Work Text:
His boy was working so hard.
Toshinori sat in the cramped wooden chair, elbows resting on the chipped pressboard table that wasn’t tall enough for him—they never were—and watched the little green GPS dot slide around on his phone screen. The movement was a familiar cycle by now. When it wasn’t hovering anxiously in one spot, the dot would move at a steady clip in some random direction for a number of minutes, then it would stop, then wait, then launch off at astounding speed in a straight line like an arrow from a quiver.
After that would be the slow approach, circling or zigzagging between buildings, each movement more careful and cautious than the last. Finally, without warning, the dot would explode into frenetic jittering motion, each spasm of pixels a kick or dodge or close call that he couldn’t see, but could vividly imagine in his mind’s eye.
And then it would abruptly go still, deathly still, and he would stop breathing and reach for the call button on instinct as thoughts of the worst pounded through his head. But after an eternity of counting the seconds, it would finally move, and his heart would start beating again, and he would watch the dot shuffle around a little before it shot off towards the nearest operational police station, quarry in tow.
He waited until Midoriya’s signal left the station before hitting the call button. It only took a second before the boy picked up.
“Is everything all right?” Midoriya’s voice echoed through the speaker, slightly muffled and metallic-sounding through his costume’s faceguard. Toshinori could hear the strain in it, an ever-present edge of worry that had settled into the boy’s voice months ago and never left since.
“I’m fine,” Toshinori replied. “I’ve found a place where we can rest for the night. One of the police safe houses.” Hawks had given him a list of some empty apartments across the city that the police used for their operations, and thankfully, they seemed to have escaped the notice of whoever had gutted the rest of their nation’s secrets. Midoriya would instantly refuse if Toshinori suggested they commandeer some civilian’s house or, god forbid, spend the night at an evacuation center, but the boy deserved a warm bath and a night of sleep that wasn’t in the back seat of a car.
“Oh... that’s good...” Midoriya murmured, sounding distracted. “I just picked up on something nearby, I need to go take a look. I’ll call you back.”
That was the same thing he’d said the last three times Toshinori called. “Young Midoriya,” he said, “you’ve been picking up on things nearby for over 36 hours straight now.”
There was a bristling moment of silence. “Yeah, I have, because there’s a lot to deal with,” Midoriya finally replied, voice clipped. Toshinori didn’t respond, and the empty pause crackled between them before Midoriya caved and broke it. “You’ve gone for 72 without stopping before!”
Toshinori sighed. He knew how he had to approach this. “And I made mistakes when I did. Do you want to risk putting someone in harm’s way because you were too tired to do your best?”
Midoriya let out a frustrated breath. When he finally spoke, it was quiet and bitter. “Fine,” he muttered. Then, in a softer tone, “...I’m sorry. Are you at the safe house?”
“Yes. The entrance is in an alley between the buildings. Ground level. I’ll let you in when you get here.”
“Okay. I’ll be there soon.” Midoriya hung up before Toshinori could say anything else.
The two of them really were alike. Asking Midoriya to take care of himself wouldn’t work, but asking him to take care of his ability to protect others would. It had taken Toshinori a lifetime to realize that the distinction was stupid and meaningless. He wished he could explain that to Midoriya in a way the boy would understand. The only things he knew how to teach were his very worst habits, and Midoriya picked those up like a natural.
It didn’t take long for Midoriya to send himself launching towards Toshinori’s location. He spanned half the trip in one enormous leap, then closed the rest of the distance in a few scattered hops. Once Midoriya’s location dot was right on top of his own, Toshinori opened the door and peered out into the dim, dusty alley. A second later, Midoriya dropped straight down from above in a whoosh of tattered teal fabric.
The boy must have activated Float at the last moment, because he suddenly slowed in midair and pingponged gently off the ground. But he didn’t stop using it quite fast enough—maybe from lack of experience, maybe from sleep-deprived reaction time, maybe both—and his momentum sent him bouncing back up at an angle, glancing off the alley wall in a lazy arc that left him suspended upside-down a few meters in the air.
“Ah...!” he dog-paddled the empty air for a second in delayed panic. Definitely sleep-deprived. Toshinori laughed at the sight, and Midoriya froze and craned his neck down. At least he still had the wits to keep the Quirk active, instead of turning it off too late and falling on his head.
God, if he were to lose focus like this in the middle of a fight... Toshinori should have told him to rest so much sooner.
“Here, my boy.” He reached a hand up, and Midoriya took it, using the anchor point to twist around and orient his feet towards the ground again.
He looked haggard. His costume was scuffed and torn, smeared with grime and blood (his blood? Or someone else’s? Please, let it be someone else’s). The jaunty little rabbit ears that sat atop his hood—lord, Toshinori had nearly lost it in front of the whole class the first time he saw them; could Midoriya have made the tribute any more obvious?—had met their end long ago, and fluttered around Midoriya’s head like a tattered halo.
“I’m learning as fast as I can...” Midoriya murmured as he sank down. He dropped the last bit of distance suddenly and hit the ground with a clang of his metal-soled boots. “The timing is... I still have to focus too hard, it doesn’t feel natural yet...”
“You’ve picked it up incredibly fast already,” Toshinori said with a warm smile. “You’ll have it mastered in no time.”
Midoriya didn’t answer him. If he smiled at the praise, Toshinori couldn’t see it under the layers of fabric and metal. The only part of Midoriya’s face he could see were the boy’s pupils, flickering an ominous electric-green from the shadows of his mask as he took in their surroundings.
“This is an apartment complex...” Midoriya said slowly. A tense undertone ran through his voice.
“It’s been evacuated,” Toshinori replied. “I checked. You won’t put anyone in danger here.”
Midoriya’s hunched shoulders dropped a fraction, and after one last glance around, he hurried past Toshinori and through the door. Toshinori followed with an internal sigh of relief.
Midoriya took a few steps into the apartment, then stopped and surveyed the space. It was a house, but it wasn’t a home. The walls were bare, the furniture depressingly functional. Even the cheapest hotel rooms at least tried to inject some color and cheer into the experience, but this place didn’t bother with the pretense. It knew full well that it was somewhere to hunker down for the night and nothing more. Aizawa would have approved of the bleak rationality.
Toshinori locked the deadbolt. “It’s not much, but there’s power and water,” he said.
Midoriya reached back and unhooked a few clasps, letting his metal faceguard sag down to his chest, then flipped back his hood with a sigh. His wild green curls had been matted down by the costume, but he shook his head and they immediately sprang back with a vengeance. Toshinori smiled.
“Are you hungry now, or do you want to wash off first?” he asked.
Midoriya glanced back at him, and Toshinori’s smile faded. The boy had dark circles under his eyes, and his gaze was... hollow. Haunted. Weighed down with sheer, numbing exhaustion. Weeks and months of unending stress, all made so much worse by lack of sleep.
He should have told the boy to rest so much sooner.
“Um... I don’t have much of an appetite right now,” he said. “Is there hot water?”
“There is!” Toshinori replied, and a flicker of life sparked into Midoriya’s eyes. “Take as long as you want. It shouldn’t run out.” Midoriya nodded and glanced back towards the door, scanning around until his eyes alighted on the travel bag Toshinori kept near the exit with the rest of their things.
One would think that a safe house, intended to let people minimize outside contact, ought to have a clothes washer inside. But it didn’t, so Toshinori used the kitchen sink and the scant supplies under it to get the worst of the grime off Midoriya’s costume while the boy showered. The place didn’t have a balcony or a clothesline either (and even if it did, wouldn’t that be a hilarious way to tip off their enemies after all this secrecy), so the outfit went up to dry in an open closet.
He looked at the teal-and-black fabric draped over the closet rod, dripping water down onto the carpet. At the cramped, musty apartment, windowless, only half-lit because some of the fixtures had burnt out. At their belongings piled near the door in case they needed to escape quickly.
His boy’s debut should have been so different.
Midoriya had found his appetite by the time he came out of the bathroom. He wolfed down what Toshinori set in front of him like he hadn’t touched a crumb of food in a year. Of course he’d be starving: he’d been running around throwing Quirks left and right for a day and a night and another day. One For All was a miraculous power, but incredibly taxing. Even back in his prime, Toshinori had to eat like a horse to keep up with it and prevent his body from breaking itself down. Maybe he could use that angle to convince the boy to stop and take meals more often.
Eat, because otherwise you won’t be able to use your Quirk as well.
Eat, because watching you run yourself into the ground is ripping my heart in half.
In the middle of a mouthful of rice, Midoriya let out a sudden full-body flinch. He choked, coughed, eyes wide.
Toshinori sat up in alarm. “Are you all right?”
“Yh—” another cough. “Yes, I’m fine.” Midoriya grimaced and swallowed, then coughed some more. “...I think I got rice up the back of my nose,” he sniffed. Then he jerked again, like he’d been jolted with an electric prod.
Was he injured? Was—wait. “Is this the one Quirk?” Toshinori asked. “The fourth’s? ...Shinomori’s?”
“Yeah...” Midoriya said, squeezing his eyes shut briefly and rubbing his forehead. “It’s... reacting to something off in the distance. It’s not close. I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”
Danger Sense, the Quirk of the fourth One For All user. A passive ability that triggered to alert its holder of any threats nearby. After its time incubating inside One For All, “nearby” became “anywhere within several blocks,” and the “alert” became a sensation that, according to Midoriya, felt a bit like being stabbed in the head with an ice pick.
“...You said you can talk to the vestiges now, correct?” Toshinori asked. “Did he tell you if there’s a way to turn it off? Or... reduce the range?”
Midoriya scowled and picked at his rice. “I remember asking him, but he just laughed and said it was why he became a hermit. Maybe it’ll get better over time.”
Toshinori frowned. That might be so, but Midoriya was suffering now.
Midoriya continued between bites. “I’m starting to be able to talk to them when I’m awake, too. But right now, it’s like... trying to hold smoke in my hands... I lose them if there’s any kind of distraction.”
“Still, that’s...” Toshinori let out a short laugh. “It’s incredible, all of this. And you’re taking it in so quickly. I’m more amazed at you every day.”
Midoriya didn’t smile. “....It’s... a lot,” he murmured, and the exhaustion in his voice sent a knife through Toshinori’s heart.
Going from one Quirk to seven... it should have shot Midoriya straight over the moon with giddy excitement. Toshinori never realized how much he missed the muttering, the rushed scrawl in those lined notebooks like the boy was trying to pour an ocean of thought onto the page. The pure joy of learning and discovering and eagerly anticipating everything the future had in store.
Even before the world fell apart completely, it had been a long time since Toshinori had seen that bright-eyed, unbridled enthusiasm. Midoriya’s smiles had become further and further apart, cautious, fleeting, blunted by all the things that weren’t supposed to happen to high schoolers, things that weren’t supposed to happen to anyone. Things Toshinori had sworn to protect the world from, so nobody would have to go through life with the expression he saw on Midoriya’s face right now.
Midoriya flinched a few more times as he finished his food. As he ate, he kept casting furtive glances over Toshinori’s shoulder, towards the door. Finally, he pushed his empty bowl away from him and stood up.
“It’s not close, but I should still check it out...” he began.
Toshinori caught his gaze and held it. “You need to try and rest.”
The boy’s face darkened, but he didn’t argue. Even with food in him, he looked drained, ready to keel over.
“There’s a bed, and a couch,” Toshinori prompted. “I’m still not sure which is more comfortable.”
Midoriya drifted over to the bed in the corner of the room, looked down at it. Then turned back.
“You’ll keep watch?” he asked.
“Of course,” Toshinori said, and finally, the boy relented and crawled under the sheets, curling up in a little ball with his back to the room.
Toshinori let out a quiet sigh and cleaned up the table, then sat back down and pulled up a few of the scant police reports from that day.
He tried to pay attention to the walls of text. Every few minutes, he heard a rustle of fabric as Midoriya shifted around. He glanced over the top of his phone just in time to see the boy let out another jolting flinch and curl up tighter, clutching the sheets in a clenched fist.
God. Was there somewhere else he could take the boy? Some isolated cottage out in the countryside, away from other people, where the Quirk would stop tormenting him until he could handle it better? But no, they’d never make it out of the city undetected, and there wasn’t a square block inside the city that didn’t have some kind of malicious intent rearing its head nearby.
Finally, after two harsh jerks, back-to-back, Midoriya threw off the sheets and sat up.
“I’m gonna go check it out,” he announced, pushing himself out of bed with a little stumble.
Toshinori got to his feet and crossed the room as Midoriya made his way towards the closet where the costume hung. He planted himself between the outfit and the boy.
“You need to try and rest,” he repeated. “You can’t fight like this. You’ll only get yourself hurt, and then you won’t be able to help anyone.”
Midoriya didn’t reply, just glowered at him with bleary eyes and tried to sidestep around him, but Toshinori reached out an arm to block his path. Midoriya let out something like a snarl and tried to shove it aside.
“Midoriya!” he grabbed the boy by the shoulders. It was an empty gesture, and they both knew it. Midoriya could overpower him easily nowadays if he wanted to, even without any Quirks. “Stop. Please.” I love you. I can’t watch you do this to yourself.
Midoriya struggled briefly in his grip, rage and exhaustion and frustration flashing across his face. Then his whole body jerked under Toshinori’s hands as the Quirk struck again, and he let out an awful low noise, face twisted up in pain.
“I...” he whispered, and something in his expression seemed to crumble. “I can’t... I—” The rest of his words were swallowed up by a pitiful sob.
“I should’ve... learned faster...” he choked. “I should’ve fought harder, this is all my fault, I need to, to...” A tear rolled down his face, then another and another, and Toshinori’s heart broke. His boy had spent all this time trying to be strong, trying to be an inspiration, trying to master something that no human being had mastered before, all while the world fell to pieces around him... trying to hold the whole world on his shoulders, just like his mentor had taught him to.
“No,” Toshinori said. “None of this your fault, do you understand?” He pulled Midoriya closer, and the boy clung to his shirt like it was a life preserver, wracked with hitching, gasping sobs so strong that Toshinori felt like his arms were the only thing stopping Midoriya’s body from shaking itself apart. God, it really was only his worst habits that he passed on. Midoriya was a child. Nobody could shoulder that kind of crushing weight without suffering. Toshinori knew that better than anyone. Why had he ever told the boy not to cry when he needed it?
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he murmured. “You’ve gone beyond what I ever asked of you, you always have. I’ve always been proud of you.” You’re perfect. You’re more than I ever deserved.
Midoriya just clung harder, breath coming in quick, harsh gulps as the emotions washed over him. Toshinori gingerly walked the boy a few steps over, to the couch, so he wouldn’t just crumple onto the threadbare carpet, and let Midoriya burrow against his side, folding the boy up in his arms as securely as he could. He couldn’t give very comforting hugs in this bony body, but he’d try his best. It was all his poor boy had.
It took a long time, months of bottled-up tears flooding out, as Toshinori murmured comforting words and gently rubbed little circles in Midoriya’s back. Every time it seemed like the boy was starting to calm down, he’d get another jab of Danger Sense and the tears would start anew.
But finally, finally, Midoriya’s breathing smoothed out from shuddering gasps into sporadic hiccups and then to slow, even breathing. He usually transformed into a stammering ball of apologies whenever he cried around Toshinori, but this time he looked too exhausted to do anything but stare distantly at the empty air, with that wrung-out, dazed look that came after channeling too many heavy emotions at once. He didn’t try to pull away, just lay there, warm against Toshinori’s side, face pressed into his shirt.
Toshinori didn’t dare to move, just sat quietly and felt the steady rise and fall of the boy’s chest under his arm. He had no idea what to say anymore, or if he was supposed to say anything at all. The moment felt ethereal, a fragile bubble that could shatter at any moment.
Then Midoriya flinched yet again with a sharp breath, clutching Toshinori’s shirt tighter. God, what was he supposed to do?
Finally, Midoriya spoke, quiet and hoarse. “Can... can you tell me one of your stories? From behind the scenes?”
Toshinori felt an ache in his chest. This had been Midoriya’s favorite thing for a long time: hearing the scandalous tales of events or rescues or fights that never made it onto TV, because they’d gotten hilariously botched, or were incriminating, or indecent, or otherwise unfit to air. The hidden side of the great All Might that nobody else got to see, a gleeful little secret shared just between the two of them.
And despite every humiliating mistake he admitted, the boy still looked at him with stars in his eyes, still hung on his every word like it was spun from gold. He didn’t deserve that look, he never had, but Midoriya gave it to him anyway.
“Of course, my boy,” he murmured. “Let me think...”
He’d told a lot of stories already. Countless events that had been suppressed, glossed over, erased. So many years of fine-tuning his image, so he could show the world the perfect, unshakable symbol he thought they needed. If more people had been able to hear these stories—if he had allowed them to see that he was only human after all—would society have crumbled as violently as it had? Would the people feel as betrayed as they did now?
It was a little too late to wonder about any of that.
“Oh...” he said, “Did I ever tell you about the time I helped break the U.A. cafeteria?”
Midoriya craned his head up to look at him. “Wh-what...?” he frowned. “Why would you break into the cafeteria?”
“No, no no, young Midoriya. We didn’t break into it. We did much better than that.”
Midoriya shifted, nestling his head back down against Toshinori’s collarbone. Still not pulling away. Toshinori once again felt the sense of tiptoeing around the edge of something profound. He cleared his throat, and began.
“It was my second semester at U.A., and one of my friends had a Quirk that acted much like a microwave. Dangerous, but fantastically versatile. Now, I’m not sure if you’ve watched the staff loading things into the storeroom behind the dining area, but one day, we happened to see them unload a fifty-kilo bag of corn kernels, and, you know, we got very curious...”
He settled into the familiar rhythmic cadence he used with these stories, but quieter, without the bombastic punctuation or sweeping gestures he usually added for flair. He explained how popcorn could become amazingly dense when you packed fifty kilos of it inside a very small space, and how, yes, it was possible to start a grease fire if you accidentally punched through a frying vat because you were panicking and still not very good at controlling your brand-new Quirk...
As he spoke, he could feel the tension gradually ebb from Midoriya’s frame. Every now and then, the boy would flinch in his arms, but he relaxed again soon after, distracted by the story or just overpowered by sheer exhaustion. Other times, some silly detail would draw out a short laugh, or a smile, the soft warm smile that Toshinori was afraid had been lost forever, and Toshinori’s heart would overflow into his throat and he’d have to swallow and take a deep breath before continuing.
By the time Toshinori recounted how he and his friends discovered that the cafeteria’s support beams were not, in fact, built to code, Midoriya’s eyes had slid closed and his breathing was slow and even. One hand still loosely clutched Toshinori’s shirt, occasionally twitching in the little sporadic jerks that came with the tide of sleep.
He spoke softly, not sure if the boy could even hear him anymore, not sure whether stopping or continuing would be more likely to rouse him. “So, to sum it up... by the time school let out, Nana had already gotten thirteen phone calls about the whole thing. And I had to try and explain that—”
Midoriya shifted. “Seventeen,” he murmured into Toshinori’s shirt.
“Hm?”
“She says she got seventeen...” Midoriya’s eyes were still closed, his tone dreamy, half-asleep. “She says... she never laughed harder in her entire life than she did that day.”
He went numb. “Oh...” he said, “yes, she’d know better than me, wouldn’t she...” and then his throat closed and he couldn’t say anything else.
He still hadn’t really processed it, hadn’t tried to open that particular box yet. These last few weeks, when he sat still and quiet, he thought he could feel a tug at his chest, barely perceptible, like overhearing the faint muffled murmur of conversation from another room. And every now and then, it was like he could feel the outlines of that warm, rich, achingly familiar laugh, so close he could almost touch it, and the grief and longing would hit him like a truck all over again.
“I’m glad you got to meet her,” he finally said, in a low, thick whisper. “I’m glad she’s there with you.”
There was a long pause, and he wondered if the boy had fallen asleep. “You’re... here too, you know...” Midoriya finally replied, his words slow. “I told you that... right?”
It took him a moment to understand. “You did...” he replied. “It’s a little weird, huh?” A strange glowing copy of himself, inside a Quirk. Hopefully he wasn’t making a fool of himself in there.
“Yeah... ‘s kinda weird... but... I’m glad...” the boy let out a contented little sigh. “You’re... here...”
His chest felt like it was going to burst open. He wanted to draw his boy close, squeeze him as tight as he could, but he couldn’t, he didn’t want to startle him and snatch away his hard-won sleep. He let out a slow, quavering breath.
“I always will be,” he whispered, and Midoriya let out a soft murmur that might have been a word. Whatever it was, it sounded peaceful.
After that, Midoriya didn’t stir, didn’t flinch. Finally free to rest.
For a while, Toshinori just looked at him. The soft green curls, still a little damp from the shower. The hand grasping his shirt, smooth young skin marred with scars.
Toshinori put those scars there. He might as well have broken the bones himself. He made so many mistakes, too many to count, too many to atone for. Everything he could’ve done wrong, he did, and his boy was left to pay the price. Trying to fight the evil Toshinori should have destroyed, trying to save the society Toshinori had groomed into a time bomb.
Toshinori’s body was a husk, his power used up. He was no help to anyone anymore. The only thing he had left now was... this. Being here. Living up to that cheesy catchphrase.
I can’t do much, but I can stay by your side.
He could feel the tug in his chest, the warm muffled murmurs, too far away to hear clearly. He gently, carefully rested a hand on his boy’s head.
I’ll be with you, all the way to the end.
