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ofmermaidstories · 2 years ago

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You don’t know where your son came from.

Ostensibly, he’s the best of you and Deku both—his big eyes are all Izuku’s, his grin (sharp and fleeting) is all yours. But your little boy burns with so much life, you don’t know where he gets it from, what fiery star he’s mined it from. Before he was born, before he even existed, a psychic had told you three things about him: that he had been here before, that he would be a leader, and that he would be your husband’s biggest heartache.

(“I don’t have a husband,” you’d told her, stoutly. You were twenty three and chronically single, at that stage; you never liked the people around you enough to let them close enough to change your mind.

She arched an eyebrow, but didn’t look up from the playing cards she was now flipping over, like she was reading the future in the red hearts, the black spades.

“Don’t sweat the details,” she’d said, unbothered, like she hadn’t just told you your future child and husband were hurtling towards some great pain you couldn’t save them from. “He’s on his way now. He needs you just as much as you need him, I think. And the boy. Eventually.”

“You just said they’re gonna hate each other,” you pointed out, annoyed, and the woman sighs. She hadn’t been your idea of a psychic at all—with her neatly kept, shining hair and the designer polo shirt she was wearing. The tennis-white shoes, the singular golden bangle.

“I said he’d be your husband’s biggest heartache,” she reminds you. “That could mean anything. Use your imagination. You’re going to need it, with the life you have in front of you.”

You hadn’t been very impressed, with that—the feeling mutual, apparently, since she ended the session shortly after. And though you laughed about it with your friends later on, you thought of it again when you met Deku—Izuku. Izuku, and the way he had taken your hand, promising you he was there, that you were safe—that you were safe with him.)

You almost didn’t have him—you almost didn’t want him, want children. What would you do with one? Dedicate the rest of your life to it? How could you ensure it’d be safe? You couldn’t—no one could, not even your superhero husband. Your superhero husband who had been the epicentre of the war that tore Japan apart, when you were both teens. Who had lost mentors and classmates alike to it. Who knew the cost of what he was asking of you.

(Izuku brings it up long before you’re engaged, in the dark when you’re flush against him, his salty skin.

“Have you ever—have you ever thought of—”

You frown against where you’d been pressing lazy, afterglow kisses to his collarbone, pulling away to continue frowning into the night, as he trailed gentle fingers down your spine.

“No.” You say. And then after a moment, when that doesn’t stop his tenderness, his careful touching, you admit, “I don’t know. I don’t know what I want.”

The what do you want goes unsaid, but Izuku answers it anyway.

“I like kids,” he whispers like it’s a secret, like he doesn’t keep every card and drawing that comes his way, like he isn’t the biggest sucker walking the planet. “And I… I trust the world enough to have them.”

Your skin prickles. He’s been here before, the psychic had said. He’ll know what he’s doing. He’s going to lead people. And—

Her mouth had pinched, spidery hands stilling on the cards—clubs, spades, hearts—in front of her.

And what? You had asked.

And he’s going to be your husband’s biggest heartache.)

In the end, it’s Izuku’s understanding that convinces you to give him the baby you were promised, so many years ago.

“I want to be with you,” he’d said, his fingers twining in yours, tight. “It doesn’t matter what we do, or don’t do. It’s you I’m choosing.”

You knew how much he wanted kids. It was in the way his face would light up, when presented with the newborn of one of the Agency girls. His gentle hands, helping a child down from the ruins of a smouldering building. The way he believed in them being the future.

“I choose you, too.” You tell him in return, confident. “And—and… whatever—whoever—we bring into this world.”

(His brow had knitted, not understanding—leaving you standing there with your hands in his, eyebrows raised, waiting for him to get it.

When he does, his eyes widen—big and green. And hopeful, his face already tightening with the tears that came to him so easily—when he was happy, when he was angry. Whenever he was overwhelmed. “You want to—”

You lift his hand to your mouth, and kiss his scars. “Yeah,” you tell him. “I want to.”)

Your son’s entrance into this world is one of the worst things you’ve ever gone through—and one of the best.

Your labour lasts 30 hours; you don’t sleep at all during it. The baby comes out blue, too choked during his entrance to understand how important breathing is, his thin, bird-like shoulder almost dislocating, trying to pass through; you, in turn, almost die from the bleeding, caught only by a sharp-eyed doctor who saw the early warning signs, as the green lightning of Izuku’s Quirk crackled along his hands, helpless.

You will never do it again. To free your baby boy the doctors had to cut you, deeply, to your asshole; a episiotomy, widening the passage for him. Afterwards, much afterwards when you’re happy and drowsy and holding your tiny, perfect baby in your arms, the doctor that saved your life will tell you that incontinence was a common side-effort of the incision; that you wouldn’t be able to wear high heels again for a while, without putting tension on your stitches. That even trying to pee would be excruciating.

But it didn’t matter: you had everything in your hands, bundled up. Your angry-faced little son, ugly and alien, his tiny fists balled up against himself.

Izuku couldn’t stop his tears, wiping a trembling hand at his eyes every now and then, his lips against your hair, against the shoreline briny smell of your newborn’s head.

“We’re not doing this again,” he whispered. “I’m—this is enough. You’re enough.”

You rubbed your face against his shoulder, his tremors, and traced a delicate finger along the tiny pout of your son’s mouth.

“We’re enough,” you tell him.

In response, Izuku holds you tighter.

In retrospect, your son’s birth should’ve been the warning sign. He is so foreign. He has so much attitude, so much life. He is fearless and unruffled by his father’s fussing; from the moment he can look around him, alert, he wants to be apart of it all, reaching up to Izuku, reaching up to the friends that come and surround him, like immortal godparents. He toddles after them—at first in fat, clumsy infant steps, then more sure-footed, quick, picking up the frightening speed children came with. It makes Izuku worry, you know, especially in the early days, when the baby would throw angry screaming fits that dissolved into heartbreaking sobs, just because Izuku wouldn’t—couldn’t—take him to work with him.

“I think he’s going to be a Pro,” you tell your husband, playful. You’re teasing him—before your son was born, it was all Izuku wanted, a child that he could be there for, someone who he could fight together with. But now all your little boy had to do was drop to the floor too fast, bonk his head on the table leg at the wrong angle and Izuku would be there, brow furrowed, so worried that he couldn’t protect him from every hurt, no matter how big or how small. “He’s going to be just like his father, dashing off to save the world every day.”

“I don’t—” Izuku stops himself, almost guiltily, your baby boy sagging in his arms, asleep. “I just want him to be happy, to be safe.” Izuku whispered.

You smile, because you’ve heard this a thousand times before; your heart breaking every time. Izuku kept photos of everyone he lost—a small shrine of them, faces you never knew in person. Some older. Some far too young, too golden, too alive.

He’s going to be your husband’s biggest heartache.

“I know,” you say, soft. “I know you do.”

Izuku’s hand was big enough to span your baby’s head completely; cradling him, fingers soft in his downy curls. Protective. This was the only time your son would tolerate this touch, this hovering, and some part of you—the part that thinks of your psychic’s words—thinks the timer you two have with him is set much shorter than either of you realise.

Your answer to that is to simply not think about it.

It’s easy enough not to; taking care of a child and working at the same time wipes you out, gives you little time to work yourself up into the same morbid moods Izuku could frenzy himself into. You’re too concerned with making sure your stupid son doesn’t break his neck, stops tracking mud throughout the house, releases the cohort of tiny frogs he’s keeping under his bed, in one of his father’s shoeboxes. At three he’s already a menace, a whole other human of his own and you are reminded, daily, of what it means to give birth to someone—to bring another human being, whole and complete, into this world.

“Play Agencies with me!” you hear him shout from the backyard, one day. He’d turned four in the spring; it was now a lazy, balmy summer, and he was spending the golden days as wild as the beetles and bugs that flitted along the treeline.

You stick your head out the sliding door, frowning. “Talk nicer to your uncle Kiri, brat!” You call out.

In answer you hear Kirishima’s laughter; your son probably scowling, fearlessly, at your reprimand.

“Play Agencies PLEASE!” you hear him shout, even louder—for your benefit, obviously. Kiri must agree, however, and you can hear your boy marching around the yard, bellowing out, “Number! One! Heroes! Let’s roll out! Round and round and round we go!”

In comparison, it’s silent in the kitchen, and you sigh as Izuku steps back in from where he’d been watching them, on the patio.

“I’m sure I wasn’t that bad at his age,” you say, a joke—but you stop when you see your husband’s face, too soft. His eyes, too big—too shiny.

“You alright?” You ask, wondering if it had been a rougher week at work than you realised.

But Izuku shakes his head, shoulders jerking as your son’s song—his chant—continues on, from outside.

“It’s nothing,” he says. “He reminds me of… he… it’s nothing.”

You take his hand in yours, and too easily he pulls you to him. Your husband’s biggest heartache, the psychic had said. She did say you would need an imagination, with this life.

“I’m just—I’m just happy,” Izuku whispers, smiling through his tears.

It’s golden and bright and the cicadas are shrilling outside, the chorus underneath your child’s song, still being belted out, Kirishima catching on enough to join in. It’s a beautiful day—soon the others would arrive for lunch, the motley crew of heroes that had followed each other through school and warzones and the years, the sorrows that came with them, and the joys.

You breathe in the scent of Izuku’s shirt, his skin underneath it. “It’s okay,” you tell him, quietly. A secret between the two of you, in the small section of sunlight in your kitchen. “He’ll be here for a long while yet,” you promise him. This time is silent—but with the way your husband’s arms tighten around you, you think he heard it anyway.

#prompts and drabbles and other things #trigger warning for BABIES 👶🏼 !!!!#andy don’t look #NOT andy friendly #andy go away #actual trigger warning for birth tho bc god speed #tw: birth #everything i’ve ever learnt about giving birth to another human being has been against my will so now i am imparting that to u guys ur welc #there’s no point to this i just wanted to drabble okay goodbye im done

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