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dashielldeveron · 3 months ago

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soulmate trope | midoriya izuku, part one

Midoriya's route of soulmate trope. Part two here. “this doesn’t match the manga’s canonical ending!” correct. and isn’t that sexy? please read this route last, as it contains spoilers for all other routes. warnings: female reader. manga spoilers up to 411ish. angst. sexual content. moderate injury (not reader). indulgently meta on behalf of the author. a note: some meta elements in this route may lead you to think it’s the true route for this fic. not necessarily. the true route is whichever one is your favourite :) ~57k overall. ~39.5k for part one.

“Aizawa-sensei, you’re good at sleeping.”

Aizawa rubbed his good eye with the heel of his palm, propping his forearm on his doorframe to support his weight. “It’s certainly what I’d like to get back to doing,” he said through a yawn.

“No, please, I—may I come in? This is kind of important.” You glanced over your shoulder towards Eri’s and Tenko’s dorms down the hall, both without light emanating from underneath the doorways.

“Kind of?” The sleeve of his dark t-shirt strained as his bicep tensed and relaxed when he let his arm fall to his side again. “You woke me up for kind of important?”

Sucking in through your teeth, you said, “I lied. It’s really important. Possibly the most important thing to happen to me since the war. And you’re the one most likely to be able to help.”

Aizawa glared at you, narrowing his good eye and shifting his jaw. But he stepped aside to let you pass, gesturing towards his kitchen table. “Why am I not surprised?”

***

You jolted awake, and you were wet.

Damp, really. Dew-heavy strands of grass crawled up to brush your sides, catching the morning chill, and hey, why were you sleeping outside?

Rubbing sleep out of your eyes, you pushed yourself upright and took in some sort of clearing with little vegetation besides yellowed weeds and shrubs stretching out to a dense treeline. The sun hadn’t appeared to have been in the sky long, but you’ve been here for a while based on how soaked through your clothes were these weren’t your clothes.

What were you wearing? Had someone bothered to dress you on top of dragging you out of reach of civilisation? Moreover, were they—you held your breath, taking in the weird half-gloves that had an intricate, painted floral pattern—some stranger LARPer?

Gracious, they’d put you in a corset, and you’d slept in it. Well—you felt along your spine for the ties—at least they’d loosened it for you? Huh. Layered with some kimono-style top that actually looked like it could’ve belonged to you, but the trousers and boots were unrecognisable.

But everything fit you, and fit you well. This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment heist; this had been thought out, definitely by some deranged role-player. Even down to the props inside a battered pack nearby (starting with knitted socks, two other kimono tops, and a traditional tea set), this had been planned.

Shoving the socks back inside the pack, you scanned the clearing again in hopes of catching a camera lens, but all you could make out was the morning breeze’s light rustling of leaves and grass.

You nearly jumped out of your skin at shuffling and a quiet grunt: a taller sweep of dying grass had blocked you from discerning another person sleeping near you. With caution, you—

A groan came from their direction as they flipped over to stretch, along with the bitter murmuring of “That didn’t feel like more than three hours.”

Pushing the taller grass out of the way, you grinned in relief, scrambling over to Shinsou as his bleary, dark-circled eyes blinked up at you. “Hey, Shinsou,” you said, “Do you know what’s going on?”

He folded his arm behind his head, his mouth crooking up in a weary smile. He had on some strange, LARPer get-up, too: archer’s gloves, a faded armguard running up the inside of his forearm, some fucking medieval whore outfit that accentuated his waist (but your LARPer kidnapper, at least, gave Shinsou the courtesy of making it somewhat resemble his hero costume). “Still disoriented? Yeah, I think we shouldn’t’ve rushed the Gauntlet yesterday. I don’t think any of us even got out our bedrolls. Still, we don’t have to do it again.”

Huh?

“Are you asking where Touya and Monoma are?” Shinsou pushed up enough to lean back on his elbows, and he tilted his head back, eyes fluttering shut. “You were the one who assigned them breakfast, remember? They’re probably scoping out that brook fifteen minutes back.”

A deep-set dread sank into you like an anchor into too-shallow swamp water. Shinsou was acting like this was normal, like there was a routine, and you were the one out of the loop. Where were you? What were you doing here? Were you—and the thought made your throat run dry—the only one out of place?

You may not know what’s going on, but the thing to do now is collect information. For that, you have to act like everything’s fine. “Yeah, you’re right,” you said, examining the flock of birds in flight embroidered onto your kimono top, “I’m a bit out of it, I suppose, from not sleeping long enough. You said three hours? Feels like we were asleep twenty minutes.”

(Shinsou had used minute as a unit of time, so you could use it. Good to know something was the same as back home.)

“Too bad we’ve got to get going after breakfast,” said Shinsou, sighing as he sat up fully and running a hand back through his hair, which sprung back upright despite his flattening it, “We should start a fire before the others get back, just to speed up the process.”

You fumbled your way through starting a fire, but the two of you got one going. Shinsou rooted around in one of the rucksacks you hadn’t noticed earlier, next to a pair of crunched silhouettes in the grass, untouched by morning dew, to retrieve Monoma’s cast iron rotisserie spit, fish-shaped trammel hook, and tin percolator, along with two of the mismatched enamel mugs bought back in Renfield…

Your eyes glazed over as Shinsou dug the two ends of the iron spit on either side of the fire. How do you know that? Why is your brain supplying words for things you don’t recognise? But you had this information, regardless, and something in your gut told you that it was accurate.

You could picture the Renfield shopkeeper who sold the mugs to you.

“Will you wipe those down, please?” Shinsou set the mugs into your lap and opened his own pack for the coffee, which you’d known he’d stored there, in that outermost pocket, because he was encouraging it to get crushed.

With a cloth stored with your tea set, you cleaned both mugs slowly, wiping the black insides before the blue and cream-coloured outsides.

The brewing coffee smelled just like Shinsou’s flat back home.

“Pass me a cup?” Shinsou asked, eyes on the flame while he held out his hand.

The cream-coloured one was yours. Your gut said so. You placed the blue mug into Shinsou’s palm. He hardly glanced at it, but he shot you some sort of look you couldn’t understand.

You were drinking your unsatisfying, campfire coffee when Monoma and Touya showed up, laden with four, silver fish and a duck, for some reason, under Touya’s arm like a football. And oh, Monoma was Monoma, clear as day by his loud, barking yet melodic voice, but you hadn’t expected this Touya to be fucking Dabi.

(Sure, you tried to calm yourself down, taking another large gulp of coffee as they both settled down around the fire next to you, overly familiar and making too much noise this early in the morning.

Back home, Todoroki Touya had been living with his family, heavily reformed [?] and in therapies, both for his brain and his body. Beyond a curt introduction at a formal event, you hadn’t personally interacted with Touya outside of the battlefield, years ago. So, why is he with you now?

Moreover, why are you with this particular combination of people in the first place?)

“Hold him,” said Touya, plopping the duck into your lap, where it loafed like a cat, and he unhooked the first fish from the line to toss it to Shinsou, who was ready with a clean knife.

You averted your gaze from the gutting, knowing in your heart of hearts that you’ll have to eat that without looking disgusted. Sighing, you patted the duck on its head and stared down at it, reaching for its name through whatever memories you somehow had, and it settled its neck into the crook of your folded leg, making a contented noise that was not quite a quack.

Don’t tell me, you thought, lifting your hand from its back, This duck is someone I know, transformed into a duck.

***

“Enough about the duck,” said Aizawa, clanging his Put Your Hands Up Radio mug onto his kitchen table.

“The duck is important,” you said, holding your excellent, non-campfire coffee close enough that the steam billowed into your face, “I love the duck. His name is Granddaddy Slapkins.”

Aizawa clapped his hand to his forehead. “Is he anyone we know?”

“No, he’s just a duck. But he’s as much a part of the party as anyone else,” you said, as Aizawa’s cat, Konpeito, leapt onto the table and rubbed the upper curve of her tail on your face. “Oh, I love you, too, baby,” you said to her, free hand sinking into her thick fur, “I know you’re real.”

Aizawa dragged his hand down his face. “So, to confirm, you don’t believe the events you just described are real.”

“That’s the thing: I don’t know. At first, I thought it was just a silly, fantasy-themed dream with some people I know in real life. But it got stranger,” you said, scratching just before the base of Konpeito’s tail, arching her back in a stretch, “It wasn’t a one-off dream. I kept going back, to the exact spot where I left off. No inconsistencies or plot-holes, like dreams usually do. I go to sleep here, and I wake up in this fantasyland. I go to sleep there, and I wake up here.”

Aizawa squinted to ascertain how much time was left on the oven for the muffins. “Are you getting any rest from this, if your consciousness is active throughout it all?”

“I am,” you said, considering the fact for the first time, “Should I not be? Now that you say it, it seems obvious that I should be exhausted all of the time.”

“If you were exhausted, I’d be more inclined to think that these weren’t just dreams.” Aizawa tapped his fingers on the table, trying to attract Konpeito. “The fact that you aren’t grounds you in this reality. It rules out something as far-fetched as—as living in different universes or timelines.”

You laughed through your nose. “Come off of it, Aizawa-sensei. Not very logical of you to entertain ideas that impossible.”

Rising as the oven timer beeped, Aizawa blinked slowly at you, mouth curving into an oddly soft smile. “I tend to consider the impossible, when it comes to you.”

“I’m glad you have such faith in my total incompetence,” you said, holding your mug at arm’s length to prevent Konpeito from lapping at your coffee, (though she was trying to climb onto your arm to get it), “So! The second time it happened, I was weirded out but chalked it up to coincidence. The third time, I tried to figure out if anyone were from here and now, like me.”

***

“Shinsou,” you said, hanging back on the winding, mountain path while Monoma and Touya trudged ahead, “I’ve been thinking. Do you think we could source some milk at the next town? I’ve been craving a cappuccino.”

Shinsou tightened a rucksack strap over his shoulder, hiking it farther up his back. “A what?”

“Oh, a cappuccino? Cappuccinos? I thought we talked about them before. Just for, y’know, adding some variety to our routine.” You tripped over an exposed root but caught yourself. “If that isn’t a good option, we could skip milk and just try to brew espresso instead. If that’s okay.”

Shinsou pointedly stepped over the root. “Forgive me for not remembering. Remind me what exactly those are?”

“Oh, uh.” How anachronistic would it be if you explained what they really were? “Energising. Spells. Energy spells that require milk, y’know, as an organic component.”

“Ah. That would be why we haven’t used them yet,” said Shinsou, nodding, “since milk doesn’t keep long when we’re on the road. Perhaps when we have a consistent source, we can try them out.”

***

Aizawa swallowed his bite of muffin. “Well. It’s not the Shinsou we know, for certain.”

“Yeah. It makes me feel like I’m in the twilight zone, that I can look at my best friend and know things we’ve done together that he has no recollection of,” you said, steering Konpeito away from a loose chocolate chip, “And Monoma didn’t recognise the plot of Lord of the Rings when I started to tell it over the campfire one night, and Touya didn’t say anything when I Naruto-ran—”

“Those aren’t foolproof.”

“But the Shinsou one is.”

“Hm,” said Aizawa, mouth full, and he fiddled with the band on his night eyepatch. “And they’re the only people you’d seen.”

“Up to that point. We’d been travelling to this town, Alderside—beautiful place, really, nestled along this ghastly mountain range with bad roads, fabulous spring festival—”

“Why did Shinsou accept that a cappuccino was a spell? Is he an idiot?”

“Oh, uh. That would be because there’s magic there. Spells are normal,” you said, biting into your muffin.

Aizawa shook his head, glaring into his coffee. “If you ever tell anyone else this story—which I advise that you don’t—give that information earlier. It sets the tone for how ridiculous this is.”

“Yeah, I—sorry about that,” you said, scratching the underside of your chin, “Forgot. Magic has become so normal to me, in that context, that I forgot that it’s not implied.”

“Do you do magic?” Aizawa sat back in his chair. “Are there quirks?”

“Yes and no, and then to an extent.” You moved your muffin out of Konpeito’s way. “To the best of my knowledge, no one has a quirk exactly like we have here, but I’ve found that people’s magic usually mirrors their real quirks somehow. Monoma’s an illusionist—uses magic to make copies of himself or whomever we’re fighting, and if he’s made that particular copy a lot, then that copy can use their magic. Touya’s magic is this sort of freezing fire; I don’t really get how it works, but it means we can’t rely on him to cook by himself.”

“All right. Is the magic something you’re born with, then, similar to a quirk?”

“It’s hard to say, Aizawa-sensei; sometimes I think I have it figured out, but life’ll throw me a wrench. You can study different types of magic, sure—for example, Shinsou’s studying necromancy right now. But I think everyone has a natural talent for a certain type of magic, and you have to try a lot of different kinds to figure it out. So, effectively, there are quirkless-slash-magicless people, because it’s a hassle to find out what you’re skilled at out of thousands of types of incredibly specific magic.”

“I’m assuming what magic you’ve learnt is highly specific and useless?”

“Oh, rude! That is rude, and mean, and accurate! Shut up,” you said, grumbling into your muffin before taking an angry bite out of it and rushing to swallow with a dry throat. “But the main thing is that I didn’t learn this stuff. I already knew it when I got there. I have a whole different life I’ve apparently lived.”

***

Over a week’s worth of living in this unfamiliar world while you slept had you feeling uneasy and isolated. Moreover, you missed being able to fully trust your best friend. While washing your filthy socks by a riverbank, you made up your mind to confess to this Shinsou that you lived in a place called Japan and were at a loss for why you were here now.

You returned to camp, wrenching the water out of everyone’s socks before hooking them to a shitty clothesline near the fire. Monoma, half-asleep, was turning the spit over the fire, while Touya was distracting Granddaddy Slapkins with oats while he tried to repair a hole in his boot (Touya was trying to repair a hole in his own, human-sized boot, not that he was trying to fix a duck-sized boot—obviously). Shinsou was scanning necromantic glyphs from a handwritten book, but his eyes kept drifting closed too often to be absorbing information.

“Hey, Shinsou,” you said, gathering everyone’s sweat-stained undershirts, “Come with me to the river? I know it’s my turn to do laundry, so you don’t have to do anything, but I think I just may fall in if I don’t have anyone to talk to.”

Taking a few moments to register your words, Shinsou blinked blearily up at you, and, snapping himself out of it, he slammed his book shut. “Yes,” he said in a stilted voice, and he cleared his throat. “Yeah, let me come with you.”

Weaving through the trees behind you, Shinsou carried his shirt and Monoma’s down to the river, claiming that he should have to deal with his own sweat, and if you did all four by yourself, you wouldn’t get back to camp before the Night Wyrms started wandering (the what? You pulled your cloak closer).

You knelt on the rocks, set the soap and scraping knives between you, and started wetting your undershirt’s sleeve (yours was a slightly thicker fabric than Touya’s, so yours would take longer to dry. Better do it first—and again, this routine already was imprinted in your brain, like it was instinctual).

“Hi,” you said eventually.

“Hello,” said Shinsou, hunched closer to the ground than you were so that he could squint through the water while he rubbed at a bloodstain on Monoma’s shirt. “Come here often?”

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Historically, yes, but if it’s funny, I’m afraid I’ll have to tell everyone. What’s on your mind?”

You opened your mouth, closed it, and bit the inside of your cheek, grimacing. How do you say this? Since this world has magic, it’d be easier to take, but—

He flicked water off of his fingers. “Does this have anything to do with how bizarre you’ve been for the past two weeks?”

“Wha—whoa, what? Shinsou, what do you mean?”

“That,” he said, nodding, “First of all, you haven’t called me Shinsou this consistently since we were ten. Call me Hitoshi right now.”

“Wha—? Hitoshi,” you said, thrown off.

“Good. You’ve been scaring me.” Shinsou finally scraped a tough splotch of blood away, and it flecked and disappeared into the water. “Now, what’s wrong? Did running the Gauntlet that quickly make you develop amnesia? Do you have a conditional curse on you that you can’t tell everyone?”

“Wow. You are the same in every universe.” Grabbing the soap, you scrubbed at the sweat stain on a kimono sleeve. “Overattentive to the point where it’s helpful. How irritating.”

“Hm,” he said, rubbing his knife underwater, “So. You’re not the woman I grew up with.”

“Not exactly.”

“What’s going on? She still in there?”

“Yes. I’m also her, but not,” you said, glowering at the flaky soap, “Everything you experienced with her is still here. I know all of that. I've lived all of that. It’s as if I have overlapping lives right now, because I have those memories and memories of what I consider my real life—and I know a version of you there.”

“Is he as pretty as me? Bet not,” said Shinsou.

“Well, he has access to mousse, so his hair’s a bit better, but I think you’re winning in terms of ruggedness. Living outside, and all.” You pursed your lips. “But no, I’ve started coming here when I go to sleep there. To me, this is a dream.”

Shinsou paused. “I’m glad you like it here?”

“Okay, you daft dimbo, you know what I meant. A sleep-dream, ongoing, and when I go to sleep here, I wake up back in reality. My reality, I guess.”

“No wonder you haven’t had a lot of stamina lately. You know we’ve had to slow our pace down, right?”

“I don’t go hiking; Bakugou took me once and yelled at me, so I don’t wanna do that anymore.” You tilted your head. “Do you know Bakugou?”

“Another friend from your reality?”

“Yes. I wonder if he’s somewhere here, too? I know Monoma and Touya, too. What was I—” You cut yourself off and sighed. “I know everything that’s happened to me in this life is in my brain, but it’s slow-surfacing. Usually, something has to jog my memory a bit before I remember something fully. So, we did grow up together?”

Shinsou nodded. “Same castle town. Both in families serving the king.”

“Really?” Cute. Memories of running together around cobblestone streets and murky hallways surfaced. “Same job, or?”

“I happen to come from a long line of—” He coughed. “—torturers and executioners, and you were the first in your family to pursue poetry.”

Your fist curled around the soap. “I’m sorry; I must have hallucinated. What?”

“You didn’t want to be a jester, like the rest of your family, so you studied to be a bard—”

“Please tell me you are lying to me,” you said, grabbing Shinsou by his kinky, medieval collar and yanking him towards you, “Please say that you are getting back at me for spilling coffee on your bedroll.”

Shinsou blinked, once, twice, and then a wide, toothy grin stretched across his face.

Releasing him with a groan, you pouted and scrubbed at a stain while the memories came flooding back. You had been studying to get out of foolery, and being a bard had been the most enjoyable way out. “We were friends, and we had life plans. I happen to notice that I don’t carry an instrument with me. Am I not a bard?”

“You quit once we figured out what type of magic you’re skilled in. Around the same time King Todoroki banished you from the castle for unsavoury verse.”

Swallowing that salami slice of crazy information, you asked the question that was easiest to talk about, now that memories were coming back: “Todoroki Enji? The king?”

“Correct. But don’t feel bad about being banished; you get bad luck just by being near the man. His own marriage is in name only, and one of his kids is missing—”

“Only one?”

“Technically two, but we know where Touya is. Prince Shouto’s whereabouts are unknown. But more pressing is that you don’t appear to remember your magic?” Shinsou scratched the back of his neck. “We’re gonna hit Alderside soon, and the reason they summoned us is your technique.”

“Explain it to me,” you said, spreading your wet undershirt across a dry rock, deciding it was clean enough, and you checked the sky. “Do we have time before night falls?”

You’d apparently studied and become very skilled at two types of magic (which was a low number of magic disciplines; most people studied around three to five types but never become great at them). The first type explained some of your luggage: it was a support technique involving a shortened tea ceremony. While the rest were in a physical battle, you trapped everyone within a certain area, the breadth of which depended on what type of tealeaves you used. From glyphs painted from the dregs of the last ceremony, tea sprigs would sprout out of your forearms. You’d harvest and process them, with magic speeding the process all the way to serving and drinking. Everyone within the boundary was compelled to physically stay within it until the end of the tea ceremony, and occasionally, though you had no control over whom this affected, a fighter would be compelled to sit and complete the ceremony with you. Their drinking the tea would weaken them, usually in endurance, but not by much. Your previous memories informed you that you had been working on brewing teas that had greater magical effects.

“You really only need your whisk; you’ve just been carrying around that teaware for misdirection, and everything else is conjured from the glyphs on your arms,” Shinsou was telling you on the way back, burdened with wet-wrung shirts, “So, you’re not directly fighting, but you’re valuable support.”

“So, why does a whole town need a tea ceremony?”

“Oh, they don’t want you for that one.” Shinsou held back a branch for you to pass into camp. “They want you because you’re a soulwalker.”

The rest of the journey to the town of Alderside, Shinsou didn’t explain. Said you’ve never talked about how it works because you didn’t know. Soulwalking was rare. Soul magic was one of the extremely few types of magic that couldn’t be studied: you could either do it, or you couldn’t, and almost everyone couldn’t. You’d never met anyone else who could.

It’s why the group of you get jobs across the country: something will go awry in the mirroring spirit realm, and you’d leave your body behind for your party to protect, while you—your soul—wandered through the spirit realm.

Monoma showed you the letter that you’d gotten by hawk from the mayor: Alderside periodically was engulfed by a purple fog. Every night and occasionally during the day, it acted as a totally blinding smokescreen that could teleport someone around town and the surrounding cliffs. They wanted you to come investigate so that they could travel at night again, before someone could be teleported off the mountain entirely to fall to their death.

Something that Shinsou had neglected to tell you was that you had a reputation. When your party rounded the last bend of the mountain before Alderside, you were greeted with a loud, excited clamour from a gathering of five, the leader of which embraced you on sight and exclaimed into your ear that she was pleased as punch that the Dango Lady was finally here.

Otherwise trapped in the hug, your head whipped towards Shinsou, who, after a moment, gathered himself and nodded. “Thank you,” you said into her pastel pink hair, stiffly raising your arms to return the hug and wondering why you’d been content with calling your professional persona the Dango Lady, “I hope we can meet your expectations and solve your problem.”

She pulled back, hands sliding down to grip your forearms (Were all citizens in this town this touchy, or was it just her? Based on the similar way your friends were being greeted, perhaps physical touch was integral to this area’s culture). “Hi,” she said, her cloud-fluff earrings bobbing as she spoke, “I’m the one who summoned you; I’m Fuwa Mawata, the mayor of Alderside. You’ve come just in time to salvage our spring festival in two days. If this smokescreen persists, we may not be able to have it, and this festival hasn’t been cancelled in over two hundred years now.”

Giving your wrists a squeeze, Fuwa dropped your arms with a gentle smile, and she glanced over the rest of your group, taking a step towards Monoma. “I’m afraid I don’t have any more details other than what I’ve said in the letter,” she said towards you, standing on her tiptoes to rest her chin on Monoma’s shoulder while she hugged him, “But I can guarantee that you’ll have a safe spot to perform your ritual, and we’ve set aside the best rooms in our inn for you.” She released Monoma (looking rather alarmed) and moved onto Touya, unable to push her away because of his tight grip on Granddaddy Slapkins’s carrier. “Whatever supplies you need, we will do our best to provide. Perhaps you’d like to drop off your belongings at the inn and then visit our magic shops?”

“That sounds faaaaaaaantastic,” said Monoma, tightening the straps on his pack for the third time that day (it was his turn to carry most of the cast-iron cookware again), “Thanks for your hospitality. Dare I—may I ask what the bathing situation is at your inn?”

“You may,” Fuwa replied, and there’s something in the way that Shinsou’s entire body froze when Fuwa wrapped her arms around his neck (she’d kept them around the torso for the rest of you), how his eyebrows shot up towards his hairline above wide, panicked eyes, and how he didn’t even try to return the embrace, arms rigid and hesitant—something that made you realise you’ve seen her before, but you didn’t know where.

(Later, when you were awake, you’d find her instagram. She’d been in the year above you at U.A., and, thinking back, she’d had a crush on Shinsou. When she’d graduated, she’d even asked him for his second button, and when he’d evaded by pointing out he wasn’t wearing the school cardigan that day, she gave Shinsou her button.)

Fuwa and the rest of the committee escorted your party through Alderside. Your first impression of it was that it was bright. Half of the town’s buildings were carved directly into the mountain, the natural rockface reflecting the sun with a harsh glare, and the rest were neatly whitewashed and embedded with shining stones that formed a mosaic, each one depicting a different scene from the town’s history, broken up only by stained glass windows, glinting and glittering with any shred of sunlight they could grasp, and stained-glass windchimes dangled from roofs and archways, clinking in the crisp, morning breeze. Your boots even clinked a bit on the streets, since they, too, were crafted with reflective stones in a mosaic, this one meant to resemble a river.

“I apologise about the level of noise,” said Fuwa, holding open the door to the inn herself, “We’re still preparing for the spring festival regardless, so we’re more hectic than usual.”

“Noise is good,” Touya said, “It’s when it’s quiet that you’ve got to be on guard. My friend won’t be a problem, right?” He shifted Granddaddy Slapkins underneath his arm.

You’ve never been more grateful to have a separate room from Touya. Shinsou conked out on his bed in your shared room the minute you’d set your bags down, and Touya, despite trying to nurse a mug of apple cider, was drifting off in his chair.

Monoma folded his cards on the table when Touya’s forehead finally rested on it. “Well, I don’t think I’m going to win this hand,” Monoma said, gathering his cards and Touya’s, “Now that we’ve eaten, I am more than aware of how disgusting we are. Fuwa had better not have been lying about their hot water.”

“Tell you what,” you said, sliding your cards over to him, “Why don’t we both bathe and head out to their market? We can resupply while these two are sleeping. Plus, we can garner what the general public’s thoughts on this smokescreen are.”

Forty-five minutes later (Monoma took long showers), you were going from shop to stall, weaving your way through the townspeople preparing the festival, having to duck out of their way when they turned corner bearing what you thought was an excessive amount of firewood, all carved with colour-coded runes, along with planks for temporary game stalls and what looked like a maypole but a person carrying it was quick to tell you was called a spring-stick.

Since you were going to soulwalk that night, you went ahead to the magic shops while Monoma fossicked around for the usual travelling supplies to cut the outing in half. After going over the list with him again (“Socks, especially, Monoma. Everyone in our group always goes through so many socks.” “One of these days, we should all learn how to knit.”), you headed downtown and he uptown.

Alderside’s four magic shops were all carved into the mountainside together; the only reason they weren’t one, big store was because the owners wanted to have clear boundaries between inventory type. You opened the door, bell clanging, to the enchantment quarter.

(Enchantments were the most powerful category of magic, more potent than other disciplines like sorcery, witchcraft, and warlockry. Soul magic was a type of enchantment, and so was your tea ceremony, though that was balanced with one of the lowest types of magic, herblore.)

You felt a little pretentious walking into the enchantment quarter, where magic users who clearly knew what they were doing were sifting through the racks—although there was ostentatiously just a magician in here; shouldn’t he be where the sound-based merchandise is—because you still felt like you were just some normal person, from a world of quirks and heroes instead of magic.

When Monoma eventually came meandering in, chewing on some locally made, closest-thing-to-gummy, peach candy, you could’ve sworn he was the Monoma you knew awake. He didn’t even manage to get across the shop floor to you before he stopped to riffle through a ribbon-bound book and frowning at the first illustration. He bent his head to the side to get a better look, jaw chomping down, before shaking his head and heading towards you.

Monoma made a big show of sliding up next to you at the botanical display, and he popped the collar of his shirt, not noticing how it immediately folded again. “Golly gee, miss,” he said, affecting some accent that was definitely not local and exacerbated further by the peach gummy in his cheek, “I reckon I’ve never seen you around these parts. I’d be delighted to show you around this here festival, if you let a varmint like me even grovel to be in your presence.” Monoma lifted the tiny bag of peach candy from his coat pocket to offer you some.

“Thanks, Monoma,” you said, taking one and popping it into your mouth, “How’d your end of the trip go?”

“Very well. No obstacles,” he said, dropping the silly voice and onto his elbows as he leant against the display table, propping his chin on both of his fists, “Got the non-perishables easily, and of course I was able to haggle the price down for the supplies we buy in bulk. I was able to get two extra pairs of socks thrown in, but we’ll have to fight for who gets them.”

You traced the brittle branch of a potted, staked vine, labelled as Cat’s Clover, but as it bore no leaves, you couldn’t discern why. “Fine by me.”

“I was also barraged by a curator at their local museum who didn’t care that I had better things to do. Have you heard that this spring festival is supposed to be a final splurge on the winter store before the spring planting? Two days from now, it’ll be eight hours of partying, and then they’ll climb to the top of the mountain to plant the first crops of the year.”

“Is that why I’ve been seeing onions and leeks everywhere?” you asked, giving a featherlight tap to the single bud on the vine.

“Yeah, it’s the festival’s symbols. Same with why there’s so much green and white.” Monoma flicked the tiny leaf of a potted shrub as if it’d personally offended him. “By the way, if someone gives you a packet with a single seed in it, don’t do anything to it yet. If you crack open the shell too early, the spell won’t work. You’re supposed to open it the dawn of the planting, and whatever flower grows from it—it bursts fully grown from the shell—is supposed to tell what your year is gonna be like. Looks like they have flower symbolism guides,” said Monoma, jerking his head towards the checkout, “We should pick one up on our way out.”

“Got it. If it’s that significant to the festival, we’ll probably be getting ours from Fuwa,” you said, peering into a bell-shaped bloom, “Hopefully there won’t be any sort of ceremony about it. I’d like to get in and get out without being seen by many people.”

“Oh! Speaking of not being seen. I saw a liripipe hood you’ll like. I didn’t get it, because I think you should see it first, but,” Monoma said, pausing, a sneaky little grin growing when you caught his eye, “it’s got buttons, so you could attach it to your surcoat, if you wanted, and it’s embroidered. Got that type of floral motif that you like so much.”

You raised an eyebrow. You hadn’t mentioned to anyone that you’d decided you needed another hood, but if it’s a liripipe hood—you’d probably be able to fit all of your hair into it, keeping it cleaner for longer in this filthy place without your normal conditioner—and he must have noticed how you’ve been acting since your last hood was destroyed, absent-mindedly reaching for it and adjusting without it.

“I’ll bite,” you said, already thirsting for it in the back of your mind, “I want to see it, at least, but since someone spent months embroidering it, it’s probably way out of our budget. But I would like to see. I would like to perceive.”

“Right. But,” said Monoma, jabbing a finger in your direction, “what if you requested it as part of your payment? For getting rid of the smokescreen?”

“Oh, Monoma, that’s—” You wet your bottom lip. “—that’s a little evil.”

His grin turned extremely smug, and he hummed. “I know. Isn’t that why you keep me around? Besides my love and blissful companionship?” Pushing himself up from his slouch, he pulled this strange move in which he nuzzled your shoulder like a dog, but he wasn’t acting like it was weird, so he must have done it before.

“Yeah, yeah,” you said, patting him roughly on the head, “I’ll think about it, but that assumes that I’ll be able to fix whatever’s going on in the spirit realm.”

Monoma finally stood upright, stretching and cricking his back. “Of course you will. What are you talking about?” Grunting, he rolled his shoulders backwards and then forwards. “You always solve it somehow, even if you’re panicking the whole way. I have complete faith in you. Everyone does. May we go look at that wand display in the corner?”

“Is your wand broken?”

“No, I just like to look,” Monoma said, and he tugged on your arm, beaming as he guided you away from the plants and back to a revolving display of sorcery-and-above level wands, all secured by chains so that they wouldn’t escape. He honed in on one he liked right away, coaxing it out of its attempt to burrow out of the shop’s walls. “Have you managed to find everything you need for tonight? I can charm someone if these people are hiding things from you.”

“Thanks, but they had the main ingredients I needed, already dried and bottled. So, yes, it’s the most expensive Red Lace and Cottoncrown I’ve ever bought, but I don’t have to prep it myself.”

“Red Lace?” Monoma cocked his head, his index finger scratching the head of the sourwood wand as he would a cat, “Isn’t that for the tea ceremony? Don’t you need some Gold Comb?”

“Oh, you’re right,” you said, names of herbs straightening themselves out in your head now that someone’s talked about them with you, “I usually have to ask about that one, though.”

Monoma gave the wand a firm pat. “I’ll come with you.”

“No, I’ve got it. Stay with your new friend,” you said, nodding towards the sourwood wand and then the magnolia and sycamore wands that were edging closer to Monoma’s palm, “You’ll know if I need you.”

“Don’t you always?” he called, smug voice carrying across the shop while you waved him off.

You had to wait in line, since the shopworker had to explain in embarrassingly excruciating detail to the magician in front of you that magician-level magic did not and could not use any of the heart-shaped quartz he was trying to purchase. When you plopped your bottles of pre-made potion bases and ground herbs on the counter, your arms cried out in relief.

Blowing her blunt, blue-black bangs out of her face, the shopworker wrote down the serial number for your first ingredient without thinking, but she paused when she read the label for your second. Staring you down, she moved to write down its number, more slowly this time, but when she read what your third bottle was, she clonked it on the counter. “I think I have to arrest you,” she said, more pissed that this was going against routine rather than at whatever law you’d just broken, “You can’t buy all these together. You’re going to create a poisonous miasma, and if you add this—” She picked up another of your bottles. “—then it has a chance of developing consciousness. If you use this as the base—” Another. “—then it’ll cause hallucinations and nausea to those who only even get a whiff of it. What are you up to? You planning a terrorist attack during the festival?”

“What? Of course not. I didn’t know these could do that,” you said, hands raised in defence, “I’m—I’m not even aiming to make a miasma. I won’t be burning anything at all. I’m making—liquid. This is staying in liquid form.”

“Is that so?” The shopworker’s shoulders slackened, and she glanced over your ingredients again. “I usually don’t see these go into liquids. If you’re telling the truth, I think we legally have to watch you make your potion so that we can ensure you’re not crafting a miasma. Give me a moment to call my supervisor.”

“No, no, wait. I don’t—I have permission,” you said, hating that you were pulling this card but desperate to get out of this interaction, “Mayor Fuwa summoned me for a safety procedure involving this potion. I have the letter from her requesting I do this job, but we can go find her, if you’d like—”

“Hold on, are you the Dango?” Her eyes lit up. “The Dango Lady who’s going to remove the purple smokescreen from Alderside?”

You needed to leave before anyone else heard. “Yes. I was trying to work undercover.”

“I’m certain I can speak for everybody in this town when I say that we’re so, so relieved that you’re here,” she was saying, body language relaxed and familiar (so that her large, imposing presence became non-threatening in an instant), conjuring a quill to compose a note to her supervisor while she bagged your ingredients, “No one’s been able to leave their houses at night for the past two months, and it’s been miserable trying to communicate with anyone past this new curfew; I haven’t talked to my girlfriend in a week, and if there’s an emergency while the smokescreen is up, no one can do anything about it. We’ve had to allow people to suffer while we waited for the smokescreen to dissipate. I swear on all the ratsbane on the mountain that if that Jackrabbit scoundrel ever returns to Alderside, I’m going to curse his bloodline on sight. And then I’ll take him by his ears and plunge tiny bits of soapstone glyphs into them so that they damage his ear canals—”

You snapped out of your examination of her neck, which appeared to have a scar from beheading. “I’m sorry,” you said, swallowing thickly and rubbing your fingers over your own neck, “A jackrabbit?”

“No,” she said, miming spitting off to the side, “The Jackrabbit. The soulwalker we’ve hired in the past.” She shoved your last bottle into a paper sack, clinking against the others. “You’d better not betray us like he did.”

There’s…another soulwalker?

“I’ll do my best not to,” you said, glaring over your shoulder to beg Monoma for help, but he was being lovingly swarmed by wands, snuggling against him like a herd of cats. “I was unaware another soulwalker had come through Alderside. Was he unable to get rid of the smokescreen?”

The shopworker floundered, her jaw dropping in incredulity. “Get rid of—he caused it. He was hired to consult a recently deceased judge for help on a murder trial, but he did something in the spirit realm to attach a dark presence to Alderside that causes this smokescreen.”

The shop owner came over before she could explain anything else, and the owner was equally thrilled to have a new soulwalker in town. They looked over the letter for Fuwa’s magical signature on it, and they did insist you make the potion in front of them to prove your project would stay liquidous. Monoma had disentangled himself from his wand fan club by then and helped you measure herbs, including the Gold Comb kept behind the counter.

“Right, so it can settle for now. I’ll have to bring it to a boil at the ritual site and stir counter-clockwise for eight minutes before giving it a clockwise stir, and it’ll have to cool before I use it, obviously.”

The shopworker traced the scar on her neck. “What does it do? Does it take you to the spirit realm? Does it stabilise it?”

“Neither,” you said as Monoma handed over the payment, “but it helps me get started.”

The shopping had exhausted you, so you headed back towards the inn, allowing for a detour to pick up dinner from a restaurant Monoma had been bugging you about all day, to rest until the soulwalking ritual that night.

Before long, you headed out to the ritual site. A spot staked out before you’d even entered Alderside, the limestone overhang boxed in a tiny clearing, able to be guarded by your friends while you were out of your body. The process wouldn’t take as long as it normally did due to your pre-mixing the potion at the shop, so all that had to be done was kindling a fire and laying your bedroll.

As the potion heated over the fire in Monoma’s kettle, memories of its effects came back to you. You could soulwalk without any supplements, but this recipe you’d crafted helped you start and stop the process more easily. When soulwalking, your soul had to slip out of your body as close to a sleep state as possible without actually sleeping, because relaxed muscles were easier for your soul to slip out of. The current edition for this recipe was leagues more effective than Shinsou’s sirenic magic had been when you first started out: it helped you grow drowsy, but the Gold Comb kept you just aware enough to notice when you were about to fall asleep—and therefore most easily able to leave your body. Another recently added ingredient, Cottoncrown, was an herb that promoted lucid dreaming, so it helped you have more control in the first few minutes orienting yourself as an unbound soul. Everything else was designed to keep you unconscious while you were conducting business in the spirit realm.

Unfortunately, as your potion began to boil, you realised why people have been calling you the Dango: if you take your true form when soulwalking, then your soul can get trapped in the spirit realm. If a soul matches a nearby body, then the realm registers your soul as dead and tries to shuttle it to the afterlife. Therefore, all soulwalkers had to have a transformation unlike their natural appearances, and you…

After the half hour of Shinsou softly telling you a story while Touya played his mouthharp, your soul crawled out of your body with the tiny, cat paws of your real-life cat. How on earth did this version of you become Dango when she’s never seen her? You tried to examine your toe beans, but you found that you didn’t have good control over your elbows; you had to lie on the ground to study them.

You were your cat. A chocolate-point fluffball, prone to bouts of extreme violence.

No one’s making you stay in the spirit realm. You don’t even look human.

The spirit realm mirrored the flesh: you were still lying on your bedroll in camp—both physical you and cat you. With a touch of alarm, you noticed you were lying on your own chest, so you gambolled off. Shinsou, Monoma, and Touya had vanished, because they were bound by flesh to the world of the living. The shadow of your body was here as your portal out.

The spirit realm always smelled pleasant, if not in a subtle, hazy way, as if you weren’t supposed to notice it. Around Alderside, it smelled of freshly mown grass, which was an oddity in itself; no vegetation grew in the spirit realm. Painted in shades of greys, the realm betrayed its anomalies in stark colours.

So, looking for any flash of colour, you jumped onto limestone rock, out of the clearing, and towards Alderside. Not a long walk, but it took longer on your little legs, and wow, you were getting so much grit between your toe beans, and would you really have to lick to clean them?

Cold in the overcast weather, you stalked towards the town entrance, grumbling about tangles in your fur, when your ears twitched, detecting the sound of running water. Slinking into town, you followed a babbling brook along the same, mosaiced streets designed to look like a river, its stained glass dull, grey, and glossy underneath the current.

The fog became dense purple around midtown, near the raised spring-stick. Clearly unnatural, since it’s got a colour. You trotted along the brook’s bed, keeping an eye near the roofline, where the smoke clung the thickest, and you darted behind a crate at the sight of another soul in the middle of the square.

It’s human, current rushing around his thin ankles. Barefoot, but wrapped in bandages. So were his arms, but his compact body was obscured by an oversized, scarlet jacket, with a wide collar buttoned over his mouth. He ignored how the smoke emanated from him.

A human soul. You hadn’t expected to meet someone here. To the best of your knowledge, you tended not to. You leapt atop a stack of crates and spoke to him (never mind that your vocal cords were not physically able to speak; it’s magic. Don’t think about it too hard). “Hello.”

He didn’t look away from the water.

“Hi! Over here. By the storefront.”

Shifting his weight, he blinked, shifting his gaze from the brook to the overcast, night sky.

“Nice to meet you,” you said, frowning, “I’m here to help you. Are you lost? Stuck? Do you need to go on to the afterlife?”

He took a deep breath in, closed his eyes, and then exhaled.

“Okay,” you said, jumping down from the crates and skulking towards him. Maybe this guy couldn’t hear you, so the next step would be to go rub against him like a friendly cat to get his attention, and then, perhaps, pantomiming ways of helping him. It pained you to wade through the brook, water almost wetting the fur on your stomach, but you head-bumped his leg when you reached him, making a point to purr loudly.

He finally looked down and picked you up. Tensing, you mrowped in distress before he secured you to hold you like a baby, your stomach exposed and facing upwards so that he could look at you.

“What do you want?” he asked, quiet, reserved. He’d already turned back to the sky, despite five of your six ends’ sharpness.

You sighed the best a tiny cat could sigh. “The smoke is coming from you, correct? Is it your—” Out of habit, you’d almost asked if it were his quirk.

“Yes,” he said, too quickly for you to think of another term.

“I represent this town. What would it take for you to stop using your smokescreen?”

For some reason, at your question, the man snapped his gaze to you, visibly taken aback despite his mouth’s concealment. He must not have seen anything further in your expression, because he continued, albeit cautiously. “I cannot accept a bribe, for I cannot control the smokescreen here. It leaks out of me against my will.” He shifted you to one arm so that he could hold up a hand, purple smoke seeping from his pores. “It is behaving most unusually. Not like itself at all.”

“It’s harming the town.”

“I’m aware.”

“Then please leave?”

“I’ve been stationed here by my master,” said the soul, covering his leaking hand with his sleeve, “I cannot leave this place.”

A soul with a master? This other soulwalker must also be a necromancer. “All right. I can help you break from his service.”

“No,” he said, wading through the water towards the spring-stick, “I serve him willingly. I’m honoured to aid him when I can.” He neared the barrels and crates, still unpacked, near the spring-stick site, and he lowered his arms to let you crawl onto them.

You nestled into the sacks of dried petals, settling into a catloaf. “Can I help you fulfil your task, then?”

His narrow eyes flickered towards you as he leant against a barrel and crossed his arms, the thick fabric of his coat puckering. “Nothing you can do. I’m to stay in Alderside until the next new moon, and then I will move on.”

You shifted, pulling your little legs farther underneath you. “Listen, I’m not actually a cat. I am more than capable of helping you. I have magic, you know.”

“I’m aware,” he said again, “You must be the other soulwalker my master is avoiding.”

“Avoiding? Say more about that,” you said, growing more distressed by the minute at the unequal levels of information between the two of you.

“No.”

“Fine,” you said, trying to spit but failing, “Will you tell me why you’re stationed here?”

He tugged his collar farther over his mouth and nose. “No.”

“Forget it, then.” You unsheathed your claws to tap them on the crate, your dewclaw sticking in the wood. “Let’s re-route back to your smokescreen. Is there a way to stop its leaking?”

He held up his hand again, flexing it. “I’m not certain.”

Unhelpful. “If you can’t stop the leak, can you control where the smoke flows?”

He paused to think, and he shook his head.

***

“My back is starting to hurt,” said Aizawa, slumping in his kitchen chair, “Do you mind if we move this conversation to my room so that I can lie down?”

“Not at all,” you said, standing and taking both of your coffee mugs to the sink, “I apologise for taking so long to get to the point, but there’s so much context, I think, that’s necessary to understand it.”

“I don’t mind,” said Aizawa, stretching, back popping in two places, shirt riding up as he did so. He rolled his shoulder backwards and started towards his bedroom. “How did you manage the smokescreen?”

“Well,” you said with a grunt, bending to scoop up Konpeito and rushing to follow Aizawa, “You know what a bag of holding is? It’s a bag that can hold an infinite amount of anything, but it only takes up the space and weight of the bag itself.” Once in his bedroom, you released Konpeito onto her worn cat tower, tag jingling, and she retreated to the topmost tier to gaze down at you in disdain. “I went back to the magic shop and got the staff involved to cast the spell to make bags of holding on an airtight jar, and I took it back to the spirit realm. We couldn’t stop his leaking smokescreen, but it stopped harming Alderside if it all funnelled into the jar.”

Aizawa shot you an incredulous smirk before collapsing on his bed, bouncing his sleeping bag off of it and covering his eyes with his arm. “You’re insane.”

“I like to think so,” you said, kneeling on the other side of the bed before fully sitting on it. “Alderside’s problem was fixed, even though that guy wasn’t leaving. We stuck around for the spring festival—fantastic, beautiful, perfect—fruit preserves on everything. I think Monoma ate his weight in baked brie with pear preserves on top. Dancing. Games. Tag where you hit people with fake leeks. Flowers conjured by magic everywhere. I got one of those fortune-telling seeds.” You scooted backwards towards the headboard and accepted the throw blanket Aizawa offered.

“I’m not falling asleep, by the way,” he said, peeking out from underneath his arm, “Just resting my eyes. Dry eye, you know.” He nestled his nose back into the crook of his elbow and rested his other hand on his chest. “And your fortune?”

“My knowledge of flowers is not expansive,” you said, kicking underneath the throw blanket to cover your lower body, “We couldn’t discern what our flowers were from the guides, so we had to ask around. I got a lotus. It’s silly, but Alderside’s flower symbolism doesn’t match up with reality’s, which is for enlightenment, self-regeneration, and rebirth; I looked it up later. For Alderside, a lotus means indifference and grief. Which is rude of it.”

“It’s just a fortune. Doesn’t mean anything.”

“I know. There seemed to be more negative fortunes than positive in those seeds; Shinsou got the worst of it; his flower has negative connotations in both worlds. Snowdrops mean consolation and hope here and vigilance and loneliness there. But nothing matters,” you said with a curt laugh.

Aizawa ran his tongue over his lower lip. “How was it being a cat?”

“Surprisingly okay. It was interesting to compare how unlimber I am in my own body. I also think it’s unfair humans don’t have a comfortable way of lying on their stomachs and looking around at the same time.” You smiled down at Aizawa, though he couldn’t see it. “It’s just like you to hone in on the cat stuff.”

“Isn’t it about time you brought Dango over to play with Konpeito again?”

“I’ll bring her next time I need to consult you about a crisis.”

Aizawa sat up to reach for his prosthetic leg. “Speaking of. When does this story become a crisis?” He detached the prosthetic with a quiet hiss from the pressure release, and he propped it against his bedside table.

“It already has. I actually did know that guy in the spirit realm.” You scratched the back of your neck, averting your gaze as he turned back towards you. “After Alderside, we kept getting summons to help out towns with similar problems, all stemming from souls being stationed there by the Jackrabbit. I, uh. Didn’t realise until Shimura Nana that they were all vestiges.”

Aizawa groaned your name in frustrated disappointment. “You didn’t. You didn’t.” He lay back down, hair splaying across his pillow while staring at you with a constipated expression. “I see we’ve arrived at this morning. I had to stop class so that my students could get it out of their systems.”

“Sorry about that. What I wouldn’t give for everyone not to have that information. I’d only just learnt it myself,” you said, grumbling and tucking yourself under the blanket as you, too, lay down, teeming with bitterness, “But no. Not quite this morning yet. We’re getting there. Like I said, it took me until Shimura Nana to figure it out, and it didn’t even matter that I was able to piece it together. He was still there when I arrived.”

***

Fury radiating from every pore, you stormed away from Shimura Nana on little cat feet, racing towards the cove she’d said her master’s body was, and on the shore outside of the coastal village, he sat next to All Might’s wispy vestige, trouser legs rolled up to dip his feet in the greyscale water, heels digging into the sand—very human-looking heels. How come he still looked like his human self?

You bounded down the beach, sand sticking between your toe beans and in your fur, and you pounced onto his back, sinking your claws into his stupid cape.

“How dare you,” you said, your cat weight making him hunch forward as he scrambled to catch you, “You’re causing a mess of trouble for me, you rat. I’ve been summoned across the country to fix your mistakes; how come all of your vestiges have something wrong with their—” It’d only been a split second in which you’d almost said quirks. “—magic. I’m going to rip you to tiny, edible shreds,” you said, fuming, claws catching onto his rabbit-earred hood as he dragged you over his shoulder.

You yanked at his hood, desperate to see that stupid, freckled face so that you could scratch it, but it wouldn’t budge. Violence tapering off, you sheathed your claws once it hit you that he was disguising his soul by making his mask part of his body.

Midoriya blinked slowly, eyes large and uncanny underneath the mask. Monstrous. Teeth look sharper, too. His silence unnerved you; you’ve never known him to shut up. But that was All Might next to him, swaying and diffusing in the nightly sea breeze, so this was Midoriya. Jackrabbit. You should’ve realised it sooner.

“You’re the other soulwalker,” he finally said, loosing his grip on your scruff as you calmed down, letting your weight rest in his lap.

“Are there only two of us? I know it’s a rare discipline, but only two makes us look like an endangered species.”

“If there are others, I don’t know of them.” He petted the back of your neck, as if reminding you he could still strangle you to death.

Of course the only other soulwalker, the only rival in an extremely rare, difficult magical discipline, the one whose chaos you’ve had to ameliorate, would be the number-one hero. You didn’t stand a chance in surpassing him. At the same time, it made you feel the tiniest bit special that hey, the number-one hero is the only one to rival you here, wow. Especially since your magic—unfairly—doesn’t resemble your quirk at all. Turns out with his vestiges, the soulwalking must be somewhat familiar to him. You’ve had to wing it from scratch, and he’s—well.

“I want to talk to you when I’m not a cat,” you said, nodding towards him and at All Might out of politeness, “My party is nearby with my body. Want to have dinner with us tonight? I’ll ensure your safety.”

The ears on Midoriya’s hood twitched. “You’re so sure you can trust me. I could destroy you right now, and I would be the only soulwalker in the realm.”

“I don’t care. I trust you,” you said, because people here tended to mirror their selves from reality, and Midoriya was just a little baby boy. Just a little guy. He’d even be a great addition to your party, especially for strategizing, and you wouldn’t have to follow his trail of disaster anymore. “Look, do you want me to come get you in my real body first? I’ll be unarmed. Or we could meet up in town, if you’re worried about meeting in private.”

Midoriya glanced towards All Might. “All right,” he said slowly, “Dinner. There was a beachside restaurant, wasn’t there?”

“We can meet you there. There’s four of us,” you said, answering his question before he asked it. He closed his mouth. “We’ll buy, if that’s any incentive. We’ve gotten paid pretty well for fixing the problems you’ve left behind.”

He nodded again, eerie in his stiffness, and he stood, keeping you out of the water. “How will I recognise you?”

You laughed through your nose as he gingerly set you down on dry sand. “I’ll be the devastatingly beautiful one with something deeply wrong with her.”

When you led your party into Suoh’s Seaside Café, you meandered through a packed front of house celebrating a birthday, and out to its deck, where Midoriya sat alone, scribbling into a notebook at the umbrella-covered table closest to the ocean.

It’s strange, seeing him out of his hero costume, labelled t-shirts, or hero merch, and it’s odder still seeing him out of anything green. Everyone else appeared to share their real counterpart’s preferences for clothing, so it was weird that Midoriya instead was keeping it monochrome with some pirate-ass, billowing long-sleeve, the tightest black trousers you’ve seen this side of consciousness, a double-breasted vest from a vampire’s wet dream, and—okay, never mind—now that you’ve gotten a good look at it, his cloak’s not fully black; the inside was dyed deep green. Made it feel more like Midoriya.

But it occurred to you, as Touya elbowed you to approach, that you haven’t really seen Midoriya in a while, in real life. He might dress like this now. You wouldn’t know. Midoriya tended to run around with the Iida-Todoroki-Uraraka-Asui-Tokoyami crowd, always scraping his nose to the grindstone, always in high demand, never having much free time. Everything you knew about Midoriya was filtered through headlines or through Uraraka in the breakroom at work, like how he’d gotten her flowers yesterday or how he forgot to get dish soap last time he was out.

You haven’t properly hung out with Midoriya in about three years, and even then, it’d only been because you’d been the only two U.A. graduates at a fundraising event. Latching onto each other for the night had seemed safer than going through the hordes of strangers alone. And that night had been the first time you’d spent time with him since graduation, and before that, he had—all that other stuff to deal with.

When you tapped on the table to get his attention, the way he dropped everything to beam up at you made you want to pursue his friendship again.

“Hello!” Midoriya shut his handbound notebook, and you swore his boyish smile took up over half his face; it’s almost too blinding to look at. “I assume you’re the cat I met?”

“Meow,” you said with a flash of your eyebrows, pulling out the chair next to him, chair legs screeching on the wooden deck.

“It’s good to meet you officially. I’ve heard a lot about you, as a soulwalker. I’m Midoriya Izuku,” he said, reaching out to shake your hand.

After ordering and introductions, the notebook was opened to a clean page when Monoma started talking about his copy-illusions, and Midoriya began asking questions. You slurped at your iced tea, feeling more comfortable now that this Midoriya was acting like the Midoriya you knew—asking about magic/quirks felt much, much more familiar than the uncannily stiff, stoic man you met in the spirit realm. He got to rambling underneath Touya’s reluctant explanation of his freezing fire and Shinsou’s necromancy and sirenic call, but when he got to you, it tapered off.

He'd bent over to write more quickly, nose practically touching the paper. “And you soulwalk, same as me—we should talk about it later; I don’t want to bore everyone else at the table—is there any other magic you can do?”

“Yeah,” you said, unable to make out what he was scrawling diagonally, “I have this boundary-binding tea ceremony.”

Midoriya’s hand halted for the first time in ten minutes. “I’m sorry. What?”

“Yeah,” you said, lifting a scallop from your soup (Shinsou, at least, could share in your raving about how fabulous the soup was, but Monoma ate his popcorn shrimp with pride while Touya’d ordered chicken at a seafood place), “It’s a bit of an obscure technique, like soulwalking. I’d classify it as a type of conjuring, if you want a broad category.”

Midoriya scratched out the previous two sentences and began to copy what you’d said. “Fascinating. I’d love to hear more about it.”

His awkward, abrupt pause had been the only social hiccup all evening. Otherwise, he’d been lovely—eager to share information and to listen, apologetic for the trouble he’d caused, boyishly charming to the point where even Touya got a little flustered, easy to laugh and to make others laugh. You could see why he’s the number-one hero back home. It’s easy to feel like you’ve known him forever, like he belongs at your side.

When Touya wanted to test how Granddaddy Slapkins felt about Midoriya, you knew what was coming. The instant Granddaddy Slapkins settled into Midoriya’s lap, quacking softly as he fed him a stir-fried snow pea, Monoma propped his chin on steepled fingers, shooting looks that were not subtle around the table before opening his mouth.

“Midoriya, you seem a decent fellow. Would you like to join our party?”

Taken aback (or perhaps just startled at the nip Granddaddy Slapkins gave him), Midoriya considered. “Are you sure?” Midoriya clutched the duck to his chest, petting gently, and looked at you. “You wouldn’t have to follow me to fix my problems,” he said, tilting his head very slightly, brow pinched in thought, “I wouldn’t have to—you could help me, most likely. In what I’m searching for. It might be better to have more than one person investigate it.”

Grinning, Shinsou crossed his arms on the table to lean on them, hand gripping his opposite elbow. “Tell us more.”

“I—” Shaking himself out of it, he broke from you to look at Shinsou. “Yes, actually. I’m on a mission myself, and since your missi—quest to solve what problems I’ve caused is coming to an end, I might be able to offer a new one,” said Midoriya, stowing his notebook away at last and pulling a threadbare, velvet box out of his satchel. He popped it open like a ring box, and on its cushion sat a clear, perfectly spherical crystal with the barest suggestion of topaz yellow glinting off it.

“Do you want us to fence it?” Touya was asking as he lifted Granddaddy Slapkins out of Midoriya’s lap and circling back to his seat on the bench, “We passed through a gem market when before we entered the Gauntlet—”

Monoma cut him off. “The only way we are going back through that abominable place is if we can conjure a carpet to fly over it.”

“I’m not trying to sell it,” said Midoriya, shutting the box again, “I’m trying to restore it. It’s a soul crystal, one that belonged to my master, Yagi Toshinori.” All Might’s real name. Tracks, with Midoriya. “My master’s body has gotten frail in his old age,” said Midoriya, worriedly rotating the box from hand to hand, “After sustaining a stomach injury, he used up all of his magic in preserving his physical form, which has gone into hibernation. His magic is gone, but it’s not yet his time to die. I’m trying to take his soul crystal to the soul altar to restore his magic. He’ll be able to resume living in his body if I can do that.”

“All right,” said Shinsou, nodded while he took an enormous slurp of his coffee, “Where’s this soul altar? We can help you get to it.”

Midoriya laughed nervously, scratching his cheek. “I don’t know exactly. I’ve been given the parameters. It’s why you’ve been following my vestiges, actually,” he said, nodding towards you again, “Entrances to the soul altar move around in the spirit realm. It has consistent places it spawns, but I don’t have enough vestiges to watch every spawning point. What I was doing was stationing them at the most common ones, but they don’t—something’s been going wrong with all of their magic; none of them have been working right. I—”

“So, are you saying we’d be travelling around for these entrance points?” Touya asked thickly, mouth full of fried chicken. “What about just going to where the altar actually is?” At Midoriya’s perplexed stare, he swallowed and continued. “If its entrances keep changing locations, then they’re probably not actually in those places, taking up space. It means that there’s a solid location for the altar, and the entrances are the only things that jump around. How stupid are you to forget that loose magic, the stuff that’s not bound to anyone or anything, doesn’t last very long? You’re saying that these entrances have been bouncing around for a while, so they’ve got to be bound to something. So. There’s probably a physical place where the soul altar is bound.”

You stifled your smile at Midoriya’s silence by tilting your bowl to get at the last of your soup.

“To—ya,” said Midoriya slowly, eyes glazed over, “You may be onto something.” Mechanically, he returned the box to his satchel, and he bowed his head. “Please let me join your party.”

And that was that. Midoriya left the restaurant with all of you, spitballing theories about the soul altar, all the way up until it was time to set up camp again that night, and after that, he lay on his bedroll next to yours, laughing until while you told him about soulwalking as a cat with his vestiges, until the both of you fell asleep.

***

“Aizawa-sensei?” You prodded the arm covering his eyes. “Are you awake?”

“You’ve got to stop calling me that,” said Aizawa, shifting underneath the covers with a groan, “Someone your age calling me sensei makes me feel like I’m on a rollercoaster into my own grave.”

“Aren’t we all,” you said, sitting up, the blanket pooling around your waist, “Were you even listening?”

“Midoriya joined your party, and he’s been travelling with you for a few weeks now,” he said, finally lifting his arm from his face to sweep hair off of it, “Just stop calling me sensei. I haven’t taught you for almost a decade now.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” you said, rolling your eyes, “What do you want me to call you? It’s not going to feel natural, whatever it is.”

Aizawa ran his fingers through his hair and scowled at a tangle. “Shouta is fine. We’ve been friends for a while now, wouldn’t you say?”

“I guess,” you said, “but it’s not easy to make the mental shift from thinking of someone as distinctly an adult to a peer. I’ll try. But back to you, teaching. We’re up to this morning. We are up to what your students wouldn’t shut up about.”

He pulled at the knot in his hair, wincing. “Should I be taking notes?”

***

Six hours ago, you’d gone to brunch with friends, most of whom you hadn’t seen in a long while because of work. Yes, you saw most of the women because of the all-female hero agency that you’d founded, but seeing everyone together was like stepping back into the past, the way people relaxed into familiar patterns of interacting with each other, even though it’d been months or years since you’d spoken to each other.

It usually took a couple of weeks out to reserve a table at this brunch restaurant, but they’d been more than enthusiastic about renting their whole place out to, essentially, the former Class A. Kind of guilty seeing all the vacant tables, but comforting to know no one was eavesdropping on you.

You sidled up on the end seat next to Shinsou and Monoma at the tables they’ve pushed together for your group. You scanned the menu once you’d set your purse down; in your dream world, your party had had breakfast for dinner last night and left you craving it for real (Shinsou was already sipping at the largest frappe on the menu, and your heart ached for dream Shinsou, who’d never have one [last night’s dream Shinsou had stubbornly held back tears drinking black coffee after Midoriya and Monoma used the last of the sugar for their strawberry toast]).

“Where is Uraraka?” Monoma scrolled through his phone, pouting. “Shouldn’t the one who organised the event be here on time? I have some design proposals for the formalwear collab we’re doing to promote her miniseries. I simply have no patience for all of those bubble dresses she keeps sending me.”

“She’ll be here,” you said once the waitress took your order and menu, “I wouldn’t worry about—”

“They don’t have a classic silhouette, so they’re not a lasting style—”

A bell chimed when the restaurant’s door swung open, with Uraraka waving to everyone, the tips of her fingers lightly pink. “Hey, guys! So sorry we’re late,” she said, weaving between tables towards ones pushed together, “We got caught up at Sakura Grove and then that home improvement store again; they just have so many interesting lamps.” She sat in the seat across from Shinsou, and—oh, you didn’t even see him trailing behind her—Midoriya sat in the last available seat, across from you. Uraraka slung her purse off her shoulder, rooting through it for her phone before draping its strap over the back of the bench. “What have I missed?”

Mina reiterated her cute anecdote about being paired with Kirishima for an undercover mission, not even because they were soulmates but because the situation called for their specific quirks. Tokoyami and Jiro shared that they wanted to release an acoustic album together, and if Bakugou would play percussion in it, hey, then no one would have to suffer through Aoyama’s maracas. By the way, Sero, did you know that Present Mic was asking after…

You stayed quiet. With your mind running a mile a minute both asleep and awake, you felt like you spent a lot of time talking nowadays. Instead, you considered Midoriya, who, bags under his eyes, remaining quite silent himself, kept his mug of oolong tea, double-sweet, to his lips, answering and laughing when prompted by Uraraka and not much otherwise. He’s sitting on the edge of a shared bench, right on the edge so that his ass doesn’t entirely fit—but he seems like he’s consciously trying to downplay his large presence right now, not taking up a lot of space, despite having the broad shoulders and muscled thighs expected of a number-one hero. Midoriya’s wearing a t-shirt labelled Nice Button-Down, the fabric that sort of transparent-thin that comes from being well-worn, thrown on hastily enough that the sleeves were still twisted and straining around his biceps, stretching the fabric even thinner (you could make out some of his darker freckles on his shoulders from across the table) and jeans that were crumpled enough to have come out of the dirty clothes hamper, his hair wildly dishevelled so that most of it still obscured his eyes—you’d think they’d just overslept and lied about it. But Uraraka’s even got those little rhinestones glued to the corners of her eyes, so maybe Midoriya was content with wandering around looking like—well. The number-one hero must be exhausted all of the time, you supposed. Your eyes fell to the veins on the back of the hand encircling his mug, and after a few moments of staring, they pulsed visibly. At least he’s drinking enough liquids.

If the real Midoriya had become this quiet, then perhaps the dream Midoriya’s behaviour in the spirit realm wasn’t so out of character. And if he’s anything like himself in your dreams, then you wanted to rekindle your friendship.

While Shinsou and Uraraka were critiquing Monoma’s design for a dress inspired by the elves leaving Middle Earth in The Fellowship of the Ring, you waved your fingers at Midoriya. “Hi.”

Midoriya blinked slowly, as if it took him a moment to realise you were talking to him, and he set his tea down on the lace tablecloth. “Hi,” he said back, with a rasp to his voice, “I don’t think we’ve seen each other in a while. When was the last time we…?”

“Around three years ago,” you said, taking a bite of your waffle, “That idiotic fundraising event full of old people who wanted to feel your biceps.”

“Has it been that long?” He chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck, and something about this felt wrong felt off felt like that action, inflection, and dialogue was planned and fake and—

You ignored it. “How’re you doing?”

“I’m—” He wavered his free hand from side to side. “—busy.” Midoriya smiled again, cupping both of his hands around his mug, fingers overlapping and making the mug look much smaller than it was. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss what I’m currently doing, because I’ve signed an NDA, but non-mission-wise, I’ve been up to my nose with this advertising deal for protein shakes, and I’ve been working with Hatsume about redesigning my boots now that my kicks are reaching around 1200 psi on average, and—” He broke his gaze from his tea, glancing around the table as if he just remembered it. “—and Uraraka and I are working on pre-production for her miniseries, and—oh, thank you so much,” he said to the waiter who set his strawberry French toast in front of him.

Midoriya turned back to you. He blinked blearily.

You stared back at him. “No one’s asked you how you are in a while, haven’t they?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Midoriya, unravelling his silverware from his napkin, which he spread across his lap, “Uraraka knows everything going on with me, and I’m not often allowed the free time to speak with people who’ve—friends, I mean.”

“Well,” you said, cutting into your waffle while he did the same with his toast, “I’ve actually been thinking about you lately, and it’s a shame we don’t hang out very much. I was actually thinking about that fundraising event and how good it was to be with you then, and—yeah. If you’re cool with it, I’d like to talk to you more.”

Midoriya faltered, fork lowering from his mouth as he gave you a toothy grin with something unreadable glinting in his eyes. “I’d—that’d be good. I’d like that, too,” he said, and he took his first bite of strawberry-stained French toast and let out what could technically be labelled as a moan. “Ffffuck, that’s good. That’s good. I haven’t had strawberry toast in forever. My nutritionist won’t—”

“I didn’t know forever was only a few hours. You just had some last night, moron,” you said thickly through your own waffle, shaking your head at how he’d deprived dream Shinsou of sugar for his coffee, and you stopped mid-chew.

Midoriya did, too.

The silence between the two of you lasted a lifetime, though your friends continued chattering on a single topic, chairs scraping and echoing around you.

You couldn’t taste your waffle when you swallowed it. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

“I’ll show you where they are,” said Midoriya, standing in a rush, “I’ve been here before.”

Hastening away from the table, you pulled Midoriya into the hallway where the bathrooms were, but he shook his head and steered you the opposite direction. “The sound carries in here,” he said, pushing open the doorway to the restaurant’s covered porch.

He’s already pacing, muttering to himself, and frantically pulling at his hair when you collapsed into one of the flimsy deck chairs. Empty, like your insides have been scooped out, you watched him pace back and forth before he spun around to point at you. “Right. How long have you been going there?”

“Don’t be vague,” you said, a stone of dread splashing into your stomach, “We’re talking about that fantasy world when we fall asleep, right?It’s actually you I’ve been travelling with?”

“Yes,” Midoriya said, swallowing, Adam’s apple bobbing, “I haven’t found anyone else who travels from this reality to that one. My vestiges know, of course, because they come over with me. Actually, is anyone else in our party—”

“No. They’ve all lived there their whole lives. Dream Shinsou knows I come from this reality, though, and that I have overlapping memories of two lives.”

“This is it, then. It ends here,” said Midoriya, running his hands down his face, reminding you of Aizawa, and he slapped his cheeks. “I have to end my relationship with Uraraka.”

You jolted in your seat. “What’s wrong with—Deku,” you said, holding your hands up in concern, “What are you talking about? Just because we’ve been meeting in dreams doesn’t mean—”

“I’ve been expecting something like this.” Closing his eyes, Midoriya took a careful breath in, and his shoulders heaved as he exhaled. His eyes snapped open. “Uraraka and I aren’t soulmates. You and I are.”

Throat drying, you narrowed your eyes. “No, we’re not. I don’t have a soulmate, and I would know. Ito hasn’t said anything about my having a soulmate at work, and she’d know—”

“No, please—please let me explain.” Midoriya pulled out the chair opposite you, and he shifted it over to your side of the table. “Uraraka and I were never soulmates. We were wrong when we thought we were bound.” He took both of your hands in his, and, startled, you looked around the vacant deck for help. “Do you remember what our bond was? Sharing the same song in our heads. But we were stupid,” he was saying, shaking his head, “and we already had feelings for each other. So, when we seemed to share a song, we didn’t take into account that we have the same music taste and were always recommending music to each other, always blaring music whenever we were around each other, as if enforcing it—and when it was clear that we weren’t actually bound, we stayed together, anyway. We were in the public eye by then, and things were messy. And now—” Midoriya winced, sucking in through his teeth. “—she and I are extremely popular as a unit, as if people can’t think of one of us without the other, and we do work exceedingly well together, and—”

Midoriya cut himself off, head bowed so low that his bangs grazed your fingers and that you could see where his undercut began on the back of his neck. “I couldn’t mar Uraraka’s reputation. Women are always villainised in breakups, and she especially would be, since, by all accounts, it looks like she’s cheating on me.”

You opened your mouth, but your voice wouldn’t come out.

Midoriya raised his head, eyes watering. “She’s already found her real soulmate. Almost a year ago now. We’ve stayed together for public image, because I haven’t minded, and we’re both too tired to deal with the fallout. Now that you’re in the picture—”

You cleared your throat until you could speak. “Why would I matter? We haven’t exactly been friends. I don’t know you. You don’t know me.”

“I could,” said Midoriya, squeezing your hands tightly, “I could love you.” Holding eye contact must have been difficult while crying, but he did it, raising your hand to his mouth to press a kiss to your knuckle.

“What the fuck,” you said, ripping it away.

***

Grimacing, Aizawa laughed through his nose. “Wow,” he said, rubbing his good eye, “That’s unfortunate. It’d be hard to ignore at this point, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah,” you said with a jerk of your head to the side, “I left after that, but you saw the—did you see the video? It was some reporter whose quirk allows him to turn into a beetle, so he was sitting on the railing—wanted to overhear anything from heroes during brunch, and he ended up finding out horrible news at the same time we did.”

“I never saw the video, but my students described it to me in great detail.”

You clicked your tongue. “Fabulous. Then you heard how Deku brought Uraraka out to the same spot, so Beetle was able to get everything about how excited Uraraka was that they could break up. What’s ironic is that they were discussing a plan about how to end their relationship with delicacy so that the public wouldn’t villainise anyone, but now that this video is out, there’s no need for a plan or delicacy. I’ve turned my phone off ever since Uraraka texted me that she had to protect her soulmate, since she’s just a civilian who’s been doxed. I did some stress-wandering-about, and then I came to you.”

Aizawa pushed himself up, bending his knees to rest his arms on them. “You finally have a soulmate.” He tapped his fingers on his leg. “Thought you were one of us.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” you said, giving him a dismissive wave (but aware he was trying to make you feel better about it), “I should’ve considered everyone in our soulmate-less club before getting assigned. How careless of me.”

(Out of everyone in ground gamma when Tainted Love’s team invaded, only a handful of you weren’t assigned soulmates [Bakugou, Monoma, Todoroki, Aizawa, Shinsou, and you], so whenever there’d been a soulmate-based event, you’d instead hung out with some or all of the soulmate-less group, eager to grumble about your lot in life and engage in non-romantic conversation.

There’d been in-group jokes about how its members should all just get together. Looking back, you wished you had, so that you’d have more of an excuse to get out of this Midoriya stuff. But you couldn’t pin down which of your friends you’d go for, like something deep inside you wouldn’t let you—and you supposed that was the soulmate bond, at which you seethed.)

“So. We’ve caught up.” Aizawa covered his yawn. “How can I help? I’d break the bond if I could, since it upsets you, but I believe that’s beyond the scope of my quirk.”

“I knew that coming in,” you said, “I’d like your advice on how to have dreamless sleep. I don’t wanna face Deku right now; I can’t handle it.”

“Hm. It’ll be hard, considering you’ve been dreaming every night for half a year now.” Aizawa pinched his lower lip, brow furrowed. “You can’t run away from a soulmate bond.”

“Yes, but I would like to.”

Sighing like the weight of the world curled on his chest, Aizawa reached for the knob of his bedside table’s drawer. “Fine. Let me give you what I give Yamada when he’s fresh off of his radio show.”

***

When you lurched awake in your bedroll by a smouldering firepit, you scratched Aizawa’s advice off your list. Maybe it’d prolonged the time until you woke, because these thunderous river rapids should have woken you earlier, but you couldn’t count on it.

Joints aching, you pushed yourself upright. Funny, you hadn’t been in your bedroll but on it—probably due to the layer of filth coating you. Last dream had had your party in an unexpected scuffle with earth mages, and they’d pounded you into the ground. Camp had been set up near this waterfall so that you could wash yourselves when you woke up, because everyone was too exhausted to do anything after that fight other than sleep. Looks like Touya didn’t even both setting up his bedroll and slept directly on the riverbank.

Camp was vacant, save for you, but the eternal coal was still hot, buried under the ashes of the hastily dug firepit. Wasn’t there a village nearby? Could that be where—yes, the results of Monoma’s scouting included that the nearby village tended to not even talk to women who passed through, due to insane objectification, and everyone else had probably gone there to restock.

Well, you’re taking the good soap, and you’re going to bathe in the waterfall, because it’s the closest thing to a modern shower’s water pressure that you’re going to get. Unlacing your corset as you walked, you trailed along the river and climbed onto the jagged rocks by the waterfall, and through it took you a minute to find secure footing on the slippery stone, you made it onto the stone ledge that would let you slip behind the waterfall for some privacy.

Yanking your loosened corset over your head, you did the same for your shirt as you dropped your clean clothes to the ground, sighing loudly against the ambience of the deafening waterfall and its softer, coursing showers flowing through rock interstices. You’d plopped your shirt onto a dry section of rock, about to pull off your undershirt, when you spotted Midoriya across the inner plunge pool. Hidden behind a sheet of water and submerged almost to mid-chest, his bulky silhouette washed its hair, rinsing out soap and shaking the water out like a dog.

You lowered the hem of your undershirt.

Crouching to gather your clean clothes, you winced at your knees cracking but kept vigilant, eyes darting between the exit and his shadow, holding your breath despite—

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

Your blood turned cold. You spun back towards the pool, keeping your distance from the waves sloshing against the rim and your gaze towards your feet, listening in horror to the swishing of water as he swam towards you. “What do you want, Deku?”

“What do you mean by that? I want to talk to you.”

In your periphery, Midoriya swam to the edge of the pool, water lapping around his infuriatingly narrow waist, and he rested his forearms on the rock’s edge to lean towards you, collarbone poking out and shoulders hunching in the effort to stay above the surface. “If it’s all right with you,” he said, with the air of defusing a bomb, “I’d like to pursue a relationship with you, as my true soulmate.”

You hunkered back towards the only section of dry stone, clutching your knees to your chest. “Well, I don’t.”

Midoriya gave a breathy exhale, eyes softening but still pinning you to your spot against the rock wall. “I could be so good for you,” he said, shaking his head, “I know I could love you.”

You bit your lip. “Aren’t you in love with Uraraka?”

His hair dripped into his face at the same moment his expressed sharpened again, just barely. “I was.”

“I don’t want a relationship right now,” you said, gaze flicking towards the exit, “I’m content with how I am by myself.”

Midoriya hummed, narrowing his eyes, and he hitched up his elbow placement on the stone’s edge, his abs flinching when they grazed the side of the pool. “I don’t think that’s your reason. Tell me.”

(Who is this man? What happened in the past few years?

You kept a vivid memory of the fundraising event from three years ago close to your chest, guiltily hoarding it from sunlight, because you weren’t supposed to—

Midoriya and you had ducked out to the venue’s third-storey balcony, him in his stupid pinstriped suit and you in some silky dress that vaguely resembled a jellyfish, both sweaty from the packed crowd and bright lights inside. You’d made a joke at the punchbowl that’d made Midoriya splurt champagne out of his nose, so you’d slinked outside to avoid glares while you laughed—charity was serious business, and you were only figurehead heroes representing your agencies, anyway.

The two of you had hidden on the spiralling staircase outside while you finished your champagne and talked about your agencies. Both of you had been the sole members of your U.A. class to start an agency, and your processes had evidently been tremendously different. You’d found yourself disagreeing with your classmates, as you’d gazed up at Midoriya, sitting two steps higher than you were, champagne flute at his side, because his rambling—constant analysis, making strange jumps in logic with synthesis you didn’t expect, riddled with moments of admiration for those who’d gone before him—had made your heart sing.

You hadn’t understood most of what he was saying, and you could’ve listened to him forever.

Midoriya had unlocked a desperation to understand like nothing ever had, and he was interesting, full of wonder and curiosity, kind more than anything, a bit too generous, and, moreover, actually listening to you, instead of just waiting his turn to talk or interrupting.

And when you’d expressed worry about how to keep moving forward, he’d said the most beautiful words anyone’s ever said to you: “Let me help you.”

[After, you’d had to shove all these feelings down, because he’s dating your friend. You’ve allowed yourself to—think of him like that only in the context of that night. Otherwise, your attraction towards Midoriya can’t exist.])

“Shut up,” you said, curling in on yourself, resting your chin on your knees, “You’re clever. You can figure it out.”

Midoriya spoke with a touch too much enunciation, the tendons in the back of his hand flexing as he gripped his bar of soap, wrapped in his washcloth. “I want to be sure. Tell me.”

You couldn’t look at him. “You’ve recently ended a long-term relationship with one of my best friends. I can’t date you. That’s violating girl code.”

“Uraraka was eager for the breakup,” he said evenly, “She’s ecstatic that she can finally go on public outings with Spike, her real soulmate, even if it comes after a media fallout. Uraraka holds no power over me. All I am is yours.” A droplet dripped from his bangs onto his lower lip, and his tongue darted out to lick it off. “Come here. Sit next to me. Put your legs in the water.”

You baulked. “I’m sorry?”

“You came here to bathe. I can help, if you’d like.”

“Wha—I,” you said, fumbling, spluttering, “I don’t—huh?”

“It’s okay,” said Midoriya, holding his hand out to you, “You’re okay. You’re safe.”

“No, I am not—”

“It’s okay. I’m aware you have feelings for me, so you don’t have to worry about—”

“Hold on—what, what on earth are you talking about?” Scrambling to get more than five feet away from him, you backed farther into the rock wall, jagged edges pressing into your back. “I don’t—do you seriously believe that I like you? That I’ll throw myself at you immediately once my friend’s out of the way? I can’t—I’m not gonna work like that. I don’t. I,” you said, jaw slack, “Why would you think that I’m automatically into you just because I’ve been told to be?”

“Hm,” he said lightly, somehow cockily, with a lift to his eyebrows, “I wouldn’t know.” The fucker pushed on his hands to heave his body out of the pool, water cascading down his stupidly defined chest and trim waist, and—you held up your hand to shield yourself from his dick, because you’re not giving him the satisfaction of seeming interested—but apparently, his cock’s not the focus, because he twisted himself around to sit on the edge of the water, legs dangling into it and broad back facing you, droplets trailing down between his shoulder blades and the swell of his ass.

You’re cursed with noticing things: his ass was even more aggravatingly round/firm than it was in the New Year’s shoot with Rumi even with the lower part smushed against stone, and it’s got freckles on it. Freckles only on the top part of his asscheeks, actually, as if he’s walked around naked in sunlight a good bit. Either way. You were frothing with abhorrence and frustration, brain needing to be scrubbed with a wire sponge. If you had known about this back in school, before soulmates were invoked, no one could’ve stopped you.

But since Uraraka’s been gushing about this man for almost a decade now, it made your stomach turn, quashing initial interest. You can’t just summon romantic impulses, with or without guilty feelings about wanting your friend’s boyfriend.

Steeling yourself, you said, “I don’t care that other people find you attractive. I’m not attracted to you.”

“Fascinating,” said Midoriya, and he tilted his head backwards to look at you, hair falling back from his face, “Showing my v-line usually worked on Uraraka.”

“I’m not Uraraka. You can’t expect me to fall for the same stuff as she—oh,” you said, and you slumped against the rock. “You really don’t know me. And I don’t know you.” You pressed your forehead against the wall, spreading wet grime on your skin. “I could—I could fall in love with any of my friends if the soulmate bond would let me, because I know them as individuals. Shinsou—Shinsou’s favourite character growing up was Sailor Mercury; he pets every cat he can and is horrible at making onigiri, but that doesn’t stop him from making it; he bikes and plays bass and can tie an excellent knot. Monoma’s the biggest theatre nerd I’ve ever met; he’s got an improv group that does performances at Nekozawa’s every month, and his love for Franco-Belgian comics and The Lord of the Rings is only surpassed by his obsession with gummy candy. Bakugou, that moron, plays the drums because his parents forced him into lessons, and he mountain climbs for fun; he goes to bed at 8:30 and can’t sleep with heavy blankets because he overheats in his sleep, and he’s the one who stole Kirishima’s crocs before prom and knows more about eyeliner than anyone else I know. You, though. Deku. Outside of hero work, outside of hero training, outside of what you’ve said about your heroic journey to the public, I know nothing about you. You let people know your thoughts about what you do, but you don’t let anyone know who you are. All we’ve got outside of hero work and hero admiration is that you like katsudon. I bet you don’t keep up with me, eith—”

“That’s enough.” Back towards you, Midoriya held up his hand, and after he cut you off, he used it to scratch his shoulder. Chest rising and falling, he leant back on his palms to gaze up at the waterfall surging downwards from the rockface.

His shoulders were shaking.

He’s laughing.

When Midoriya turned, he’d the same, hard glint in his eyes as when he’s in battle, when his body’s lit up in OFA lightning, sparking with every odd edge he touched, looking so, so alive. You haven’t thought he could look this way outside of a fight. Horribly entrancing, the way his eyes betray his anger while he’s still grinning to himself, shaking his head, and—and crawling the five feet towards you, dripping water, and you were pinned under his sharp glare, because otherwise—can you scoot back more? He’s so close that you might—

“I wouldn’t worry. We’ll know each other in time.” Trailing his last two fingers along your jawline, Midoriya turned your head to ensure you focused on him instead of the exit. He almost withdrew his wet-warm fingertips from the underside of your chin but thought better of it, instead lightly, barely, rubbing a water droplet into your lower lip. “Hm,” he said, running his tongue over his own, “My plans for you can wait. For now, I’ll do whatever it takes to win you over.”

Your heartrate had already spiked because of his shared body heat and that battle-ready look in his eyes, but the moment Midoriya leaned in, eyes half-lidded, your heart stopped.

(You can’t kiss him you can’t kiss him that’s your friend’s boyfriend you can’t you can’t—)

But his lips never touched yours—Midoriya diverted his lips at the last minute, and strangely, absurdly, dragged his mouth and face along your own, feeling his slight morning stubble scuff against you until he stopped by your ear, cheek pressed against yours (his fingers on your mouth dug into your lip, holding you still, despite your twitching to get away).

“Grant me permission. Please. I can be so, so good for you,” he said, hot breath striking your ear with each consonant, still pressed closely enough to feel his grin (its contrast with the fury in his voice made you lightheaded), “I can give you exactly what you need, and I give it so freely. So. Please. We may not know each other well, but I do know this: you alone own me. You alone hold me by the throat.” He nosed down the tense column of your neck, huffing through his nose when he pressed against your pulse point, and he fucking licked all the way up to your earlobe (the cold air swashing over his saliva). “If you’ll say the word,” he said, licking his bottom lip again, so close that you felt his tongue’s movement, “If you’ll let me, I’ll rip you apart. In any way you want.”

His little finger edged into your mouth and pressed down on the tip of a canine.

Shaken, you could only tug at his wrist to extract his hand, and once he’d let you remove it, you asked, “What the fuck kind of relationship did you have with Uraraka?”

Midoriya laughed again—but it’s a short, high-pitched burst, like the laughter you would’ve identified as his before. He shifted backwards to sit on his knees (don’t look at his lap; don’t look at his lap) and tilted his head with an easy smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Because I—this—” How is he the one with total confidence when he’s the one naked? “—this sort of—idea. The way you talk. This doesn’t—this doesn’t come from nowhere. I,” you said, covering your eyes with your hand, “Will you—will you allow me a moment to collect my thoughts?”

“Of course,” said Midoriya, and he—he backed away. Scooted back to the pool’s edge. Wrung out his washcloth. Gathered his things. Returned his legs to the water.

Didn’t put on any clothes.

“Okay,” you said after a minute, “I think I can—”

“Come sit by the water with me?”

“Uh,” you said, transfixed as the tendons in the back of his hands rippled as he flexed each of his fingers, “No. I’m fine where I am.”

He half-shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“Right,” you said, swallowing with effort, “I, uh. In general, not just for our situation, but generally, you have to work for a relationship. You have to put in effort. I—it sounds like you’re trying to slip into one with me while acting the same as you did with Uraraka. That’s messed up. I’m not the same as Uraraka or anyone else you could’ve dated. You can’t replace one woman in your life with another. It may just be out of habit, since you dated her for so long, but, um. Yeah. You need to treat me like—like me.”

Midoriya hummed and brought his fist to his mouth, which moved silently for a few seconds as he formed the words, but eventually, he glanced over his shoulder to speak. “Then I’ll work for it. I’ll study you until I work my way under your skin, until I’m exactly what you want.”

It’s the arrogance in his words and the safety in the distance between you that made you roll your eyes, finally tearing them from your determined gaze at his face and settling on his dick, prettily resting half-hard on his thighs, but you refused to look at it for more than a few seconds: it’s a dick one of your best friends fucked for years.

(It’s also unnerving how he’s kept saying want instead of love.)

You held up your hand to block your view of him. “I want nothing to do with you.”

***

Perched on your hip, Dango yelled and kneaded with her claws out until you woke. Bleary, you automatically raised your hand to pet her.

You’d slept in. No field work today, just a meeting later about performance evaluations for your interns. You got to have a slow morning.

Now that you were awake and gradually becoming caffeinated, the stupider the situation grew. How audacious of Midoriya to assume you’ll like the same sort of things Uraraka likes—and sure, there’s overlap, but he’s assuming instead of figuring it out with you. You’re an individual. You can’t take anyone’s place, and no one can replace you. Honestly, it should be obvious to the number-one hero that you’re the only you out there. What an idiot.

The doorbell startled Dango from your lap. Setting your tea aside, you trudged over to see who’s crazy enough to visit at 8:36 in the morning.

You opened the door on some…kid, dressed in a worn suit, holding a tablet, and asking for your hero name, and after confirming you were you, he continued. “Hello. My name is Kazama Tetsuya, and I’m a representative of Mera Yokumiru, longest-running president of the Hero Public Safety Commission. I’m here in regards to the incident concerning pro-hero Deku at 07:41 hours this morning. Your cooperation is required. Sign here, please.”

Frowning, you took the offered tablet and stylus and slouched against your door frame. “What am I signing? How come there’s no text here?”

“Hm. They said they wanted this done as quickly as possible,” said Kazama, striding past you into your flat, and, with his hands on his hips, he took a cursory look around. “Twenty sounds like it should work.”

Tiny spheres of flesh popped off of him like gravel sliding off a shovel, and each one grew to an identical clone of himself, all of them rushing around your apartment.

“What’s going on?” you asked, shoving the tablet back towards whom you hoped was the original.

The Kazama tilted his head at you, keeping his hands flat against the tablet so that you would have to keep gripping it. “Have you not heard? Deku is in the hospital. Critical condition.”

“Okay, whatever,” you said, pushing it into his chest, slipping the corner of it under his suit lapel so that it’d stay, “What does that have to do with me? What’re all of these yous doing in my apartment?”

Kazama’s eyes flickered down to the tablet, which you were supporting with a single finger, but he made no move to grab it. “We’re packing your belongings. Due to your extreme and explicit rejection of your soulmate, Deku was unable to complete a mission. It took both Dynamight and Shouto to pin him down; his thrashing and convulsing inadvertently caused immense property damage. He was unable to be communicated with. The only reason he’s in a hospital at all is because Tainted Love was summoned to sedate him.”

You glared at the Kazamas wrapping your dishware in newspaper. “So why are you packing my stuff? Stop it.”

Kazama shook his head. “Afraid we can’t. The ultimate decision of the HPSC is that you cohabitate with Deku so that he will not experience debilitating pain again. This decision is under the stipulation of Tainted Love’s quirk that dictates that soulmate bond pain will desist if the soulmates show some form of acceptance to each other. By living in the same space, you are accepting that Deku is safe to be around in a physical capacity.”

You dropped the stylus and tablet to the floor, screen cracking. “What kind of—”

“His pain will be exacerbated if you don’t,” said Kazama, bending to pick up the tablet, “He wouldn’t be able to perform his hero work. You wouldn’t deprive Japan of its number-one hero, would you?” Kazama tucked the stylus into an inner suit pocket, and he held the broken tablet lazily at his side.

They were already unmounting your art from the walls.

Swallowing, you crossed your arms. “What about me? Am I not valued as a hero? Don’t I get a choice?”

From your bedroom, you heard Dango meowing mournfully.

***

Dressed in wrinkled civvies seized before Kazamas could pack them into a box, you stormed into your hero agency, grinding your teeth, ignoring co-workers calling out to you, and mashing the elevator button to go to the ninth floor over and over again.

You bounced on the balls of your feet in the empty elevator. When was the last time you passed out? You just might, at how worked up you’ve gotten. You placed two fingers over your wrist to take your pulse.

But the lift doors opened on a wonderfully busy ninth floor—wonderful because the woman you needed was in her office. Frazzled, you shoved open the door, palm flat on the glass, and managed to say, “Are you particularly busy right now?”

Ito set her package of cheese crackers on her desk. “Not for you. I was gonna call you when I knew you were awake,” she was saying as you shut the door behind you and approached her vacant armchair, “to let you have a bit more time, but it looks like you’ve heard.”

You plopped into the armchair across from her, tapping your fingers on the chintz. “What happened?”

“I could ask you the same question,” she said, closing her laptop, “Strongest instance of soulmate rejection I’ve ever seen.”

“Another time, Ito. What’s your involvement with this? The HPSC is packing up my apartment to move in with Deku as we speak.”

Ito winced. “Ooh, that quick? It hasn’t been three hours.”

You inhaled sharply. “That quick?Don’t tell me—”

“They called me in to subdue him, and the only way I could do that was by making him breathe in my quirk again.”

Groaning, you clonked your forehead on her desk. “I don’t want an increase in romantic clichés with Deku.”

“Sorry about that,” she said, holding out her cheese crackers to you, “Nothing else was working. He even instantly burst through Shouto’s ice veil.”

Shifting your jaw, you took a cracker. “Is three hours abnormally fast for the clichés to set in?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“Damn,” you said, chewing, “I’ve gotten so used to my life alone. I like it. I’m have control over my life. I love my friends; I love my work. I’ve gotten used to not needing romance to be happy, and now it’s—I don’t want it.”

‘With Deku or at all?”

“I don’t know. Probably both.”

“Well. Hate to remind you, but you can’t blame girl code entirely for not wanting him. You know how my quirk works: there had to have been a moment of genuine attraction between the two of—”

“I know; I can even pinpoint it back to the night I felt it,” you said, holding out your hand for another cracker, “I don’t know. I don’t know! They didn’t ask me before they started packing my shit up, claiming Deku’s pain was more important than my feelings. Don’t I matter, too? Why am I fodder in this quest to alleviate Deku’s pain? Am I not important?”

Ito handed the entire packet to you. “Not as important as the number one, evidently.”

“I don’t blame you, of course; we didn’t know each other back then,” you said, peeling back the plastic to expose the next cracker and accidentally letting all of them fall to the desktop, “But it’s stupid. I feel like I’m being forced into it from so many angles. The bond won’t letting me feel anything for anyone else. It’s dumb. I’m dumb. I’m tired.”

Ito frowned and steepled her fingers. “I need you to explain some of that. Soulmate bonds let you have feelings for other people. You don’t have to be in a romantic relationship with your soulmate, so long as you’re still in their life as a positive force—it’s just that pretty much every pair has ended up romantic, anyway. I’ve known of situations with soulmate pairs within a polycule, and stuff, so—interesting. This may be an aspect of your bond specifically. Have you tried really hard to like someone else?”

“I don’t even have the motivation to.”

“That could just be you, not the bond. You said you’re used to not having romance in your life.”

“I hope it’s me, then. Makes part of it of my own volition.” You scratched the back of your head, wishing you were still in bed and ignorant of the situation. “I haven’t seen you since the news dropped yesterday, so I’d like for you to assess what I know about the bond. Deku and I share dreams.”

“Common enough,” said Ito, nodding as she opened her desk’s top drawer, “Affects three percent of people affected by my quirk.”

“But I’ve read your reports. Most of them go to a single location, like an endless beach or the same cottage in a forest, with no one else around.” You tongued a cracker part to your cheek to enunciate more clearly. “Deku and I have been sharing an entire, fantastical world, populated with mirrors of people we know in real life.”

Ito paused as she gripped a new cracker packet. “That’s…new. New to me, anyway.”

Not a good sign. “Is there any way to stop having these dreams? I’m pissed my brain has to be turned on all of the time, and I don’t wanna see Deku every night.”

Ito fiddled with the plastic. Squinted at the ingredient list. “Not sure there’s a way to stop it on this end, but I’ll look into it. Why don’t you find the dream version of me to consult her?”

“Ito, you’re brilliant,” you said, pushing on her desk to stand, “I have a nap to take.”

You’d gotten to the door before she called your name. “Just so you know. The more you hate him, the worse his pain will get. I’m not telling you to love him. I never would. But.” Her expression glazed over; some of her thick, white hair fell into her face, and she made no move to brush it away. “It was terrifying. To see the number-one hero like that. My quirk was killing him. I like hearing men scream, but not like that. I don’t—I don’t want to hear that sound ever again.”

***

When you woke up in your fantasyland, the first thing you did was pelt Midoriya with your pillow.

“You are ruining my life at the moment,” you hissed between bites of breakfast.

In the waiting room of a diviner who was using All Might’s soul crystal to locate the altar, you shoulder-checked him. “Are we gonna be forced to combine agencies, too? Or am I gonna have to leave mine to join yours?”

Midoriya rubbed his shoulder, glancing over it at the others, discussing the map. “Legally, no, but I assume we’ll collaborate more.”

“Good. That’s my agency; I built it from scratch. I don’t want any other big decisions being made for me.”

During a water break out of the Valley of Haze, you knocked over his bag, furious with an abrupt realisation. “You were writing down my quirk.”

Midoriya hesitated before he took a drink from his canteen. “I’m sorry. When?”

“At the café when we first met here. You were writing down everyone’s quirks and how their types of magic matched up with them, and I threw you off because my magic isn’t like my quirk at all.”

Midoriya puffed out his cheeks, exhaling. “That’s true. You caught me.”

At Belldrop Pass, you gasped at the same time Shinsou paid the toll. “You idiot,” you said, thumping Midoriya’s chest, “You’ve been obvious that you weren’t thinking of Uraraka romantically. You’ve been calling her Uraraka instead of Ochaco.” You dug the heels of your palms into your eyes. “I should’ve known.”

When you stopped for a late supper outside of Mellowroom, you tried to be civil (Shinsou was watching). “Deku,” you said thickly, through a dinner roll, “I think we should find Ito here. She may be able to help with—our situation.”

Midoriya laughed nervously. “Hah, really? I guess it would be worth tracking her down again.”

You choked on your bread. “Again?”

Midoriya handed your glass to you and slumped in his seat to make the conversation private from the rest of the table. “She’s the one who told me about the soul altar. She’s not a soulwalker, but she’s the only other person I know of who has soul magic. I didn’t ask after soulmates that time because I didn’t think this was a soulmate situation.”

“I am going to crazy axe murder you.”

“Go ahead.”

You refused to talk to him all the way to the final strip of coastline where you set up camp. The group had travelled for so long that it took real effort to even unlace their boots, but you couldn’t sleep despite your exhaustion. Sleeping would mean waking up in reality.

You sat on the shore, antsy as you stared out at the sea, the thin crescent moon reflecting on the water. An island only visible in the spirit realm was supposed to be out there, and on that island, the soul altar.

You were getting too fidgety and jittery; you might work yourself up into a panic attack. Brushing the sand off your trousers, you stood, but when you turned, you bumped into Midoriya.

He shot you a curt wave. “Can’t sleep?”

You bit your lip. “Don’t want to.”

“Then you don’t have to,” he said, holding out his hand, “Let’s go to the spirit realm together. We can stake out what’s on the island before we go there officially tomorrow.”

You might as well give yourself something to do instead of overthinking. Ignoring his hand, you trudged back through the dunes towards the rest of your party, all passed out in a half-hearted attempt at setting up camp. While you intended to immediately take advantage of the homing spell the diviner placed on All Might’s soul crystal, Midoriya whispered across a sleeping Touya that you at least needed to unfurl your bedroll so that your soulless body would be secure enough to leave without a guard. Midoriya upset camp structure by dragging his own bedroll next to yours, and he set the crystal’s box on it so that it’d be there for you in the spirit realm, while you rummaged about for the dregs of the last time you made your lucidity potion. You took most of the last mouthful before passing the phial to Midoriya, and yet he was waiting for you in the spirit realm by the time you crawled out of your body.

You curled your tail around your little cat legs, and Midoriya followed the movement. “You know,” he said slowly, expression unreadable behind his mask, “You don’t have to be a cat. You can just apply a couple of cat traits to your human form, or you could do something so minor as changing your eye colour.”

“I’m not gonna be a fucking catgirl,” you said, leaping from your bedroll to his to avoid dirt on your paws.

“It’ll be faster to move around if you were bipedal.”

“Open the box,” you said, swatting at it with your paw.

“Hm. Do you think we’re within the radius for the homing spell to activate? We may have to return to the shoreline. Hey, don’t try to claw it open. That’s All Might you’re handling.” Midoriya popped open the box and moved to set it between you, but you had your grabby little paw on it before it was on the ground. Midoriya hissed and rushed to touch the crystal before you evaporated.

Less than a minute later, you materialised face-down in dirt. You curled your fingers into it, rubbing grit between them until you were tactile enough to stand, and you brushed the dirt from your dress, glancing over the half-kilometre of ocean between this island and the shoreline. If you squinted, you think you could make out your camp among the dunes.

“Thank you for cooperating,” came Midoriya’s voice from behind you, crunching dead leaves as he approached, “It’ll be easier this way.”

“I didn’t choose to look human,” you said, frowning over your exposed knees in some intangibly wispy dress, patting where your pockets had been, “You look different, too.”

Midoriya allowed you a better look at how both of your outfits clung to you in wisps, like they were curls of fog that could be swept away with a single breath. His mask was torn in half—mouth still concealed, hair still covered by rabbit-ears hood, but every movement of his eyes could now be detected—and, eerily, they were fixated on you.

He plucked a leaf from his vest to flick it away. “I didn’t choose to, either. Looks like the soul altar has some opinions on us.” His hood’s rabbit ears flickered a glowing green for a fraction of a second, both of them twitching. Midoriya didn’t notice.

Instead, he stretched his arms over his head, arching his back and looking over the curvature of an enormous tree’s limbs that shielded most of the island from moonlight. “Suppose we’d better head towards that tree, yes?” he asked, coming off of a groan.

“Seems to be the centre, anyway,” you said, striding past him towards a narrowly cut path, and behind you, Midoriya laughed. You spun on your heel and crossed your arms. “What’s so funny, Deku?”

He sobered, but his eyes still glinted. “I wasn’t going to say anything, since you didn’t seem to notice the glowing blue whiskers,” he said, waving his hand in front of his face, “but you’ve really been assigned catgirl by the spirit realm, it seems. You’ve got a tail.”

“What?” You twisted to see it, but you couldn’t discern anything at all.

“Nine of them, actually,” Midoriya was saying, smile creeping into his voice again, as you stomped towards him, “I considered you might be a kitsune at first, but then I remembered that cats are supposed to have nine lives—”

You seized his infuriatingly slim waist and forced him to spin around.

“Feel free to manhandle me more, sweet—”

“There,” you said, jabbing two fingers into his back above the swell of his ass, “You’ve been assigned bunny-boy. You’ve got a tail, too.” It’d twitched when you’d poked him. “Can you not feel it?”

“Not at all,” said Midoriya, hands raised, waiting for you to manoeuvre his body more (when you noticed, you shoved him away). “So, you can’t, either? Funny.”

“I’ll kill you,” you said, turning back to the path, “I’ll really do it this time.”

“Do you think that if we die here, we’ll die in real life?” he asked as he jogged to catch up with you. “Since it is really us who come here, if in spirit or soul rather than body, then do you think we’d…”

Midoriya babbled the entire walk to the soul altar, sucking out all the fun of threatening to murder him. At the centre of an overgrown, stone dais, the trunk of the grand tree was hollowed out by erosion, worn through by a spring running through it and pooling at its base, the clearest water you’ve ever seen burbling quietly underneath a smattering of lily pads. Glowing wildflowers crept onto the platform, and the tree’s branches grew downward, creating a cramped dome around the space.

Midoriya ran his hand over the domed branches, failing to push them from their structure. “I wouldn’t know if this is the altar. I’m assuming, since the stone dais indicates that someone built this, but—call me naïve, but I was picturing an altar.”

“No, I think it is,” you said, crouching near the water, “There’s a stone lily pad. At the centre of the spring. Is it just me, or does the way the flower’s formed look like it would hold a soul crystal?”

Midoriya knelt next to you on the rim. “It’s not just you.”

You stood and edged closer to the stone lily pad. “Do you think either of us could reach it?”

Brow furrowed, Midoriya said, “I don’t think we should touch—”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Midoriya brushed a curl out of his face at the same time his rabbit ears trembled. “It’s too far out for either of us to reach securely, but I could help—”

“Give me the soul crystal.” You braced your knees on the pool’s edge, and you stretched over the water, straining your arm until you were just a few inches short of the lily pad. You wriggled your fingers in an attempt to graze it. You waited for his admonishment, but it never came. Baffled, you glanced over your shoulder.

Midoriya stared into his lap, thumbs intertwining. “I don’t think so,” he said, shifting his jaw, “You’re tired and desperate for answers. You shouldn’t let All Might be the expendable part of this. We should go back to camp and try this for real in the morning.” His wide, hard eyes locked with yours, and for some reason, it was too much, the way the spirit realm made them glow with life more than they ever did in reality. “You need to listen to—”

Losing your balance by jerking away from his glare, you fumbled for support on the stone lily pad, but you closed your fist around nothing but water and slipped. For three, aching seconds, freezing water pierced through to your soul, but Midoriya snatched you from the water before your brain could register you’d fallen in.

“You’re okay; you’re okay. Relax,” Midoriya was saying, clutching you to his chest to share his body heat, while you shivered and writhed despite his hands on your waist and your forehead (probably to keep from banging your head on the dais), “Really, sweetheart, when I tell you not to do something, it’s for your own good.”

“Don’t sta—start that with me,” you said, sputtering, “I’ll kill—”

“Wait, shh, shh, shh.” Midoriya clamped a hand over your mouth, and you were about to rip it away, but with a minute move of his hand, he directed your line of sight to what he was talking about.

The stone lily pad sank into the pool, furiously bubbling from the spot, spreading to cover the pool’s surface, the sound of rippling water growing each second.

Gasping, your hand flew to a suddenly hot spot on your lower back, and—even through your closed eyelids, you could make out the intensely blue glow, surging brighter and brighter. Midoriya pushed down on your back, keeping you between his legs but with enough space for—you could see them, this time—for your tails to splinter off and dive into the pool, heat leaving with them.

As you struggled to sit back up (Midoriya helped you up by wrapping an arm around your shoulders), wide swaths of angrily frothing bubbles surged from each tail’s entry point, each glowing in turn as you tried to catch a glimpse of the surfacing images—

***

“No, c’mon—sit all the way down,” Katsuki was saying, and you flinched when you looked down to see that he was gripping your thighs, forcing them apart, with the lower half of his face glistening in the lamplight. “There’s no way the bond won’t extend this far; it applied to your gag reflex. You won’t hurt me—and besides, I can handle you any day of the week with my hands tied behind my back.”

***

You flinched at the pop of a cork, planted in a crowd of your friends at a formal celebration and gripping an empty glass, and at your side, Neito let the champagne foam gush onto the floor, laughing as your friends applauded. You could see the moment the idea crossed his mind: he swopped the bottle to his clean hand, and, with a smug grin, he held his champagne-soaked fingers to your mouth, in front of everybody.

***

Shouto seized you from the party and onto a battlefield covered in smoke, his whole hand encircling your forearm, and after he gave you a once-over, he slid his hand down to yours, his wedding band hot from his flames.

“Don’t worry,” Shouto said, clasping your hand and easing his own to a comfortable warmth, gesturing with the other towards the bleeding scratches on his face and neck, “I can’t feel a thing.”

***

“I wish Eri and Tenko had come to the farmers’ market with us,” you found yourself saying, putting an apple back in its stall, “Then I’d have a better idea of what they might want over the holiday.”

“I wish you’d think more about what you want.” Shouta’s voice grumbled in your ear, body heat blending with yours as his hand came to rest on your waist. “I’m glad they didn’t come. Between them, our friends, and our students, I need all the time with you I can get.”

When he brought your hand to his mouth, Shouta left a glittering, pink mark behind.

***

You were still staring at the back of your hand when you were slammed into a darkened room, sinking into a mattress with tears running down your cheeks.

“I—I love you; I’ve loved you for so long,” came Hitoshi’s voice, his own tears dropping onto your neck as he kissed your pulse point, the barest edge of his fingers brushing over your bare skin, pressing lightly into the underside of your breast, “I was terrified that I’d never be allowed to look your way.” His hips shifted between your legs, one of his large hands dragging upwards along the inside of your thigh. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

***

“To get what you want, Touya,” you heard yourself saying into your phone, feeling yourself physically sitting on a kitchen stool but seeing things through Touya’s eyes, seeing his hands run down his bare chest, thumbs pricking at his boxers, “You have to tell me how pretty you look right now.”

Touya’s hands faltered, clenching into fists. “Hey, fuck you. Why don’t you come back home, then, instead of leaving me by myself? I get so worked up when you’re not—”

“Say it, baby.”

Touya slid his hand past elastic to squeeze himself, cutting off his groan with a breathy inhale, the tiny hole in his cheek whistling. “I guess I’m—”

***

You’re blinded by falling cherry blossoms. You had to blink to adjust. Tenko was at your side, dressed in a mirror of your own pink yukata, and he was yanking you off the sakura-viewing path, out of the way of the scavenger hunters rushing to find the next clue. Tenko pushed you against a tree out of sight, smile toothy and endearing in the moment before he kissed you, quiet but all-consuming and fervent.

***

Your soul thumped back into your body with enough force to knock Midoriya backwards with you, and once again, you were soaked and shivering and miserable, instead of feeling all of that warmth. It took a few moments for its dregs to drain from your chest, and then the cavity it left was simply hollow.

Midoriya had his arms around your torso and legs clenched around yours, bracing you from falling back farther on the dais, and his voice came quietly. “Is that it? Aren’t there any more?”

You tried to inhale. Your nose was stopped up. “Aren’t those enough?”

Midoriya’s grip loosened, arms falling to your waist—enough room to leave, if you had the strength. Once he pulled his mask down to rest around his neck, his voice was less muffled. “You—you still have two more left.”

Grimacing, you wiped your nose on your wispy sleeve. “What?”

From behind you came another bright blue glow, but it didn’t plunge into the water on impulse like the others had. Instead, the cattail detached itself and wove itself around your wrist playfully, nudging what might be its head at your palm. For barely a full second, you felt that warmth again, and again you felt its loss when the tail unravelled itself from your forearm and wafted towards the stone lily pad, in which it curled into a gossamer sphere and vanished.

You held your wrist to your mouth in a vain hope to trace that warmth. “I think that may have been a life in which I don’t have a soulmate. Or perhaps all of them.”

Midoriya nodded against the crown of your head, and he reached around to grasp your forearm, drawing it away from your face to examine it himself. “One of them is sticking around. I supposed we can assume what that one is.”

“Deku,” you said, as he twisted your forearm to get a better look, while you were baffled why the pool was growing blurry, “All of those people I was soulmates with, in different lifetimes—I.” You cut yourself off, plucking your wet dress away from your skin. “They were the only people we know who weren’t affected by Ito’s quirk. What if—what if I’m the reason they don’t have a soulmate? What if I’m supposed to be their soulmate, but we can’t be paired off in this timeline because of you and me, and so their lives are colourless—”

Midoriya kissed your wrist, in the same spot you had.

Ah. The pool was blurry because you’re crying. You’re so wet that you hadn’t noticed.

You turned around in his hold, fingers curling into the damp spot on his shirt. “I’ve fucked our friends over, Deku. I’ve ruined their lives. They’re gonna have to watch everyone else they know, including you and me, dawdle in this sappy fucking soulmate shit forever, and they’re always gonna feel—” You slapped a fist to your chest. “They’re gonna feel this hollowness for the rest of their lives—I just had a taste of what that soulmate warmth feels like, and even in those flashes, it made its home in my gut, and I don’t know how I’m gonna live without that now that it’s touched me.” You grabbed his shirt again, a bit too roughly, forcing his ass down a stair on the dais. “I’d chase that feeling until the end of time if I knew it was snatched from me.”

Eyes darting between your face and hands, Midoriya closed his hand around your fist and pried it away from his shirt. “You can have that warmth again with me.”

“I don’t fucking care about you right now,” you said, beating his chest and pushing him down another step, “I care about my friends, whom I love. And apparently people I didn’t even know were important to me. They’re gonna wander the earth alone, and no one should have to do that. Fuck.” You shoved him away, crawled a few steps up the dais, stooped on the edge of the water, and buried your face in your hands. “How can I fix this?”

“You don’t have to,” Midoriya was saying, splayed out as you’d left him at the bottom of the stairs (hands held up cautiously, as if he’s taming a wild animal—and you resented that). “It’s not your responsibility. It’s just another aspect of the soulmate trope quirk. No part of this is your fault.”

“Why is there only one of me,” you asked flatly, dragging your clammy palms down your cheeks.

Midoriya hissed through his teeth, the wisps of his shirt collar dissipating and reforming with the movement. “You don’t know that they’re suffering. You know they’d complain—”

“You don’t let anyone know when there’s shit going on with you.”

He paused, brow furrowing. “That’s different.”

“Please. Promoting all this bullshit about supporting each other when you keep everyone locked out—in those brief flashes, I felt closer to each and every one of them than I ever have to you.” A full-body shiver wracked through you. You toyed with the hem of your dress, but you can’t take it off; he’s right there. “Hell, I barely had ten seconds with each of them, but I know that I’d take any of them over being here with you.”

“You haven’t given me a chance.”

“Why would I, when you’ve been scarily opportunistic? I—fuck,” you said, tugging at your hair and standing to pace, “I could’ve had anything. Could’ve had everything. Could’ve been content and happy and warm, but instead I have to be here. With you, instead of any of those men who know how to love me, and I them. I’ve fucked them over.”

Midoriya took a moment. Wetted his lips. Moved to a crouch. “Please listen to me. Not one iota of this is your fault. It’s just a pattern that’s been made clear to us because of this fantastical situation we’ve found ourselves in. In our reality, when we’re awake, you have one soulmate. You have no bonds with the others. You’re not their soulmate. You’re mine. And I’m yo—”

“Oh, get over yourself,” you said, clomping down the dais and shunting your foot against his chest, pinning him to the ground (the back of your head said that he was letting you do that, since he could rip you to shreds at any shut the fuck up). “This isn’t about romance, shithead. This is about losing a primary relationship that helps them grow as human people. What if I’m the catalyst for a bunch of character development, and they don’t get that now? Use your fucking brain, Deku. I want my friends to be the best versions of themselves that they can…they…”

Your mouth clamped shut. He’d gotten that determined gleam in his eyes again, staring up at you, practically sparking slivers of that OFA lightning, and he’d snaked his hand around your ankle.

Your brain emptied when his thumb rubbed over the bone on the inside of your ankle.

“I don’t think that’s quite true.” He was suppressing it. He was. But he couldn’t entirely hide the upwards quirking of his mouth when he spoke. “How much of this petulance is because it’s me?”

Intending to huff, your stopped-up nose made you hrnk stupidly instead. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you said, lifting your foot’s pressure from his chest.

But Midoriya tightened his grip around your ankle, trapping it against him, no matter how hard you struggled. “You don’t want to inconvenience anyone. You think that living in another timeline wouldn’t’ve upset the status quo here. Here, you appear to inconvenience many people—Uraraka and me, the people who have certain perceptions of us. The ones who aren’t your soulmate. You think you’ll even upset the balance of your friend group, because no one has dated another friend’s ex before. You don’t want this, because there’s no easy way out. It’s too much trouble.”

His hood’s rabbit ears sparked green and shuddered before fading, reminding you of all the trouble Midoriya’s been for you for the past few months. You tried to jerk your foot away, not caring if your shoe came off, but he caught the back of your knee with his other hand and yanked you down towards him. You hated how he’d perfectly set up your fall, straddling his chest without hurting either of you. Securing you to him by your knee, he’d relinquished his hold on your ankle to intertwine his fingers with yours—if he hadn’t, you’d be choking him by now.

“You don’t want to rock the boat, because it’ll be hard. Well, let me tell you something,” he said, curls splayed around his head, flat on the earth, concentrating all of that resolve and brainpower on you (as if you were someone worth watching), “Life is hard, my dear. But isn’t it worthwhile to try?”

“I can’t take this.” You blundered behind you for the velvet box clipped to his belt, and the instant you touched the soul crystal, you beamed back to your body at camp.

Gasping, you bolted upright, throat very dry, eyes adjusting to the physical realm’s moonlight—startling Shinsou, quietly puttering about to heat up some coffee while the others still slept. Over his shoulder, out over the ocean, the island was gone, and Shinsou was tilting his head, opening to mouth to ask what had happened, when Midoriya returned to his body as well.

Face red with fury and still soaked to the bone, Midoriya spat, “You can’t just run from all of—”

You scrambled away when he grabbed for you, throwing yourself over your bags and Shinsou’s as a barrier, and at the fire, you clutched Shinsou’s arm.

Midoriya remained in his hunch from when he’d tried to catch you, fist digging into the dirt. The heaviness of his shoulders rising and falling would have been more intimidating if his nose hadn’t been whistling, but you didn’t like it, the way he was looking at you, because that was the look he only ever gave villai—well. You could work with that.

Jumbled and scared and angry, you grabbed Shinsou by his kinky, medieval collar and kissed him, because if Midoriya’s going to look at you like a villain, you’d like to deserve it, especially since he doesn’t seem to want to blame you for any of this, not even that your soul’s evidently compatible with other people (and wouldn’t he want you all to himself?), and Shinsou made some sort of squeak that turned into a quiet grunt at the back of his throat before opening his mouth; you needed to push Midoriya away, because even if you let yourself like him, what if you screw up this soulmate in addition to all the others, and then what percentage of your friends will you have fucked up? Shinsou’s actually really good at this, wow, but shouldn’t Midoriya be jealous about that why is he letting this go on for so long.

Stones sinking into your gut, you broke from Shinsou, pressing your forehead to his, mouthing thank you, and giving his hair a final ruffle before pulling away entirely. Shinsou remained frozen in his campseat, but Midoriya had crossed his arms, looking out over the ocean and quite bored.

Your heartbeat thundered in your ears, on your tongue, and on the roof of your mouth. He’d been so vehement, so intense, and this quiet stoicism made your breath hitch in your throat. Isn’t he—isn’t he going to say anything? Rebuke you?

When Shinsou asked something along those lines, all Midoriya did was wipe some of the dirt off of his jawline and rub it between his fingers. “She knows what she’s doing wrong.”

***

You woke up for the first time in Midoriya’s apartment, sick to your stomach, and seeing all of your worldly possessions in boxes against the wall of his guest room, creating claustrophobia, did not help. Even the sheets that fell to your waist when you sat up weren’t yours; the only stuff you’d unpacked last night was Dango’s bare requirements. Where is she, anyway? You needed to press your face into her belly fluff.

Hoping Dango damaged some of Midoriya’s tchotchkes in the night, you stumbled to the bathroom and knelt by the toilet, waiting for the nausea to pass. God, you really did kiss Shinsou to piss off Midoriya, didn’t you? Your stomach flipped at the thought of using your best friend for something like that, especially since—you winced, resting your forehead against the bathtub rim—since Shinsou might like you romantically.

Fuck, all of them might.

You doubted it, because you normally don’t have that sort of luck, but regardless, you hoped to God they didn’t. You couldn’t stand the thought of their feeling that hollowness.

Would dream Shinsou be mad at you for using him? You didn’t want him to be mad. He’s Shinsou. Checking in with the real Shinsou about it would get you out of this apartment. It’s still incredible early in the morning; you weren’t even sure the sun had risen yet, but you needed to escape. Eyeing the new toothbrush Midoriya had given you last night, you pushed yourself up, still a bit wobbly, and got ready as quietly as you could.

All your sneaking didn’t matter, though, because a shirtless Midoriya was in the kitchen when you passed through it, popping above the maximum dose of ibuprofen into his mouth, slumping over the counter, and mumbling under his breath to the sound of his electric kettle boiling. Maybe you could just slip behind him, and he wouldn’t say anyth—

“It’s good to see you up,” said Midoriya, keeping his back to you and removing his kettle from the heat (you winced, shoulders slackening now that you’ve been caught), “I figured you would stay in bed today. You went through a lot last night.”

“I have work,” you said, trying to look anywhere but his tensing biceps as he poured water over a teabag in an Ingenium mug, “I—I don’t wanna sit around and have time to think.”

“You and I could call out of work. Could unpack your things,” he said, facing you and fiddling with the string on his teabag, “Would you like some tea? I have more than just oolong.”

You started edging towards the door. “No, I’m. I’m going to work.”

Midoriya blinked. Glanced at the clock on the wall. “All right. Wear your raincoat; it’s supposed to storm around sunrise.”

Was it? “I don’t know where Kazama packed my raincoat.”

“Take mine, then. In the closet by the door.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” you said, spinning on your heel towards the closet, anyway. You couldn’t get to most of your packed-away clothes, so it made sense to protect the few articles of clothing you had access to.

Midoriya followed a few paces behind, bobbing the teabag in his mug. “Don’t get angry with me for looking out for you,” he said, blinking slowly, leaning against the wall while you rooted through his hanging jackets, “Would you prefer I let you suffer? Oh, you passed it. It’s the green one.”

“How is your suffering, incidentally?” You pulled his raincoat off the hanger and shoved your arms into the sleeves. “Need another trip to the hospital?”

“Would it betray my otherwise calm exterior if I revealed that I’m barely holding it together?” He grasped your shoulder and turned you towards himself in what should have been akin to manhandling but was actually gentle. “I’ll be okay. It’s better now that you’re here,” said Midoriya, zipping up the jacket for you, holding eye contact once the zipper stopped at your throat.

What. The fuck. Is he going to keep pulling these mundane (but weirdly doing it for you) moves? “Then allow me to leave,” you said, reaching for the doorknob.

***

“Hitoshi,” you said, deeming it deep enough in your visit to mention it, “I have a hypothetical question for you.”

Shinsou unlaced his boot to make a tighter attempt. “Try me.”

“Hypothetically. Hypothetically. If—if you and I knew each other in a different universe, if we’re still the same people adapted for a different world—hypothetically. Would—” You swallowed thickly, and you took a sip from your takeaway cup, full of the bleak-in-taste but high-in-caffeine coffee perpetually available in the break room at Might Tower. “Hypothetically, if I—fuck. Okay. If I kissed you, to prove a point, to piss someone else off, to make someone else jealous—hypothetically, would that version of you be mad at me? Start to hate me?”

With a wry smile, Shinsou paused in his cleaning the inside of his mask, dabbing the interstices with an alcohol wipe. “If he’s truly anything like me,” he said, reaching over to ruffle your hair, “he’s grateful for anything you’ll give him. For any reason.”

You didn’t bother to bat away his hand like usual, and without your protestations, he returned to his mask. “You’re breaking my heart, Hitoshi.”

“That makes two of us.”

***

The train ride to Bakugou’s agency had you vibrating out of your skin. You didn’t even flash your ID at the front desk of Genius Offices; the elevator couldn’t rise fast enough to the floor with Bakugou’s office—you had to see him to test if a-fucking-nother of your friends had feelings for you, if your fears of ruining their lives were well-founded. Employees let your through because of your hero status but also because of the intensely manic energy you emitted, and the path to Bakugou’s office cleared the first step you took out of the elevator.

When you slammed open his door, the knob struck the wall, flecking off paint, and your heart stopped: yes, Bakugou was taking up as much space as he could in his swivel chair, wrists draped over the chair’s arms, legs splayed, one of them kicked up on his desk, but Midoriya stood across from him, in civvies still wet from the rain, halted mid-pace, lips still parted. You couldn’t let his presence change anything; you had to—well, you’ll have to expediate the conversation since he’s here.

Supressing panic, you strode towards Bakugou, determinedly ignored Midoriya, and straddled Bakugou’s thigh to cup his face to kiss him. Damn, Bakugou—he immediately opened his mouth, hot and consuming and a little dizzying in the way his tongue pushed into your mouth, pressing against yours—that’s enough.

You broke from Bakugou, panting. “Katsuki,” you said softly, feeling Midoriya’s gaze bore into the back of your head, “Do you have feelings for me?”

“Hahh.” Bakugou’s grip slid from your waist along the curve of your hip, fingers digging into your skin for three seconds—his eyes darting over your shoulder and back to your lips. “I, uh. Never planned on discussing them in front of Izuku. Wasn’t gonna bring them up at all, with the news two days ago that you two are soulma—”

“Oh, God.” You stumbled off of Bakugou’s lap and onto the floor, hitting your head on his desk as you threw up on his fancy carpet.

You were vaguely aware of being shuffled to the in-house infirmary and getting treated for a concussion, with employees trafficking in and out of the infirmary, and your first coherent thought, however much time later, was that it was making you nauseous how gently Midoriya cradled your hand in his when he could snap every bone in it without trying. He was talking to the doctor and Bakugou in turn in that low, firm voice, but words escaped you, only absorbing Bakugou’s subdued frustration and Midoriya’s quiet decisiveness.

You snapped back into it when Todoroki walked in—did he feel the same as Shinsou and Bakugou?—and you seized up, clutching Midoriya’s hand to your chest, teeth digging into the inside of your cheek. “I’ve ruined their lives,” you said under your breath to Midoriya, flinching when his free hand came up to stroke your back, but the gesture grounded you.

“You haven’t,” he whispered back, angling your body towards his so that your voice wouldn’t carry (in your periphery, Bakugou had the decency to thump Todoroki’s arm to pull his attention from your conversation).

“I checked with Shinsou,” you said in a rush, “and now we know Bakugou does, too. I’m so fucking scared to ask anyone else—”

“Don’t do it,” said Midoriya, squeezing your hand, “Knowing won’t make you feel any better. It’s gonna be fine. You had no control over this. No one will blame you for anything.”

“I’m scared.”

“You’ll be okay. I’m not gonna let anyone hurt you. Though, you’ve already hurt yourself a fair amount on Bakugou’s desk—you don’t have a concussion; don’t worry too much.” His middle and ring fingers traced down your spine. “But since you’ve thrown up, why don’t we go home?”

“If we go home, I’ll fall asleep,” you said, tasting blood from how much you’ve bitten your cheek, “and I can’t handle that right now. I need to just stop; I don’t wanna be here or there.”

“All right.” Midoriya nodded, tapping his thumb on the back of your palm with a squeeze to your interlaced fingers. “We’ll see what we can do. Even if you do fall asleep, I’ll make sure none of our party bothers you, if you want.”

“Yeah.” You mirrored his nod, frazzled and jumpy and not quite there, but his hand on your back kept you from dissolving into nothing.

“Listen. I’ll pick up takeaway from somewhere and meet you at home. You have a preferred place? Type of food?”

Your tongue took up too much space in your mouth. But your body needed food, even if you didn’t feel like eating. “Would it be too much trouble to stop by Saizeriya?”

“None at all. Text me your order. You go home and find Dango; pet her until I get back. She was under my bed last time I saw her.” After a moment of wavering, Midoriya pressed his lips to your hairline.

***

You did not return to Midoriya’s flat. Tucking his raincoat closer around you, you topped off your rental car’s gas tank on your way out of town, standing as far away from the dripline of the overhang but getting splashed along your jeans, anyway.

You had no goal. Just wanted distance. Driving in the rain was grounding today, for some reason, and something as horribly modern as driving and traffic laws only existed in this universe, therefore very far from your dreamland.

But you had to sleep eventually, and though dread flooded you, you pulled into a roadside station outside of Kikugawa, got a drink from a vending machine, and kept your phone off, despite the urge to doomscroll. The missed calls and text notifications would corrode your gut, and who knows what sort of tracking services Midoriya might be able to enact?

You watched raindrops race each other down the windshield until your eyes couldn’t stay open, and then you tugged the raincoat’s hood over your eyes to block out the lightning.

***

You could hear Monoma and Touya talking in the distant dunes when you woke. No sign of Shinsou or Midoriya in camp, but you could never be too careful.

You slipped into the spirit realm without anyone realising you’d been awake, and you flipped over to face the soul crystal’s box peeking out of Midoriya’s rucksack. Sitting up out of your body, you pinched your nose, reluctantly humanoid but conceding to its convenience, and took what felt like your first breath all day. Your hand passed through the soul crystal’s box at first—normal for handling a physical object in the spirit realm, so you concentrated on focusing your energy into your fingers.

You had to get to the altar. You weren’t sure how you were going to do it, but you were going to fix this. It had to be this you, not any of the others who neither knew about everyone else nor accessed soul magic. At the soul altar, you would somehow split yourself for everyone to have you—and that may destroy you in this timeline; you didn’t know—but you had to try something—fuck, only the edges of your thumbs were physically manifesting—but something very, very solid closed around your wrist and knocked away the velvet box: Midoriya’s hand.

He caught both of your hands with such speed that he was on top of you before you could register the touch of his thumb and ring finger.

(But—and this was fucking weird—Midoriya wasn’t using his body to dominate you sexually like you’d expect, through a typical move like pinning your arms down and straddling you, a knee between your legs, but instead he’s—he’s completely flattened himself to hold you down, like a weighted blanket. He brought one of your hands between your chests, over his heart, and he propped himself up very slightly by his other elbow, still restraining your hand, and you loathed how it was because he was being considerate, angling his head away from your neck so that his breath wouldn’t wash down it. The chill of the spirit realm made you almost wish he would. But he’s clever, annoyingly clever, and still so kind—he’s got you pinned without room for movement, but nothing hurt. Of course your enemy had to be the most observant and adept piece of shit you’ve ever met.)

Midoriya remained silent for two, long minutes while you stared up past green wisps of hair into the colourless, overcast sky.

“Please don’t do anything drastic to yourself.” He was close enough to hear his swallow. “You don’t need to fix anything. They chose to have romantic feelings for you. You didn’t make them do anything. This happened to you outside of your control. However they deal with their feelings is on them. Other versions of us have all managed. We’re just not at that stage of our lives yet.

“And I think you may be afraid that being with me may narrow your happiness and the happiness of others, and I—I think I’ve made that worse by allowing you glimpses of how I was with Uraraka, but we were fine; she encouraged me to let her give up that control, but you’re right. She and I talked about that. You and I haven’t, and I fall back into comfortable behaviour because it’s the only love I’ve ever known. But if you wanted something romantic between us, it would in no way consume your other relationships. If you like, we could work to foster whatever you want with—with people who are your soulmates elsewhere. No romance is worth cutting yourself off from everyone else. Whatever you want, I’ll do. I’ll be whatever you want me to be.”

You writhed underneath him, saliva building on your tongue. You didn’t have exact words for your feelings, but you should start somewhere. “I wouldn’t expect you to be anything other than yourself. Don’t change yourself for me.”

Out of your periphery, you caught his incredulous expression. “I know I will in thousands of small ways, in how much tea I brew, in how loudly I play my music, in how often I leave the lights on. It’s natural to change, and I’ll gladly do it. I’ll still be me, at the end of it. And, if I may—” He wetted his lips. “—I would venture that the same’s already happened to you. There’s a reason why this you, over any of the others, is here, right now, with me. The choices you’ve made, all the changes and tweaks to yourself that have led to your current personality, have made you perfect to be here, instead of any of the other timelines. This version of you may be too introverted to be with Bakugou or too indirect for Todoroki—I don’t know. But our souls are made for each other, for the right here and right now, and I’d like to know why. The only way I can learn is with you. If you don’t want to, that’s fine, too. But I think—I think we could be good for each other.”

You scoffed, with Midoriya lifting his head to search your face. “Come off of it, Midoriya. I’ve been nothing but hostile towards you. You can’t actually believe that.”

“I do.” He lifted himself enough to look you in the eye, taking some of his weight off of your chest (and your boobs finally weren’t smushed). “I’ve known you tangentially for years, and I’ve known you directly for almost two months now.”

“I didn’t know you were real—”

“But I was, and I was being myself the whole time. Were you?”

Where’s he going with this? “Yes.”

“The you I’ve been getting to know is funny and determined and amiable. She’s quick on her feet and eager to solve problems and cares so, so deeply for other people. And, moreover,” Midoriya said, green eyelashes dark against his skin, “she seems very protective of her heart. I understand your caution; I used to—oh, gracious.”

He released the hand at your side to rub his eye, and he removed himself from your entirely to kneel at your side. You were cold without him.

Midoriya gripped his knees, changed his mind, and went back to rubbing his eye. “Lately, I’ve been really into soft cheeses.”

Sitting up, you crossed your arms, your wispy clothes doing nothing to obstruct the chill. “I’m sorry?”

“I can hardly expect you to let me into your heart when I’ve been absent from mine. You’re right, of course, that I don’t tell people about myself,” said Midoriya, shrugging and slumping afterwards, “My whole life for so long was becoming a hero, so I admit I didn’t have many interests outside of that obsession. Now, being a gregarious but blank slate encourages people to project whatever they need to onto me so that they’ll let me help them. The detail of liking katsudon is minor enough to ground me in reality, reminds the public I’m human. I…”

Grimacing, Midoriya ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it out of his face. “I’ve grown. I’m more than minutiae; I’m more than my actions. I’m still figuring it out myself. But learning, us, together—starts with details from both of us. So, lately, I’ve been into soft cheeses, but my favourite brie and mozzarella are only offered at this farmers’ market just outside of town that only pops up once a month. I don’t always have the date right, so I’ve made the journey only to show up to an empty market more than once. And I don’t know if you’ve been to the kitchen yet, but I usually keep a puzzle going. Right now, I’m doing this 1500-piece puzzle of a red-eyed tree frog on a leaf, and all of the green is making it particularly difficult. I’d love for you to join, and—and I’ve tried to make myself like coffee, but it’s never meshed for me. I always take my tea with sugar instead of milk, which makes me feel like I take it wrong. Don’t most people take it with milk, no sugar?”

You smiled. It’s good to hear the familiar rambling. “I can’t say I’ve thought about it much. I…” You brought your knees to your chest, hugging them and shivering. If he could try to open up, you could, too. “Something a bit similar is going on at work right now. Before all of our soulmate stuff, the biggest drama had to do with the break room coffee creamer. We ran out, and Mina asked Yaoyorozu to make some. She did, but suddenly, there was a debate about whether or not it was creepy to drink something from Yao’s body.”

Midoriya dropped his hand into his lap and managed a small smile. “I don’t think I’d drink that.”

“Yeah, and there were a lot of weird takes, comparing it to breast milk, and stuff. Ultimately, Mina didn��t have coffee at all that morning.”

“Probably for the best,” said Midoriya, glancing off towards the ocean, where the island waited in the distant fog, “I put your Saizeriya’s in the refrigerator. Have you eaten, wherever you are?”

Fidgeting, you moved to bite the inside of your cheek but stopped yourself; the skin smarted on this side of reality, too. “I’m fine. I got something from a vending machine.”

Midoriya frowned. “That’s not a meal. Where are you?”

“I’m…at a rest stop outside of Kikugawa.”

His head snapped towards you. “Kikugawa? What are you—” He winced, ducking his head. “You’re scared of me.”

“I feel better now that we’ve talked,” you said, “I—it’s complicated. My main road block is knowing that I’m tied up with some of our friends in other universes—but I think you’re right; there’s nothing I can do about it. So, I’ll get over that, eventually, hopefully, but I know it’s going to haunt me for a long time. I’ll be fine about that in time. The other road block is, uh.” You couldn’t finish. It was almost too childish to voice.

Midoriya sighed. “Do you want to arrange a meeting with Uraraka in which she gives you her blessing?”

“She already has,” you said, resting your chin on your knee, “Through text, though. Might be better if we talked face-to-face.”

“Right. It will also be beneficial for you to meet her real soulmate, Spike. The difference between how she behaved with me compared to Spike is immense. What else is in the way?”

You sucked in through your teeth. “You know how the Class A girls have a group text?”

“The one left over from Girls and Todoroki Nights?”

“Eh, no. This is a separate one without Todoroki or Shinsou; it’s only women. Okay, so, uh. Uraraka,” you said, hesitant on how to phrase it, “never directly said anything about the, uh, nature of your relationship—never said anything about whatever imbalanced power dynamic you had going on. But she would talk about, like.” God, you can’t look at him. You squared your jaw and said hastily, “She would tell us about your dick and how well you fucked her and sometimes when you would do hot or cute things in bed; like we all found out about how you came in your pants the first time you fingered her, and how your cock is really leaky and you have special fabric underwear to absorb it, and how you eat pussy like you’re making out with it, and—”

(And again, Midoriya surprised you, because instead of turning bright red and sputtering something about not needing to hear any more, he pinched his lower lip, tongue tapping the point of a canine, and said—)

“Do you believe any of it?”

You halted mid-sentence, mouth still shaped like your next word. You closed it before it could dry out. “I do, now.”

“I see. I should’ve expected she’d share details about our sex life; she’s into exhibitionism, and sharing details in a group text is nowhere nearly as exhibitionist as the punishments she wanted me to enact,” he said, as if he weren’t dragging both himself and your friend under, “I’m sorry for my earlier behaviour, especially at the waterfall. You’re right that I was letting myself continue a habit. I should’ve asked what you wanted. Do you…” He pressed his fist to his mouth and looked away, jaw clamped shut to prevent talking aloud.

If you said it out loud, you made it real. You’ve already done your best to squash it down, but—you guessed—Midoriya deserved fair play. “Some of what you did was attractive, but since we hadn’t talked about it, I was scared. I still am, because—well, we’re going to work out the other lives stuff together—but I’m still feeling scared and guilty because you’re my friend’s ex. I know this is only an issue because I’m too trapped in my own head, and I am by no means slut-shaming, or anything, but—I don’t know. I’m scared that every time I touch you that I’ll be comparing myself to Uraraka and if she—did it better, or something. It’s a worry because I know her extremely well, not because there’s been someone with you before me. I know this is ridiculous—”

“All the more reason for you to leave your own mark on me,” Midoriya said, and he removed his cape to wrap it around your trembling shoulders, fixing the clasp around your neck. “Noticed you were cold,” he said with a quick smile, “But if, in any way, it unnerves you that someone you know has touched me, shouldn’t you replace them with your own? How much time should I set aside?”

“What?” You pulled the cape more closely around you, twisting its surprisingly heavy fabric to cover your lap. “Are you—what happened to the Midoriya I knew in school?”

“I’m still him. Every bit.” He toyed with the corner edge of the cape, rubbing it between his fingers. “Listen. If you detach you and me from the situation, from the relationships with our friends, from any context whatsoever, what would you want? Would you want anything from me? Would you want me?”

When he flipped the cape’s corner into your lap and removed his hand, you were tempted to grab hold of it. “I could,” you said, fingers instead curling into the fabric, “It’ll take a while to walk out of my conflicted headspace, but I could.”

Midoriya heaved an enormous sigh, tension visibly leaving his body. “Thank goodness. I fear I’m already too into you to back away. I would if you wanted me to, of course, but—”

(You missed part of the rambling for the huh? What the hell was the number-one hero doing, pining after you? What had you ever done to get his attention?

Two months wasn’t a long time. Possible, of course, but unlikely. Was…was he attracted to you before the soulmate situation occurred?)

“—only hope that you’ll forgive me for my bad behaviour; I should’ve talked to you from the start. I guess I was scared, too,” Midoriya was saying when you snapped back into it, “May I—may I assume we’ll spend more time together? Get to know each other?”

“You may,” you said, and all of the past months of dreaming and running around and avoiding vulnerability weighed down on your back, pressing down to flatten and crush—so, you rolled your shoulders back. Sat up straight. Bit your lip as you looked him directly in the eye and said, “Midoriya, you have permission to seduce me.”

Midoriya opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again, brow furrowed. “Are you sure about that?”

“So long as you’re clever about it,” you said, moving to sit on your knees, mirroring him, “So long as you seduce me on an intellectual and moral level before you—you can’t rely solely on your enormous hands and big, ol’ wet eyes. I challenge you to ease me into a romantic relationship from friendship. I want you to make me feel soooooo comfortable. I want you to surprise me.”

You heard the OFA static, rather than saw it. A quiet crackle that faded as he clenched his jaw.

“But otherwise, I want you to do it in ways that you like. Not necessarily what you’re used to.” You were grinning, fascinated by the heady way he was staring at you, unable to tear his eyes away from yours. “I wanna see what you like. I’ll tell you if I’m not into something.”

A few seconds passed before Midoriya answered. “I’m into a lot of things,” he said slowly.

“Yeah? I wanna see what you can give me.”

Twin bolts of lightning snapped and popped around his body, bright and blinding as if they were in the sky, and they sizzled out in an instant when he opened his mouth. “You seem to like to argue. To push back a little. Am I wrong?”

You shook your head, watching the tiny ripples of static electricity weave like snakes around his arms and down to his fingers, tips of your own hair starting to frizz.

“Right. What’s our safeword?”

You cast your thoughts around, and they settled on your seedling fortune from Alderside’s festival. Well. While no one can control your fortune, you’ll make it your own. “Lotus. As in the flower.”

With a slow blink that shot heat to your lower stomach, Midoriya swallowed, his Adam’s apple dipping. “Right,” he said, voice rasping, “I’ll get on it.”

“I look forward to it,” you said, smiling, feeling excited about the soulmate situation for the first time since you breathed in that dust, “In the meantime, why don’t you tell me more about your soft cheeses?”

***

Midoriya was gone by the time you got back to the apartment, and since you didn’t go on patrol until evening, you spent the time unpacking your things. Since yesterday, he’s stuck post-it notes on drawers and cabinets to label their contents, easing the process.

Infuriatingly, you found Dango sleeping on his bed, as if it had been her space her entire life. You crawled onto the bed next to her, holding out your hand for her to sniff.

While she walked in circles before curling in a ball next to you, you glanced over his jam-packed bookshelves and bulletin boards (plural, with a few pieces of yarn connecting tacks across boards) and settled on his bedside table, where, in front of a framed, blood-splattered, All Might trading card sat an empty mug, still smelling of sweetened oolong tea. Cute. You got out your phone to snap a quick picture of Dango and then opened your texts.

YOU

hey midoriya

YOU

i know another thing we can work on

MIDORIYA 👉👈🌱

I remember. We’ll work out a way to be completely unconscious instead of visiting our dreamland

YOU

not that one. adding another task

YOU

learn how to make frappes. and then how to make them in fantasy setting

YOU

all versions of shinsou deserve a big fuck-off drink

MIDORIYA 👉👈🌱

Most likely unnecessary to re-create the process exactly. Don’t you think we could adapt part of your tea ceremony magic for coffee?

YOU

y’know. i hadn’t considered.

***

When your eyes finally focused, Midoriya’s face had the closest thing to fear you’ve ever seen on him, tapping your cheeks to get you to stay conscious, and when you violently shuddered and coughed up seawater, relief passed over him.

It’s cold. It’s so fucking cold; with no explanation, an ice storm swept over the coastline as your party was packing up camp, and with the chilling winds and grey overcast came the fiery fury of a dragon forced to fly south. Tucking away his knitting needles, Monoma had been in the middle of proposing the storm might be a spell to drive the dragon out of a settlement when the writhing, fervent thing had spotted your camp and had dived towards you.

The dragon’s wings beat the frigid winds down on you, your clothes still damp from your trips into the spirit realm, shocking you so hard that you only caught flashes of its wreckage: you didn’t know how Monoma, Touya, and Shinsou vanished one by one into thin air with each swipe of its tail, but its front claws closed around you as it leapt into the sky again, flying out over the ocean, where it dropped you into slushing water almost half a kilometre out.

And Midoriya—he must have swum out to retrieve you, dripping and panting over you on the shore as he turned back towards the remnants of camp, and you, tired and freezing enough to let him move you into a water-eroded cave farther down the beach as the wind picked up, could hardly feel guilty for not helping him build a fire for how hard your head spun.

“If we’re separated from the group, unknown how to recover them, then—if we continue the plan to return to the Gauntlet, we might run into them eventually,” he was muttering as he threw logs on the fire, “Town’s three kilometres away, but I don’t think we’re in any condition to travel. Once she warms up—” Midoriya scrambled towards you, curled up and shivering on a thrown-together pallet on the other side of the fire, and he patted your cheek again. “Hey, hey, please, don’t fall asleep yet. I know you’re tired. It’s gonna be fine. But stay with me for a few more minutes, please?”

“I’m fi—fine,” you said, tongue numb enough to trip up your words.

Midoriya grimaced. “No, you’re not. Forgive me,” he said, prodding you to sit up and slipping your soaked shirt over your head, and he rested your forehead on his shoulder before setting to work unlacing your corset.

“What, f—fuck,” you said, unable to do much else besides continue to shiver, “This mah—must by a spe—special kind of cold.”

“Considering it’s most likely magic-induced, I wouldn’t doubt it,” said Midoriya, deft fingers already halfway done with the ties, “This is the third night in a row you’ve gotten cold and wet, so I’m afraid this may be the final straw to your getting hypothermia.”

“Hah—how come you’re not too affected by it?”

“I used to be. When I first started dreaming, I woke up in the northern lands. This body has since gotten used to this level of cold. I spent a full month helping one of the towns with a burrowing dragon. Tends to be a problem up there.”

“Resourcefu—ful bitch,” you said, taking deeper, sloppier breaths now that he removed your corset, the chill spreading across your chest. You wrapped an arm over your boobs once he lay you down (your undershirt still covered them, but it was nearly transparent with dampness), yelping at his first tug to take off your trousers.

“Relax. I’m not trying anything. The quickest way we’ll get you warm is if we share skin-to-skin contact,” said Midoriya, and he sat back on his heels. “Why don’t you take off your pants yourself, then? I’ll hang them by the fire.”

Nodding, you fumbled with numb fingers to unfasten your pants, and it was only after a few minutes of struggling to get the wet-clingy things off that you realised he’d stripped down to his smallclothes, too concentrated on hanging drenched clothes above the fire to be abashed at his nakedness. You tossed your pants towards him and ducked under a blanket, where your undershirt kept you icy, regardless.

“I’m thinking that after we check you into an inn in town, I’ll come back to comb over the beach to see if I can scavenge anything related to the dragon itself or to the rest of our party. If I find something, we could take it to the same diviner who tracked the soul altar through All Might’s crystal, and we’d be able to reunite through—ah.” Midoriya was cut off by another piece of wet clothing slung at him, and he peeled it away from his face, scrunching when he noted how you tucked the blanket more closely around you. “But I suppose that’s a conversation for later,” he said, nervously chuckling (dimples and creases in his cheeks highlighted in the flickering light) and draping your undershirt over the flames.

Though hazy, you appreciated how Midoriya tried to delay it, how he busied himself with securing the cavemouth, scooting your pallet closer to face the fire, and hooking Monoma’s banged-up kettle nearby, before lifting your blankets (you hissed at the swash of cold air down your bare back) and crawling in behind you.

Immediately, he’s got his mouth against the crown of your head, each hard plane and muscle ridge down his fire-touched chest pressed against your skin. He’s being so respectful in how his hips cradled your own, sharing the warmth without touching, so when one of his large hands grazed your waist, you took it, sliding your hand down to his to guide his arm fully around you and closing them in a fist underneath your boobs.

“Be—better,” you said, firelight still bright through closed eyelids, “Thank you.”

Midoriya huffed into your hair. “You’re surprisingly accepting of this.”

You hunched in towards the fire slightly (you swore your tits were going to freeze off). “We both took the sa—same safety courses. I know this is the logical course of action.”

“You sound like Aizawa-sensei,” said Midoriya, humming.

“Remember wh—when he taught gave that lecture? Brought in Kayama-sen—sensei to discuss human anatomy. Said that we’d probably never run into something like this.”

“Mm, I suspect it’s a contributing factor that I breathed in a second dose of Tainted Love’s quirk.” Midoriya nudged the back of your head for you to lift it, and he slid his folded arm underneath you to use as a pillow. “Wouldn’t you say the cliches extend to the dreams, based on this?”

“Fantastic,” you said, a full-bodied shiver sweeping through you, prompting a cough.

“No, no, you’re okay; you’re fine,” said Midoriya, rubbing over the goosebumps on your upper arm, “Once you’re warm enough, we’ll head into town. Wasn’t there a restaurant Monoma wanted to try? Do you want to go there?”

“I just wanna bathe and get in a real bed,” you said with a whimper, tugging the blankets up to your chin, “I don’t want to be siiiiiiick. We won’t be able to start tracking the others until I’m well.”

“We’ve been travelling with purpose for a while. It might be good to have a break, and you needn’t worry,” said Midoriya, replacing his arm around your waist, this time laying his hand flat on your stomach, right atop your diaphragm, keeping track of how hard you breathed, “I’ll take care of you.”

You sniffled, licking your dry lips. “Oh, fuck off.”

You flinched as the fire crackled, and Midoriya shushed you again and curled himself around you, edging a careful knee between your legs and drawing you close enough for your hips to touch. Scoffing, you realised there’d been a reason he’d kept a distance.

“Sorry! Sorry,” he said hastily, backing his hips a little, “I was—I just got to thinking about your back, and how soft it is, and then you mentioned wanting a bath, and you said it with the most glorious little whine to your voice—”

“You’re the reason they make dress codes so strict,” you said, shooting a glare over your shoulder.

“I think the tea’s boiling,” said Midoriya, and when he crawled out of the blankets, you made a pathetic noise at the back of your throat (the corner of his mouth twitched). But he was behind you again in a couple of minutes, arm curving over you to set your cream-coloured enamel mug in front of you on the pallet.

Once you’d drunk most of it, not tasting it but enjoying its heat, eyes growing heavier by the second, Midoriya spoke. “All right. I feel a lot better knowing your insides are warming up, too. You don’t have to try to stay awake anymore.”

You paused, waiting for a sneeze to come, but it died before you could. “But barely half of the night has passed. I’ll wake up back home and not be able to go back to sleep, because I’m woozy here.”

“Then stay awake. Feel free to rummage about the apartment, unpack, or anything. Watch a movie. We’ll get to work on finding a way to sleep dreamlessly soon.”

You set your mug aside, sapped of the strength to hold it up. “Should I wake you?”

“I don’t think so,” said Midoriya, rubbing your arm again before wrapping his over you, shifting his knee between your legs, “I need to take care of you here. Do you mind if—hm. It’d be difficult to move you and the supplies the three kilometres into town. I really think we should get you to town as soon as possible, though. Would you object to my moving you in your sleep, or would you prefer we stay here until tomorrow?”

“I don’t—don’t fucking care,” you said through a yawn, “I was just thinking. This dream shit seems more aligned with our real lives’ circadian rhythms, and stuff. Do you think if I suddenly woke up in the middle of the night here that I’d, like, faint in real life? It might happen, since we’re going to sleep during the day.”

“I’ve considered that,” said Midoriya, setting his cup next to yours with a clink on the stone floor, “and I don’t have any answers. S’pose we’ll find out.”

***

The next few months of your life were spent learning how to live under the soulmate bond. You’d unpacked completely, your belongings mixing with his and finding their homes in his flat. Gotten used to routines and grocery preferences. Still struggling to remember where he kept his measuring cups.

Midoriya claimed the soulmate pain had gone away, but sometimes, you caught him just standing there, clutching his shirt over his heart, expression strained but focused on nothing at all. He’d always brighten when he noticed you watching.

(One night, you’d stayed up later than Midoriya because you’d had a bit of a fight; he’d had Mirio, Nejire, and Amajiki over without telling you first, and you’d needed the quiet and space to work on a complicated collab proposal—and it kept you up during most of the night. He’d gone to bed angry, and you’d fumed over your laptop, when some sort of tinny whine broke the silence of the apartment. You’d taken off your headphones to check, and the sound kept coming.

You’d cracked open the door to Midoriya’s bedroom, where he’d been restlessly tossed in his sleep, bedsheets twisted around his waist and falling onto the floor, muscles strained even then, face screwed up, creases between his eyebrows—whining, wincing, clenching teeth together. It’s a sound you didn’t want to hear again. You’d gotten closer, wincing yourself as you watched sweat beading down his cheek, only to slide off onto his wet pillowcase. His shirt was soaked through, and he’d gone all pale.

You’d almost wished he were having a sex dream, because then you wouldn’t have to feel sorry for him. But no, God, this was happening because you were mad at him, because you’d fought, rejecting him somehow, and for such a tiny, little thing.

You’d pressed the back of your hand to his forehead to check his temperature, and Midoriya immediately stilled, breathing returning to normal.

If he’d noticed, he hadn’t said anything the following morning.

[And you? You weren’t experiencing any soulmate pain at all.])

Dango had grown to like Midoriya immensely, which baffled you until you’d discovered how much scrambled egg he gave her every morning as her cat tax—she took it out of his hand with such delicacy.

Right now, she lay on your lap while you scrolled through your phone on the couch. You’d made yourself a lurker account to follow people thirsting after Midoriya to see how other people were attracted to him—what made him appealing to them and how they talked about it. With his involvement with Uraraka’s miniseries picking up, on top of his already exhaustive schedule, you were seeing less and less of him in reality and had to rely on your dreams to spend time with him, so you visited these people’s accounts also as a way to check in on his public self.

[image description: a dishevelled Pro-Hero Deku, covered in soot from an explosion from fellow Pro-Hero Dynamight, lands a kick into the jaw of an 80-meter snake controlled by villain Viper. His boot sinks into its flesh in the moment before the force of the kick makes the snake burst. His hero costume is torn so that he has neither sleeves nor his hood. One of his gloves is missing, and his hair is wilder and curlier than usual.]

chargenut: uuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh hi!!!!!

sakuraraka: i wanna play with his hair i wanna tackle him to the ground

momo-closet: *fumbles for inhaler* very normal abt this. need him carnally need every man who can stomp something to death with a single move. Also please look at his ASS and how ROUND it is. desperately need to smack it but my hand would bounce off into the stratosphere

alienkawa: my womb ouch

dickuprint: god his curls are SO fuckgn sexy here. his current undercut and styled hair must be a strategic move by his PR team to nerf his perfect fucking looks bc otherwise he’d be too pretty for anyone to get anything done. undercut also sexy tho

nonbinarysalmon: he………………………

Neither you nor he had found a way to sleep without dreams yet. Well—actually, you’ve both discovered that if you get hit hard enough that you pass out, then you won’t dream, but you can’t rely on giving yourself a concussion every once in a while.

You’ve consulted Ito about it, purely for the soulmate basis. She’s never known dream-sharing soulmates to not share their dreams or go to the same place. After Ito, you moved onto sleep specialists and a few medications, but nothing worked—though you got managed to procure some fancy sleep aids for Aizawa out of it.

You and Midoriya would have to figure out this one yourselves, if it were even possible.

[image description: a gifset of Pro-Hero Deku on Pro-Hero Uwabami’s talk show. In the first gif, Deku blinks in mild shock at Uwabami’s insult towards Pro-Hero Shouto. In the second gif, Deku starts to laugh softly, tongue running over his lower lip, as anger visibly shines in his eyes.]

purprevbabey: incredible how fast my legs spread when he gets mad like that

dickuprint: okay but like. you can SEE how much control he has. how he’s got the power in the situation. and he knows he could rip her to shreds for that comment but he’s reigning it in. godddddddddddddddddd men who laugh when they’re pissed pls get mad at meeeee

oldfashionedkitten: You just know he can Detroit Smash on my Full Cowl until I Shoot Style.

sakuraraka: oh what a piece of work is man 👅

midori-world: SLUT

dailydeku: what crime must I commit to get him to look at me like that??? can you IMAGINE being on the receiving end of that look and not being completely drenched. considering arson. perhaps public nudity. his bedroom is public right

You and Midoriya had spent ages tracking the dragon, and you’d found it burrowing underneath yet another village trying to attack it. After halting the townspeople’s weapons, you and Midoriya had crept into its burrow, inelegant in the haste it was dug, and discovered the dragon thrashing and rolling around in the dirt.

You’d started your tea ceremony to bind the dragon to the space, and the dragon had stopped convulsing to stare at the floating teaware and conjured table. It’d seemed to understand what Midoriya said to it, and when it shuddered, you’d noted, it was all in effort to get something off its tail: a slightly luminescent, red band that, now that you were close enough, was clearly not part of the dragon’s amber scales. It had been tagged.

You’d offered to remove it, and the dragon had shifted its attention to you entirely, thumping its tail in front of your tea table. It had gotten frustrated while you and Midoriya discussed the tag’s perfect, unbroken seal, and to your horror, the dragon seethed and erupt into flames, out of whose ashes crawled a very naked Bakugou. You’d already been overwhelmed by his tits and scarred muscles to the sounds of Midoriya’s babbling on shapeshifters when Bakugou climbed onto your tea table and thrust his ass towards your face—you’d scrambled backwards out of shock. But he’d settled into a kneel, hissing over his shoulder at you, while you’d noted the tag had been sealed as a patch on the small of his back, which, so long as you wore down the holding spell, could be removed.

Bakugou had been incapable of human speech himself but nodded and grunted as you and Midoriya chipped away at the tag’s seal, and once you’d peeled it off, the underside of the patch revealed its owner: Todoroki Natsuo, who had enchanted the tag to teleport any significant source of magic back to the Todoroki castle. Midoriya had fortified this, saying that northern dragons were often used to collect kneilanth root and butter knappe, which grew too deeply underground for humans to safely dig for them.

And so, Bakugou had come with you all the way to rescue your friends from Todoroki castle, from which you’d been banned all those years ago for bad poetry.

(Bakugou had been doing quite well as a human, actually. Language was still an issue, mostly because his human mouth had to adjust to vocalising the sounds, and he tended to dislike the feeling of fabric against his skin. But he liked watching your magic and eating meat with the bones removed, and he enjoyed listening to stories. This Bakugou was charmingly, openly affectionate in his own gruff way, hovering near your side when outsiders crossed your path, taking tea towels for his nest/bedroll, and plopping your hand in his hair once camp was set up in the evening.

You tried not to think about what it could mean for your reality’s Bakugou.)

Foiled in your infiltration to Todoroki castle, you’d been captured and separated, and you and Midoriya were eating breakfast in his apartment to discuss your next move.

“I’m on the east side of the castle’s dungeon, in one of the cells on the first floor underground,” you said, setting your drawing of the castle layout (to the best of your memory) aside to sort through the puzzle’s edge pieces, “My other life’s memories tell me that I visited briefly before, because Shinsou’s family works in and out of there. I haven’t seen any of the Shinsous, though. I’ve only been handled by strangers. Where are you?”

“I must not be in a dungeon, then. There’s a window letting in sunlight, so I must not be underground.” Midoriya pinched his lower lip and frowned at two, similarly coloured puzzle pieces. “But they’ve tied me up. You’ll have to find something to cut the rope with, if you break out first.”

“Interesting,” you said, and you reached for your mug, “They didn’t bother to restrain me. They must not think I’m a threat, but you must look it.”

“Do you need a refill? I was about to get more,” said Midoriya, standing, his hand outstretched as he leant over the table, tossing his own empty mug to himself.

You squinted into your mug, the dregs of yet another failed, homemade frappe at the bottom. “I think I’m coffee-ed out for the day. Just water, please?”

“Right. If you’ll allow me a moment,” said Midoriya, holding both mugs in one hand (your brain short-circuited for a moment. Large. Large hands) as he crossed to the refrigerator. “But it’s the Todorokis’ castle. We know at least Endeavor and Natsuo are there because of Bakugou’s tag, and even if they are present, I don’t know Fuyumi or their mother well enough to rely on them. And Shouto isn’t there to help us.”

“I doubt the crown prince would help out his former jester,” you said, latching two pieces together, “and I doubt we could find Shouto if the whole kingdom hasn’t found him after searching for a year.”

“Is that a challenge?” His smile was audible over the gentle slosh of liquid. “Then that should be our next quest after we find the rest of our party.”

“Done. We’ll find Shouto next.” You accepted your mug once Midoriya tapped the back of your shoulder with it, and he plopped into his seat across from you with a heavy sigh. Your eyes glazed over a little when a frustrated Midoriya pulled reading glasses out of his breast pocket and slid them on. “Oh,” you said, taken aback.

He shot you a grin before bending back over the puzzle, hair flopping onto his forehead. “Don’t let it slip that the number-one hero needs peepers, all right?”

“Peepers,” you said, clasping a hand over your heart, “Who are you?”

Midoriya clicked his tongue and tried to fit another piece.

Shaking your head, you continued. “I think the move here is to appeal to the guards who’ve handled me so far, to try to see if I can talk to any of Shinsou’s family to get out. If not,” you said, taking a deep breath, “I can try soulwalking. The dungeons are charmed to stop magic, but I don’t know if they’d account for soul magic, since it’s so rare. I can try getting a key that way.”

“Key,” said Midoriya, holding up a finger and then a second, “And knife.”

“Yeah. You’re tied up. You’re tied…up,” you said, propping your chin on your fist, “Gracious. Has anyone ever managed to tie you up before?”

His eyes flickered over to you, glinting. “Not in any way I didn’t intend.”

“I—hm,” you said, having to look away and plucking at your shirt to cool yourself down, “I meant. I meant if you’d ever been—captured. For work. But I guess that sort of thing doesn’t happen to you, does it?” But if he wanted to take it that direction, you’ll play. “Tied up how? You uncomfortable?”

Midoriya smiled more with his eyes than his mouth, though he kept them on the puzzle. “It’s not my first time on my knees,” he said, fitting another piece together, “but I’ll admit the stone is making them ache.”

Fuck, how is anyone supposed to maintain a conversation with this man? “I hope they gagged you with how clever that mouth is,” you said on impulse, smoothing down the front of your shirt and frowning once you’d realised what you’d said.

“With a bit,” he said, drawing a line across his lips, “They confiscated my shirt when they checked my skin for runes and bound my arms behind my back, looping the ropes here—” Midoriya pulled up his sleeve to trace his finger on his upper arm over the rising swell of his bicep. “Here—” He did the same below the muscle, flexing it as he kept his gaze on the puzzle. “And here.” He straightened his posture to drag his finger diagonally over his collarbone, all the way up to where his neck met his shoulder.

You’re going to kill him. You’re going to pluck out each of his tendons to weave them into a basket. You’re going to bite down as hard as you can into that bicep until you can spit it out.

“Yeah, sure, man,” you said eventually, rubbing your eyes with the heels of your palms, “Don’t expect me to walk into your dungeon, pussy out, or anything, even if you’re already kneeling. If you could concentrate, please. We need to come up with something before tonight.”

Nodding, Midoriya covered his yawn and stood, stretching his arms above his head with a quiet groan (and you…noted the sliver of hard stomach when his shirt rose). “I’ll take my chances,” he said, rolling his broad shoulders back, taking a moment to hold his elbow for the extra strain. “I know you’ll be able to pull it off, whatever we decide, and I’ll do more thinking during work today. I need to head out. I’m behind on the last performance evaluations for this round of interns, and I’m supposed to be taking them all out for interim evals today.”

“Good fucking luck.” You corralled the loose puzzle pieces into one corner of the kitchen table as Midoriya put mugs in the dishwasher.

“Thanks.” He tossed in a soap pod. “What time will you be home today?”

“Uh, give me a sec,” you said, thinking and moving to put things back in the refrigerator, “I…oof, late. Late. I stay super late today, because I’m covering for Jirou. She has a gig tonight. Yeah, I have my lunch break around fucking 3:30, and then I work until two in the morning.”

Midoriya winced, nose wrinkling. “Let me meet you for lunch, then. I’ll see if I can swing by after that, too, to bring you something then.”

“Oh. You don’t have to do that.”

“I know. I want to,” said Midoriya, and for barely a full second, he shot you the most devastatingly sincere smile you’ve ever seen in your life: boyish and endearing and a bit like distilled sunshine, all of his earnest devotion concentrated and aimed at you before simply switching it off as he looked away and removed his glasses, seemingly unaware of how very frantically your heart was banging about in your chest.

Once he was out the door, you grabbed your phone to scroll through the Midoriya thirst accounts, desperate for validation that someone else was thinking of him in that way.

[video description: a Deku fancam set to MARINA’s “Primadonna.” Clips from interviews, paparazzi, photo shoots, and social media flash in time to the beat, mostly focusing on the way a smiling Deku often rubs his lower lip with his index and middle fingers while he thinks.]

blueberrybakugou: fist me. who said that

chargenut: I just want. If I could just. Like for five minutes. Just.

igneousbastard: Every Deku picture is mind-bogglingly vogue. He’s the ultimate do I wanna be him or fuck him. Keep it coming king 👑 👑 👑

sakuraraka: he just looks like he’d be so nice to hold hands with. well that and to **** **** * *** ******** *** **** ** ******* ********* but i digress

kirishimashairdye: bites him bites him bites him bites him grabs his beautiful face and kisses it all over tweaks his nipples unzips his pants and pulls out his c—* GUNSHOTS *

kurapikas-ballandchain: whatever u say babygirl 💖

mmmmmidoriya: god i am so jealous of his soulmate. gets to shove her head between his thighs every day

dickuprint: @mmmmmidoriya you’ve seen who it is, right??? i am manifesting they make out in public so that we can see what deku does with his tongue then 👀 guess i’ll have to live vicariously through her for the rest of my LIFE.

mmmmmidoriya: @dickuprint i wish i had been hit by that quirk bc having a soulmate would fix me and every problem that ever existed

You lay back on the couch, holding your phone above your head and feeling unbearably fond of these unhinged people you’ve never met. Almost a shame that no one in your life could talk to you about Midoriya that way—except, perhaps, Uraraka, and she’s moved on. Still. Somehow it was comforting that all of these people, even though they’d never been the direct victim of a Midoriya smile, could feel so strongly for him. Their vehemence was infectious, and for the first time in three years, an invitation to adore Midoriya bloomed in your chest. So, you allowed yourself to open up your old feelings for him and made your first post.

assortedsoftcheeses: have we considered how sexy midoriya would be in reading glasses???? willing to commission fanart btw.

***

Silhouetted by the hallway light, Midoriya rapped his knuckles on your doorframe. “May I come in?”

“God, fuck,” you said, wiping at your nose, “Sure.”

House slippers scuffing on carpet, Midoriya approached cautiously while you smeared your tears over your face with your blanket, and he knelt by your bedside, looking up at you. He didn’t ask what was wrong. Simply waited. Put his hand next to yours, should you want it.

“I’m so fucked up about Shinsou in particular. He’s my best fucking friend and has always, always been there for me. Always a source of comfort.” You sat up in bed, adjusting the straps of your tank top. “I feel guilty for not being able to love him like he deserves. I do love him, y’know? But I can’t—I don’t have any impulse to love him romantically. He’s just—very important to me. I don’t want him out of my life because of our soulmate bond.”

Midoriya’s pinkie nudged yours. “He doesn’t have to be. So, let’s make time for you to spend with him.”

You balked, taken aback. “You’d be okay with that? You wouldn’t get jealous?”

Midoriya smiled gently, creases in his face lit by lamplight. “Sweetheart, I can’t get jealous of Shinsou; he’s your best friend. And, moreover, he’s probably still closer to you than I. You’re allowed to have space away from me, y’know?” He inched his hand underneath yours, his fingers curling upwards into yours, and he traced circles into your palm with a light graze of his middle finger—and that light touch shot a spark through you, more sensitive to his calloused skin than your weighted blanket or your too-soft pillow or Dango’s heat coming through the comforter from where she loafed on your feet. “In fact,” he continued, as if he hadn’t casually skyrocketed you from this plane of reality and back, “I’ve been considering a a project that Shinsou and you may fit perfectly into.”

And so Midoriya, Shinsou, and you coordinated your schedules to all head over to U.A., to the Aizawa hall, down to room 310, all the way at the end. Midoriya raised his hand to knock as you shot a nervous glance at Shinsou.

(Shinsou and you had a very specific dynamic when you hung out together, but adding Midoriya enhanced it in a way you couldn’t articulate. Nothing Shinsou normally did was sacrificed, but there was just something in how now there was someone to stand so closely to you that you felt his body heat, to explain in gratuitous detail his bulky camera equipment for the later birdwatching, to tease you to repeat your compliments towards him because he wanted you to admit it—it was different, yes, than just hanging out with Shinsou, whom you never had to try to impress, but something made you incredibly aware of Midoriya’s stupid, unstyled hair that was curlier than usual and his gesturing with an old, bulky, silver watch that he claimed was his father’s—something that added a safe sliver of excitement.)

“It’s unlocked,” called a voice that only had traces of his old rasp, and in you stepped to Shimura Tenko’s living space: summer-warm and cluttered in a purposeful way, with the wide windows propped open so that the white curtains wafted with the breeze, a mirror with fan mail from hero work taped to its glass, a skateboard mounted to the wall, a strategically planned gaming desk, and his red shoes next to Touya’s boots and Eri’s sandals by the door.

Midoriya absentmindedly helped you take off your jacket to hang it on the coatrack while you toed off your shoes, and you were smiling: Tenko and Eri sat across from each other on the couch, both sketching an angle of a still life scene (of a reflective water bottle, an overflowing bowl of shining stones, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figure, and a morning glory picked from the dorm flower bed) on a tiny table dragged to the middle of the rug. Todoroki Touya was sprawled out on Tenko’s bed, head dangling off the side and squinting as he read volume seven of something called GINSENG TEA X LUSTFUL BALLSACK.

“Hey, Izuku,” said Tenko, glancing one final time at the still life and his drawing before closing his sketchbook to stand. “You’re late.”

(God. It still shook you, whenever you thought about it, that the man who had been Shigaraki Tomura was doing well now, getting to act his age, getting to do hero work, getting to settle into comfort. Midoriya apparently visited him at least once a week and had gotten to know him well, and Shinsou had spent brief spurts of time with him when they both needed to be with Aizawa. Good for Tenko, of course, but you didn’t know how to talk to him. How do you talk to someone who changed the trajectory of the entire world?

But Midoriya brought you out of your head, because he was showing the same level of comfort with Tenko as he had outside with you and Shinsou, in how he warmly greeted these people and felt at home in this space. That brought down your nervousness to the same level as when you meet a friend’s friend for the first time.

[And a voice in the back of your head said that you didn’t need to try to get them to like you, because of course Tenko and Touya would like you. You’re their soulmate in another timeline.])

“Traffic was bad. It’s good to see you,” Midoriya replied, hand sliding to the small of your back, grounding you, even though the touch was unfamiliar. “Tenko, Touya—you know Shinsou, but I don’t believe you’ve met my soulmate yet?” Masterful how he’s calming you down and showing that he’s got everything under control in the same gesture. Competent bastard.

Midoriya nudged you towards Tenko as you exchanged names—unnecessary, really, since both of you knew who the other was—and waves of sorrow, pity, and affection washed over you as you looked him over: tired, with better posture, his hair swept out of his face—just some guy—and you fought the urge to hug him. And bolstered by Midoriya’s calming touch on your lower back, you instead did something Tenko might appreciate more: you held out your hand.

Something strange visibly passed through Tenko, his red eyes lighting the fuck up, and he clasped your hand, shaking it. “You’re bold.” You could’ve sworn he was suppressing a smile as he glanced from you to Midoriya. “Hope you stick around.”

“Deku,” said Eri from the couch, titling her head backwards over its arm to speak towards you, “Tell Tenko he should come to my watercolour class with me.”

“He can do what he wants,” said Midoriya, as Shinsou stepped aside to enquire Touya after the manga he was reading. “What’s so special about this class?”

“Oh, come on, Deku. It’d only be one time,” Eri said as Midoriya ruffled her hair, careful of her long, curving horn, “Tenko’s been saying how hard it is to draw reflective surfaces, and there’s gonna be a whole class session on them!”

Tenko shook his head. “I can’t paint.”

“You did that great painting with coffee of a boat that one time,” said Eri, tapping her pencil against her sketchbook.

“I couldn’t drink the coffee; I had to do something with it,” said Tenko, “I wasn’t trying to paint for real.” He sighed, shoulders heaving, and he turned back to you. “You want tea, or something? A snack?”

A few minutes later, the five of you sat together on the rug (Eri went downstairs), clutching mugs of decaf orange tea with a plate of grocery-store-bakery shortbread in the middle, and you began to plan what sort of Dungeons and Dragons game you all wanted to play.

“I may have some ideas for adventures in a fantasy setting,” said Midoriya with a completely straight face. You scoffed and rolled your eyes, and you were about to thump his chest when his arm came to rest behind you on the couch cushions; you found yourself swallowing at the acute awareness of the heat his defined bicep transferred to the back of your head.

(Weird. Usually, Shinsou was the person in a group hangout that you’d pay attention to the most, because you’d catch each other’s eye to make jokes, but somehow—somehow—you hated that you had to keep depending on that word—somehow, you wanted to pay the most attention to Midoriya, because you didn’t know what he’ll do next.)

Throughout all of the ideas for a homebrew campaign, the goosebumps on the back of your neck never settled. Midoriya doesn’t even have his undivided attention on you; he’s just talking to friends with enthusiasm and those expressive hands, silver watch clinking, and it’s exciting just to watch him. When he’s not looking at you, it’s like you can see him better—how he’s a good leader, a good friend, and a good, good man.

(And then, that tiny, evil voice in your mind whispered that it’s because when Midoriya looks at you, he looks with so much want that it’s blinding. That when he looks at you, his light blocks out everything else.)

***

You’ve had enough of the ocean. Enough of the heat. Sweating, you pulled the wide brim of your sunhat down over your face and once again moved your folding chair farther into the shade, its chair legs scuffing the deck. No one is going to persuade you to do any heavy lifting today; you’d melt.

Monoma felt the same, after getting a terrible sunburn, so he kept to whatever shadows the ship could offer, and he was likely below deck, reading his little detective novels—hopefully in silence, since Shinsou had announced he’d be taking a nap about an hour ago. You’d join them, but for some reason, seeing the water itself distracted you from the frequency at which the boat rocked and kept your stomach from turning.

So, you kept to the main deck, which allowed you to watch all of Endeavor’s—sorry, King Todoroki’s crewmen as they kept the ship running. Always strange, but you supposed that whom you knew as pro hero Burnin’ made for a fine ship captain. You respected how she didn’t defer to any of your party, especially Touya, even though she and the crew were yours to use for the mission to find Shouto.

Funny how only a month ago you’d been an enemy of the king, and now he’s sent some of his most trusted personnel with you with his blessing. Your attempt to break out of the dungeons had failed—well, you had successfully escaped, but once you’d located Midoriya, you’d run into a few problems: he’d been tied up in an infuriatingly sexy way, just as he’d described, and they’d since removed his trousers as well as his shirt. Cutting him free had taken time, since you’d only been able to commandeer a dull blade, and to slice the knots on either side of his neck, you’d had to press your boobs near Midoriya’s face. He’d wasted so much time apologising for his subsequent erection that the guards had caught up with you.

It had gone down, at least, by the time they’d dragged you to Touya’s childhood sitting room, still as luxurious and well-kept as when he’d first left, where the rest of your friends had been at a tea party, arguing over what little cheesecake was the best. A cup of tea had been shoved into your hands, and across the table, you’d caught Touya’s mocking gesture of putting his pinkie up while he’d sipped at his own tea.

The Todorokis had been pleased to see Touya again and had welcomed him and the rest of your party into the castle eagerly (you say the Todorokis: you mean Rei, Fuyumi, and Natsuo who opened the castle to you. Enji, it’d turned out, had more or less become a king in name only during an illness that confined him to his bedroom, leaving the actual governing of the kingdom to Rei. Apparently, Enji had seemed glad when he’d heard Touya had returned, but he'd merely turned over in bed to continue to read after nodding at the news). You and Midoriya had been issued a pardon once Touya had informed his family that you were his friends, and for almost a month, you’d camped out in the castle and explored the town. Thrilling, really, to rest in a place with clean beds and keen to provide multiple changes of clothes. Everyone had gotten to request what was for dinner a couple of times, which was lovely—adorable, really, the way Touya sighed happily into a bowl of soba made the same way as when he’d been eight years old.

But Touya had claimed he couldn’t take the familial doting forever—though you figured it might be pressure to take the crown soon—and he’d took your idea for an easy way out of the castle: why doesn’t your party go search for Shouto?

And thus the ship from Endeavor’s navy, staffed with his combat personnel who hadn’t had much to do in peacetime. You were off towards a partially mapped archipelago from which rumours of a mage who could wield both fire and ice came.

Heavy footsteps clonking down the stairs to the quarterdeck shattered your concentration on the deep, azure waves, and you’d hardly turned to look before Bakugou plopped directly onto the deck next to you, crossing his legs and leaning against your chair.

Bakugou reached for your hand and dropped it onto his head. “Scratch.”

You laughed through your nose. “Fine,” you said, curling your fingers into his hair for the first time that day—oof, his spikes were more pliant because he’d been sweating so hard. “What’s got you so worked up?”

Pouting, Bakugou huffed, and you offered a drink from your canteen to encourage him to speak. “Couldn’t beat Izuku and Touya to the crow’s nest,” he said after taking a swig, raising his head towards your touch, “Bein’ up that high when I’m not in dragon form—I don’t like it. Makes my head hurt.”

Now that you tilted the brim of your hat backwards, you could make out two figures skibbling around the rigging towards the top of the tallest of the ship’s three masts. You can’t discern who’s who, but one of them swipes at the other, who barks a laugh, and it’s good to see the both of them playing. They deserve it.

“I’m sorry that’s happening to you, Bakugou,” you said, swearing that he let out a sort of purr when you scratched near the base of his neck, “Would it help to be a dragon again? Fly behind us for a while? I can ask the captain.”

Bakugou shook his head, and then he strained his neck to rest his chin on your thigh. “I shouldn’t shift into a dragon until we’re near land. Shifting back into human form would leave us with the fiery, dragon carcass, and I don’t wanna burn down the ship with it.”

“That would put a damper on our journey,” you said, “I haven’t considered: do all shapeshifters physically leave their magical bodies behind when they turn back into a human? What do you normally do with your…”

You narrowed your eyes at the crow’s nest at someone’s shout. It’s too bright out today, under this perfectly clear, blue sky, and you’re blinded when you look their way. You held up a hand to shield your gaze from the sun as a cacophony of voices resounded across deck, able to make out before you did that one of them was falling from the nest, caught in a snapped section of rigging. In the moment Bakugou leapt to his feet and helped you up, a strident, clean crack made your stomach drop.

Both of you raced over to the small crowd of crewmen already lowering a grimacing Midoriya to the deck, hanging by the ankle caught in the rigging, and he winced, inhaling sharply, at the first touch from the medic.

“I’m fine,” said Midoriya, maintaining a shaky smile and holding up a hand to you, which you grasped once you dropped to your knees.

“No, you’re—you’re bleeding out, you asshole,” you said, gripping his hand harder than you needed to, “Drop the All Might grin.”

“I’m har—hardly bleeding out,” he said, but he relaxed into a closed-mouth smile as the medic cleaned the deep cut with her water magic, with Bakugou hounding her with questions on her method the entire time.

“What happened?” You scooted out of the way of the crewman who’d fetched a medical kit. “I thought you and Touya were—”

“We were being reckless. I misstepped and sliced my leg on an errant nail, and I fell due to surprise and got caught in the rigging. It’s not Touya’s fault,” said Midoriya, raising his voice just as Touya reached the bottom of the mast, looking less agitated once he heard.

Touya stepped out of the way of the pooling blood, and after the medic confirmed with him what’d happened, she said, “Midoriya, your ankle is broken. Looks like it was snapped by the ropes. The cut doesn’t reach the bone, but it’s deep. It’s gonna need to be wrapped as tightly as possible over this splint so that this flap of skin doesn’t fall off and stop the bleeding. I can do a temp one, but we’re gonna have to dock somewhere to get some—”

“I think I can do that,” you said, realising it as you spoke, “With my binding ceremony, I should be able to bind his injury as tightly as it needs to be. Monoma could transfigure the bandages into something more permanent.”

The medic only took a second to hesitate before enlisting Bakugou to help carry Midoriya below deck. You ran ahead to grab your tea whisk, and you were already kneeling on the floor of Midoriya’s bunk when they brought him inside. Bakugou’s mouth twitched at all of the blood seeping out of the gauze on Midoriya’s leg, but the medic yanked him by the elbow back above deck to sterilise the area.

Midoriya panted from the blood loss, eyes fluttering as you began your ceremony. “I don’t know how long I can stay upright. I—hahh, is it hot in here to you?”

Miniature tea plants pushed through the top layers of skin on your forearm, growing to maturity at a rapid pace. “A little,” you said, glancing at his steadily moistening forehead, the first bead of sweat dripping down the curve of his cheekbone.

His breathing grew heavier as your magic sun-dried tealeaves and steamed them. Grimacing, Midoriya said, “Forgive me for this,” and started unlacing the front of his shirt.

Oh, his shirt is coming off? You tried to seem very interested in magically kneading, oxidising, and drying tealeaves, but Midoriya noticed how distracted you were, raised a brow, and, with an incredulous smirk, lifted his shirt to flash you his fucking nipple, perked up from the fabric rubbing against it.

“Oh, you like that, don’tcha?” Midoriya asked, not that he needed to: your teakettle boiled over so quickly because it matched the heat rising to your face. Grinning to himself, he pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it near his bag.

You channelled the centre of your binding magic into the bandages, taking in how much blood was seeping through the previous ones, how it might affect Midoriya for months if this doesn’t work out.

I hope this helps.

Commanding your magic to bind tightly around Midoriya’s wound, you redirected residuals automatically trickling into the teakettle back to the bandages. Midoriya must put a lot of trust in you, considering you’ve never used your magic in this exact way, but since it’s still a binding ceremony, the credits might just transfer.

“No need to be so nervous,” Midoriya was saying, slumping into the bed now that his shirt’s off, as if his tits weren’t just out there, “You’re still on guard with me. I’m waiting for you to be comfortable.”

“Y’know, the best way to stop residuals going into the tea is to have no tea to go into,” you said, ignoring him and pouring him a cup, which you shoved his way, “Drink up.”

While you prepared your own tea, Midoriya swallowed his like it was a shot, and he even screwed up his face and thumped his chest like it’d been alcohol. “Gracious,” he said, peeling his eyes open, “That does not go gently into the night.”

“Excuse me?” you asked, magic faltering slightly before renewing the channel binding his wounds. You took a sip from your teacup, but it was the same tea as always, so you were taken aback when he returned his empty teacup, smelling like bitter, medicinal residuals.

“Pour another cup for me,” said Midoriya, and both of you followed the arc of liquid into Midoriya’s teacup, resembling standard green tea. When he lifted it to his lips, he shook his head. “It’s the same medicine as before, but how?” His eyes lightened, corners of his mouth twitching upwards. “You poured yourself a normal cup of tea in between.”

“I think,” you said, in a small voice, staring into your own teacup and wondering at what more your magic was capable of, “I don’t know. I didn’t do anything differently. Aside from the bandages, but, y’know.”

“Hm,” said Midoriya, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, fingers curling into his wet bangs, “Would you mind getting my notebook out of my bag for me?”

“I shouldn’t move until the ceremony’s over,” you said, nodding towards the slowly-twining bandages, almost to his ankle.

“Right,” said Midoriya, tongue flicking over his lower lip, eyes shining, “I can wait. But the liquid in the teakettle physically changed materials, if in taste, rather than appearance, temperature, and texture, and it changed back for when you needed to drink it. Do you think there’s a subconscious element to your magic that adjusts itself for the person receiving the magic? Because it wasn’t even purposeful, because you’re trying to put all of your magic on my wound, but if it still manifested in the tea—”

(And as your gaze drifts upwards to Bakugou’s bunk, blankets draped over the side into Midoriya’s space, it hits you, the overall, cultural, social reason why it hasn’t been easy trying to love Midoriya, affecting not just you but nearly everyone who meets him: loving Midoriya is like loving the sun.

Because no one needs to think about loving the sun. It’s obvious how it’s the most important star in the sky, how it’s built into our everyday lives.

And so you don’t notice it until it’s paired with something else, that highlights, by contrast, the beauty of the sun. Put it with the moon in eclipse or the tilt of the Earth, and it’s suddenly an interesting thing to talk about, like how some people only discuss Midoriya in conjunction with Todoroki, or how his personality balances Bakugou’s, or how he expresses romance and sexuality in how he treats Uraraka. Talking about Midoriya by himself isn’t very interesting to a lot of people, because he seems to be the default good, and for some people, good is boring. Bringing in someone different downplays his apparent blandness.

You’re guilty of it. You’ve been musing over how he adds to the hangouts with Shinsou, how he works the room during DND sessions, how he’s part of a romantic unit only with Uraraka. How he fits into hero society. You haven’t been fair to Midoriya. You’ve never looked at him as just Izuku.)

“—then it comes down to desire, I figure, that changes it,” Midoriya was saying, and after taking a breath, he gestured towards his ankle. “Looks like the binding’s done.”

Breaking you from your thoughts, the strain of magic came to a halt as the final bandage looped closely around Midoriya’s ankle, sealing it. “Yeah,” you said, moving from your kneeling position to examine your work, “What was that about desire?”

“You wanted to heal me, yes? That desire probably drove elements in your ceremony to change, I’m guessing.”

His bandages were perfectly set, perfectly holding pressure. “I did wish really hard.” I hope this helps rattled in your head. “Feel any pain?”

“None at all. You did well. We can add this to your arsenal, I suppose—and you don’t have to get me my notebook,” said Midoriya, beaming up at you as you stood, the tea ceremony equipment evaporating. He caught your hand before you could leave, his touch delicate as he guided the palm of your hand to his lips. “I’ll remember,” he said, bright eyes holding you in place, “since it’s you.”

That settled it. You were going to chase the sun.

***

When the ship reached the archipelago, it didn’t take long to realise that it was protected by an invisible dome. As a dragon, Bakugou found a crevice near the top that he could slink through, so so long as Bakugou could carry it on his back, it could get to the islands.

In your first flight, Midoriya held you closely from behind, and he covered your eyes with his hand when you grew too nervous, claiming that your flustered expression was bad for his heart.

You found Shouto on the east side of the island, long-haired and tanned while net-fishing among stone columns that held up houses before a hurricane destroyed them.

“Hm,” Shouto was saying, coaxed into sitting around a freezing fire lit by Touya, using Monoma’s cast-iron spit to stab through his fish, “If I’m using my fire and ice magic enough for my father to track me, then perhaps I should learn another discipline.”

“God, no,” said Touya, giving a dismissive wave, “We were just told to find you, not bring you back. And we didn’t promise to say where you were, either.”

“You’re allowed to use your magic, regardless,” Midoriya said, “It’s your magic, not his.”

“Good,” said Shouto, nodding, “My companions do not wish to participate in society. I would prefer to stay with them.”

“How many of them are there?” Midoriya set his crutch against the rock he was sitting on and instead leaned more against you. “Your friends, I mean.”

You met them soon enough at dinner: Aizawa Shouta, who had crafted the dome around the archipelago (his magic could create the perfect conditions to sleep, including the cancellation of others’ obnoxious magic), and Shimura Tenko, who had to be pried away from the dragon body Bakugou had crawled out of (Tenko’s magic allowed him to talk to animals and know what is in their heart of hearts. He emphasised that this was vital, since cats lie to you).

You couldn’t force anything into your stomach for how sick you felt, and eventually you set your fork down to tap the back of Midoriya’s free hand, which he flipped over for you to hold, lacing your fingers together. At your morose silence, Midoriya made an excuse to the group about needing his leg rebound, and, leaning on both you and his crutch, he led you away from the fire on the shore and towards Shouto’s hut.

Shutting the bamboo door behind you, you helped ease Midoriya into a chair before pinching the bridge of your nose and speaking in an unsteady voice. “That’s everyone. All of my soulmates in one place. I don’t fucking get why they’ve kept popping up. Presumably we have everyone we know mirrored here, so why do they have to be the ones we spend time with?” you asked, beginning to pace in the tiny room.

Midoriya leant his crutch against the table, settling into his seat with stiffness, bamboo creaking under his weight. “Do you want to leave? Separate from the group?”

“No, I—” You sucked in through your teeth. “I hate that I have a sort of fucked-up harem. It doesn’t serve any purpose other than to fill me with guilt. I don’t know how to handle it, and I don’t want to handle it. I know that leaving everybody would also fill me with a different kind of guilt, so I know leaving isn’t the solution, but I still don’t know. I don’t know where to go or what to do or if I should tell them at all. These versions of our friends, anyway,” you said, running both hands backwards through your hair, “God, it’s too complicated. It’s too much to focus on that there’s no focus. I—” You spun on your heel to face him and had to cut yourself off: Midoriya was taking great pains to slide out of his chair, to kneel at the end of your path.

“No, what’re you—? Let me help you back up,” you said, rushing back towards him, but he refused your help.

Midoriya offered his hand upwards to you. “Isn’t it a relief, then,” he said, watching your fingertips graze his before sliding down into his palm, “that you know where you come home to?” His fingers curled into yours. “I can’t speak for everyone, of course, and I wouldn’t want to, so allow me to be selfish: I’m here. I plan to stay,” said Midoriya, so softly it was hard to hear him over the night wind, “I want you. No one coming into our lives is going to change that. You say there’s no focus, but you’ve been my sole focus for almost a year now. I can’t imagine I was satisfied with anything else. And I will admit, my dear, that it makes me burn with jealousy that you spend so much time looking away from me, even in well-intentioned worry. I want all of you.”

Squeezing your hand in his, Midoriya brought the fabric of your skirt to his mouth to kiss it, keeping eye contact. “Please. Please. All I am is yours. My heart is yours; these hands are yours; this cock is yours. All of me is yours. All you have to do is ask for it, and if you’re always looking away from me, you won’t. Please look at me. Please let me help you.” He dropped your skirt, his fingers grazing your hip as he shifted his weight off of his injured leg, and he held your hip to steady himself, never tearing his gaze away from you.

The number-one hero’s bulky figure was on his knees in front of you despite his bad leg, squeezing your hand like he’ll never let you go and pressing his face to the front of your dress.

“Tell me you’ll let me in. Tell me I’m the only one,” said Midoriya, nuzzling the spot where your thigh met your hip, “Tell me that only I’m allowed to keep you warm.”

The sun was once thought to be the centre of the universe. It’s time he became the centre of yours.

“Tell me that I’m not alone in this. That you can’t wait any longer,” he said, bright eyes watering without overflowing, and you looked directly into the sun.

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