Avengerrevenger - AvengerRevenger

♡~Masterlist~ ♡

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Fics:

• Sweet and Sour Chapter 1 You are forced to ask Draco, of all people, to become your tutor. He agrees, but asks for a high price that compromises everything you strive for.

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• Sweet and Sour Chapter 2 Things between you and Draco take a drastic and spicy turn in the days before your study date.

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• Sweet and Sour Chapter 3 Malfoy's bitchy personality undertakes an odd change; maybe it's because you are destined to fuck him later today.

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• Sweet and Sour Chapter 4 You're losing control today, hardly able to make it through your study session in desperate need for Draco; he feels the same.

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• Sweet and Sour Chapter 5 Draco's payment arrives; you spend a steamy sex-filled night with the Slytherin Prince.

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• Sweet and Sour Chapter 6 Coming down from your first night with Draco, you can't keep your hands off each other, enjoying a comical love feast in the middle of the night.

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• Sweet and Sour Chapter 7 Waking up blissfully in Draco's arms, you are relishing your new relationship. How will your crazy friends react when they see you walking down the hall from his room?

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• Sweet and Sour Chapter 8 Snuggling Draco on the Quidditch field after practice, he nips you off to a corner of the grounds to reveal yet another kinky side of himself.

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• Sweet and Sour Chapter 9 When things go sour between you and Harry after a failed attempt to tell him of your relationship with Draco, Draco proves to have more heart than the Gryffindor

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One Shots:

• Whimsical Comedic Insane Draco x Reader Smut

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• POV DomReader x SubDraco Smut drabble

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Imagines:

• Hot and Bothered Draco (masturbation)

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• Sex on the Hogwarts Express (exhibitionism)

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• Sex with Draco

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• Giving Draco a blowjob (rough)

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• Draco lusting over you in Class (masturbation)

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• Draco's ecstatic about you riding him

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• Draco getting aroused by your singing and dancing

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• Draco getting turned on by you being you

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• Draco wanting you in Class

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• Jealous Draco in Class (fluff)

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• Sexual invitation at the Malfoy's Dinner

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• Intense sex with Draco

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• Hogwarts Boys masturbation habits

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• Draco in love with Reader

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• Young Draco in love with Reader (fluff)

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• Draco noncon (dark)

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• Draco jerks off to you in the mornings

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• Draco and Theo are in love with you

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• Daddy Draco

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• Through the years with Draco

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• Yandere Draco kisses you against your will

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"Silly" things:

• Did I just wank to Draco at 3 a.m. ?

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• House to yourself?

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• Uncircumcised Draco~

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• Draco's Boggart (purely silly)

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• A one-liner to cheer you up~

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• Draco's b-day~

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• Theo wants you ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

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• Draco's advice when sad

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• His walk

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Last updated July 29th 2022

curse-breaker [part 3/3]

summary: You're the Mystic Arts' best and brightest when it comes to breaking ancient curses, and Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme...well, he's the Mystic Arts' best when it comes to everything else. But when a normal day together at New York City's Sanctum Sanctorum is turned on its head by an invitation from Tony Stark himself to attend this year's Stark Industries Gala, you find that you need to clarify what, exactly, you and Stephen are to each other, and not just to the world at large.

pairing: Stephen Strange/Sorcerer!Reader

warnings: Literally 90% of this chapter is just smut. We've got us some magical mind-reading and mind sex, sex magic, face-sitting, edgeplay, P in V sex, creampie...I think that just about covers it! DNI and DNR if you're under 18!!

word count: 11.9k

a/n: Finally, the smut chapter! Let's jump right in! If you're looking for earlier chapters, though, you can find them here: [part 1 here] [part 2 here]

“So we’re looking for a picture of a guy with tentacles on his face.  Anything else you can remember?”  Stephen asked, magically flicking through the pages of his book quickly.

“Not really,” you sighed, waving your hand again and again to skim through your own book’s pages rapidly.

“Mm.  Well, we’ll find it eventually,” Stephen sighed.  “Though I am very tempted to just use the Eye of Agamotto to get through this in the next two minutes.”

“Pretty sure you’re supposed to save that for serious problems,” you remarked.

“Yeah, well, I can think of a lot of other things I’d seriously rather be doing right now,” Stephen grumbled.  You hummed in quiet agreement, but, to your relief, Stephen didn’t actually reach for the relic around his neck; as much as you wanted to be able to focus on him, too, neither of you needed for him to create the potential for alternate timelines or altered reality or any of the other things that could come from the wanton use of a magical item that could literally rewind and speed up time.

You and Stephen soon fell into your own headspaces, all of your attention on the task at hand.  For a long, long stretch of time, during which you made it through the first 300 pages of your book, there was nothing but the sound of the two of you breathing and the steady swish of paper as each page was turned.

Abruptly, the Cloak began moving beneath Stephen, jostling him around. 

“Hey, what’s—I’m reading!  I’m doing the right thing,” Stephen protested.  “What are you mad at me about now?”  But the Cloak, being unable to answer, simply continued to ripple and flutter, pushing Stephen up into a sitting position and pulling itself out from beneath him.

“I think he decided he was tired of being laid on,” you said with an amused chuckle as the Cloak went to hang himself up on a coathanger kept by the bed.

“He messed up my robes,” Stephen grumbled as he was dropped back on the bed, shifting his hips and trying to straighten out the layers of his Sorcerer Supreme attire, which was now rumpled underneath him.  “Oh, fuck it, I’m just going to put something more comfortable on,” he muttered after a moment when it became apparent that fixing his outfit was going to be more bother than it was worth.  He waved his hands, and you watched out of the corner of your eye as his deep blue robes turned into his favorite baby blue Columbia hoodie and a pair of dark grey sweatpants.

“Better?”  You asked, amused.

“Yeah,” Stephen agreed, already back to flipping through the book he was holding.  You turned your attention back to yours, parsing through as quickly as you could.  Within another couple hundred pages, though, you found your shoulder and neck getting a little stiff from how you were propped up on Stephen’s pillows.  You shifted your weight, trying to wiggle into a comfortable position.

You thought you had it figured out until a couple hundred pages later, when you once again had to adjust yourself.  A whole day of teaching curse-breaking plus a couple hours of hunching over that little table in the library had really left you achier than you’d expected.

“You’re distracting me,” Stephen voiced from beside you.  “Can’t you stop squirming?”  You rolled your eyes, glancing over at him.  He always looked so undeniably soft and cuddly in his sweats, and right now was no exception, no matter how prickly he was acting.

Suddenly, an idea came to you.

You picked yourself up and turned your whole body, laying your head down on Stephen’s lap and stretching your legs out across his bed. 

“What are you doing?”  Stephen asked; you could feel his thighs tense beneath you, and when you turned to answer him, you realized that he was frozen in place, his hands stilling where they’d been magically flipping through the book, as if he was completely unsure of what to do.

“Getting comfy, so I can stop distracting you,” you replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“This is more distracting,” Stephen said under his breath.

“Mm,” you hummed.  “It’s comfier for me, though, so….”

Stephen was silent for a moment before dropping his hands and relaxing some of the tension in his thighs.

“Is it really?”  He finally asked.

You made a content mm-hmm­ in agreement, and Stephen let out a somewhat resigned sigh in response, making no effort to move you or verbally remand you for your decision.

You smiled to yourself, turning your attention away from Stephen and beginning to flip through your book again.  The steady swish of paper above your head told you that Stephen was doing the same.

You were coming up on finishing up the first thousand pages of your book (officially halfway!) when you felt something tugging softly on your hair.  When you turned to see what was going on—had you gotten your hair caught under one of Stephen’s legs, somehow?—you were surprised to instead find Stephen’s fingers, shaking as they tentatively played with one of your locks.

“Is this all right?”  He said, his voice low and quiet as his fingers stilled under your gaze.

“Yeah.  Feels nice, actually,” you murmured, your eyes soft as you regarded him.

“Mm,” he hummed in response, letting his fingers begin to move again, twirling and brushing through your hair in unsteady, tentative movements.  As you both returned to your books, he gradually became more confident, letting his fingers card through more and more of your hair, alternating between running it between his digits and smoothing it down in gentle, slow strokes.  Soon, his fingers were even brushing up against your scalp, providing soothing stimulation as he ran his fingertips through the roots of your hair.

You leaned into his touch as he did so, allowing yourself to make a small mewl of pleasure.

“You like that?”  Stephen asked, and when you glanced up at him, you were surprised to once again see that same eagerness to have gotten the right answer that you’d seen earlier, when you were both working hunched over the table together.  His lips were slightly parted as he looked down at you, desire and fascination intermingling in his gaze.

You were suddenly extremely grateful that the Cloak had cockblocked the two of you.  This was so much better than if you’d just fucked each other.

“I do,” you breathed, fluttering your eyes closed and letting your lips part as Stephen ran his fingers along your scalp again just to see the effect it would have on him.  When you opened your eyes, you were greeted by the sight of his chest rising and falling just slightly faster and harder than usual, his pupils blown.

God, he was a gorgeous, gorgeous man.  You wanted to absolutely wreck him tonight.  You wanted to twist him around your little finger, to experience the depths of devotion he obviously had for you, to watch him shake and shudder beneath you while you praised him and pleased him in turn—

 “I was, um,” Stephen began, his lips still parted as he continued to regard you.  “I was wondering what you thought about red and blue as our colors.  For the gala,” he clarified.  “I know I mentioned it earlier, but now that you’re officially going with me….”

“You want me wearing your colors for all of Stark Industries and the Avengers to see, is that it, Doctor Strange?”  You asked knowingly, though not without keeping your voice soft and low and allowing a lazy smile to pull at your lips.

Stephen ran his fingers through your hair again as he swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“I do,” he murmured.  “I really, really do.”

Your smile grew at his words, and you reached back with one hand, slipping it under Steven’s thigh and gently rubbing the firm flesh you found there.

“That can be arranged,” you agreed, turning back to look at your book before the needy look Stephen was just barely disguising drove you absolutely wild.  “Are you thinking of a blue suit for yourself, then?”

“Blue suit, white shirt, darker blue tie.  Black shoes.  And Cloak, of course,” he added,  “for the pop of red and the levitation powers.  And because I don’t really go anywhere without him anymore.”

You began flipping through your book again, smiling to yourself.  He hadn’t just considered this offhand today; he’d thought about it. Thoroughly.

“And what about me?”  You asked, unable to resist.  “Do you see me in a blue dress or a red dress?”

Stephen was silent for a moment, and even without looking at him, you could feel his eyes on you.

“I see you in whatever dress you want,” he finally answered carefully.

You smiled at this reply.  He was trying.

“That’s a good answer,” you admitted, continuing to gently work the firm flesh of the back of Stephen’s thigh.  “But really, Stephen.  You said earlier that you don’t see yourself at the Gala without me, so I’m curious: what do you see me in when I’m there in your mind?”

Stephen drew in a slow breath, turning page after page after page of his book as he exhaled slowly.

“I thought red and gold at first,” he finally said, the hand that was entwined in your hair running through it once more, then smoothing it down, then repeating itself again, “but then I realized that Stark would probably take that as some sign that you were a huge fan of his or something, so I had to throw that idea out the window.  The last thing I need is Tony thinking my date is there for him and not me.”

You laughed quietly in amusement; red and gold had seemed like it would be a good choice at the start of Stephen’s sentence, but you definitely saw how those colors would be reserved for the host of the gala himself.

 “Blue, then?”  You asked, though you were already sure of the answer.

“Blue.  Though I envision a little bit more of a royal blue than my suit or robes, to bring out your complexion and provide a little matching contrast between us,” he replied.

“That actually sounds like it might work.  We could match my dress to your tie,” you mused, continuing to flip through the pages of your book.  “How do you know that royal blue would bring out my complexion, though?” 

Stephen chuckled at this, grazing his fingers along your scalp in the most scandalously delicious way.

“I told you I remember things about you with crystal clarity, didn’t I?”  He murmured, and you actually felt a little heat rise up to your cheeks at this.

You’d never imagined that Stephen paid attention to even these small, relatively insignificant things about you.  You couldn’t even be sure of the last time that you’d worn royal blue, though you were sure you had at some point over the years.

“Right,” is all you said, hoping that the way that you were continuing to flip through your book and rub Stephen’s thigh would conceal some of your own shock.  “Will you come dress shopping with me sometime, then?”  You asked after a beat.

Stephen’s hand continued its steady rhythm through your hair.  Stroke, rest, repeat.  For a moment, you were worried; as Sorcerer Supreme, the earth needed him.  Did he really have enough spare time in his day to take you dress shopping?

“I’d be delighted to,” he murmured, and you felt the anxiety in your chest loosen.

Something told you he’d always have enough time for you.  And if he didn’t have enough, he’d make more.

Literally.

“Next Saturday?”  You asked, turning away from your book once more to look up at Stephen.  You couldn’t help but feel a soft smile pulling at your lips.  You’d fought the Zealots, interdimensional monsters, and innumerable mystic threats with this man, but the thought of going dress shopping with him made you feel more excited than you had expected.

You supposed it had to do with the fact that the two of you lived such a hard life together, full of battle and teaching and training and investigating, always pushing back against the evil forces that threatened the world.  The chance to do something as mundane and romantic and soft as dress shopping together felt undeniably thrilling.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Stephen responded, his voice quiet and smooth.

Still smiling, you slipped your hand out from behind his leg and reached up for his hand, which was still running through your hair gently.  You carefully disentangled his fingers from your hair, then entwined your fingers with his.  His large, long digits shook and occasionally spasmed against yours, and the unusual ridges of his dozens of surgical scars felt foreign against your skin, but you didn’t care.  His hand was warm and comforting in yours, and you could feel his magic flowing through him and into yourself like a low undercurrent of electricity that hummed of his very being.  You imagined that your magic was flowing into him in return in a reciprocal energetic connection that spoke of the ways in which the two of you were becoming more and more intertwined with one another.

Stephen ran his broad thumb back and forth over your hand, his blue eyes soft as they held your gaze.  Finally, he returned his attention back to his book, and you did the same, reminding yourself to stay patient.  You and Stephen were in the last half of your books now; you’d be able to turn your full attention to him soon enough.

Fortunately for you, that moment came sooner than later as you flicked over a few more pages and saw a small inset image of a man with tentacles on his face.

“There he is!”  You exclaimed, sitting bolt upright and letting go of Stephen’s hand in favor of snatching the book out of midair.  “Fucking finally!”

“Where?” Stephen said, sitting upright too and scooting closer to you. You moved closer to him in turn until he was leaning over your shoulder so closely that your back was pressed against his broad chest.

“Right here,” you said, pointing out the small picture as you scanned the surrounding text for any clues as to who you were looking at.

“Chthon,” Stephen said after a moment, pointing out the text that identified the betentacled man.  “The world’s first black magician.  Said to be of the race of Elder Gods and brought back to Earth by Morgan le Fey.”

“No further discussion of this most foul, yet mighty, arcane being, nor of his legacy, the Darkhold, shall be had within these pages, for even their mere mention, though necessary, invites corruption, pestilence, and devastation to all those who read this page,” you said, reading the next line aloud.  As you did, a heavy dread settled in your stomach and a shiver passed down your spine.  Stephen must have felt it, too, for he wound one arm around your waist, pulling you closer to himself.

“I just got the worst feeling in the pit of my stomach,” he murmured.

“Me, too,” you agreed.  His arm tightened even further around you.

“Whatever this Darkhold is, and whatever this Chthon has done, it’s ancient and powerful magic,” Stephen rumbled, and you could practically hear the frown in his voice.

“It is,” you nodded solemnly as you scanned the rest of the page.  Unfortunately, as promised, it never mentioned Chthon or the Darkhold again.  You made a mental note of the page number it was on, then closed the book and set it aside with a sigh.  “Well, at least we have a start.  We’ve got a face and a name.”

“We do,” Stephen agreed, setting his chin on your shoulder.  “And Kamar-Taj has Morgan le Fey’s personal journals in the Special Archives, so I think we’ll have a lot more than just that soon enough.”

The beginnings of hope stirred in the pit of your stomach with this new information, chasing away the sense of dread that had settled over you.  Whatever this was was bad—world-altering, life-ending bad—but as long as you had Stephen, everything would be okay.  If anyone could put together the pieces of this mystery, it was the smartest man you knew.

You turned in Stephen’s hold, settling your hands on the breadth of his shoulders and regarding him fondly.

“You’re pretty brilliant sometimes, you know that, Sorcerer Supreme?”  You murmured, bringing one hand up to cup the side of his cheek.  He leaned into your touch the slightest bit, his eyes fluttering closed as he covered your hand in his, pressing your palm to his skin more firmly.  As he did, you could feel the sense of dread that had settled in his body dissipating into thin air.

“I could never do any of this without you,” he rumbled, the vibrations of his voice echoing through his chest and into yours.  He turned and pressed a kiss into the open palm of your hand, then smiled against your skin, a small chuckle escaping him.  “In fact, that was reason number seven on the list of reasons why I wanted you as my date to the Gala.”

Something flipped in your mind at his words.

Maybe you did want to hear that list, after all, you decided as Stephen began pressing soft kisses to the inside of your wrist, the bristles of his perfectly groomed beard tickling and scratching your sensitive skin.

“That is a pretty good reason,” you admitted as he inched higher up the inside of your arm, giving you another kiss and another and another, even as his lips curled into a smile at your words.

“I knew you’d think so,” he murmured, blue eyes glancing up at you through his dark lashes.  You once again recognized the self-satisfied look he wore when he got something right; it was just barely disguising an underlying need to get more and more things right about you.

“What was reason number eight, then?”  You breathed, carding your fingers through Stephen’s hair as he began working his way up to your bicep, pressing kisses to the muscle and then to your shoulder as he worked higher and higher still.

He paused at your words, his lips now hovering over your collarbone.  He pressed a kiss there and then delivered another one before pausing again over your neck, his beard scratching over your pulse point as he smiled.

“Let’s, um, let’s actually start at reason number one,” he said, sounding a little sheepish.  Ordinarily, you’d wonder what the reason for his sudden hesitation was, but moments later, he began nipping and kissing at your neck, working his way up to your jawline, and your only thought became the need to tip your head back to grant him as much access as possible.

“All right,” you acquiesced, your mind beginning to grow hazy with desire.  “Let’s hear it, Stephen.”

“I like having you around,” he mumbled against the column of your throat, punctuating his sentences with kisses there, too.  “I like being around you.  And when I’m away from you,” he added, moving up to your jawline once again.  He pressed a kiss there, too, then hovered his lips over yours. One of his big hands tangled in the hair at the back of your head, holding you close but not quite close enough to give you the pressure on your lips you so desperately craved.  “I miss you.  I’d miss you the whole night long if I were at that gala with anyone else.”

 “Even Wong?”  You breathed, unable to resist being sassy.

A bubble of laughter escaped Stephen at this, his lips grazing over your own with the movement.

“Even Wong,” he agreed, and you laughed and pulled him in for a messy, clumsy kiss, bumping noses and your teeth clacking against his as the two of you laughed and held each other and molded your mouths together around your smiles.  The low, languid energetic buzz of the universe around you tumbled upwards, escalating in pitch the more your magic and laughter and mouth entwined with Stephen’s.  Your veins were on fire; your heart was burning, aching, searing from the fullness of feeling him—his magic, his energy, maybe even his very being—flooding into you.  You didn’t know which it was. It could be all of them or one of them; it could be that it was impossible to separate out Stephen Strange from his own magic.  Maybe, by now, he was magic.

But if that was true, he was your magic, and you were his.

You had to have him; you had to have all of him, and you had to let him have all of you. 

Almost as if you’d decided on it together, he began to lay back, and you pressed further into him, tangling your fingers in his larger ones and pinning his hands to the mattress by the side of his head just as you pinned his broader frame with your smaller one.

“It would have killed me to see anyone else on your arm at that gala,”  you admitted, speaking your words around your open-mouthed kisses to him.

“It would have killed me to go with anyone else,” he admitted right back as a flood of triumph surged into your system from him.

So this was what it felt like to be Stephen Strange when he got something right.  You could see how the mountain-sized kick of dopamine his system provided him could get addicting.

As his tongue slipped into your mouth, taking dominance of the kiss back from you, you had to admit: you could also see how he could get addicting.

“Let’s hear the second reason,” you said, pulling away from the kiss.  Stephen chased after you, craning his neck up to try to recapture your lips in his. It wasn’t lost on you that he left his hands pinned underneath yours, even though he could easily overpower you and pull you back down to take the kiss he so obviously wanted.  And oh, by the Vishanti, did he look gorgeous with his eyes half-closed, his expression already half-drunk on you as he yearned for you.  The things you could do to him, the ways you could wreck him and please him—

Stephen suddenly stopped chasing your lips, setting his head back on the pillow and regarding you with wide eyes and lips parted. You had to assume that, just as his elation at having done well with his first reason had spilled into your consciousness, your desire to see Stephen absolutely ruined for you, begging for your touch and praise, was flooding his mind.

“Second reason,” he repeated breathlessly, his fingers trembling as they squeezed yours just a little tighter.  “Second reason.”

“Second reason,” you repeated with a breathy laugh, squeezing his hands back as you lowered your head and kissed the strong column of his throat.

“It is astonishingly hard to remember what I’m supposed to say right now,” Stephen rumbled, his voice dropping into his low range, reverberating against your mouth.

“Use your all-powerful photographic memory, Stephen,” you snickered, sucking and biting at the skin just under his jawline, then soothing the mark you’d made with your tongue.

“I’m trying.  Fuck.  Fucking shit,” he hissed as you began thinking particularly hard about working your way further down his body until you were pulling his sweatpants and boxers down and sucking his cock.  You felt his hips buck beneath you as you imagined touching your lips to his tip—

And then, suddenly, your foot-in-mouth senses began going off, perhaps louder than ever before due to the fact that there was no distance between the two of you, physically or magically speaking.

“I’m bigger than what you’re imagining,” Stephen said smugly, apparently perfectly able to focus on that, of all things.

“Of course, you are,” you grumbled, immediately dropping the mental image you’d been conjuring up. It figured that Stephen would be cocky, smart, powerful, and hung.

“Trust me, you’ll be happy about it in the long run,” Stephen grinned beneath you as he sent a soft surge of magic into your palms, gently pushing your hands away from his.  Once his hands were free, he wrapped them around you, his fingers spreading wide as they moved across your back, holding you close and pulling you up to give you another kiss.  His open mouth met yours with a hunger that you didn’t know that careful, controlled, clever Stephen could possess, and you melted into him willingly.  “Second reason,” he said when he finally pulled back for air.  Your mind felt astoundingly clear for having just been kissed senseless, but moments later, you realized why.  “I told you this one earlier, actually, but when I’ve got you in my arms, I feel calm, like I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”

For the first time, you could feel what he felt when he held you.  You always felt calm in Stephen’s arms, but what he felt was a profoundly grounding experience, as if you could take all the chaos and energy and sheer force-of-nature power that was Stephen Strange and rearrange it into something cohesive just by your presence and proximity.

“It’s incredible, isn’t it?”  Stephen asked, stroking your cheek with one thumb and looking at you admiringly.  “A lot of times, I can even tell where you are in the Sanctum based on this feeling.  But it’s strongest when I’m holding you.”

“It’s…” you started, your mind running a mile a minute.  Beautiful.  Electrifying.  Magical.  A thousand times better than my foot-in-mouth senses.

Stephen laughed at this, a low, almost melodic chuckle that you rarely heard from him.

“Having just experienced your foot-in-mouth senses, I agree with you on all accounts,” he grinned.

“I really got the short end of whatever magical stick we both got when we met each other,” you agreed, and another genuine, melodic laugh came from Stephen at this.

“That’s reason number three, by the way,” he said, the hand that had been on your cheek tangling into the hair at the back of your head and pulling you in for another kiss. His other hand slipped underneath your shirt, his fingers trembling slightly as they explored your back.

“What is?”  You asked as you pulled away from Stephen enough to slip your hands under his baby blue Columbia hoodie.  “My foot-in-mouth senses?”  As you sat back enough to do so, your hips rocked into his cock, which was straining against his sweatpants, already hard.

Shit.  He was bigger than you’d imagined.

“Told you,” Stephen said with a smirk, lazily grinding his hips up into yours.  You tried your best to remain mentally unperturbed by the fact that he was right; you didn’t want to give him that pleasure.  The last thing you needed was for Stephen Strange to develop even more of a complex than he already had.

But he did feel delicious against you as he ground up into your core.  The friction he could provide was tantalizing, and you couldn’t help but imagine, for the briefest of nanoseconds before you regained control over yourself, how good he’d feel, filling you and stretching you and fucking you.

A hit of dopamine flooded your system at this, and you knew that, despite your best efforts, Stephen had sensed your momentary weakness, and he felt fucking great about it.

“That’s it.  You’re gonna feel so good all full of me, baby girl,” he mumbled against your lips, his big hands sliding up and down the sides of your waist.

Oh, God, he wasn’t supposed to sound that good dirty-talking you.  He’d barely even said anything, and you were getting soaking wet for him.  Could you blame yourself, though?  His voice was so low and smooth, and his hands felt electrifying on you, and his cock was still grinding up into your core desperately—

“Third reason,” you said, your voice breathy and shaky as you skimmed your fingers along the sides of his waist in turn, up to his ribs and down to the sharp lines of his svelte hips.

A low chuckle erupted from Stephen at this, and moments later, you were hit by the awareness that you thought that you were going to be the one to have him underneath you, shaking and mewling and begging for praise, but he was going to do everything in his power to make you be the one coming unraveled for him.  His thoughts were leaking into your mind, visions of him hovering over you, his hair sweaty and sticking to his forehead as he filled you, rocking you into the bed—

That competitive bastard.  This was payback for that earlier thought about sucking his cock; you were sure of it.

If Stephen Strange wanted to try to play this game, he could go right ahead.  You were going to win it, though.

“I want to hear the third reason,” you repeated yourself with more confidence, trying to regain control of the situation by lifting your hips and lips away from his and resting your hands on his pectorals.  They rippled beneath you, lean yet larger than you’d remembered.  Since when had that happened?

Another hit of dopamine flowed into you from Stephen.  Shit, you thought, irritated with yourself.  You hadn’t meant to give him that satisfaction.

Stephen smiled beneath you, clearly very pleased with the dynamic emerging here.

“The third reason,” he said, sliding your shirt up and over your shoulders.  You pulled back from him enough to help him, once again sitting back on his cock as it strained against his sweatpants, “is that you’re literally one of the only people I find funny.  Trying to banter with anyone else is like talking to a wet rag.”  You tugged at his sweatshirt, pulling it up and signaling to him that he should discard it, and he sat up to help you strip it off of him.  “Even this,” he said, tossing his Columbia sweatshirt aside and wrapping his arms around you.  “This connection, this…whatever we’re doing.  I love it.”

You let your hands clutch at Stephen’s well-muscled shoulders as he pulled you in close until your chest was flush against his. A hungry look passed over his face as he lowered his head down toward you once again, slotting his mouth over yours.

He kissed you with that searing intensity and desire that you were learning lived deep inside Stephen, his hands pinning your hips down to his.  At the same time, he rutted up into you, his growing desperation to receive and give friction seeping into you.

Oh, by the Vishanti, it felt good.  Everything about this felt good; the steady drag of his cock against your core, even through your clothing, was just what you needed, but you could also feel Stephen’s pleasure and how turned on he was. Your consciousness was almost overcome with how excited he was to be finally grinding up into you, to be the one in bed with you, making you feel good—

Something clicked in your mind, and you decided you were going about this all wrong.  If you engaged Stephen in the battle of wills he was trying to bait you into, you were going to lose.  There was, quite simply, no one in the universe as strong-willed as the Sorcerer Supreme.  No, you were going to win Stephen over by giving into him.

It was remarkably simple, really. If you tried to keep pretending that Stephen didn’t phase you, you were just going to end up accidentally goading him into trying to prove to you and himself alike that he did, in fact, have the power to make you come apart at the seams.  But if you admitted how much you liked the things he could do to you, he’d spend all night chasing your high, doing everything he could for you.

If he was excited to be making you feel good, then God, you wanted him to know the full intensity of the fire he stoked in you and the electricity he put in your veins.  Foreplay with him was already worlds better than any foreplay you’d ever had with anyone else.  You’d never experienced this level of magical connection with another human—had never even known it was possible, even—and you wanted to let it keep going deeper, to let him fuck you just right and to take care of him and that perfect, absolutely gorgeous body of his until he gave everything he had to you.

Stephen’s mouth moving against yours slowed as his mind struggled to keep up with the onslaught of desire from you.  Finally, he pulled back, pupils blown and lips swollen from being kissed so thoroughly.

“You do think I’m pretty,” he rumbled.

It took you a long moment, but you finally remembered your conversation in the morning as you’d portalled yourself over to Kamar-Taj. 

Don’t you worry your pretty head over it, Stephen.

You think I’m pretty?

“I think you’re fucking beautiful,” you purred, no longer holding back your emotions.  As expected, a kick of dopamine hit your system from Stephen’s.  “I think you’re the most gorgeous man I’ve ever so much as laid eyes on.”  More dopamine.  “Even your grey hairs are the prettiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.  Let me take care of you, Stephen.  My stunning, handsome man.”  Another jolt of elation and desire.

“I want to take care of you, too, sweetheart,” he said, his voice shaky.  “I want to fuck you so good.  Make you all mine.”

“You will,” you promised him, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth.  “I promise, baby, you will.  But you want to be good for me, don’t you?”

You waited a moment with bated breath.  If you were right about this—about the fact that he would only fight you for control if he felt like he had something to prove to you—he’d melt into your openness and unabashed passion for him while striving to overachieve and please you.

And if you were wrong, he was going to be in control, and you had a feeling you would be in for an interesting night full of power play after power play.

“Of course,” Stephen finally breathed. “Anything you want.  I’m all yours, darling.”

“My beautiful man,” you sighed, holding his face—his pretty, perfectly sculpted face—between your hands and kissing him hard.  As you did, you thought about how you wanted him to unclasp your bra and free you from it.

Stephen grunted, moving with all haste to undo your bra clasp.  His fingers shook violently as he attempted the task at first; it wasn’t until you felt him direct more of his magical energy to stabilize his fingers that he was able to accomplish his goal.  Once he did, though, you helped him shimmy your bra off your shoulders.  The moment he cast it to the side, you pressed yourself against his chest again, savoring the heat of his smooth skin on yours and kissing him deeply.

“Thank you,” you sighed into his mouth as you took his hands, moving them onto the sides of your breasts and moaning as his trembling fingers came into contact with your skin.  “That’s so much better.”

“Anything for you,” Stephen breathed, his fingers tracing your curves tentatively, though you could feel the overwhelming hunger that was at the core of him urging him to claim you, to bite you and leave marks all over the softness of your tits and inner thighs.

“What reason are we on?”  You asked as you pulled back from his chest just enough to allow your breasts to be bared to him.  Without his heat to keep you warm, you could feel your nipples pebbling in the cool air, and you longed for Stephen to play with them. Beneath yourself, Stephen’s cock stiffened even further, and an awareness of the fact that he was aching from being so hard for you, from craving your touch so thoroughly, filled your mind.

“The fourth,” Stephen breathed, fulfilling your desires by sliding his hands across the soft plushness of your breasts, savoring and groping at their curves until he came to your nipples.  A gasp left your mouth at the electric tingle of his magic that surged through his fingertips and into your flesh as he stabilized his hands enough to allow himself to roll your hardened peaks between his thumb and forefinger.  At your reaction, the briefest, most split-second feeling of shame and embarrassment trickled into you from Stephen.  Short though it was—blink and you’d miss it—it was powerfully intense, buoyed to the surface of his consciousness by fears that he’d never be good enough in bed for you, that he’d hurt you with his clumsiness or his magic, or that you’d be turned off by his hands.  You tasted all those fears at once, and then, abruptly, they were gone, pushed away from the surface and away from you.

Well.  You couldn’t have that.

“That felt really good,” you said, sitting back on Stephen’s lap so that you were on full display for the man underneath you.  Firmly and confidently, you put your hands on Stephen’s and redirected them back to your breasts.  “That tingle of magic…right…there,” you breathed, moving his scarred fingers back to where they had just been.  “Fuck, that’s…that’s really sexy, Stephen.”

Stephen’s lips parted as he watched you with lust-blown eyes, his gaze fixed on where your hands intertwined over your tits.

“You…you’re not just saying this to make me feel better,” he finally said, continuing to do his best to please you with his fingers and his magic.  “You like this.  A lot.”

“When do I ever say things just to make you feel better, Stephen?”  You moaned, biting your lip and clutching at his hands as they became bolder in their manipulations.

“I know, it’s just, I….they’re ruined,” he finally admitted quietly, his hands stilling for a moment.  “Why would you want—”

“They’re sexy, you idiot,” you fired back, though not without affection in your voice.  “You have big hands with slender, long fingers and dozens of mysterious scars from a tragic accident, and you pour magic into them to help them work.  And the magic feels good to me.  You’re in my brain; surely, you can see how this is a turn-on.”

“I…yes?”  He finally said, beginning to move his fingers again.  “I can.  I can,” he repeated, as if reassuring himself.

It helps that they’re yours, you added mentally.  Every part of you is gorgeous to me.

Out loud, however, you uttered a simple “good boy” as he began playing with your tits in earnest again.

Stephen’s mind reacted to both these things with fireworks, a rush of positive emotions flooding through him and through you as he groaned out loud, a beautiful, low sound in his chest.

Strong arms wrapped around you, hitching you up on his lap before pulling you back down towards him. He captured one of your nipples in the warmth of his mouth, his tongue working deftly to swirl and flick at your hardened peak while his hands moved down to grope and squeeze your ass.

“I still owe you that fourth reason,” he said, moving his mouth over the soft expanse of your breast, kissing and biting you in his bid to mark you as he intended.

“Let’s hear it, then,” you purred, grinding yourself down onto Stephen’s still-clothed cock and carding your fingers through the greys of his hair.

“I want to make you laugh,” he said, then moved over to your other breast, marking it the way he’d marked the first.  “And get you drinks.”  Another hickey, followed by his tongue soothing your skin.  “And hold you in my arms.”  A soft bite and a soft, slow kiss to your flesh.  “And dance with you.  You, and no one else.”  At this, his mouth covered your other nipple, lavishing it with the attention the first side had received.

“Oh, Stephen,” you sighed.  “Say that again.”

You didn’t have to clarify; you already knew he could understand what you were thinking about.

“You, and no one else,” he repeated lowly, his hands squeezing your hips and pulling you as close to him as was physically possible.

Then, to your surprise, he sent a tingle of magic through his tongue as he closed his mouth over your flesh once again, and you swore your vision went white with bliss and shock for an instant.

The first thought you had that broke through the pleasure was that you wanted him to try that somewhere else.

Stephen laughed at this, closing his mouth over your nipple again and sending his magic through his tongue once more as he flicked and toyed with your peak.  You whined and squirmed in his hold until he finally pulled away, scraping his teeth on your nub as he went.

“Does my pretty baby want to ride my face while I do that?”  He asked, his hands squeezing your hips encouragingly.

“Yes,” you gasped, and Stephen’s smile grew wider.  “Oh, Stephen, yes.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he rumbled, his hands moving to slide your leggings and panties down.  You lifted your hips to help him, only to eventually find yourself irritated enough by trying to strip while kneeling to just magic them away into a pile on the floor.  Stephen chuckled at this, his broad palms moving over your soft thighs as his eyes raked hungrily over every last inch of you.  “You’re beautiful,” he practically purred, his hands skimming back up to your hips.  Magic flowed through him and into you as he lifted you like you were feather-light, pulling you up over his shoulders until your core was situated over his face.  He breathed in and out, the air from his lungs hot and teasing on your core, and you could feel, in your own mind, the way he was savoring the scent of you.

You’re so beautiful.  Stephen’s voice, clear and strong and deep, murmured into your thoughts as he turned to bite and suck at the sensitive skin of your inner thighs.  You squirmed and squealed at the sometimes-harsh contact and the bristle of his goatee on your skin, but nevertheless, you allowed him to mark you the way he wanted, especially since he was slowly working his way inwards toward your dripping pussy.  You have no idea how beautiful I think you are, do you?

As he finished the thought, you were hit by a rush of memories, all photographic, picture-perfect in a way that your mind was not capable of achieving.

You, coming down the stairs at the Sanctum Sanctorum first thing in the morning, your pajamas on and the sunlight illuminating your face.  A smile crossed your sleepy features when you saw Stephen had just come back safely from an emergency visit to the London Sanctum, and you felt the way his heart ached at the thought that another man might be the one to see that smile every morning and not him. 

Beautiful, Stephen thought.

You, shielding his battered and magically paralyzed body with your own, your knees on either side of his chest and the muscles in your arms and shoulders flexing as you struggled to contain the strength of the energy and rage building inside you, channeling it into a spell to vanquish your enemy.

Beautiful.

You, laughing at some dumb joke he’d made.  You, your nose buried in a translation book, the setting sun framing you in the library window.  You, standing tall as your hands worked quickly, sorting through magic runes as they floated and twisted in the air, fighting to break an ancient curse as the ground beneath the two of you shook.

Beautiful.

You, covered in mud and the smell of smoke and little specks of Styrofoam, beaming from ear to ear as you told him all about the sorcerers you’d been working with today.

Beautiful.  You’re beautiful, inside and out, and that’s reason number five, because you make the world light up everywhere you go.

His nose gently parted your folds as his hands held your hips firmly, and finally, finally, his tongue darted out to lick a slow, almost gentle stripe up your core. Satisfaction with the taste of you surged through him and, in turn, through you.

“Stephen,” you breathed.  He moaned into your pussy, a delightfully low, deep reverberation that had you gripping his hair and grinding down onto his mouth for more friction.

You shine, Stephen thought into your brain as he began eating you out like a man starved.  You shine in every single way, and I want the world to see that. And tonight, I want to worship you for it.

God, you wanted his worship in a way you didn’t even know you could.

Yes, you thought back to him.  Be good to your pretty baby, Stephen.  Make me feel so good I can’t even remember my own name.  You can do it.  If anyone can, it’s you.

His tongue was perfection against your cunt; being in your brain the way he was, he knew everything you wanted, the perfect angle and pressure to apply, and where to move to provide you with just the right stimulation. Thanks to the magical connection between the two of you, he knew you as intimately as you knew yourself. As you grew wetter and wetter under his care, soaking his chin and his goatee with your juices and his saliva, you could feel your ever-mounting pleasure seeping into his brain, rebounding into yours and reverberating between the two of you like a building echo chamber of bliss.

“That’s my pretty baby,” Stephen moaned aloud into your pussy.  “Letting me have her perfect little pussy, telling me exactly how to make her feel good.  Do you feel good, beautiful?”

Oh, by the Vishanti, he knew you did.

“I want to hear you say it,” he rumbled, and you swore you saw stars at how good the vibrations of his deep voice felt against your heat.

“I feel so good,” you affirmed breathlessly, only for an ache of wanting to reach through you.  Stephen wanted more of your praise, and he wanted you to say his name while you praised him.  God, he ached for your praise in a way that almost hurt.  “Oh, Stephen,” you crooned, carding both your hands through his hair as his cerulean blue eyes flitted up to make contact with yours, even as his tongue began fucking in and out of your hole.  “My good boy.  My beautiful, gorgeous, perfect man.  Who’d have thought you have a perfect tongue that knows just where to be on me?  You make me feel so good, Stephen.  Better than even I can make myself feel.  You’re making my pussy so wet for you, so ready to be filled and taken.  You will take me, won’t you?”

Stephen’s grip on your hips tightened.

“Gods, yes,” Stephen groaned into your core.

“You’ll fuck me out of my mind with your tongue, and then you’ll fuck me and fill me with your cock, won’t you?”

“Please,” Stephen said, his voice strangled.  “Please let me.”

“I’ll let you, Stephen,” you promised him.  “I’ll let you.  My good boy.”

 Stephen’s efforts to please you only increased at this.  You rapidly became blinded by pleasure, a coil beginning to build in your stomach more quickly than ever before thanks to the way your pleasure became his became yours again.

After a long moment of basking in the tumultuous climb to your peak, Stephen removed one of his hands from where he was firmly holding onto your hips and keeping them pressed into his face.

Watch, he ordered you, and you obeyed, turning over your shoulder to see what he wanted you to see, though, in a sense, you already knew.

Still, it was a delicious sight to watch Stephen move slowly, pushing his waistband down inch by inch.  You could see it snag on his cock, could see the way his hard thickness was being pushed down slightly into a smattering of immaculately groomed, short, dark hair as his waistband inched ever further away from you.  He wasbig, nice and girthy and veiny; oh, by the Vishanti, you wanted those thick, manly veins and that fat, heavy cock in your cunt so badly. You needed him, needed that perfect cock that you could only see some of and that you already knew you loved.

The pleasure that shot through you from Stephen at this was almost enough to make you cum on his lips right then and there.

“Shit,” he mumbled into your cunt, hand stilling for a moment as he panted heavily.  “Shit, I almost came, too.  Didn’t ex…didn’t expect you to want it so badly.”

The thought that you had almost just made the Sorcerer Supreme of all of Earth nearly come in his pants without so much as actually touching him crossed your mind, and you had to admit, you were pretty into it.

That’s what you do to me, pretty baby.  You drive me wild, he thought back to you, taking a deep breath as he watched you move your hand to your clit, which was beginning to ache with the lack of attention it was receiving while Stephen focused on not coming just yet. 

 Finally, he began moving again, mentally imploring you to watch, and you did, moving your fingers on your clit faster as his cock finally sprang free of his sweatpants, bobbing up against his stomach.

You wanted so badly to touch it, to touch him, to run your fingertips along that big vein and give his tip kitten licks before taking the whole thing into your mouth—

Just before you managed to get started, though, Stephen poured magic into his tongue, and you became practically boneless with pleasure as he replaced your hand with his mouth and began teasing and flicking your clit faster than ever before.  His magic was fucking into your cunt and pleasing your clit so sweetly, so deeply, hitting places far within you that nothing physical could ever—or had ever—reached.

It was all you could do to brace one hand on the headboard while your upper body practically gave out on you.  Your pleasure, once again, reverberated into Stephen’s mind and then back into yours, and you soon found yourself sobbing his name, your other hand gripping his hair so tightly it had to hurt.

Through the haze of pleasure, though, there was something else: an iron will, a determined sentence being repeated in his voice again and again and again.

Don’t come, Stephen.  Don’t come.  I can do this.  I can ride out her pleasure.  Don’t come.

The realization hit you suddenly that if you were this close to your high, you must have been taking Stephen right along with you.  He was fighting with every ounce of his not-inconsiderable willpower to avoid tumbling over that edge with you, but what could he do against this rapidly rising tide?

“Stephen,” you gasped, fighting to pull your hips away from his beautiful, clever mouth.  His strong hands held you there in an almost bruising grip, but when you exclaimed his name again, this time with more determination and less of a keening tone, he finally let go.

“What is it, beautiful?”  He asked, his eyes full of concern for you.  “Did I hurt you?  Please tell me I didn’t hurt you with my magic, I—I didn’t—”

“No,” you reassured him, moving your hands to float yourself off his face and back over his hips, your pussy coming to rest over his shaft.  “You didn’t hurt me, Stephen; your magic felt amazing, actually.  I just don’t want you to come just yet.”  As if to emphasize your point, you ground your slick wetness up and down along his length.  “After all, I promised to let you fuck me and fill me, didn’t I?”

Stephen drew in a sharp breath, his hands returning once again to your hips, where his strong fingers fought to still your movements.

“You did.  I—just give me a minute to recover a little,” he requested, moving one hand up to your cheek when you stopped rocking your hips to let him settle back down from the precipice he’d found himself on.

“Of course,” you breathed, though you were already beginning to feel a deep ache that spoke of how empty you were at the moment.  You needed him inside you, needed the stretch of his big cockhead pushing its way into your entrance—

Fuck, pretty baby, I need you to think of something else, he hissed into your mind.

“How about reason number six, then?”  You asked, letting Stephen pull you down into a kiss that was somehow slow and languid yet hot and heavy all at once.  “I think that’s the number we’re on,” you added when you pulled back for air.

“It is,” Stephen agreed, wrapping his arms around you and holding you in a tight embrace.

Something in his energy shifted at this, and for a moment, you were worried he was going to retreat from this connection with you entirely.

Something was wrong.

“Stephen,” you breathed, chasing him as his magic pulled away from you.  You captured his energy before it was gone, and you held him tightly, desperately, both on the mystical plane and the physical one.  “Don’t go.  Don’t—don’t—just tell me what’s wrong,” you pleaded with him.

Had you hurt him?  Had you upset him somehow?  What had you done?

He stopped trying to retreat from you, and a swirl of complex emotions flooded through you, too multifaceted to be able to sort out immediately.  The one thread you did manage to identify—the one that jumped out the most at you—was an odd sense of grief and regret and fear.

You weren’t sure you’d ever seen Stephen afraid of anything before.

“It’s not you, beautiful.  It’s just…I know I’ll never be able to offer you a normal life,” he finally said, burying his nose in your shoulder.  “Our lives are constantly in danger because of who we are and what we do.  There will probably never be a time when we’re not dealing with mystic threats, and that’s especially true for me, because I’m forever bound to my duties as Sorcerer Supreme.  But you…you could walk away from this, if you needed to.”

“This is a really, really weird reason to want to take me to the gala, Stephen,” you said in a feeble attempt to try to make light of whatever the hell was going on here.  “Gotta say, I don’t get it.”

Unsurprisingly, your attempt at humor didn’t work; his heart remained heavy, and you swore you felt tears pricking at your eyes that weren’t your own.

“Being with me is a risk.  An extraordinary one,” he continued, his goatee grazing the skin of the crook of your neck as he spoke.  “People who are close to me have already gotten hurt or killed, and I’m sure they’re not going to be the end of it.  So if there comes a time where you decide that this life isn’t for you—the Mystic Arts, the Sanctum, me—I’ll understand.  But in the meanwhile, if we can share even one night of being together like a normal couple, of getting to…to forget about who we are and the Mystic Arts and just be together, dressed up on a night out…then I really, really want to do that with you.  I want that memory of us, together.”

An undercurrent of emotion swept through you from Stephen.  There was a longing to have just been your non-magical, rich doctor husband, to have somehow met and immersed you in his world before it was turned upside down by his car accident.  There was a fear that the day would come when you’d need to leave the Mystic Arts, and there was a fear that even separating yourself from all you’d known, from him, might not be enough to keep you safe.  Along with that fear came a powerful urge to protect you, to become the strongest Sorcerer Supreme the world had ever seen, to make sure that you were never, ever separated from him by the machinations of another.

And underneath it all, there was a deep surprise that he was being so emotional about this.  When he’d written this reason out earlier, it hadn’t seemed like too big of a deal.  One normal date together could last him a lifetime, if he needed it to, and besides, people moved on all the time.  He’d done so once already.

But now, having been connected to you in this way, he knew that being separated from you would be like tearing half his heart out.  He had always loved you, but he’d never known how deeply that love ran, and now that he had finally recognized it, he was all the more profoundly affected by the fear of losing it.

It was, perhaps, the thing he feared most in the world.

“I don’t plan on leaving you or the Mystic Arts, Stephen,” you breathed, your voice shaky and tight.  “And I don’t plan on letting you be taken away from me, either.  Not again,” you added, thinking back to when he’d gone to sacrifice himself to Dormammu in order to save all of Earth.  “But all we have promised to us is the present, so let’s not worry about these things just yet.  Let’s just be together and love each other.”

He was silent for a moment, taking your words in and thinking on them.  Then, you felt earth’s master of time put aside his powerful fear of the future.  The heavy weight of it shifted off of you, and though you knew Stephen likely wasn’t over his fear entirely, at least he could focus on the present instead of dwelling in realities that were yet to manifest.

You had to admit, you were proud of him for that.

“Let me love you,” he finally rumbled, grinding his hips up into yours.  “Let me make love to you, beautiful.”

You didn’t need words to give him your consent; you let your desire for him flow through yourself and into him, and he responded with that powerful hunger that you were learning was at the core of Stephen Strange, both in his magic and in the searing kiss that he gave you as he slotted his mouth against yours and continued to grind himself into you.  You bucked your hips in turn, rubbing your wetness all over his shaft, pausing as your entrance met the bulge of his cockhead.

You couldn’t tell if you had the thought or if Stephen did, or if the two of you were thinking in an almost startling synchrony now, but the yearning to feel his thick tip stretching your walls open as he pushed inside your core flared true and strong once more.  Stephen bucked at this, groaning into your mouth as you continued to kiss him, thoughts filling his mind—and, in turn, yours—of how he was going to fuck you into the mattress, nice and slow and gentle for as long as the two of you could hold out, then fast and hard until you found your shared high together. He was going to fill you with his cock and his magic and his adoration and love for you, the way he’d been wanting to for years.

The two of you rolled together, words completely unnecessary as you both mentally agreed that Stephen would need to be on top to fulfill your shared fantasy.  Once you were underneath his broad frame, you wrapped your legs around his narrow waist, hungrily holding him close to you, and he reached down between your bodies, lining his cockhead up with you and rubbing it up and down through your folds and slick.

“Are you ready?”  Stephen murmured lowly, and you mewled and nodded, urging him on with your hands on his shoulders and your legs around his waist.

Gently, he pressed himself into you, his fat cockhead stretching you out just as you thought he would.  Stephen gasped at the sensation, wonder written across his face as he pushed slowly into your core.  The stretch you were feeling grew stronger, becoming almost painful in that tantalizing, give-me-more type of way, and Stephen stilled himself, waiting for a moment and watching you intently.

You’re not hurting me, Stephen, you reassured him in your mind.  I need you.  Please.

His lips fell apart as he drew in a shaky breath, then pushed the rest of the way inside you, hilting himself in your core.  You pulled him down into another kiss, this one gentle and soft as you struggled to make sense of all that you were feeling.  He was so full and heavy in you, and similarly, his cock felt so snug and warm and wet in you.  You were better than he’d imagined; your pussy was beautiful, perfect, his.

You mentally implored for him to begin moving, and he did, entwining his hands (shaking) with yours as he began moving his hips in gentle, slow thrusts.  His heavy cock dragged along your inner walls in a way that had you squeezing your heels into his back to encourage him to give you more; at the same time, you could feel your own pussy holding his cock like it was made for it. Like you were made for him.

Stephen dropped his head to your breasts, licking and sucking at them and sending his magic through his tongue once again.  Through it all, he refused to pick up his pace, continuing to slide in and out of you in languid, though not unattentive, movements.  You wanted him to give you more, to fuck you faster and harder and take you up to that peak that you hadn’t been far from reaching earlier, but this desire was drowned out by an increasing possessiveness from Stephen.  You wanted more of him, but he wanted to spend all night buried within you, fucking your perfect pussy nice and slow and claiming it as his with every stroke, and, as you’d said earlier, there was nobody in the world with a more unyielding will than Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme.

“Take it,” he groaned into your chest.  “Take all of my big cock in that pretty pussy of yours.  That’s my pretty baby.  Being so good for me.  Gonna let me fuck her as long as I want, because she’s all mine, isn’t she?”

“All yours, Stephen,” you gasped as he continued to rock in and out of you inch by tantalizing inch.  “I’m all yours.”

“All mine,” he growled, moving his hands to hitch up underneath your knees and press them to your shoulders.  “Mine.”

You expected him to fuck you harder in this position, but he continued to draw in and out of you in slow, tantalizing movements, his eyes often flitting down to watch the way his cock disappeared inside of you.  Despite his slow pace, your mutual pleasure stoked higher and higher, buoyed by the way you could feel everything he was experiencing and vice versa. Still, it never reached a fever pitch; when your pleasure began to escalate, he slowed down even more, creating an intense ache and need within you.  By the second time he did this, you were aching for more stimulation so badly that tears were pricking at your eyes, his name falling off your tongue in sobs.

“You’re being so good for me, pretty baby,” Stephen said, kissing away your tears.  “So good.  You can keep taking me, can’t you, pretty baby?  Or do you need me to fuck you hard and fast now?”

“I can…I can keep taking you like this,” you said around a hiccup, and a low moan tore from Stephen’s throat at this.

“What a good girl,” he murmured, once hand reaching up to stroke your cheek gently before returning to the backside of your knee.  “I’m going to take such good care of you.  Promise you’ll feel so good in the end.”

“I already feel so good, Stephen,” you said, and it was true.  As agonizing as it was to be denied release again and again, there was something incredible about being in your body and Stephen’s at once when you both wanted more of each other, when it felt as if your desire for one another could literally never be satiated.

Stephen’s iron will held true as he fucked you relentlessly slowly, refusing you your release again and again and again until you were out of your mind with need and desperation and pleasure.  You were reduced to putty in his hands, crying out for him with tears in your eyes, your own consciousness sometimes in your body and sometimes in his and sometimes nowhere at all.  When you flickered into his body, watching yourself sob and reach and claw for him while getting fucked, you became dimly aware of the irony that you’d thought that you would be the one making a mess of him, and now here he was, reducing you to this.  In the end, though, you (he? You couldn’t tell who was thinking what anymore) were going to absolutely ruin him, send him over the edge in a way that he’d never experienced in his life.  Even now, he was holding on to his connection to his body only through sheer determination to make you his, to make this last as long as it could, and, above all else, to fuck you more thoroughly than you’d ever been fucked in your life.  In fact, the further Stephen slipped into your mutual pleasure, the more you found him clinging to his absolutely, wildly desperate desire to please you and make you pleased with him in turn.

It wasn’t unlike when he’d sought out your approval in the library.  Everything came down to you, in the end.

You weren’t sure how much time had passed when he called out to you, his voice thready and his lips puffy from all the kisses the two of you had shared.

“Pretty baby,” he moaned.  “I need you.”

You understood his meaning immediately.

“I need you, too, Stephen,” you keened.  “Take me.”

Take me how I know you want to.

Stephen’s hips stuttered against yours for a moment, and for one last instant, you were in his body, watching your drooling cunt be split apart by his red, needy cock.  Then, his hips moved fast and sharp, snapping against you with a loud slap, and you were sent back into your own mind.

He leaned more of his weight onto your aching, doubled-over legs as he rutted into you hard, his heavy balls slapping against your ass over and over again.  You clutched at the bedsheets, at his forearms, at anything you could hold to as the wet sound of your skin slapping together filled the air and his cock reached deep into that place of you that had you seeing stars.

Then, to your surprise, his magic was there, too, deep in your cunt and on your clit, hitting you achingly sweetly.  Within moments, you were breaking apart at the seams for him, pleasure gushing through you and through him, the coil in your belly snapping and wave after wave of sheer hot ecstasy rolling through you.  You went limp; your vision went white, and there was no sound, only silence.  There wasn’t even a you; there was just the connection between the two of you and pure electric bliss racing through it, reverberating back and forth.  Just when you thought you might come back to your body, Stephen’s orgasm rolled through the magical connection between the two of you, sharp, deep, heavy bursts of pleasure exploding as he shot his load deep within you.  You were him, feeling his balls tighten and empty themselves, his cock spasming as your pussy throbbed around him, milking his orgasm out, and you were you, feeling the way you clenched around his thickness, the way another burst of pleasure began anew as you came on his cock again, your orgasms an echo chamber for one another.

Wave after wave of pleasure rolled over you and Stephen like this; each time you thought you were coming down from your last high, the bliss that reverberated into his brain started him up again, and then, in turn, you were soon coming again, and vice versa.  You were vaguely aware that he was coming without pumping any seed out; he’d completely emptied himself within you, and yet, you were still throbbing around Stephen’s cock again and again, begging for more.

 When you began to come down from your shared bliss, the waves becoming less overwhelming, you were surprised to find yourself babbling and sobbing and screaming for Stephen, and in turn, he was grunting filth into your ear, moaning and calling for you, his voice low and desperate.

Finally, his arms gave out above you, and he slumped against you entirely, letting your aching legs fall down as he wrapped his arms around you and buried his head in the crook of your neck.  You held to him tightly, feeling the weight of his body on yours. It was blissfully soothing and reassuring.  You were warm and safe, folded up in the arms of your man, the only man you could ever trust to experience such a powerful, deep connection with.  You were exhausted magically and physically, your eyes fluttering shut despite the slick and sweat and cum staining the sheets all around you and Stephen’s softening cock still within you.  Through your still-open connection, you could feel a similar level of post-orgasmic exhaustion in Stephen.

“I love you,” he murmured, moving his hands clumsily and magicking all the filth the two of you had created away.  “I love you so much.”

In the wake of the bliss and emotion you had both shared, you didn’t need to hear anything else.  You moved your hands, too, magicking the blankets up around the two of you.

“I love you too, Stephen.”

As you began drifting off to sleep, though, you heard him murmur something quietly.

“There was one other reason.  An eighth reason.”

Through the haze of your exhaustion, you remembered that he hadn’t wanted to tell you that reason earlier.  Now feeling too exhausted to speak, you let your curiosity seep through your magical connection.

“I can’t wait to see the look on Stark’s face when he sees how gorgeous you are at that gala and realizes you’re with me.”  Stephen’s voice, husky and almost asleep, was nevertheless full of pride and satisfaction.

I’m yours, Stephen, you promised him with your thoughts.  All yours.

Mine, he thought back, and to your surprise, he added, and I’m all yours.  Have been for a long time.

You smiled to yourself and fell into a comforted sleep, feeling certain that here, in the Sanctum Sanctorum, in your home with Stephen, in his strong arms, was precisely where you’d always belong. [A quick ending author's note: I couldn't keep Stephen's reasons straight in my mind while writing this, so I had to write them out for myself. In case you want to see them all and get some feel-good fuzzies, here they all are, from Stephen's perspective!

Reasons why I want to take you to the gala:

1. I like having you around, and when I’m away from you, I miss you. I’d miss you the whole night long if I were at that gala with anyone else. Yes, even Wong. 2. When I hold you in my arms, I feel calm, like I’m right where I’m supposed to be. And I have a feeling I’m going to need a lot of calm at any party that Stark is putting on. 3. You’re literally one of the only people I find funny. Trying to banter with anyone else is like talking to a wet rag. Please don’t make me suffer through a night of having to pretend that everyone else’s terrible jokes are funny. I don’t think even Stark has enough alcohol to help me survive that. 4. I want to make you laugh and get you drinks and hold you in my arms and dance with you. You and no one else. 5. I know I’m not supposed to talk about the fact that you’re beautiful, but you are beautiful, inside and out. You make the whole world light up wherever you go. You shine, and I want everyone else to see that. 6. I know I could never offer you a normal life. Our lives are constantly in danger because of who we are, and I’m forever bound to my duties as Sorcerer Supreme. But if I can give you even one night of just being a regular couple and getting to dress up and forget all about the Mystic Arts, then I want to do that. 7. And related to that, I could never do any of this without you. You’ve been there with me since my first days at Kamar-Taj, and now that I’m Sorcerer Supreme, I have no idea how I would survive holding this title without you around. Why would I want to go to the gala without the person who made—and makes—all of this possible? 8. Lastly—and I’m so sorry, but I have to mention this—I’m absolutely dying to see the look on Stark’s face when he sees how gorgeous you are and realizes you’re with me tonight. If you're interested in seeing more of this reader x Stephen pair (maybe at the gala?) please feel free to let me know!! Either way, thank you for reading! <3]

Masterlist

Started: 14/06/2022 Last Updated: 04/07/2022

Marvel Doctor Strange

One Shots

The Man You Are (Smut / Angst) Let Me Take Care Of You (Fluffy) Give Me Some Attention (Smut)

Headcanons / Imagines

A Study In Defender Strange's Personality Losing Your Virginity To Defender Strange (Smut)

Series

The Point Of No Return Part I (Smut / Angst) Part II (Smut / Angst) Part III (Angst)

One Shots

Don't Let Me Go (Angst / Smut) Two Stephens (Smut)

One Shots

Two Stephens (Smut)

---------------------------------

Spotify Playlist (Songs that inspired my stories)

A/N: I know this is very simple but I am happy I finally figured out how to do it. (I had some help, I confess) ;) Probably I will start writing for others Benedict Cumberbatch characters as well, but it may take some time. I 'll probably write for Tony Stark too as soon as possible.

I tag people at my fics, just let me know if you want to be tagged.

Here’s some of my favorite comic book Moon Knight moments

edit: It has come to my attention that some of these are fake but i dont care because they’re hilarious and very in character and make me love him more

edit 2: literally just enjoy the funny pictures.

Antecedent 

tags: AFAB reader (referred to as ‘mama’), established (kinda toxic) relationship, canon divergence: secret family au (post arrest), spoilers for touya backstory and chapters 349 onwards, hurt/comfort, original child character (‘Kaiyo’; he is your shared biological child), no reference to readers quirk, mentions of canon attempted suicide and canon child abuse, themes of generational trauma, family feels, todoroki family centric, villain rehabilitation, dealing with trauma and recovery, second chances

wc: 16.5k

You shouldn’t have come. 

There are crowds of press, packed so tightly that getting any closer would be futile, all of them a cacophony of questions and accusations. You’re standing atop a small brick wall encasing a flower bed of hyacinths outside of the hospital, a head above the sea of cameras, watching as a group of heroes — Endeavor and Shouto included — slowly lead Touya towards an armoured van. 

Relief floods through your system for a few precious seconds, overwhelming the hopelessness in your stomach. He was alive. 

One little rumour from a patient in your clinic, an unsure whisper of I heard they’re moving that Dabi kid from the ICU to villain corrections had led you here. It’d been two long, devastating weeks since the final battle. Two weeks with no word from him, two weeks of reading every article you could find about the ‘elusive first son of Endeavor’ and learning nothing. 

The media blackout that came thereafter was the only thing that kept you hoping that he was okay. The Todoroki family, though disastrous and complicated, held some influence in Japan. And though Touya would vehemently try to reject it, they could not allow their surviving first son to be fed to the wolves. 

And wolves they were; yelling obscenities and insults with spitting anger. Legal justice was one thing, but the court of public opinion was another thing in its entirety, a fragile and fickle thing that held the power to sway even government policy. 

Kaiyo stirs in your arms at the noise and you soothe him, rubbing your hand along his back until he quietens, then you tuck away the stray red hair that has fallen loose from beneath his hat. Truthfully you never intended to bring him here, but given recent events it has been hard for him to separate from you, cheeks still slightly pink from his earlier tantrum. 

It’d been damn near impossible to prevent the four year old from learning about the broadcast a few months prior, paired with the sudden less than frequent visits from his father, he knew something was deeply wrong and he didn’t understand it. 

Touya is scanning the crowds lazily, expression impassive to everyone but you. You could see was exhausted, more gaunt than you last remember, but his disinterest only fed into everyone’s fury. 

“Villain!” they’re bellowing at him, fingers pointed and words sharp, “don’t you care about the suffering you’ve caused?” 

He cares, you think, more than anyone could ever understand. 

You cannot look away as Shouto lingers by his brother, the other sidekicks giving them a wide berth. Endeavor is tucked away beside the van speaking with an armed officer, his shoulders hunched forwards in an uncharacteristic manner. He appeared to be ashamed. 

Good, the thought bitter and weighing heavily in your chest. 

Touya shuffles along obediently, wrists out and pressed together against his pelvis. Quirk suppressing cuffs, you assumed. They were bulky, and no doubt uncomfortable. You hold Kaiyo a little closer as you ache, distantly wondering if he’s cold without his quirk. 

After today it was entirely possible you’d never see him again, that your son would grow up without his father.

Nobody knew of your connection to him, something both of you doubled down on after your pregnancy came to light. There would be no way for you to visit or contact him now without suspicion being cast upon your little family. Law enforcement will without a doubt assume you were aware of his intentions, and worst case they would believe you to have played a part in them yourself. 

He couldn’t allow that to happen. And yet, here you were. 

You just needed one last look at him to know he was breathing, living flesh and blood, to know that the only thing you would have to mourn was your relationship. More than anything you needed him to be ok. And he does look different – better, in some ways. The new skin grafts hug his jawbone comfortably, and the rings that once kept him together are gone. 

Being alive meant he still had a chance. 

Touya tilts his chin up, squinting against the flare of the sun, and the corner of his mouth crooks into a smile. It’s the irony, you think, as your own lips twitch. The heavens should have opened by now, rain should be soaking your clothes to your skin, influenced by the utter misery flooding throughout your body. Instead, the day is bright.

As if he can feel it, he turns, and his gaze immediately falls on your figure in the distance. You’re close enough to see the abject fury flit across his features, eyes wide and unblinking as they stare back into your own. 

The hand you have rested against Kaiyo’s back slides up over his hat to cradle his head, his small fingers curled tightly into the fabric of your shirt, drawing Touya’s attention to the boy. 

To his son. 

The anger dissolves like sea foam, it washes away to give space for his grief. This was it, the final goodbye. You couldn’t find it in yourself to hate him for his choices, because it was something he had told you he’d do from the start. 

In hindsight, you can only curse your naivety. 

You’d met Touya a few months after your eighteenth birthday while shadowing one of the senior nurses in the clinic. The place was small, run down and barely funded, but it was valuable work and they were kind enough to give you the extra experience.

He’d been brought in unconscious by a concerned passerby. The skin of his arms has been rough, raised and pale pink, inflamed where they’d been burnt. Barely nineteen at the time, it was nothing compared to what he would do to himself years later. 

“Watch him until he wakes up,” they’d told you, and you did so dutifully until his eyes flew open in alarm. 

Back then his identity as Dabi was makeshift, fresh and unrefined. With the glue still wet between the cracks it was unsurprising that he would slip. Touya. That was how he introduced himself to you on that first day, under the hazy influence of painkillers.

The memory stuck with you throughout your relationship. You’d see it now and then — you’d see Touya plainly behind the veil. Sometimes you said his name as if it was a dare, and he’d hated it so much that he loved you. With you there was no need to exert effort in maintaining his bravado, he could just be. And that was dangerous, or so he’d insisted.

He would disappear for weeks at a time. He always had a myriad of excuses, from expressing concern for your safety to spitting that you were nothing but a good fuck. You could no longer count on one hand the amount of times you’d heard the ‘I’m a villain, you shouldn’t be with me’ speech. 

Touya would leave, and yet you’d still come home to a receipt on the counter, or to your clean sheets unmade. It was laughable, and you loved him. 

The pregnancy was… unexpected. Difficult. If his emotions were a switch on the wall, your growing baby was a finger flicking it up and down incessantly. Mornings full of nausea and nights full of reassurance. You offered him an out, a door that would always be left open, and he refused it. 

Stay and be a bad father. Leave and be a bad father. Those were the only options he thought existed for him. And maybe you should’ve believed him when he told you Kaiyo’s birth wouldn’t change a thing about the path he’d set for himself. 

But you couldn’t accept it. Not as he’d held your boy in his arms, not as the apprehension and fear in his eyes softened into love. Not as he’d laughed and told you, “guess I needed to give one good thing to the world before I die”. 

Sometimes the adoration would become overcast with anguish. There were days he couldn’t even look at Kaiyo because of how much he loved him, reminded only of how little he had been loved by his own family — but he never let Kaiyo see it. 

“Just because he’s too young to understand now doesn’t mean he won’t later”.

The only small mercy is that your son remains asleep, blissfully unaware of what he is losing, and unperturbed by the noise around him. His light, shallow breaths against the skin of your neck are a warm comfort. 

Touya can’t say anything for fear it will draw attention to you both, and you think that alone is punishment enough. 

Shouto stands beside him in silence, surveying the surroundings and eventually following Touya’s line of sight to you. Instinctively you step backwards into the soft soil of the flowerbed, your thoughts offering an apology to the hyacinth flattened beneath your shoe. 

With the realisation that his youngest brother has noticed you, Touya turns and lunges in Shouto’s direction with his teeth bared. It could almost be comical if not for the unpleasant murmurings of the crowd. In the short moment that Shouto is distracted, you jump down from the brick wall and slip away. 

You don’t look back. 

A small part of you had hoped your role in the story had ended, that you now might just move forward as best you can. Instead, you were shadowed by an overwhelming sense of dread everywhere you went. There was little to do besides work and walk, yet you couldn’t help but feel watched. The cashier at your local market, your neighbour, Kaiyo’s teacher, the food vendor on the corner; with just one look you can’t help but to think that they must know, that any day now this false peace will collapse onto you like a tonne of bricks. 

The anxiety keeps you up at night, counting the glowing stars stuck to the bedroom ceiling to pass the hours, tension threading itself into your muscle fibres. Kaiyo was warm where he laid curled at your side, but the loneliness — in all its violent emptiness — made the night colder. Despite it all, you missed Touya, your eyes still searching for him across the futon. 

Remnants of him are still scattered throughout the apartment. Should anyone come looking, there would be plenty of him to find. He’d hated having his picture taken, yet always gave in to you quickly, and you never needed to ask him for anything twice. There were photographs of his lips pressed to your hair, of his smile tucked against your neck, of his arms holding the baby; hand cradled around the crown of his head, his purpled scars a stark contrast to Kaiyo’s soft skin. 

He had treated fatherhood like he was a dying man, a clear red flag that you can only now see with hindsight. He had spoiled the two of you with his time and effort, no matter how uncomfortable it made him, because he knew any day might be his last. Touya was born with inherited wounds that were left to fester. To him, his failure was terminal, and no amount of love would undo that. 

The wood panels are cool beneath the soles of your feet as you pad your way through to the bedroom, bending at your knees to pick up stray toys and socks left throughout the hallway. There’s still an ache in your cheeks, the strain of smiling too long through all the tears and questions from your son that morning before school. You wish you had answers. 

Your shared room looks much emptier with the large futon hung over the balcony to dry. You find a small star in the centre of the room that has fallen from the ceiling. Held between your fingers in the daylight it is dull, a pale yellow, much different to the green glow it emits at night. Touya had bought them for Kaiyo after a series of bad dreams, lifting the boy onto his shoulders and letting him stick them wherever he pleased. 

Another piece of him. As you are slipping the star into your pant pocket, you hear a knock on the front door. You weren’t expecting anyone — rent had been paid, Kaiyo was with his sitter and your neighbours were at work. It sounds again, reverberating throughout the apartment, and the soft hair on your arm lifts in anticipation. 

There is a sense of embarrassment somewhere within you as you creep towards the entryway, keeping your body low and your steps light. You can hear muted, muffled voices through the cheap wood, fingertips carefully lifting the peep hole cover to look through. 

You hold your breath, stunned. There are two women just an arms length from you, both of them beautiful and horrifyingly familiar to you. Rei, Touya’s mother, stands with her head held high despite the nervous fiddling of her hands. Fuyumi, his sister, is clasping the strap of her shoulder bag with a white knuckled grip. 

“Mother, are you sure this is the place?” she asks, her eyes darting anxiously over the surroundings, “maybe Shouto made the wrong assumption”.

Rei is lovely, you think, even with the air of sadness  Her smile is gentle, and her expression softly determined. “The worst outcome to this is that he misunderstood the situation,” she replies, “but if this person is important to Touya then they’re important to me”. 

Fuyumi nods, shifting her weight between each foot. You inhale shakily through your nose, blinking back the dryness in your eye as you continue to watch through the lense. 

“He said… there was a child”. 

Your forehead bumps against the door as you startle, cursing under your breath, lungs tightening as the dread floods your system. The two women freeze alongside you, observing the door cautiously, glancing at one another in silent conversation. 

“If you’re there, we aren’t here to hurt you,” Rei lifts her hand, and rests it against the door in a show of reassurance, “I believe you know my eldest son. We only want to talk”. 

The push and pull of guilt, relief and fear forces the weight of your body to sink forward, drawn to the sincerity in her voice. There is no amount of time or distance that would dilute the loyalty you felt towards Touya. Letting them in would be a betrayal. 

“Please,” Fuyumi’s voice is wet, thickening with tears, “he’s my older brother. He’s refusing to talk about you or— or anything! We just want to—”

Rei turns to soothe her, and you’re reminded of your own parenthood. If something ever happened to Kaiyo you might just scorch the earth in your attempts to find him. It’s hard to swallow the swell in your throat as you watch his sister turn into the touch, seeking that comfort. 

Touya had loved his mother, a difficult thing for him to stomach but true all the same. He’d grieved the attention he never received from her, but you knew he didn’t blame her, and it is that which leads your hand to the door handle. 

Time feels like it’s in suspension. To see them standing so clearly before you without the film of dirt from the glass is still a shock to process. Behind you is a home filled to the brim with evidence of your own criminal involvement, the first photograph they’ll see hung in the hallway is of their grandson.

Kaiyo deserved his chance at having a family. 

“Please come in,” your fingers are trembling where they sit in your pocket, curled around the divots in the star. Please forgive me, you think. 

You step backwards to allow them through, both accepting with a short bow and a quiet thank you. It’s unnerving and tense, their stares lingering along the walls and shelves, the mother and daughter now hand in hand as they take a seat on your couch. 

“Would…” a blunt point of the star sinks into the thickest part of your palm, the sensation acting as your tether, “…can I get you anything to drink?” 

“Some tea would be wonderful,” Rei concedes, her voice full of earnest and so light it’s almost wistful. As you steep the leaves you can’t help but get the feeling she knew you needed more time.

The ceramic cups are old, stained with time and well loved. You fill them with hot water, tendrils of steam billowing warmth across your face, and place them atop the coffee table before kneeling onto the floor. 

Beneath your mug is a clumsily drawn cat, the marker permanently stained into the wood. There are others, too, little marks left by mistake. Faint lines of kanji where the ink had seeped through the paper, hearts and stick figures and stars. Rei reaches her hand out to trace a finger along them, lips pressed thinly in a sad smile. 

“I apologise for our unexpected intrusion,” she tells you, “I’m Himura Rei and this is my daughter, Todoroki Fuyumi".

“Believe it or not I’ve been waiting for someone to find us,” your hands wrap tightly around the hot cup, incognisant of the sting to your skin, “it was beginning to eat away at me a little bit”.

“Then Shouto was right,” Fuyumi mirrors you, keeping her voice soothing and calm as she speaks even as her eyes are tearful. You recall Touya telling you she was a teacher, and you can see why. 

“You did know him,” she says, “it looks like he spent… a lot of time here”.

You hear yourself laugh breathlessly at her tiptoeing of the subject, “he practically lived here until he decided to join the league. After that he stayed away for our safety, I suppose”. 

She nods, seeming to accept your answer, glancing then to her mother in a silent plea for assistance. “Could you tell us what he was like?” there’s a mellow, apologetic tone in Rei’s words, but to whom she was apologising you didn’t know.

“Could you tell us all the things we missed?”

So you sip your drink to smooth the dryness in your throat and it’s scalding against the roof of your tongue, and you tell them everything you know. 

After your first meeting you’d thought about him every day for a week, haunted by the intensity in his eyes and the marks on his skin. You had talked and talked and he had done nothing but listen. While you thought you'd never see him again it wasn’t long at all until he came back to your dingy clinic, this time of his own accord, in need of painkillers and suturing. 

He’d gone straight to you, rudely bypassing the doctors with any qualification in the ward, and shoved some money into the palm of your hand. He was still young, his attempts at carrying himself like a man seemed more like puppetry to you, but still you entertained it and attended to his wounds. 

“Since I’m still not fully trained you’ll need to sign this,” you remember holding out the clipboard to him, your supervisor lingering by the curtains, the impatient tap of her foot echoing in your ears. 

“Touya—” 

Back then his aversion to hearing that name was much greater. Every time it’d passed through your lips was as if you had pressed your thumb on a fresh bruise, and he’d lash out in kind. 

“Don’t call me that here!” 

“Why? Are you running from something?” 

He’d laughed at you with eyes that glittered like he was about to cry, but the tears never came, they never could. “Running implies that someone is looking for me,” his skin pulled uncomfortably taut as he smiled, “there’s no one to run from”.

“He dyed his hair black soon after that,” the mug held between your trembling hands grows cold, your tea mostly untouched and leaving a faint brown ring around the ceramic, “sometimes he would visit me all soaked with rain, and the colour would run down the back of his neck”. 

You pause every so often to offer them a chance to ask questions, but the two women remain quiet, listening raptly to your story. Their genuine trust and willingness to believe you bore a sense of unease, or perhaps guilt that you’d had him to yourself while they’d mourned. 

“Then things eventually progressed to… more,” even with the air of melancholy, you couldn’t help but take refuge in the normalcy of being timid around your partner's family, sheepish as you recount your relationship. 

“Did you love him?” Rei asks, and though not unkind, her question makes you feel unspeakably lonely. 

Loving Touya had felt nothing like a free fall, there was no moment in which you woke up and realised your feelings. It’d been no great feat to love him, no grand prize or climax at the end of a long battle; you saw all the worst parts of him and it didn’t change a thing. Even with all his flaws your feelings only deepened until they hollowed you out. 

Despite it all, you had walked into it knowingly, each step forward towards him a purposeful choice. 

You have only your own hunger to thank. Your eighteen year old self had been fiercely persistent, and however much he denied it, you knew he was drawn to your sympathy. Even though he was never entirely honest you pursued him with the small truths he did offer, motivated by the selfish wish to see him happy. 

“Yes,” in sickness and violence, in struggle and fear; you’d loved him through holidays and birthdays, through time spent apart and nights spent alone, “I love him”. 

“And the little boy, is he your son?”

Kaiyo. An unexpected yet happy accident. Named after forgiveness and the spitting image of his father, a red haired cherub, you both already knew the answer. “You can say it, Ms. Himura,” your smile strained as you run your thumb along the handle of your mug, “he’s our son. Mine and his”. 

Fuyumi exhales shakily, slumping forward like the fight left her body along with it. You can see the moment your confession truly registers, misty eyed and sparing a glance between one another. Turning on your knees, you reach into the shelves of the TV cabinet, grasping the framed photo of your son as an infant. 

Rei takes it from you delicately as you offer it to her with an outstretched hand and traces her fingers across the glass pane, circling the swell of Kaiyo’s pink cheek. It’s a personal favourite of yours — his arms are held above his head in triumph, the lower half slightly blurred from the excited kick of his feet. He’s grinning widely, so much so his eyes are squinted. 

Touya had been the one to take that photo, making ridiculous noises from behind the camera, the ghost of their intermingling laughter still ringing in your ears. 

“His name is Kaiyo and he’ll be turning four soon,” you watch warmly as Fuyumi leans over her mothers shoulder to get a better look, hand clutching at the fabric of her knit sweater, “the pregnancy was unexpected. We didn’t… I told Touya I would raise him myself, but he insisted on taking responsibility”. 

As you recall, the very notion that he wouldn’t stick around had offended him. He loved his son. He’d even cried over the baby scans, dry blood still smeared across black and white where they sit in your bedroom drawer. But you could see how the fear had eaten away at him throughout those nine months, restlessly doting on you and bringing home stolen things for the baby every few days but never being able to touch your growing bump. 

“Then, why did he join the league?” Fuyumi asks, but you were intuitive enough to see the real question between the lines. Why wasn’t any of this enough? Why did he leave this behind, too? 

You’d guessed from the beginning that his relationship with his family was, at best, a strained one. In reality it was worse than you could’ve imagined. The small pieces to his past that he let slip every now and then would always fill you with distress, at a loss for words. 

The reveal of who his father had been all you needed to understand the secrecy, of both his identity and of your relationship. 

“Stain,” you cross your arms over the surface of the coffee table, knees folded beneath it, and resist the urge to hide your face, “he continued to use his quirk so his condition was worsening, and his anger towards Endeavor had been festering for years”.

You ignore their plaintive wince at the mention of the pro, blunt nails curling into your inner wrists as you continue. “Touya felt his death didn’t matter. It didn’t change a thing,” and he had to watch his world move on without acknowledging it, “everything Endeavor did made him susceptible to Stain’s cause”.

Stain’s temporary reign of terror over Japan was the first time he’d ever heard anyone criticise hero society so blatantly. You remember the vengeful kindling in his eyes as he recited the vigilante’s words, your son sound asleep in his arms and none the wiser. 

It was that night, and every night that followed, that the stress had started to gnaw at your chest until you felt your lungs collapse under the weight. Panic gripped you each time he returned home with a new injury, the smell of smoke suffocating and clinging to the futon covers no matter how much you washed them. He carried a feral sense of excitement and restlessness that left you helpless — something had breathed new life into him, and it had not been you. 

Fighting had been pointless, your pleas like water to a ducks back. He loved you, he loved his son, and somehow he had rationalised that burning himself and the world would give rise to a better place.  

“He already died once,” your smile is tight but not as tight as your throat,  “and it did nothing. So this time he’d do it where it couldn’t be hidden, where everyone would have to look right at his self immolation and know their part in causing it”. 

It's then that Rei carefully places the photograph on the table as she lowers herself onto her knees, the frame remaining upright with the support of its stand. With her hands resting one atop the other, she leans forward into a full bow in front of you. 

You’re stunned with arms suspended in the air as you hesitate to reach for her, a swell of tears lining your eyes at her softly spoken apology. Your son watches over the exchange, his presence poignant even through an image. 

“Ms. Himura, please lift your head,” you shift towards her, close enough to thread your fingers over her own, feeling the peaks of her knuckles against your palm. 

“I failed him as his mother,” she says, overturning her hand to hold yours and squeezing, “it was those failures that led to your own suffering. I’m sorry”. 

In your peripheral you see Fuyumi as she moves to mirror her mother, sitting close beside you, fingers ghosting a chill along your forearm where she comes to entangle with the two of you. 

“Please don’t take responsibility for my pain. Besides, it wasn’t always terrible,” you stare at the knot of limbs, comforted by the gentle warmth of their touch, “I don’t think… I’ve ever met anyone who loves as much as your son does”. 

Rei’s eyes fall shut, a faint pinch between her brows, sorrowful as she replies: “I know”.  

Her expression is so full of regret it’s almost contagious, drawing you in and reminding you of your own mistakes. There’d been so many opportunities that you could’ve fought him, could’ve said something, but didn’t for fear of pushing him further away. 

“How did you find me?” 

Your voice cuts through the plaintive silence and you shrink under their gaze as their eyes lift. Fuyumi speaks in place of her mother, her thumb rubbing back and forth over your wrist. 

“Shouto saw you as Touya was being transferred, and in all honesty he didn’t think anything of it until Touya attacked him to keep the attention on himself,” she explains with an amused lilt, “he appeared to be very protective of you”.

Idiot, you think fondly. 

“I assure you he only told my mother,” Fuyumi squeezes your forearm once again as if to comfort you, “he was concerned and wasn’t sure if he just misunderstood. But we wanted to look for you to make sure”. 

“Then, the authorities aren’t aware?” 

“No,” Rei murmurs. 

You’re surprised by just how much you were being upheld by stress, shoulders sagging forward in relief, sinking your teeth into the soft inside of your cheek to withhold a whimper. 

“Thank you,” you say hoarsely, and you repeat it again and again until the two women have swaddled you in their arms, surrounded by the gentle scent of lavender and detergent. 

“You’re family to Touya, therefore you’re family to us,” Fuyumi reassures you, “you don’t have to do this alone anymore if you don’t want to”. 

Family. The prospect almost seemed too good to be true, an enticing offer laid out only to trap you at the end. You couldn’t risk Kaiyo’s safety or wellbeing, but their sincerity is so palpable it’s stifling. 

“How is he?” you ask instead, “is he safe?” 

“This knowledge isn’t available to the public, but he has been moved into a private villain corrections centre,” Rei looks at Kaiyo’s picture as she speaks, and you wonder if she sees Touya looking back.

“He will be undergoing rehabilitation with the hopes of one day joining us for a period of probation,” she continues, turning to you with a soft smile, “rest assured we have no intention of removing his autonomy. Touya consciously chose to carry out his actions and he should take responsibility for it…”

Her voice breaks, “… but we had our own part to play in his creation, and believe he deserves a second chance”. 

It’d sound like a perfect dream if you did not know Touya as intimately as you do. You’re unable to repress the grimace that crosses your expression. 

“He won’t be happy about that,” your eyes fall closed momentarily as you exhale, “he won’t see it your way. You already took his autonomy by removing his choice to die, that’s what he’ll think”. 

“You really do understand him, don’t you?” Fuyumi laughs mournfully, “he’s refusing to cooperate. He was relatively fine in police custody but since the transfer he’s become more hostile”.

The room grows a little smaller with every word. “Do you think it’s because I was there?” 

“Shouto asked twice who you were and Touya attacked him both times. It’s a big part of why he came to me about it, and why we knew we had to find you,” Rei says. 

It would make sense. Touya always smothered his anxiety with anger, a response that allowed him some control or imitation of power, and power meant safety. You knew he found common ground with his youngest brother, that being the reason he ultimately lost to him, but that didn’t mean he trusted Shouto. The thought of him restlessly wondering if you and Kaiyo were in danger causes your chest to tighten. 

“Maybe if you’re able to tell him we’re okay, he’ll start responding to treatment?” 

“Maybe,” Rei nods and then the apartment is veiled in heavy silence. It wasn’t unlike sitting at his wake. You wished he could bear witness to how much love you all felt for him. 

Suddenly, a muted beeping sounds from the thin, mint coloured watch clasped around Rei’s wrist. She sighs and pressed her lips into a thin, displeased line. “I’m sorry but we can’t stay longer. They still get a little nervous if I’m out too long,” she says. 

Right. She too had spent time locked away in a hospital. It must be difficult, you think, to have a mistake follow you wherever you went. A perfect recovery did not mean other people would forgive, or forget. 

Maybe one day, Touya would see that he and his mother are more similar than he realises. 

“That’s fine, Ms. Himura,” you bow forward towards her, and then again while addressing Fuyumi, “I’m grateful to you both for finding us”. 

“And we’re grateful you gave us a chance,” Fuyumi lifts her arms in an aborted motion as if to hug you, but decides against it, “we’d like to leave you with our contact information. If there’s anything you need or… if you’d like Kaiyo to visit, please don’t hesitate to call”. 

Their touch lingers long after they leave. The evening moves on, sun dipping below the seam of the horizon as it always does as if nothing had changed, an unintended reminder of how minuscule your problems really were. Kaiyo is returned home by his sitter, excitedly babbling about his day, rushing throughout the apartment with bare feet padding over the spot where his grandmother had been seated only hours before. 

You’re reminded of how intuitive he is when he curls himself around your thigh, asking you if you’re okay, if you were feeling sick or sad. There’s a guilt there that can only come with parenthood, your depression smothered like a wet blanket as you pull forward a smiling mask to wear, hoping it will placate his worry. 

“I’m okay baby,” you tell him with fingers combing through unkempt red hair, his eyes wide and bright and distinctly your own, “I’m just a little tired”.  

There is an anger that accompanies the insurmountable love you feel when you look at your son. It is difficult to accept his abandonment, to know you will have to be the one imparting that pain into him. So gentle, excitable and considerate of those around him, qualities taught to him by his supposedly villainous parents.

Despite his mistakes and doubts, Touya tried to be a good father, he’d wanted to be one. You suspected a lot of it came from a place of wishfulness, parenting his child in a way he’d wanted for himself, as painful as it might’ve been to realise just how little he’d mattered to his own. And you can see it now — Touya’s inherited wounds are steadily present on Kaiyo, a passing of the torch, and all you can do is try to stop the bleeding.

If you truly thought about it, you could say your whole relationship had carried a disquieting dark shadow beneath its skin, something of a spreading blood wheel. You overlooked it anytime he was callous and unruly, you’d cry and ache but it pleased you to know he still cared enough about himself to be angry. 

Soon after joining the league he’d gradually plateaued, urges satisfied, and you should’ve noticed. 

“Mama, look,” Kaiyo appears and lifts a thin sheet towards you, paper wrinkling under his chubby fingers, “I drawed dad!”

“Drew,” you warmly correct, cradling his cheeks as you duck to press a kiss to his forehead. The drawing is that of three stick figures, each one distinct with features. Touya’s figure has his black spiked hair, and across the lower half of its face is a purple shadow. His scars, you assume. 

It was all perfectly normal to Kaiyo; the sutures and rings, the burns, the ever present smell of smoke. From the moment he could open his eyes, they would follow his father with love and excitement. The admiration would sometimes unsettle Touya, too familiar, too much like looking into a reflection. 

“It’s brilliant, baby,” you tell him, gentle as you take it from his grasp, “shall we put it on the pinboard along with the others?”

He huffs, incensed by your request, “but I want to show my friends!”

Therein lies the dilemma. You wonder how often this problem will crop up in the years to come, how quickly you might run out of acceptable excuses as he becomes old enough to understand. Dabi was too easily recognised, even in your son's amateur rendition of him. 

“I really love this one though Kai, it has all of us,” you twist your lips into a cartoonish pout, pulling the sweet sound of a laugh from him, “please can I keep it?”

His childish glare withers as he fights a smile, the restrained happiness plain on his face and entirely contagious. “Ok mama, I guess,” he relents, innocent and forgiving, head tilted and cheeks pink under your praise. In moments like this, you can truly understand a parent's wish to freeze time. 

You recall Touya’s claim of putting good into the world before his death. You too could hardly believe that you’d raised such an unequivocally good little boy. But as you watch your son appraise his art with an excited wiggle, you’re reminded that children are not a tool for redemption. 

“I love you,” I promise I’ll be better for you, “and dad loves you too. How about we draw him another picture? I’ll do one aswell". 

“Okay!” he takes your hand and begins to pull you along the hallway towards his room, your back bent uncomfortably to lessen his reach. Halfway to his destination, Kaiyo pauses, pulling anxiously at the hem of his metallica shirt. 

“When… When is dad coming back from work?” 

That’s right. Work in Okinawa, you’d told him. A terribly flimsy excuse given in a moment of panic. At the time you just wanted him to have a reason to hold onto, to reassure himself with, but it was slowly coming back to bite you. 

“He still has a lot to do baby,” an understatement if you’d ever heard one, “it’ll be a little while. But we can be patient, can’t we?”

His lips purse into a pout, eyes shimmering with unshed tears as he bravely nods, and the thought of Rei’s phone number waiting in your contacts lingers in the forefront of your mind. 

Truthfully it haunts you throughout the rest of your week, stomach lined thickly with guilt. You eat, you work, you walk Kaiyo to school with eyes on every corner. You sleep in Touya’s most recently worn hoodie and pretend it’s his skin, his hands, too attached to his scent to wash it. 

Kaiyo continues to draw, to write and create. He brings graded homework back from school to keep in one of your old folders along with his other keepsakes; just in case Touya comes back, just so he can show him. 

You were looking over some of the old home made cards the night you finally called Rei, reliving another time and wondering if it ever really had been better, or if it’d just been a figment of your imagination. 

It can be difficult to know when a memory has been altered by nostalgia. 

“What’s this?” Touya had said as Kaiyo handed him a Father’s Day card, the inside lined with confetti and star sequins that toppled into his lap when opened. 

“I— I made it for you,” Kaiyo had explained nervously with eyes wide, hands flexing at his sides, “see… that’s you and— and me!” 

“Those potato shaped things are us?” Kaiyo had visibly deflated even with Touya’s playful tone, “this is pretty fuckin’ cool if you ask me”. 

“Freakin’,” you’d gently chided, lacking any heat for it to sound truly scolding at the time, too pleased by Kaiyo’s excited dancing. You recall the relaxed smirk on Touya’s lips and how he’d pressed a kiss to your shoulder, a rare moment of him being truly at ease and present. 

“And the heart, why s’it blue and not red?” 

“Because of your fire, dad!” Kaiyo grinned as he lifted his arms, mimicking the pose of a hero, “I hope I have blue flames, just like you”. 

Fragile. You'd watched on as Touya’s expression became strained, closing the card and setting it on the table, “I guess we better keep it somewhere safe since you worked so hard on it”. 

Into the folder it went. 

You decide to make the leap the following morning, allowing Kaiyo to sleep a little longer while you sift through your shared wardrobe for a suitable outfit. Work had happily allowed you a day off — even though they were chronically short staffed, you didn’t often call in sick so they were glad to give it to you. 

Usually Kaiyo would be dropped off with his sitter, an older woman known in the neighbourhood for fostering children. She’d been around for a long time, had seen and worked with many a criminal, and she understood young people more than you could comprehend. You trusted her with your son, trusted that even if he unknowingly slipped up she wouldn’t say a thing. 

But today that wasn’t necessary. You feel the fabric of the small knitted sweater between your fingers, frowning at the aggravating itch. He wouldn’t wear this, too scratchy, but it was also the closest to nice clothing he had. 

It isn’t like you’re living in poverty, but one mistake and it could very well be a truth for you. Clothes were fine as long as they fit — Kaiyo loved the little band tees his father would bring him more than anything, he didn’t care much for formal wear. 

The unbidden image of Touya’s displeased scowl flashing through your thoughts is enough for you to put the sweater back. Forcing Kaiyo to conform for the sake of his wealthier relatives, indicating that your own reality was something lesser, is something you wouldn’t do. Something Touya would hate you for. 

A small lump curled up beneath the futon covers begins to move. Kaiyo stirs, almost as if he can feel your turmoil, sleep lined eyes searching for you. 

“Ma?” 

“Mornin’, handsome,” a smile pulls naturally at your lips and warmth unfurls in your chest when he reaches for you. Half of his hair is pressed flat to the side of his head where he’d laid. 

He blinks slowly from your lap, his fathers nose wrinkling as he surveys the clothes you’d been mulling over. It’s an unspoken question. 

“I have a surprise for you so I wanted to find something nice for you to wear,” you tell him, hand rubbing along the length of his back. He perks up noticeably, foot kicking out against the sweater you’d just been holding. 

“Don’t like that one,” he says. You laugh, eyes closing for a moment to silently send thanks to Touya, even if he had just been a fleeting piece of your imagination. 

“Thought so,” you murmur, leaning forward to move it aside, “pick something for yourself, then. Make sure it’s something you’ll feel good in, because we’re going to meet some new people today”. 

“Who?” he asks, mouth wet and shaped into an ‘o’ as he fists his hands into another one of his dark coloured t-shirts. 

“You know how a lot of your friends have more than just a mother and father?”

He mumbles a dejected ‘yes’. 

“Well, I know you’ve been missing dad so I thought we might be able to connect with him in a different way,” you explain, helping him lift his pyjama shirt over his head and refraining from pinching his belly. 

“What would you say if I told you… I was going to take you to see your grandma right now?” 

“Grandma?!” he squeaks from behind the clean shirt you loop over his head, frowning then as you help him push his arms through the sleeves, releasing a small noise of complaint. 

“That’s right, your dad's mother,” — your smile dims slightly while he insists on dressing himself, reminded of how quickly the time has passed, how much he was growing — “I guess he didn’t talk about his family a lot did he?”

Kaiyo shakes his head excitedly, bouncing on his toes as he struggles to tug his pants over his clean underwear. He relents and allows you to do up the fiddly top button of his trousers. 

“That’s not all…” 

“More?!”

“You have an auntie and two uncles,” you tell him, and his hands fly to cover his mouth as he begins to dance with excitement. His joy is contagious, you feel it fill you and spill over as you pull him back into your lap, holding him tightly. 

Rei and the siblings, that had been the deal. No Endeavor. Touya may forgive the former, but never the latter. You wouldn’t do that to him.

It isn’t strenuous getting him out the door, but it is taxing to get him to the station, hair once again tucked under a knitted beanie despite the day's warmth. He jumps over the cracks in the pavement, follows the pattern with his feet, stops to greet every stray he sees. 

And you let him. Because his happiness is your own, and you dread to imagine him without it. Maybe it was selfish for you to cover his ears to the cruelty around him. He knew of fear, pain and crime, he knew that people sometimes did bad things to others. But it had never been personal to him, not yet. 

Perhaps the biggest question as a parent was just that — at what point do you expose your children to what may hurt them? 

You had told Rei the cover story ahead of time, embarrassed by your own lies, but she’d been understanding. Gentle. Somehow it only left you more ashamed. 

You wanted to preserve the innocent lense in which he viewed the world, wanted to encase the image he held of his father in amber. Because when you’re a child, the power of those traumas stay with you, chemically alter you; they become the epicentre of your nightmares, they shape your convictions and morals, they fuel your will. Touya knew that more than anyone. 

You observe Kaiyo while he watches the surroundings change, clutching the backrest of his seat as he looks out the train window, propped up on his knees and ignorant of the glare from the elderly woman beside him. Folded on her lap is the morning newspaper, a grainy black and white photo of flames and the words ‘Where is Endeavor’s Villainous Son?’ printed across the front. 

You adjust the hat, his eyes fixed on the moving landscape. He’d never been this far out of the Kanagawa prefecture, Touya’s unease with regards to your safety always taking precedence over the freedom to explore, so you let him press his nose to the glass and laugh as his voice begins to vibrate with the train. 

“Do you remember the names I told you?”

“Yumi!”

“Fuyumi,” you emphasise, tucking the tag by his neck back into the confines of his shirt, “who else?”

He holds out his fist, fingers unfurling one by one as he counts, seeking your praises as he goes. “Fuyumi… Shouto… Natsu…o… Natsuo!”

The two hour journey passes in what feels like a minute. With one blink the train arrives in Shizuoka, slow as it pulls up to the second platform, the anticipation knotting thickly like yarn in your gut. Kaiyo, as perceptive as he can be, is bubbling with too much enthusiasm to notice your inner turmoil. 

You hold him on your hip, arms pressing him close into your chest as the sliding doors part, and step into the throngs of people waiting to board the train. As if you’d been in a soundproof bubble the noise of the city amplifies, a cacophony of voices and cries and whistles echoing uncomfortably in your ears. There are suits everywhere, hats tipped over eyes, too many unknowns in such a crowded space. 

The relief of stepping out onto the clear street almost buckles you. Kaiyo is squirming in complaint, wanting to be put back on the pavement but you hike him up a little higher. You couldn’t let him down, couldn’t let him out of reach, couldn’t let anyone take him. 

“Sorry baby, you can walk soon. I just need to find the car first—”

You’re interrupted then by a low, nasal voice, startling you to pivot on your feet. Behind you stands a large figure, bowler hat held politely to his chest as he bows forward. Kaiyo shrinks into the crook of your neck at the sight of a stranger, sensing your unease. The man repeats your name, the well groomed moustache sitting on his top lip moving as he speaks, curled into spirals at either end. He’s formally dressed, wearing a three piece suit and a large black topcoat. 

“That is you, correct?”

Grappling at your thoughts, you recall the riddle that you had given to Rei after her suggestion of having you picked up. She hadn’t wanted you to make your own way there, adamant that the family staff would drive the two of you to her home, and you gave in only at the promise of a safeword.

You inhale to steady yourself. “What is it that, given one, you’ll have either two or none?”

His eyes soften considerably but it does nothing to soothe the tension, only when he gives you the answer do you let yourself relax. “A choice,” he says, “my apologies. I should have been more considerate of your circumstances”. 

Circumstances. What a kind understatement. 

“My name is Ono Hiroki, I’m under the service of Ms. Himura and will be your driver,” he continues with a well meaning tilt to his head as he leans towards Kaiyo in greeting, “and what is the young master's name?”

You feel your son shift beneath your chin, presumably to look up at Hiroki, but he remains stubbornly quiet. “This is Kaiyo,” the grip he has on your shirt lessens at the sound of your voice, “we appreciate you coming out here to meet us but… please don’t refer to him with that title”. 

Touya would turn his nose up if he heard. You can almost imagine the shiver that may have run down his back just now, wherever he may be, and the thought forces you to hide a smile into Kaiyo’s knitted hat. 

“Of course,” Hiroki assents, and he begins to lead you towards the car. You cringe at how obviously it stands out amongst the more common models, clearly something owned by someone with great wealth and status. Even with having chosen your best outfit, the clothes on your back suddenly felt like straw, cheap and unfit for the occasion. 

The drive is smooth, though your sense of time becomes warped — had someone asked you how long it took to arrive, you wouldn’t have an answer for them. Kaiyo, just as he had done on the train, pressed his nose and fingers to the window; leaving behind murky smudges against the glass. 

As the car pulls to the curb you’re left feeling alienated by the neighbourhood. Worse, Hiroki steps out and speeds around to your door, opening it for you with a reflexive bow. 

It feels… uncomfortable. 

The property itself is walled off from the street and the building is large, though you’re sure that’s only in comparison to your own homes. You’re drawn in by the greenery that surrounds it, though the trees were likely put there for the sake of privacy the garden was clearly a labour of love. 

It appears to be a single story house, the roofs tiled dark brown with broad waves and an exterior hallway that frames around each room. You could picture Rei tending to her garden while her children sat on the veranda in the summer months. 

It was beautiful. 

Hiroki slowly leads you up the path, the gravel between each step crunching beneath your shoes. The pace can be attributed to Kaiyo’s adamance in standing on each individual stone, which the man kindly indulges. 

The entrance is made up of a large sliding door with plaster slitted windows. Hiroki pushes it across and moves aside to allow you into the house. You murmur in wonderment at the width of the genkan, the wall above the shoe cupboard  lined with traditional calligraphy. 

“Yes— it’s fine! I’ll bring them through…”

A sweet, familiar voice echoes throughout the entryway. Kaiyo tucks himself against the back of your knees as Fuyumi rounds the corner, socked feet slipping slightly on the wooden flooring in her excitement. 

Her lips part to greet you, the words caught in her throat as her gaze is drawn to the movement behind your legs. Typically Kaiyo could be quite rambunctious around others, loud and eager to befriend others. Here you can feel his anxiety, how small he must feel in this large, unfamiliar place. 

Fuyumi, too, is at a loss for words. A little pale, teary eyed as she blinks, visibly composing herself in front of you both.  “It’s good to see you again, Fuyumi,” you say as the silence stretches on, taking pity on her. 

Her demeanour lightens, and she appears grateful. Somehow her awkward loss of words and your son's hesitance lent you courage even if you, too, did not have your footing. 

“How about we take off our shoes and make proper introductions?” the question ends with a soft hum, a gentle verbal push, reaching back to pluck the hat from Kaiyo’s head. 

His hair is mussed, cowlicks pointed in all directions after being pressed beneath the yarn. You run your hand through it, wetting the pads of your fingers to flatten some of the more unruly curls down until they’re neat. The red is brighter in the sunlit genkan, and Fuyumi does well to conceal her sharp inhale. 

Kaiyo steps forward, nervously wringing out the material of his t-shirt, and Fuyumi lowers herself to his height as if approaching a cornered animal. Tender with her motions, she reaches out to still his anxious tic, ducking her head to smile where he can see it. A teacher, you remember. 

“It’s so wonderful to meet you Kaiyo. I’m your aunt Fuyumi,” she says. He turns over his wrist and takes three of her fingers into his fist, head nodding forward in what you know to be a bow. 

“Nice to meet you, aunt Fuyumi,” he replies. 

“Don’t worry about formalities, sweetheart,” she uses her free hand to straighten out the hem of the shirt, her eyes flickering over the logo with some recognition, “you can call me ‘Yumi. You are my nephew, after all”. 

Kaiyo straightens his back, overjoyed by the privilege, and looks up to share the feeling with you. If you could read his thoughts you’d guess it was something along the lines of told you her name was ‘Yumi, mama. 

“Natsuo isn’t here yet as he stayed overnight at his girlfriend's dorm,” Fuyumi continues as she rises to her feet, still keeping a firm hold of Kaiyo’s hand, “but mother and Shouto are in the tatami room. She likes having all the doors open on a day like this while we sit together, would you like to meet them?”

“Yes!”. In his excitement he pushes up onto the tip of his toes, shedding his timid attitude and grinning so wide his cheeks begin to pinken. It’s infectious, Fuyumi brightening considerably at his sudden comfort in her presence, and she begins to guide you both through the house. 

Soft spoken murmurings become louder as you approach the open sliding door into what you presume is the tatami room. Kaiyo pauses a few steps before, hidden behind the panel, waiting until you’re close enough for him to wrap an arm around your thigh. 

“You’re ok, baby,” you whisper warmly, “let’s go in together”. 

You enter the room with an awkward gait, slowed by the weight of your son against your leg, the matts firm beneath your feet. Immediately you are embraced by the scent of earth and autumn bellflower. Rei is seated on a pale green cushion across from Shouto, cross legged and holding a steaming cup of tea with both hands, on the table between them is a vase blooming purples and blues. You garner their attention, self-consciousness twisting uncomfortably in your chest as they appraise you and Kaiyo, a part of you always ready to jump to his defences. 

But the two, despite the cool air and unreadable expressions, only seem to thaw as their eyes fall to your son. 

The light knock of Shouto’s mug levelling atop the table surface brings you above water. “Greet your grandmother properly, sweetheart,” you step further into the space and lower to your knees, Kaiyo mirroring your actions with caution, facing Rei with his hands resting politely on his knees. 

You bow forward, thank you for having us Ms. Himura, and watch with fond exasperation as Kaiyo leans until his forehead is touching the tatami in your peripheral. “It’s nice to meet you, grandmother. It’s— it’s nice to meet you, uncle Shouto,” he recites, “my name is Kaiyo!”

You smile at the force behind the words, as if he’d practised them in his mind repeatedly before arriving. Rei appears to come to the same conclusion, returning the words and beckoning him to sit beside her, and Fuyumi ushers you to take a seat by Shouto.

In closing the distance Rei appears mystified, eyeline wet as she blinks back the tears, hands lifting to cradle your son's face in her palms. Kaiyo tenses for a moment on contact, shoulders relaxing as her thumbs graze over the swell of his cheeks. You wonder who she was truly seeing as she looked at Kaiyo, a little boy almost identical to her own. “My hands are a little cold, aren’t they?” her voice is soft, weak. There’s an intonation of grief, of regret, and an apology in her eyes. 

And your son, ever loving and perceptive, covers them with his own as if to tell her it doesn’t bother him in the slightest. Then he shifts closer on his knees until he’s tucked against her chest, her chilled touch running along the length of his back as she holds him. At your side you feel Shouto exhale a short, hot breath of emotion. 

“Tea?”

You look to see Fuyumi has set out more cups, now with a pale cream teapot in her grip, unphased by the temperature as tendrils of steam wisp and dance from the spout. Along the curve of her jaw is a single tear, and she tilts to wipe it on her shoulder with a weak sniffle. You feel it too, pulling the sleeves of your shirt over your wrists to conceal the trembling, lifting your chin to keep the emotions behind your eyelids.

“That’d be great,” you nod, accepting the cup that Shouto slides towards you, “thank you”. 

You’re tempted to thank Fuyumi again as you bring the ceramic to your lips, a slight sting to the skin of your palms and your lower lip, breathing in the potent scent of green tea. This family must enjoy it a little stronger, steeping the leaves for longer, the bitterness heavy on your tongue. There is at least some respite in the distraction it provides — you could not talk if your mouth was busy. 

Kaiyo ignores the silences, leaving his grandmother's lap to squeeze himself next to Shouto. You try not to laugh, the youngest at a loss for what to do as your son looks up at him in wonderment and admiration, though it is hard to restrain yourself at the barrage of questions Kaiyo targets him with. 

“Are you really going to be a pro hero, uncle Shouto?”

“I am,” he replies solemnly, “I’ll be a hero that my family can rely on. Do you want to be a hero?”

“Hell no!” 

“Kaiyo—”

“I’m going to go to space,” he barrels on without a care, too wrapped up in his own passion to recognise the informality, but with Rei’s quiet laugh you realise there was no need to worry. As Kaiyo stumbles over his words about asteroids and comets, about how the sunset on mars is blue and isn’t that so cool, Shouto seems to relax even further. 

“He doesn’t think he’s good at talking to children,” Fuyumi whispers at your side, “believe me, Kaiyo is doing him a favour”. 

Even as the time passes Shouto’s tea remains steaming in his left hand while yours begins to cool, and Rei observes their back and forth with an autumn bellflower petal between her fingers, gently as she handles it like it were something precious. There’s no tension, any growing pains soothed as Kaiyo soaks up the attention, the beating heart of the room. 

“I’m gonna go to space an’ clean up all the junk,” he announces. A goal that you’d heard many a time, manifested in his fathers arms one evening as they’d sat together watching a pre-quirk era documentary about space travel. 

“Pro heroes came along and suddenly we forgot everything that used to be important to us,” Touya muttered, “going to space is—”

“—a hero's job in its own right,” Shouto says. 

You do well not to drop your drink as Kaiyo launches himself into Shouto’s lap, one of his arms outstretched to not spill his own while the other steadies the boy to his chest. Gleeful, childish laughter wells throughout the room, paired with the balmy sun and the whistle of a Japanese tit flitting through the gardens. 

“Dad told me that too,” you feel as the mother, the sister and the brother all hold their breath at the mention of Touya, the one topic they weren’t sure if they could even touch upon, “do you really think so, uncle Shouto?” 

“I do…” he shifts, hugging Kaiyo only after glancing at you for permission, “...and you don’t need to prefix my name with ‘uncle’ every time. You can be casual”. 

“Prefix?” 

“A word that comes before another,” you interject gently, “he means you can just call him Shouto, baby”. 

In that instance your back straightens at the sound of another voice ringing throughout the house, low and distant. “I’m home,” they shout with familiarity, “sorry I’m late!”.

Fuyumi jumps to her feet, leaving to meet the new arrival, and Kaiyo watches her go with a chubby fist curled into Shouto’s sweater. He pats his hand awkwardly to Kaiyo’s thigh in reassurance, “don’t worry, it’s just Natsuo. He’s my other older brother”. 

Kaiyo lessens his grip, tentative as he watches the open doorway, and you can’t help but to reflexively reach out to pinch his cheek. “It’ll be fine,” you murmur. 

Your first impression of Natsuo is that he’s much bigger than his siblings. He must’ve inherited his build from his father and his demeanour in spite of him, because even with the chill that he brings, his grin is refreshing. The type of person that sets you at ease and wordlessly invites you in, that actively wants you to feel welcomed. 

“Wow, you’re really here. You’re really…” Natsuo's throat bobs as he swallows his next words, silenced by Fuyumi’s encouraging touch. Rather, he hastily greets his mother with a kiss to the cheek, and then he settles down at the table facing Kaiyo. 

A litany of emotions flicker through his face, like he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel. Even so, his smile doesn’t waver as he introduces himself to you, nervously rubbing his neck as he bows. 

“And you must be Kaiyo. I’m Natsuo, I guess that makes me your uncle,” he inhales deeply, chest expanding and falling, “you… you really do look like your dad”. 

He sounds mournful. Kaiyo senses the change in atmosphere, though he doesn’t understand it, and the anxiety settles into his restless fingers as they pick a thread loose from Shouto’s sweater. 

Fuyumi lightly swats at him: “Natsuo, you’re freaking them out!” 

He gives a wounded complaint, dramatic only in a way you can find with siblings as he clutches at his bicep, and Kaiyo laughs. Like it was called upon, the sun moves from behind a cloud and brightens the room. 

“Sorry, buddy. I didn’t mean to be awkward, I was just surprised,” he says. 

Kaiyo slides down from Shouto’s lap, the youngest briefly forlorn at the loss before schooling his expression once more. “It’s ok, mama said I look like dad too. That’s why I’m so handsome,” he grins triumphantly. 

Your chest knots tightly at the spotlight it shines on your relationship with Touya, thoughts running amok with assumptions of what they must think of you, whether they approve of how you have raised Kaiyo. But despite your inner conflict the family don’t flinch, in fact — they smile with him. 

“Touya was indeed a beautiful little boy,” Rei briefly looks at the purple petal still held between her fingers, “I have a lot of pictures here. Would you like to see?” 

Kaiyo scrambles, almost knocking the table as he stands, “yes please, grandmother!”

There’s an air of nostalgia as she leans down to take his smaller hand into her own, in the way he looks up with love, height falling just short of her hip. The last time she had seen her children this size had been before she was sent away. You can’t even begin to comprehend such a loss.

“Just 'grandma' is fine,” she assures, and Kaiyo bounces with each step as they leave to find the photographs. 

You realise, then, that you are left alone with the siblings. Fuyumi pours more tea, the sound of running water loud in your ears, Natsuo’s words barely audible to you. 

“I wanted to thank you,” he says, cup in hand with his thumb anxiously tapping the rim, “for being there for Touya when we couldn’t be. For bringing Kaiyo here even when you have every right to distrust us”. 

The words pick away at the composure you’d maintained throughout the morning, their gratitude, while completely genuine, feels undeserved. In the grand scheme of things your relationship to Touya had not changed much at all, perhaps he’d staved off his mission for a while to play house with you, but the outcome was the same. 

“It isn’t you that I distrust,” the ‘Endeavor’ goes unspoken, “I wanted Kaiyo to keep his connection to his father. And you don’t need to thank me, I didn’t…”

Didn’t help him. Didn’t save him. Didn’t stop him. You only loved him. You laid with him in darkness and thought if you held him tight enough that something might crack, that the light might get in. 

“What I did wasn’t enough,” you tell them, the words broken with your wet exhale, “it was your actions, your dedication to understanding him. It’s… it’s you I should thank, Shouto”.

“Still,” Fuyumi is tender as she speaks, her hand resting between your shoulder blades, “knowing that all that time he wasn’t alone, knowing that he had you, it means a great deal to us all”. 

Even if he hadn’t been alone for those few years, there was still a rotten past from before he met you that he wouldn’t touch. Touya, stone faced and eyes narrowed, watching you from beneath the sheets of his hospital bed as if he were a wounded animal. Your slow, telegraphed actions, promising respite. That’s why despite wanting to stay away from you, he couldn’t — because you saw who he was, and you still loved him. The burning flesh, the distended skin, the smoke and the blood. You saw the bodies on the news, you saw the flames across the city, and you still loved him. 

Maybe that was the only thing you got right; because there isn’t much else worse than someone loving the potential of who you could be, or loving someone you’re not. In the end, you think, we all want to be seen first and loved second. 

“I do think he’s worried about you,” Shouto interjects plainly, “ he’s not directly asking about your wellbeing because he doesn’t want to reveal your identity, but the staff say he’s restless”. 

“You can be quite perceptive, Shouto,” Fuyumi says. 

“A friend of mine has told me that before,” there’s a flicker of a smile pulling at his lips and it warms his expression. If you needed to attach a word to it you’d pick fond. 

“Though he also said I make all the wrong assumptions about what I’m seeing,” he exhales through his nose in what you think might be a laugh, “that’s why I went to my mother first. This seemed… too important to be wrong about”.

“I’m truly grateful for your discretion,” you wipe a tear along the heel of your hand, ignoring the sting in your sinuses, “and for your acceptance of us”.

“You’re our family now,” Natsuo’s grin widens, “and I can’t say I wasn’t curious ‘bout the kind of person my brother fell in love with”.

You knew what Touya would say to that. You're too good for me, I don’t want to hurt you. You should’ve seen through it then, with every premature apology. People only say those things when they know they’re going to hurt you. 

Over your thoughts you hear the siblings begin to talk again with affection, your eyes drawn to the empty end of the table. You should be here, you think, I wish you were here. 

Kaiyo returns excitedly with a large picture frame held to his chest, the paint worn and flaking, encasing an old school photograph of Touya. His uniform is buttoned to the top, face youthful and pale, not a scar to be seen. You recall his discomfort with high collared clothing, always irritable against his sutures. 

Following behind is Rei with an album of family pictures. Some of them have been awkwardly cut, some burnt along the edges, some faces notably scribbled over with a pen almost out of ink.

“Mama look, he really does look like me. And dad’s hair was white! Did he colour it like that, too?”

“No sweetheart,” you murmur with gaze fixed to the page as it turns in Rei’s lap, the siblings all gathered around to look, “remember, he told you he had red hair like yours, but it changed like magic”. 

“So cool,” he mumbles in awe under his breath, “dad is so cool”. 

Rei stiffens minutely. Maybe that, too, was uncomfortably familiar. 

The conversation continues into the late afternoon, moving only to sit beneath the clear skies and stretch your legs, Rei guiding you along her well loved flowerbeds. They tell Kaiyo stories of his father, diluted but true for the most part, their smiles tightening with the memories. It feels odd, wrong, mourning a man that is very much alive. You give them a piece of him and in exchange, they offer one back as the hours pass. You come to know another Touya — their Touya — and when you line him up aside your own you find that they aren’t all that different.  

As Kaiyo’s confidence grows with his newfound family he begins to wander. Natsuo lifts him into the air and he laughs joyfully, a sound you wish you could solidify and keep by your breast, and they take off to hide in the house with Fuyumi close behind. 

“Are you sure it’s ok for him to play indoors? I’d hate to leave any mess—”

Rei smiles. The light reflects against the crown of her head forming something of a white halo and Shouto is at her side, eyes softening at his mothers happiness. 

“I assure you it’s alright,” she says, “truthfully I think I’ve missed the mess”. 

You think of toys left astray, crayon smudging cheap wallpaper, juice rings staining the coffee table. Marks of your little boy left all around the apartment. Touya cursing as he steps on a building block, hopping on one leg theatrically to make Kaiyo laugh. Touya spilling the warm bottle of milk as he falls asleep and Kaiyo on his chest, exhausted from a day without rest. 

“I know what you mean,” you reply. 

Shouto only blinks. You couldn’t imagine that he was allowed to make much of a mess at all, and that thought alone makes you ache. His brow furrows then, and anticipation settles in your gut. 

“There was something we wanted to ask of you now Kaiyo is distracted,” he seeks Rei’s support as he talks, and she nods gently before turning to face you. 

“As we’ve told you… Touya is not being cooperative to treatment. In all honesty, we are getting anxious that he will be removed from the programme,” she says with regret, “you are free to refuse. But as you suggested when we first met, I thought he might benefit from knowing you’re safe”.

It feels as if the ground beneath your feet has steepened, a weightlessness flooding through your chest, and you reach for the closest pillar on the veranda to steady yourself. 

“You’ll let me visit him?” 

“Strings can be pulled to get you a visitor's pass,” Shouto confirms sagely, “typically it is for professionals or family. Which you now are”.

You hadn’t even let yourself entertain the idea of being able to see him again. The possibility of hearing his voice, of holding him again, felt too good to be true. 

“And Kaiyo? Where will he stay?” you ask, “I can’t take him with me, I don’t want him to see his father like that—” 

Approaching you from the house is the soft, pitter patter of socked feet. You feel a weight fall on your back, Kaiyo interrupting to wrap his limbs around your waist and neck, giggling into your nape. Natsuo lands unceremoniously on the tatami matts, leaning himself against the inside of the sliding door panels with pink blossoming on his cheeks, “damn, kid. You’ve got too much energy”.

“Your house is so big, grandma,” the words carrying a little embarrassment as Kaiyo says “ours is a lot smaller”.

“Sometimes houses are too big,” Natsuo reassures as he slumps forward to rest his chin against his fist, “you can get lost and feel lonely in a big house. I bet at your place, you can always find your mama, huh?” 

He nods, bouncing on the balls of his feet and rocking your body forward with the motions, “does that mean dad was lonely in the big house?” 

Rei’s hands wring tightly in her lap, the question pulling a forlorn atmosphere over the three, and you’re quick to try and rectify it. “Even if he was, he won’t be anymore because he has you,” you say as you twist your body to pull him into your arms, squirming as your touch curls against his ticklish stomach, “isn’t that right?” 

“Yes,” he stammers between deep inhales, giggles tumbling from his lips and ringing across the garden. Rei reaches to thread her fingers through his hair, the red stark against her skin.

“You are both free to sleep in my guestroom tonight,” she offers warmly in response to your earlier concern, “we will watch him while you’re busy tomorrow”. 

“We can have a sleepover!” Natsuo shouts, the excitement forcing him to sit straight and eyes gleaming. Kaiyo gasps, mirroring his uncles enthusiasm as he clings to your shoulders. Shouto, however, remains plain faced as his gaze flickers between the two. 

“Is it really that fun?” he asks. You hide your abrupt laugh into Kaiyo’s hair as Natsuo’s expression settles into disbelief. 

“What? You’ve never had a sleepover in the dorms?”

“We have a curfew,” Shouto shrugs, and Natsuo guffaws.

“What the f… heck is wrong with your school—”

As they bicker you observe contentment settle around Rei. A gentle breeze passes through the shrubbery and you hear the leaves rustling, light breaking through the canopy above and dancing along the grass. Fuyumi calls everyone back into the house as the scent of curry is coaxed out into the open, and you all make your way to the dining area. 

The night comes sooner than you expect. Kaiyo whines at the full feeling in his stomach, cheeks orange and smattered in sauce. Apparently Rei brought over all the childrens things during her move — everything, from toys to certificates to baby clothes, and you’re offered the hand me downs with a wistful smile. 

Aside from the red sleeves the shirt is white, a flame embroidered into the centre and the word fire written below it. Then you’re given an old blanket, slightly thread bare and clearly well loved. It is a light purple, faded after years of being washed, and dotted with stars. It’d belonged to Touya, she’d said, he always loved stars. Kaiyo clutches it tightly to his chest where he lay across from you on the guest futon. 

“Did you have fun today?”

The covers shift, a tell tale sign that he’s kicking his feet. “Yes mama,” he mumbles, nose wrinkling as he fights to keep his eyes open, “I feel really happy”. 

“I love you baby,” you hum fondly, leaning over to needlessly readjust the covers once more, if only for an excuse to kiss his forehead again, “are you sure you’ll be alright while I’m gone tomorrow?” 

Kaiyo nods, cheek turned against his pillow, jaw already slackening as he succumbs to sleep. It isn’t home, there’s no glowing iridescence on your bedroom ceiling tonight, but the space across from you feels empty as it always does. 

“Watching you two sleep soundly together was the happiest I’d ever been,” he’d said. You have no doubt in your mind that he had been telling you the truth. 

When you're pulled into consciousness it happens gently, the house so quiet that it’s unsettling. You were used to rousing with voices in the streets, car engines spluttering as they passed, thuds from the apartment above your own. Here it’s peaceful, a reality that you never thought you’d come close to, and for a moment you can hardly believe you’re awake. 

The staff offer to make the two of you breakfast but you politely refuse, a possessive twist in your stomach. Accepting help never came easily to you, a deeply buried seed of insecurity in your heart that first leapt to defensiveness. You could feed your son just fine on your own. 

Rei joins you soon after tending to her potted plants, Kaiyo pushing up onto the tip of his toes to kiss her cheek as she holds her dirtied hands away from his clean clothes, passing by you to wash the soil from between her fingers. “Grandma, will you have breakfast with us?”

“Of course,” she smiles. 

The rest of the family slowly trickles into the dining room with slow, sleep leaden movements. A full table, a full heart, a full stomach. Breakfast tastes all the better in their company, even Kaiyo seems to have soaked up the serene atmosphere as he quietly recounts a strange memory he had to Fuyumi. 

Still, the dread begins to settle, your knee bouncing restlessly and concealed by the table cloth. Hiroki enters the house with a deep bow and a lanyard around his wrist, your ID badge clipped securely to the end. “It’s best we leave now to avoid any run-ins with the press,” he tells you apologetically, “the likelihood is low. But I’d like to completely mitigate the chance, if possible”. 

Kaiyo lingers in the genkan, shifting on either foot, fiddling with the strings on his sleep shorts. “I’ll be back later, baby,” you hook your pinky around his and squeeze, “I promise”.

He presses a wet kiss to your cheek and you do not wipe it away, the morning air cooler on the skin where the imprint is left. An off duty officer waits by the curb to follow behind Hiroki’s vehicle — another safety precaution, they say — and he opens the side door on your behalf. 

“What will happen once we get there?” you ask, stare fixed on the streets as they speed past, flocks of people continuing with their days as normal. The thin, plastic card in your hands feels like lead. 

“Upon arrival the officer will escort you to the reception as I am not permitted to enter the building,” he explains while subtly adjusting the rear view mirror to watch you, “you will sign yourself in and then you’ll just have to wait. I’m afraid Master Touya isn’t aware that you are his visitor, so it’s entirely possible he’ll refuse to see you…”

Eventually the words become muffled, a disjointed hum in your ears, and your fingers tighten around the lanyard. You play out every hypothetical in your head, try to script questions in preparation, explanations and excuses. But you come up empty. 

Anything that you think of would be rendered useless as soon as you laid eyes on him. 

Pulling in, you survey the land. The facility is double fenced, double gated, and for all intents and purposes it looks to be a prison. There are patients spread out across the grounds, some lounging in the shade while others gathered under staff supervision. 

Surprisingly you are hesitant to part ways with Hiroki, the man bidding you goodbye with a bow and with promise to pick you up as soon as you’re done. The click of your shoes echoes throughout the building as you walk, the accompanying officer striding ahead of you and silent, beckoning you hastily through the security scanners.

A man stands incredibly tall behind the desktop screen situated atop the main desk, large auburn jackrabbit ears protruding from the crown of his head, paired with two large antlers. As you approach his nose wrinkles. 

“Pass?” he asks, interrupting any chance of you greeting him. You swallow the agitation in your chest and show him the ID card, to which he scans with a handheld device and waits until it beeps. Satisfied, he hands you a clipboard detailing a list of names and tells you to find yours. 

“Write your signature in the arrival slot, and when you leave write it in the departure slot. Wait to be called upon in the seating area”. 

You exhale shakily as you sink into your chair, taking in the room, unable to describe it as anything other than impersonal. You had spent a good deal of adulthood working in a clinical setting, and yet this place only seems to make you uneasy. No colourful posters, no informative leaflets, no magazines for people to read. No stickers by the doors, no colour in the staff uniform, guards posted at every entrance. 

Eventually a red light above the doors to the wards flashes red, a loud buzz cutting through the silence and startling you so harshly your chair scrapes against the tile. A doctor calls your name from the doorway, all eight of her beady eyes observing closely as you get to your feet. 

“The patient is being given forty milligrams of quirk suppressant every four hours while he acclimates to his skin grafts. So rest assured he will not burn you,” — you quickly smother your anger at her insinuation — “since you have a high ranking family pass, contact has been allowed, but if anything goes awry there are guards posted at the door”. 

You’re barely given time to process her explanation or the new information as she abruptly comes to a halt, almost stumbling into her back. All eight of her eyes blink at you expectantly as the door clicks open, inclining you to enter. 

“Thank you,” you mutter as you pass, flinching when the door once again clicks shut. You steel yourself with a deep inhale, lungs ballooning to expend the anxiety spiking throughout your chest, and lift your head. 

The air remains there, held in your mouth so as not to make a sound. Touya stands across the threshold with his back to you, facing the wide barred up windows and observing the other patients. He’s in a loose fitting t–shirt and pants, all white and blending into the rest of the room. Where the collar dips below his nape you can see pink, inflamed skin, and for a moment you are reminded of your first meeting. 

“Finally decided to come look your failure in the eye, did you?” his voice is harsh, like talking through gritted teeth and lilted with sarcasm. You’re frozen in place, muscles tensed as if you were bracing for impact, throat swelling just from hearing him speak again. 

“Hate to say it but there’s no cameras here,” he laughs, a hollow and dry sound as he begins to turn, “so you can drop the fuckin’ act—”

The anger dissipates as soon as he meets your gaze, his seething grin slipping until his jaw slacks in surprise. Even as your eyes sting you cannot blink for fear that he’ll disappear, a wishful figment of your imagination. He’s really here, a few feet from you, flesh and blood and breath. 

Closer now, you can clearly see there are lines of scarring where his previous body had been sutured together. No longer held by staples and rings, the patchwork skin fitting the curve of his cheeks without pulling taut and tearing. He doesn’t wince in discomfort as his expression contorts into disbelief, as his brows pinch and he starts toward you. 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?” 

Even with the obvious ire behind his words you aren’t frightened by him. Your legs carry you to meet him halfway, reflexively reaching out for him in all the ways you had longed to over the past few months, only for him to catch you by your wrists. His grip tightens in warning, answer me he snaps, but his demand goes ignored. You’re focused entirely on how cold he feels, sharp around your forearms, just like his tongue. 

“You’re freezing,” you whisper.

He huffs in exasperation, a sound you never knew you could miss. “I know,” he says, dropping your arms as his hold loosens and you silently mourn the loss, “it’s like this all the fuckin’ time now”. 

“Because you don’t have your quirk?” 

He nods curtly, lips twisting in disdain, the confusion in his eyes sinking through realisation and settling on betrayal. “You’ve been getting cosy with my family, haven't you? It’s the only way you would’ve been able to get in here,” he sneers.

You rub away the chill from your inner wrist, following him further into the room as he walks away from you, pleading with him to listen before he makes any assumptions. “Touya, it isn’t what you’re thinking—”

“Don’t call me that!”

Your own anger steers you then, frustrated by his refusal to hear you.  “Touya. Touya. Touya. Touya,” you repeat childishly until he spins on his heel to glare at you. I’m going to keep your name in my mouth until my last breath, you think.  Arguing, scowling, you’ll take anything in this moment as long as he keeps looking at you. 

“Your mother and sister tracked me down, I didn’t go looking for them—” your own fault, you shouldn’t have been there “—they wanted to help me. They wanted to look out for your son!”

He hums like he doesn't believe it, and the forced amusement in his smirk irritates you, crawling hot through your chest. “I bet you’ve been enjoying all that bastard's money, right? He’s got plenty to throw at you and keep you quiet”.

You almost forget to breathe with how his accusation takes you by the throat, the regret crossing his features being the only thing keeping you in the room. It’s hard to handle his vitriol when it is directed at you, hard to see him like this, so wounded and cornered. In his mind you have gone behind his back, you have sought help from the people who hurt him the most, and you are only here on their orders. 

It’s a cycle he cannot break from. He’s gone again, tethered still to the world, but they are all moving on without him. He’s gone again, tucked away where no one needs to look at him, and they are all better for it. 

“I have not met Endeavor and I have made it clear that Kaiyo will not meet him either,” you tell him firmly, “I have not, and will not, accept financial help from that man. You… I’d never do that to you”. 

He wilts then, partially limbless as he sinks back against the hospital bed frame tucked beneath the barred window, covers still spotless and unused. As you glance up at the star-less ceiling, you wonder if he manages to get any sleep at all. 

“Why are you here?” he asks again, no fight left in his words. Without the bravado to keep him up he looks exhausted, torpid. You join him cautiously, settling yourself on the edge of the mattress. 

“To reassure you that we’re okay. That we aren’t in any danger,” you murmur, splaying your hand out in the space between your bodies, “we’re worried about you, Touya. Why aren’t you talking to them?”

He rests his hand beside yours, stretching out his pinky to hook over your own; the one you’d linked with Kaiyo only two hours before. “What good would that do?” he says, “I’m defective and this is just a waste of taxpayers money. Why let me live in the first place?”

The worst part of it all is the grating monotony in his tone, the total disregard for his own life and wellbeing. “Don’t say things like that,” you rasp, “it isn’t true. You have a real chance to do better now”.

“Fuck you,” he snorts without malice, giving a light shake of his head as he continues, “I was always going to end up here. You knew the path I was going to take from the start”. 

“And so did you, Touya!” 

The words come hoarse as they catch in your throat, heavy where they press against your nerves. Around you the room becomes smaller, stifling, and yet he is still miles from your reach. You’d do anything if only it meant wiping that look of indifference from his face. 

“You knew, and you could have made the effort to change. Don’t act as if this was predestined for you, it was your own choices that led you here—” 

“This wouldn’t be happening if you just hadn’t come looking for me!”

“Of course I looked for you,” you pleaded with him, “what would you have had me tell Kaiyo?”

“That I was dead,” he replies plainly, “he would’ve been better off”.

“You…” fatigue floods your system and you feel yourself sink back against the bed frame “…you truly believe that”. 

You don't sob, don't let yourself whimper, you simply let the salty burn overtake your vision and clog your throat, thick and cloying. “Don’t cry,” he murmurs, “you know I’m bad with crying”. 

“You’re crying too,” and he laughs humourlessly, eyes still dry. Amongst the quiet you can hear people outside talking, the window panel slightly ajar to let in a continuous breeze, carrying in the scent of spring. You shiver, and when his icy touch begins to move away you upturn your hand, interlocking your fingers together to keep him there. 

You can feel him watching you as you appraise his belongings. No character, no personality, everything looks brand new and unused. Compared to your stingy one bedroom apartment tucked away in the sparse Yokohama neighbourhoods, this place was completely lifeless. He must hate it here, waking up in yet another unfamiliar place against his will, treated as if he were something to fix.

Though after everything he’s been through, it must be a relief to do something bad and be punished for it, rather than to be punished for all the things you couldn’t do. 

“How is he?” he asks, ending the drawn out silence. 

“He knows something isn’t right,” you say, feeling the chill along your wet cheeks, “he wants to see you”.

He makes a sound of acknowledgement as he strokes his thumb along the back of your hand. You tighten your grip, still habitually cautious of the sutures that are no longer embedded into his skin. “What a kid wants isn’t always what’s good for them”.

“That’s priceless coming from you,” you huff, and he knocks his shoulder against yours in response. Bittersweet, you recall how you sat beside him on a hospital bed just like this five years ago, IV hooked into his veins to ward off infection. Hair white, skin mottled, growing accustomed to your freely given affections. 

You breathe, the exhale long, and lean your weight into his side. Your hands, still interwoven, rest together in your lap. “We just wanted to be closer to you,” you tell him, your apology unspoken, “Kaiyo misses you. I miss you. Even if I’m angry with you, don’t ever believe that we aren’t thinking of you”. 

The word sorry does not come naturally to Touya, it never has. Remorse was best shown through action, overbearing attention and unnecessary gift giving that only ever left you wondering who he’d stolen from. When he rests his cheek atop your head, nuzzling softly into your hair, you know he’s trying to apologise as well. 

So you recount everything that happened over the past two weeks. Of nightmares and paranoia, of old photographs and starless ceilings, of autumn bellflowers and cultural dissonance. You rush each story, unsure of how much time you would be allowed in this place, nor how often you would be able to visit. And he listens, slowly sagging against you the more you speak, your bodies two beams upheld by the other. 

“Oh, and the driver called him ‘young master’ at first,” a small grin pulls at your lips at his amused snort, the only sign that he was still awake, “I know. I told him right away not… not to call him that. I knew you’d hate that”.

His muscles tense then as an intrusive knock reverberates throughout the room, a white knuckled grip on your hand at the interruption. The doctor from before steps into the threshold and is followed closely by one of the guards, eight eyes blinking simultaneously as she takes in the scene, her expression unreadable. 

“Your allotted time for visitation is up,” she says, her voice softer than before and perhaps even tinted with regret, “I’ll give you a few moments to say goodbye and notify your driver”. 

A part of you wishes that the wordless goodbye you gave back at the hospital by the hyacinth beds had been your last, because this time around it is impossibly harder. If his expression is anything to go by you think, if he could, Touya would freeze your hands together in an eternal block of ice. 

“Touya,” he begrudgingly meets your gaze, “what happened to you was undoubtedly a tragedy. Still you— you hurt people, and you need to accept that. I’m not going to tell you to forgive anyone, you don’t have to, but…”

You lean forward, pressing your forward to his “…even if others can’t, I want you to forgive yourself”.

“For who I was or for who I wasn’t?” he mutters, so close you can see the stray white stripes in his eyelashes. The doctor clears her throat quietly where she lingers by the door, and so you get to your feet. His throat bobs as he swallows, expression suddenly pleading as you let him go, and you take his face between your hands. 

His cheeks are rough, the sore skin raised under the pads of your thumb. “For all of it,” you say. 

You’d always thought that love didn’t need to be so complicated. Sometimes it was as simple as I see you, and I understand you. Sometimes it was dirtying your hands to make their life a little easier. Sometimes it simply took the form of an illusion, and all you needed was for someone to point out the tangled lines, the true image irreversibly seen. 

“We love you. If that means anything to you, then take advantage of this second chance and let yourself be better”. 

Afraid of testing their patience, you step away from the bed, heading towards the door where your guide awaits. While only four strides, it feels like a lifetime, and you find yourself dragging your feet to stall for time. The thought of leaving him here made your stomach sink, an invisible magnetism tied to your spine and begging you to turn around. 

You startle as the guard suddenly steps forward, recounting Touya’s patient number with warning, but the doctor holds her hand out to settle him. You’re tugged back against a firm chest, familiar if not for the deathly temperature, arms circling firmly around your waist. 

Their presence falls away as he kisses you, and the sensation is new. No awkward angle, no need to be aware of his sutures, no copper tang left on your tongue as you pull back. Once, twice, and thrice — Touya kisses you without regard for time he was wasting, for the people who were waiting to take you home, and you give him every extra second you have. 

“Tell Kaiyo I’ll be out by the time he starts his training at JAXA,” he murmurs. You laugh wetly, finally forced to take your leave. 

“Better make that ten years sooner, you hear me?” 

The door begins to shut behind you and he’s crying again, eyes dry as he calls out to you.

“No promises!”