya said with a roll of his eyes, “I’m not a fucking idiot. Next tee-shirt will have a sign on the back that says ‘Aizawa Shouta’s Target Practice’.”
Shouta let out a deep, unamused sigh, and managed to drag himself off the bed, snagging the knotted condom between his first two fingers and holding his other hand out to Touya. “Come on. Shower, sheets, and then we can try for a nap.”
“In this economy?” Touya grumbled, taking his hand and letting himself be half-drug off the bed. “I don’t think so.”
“You put me through enough emotional turmoil today,” Shouta drawled, heading towards what he assumed was the bathroom, Touya in tow. “I feel like I ran a fucking marathon. I need to at least pretend to sleep. Maybe we can eat later, when we inevitably wake up at three in the morning.”
“Three? Very optimistic of you. My ass hurts.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Shouta scolded, shooting him a glare that doubled as a once over, making sure he didn’t show any actual signs of pain. Shouta didn’t think he’d been rough with him, but maybe he’d gotten carried away. But Touya looked fine, other than the childish pout on his lips, that Shouta wanted to kiss and keep and never let slip away. “Go on, get your sore little ass in the shower. You can even sit in the tub after, I’ll take care of the sheets, how’s that?”
“Mmm, the lap of luxury,” Touya mumbled, already sounding sleepier as Shouta got the water hot and all but dragged him under it, setting the tub to fill and get warm too.
“Sure,” Shouta hummed, finding a color-safe shampoo and working it into a lather between his palms before threading his fingers through Touya’s dampening hair. “The quicker we get clean, the quicker we can go lie down.”
Touya made a noise of acknowledgement and tipped his head back a little for Shouta to keep washing him. His eyes were shut, and his face looked as peaceful as Shouta had only ever seen it when he was sound asleep in his office. Shouta wondered if this was also a first for him: being taken care of. He hoped he would be able to get used to it, if they were… together. Or whatever they were,
“Hey,” Touya whispered, his eyes still shut as the water washed the sudsy shampoo from his bleach-dyed hair. His lashes looked extra white when they were shut against the dark bags under his eyes, dripping water from the shower. “I liked- I liked holding hands. And holding you. being held.”
“You’re touch starved, darling,” Shouta informed him, brushing a thumb across his cheekbones.
Touya cracked a little grin. “I’m starved,” he repeated. “I’m starving for so many things.”
“I’ll give them to you,” Shouta promised, kissing his lips, uncaring for the hot slip of water between them. His soapy hands ran down Touya’s body, slipping between his legs and cleaning him gently. Touya let him without protest. “You’ll get used to all of it. You’ll get tired of it.”
“Never,” Touya said, smiling softly. “No, I like it so much.”
“We’ll see,” Shouta teased. “Give it a few months.”
“I want to,” Touya confessed quietly. “I want to be with you for so long that I get sick of you. I don’t think I will.”
“Be with me, or get sick of me?”
Touya took a bit too long to think about that. “Get sick of you,” he finally said. And then, quieter, “Maybe both. I’m scared- I’m scared that you’ll leave, if you know-”
Shouta clicked his tongue. “I don’t need to know,” he told him honestly. “If you ever want to tell me, fine, but I won’t ever ask you, you hear me? It’s all in the past now.”
“Not for me, not- Not for a lot of people, people I hurt.”
Shouta sighed, because he knew, objectively, that it was more complicated than he was making it out to be. But still- “I won’t leave you for it,” he promised. “I know you did bad things, Touya, I’m not an idiot. But I want you now, not the you that made those mistakes. You’ve grown so much since then, haven’t you?’
Reluctantly, Touya nodded.
“Just keep growing,” Shouta told him.”Keep being better. You might not make it right to everyone, but you have nothing to prove to me. I want you just like this, and however you’ll be in the future.”
Touya swallowed tersely and nodded again. “Fuck. I’m- I’m getting in the bath. Hurry. With the sheets,” he clarified. “I want to- I want to sleep with you. Really-”
“I know,” Shouta said with a quick laugh. “I know what you mean. Go ahead, I’ll get it done.”
He washed himself off quickly when Touya stepped out of the shower and into the bath, and after quickly drying himself off and twisting his hair up in a towel, he left the bathroom and got to work.
It took him a few minutes to find the laundry in a little closet off of the kitchen, and a few more to find the sheets, tucked in a basket on a high shelf in the bedroom closet, but Touya seemed more than happy to waste away in the warm water of the tub, so he got it all done without any rush. Tenko even emerged from underneath the bed at one point, looking even more scrappy and disgruntled than in the pictures he’d seen, and Shouta stared at him for a moment wondering just how long he’d been underneath the bed.
When the bed was made and Shouta was in a pair of borrowed boxers that strained a little at his thighs, he knocked on the bathroom door and let Touya know he could come out whenever he was ready. Then he found a remote to dim the room’s ambient light, climbed into Touya’s massive bed, and shut his eyes.
By the time Touya emerged, Tenko had jumped up onto the bed too and taken residence atop Shouta’s broad chest, purring enthusiastically (and rather like a rusty, rattly engine) as Shouta lazily stroked down his spine. Touya immediately frowned and clambered into bed beside them, drawing Shouta’s tired, content gaze to him.
“He won’t even cuddle with me yet. He sits on the opposite side of the couch. He sleeps in the armchair over there,” he said, jerking his head towards a chair in the corner of the room. There was a soft pillow flat on the seat, and a little makeshift nest of blankets atop that. Despite his complaints, Touya had clearly tried to make sure Tenko was as comfortable as possible in his chosen bed, and that alone made Shouta lean over as much as he could, without disturbing the cat, and press a kiss to Touya’s warm lips, still damp from the bathroom’s steam.
“He has particular tastes.”
“Fuck his tastes,” Touya grumbled, “that was going to be my pillow.”
“You can get a turn later, I’m sure.”
Touya huffed and wormed his way closer. In apology, knowing full well that he’d be paying for it with pins and needles later, Shouta outstretched his arm and let Touya get close enough to use his bicep as a headrest instead, curling his arm around the boy and pulling him even closer.
“Good enough?” he asked, his eyes falling shut in the dim, golden light. Tenko was purring on his chest, a calming, heavy weight, and Touya was warm and solid against his side. As the exhaustion settled in, Shouta had the rather thrilling thought that he might actually let it take him for once. He might really fall asleep.
“For now,” Touya murmured,” sounding just as blessedly weary as Shouta felt. “But I don’t like that he liked you more.”
“Mmh,” Shouta murmured agreeably. “I’ll help you win him over. Later, when I wake up.”
“Already-” Touya broke off with a yawn- “falling asleep?”
“You are too,” Shouta grunted. “Now shh. Go to sleep, darling. Wake me up if you have nightmares.”
There was something about Touya being next to him—Dabi, really, more so than Touya—that made something inside Shouta feel settled, finally. Maybe it was just the easing of his own loneliness, but he thought it was more than that. He thought it had more to do with the fact that he knew Touya. Truly knew him. And having the chance to be there, to hold him as they succumbed to the molten pull of sleep, knowing what that meant for them-
Touya made a small, affirmative noise, and Shouta let the darkness and silence take him in its wake. For the first time in what felt like years and years, Shouta truly slept.
Beside him, Touya didn’t wake even once.