Music To My Ears

Music to my Ears

SUMMARY: You and Sanzu decide to take a risk and fuck in Mikey’s quarters while he's not there.

Content warnings: pwp, Threesome—f/m/m, Anal sex, Anal fingering, cunnilingus, blowjobs, Multiple orgasms, Orgasm delay, Voyeurism, Praise kink, Light Dom/sub, Biting, Creampie, Dirty Talk, Cum Swallowing

sanzu x f!reader x mikey, sanzu x mikey

a/n: my sanmai brainrot is manifesting now

Your moans are always music to his ears, the perfect song that begins being soft and gentle but quickly turns rambunctious and powerful—straight from pianissimo and right into fortissimo. And even though you both put yourselves in such a dangerous situation that will surely result in unfortunate, if not horrendous, consequences, Sanzu can’t help but want to enjoy the music you breathe into the air.

But he can not. Instead, he quiets you with a hand over your mouth, thumb on one side and four fingers on the other while being careful not to cover your nose. His body is atop yours as he holds himself up with one arm, hips flush while you are on your back.

Sanzu hikes your legs over his shoulders in order to cant your hips upward, giving him better access to the area that makes you sing, and as he shifts his position, bending his knees and moving them closer to you, the angle of his thrusts changes and he starts hitting a spot deep inside you that had your eyes rolling back and the lids closing as you keen into his hand.

It was still loud, though—too loud.

“Shh, shh, shh. You don’t want us to get found out, do you?”

Your eyes open to meet his royal blue ones, and you shake your head beneath his grip; he rewards the answer by grinding into you, his groin rubbing against your clit with each roll of his hips, and it forces more noises that are just an octave higher than before to escape you.

“Are you close?” he asks, his voice just barely above a whisper; you nod again. “Rub your clit.”

Your much smaller hand than his own snakes between your bodies, delicate fingers grazing your clit, and just the mere touch makes you gasp. Your hips jerk away like you’d been injured, but you immediately go back for it and starts rubbing quick circles on the swollen bud, your legs soon trembling on his shoulders.

Sanzu starts thrusting again, hitting that spot deep inside you just like before—he must have been, if the way his wife is sounding off beneath him was anything to go by, as well as how your pussy pulses around his cock, threatening to clamp down around him like a vise as you grow closer and closer to your orgasm.

You keen as he pounds into you and he so badly wants to uncover your mouth just to hear the beautiful crescendo you are releasing as you are building up to your climax. But he knows better.

“C’mon, baby. Cum for me. Let me feel it,” he breathes, snapping his hips against you one, two, three more times—

The door to the room you both are in opens like the gates of hell, and Sanzu can’t scramble off his wife fast enough, pulling out and uncovering your mouth just as you reach your peak and ungracefully tumble right over it, back arching and a loud moan escaping your chest.

You seem undeterred by the intruder who’d just walked in on your intimate moment and who’d froze at the sight of you fucking in a place they definitely have no business being, and instead you just roll onto your side, close your legs around your hand, and try to catch your breath.

The Bonten figurehead’s eyes flick between you and Sanzu as he stands just inside the doorway, his hand still on the helve as the bulkhead that separates his personal quarters from the rest of the building is wide open. Sanzu can only remain where he is, jaw tense and eyes straight ahead as he stands at attention like the right-hand man he is.

When the door is gradually shut, its eerie creaking and lock clicking both sounds that would surely haunt his sleep for nights to come, he could only watch as Mikey then slowly makes his way across the room and toward his desk while the heavy but steady rhythm of his steps reverberates off the walls and shakes Sanzu to his core.

The Bonten Leader removes his coat and tosses it onto his desk, and it was at that point Sanzu glances back at you, realizing that you, too, is watching, though your face and chest are flushed—but whether that is from embarrassment, your orgasm, or something else, he isn’t sure.

Neither of you knows what to do and you both are sure as hell do not know what Mikey is about to do, but you two remain still, waiting for your punishments.

Sanzu can’t help but wonder if getting thrown off the building—or even just voluntarily jumping off it—will be less painful than silently standing at attention in the room with Mikey, listening to his steps as he moves, while you two wait for disciplinary action. His stomach is twisting and turning in a cocktail of anticipation and anxiety and dread.

Mikey is at the table now and he pulls out the chair that is closest to his desk, takes a seat, then leans back and crosses his arms over his chest. The pose is intimidating and shows his patience has grown thinner.

Then again, Mikey is staring directly at you—at least until those two eyes that are the color of charcoal turns toward Sanzu and locks with his ocean blue hues. Immediately, he looks straight ahead again, his stomach locking up as he suddenly realizes that, yeah, he understands how you are feeling now.

But the room goes silent—awkward—aside from the sound of Sanzu’s heart in his chest and ears that is no longer a steady rhythm but some sort of fucked-up beat he can’t even keep time of. And then Mikey speaks in his familiar, husky voice that always had the pinkette’s stomach doing twists and turns and flips like acrobats.

“Please continue.”

Mikey could have shot Sanzu in the head with a glock at that very moment and he’d still be staring at him in confusion. But both he and you must have been displaying the same facial expression because an annoyed look crosses Mikey’s face as his eyes flicks between the two of you again. He waves his hand a bit from right to left, palm straight up, urging you both to continue with what you are doing.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” he reiterates.

“I—” Sanzu begins but cut himself off as he glances back at you. “I don’t—I’m not sure—are you—is this—uh—” He sputters like an idiot, his words unable to gain traction in his mouth and instead his tongue keeps slipping and sliding over like he is attempting to climb a muddy hill in flipflops, and by the time he even finishes stumbling over every attempted sentence, only one clear thing comes out: “boss?”

Mikey’s string of remaining patience snaps and Sanzu feels like it is going to slide down his throat and choke him. “My most loyal dog.”

Mikey’s tone is sharper than the katana Sanzu had accidentally cut himself with when clearing a raider hideout two nights ago—and that thing had really sliced through his hand—but his title is said in a way he hasn’t heard before and it makes him stand up straighter, shoulders square, as he stands at attention in more ways than one.

“Get back on the bed and continue fucking your wife.”

Sanzu’s mouth opens and closes a few times as he glances back at you again, then at the Mikey, then back at you; and he is about to move—

“Don’t make me tell you again.”

“Yes, boss,” the scarred man says, his voice cracking from nervousness, before he quickly climbs back onto the bed. He has gone soft after getting caught, but Mikey’s sharp tone and husky voice has, well, helped give him a bit of a semi, so all he has to do is reach down and start stroking himself a little to get the rest of the way there, and seeing you spread your legs to allow him between you certainly does wonders to speed that along.

Once he is fully hard, Sanzu shifts forward, guiding himself into you, both of you releasing an ensemble of sighs and quiet moans as he hilts inside you. Like before, he grinds himself into you, his groin rubbing against your clit as you release a sharp exhale before your hips rolls along with his, demanding more friction.

Sanzu didn’t grind against you for long, though, and instead hikes your legs over his shoulders again, canting your hips upward, while he increases the tempo of his thrusts, his hips soon slamming against yours roughly.

But the moment you are growing loud again, your voice abruptly jumping a couple octaves rather than gradually increasing, his palm roughly claps over your mouth, muffling your noises.

“Let me hear.” Mikey suddenly interjects.

Sanzu stills and turns his head, eyes locking with the Mikey’s; there is an obvious erection in his suit, but he isn’t touching himself and instead is still in that same position as he watches.

When the scarred man looks back at you, however, that is when he feels your tongue slide against his palm; he crinkles his nose in disgust before pulling his hand away, being met with a grin on your face. You seem to be enjoying yourself, at least, and he’d be a liar if he says it wasn’t exhilarating to have someone—especially Japan’s most fearsome crime lord—watching him and his wife fuck.

As punishment, he snaps his hips against you roughly, coaxing a yelp from you, the sound loud and echoing off the walls in the room, though he doesn’t give you time to recover before he’s fucking you again. He pushes your legs closer to your chest, which allows him to go deeper, and you are mewling beneath him as he slams into you, both of you breathing heavily, and he knows you are both already getting close—

“Rub her clit.”

Immediately, Sanzu sits back on his knees and pulls your ass onto his legs, your own legs leaving his shoulders and instead wrapping around his waist. His thumb finds your clit, hand splaying across your mound as he rubs quick, rough circles on the sensitive bud while he keeps up his thrusts. You are still mewling, your legs trembling around him, and he tries to hold on for you, his eyes tightly closing and his teeth grinding together while he fucks you harder, but he is so close.

“Fuck, you feel so good,” he breathes, “I want you to cum with me.”

But Mikey is suddenly beside the bed, his upper body bare. He leans over and locks his lips with yours in a gentle kiss that you seem to have trouble holding while Sanzu never lets up on his rough thrusting. Mikey’s hand slides around your throat and, at the same time, your own hands find his body, one going to his shoulder blade and the other to the back of his neck, nails digging in at exactly where his Bonten insignia is placed.

Finally, you tipover the edge, your walls clenching around your husband’s cock as your nails claw and claw and claw at Mikey’s back, almost breaking open the skin all around his shoulder blades as you go into freefall from your orgasm. The kiss between you two breaks and you scream your husband’s name; and soon enough, your sounds dies down until the only thing escaping you are breathy whimpers from sensitivity—but Sanzu is already flying over the edge with you by that point.

Just before he reaches climax, he releases soft moans that only increases in frequency as he reaches the edge and finally tips over it. His eyes tightly closes again and his hips slam against you once, twice, thrice, before he buries himself to the hilt and comes inside you.

Sanzu’s orgasm crashes over him like sound waves that reverberates through his bones and soon he is holding himself above you, leans to the side on one hand so as to keep his body separated from where Mikey is still close and peppering bites along your jaw as you sigh softly and enjoying the feeling.

The Bonten leader pulls away after a few more moments and Sanzu takes his chance to lean down and kiss you, one hand cupping your jaw as he pulls his hips back just enough to slide his softening cock from you.

“Y/N.”

The kiss breaks and you turn your head to look at your superior, listening for orders.

Mikey is standing near the table—the man is so quiet with everything he does which is not unusual, and as he calls for you, Sanzu doesn’t waste any time pulling away to let you get up.

You saunter over to the crime lord and he reaches out to grab your jaw. Once you are close enough, thumb and fingers digging into your cheeks as he pulls you closer and roughly kisses you while his other arm wraps around you to pull your body tightly against his.

You find yourself returning Mikey’s kiss, and once you are separated, he reaches down and cups your ass, hoisting you up so you have to wrap your legs around his hips before he carries you over to the table and set you on the edge.

Your lips are immediately on his throat, kissing along his jaw just as you always do to your husband, and Sanzu can only watch with interest, his teeth chewing his lower lip. But this is the first time he has ever seen Mikey bare his throat, his head slightly tipping back to give you better access to such a vulnerable area, and Sanzu wonders if he does that for all his whores, knowing they could sink their teeth into his jugular and make his artery spray like a fountain.

But he doesn’t seem worried, and Sanzu knows you well enough to know you’d never do such a thing.

“Your husband takes good care of you, doesn’t he?” Mikey asks.

“Yes, sir.”

“I can tell. How many times did you cum before he did?”

“Three, sir.”

“Mm. Good. Think you can handle more?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Do you want your husband to watch me fuck you?”

The question catches you off guard and you attempt to look at Sanzu for guidance, but Mikey grabs your jaw again, thumb and fingers digging into your cheeks once more to keep your head forward as he makes you look up at him instead.

“Don’t look at him, look at me. Do you want your husband to watch me fuck you?”

“I—” you start but the answer never comes out.

Sanzu can’t blame you. He knows what you want, and he’d be a liar if he says he doesn’t want to let you get fucked by his beloved boss too—and he’d be an even bigger liar if he says he doesn’t want to get fucked by Mikey himself, as well. But the chances of that happening are slim to none, “Haruchiyo. Do you want to watch me fuck your wife?”

“Yes.” There is no hesitation in Sanzu’s answer.

“Y/N?”

“Y-yes, Sir.”

“Good girl,” Mikey purrs before he starts pushing his pants and his underwear off, completely baring himself. “Lay on your back.”

It is only then Sanzu took a moment to appreciate the way Mikey looks, taking in the sight of the countless scars that riddles his slim and muscular body like sheet music, singing the tales of a man who lived his life darkness and suffering. Bullet holes and knife wounds litters his torso, some scars are small while others are much larger; atrophic trenches and hypertrophic ridges that decorates his skin, gifts from past battles and traumas that many knew about but few knew the intimate details of.

It is beautiful on its own fucked-up way.

And Sanzu can only admire the younger man as he stands before them like the perfect living example of a marble statue carved centuries and centuries ago.

You are on your back, fingers running through Mikey’s stomach before he kneels down on the floor between your legs, his face disappearing from Sanzu’s view as it is blocked by your thighs.

It is obvious what he is doing as Sanzu had done it plenty of times himself—licking your cunt and tasting you—though the surprising part is how Mikey seems to have no problem eating you out after Sanzu had spilled inside you just a few minutes ago. But you seem to be enjoying it, the hand that had been on Mikey’s stomach is now grasping his silver locks and pulling him closer to your core, directing where you want him.

Mikey had you singing in no time, your back arching and legs trembling as you come, a soft muffle of his groans against you is sounding off in the background of your song, creating harmony together.

He helps you ride your orgasm out and once you are done, he is back on his feet between your thighs. A rough hand runs up your stomach and between your breasts, then back down, before he reaches between you two and starts pushing in; you suck air between your teeth, the sound hissing, and Sanzu finds himself standing and moving closer, his eyes zeroing in on what is happening between your legs—

Fuck.

Mikey is thick. Thick. Probably average in length—but he is definitely thicker than Sanzu; though the pinkette is bit longer. Still, shit.

Mikey eases in and is soon hilted, your song of pain eventually turning into a song of pleasure. Sanzu leans down and kisses you softly, one of his hands going to a breast and groping as he keeps your lips locked, your moans muffled against his mouth and he devours every note.

“Rub her clit,” Mikey orders as he begins to make small test thrusts.

Sanzu breaks the kiss and momentarily glances up at him before reaching over and sliding his fingers between your legs, rubbing fast circles against that swollen bundle of nerves. You are immediately moaning, gradually increasing while your body tenses and your hands grip the edge of the table beneath you just as the Mikey’s thrusts starts to pick up in tempo.

“Good boy, Haruchiyo.”

Alright, he’d be a liar if he says the praise hasn’t sent a wave of arousal throughout his body.

Fuck.

You are quickly falling apart, though, and it doesn’t take long for you to come, and Mikey’s soft groans as he slams his hips against you tells Sanzu that your walls are spasming around his boss’s cock; he knows all too well how fucking good that feels.

“Such a good girl,” Mikey purrs, his hands gripping your hips, thumbs pressing inwards toward your groin; the sound of your hips slapping together from skin-on-skin contact is nearly echoing in the small room. “Perfect fucking fit.”

But Sanzu isn’t prepared for the hand that grasps his chin and yanks him up and to his right, forcing his lips to collide with the leader in a rough kiss; his cheeks are clutched and it forces his mouth to open wider, providing access to an intruding tongue as it searches for his own.

And all the while, Mikey’s hips never falter in their thrusts even as you are cursing and keening and definitely watching your husband make out with the white-haired man above you while, at the same time, that younger man is fucking you. You mutter something along the lines of ‘oh, fuck, that’s so hot,’ and he can’t really disagree.

Sanzu has never been with a man before. That doesn’t mean he isn’t attracted to them, because he is—he considers himself bisexual even though he’s never actually fucked another guy—but holy hell if this isn’t an opportunity. And the assumption earlier that Mikey has no interest whatsoever? Scratch that, because it is clearly wrong.

He has no idea how long he’s been kissing his boss—it feels like forever because he’s been sent into some sort of bliss from just how good it is—but as soon as it breaks, they are both panting and Mikey immediately turns to you, his eyes looking you over for a moment before he glances back to Sanzu.

“Go sit on the bed,” he orders.

Of course, Sanzu obeys and goes to sit on the edge of the mattress, ensuring he is in a good position to keep watching.

It is then, however, that Mikey bends over so his body is flush with yours and you immediately wrap your legs around the Mikey’s hips as he is grinding against you. One of his arms goes to the table, a hand threading into your hair as his face is pressed against the side of yours, and Sanzu can hear Mikey whispering but cannot tell what is being said. His eyebrows furrows as he strains to hear, but he can see you bite your lower lip before looking over at him—the Bonten boss doing the same—and something about the look you two are giving him makes him almost want to blow his load again right then and there.

But he still isn’t hard yet.

Mikey starts kissing your neck and you tip your head back for him as soft moans escapes your lips while your hips are grinding. But when his teeth sink into your throat, right on your pulse point where everyone will see, your soft moans turns into a loud groan that signifies pain mixed with pleasure.

His teeth remains in your neck as he pulls his hips back and snaps them forward, likely only releasing your skin after he is certain there will be a dark bruise left behind. Mikey then drags the flat of his tongue against the spot he’d marked before he stands up straight, grabs your hips, and returns to fucking you hard.

From there, it isn’t long before the white-haired man is on the brink. Sanzu can tell before that where his boss had once kept a steady pace in his rough thrusts, they are now faltering, their tempo losing its rhythm while his breathing has grown heavy and ragged as he pants. You are close as well, with one of your hands between your thighs, fingers rubbing your clit while your legs tremble. And before long, you tip over the edge, back arching, screaming Mikey’s name—not his nickname, though, but his first name.

“Manjiro”

“That’s it, pet. There you go—mmfuck, I’m gonna cum.” A low groan is released from deep in Mikey’s chest before he slams his hips against you a few more times and then hilts himself, stilling as he comes.

Inside you.

Mikey comes inside Sanzu’s wife.

And Sanzu isn’t even mad about it—shit, he feels himself growing hard from it, that refractory period finally having dissipated.

“Fuck,” he whispers, and watches as Mikey was grinding his hips against you, his body rolling with each movement before he finally pulls out. When his cock slid free, the noise it makes is wet, likely from the mixture of your cum and both men’s cum—and when Mikey pulls back enough so his cock is in Sanzu’s view, the pinkette can see streaks of white on it.

Mikey’s eyes remains on your cunt, however, even as he suddenly speaks to Sanzu. “Haruchiyo,” he says sharply in that same tone that had helped get Sanzu hard earlier—it is doing the same thing now. “Come here.”

Bonten’s number two is immediately on his feet and approaching, standing at attention as he does and waiting for direction. But as Mikey finally flicks his eyes over to Sanzu, the pinkette have a sudden realization of what he is about to be told to do.

“Clean me off.”

“Yes, Boss.”

Just as quickly as he’s gotten to his feet, he’s also gotten to his knees. He takes Mikey’s semi-hard cock into his hand and slides the head into his mouth, sucking hard, while the the shorter man’s eyes are on him the entire time—and Sanzu can’t help but stare back. He slowly slides more and more in, sucking him clean, tasting the mixture of Mikey’s cum and the tang from his wife on his taste buds. And maybe he intentionally takes a little longer than necessary to clean the cum from his superior’s dick, but he eventually gets the job done and Mikey seems satisfied.

He is brought back to his feet, and his lips are smashed against the other man’s again, that same tongue invading his mouth and immediately being welcomed by his own. When they break apart, however, there is a soft noise from you; they both look over to see you watching with a palm groping your breast, two fingers rubbing your clit, and cum leaking from you. You don’t seem satisfied or sated despite having numerous orgasms, though you should appreciate the fact you don’t have the same sort of refractory period as he do.

Sanzu chews on his bottom lip before looking back to his king as Mikey pulls away, moving to his desk drawer and grabbing something out of it—a bottle of what, he isn’t sure—

Oh. Wait.

Oh, fuck.

Mikey returns to him but before he is able to question anything, their lips crash together again and Sanzu is being led backwards toward the bed. The back of his legs hit the edge of the mattress and he is suddenly pushed by hands against his pectorals until he falls onto the bed on his back.

Mikey is atop him in seconds with his hips slotted between Sanzu’s thighs, their lips brought together again, but it is only a brief kiss this time before the Bonten leader sits back on his knees and that bottle he’s brought is popped open, some of the substance being poured onto the white-haired man’s fingers.

“I’m going to fuck you, Haruchiyo,” Mikey says nonchalantly; it nearly makes Sanzu moan. “Have you ever been fucked in the ass before?”

“Uh, well—” he begins as Mikey gently rolls him onto his side and pushes his top leg up to his chest. “Yeah, I have. With Y/N.”

“Mm. Good.”

That is all the warning Sanzu receives before there is a finger working into him.

It doesn’t take long before he is prepped; Mikey is gentle, of course, and ends up getting three fingers into Sanzu’s ass, spreading him open because, fuck, the man’s cock is thick, and Sanzu isn’t about to be split open. But when he is ready, Mikey apparently have plans for how he wants this to go.

“Y/N.”

You are immediately on your feet—you are always obedient when you choose to be.

“On your back.”

When you lay down, Sanzu is instructed to sit on his knees between your legs like he had earlier; a hand comes from behind him to quickly stroke his cock, thick fingers wrapping around him quite nicely as he is being guided right back into your cunt, a place he knows he belonged. You are still soaked, a combination of your own slick and cum as well as the mixture of his and Mikey’s spend, which just makes it all the better.

A rough hand strokes over his back as Sanzu is hilted inside you. When that husky voice speaks low in his ear, almost a growl, Sanzu’s entire body shivers.

“Fuck her. Hard. I want to hear our cum getting fucked out of her.”

Shit.

Sanzu obeys and pulls his hips back before slamming them forward, repeating the action again and again, his cock pounding into you while he grabs your legs and pushes them upward to where your hips are canted just like before.

But he falters in his movements as two fingers are pushed into his ass, and then he completely stills as those same fingers are crooked downward, body tensing when they press against his prostate, poking and prodding and massaging it.

“Baby,” you whisper, and Sanzu opens his eyes, not even realizing he’d closed them; he moves his hips a little because he knows that is what you want, but that just makes the fingers inside him press more against his prostate, sending jolts of pleasure throughout his entire body.

Those fingers are pulled out, however, and Sanzu releases a sigh before he starts thrusting again, beginning slow before eventually pounding into you once more, making you keen.

Mikey disappears into the bathroom for a few moments, letting you two continue, and Sanzu doesn’t even realize the white-haired man returned until a hand grasps his hip, stilling him, while a rough palm presses between his shoulder blades and gently pushes him forward so his chest is almost flush against yours. The anticipation had his heartbeat increasing in tempo, knowing it is about to change as the bonten leader is preparing himself to fuck Sanzu.

The pressure of Mikey’s cock pushing into his ass nearly knocks the breath out of him. His entire body tenses, his jaw clenches, and he grabs fistfuls of the sheets as he releases a low groan while Mikey slowly works himself in. At the same time, you are stroking along Sanzu’s back soothingly, trying to help and convince him to relax.

“You can take it, Haruchiyo,” Mikey purrs.

Fuck, Sanzu could have cum right then and there because the sound of his beloved king’s voice alone—deep and husky and filled with lust—is just incredible.

Mikey is soon hilted and all Sanzu can do is just lay there, feeling entirely full while his cock is still achingly hard and buried in your tight heat. But Mikey isn’t going to let him stay still for long, and he knows that.

Mikey eventually pulls back a little before his hands are put on Sanzu’s hips, guiding him, making the pinkette move back and forth so he’s thrusting inside you while Mikey’s cock is fucking him with just Sanzu’s own movements.

It is intense and incredible and fuck.

He is already going to lose it soon if this keeps up.

Mikey starts moving Sanzu’s hips faster and he can’t help the breathy moan that escapes him, his face is pressing into your jaw as his breathing is stuttering, his body almost trembling while it threatens to tip over the edge. “Fuck, I’m so close.”

But he is suddenly pulled back, his cock is ripped from your core as a large hand reaches down to his dick, thumb and forefinger wrapping around the base and squeezing much too tight for comfort—and then his urge to cum is just… gone.

“Not yet,” Mikey murmurs in his ear from behind, and Sanzu can only whine.

Strong hips are grinding against his ass, and Mikey’s free hand slides up to his throat, fingers wrapping around the column while the other hand releases his cock and moves to be grasping his hip, holding him still as—

“Ohfuckfuckfuckfuckgodfuck!”

Mikey gives him no warning before he’s pounding into Sanzu, holding the pinkette back against his chest and thrusting fast and rough while the hand on the Sanzu’s throat makes him lean his body back against the shorter man’s. He feels hands on his cock again, stroking, and realizes you’ve leaned up to touch him, rubbing his dick as he’s getting brutally pounded into—you and Mikey both focusing on Sanzu’s pleasure. And it is intense.

But Mikey eventually slows his thrusts to where he is just grinding until he fully leans back on his haunches, pulling Sanzu with him so he is sitting on Mikey’s lap. “You like this?” he asks, his voice low and husky. “You like having my cock in your ass?” Sanzu can only nod as he pants, unable to form any coherent words. “Y/N. Ride him.”

It is an awkward position, sort of. You straddle Sanzu but is at risk of falling backward so his hands are loosely on your hips. You lean forward and kiss Mikey over his shoulder as your hips grind against Sanzu, his cock slowly moving inside you.

You two manage to somehow work in tandem as if you’d practiced—Mikey brutally thrusts upward into him while you bounce on his cock, and Sanzu is just fucking losing it; he isn’t going to be able to hold it. He can’t. It is coming.

He is coming—

His cock slips free from you again and Mikey’s thumb and forefinger are squeezing around his base once more, forcing his orgasm away—Sanzu cries out as he thought he is going to explode.

“Please,” he pants; his eyes are half-lidded while his breathing is shaky, but his pleas are ignored as teeth clamp down on the side of his neck, biting the skin hard enough to bruise. Mikey marking him just like he’d marked you.

Fuck.

After the leader let go, you are on your back again and Mikey shoves Sanzu forward to where he is laying on you like before, your husband’s chest flush with yours and his face buried against your jaw once more.

“Please, baby,” he tries again, begging you this time as if you might be able to do something but knowing you had no control over the situation—Mikey controls everything. He controls you two.

Mikey’s hand is wrapped around his cock and Sanzu releases a whine, but he is guided back into the tight heat of your cunt. “Fuck your wife, Haruchiyo, and I’ll let you cum.”

It is music to his ears.

Shaky forearms are pressed onto the bed as he starts thrusting into you, one of your hands having slipped down to rub your clit in the process, and Mikey immediately begins pounding into Sanzu from behind again. The pinkette barely registers when Mikey’s hand reaches forward and gently wraps around your throat, the other he places on the middle of Sanzu’s back as Mikey is slightly leaned forward when he starts fucking him even harder. His hips clap against Sanzu’s ass, the sound almost deafening as it echoes in the room.

But at this point, Sanzu is gone.

His hips stills as he feels his climax approaching, but he doesn’t even need to move because the force from Mikey’s thrusting is enough to make him pump into you to some extent. And while that may not have been enough for you, it is certainly enough stimulation for your husband. “I’m—I’m gonna cum,” he groans, and he isn’t sure if anyone even heard it because it is said so quietly.

But Mikey does. “Let’s hear it, Haruchiyo. I want you moaning my name—no one else’s. Cum for me.”

Sanzu tips over the edge and his body tenses up as he comes hard inside you. He groans, his crescendo having led up to the moment when he moans out Mikey’s name right against your jaw, feeling your body shiver beneath him at the sound. His hands clench the sheets, and even as he finishes coming, Mikey keeps going, brutally fucking him even as the stimulation becomes overbearing.

You suck in a shaky breath and he feels you tighten around him even though his cock is softening; he can only release a heavy exhale against you when you come, his entire body shuddering as you moan so close to his ear—using Mikey’s given name again just as he assumed you were directed to. But it is a beautiful song, nonetheless.

Mikey’s thrusts are faltering, and Sanzu is thankful for it because everything from the waist down and knees up is starting to pulse and throb and he knows he’ll be sore after all is said and done—but it’ll be worth it.

“Mm, fuck. I’m gonna cum—gonna cum in you, Haru.”

The use of his name had him groaning again and before he knows it, Mikey slams into him one, two, three more times before burying himself to the hilt and coming, filling Sanzu up as he’d promised and the pinkette lays nearly limp on top of you, panting against your jaw.

Mikey leans back onto his knees, releasing your throat though his other palm slowly begins to slide up and down Sanzu’s spine, soothing him and helping him relax, and he feels your fingers threading into his mullet. The stroking along his spine from Mikey only lasted a few seconds, however, before the white-haired man pulls out, coaxing a groan from both men, and then Mikey makes his way over to the bathroom and disappears inside.

“You did so good, baby,” you whisper before kissing his temple. “It sounded like you enjoyed it a lot.”

“Yeah,” he breathes, but he can’t get anything else out. Both his body and brain are utterly exhausted and refused to move or think.

Mikey comes out of the bathroom soon after disappearing, carrying wet rags; he moves to the bed and softly places one of the rags onto Sanzu’s lower back, the touch gentler than the he ever thought possible of someone like Japan’s most fearsome criminal, before the rag is slowly trailed down to clean him up. He is tender and sore, that is for certain, but Mikey is careful in his touches and you are soothing him by petting his head and whispering comforting words.

Once he is cleaned off, he is carefully rolled onto his side and Mikey then goes on to clean you up with the second rag, though Sanzu watches as Mikey leans down and gently presses your lips together. There is something intimate about the way he kisses you—and that same intimacy is present when Mikey had kissed Sanzu, too. He really can’t help but watch even though his eyes are drooping from exhaustion.

Surprisingly, though, Mikey isn’t kicking you two out, and even after Sanzu finds himself dozing, he’d woken up just as the bed dips and he feels his boss settling between him and his wife.

Mikey’s body wraps around your much smaller frame, one of his arms going beneath your neck and wrapping around your chest so his hand rests on your shoulder, and the other arm draping over your stomach—but not until after he reaches behind him and grabs onto Sanzu’s arm, encouraging him to join in on cuddling.

This is a new and probably still dangerous situation, but, hell, it is a good change in his life.

At my worst

Kakucho Hitto x F! Reader

Word counts: 2,5k + MINORS DNI (NSFW)

Warnings/tags: Reader is a foreigner, husband Kakucho, smut, unprotected sex, breeding kink, smut to fluff

Notes: Special thanks to @poppyandhervillains who made me now simping hard for husband Kakucho. I need this man in my life. Barely proof-read, we die like real men here.

The low rumbles of the conversations around the table. The tinkling sound of crystal glasses crashing into each other. The laughs of the women at the end of the long table you sat on. None of these noises were able to distract you from the deep conversation you were having with the four men around you.

You are seating next to your husband. A heavy radiant shape diamond on your left finger is leaving no doubt on the expensive gifts you, and your man, can afford to buy for the other.

On your left Rindou Haitani listens to your explanation on how they could double the profits of Bonten. Ran, in front of him, is pouring himself a glass of the finest Chateau Margaux you chose earlier when ordering the wine. The men always trusted your taste for wine. They say it’s easier for foreign palates to taste the difference, and so far they were never disappointed with your advice. Both in wine and business. He takes a look at Mikey in the head seat of the table. The man looks bored but he approves your words while smiling at Kakucho on your right, and you feel him puts his hand on your thigh under the table.

To Kakucho you were the greatest thing that could ever happen to him. His attitude showed nothing but admiration and love for his precious wife. You are so perfect. Your h/c hair is attached in an elegant bun, a few strands of hair left free around your face. Your eyes, so pretty, that left him struck the first time you both met. And your lips… Delicious and plump lips, covered in that red lipstick he loves so much. How did you fall in love with him, he still wonders now, as if the rings around your fingers and the constant affection you shared with him weren't real.

How could he, with the scar covering his face and his blind eye, end up with an angel like you? Well… An angel? Maybe not really. The first time you two met you were in Mikey’s office, trading with him. Turns out the angel is in reality a pretty smart dealer. Oh no, you don’t do dirty, but when it comes to tax evasion, and turning the laws in your favor, you are world widely known.

You met a few more times until you two were left alone one evening. Mikey and the Haitani brothers were well aware of your mutual attraction. So maybe, they pushed a few buttons for you two, finally ending up together around a table, and in Kakucho’s bed the same night. Him holding you tight, and you, moaning his name like a prayer, kissing his face and his scar, tender words exchanged to the other.

You got married in less than a year, the danger rushing the relationship, but you were both so in love. So perfect for the other that it wasn’t even a surprise when you showed up at Bonten’s meeting last month with the custom 4 carat diamond on your hand, and Kakucho walking in the room with his hand on your lower back.

You both kept your relationship secret. Nobody has to know. None of you wanted to put your partner in more danger than you already had to face.

The dinner ended slowly and Mikey, Ran, and Rindou asked Kakucho for a private meeting. You knew what they were doing and talking about, but you just didn’t want to be a part of it. Kakucho looks at you and caresses your cheek “We’ll try not to make you wait for too long”. You smile back at him and reply “Don’t worry about me, I got my phone and that haiku book you bought me.” “Are you trying to read haiku?” “Well, it’s interesting to read to learn more about your language and what you like”, you joke.

With one last sign from Mikey’s head, the men leave the salon and head to the private office, leaving you with the women from the dinner earlier.

You have absolutely no idea about who they are. It’s the first time you see these six women, all wrapped in gaudy dresses and fake gold jewelry. Probably some hostesses, sent there by Bonten’s men to distract the higher-ups. As if the Haitani would look at them with their wives waiting for them at home, and you know Mikey has absolutely no interest in cheap women.

Their loud voices and laughs are coming your way as you try to focus on the verse of the haiku. They are so loud you are able to catch a few parts of their conversations.

“Haha isn’t it crazy that he had to take a foreign prostitute to that meeting?”

“Tell me about it, I heard from the boss that he was too ugly to get a woman, but to buy one from afar, the guy must be desperate!”

You raise your eyebrow. You were never into gossiping but to have a lingering ear could not hurt, especially if you catch something about a man causing problems within the gang.

“But fo’ real you seen his scar?” says a fake blond “man is disgusting with his white eye. I admire her, I would vomit if I had to kiss him”

“You saw that ring on her finger? Pffff haha how cheap is that? I found the same in Harajuku!”

It hits you suddenly! The vulgar women were not talking about some random person. They were making fun of you and your husband. Your blood is boiling, you’re not someone who loses their temper easily, but how dare these stupid bitches talk about Kakucho like that?

You’re about to rise from your seat when the door of the office opens again and the four men exit the room. Kakucho walks to your seat and leans down to kiss your forehead. You hear the women laugh again in the back, drawing the twins' eyes on them. You turn your eyes and avoid Kakucho’s gaze to take his hand. It makes him cock an eyebrow up and he turns to the women, finally understanding what's happening when one of the women pretends to gag when he took your hand in his.

Kakucho lets go of your hand and walks to the six hostesses who all jump in surprise. Your husband is way taller than them, and his natural authority gives him a presence that makes anyone shut their mouth when he gets close.

“Ladies,” he says “I saw that you had a nice evening, leaving the notes for us to pay. You were quite noisy at the table. Can I know where you work?”

“They’re from club Queens in Shibuya,” says Rindou in the back.

“Queen eh?...” the fake blond nods “Well, it seems that you, dumb bitches, offended all of us five a little too much tonight.” “You five?” gasps the one who pretended to gag “But Arashi told us you were only four!”

Ran laughs a little and Mikey cuts the woman “Hitto-san over there is our business associate. She’s our greatest dealer and it seems that you really bothered her with your noise earlier.”

Kakucho gives them a look before moving back to where you're staying. “See ladies… You can insult me all you want, but you shouldn’t insult my wife.”

You stand next to him, so elegant in your black dress, an arm over his own.

“I’ll make sure you all won’t be able to work again. Ever” says Mikey before the doors open and a few men grab the women to throw them outside.

You thank all of them with a nod of your head and you leave the room with Kakucho. Your husband guides you to his Bentley and opens the passenger's door for you.

You sit next to him and sigh as he turns on the engine and drives you home. None of you say anything during the ride home. You felt so sad about the whole incident. You knew very well that being a foreigner would mean being the target of gossip but Kakucho didn’t deserve that.

Kakucho on his hand keeps replaying the scene in his head: how you lowered your gazes when you heard the women talking about you both. The insults threw his way about his face. His scar. His blind eye. And it hits him that maybe he wasn’t worthy of you.

Kakucho parks the car to your Meguro house and you both enter the place, both of you still silent about the incident. He gently touches your back and you turn to him with a sad smile on your face. “I’ll go to the bathroom to get ready for bed.” you mumble

You climb the stairs and enter the bathroom, and you let the tears fall silently on your face. You didn’t notice that your husband is leaning on the door frame, watching you.

“Is it that terrible?” he asks and you quickly raise your face to look at his eyes in the mirror. “What… what are you talking about?” He walks and stands behind you. His gaze never leaving yours. “My face,” he says.

You want to turn to face him, but his arms are on the sink, imprisoning you in his embrace.

“How can you say that?” you wipe your tears “Kakucho how can you even think that I would think like them? Your face is beautiful, your scar is beautiful, your eyes are beautiful… It’s the proof that you are alive. That you’re here with me…” you grab his left hand and kiss the ring on his finger. “Kakucho… I love you… I love you so much that I wanted to kill these hoes for insulting us!”

He lightly chuckles and wraps his right hand around your middle and kisses your neck. Your breath hitches and you feel a sudden warmth going through your veins. Your husband has this effect on you.

“I love you Y/N” he kisses you again “Fuck… you are so perfect… so freaking perfect”. His left hand leaves yours to lay on your thigh, going through the slit of your dress, touching the skin underneath. The cold gold of the Patek Philippe around his wrist sends shivers to your spine, making you arch your back and hit his chest.

His right thumb brushes your lips, his eyes staring into yours as your part your lips to gently flick on his fingertip with your tongue.

You can feel his cock poking your ass. He is obsessed with the vision of you sucking on his thumb as you’d do for his cock. Kakucho finally removes his thumb for your lips, and leans closer, eyes closed. He starts kissing the back of your neck, biting on the tender skin of your shoulder. He keeps marking your delicate skin and you can hear him purrs in your ear “Mine… you’re fucking mine…” You moan his name softly, knowing you’ll have to go to the meeting tomorrow with his marks on your neck, bruises visible for everyone to see.

His hand spreads your legs and dives under the waistband of your beautiful lace thong, his digits rubbing soft circles on your clit.

Your breath accelerates as you grasp his wrist. You can hear him chuckles in your neck. You buck your hips on his already hard cock to let him know how much you want him and he pushes your lingerie down your legs.

“Spread for me baby”

He pulls back a little, to observe you, with your dress up on your hips, panting hard, your wet cunt dripping down your thighs.

“So fucking perfect for me.”

Your lewd expression and your clouded eyes are enough to send him high already, but Kakucho wants more.

You can hear the sound of his belt unbuckling as he opens his pants, his hand wearing his wedding rings never leaving your hip.

“Tell me baby… who does that pussy belongs to?” his lips ghost your ear and you feel him between your thighs, his cock taping on your clit to tease you. “You Kakucho… it’s you… I am yours...Uhm…”

“Should I make you round with my child for them to know that you’re mine?” His left hand touches your lower stomach lightly. “Kakucho” you murmur, your eyes searching for his in the mirror. “Is that what you want?” he asks. You blush and you nod your head. “Good girl” he breathes and he finally inserts himself in your tight cunt. Both hips collide as he thrusts inside you. You feel so full that you’re having a hard time breathing.

He delivers more kisses to your neck as he starts moving into your cunt, his pace increasing with each thrust. Your walls squeeze him and your lewd mewls make his thick length pulsates inside you.

His palm softly caresses to your hips and you inwardly arch your back even further, feeling his tip hitting your cervix with every move.

You whimper his name and you hear him whispers behind you, but you are already too dumb on his cock to reply even if you wanted to. “I love you so much… fuck y/n… Your pussy always takes me so well…So good for me”

His hips keep crashing against yours, with his tip hitting your favorite spots, leaving you breathless. Your hands are barely able to hold you over the sink.

He leans into you, fucking himself inside you over and over and you feel your walls tightening on your husband’s dick.

Kakucho is panting on your neck, the sound of your arousal and his balls slapping against you filling the room.

You feel yourself coming closer and closer, your walls holding him so tight, and with one more thrust of your husband, you are sent over the edge. You become a moaning mess as you cum on his dick.

“Kakucho…” you moan desperately “Fuck baby you milk me so good… I’m gonna cum inside you.. Fill you with my seed…. Gonna give you my baby...” The sight of you, drunk on his cock, and the ring of your cum around his cock makes him cum inside you with a loud growl, painting your walls wite.

Pulling out, his cum drips down on the marble floor of your bathroom, and Kakucho turns you around, bringing your arms around his neck to kiss you gently.

You kiss him back, and you can feel your legs tremble under you. Your husband notices it and pulls you in another loving embrace, your red cheek pressed against his -now- crumpled Tom Ford shirt. “I love you” he affirms as his hand gently holds your head against him.

You nod your head against his chest and mumble a soft “I love you too Kakucho… Don’t let anyone ever make you doubt that”

He puts you back on your feet and he helps you remove your designer dress.

“Let’s get you cleaned up before we go to bed” he smiles at you.

“Can we have a round two?” You innocently smile at him, and he grins at you. “As many as you want, baby.”

tag list : @missvanity, @sacredsong, @mitsery, @sukirichi cause thank you guys for your support <3

i dreamt a creechur, his name is boris

ANTECEDENT ┊ TODOROKI TOUYA

synopsis: following Touya’s arrest you try to navigate the world as it is flipped on its head. torn between your loyalty to him and what’s best for your son, new family is formed and hope is found.

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), parent todoroki touya, 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: 16k+

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 he 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 even so 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 been in mourning. 

“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. 

“In the end it was 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 Hero, 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, but 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 one day 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 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. Especially as a child. 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?”

“Fuyu!”

“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 ‘Fuyu. 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 ‘Fuyu, 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 but still heard, “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 forehead 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!”

Hear me out : making the most raunchiest, down right disgusting sextape with mammon and someone accidentally watches it and hears EVERYTHING 🤭

You remained in your demon boyfriend’s arms, scrolling through your phone, looking at social media. Mammon watched with you, telling you to scroll back up and click on things after you scrolled past them, making you playfully scold him. He kept on doing it, laughing at your reaction and trying to fluster you more. It wasn’t until you heard a ping from Mammon’s cell that you put your phone down.

“Aren’t you gonna check that, hmm?” You exaggerated your tone, lacing it with sarcasm.

He huffed and lifted it to his face. “Nah.” He then put it back down and put his arm back around your waist.

“What if it’s important?”

“It’s just Asmo, probably something makeup or fashion related.” He shrugged.

“Okay, you’re probably right.” You returned to your social media before you also received a message from Asmo. “What the hell?”

You opened it and read: ooooooooh~

You typed up a message, disturbed by the vagueness.

Mc: Huh?

Asmo: hehe

Mc: what???

Then no response. Mammon’s DDD rung again. And then two other pings followed. You turned to him, making him groan.

“I was comfy, ya know!”

“Get your DDD and figure out what’s going on.” The pings continued, equally frustrating and worrying the both of you. Mammon opened his DDD and went to the group chat shared between his brothers and then his eyes went wide and his jaw dropped open. He went pale and you started to panic. “What is it?” You pulled his cell to your eyes and saw immediately what it was.

Asmo: guys look! *sends video*

Asmo: they make such a good couple! I’m so happy they’re compatible in all forms! I gotta say I’m a little jealous!

Levi: JADNFJRNFJNRNF

Satan: no fucking way

Beel: ☹️

Asmo: I know, who would’ve thought Mc was that nasty! Wait until 23:42 where they take him into their mouth right after he pulls out of them!

Satan: all I needed to see was the thumbnail. No thank you. Mammon’s little mammon isn’t something I’ve ever wanted to see.

Belphie: I got about 2 minutes in, they already have spit everywhere even though they’re just making out. So dramatic.

Asmo: I think it’s passionate! Romantic! And messy. Our little Mc clearly isn’t shy when it comes to spit! They let Mammon spit in their mouth at around 7 minutes.

Beel: I can’t watch. Please stop telling us what happens.

Asmo: but I didn’t even tell you the best part!

Belphie: if it involves Mammon I don’t want to hear it

Satan: how can it not involve Mammon?

You and Mammon remained frozen, watching as more messages filled the chat. Levi remained silent and, rather terrifyingly, Lucifer remained absent from the chat. Mammon prepared to type a message and then you stopped him.

“There’s no point. Only Asmo and probably Levi will watch it at least.”

“At least!!! Mc! They have no right to be able to see you like that!” He sat up and started typing.

“Uh! Obviously! But typing something will only egg them on, you know that! Plus what about Lucifer!” You tried to reason with him, sitting up beside him. “And the even bigger worry is how the hell did Asmo find the video! It’s on my DDD!” You showed him where your messages were still open with Asmo, clearly not showing any sign of you sending the tape. Despite you telling him not to, Mammon started typing.

Mammon: HOWD YOU GET THAT!

Asmo: I found it

Beel: you didn’t send it?

Mammon: NO!!! WHY WOULD I SEND THAT??

Asmo: it just appeared in my videos one day. I’m not sure how but I’m not upset. Did you not want us to watch it?

Mammon: EXCUSEEEE MEEEE???? NO! MC IS NAKED AND DOING A WHOLE LOTTA STUFF! AINT NO WAY I WOULD DO THAT OR THAT HAPPENED!!!

Lucifer: A sex tape?

The both of your hearts skipped a beat.

Lucifer: A sex tape that magically appeared in Asmo’s phone? Did Mc send it? Mammon is clearly too possessive to willingly send a video of Mc naked and “doing a whole lotta stuff” for lack of better terms.

You both heaved a sigh, thankful he didn’t immediately lecture you both.

Asmo: could’ve just been fate.

Mammon: Mc didn’t send it! Lucifer, you gotta figure out what Asmo did!

Levi: current status: 5:14. Mammon asked Mc “you’re already desperate, huh?” Directly after Mc said they were desperate for him. Mammon is clearly a little behind.

Mammon: STOP WATCHING

Lucifer: I will figure out what happened. However, Mammon and Mc, you will need to realize that for evidence, I will likely have to watch it.

Mammon: WHAT

Lucifer: who knows what happened, Mammon. Asmo could’ve snuck in when you didn’t notice and cursed your DDD.

Mammon: NUH UH! I’ve watched that video over and over, ain’t no way.

Lucifer: seems as though you’re the desperate one then, hm?

Lucifer: also, to clarify, I won’t exactly enjoy seeing your little Mammon either. Would you rather me send it to Barbatos to figure out what happened?

Mammon: you know what, I don’t even care. Just.

Mammon: Don’t.

Mammon: Watch.

Mammon: IT.

Lucifer: You know what, I’d rather leave this be as well. Everyone needs to have this video deleted from their library. I will be inspecting everyone’s phones to make sure it’s not there.

Mammon: WHAT

Levi: NOOOO

Asmo: okay well don’t be surprised by what you see

Belphie: this government (Lucifer) is too oppressive.

Satan: what will Mc think? Going through her phone? Personally, I think we should overthrow our government (Lucifer).

Beel: I don’t have anything to hide. Just don’t judge me.

Mammon: I’m leaving the House of Lamentation. Nah, the whole Devildom. You’ll never see me again.

Lucifer: 👍🏻

The two of you looked at each other, defeated and deflated. Both of you, hunched over, staring at the messages flying across his DDD. While you wanted to figure out what happened, you just accepted that it’s better not to probe. Needless to say, you were also encouraging of Mammon’s idea of a vacation from the Devildom, not necessarily a permanent one.

The two of you did not leave your room for at least 24 more hours. You just didn’t want to deal with it. However…

Asmo to you privately: want some ideas?

Maybe this wasn’t entirely too terrible.

(This was also so fun akfjdjfndn)

Ink: Mikey

You're the unlucky one chosen to be Bonten's unoffical tattoo artist. More parts to follow. Characters: Mikey x gn Reader Warnings: None

Your boss was the one who usually dealt with what he liked to call the 'big clients'. It wasn't because he doubted your skill or wanted to hide who these people were, you were a very talented and capable artist who knew the less than savory occupations of the customers, it was just that he knew how difficult some of these people could be and his years of experince meant dealing with them was much easier.

The first time you met a member of the gang you later found out to be known as Bonten, they were indeed booked in to be seen by the boss, however the out of place looking blonde came in on a quiet evening and decided he'd much rather spend the hour with you.

There was nothing sinister about his request, nothing that suggested he chose you for any other reason than 'she seems nice'.

Any objections were short lived when it seemed this man who was only in the diary as 'Sano', could get what he wanted without even raising his voice.

You should have felt intimidated when you took a seat on the black leather couch opposite him, placing a sketchpad and pen on the coffee table seperating you both, but despite knowing he was powerful, something about him was oddly child-like and it was hard to be nervous when faced with that.

"So," you smiled. "What would you like?"

It was rare anything was pre-drawn with these clients. Confidentiality was a big deal and so was hiding any potential association with the world of organised crime. You just hoped it wasn't anything too extreme for the time of day.

'Sano' took a small piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to you.

You unfolded what turned out to be a convenience store receipt with an questionable amount of pastries on it, however on the back was a rushed, minimalistic pen drawing. It wasn't something you'd usually do but you had to admit it was a nice concept and atleast it would be easy.

"Just this?" You ask.

He nodded.

"Okay, I'll draw it up out the back. Just give me five minutes."

- The room where you tattooed was small and cosy, no windows but bright due to the light overhead, and the walls were scattered with designs you drew and art from some of your friends. Something about it seemed to appeal to your customer who told you to call him Mikey, as he stared at the figure collection by the door whilst you were half way through his tattoo.

"My sister liked that show." He said quietly, pointing to an enthusatic figure with blonde hair and a short green dress.

"Oh really?" You said glancing up. "To be honest I've never actually seen it.. I just thought it looked nice."

He hummed in reply. "She thought she looked a bit like her."

"She must be pretty then."

"She was."

You gathered by his response that his sister probably wasn't around anymore but his statement didn't create an awkward silence, infact you got the feeling that he had enjoyed talking about her. You'd gotten very good at reading people in this job although Mikey was more on the challenging side. He didn't really seem to speak unless spoken to but when you could engage him in conversation he'd participate fully, almost a little like he was desperate for it.

"Where did you get this design from by the way?" You asked, wiping some of the ink off of the back of his neck.

"..someone I knew when I was younger."

"I like it. It suits you."

"What do you mean?"

You stopped the machine for a moment, thinking of the best way to phrase your thoughts. "Well, ignoring the placement, I think it seems like a good representation of you. On the outside it looks quite simple but there's probably a deeper meaning or something more going on beneath the surface.." Mikey liked to think he had crafted a personality that was enough to scare people away, never getting close enough to find out the slightest bit of information about him, but there he was, being easily and perfectly analysed by you. He also liked to think that the reason you were putting him at ease and he found himself engaging and actually enjoying your company was because you genuinely liked him, and not because you were just good at your job.

He certainly (and unexpectedly) liked you.

Either way, the rest of the session went relatively quickly. He enjoyed listening to you talk about your life outside of work and strange tattoo requests you had, and in return you would get vague retellings of simpler times in Toman.

-

"So you're all done." You smiled at Mikey. He had seemed pleased with the tattoo when he finally saw it, not based on his expression which was unchanged from the moment he walked into the shop, but the way he spoke. He sounded a little lighter. "I need to clean up in here but my boss is the one that deals with the money anyway so you can just go back out and speak to him." Mikey hovered by the door, hesistant to leave your company because once he stepped outside the shop he wasn't your customer anymore, he was the head of Bonten.

"Thank you.." He said, two words that you didn't know rarely passed his lips.

"You're welcome, it was fun. It was nice to meet you Mikey!"

He bowed slightly, any earlier confidence in your presence quickly diminishing . "You too.."

-

Sanzu: Car's coming! :)

Mikey rolled his eyes as he put the phone back in his pocket. Despite the time the street was still fairly busy and he didn't really want to be waiting around any longer than necessary. He leant against the side of a cafe whilst he waited for the car in an attempt to avoid getting shoved in the crowds. He was tired. He'd actually found the process of the tattoo somewhat meditative and now it was over the fact he hadn't slept for the past three days was catching up with him. "Hey! Mikey!" He turned round to look down the street, surprised to see you running up to him. "Damn, I'm so unfit." You laughed, bending over slightly and trying to catch your breath. "Are you okay?" He asked, confused by your reapperance.

You nodded, blushing slightly. "Yea uhm.. now I think about it this might actually be a bad idea but uh.. do you want this?" You stood up and held out a small blue bag you'd been carrying.

Mikey hestinantly took the bag from you and opened it, the smiling face of the figure from your shelf staring up at him.

"I'm not particiularly attached to it and I dunno maybe she'll have a better home with you.. I'm sorry if it's inappropriate I didn't really think this through.."

That night Mikey finally slept well, watched over by the photo of Emma next to his bed and the toy he'd told her he was given by a new friend.

- It had been a couple of weeks since you had seen Mikey, the regular flow of customers keeping you too busy to really dwell on previous clients but a large box that had been left on the front desk was sent to make sure you wouldn't be forgetting him.

"What's this?" You called out to your boss as he walked into another room.

"Dunno, delivery driver dropped it off for ya~"

The dark blue box was from what you knew to be a high-end confectionary shop in Ginza, although you'd never been there and certainly hadn't placed any orders. When you opened it up you were greeted by a large assortment of dorayaki and a rather childish drawing of the sender on the message card inside. Sorry for what's to come. - Mikey You were a little confused by the statement and slightly concerned considering the business you guessed he was involved in but half an hour (and three dorayaki) later, the door opened and a tall man with short pink hair walked in and over to you at the counter.

"I believe you're the one I need to speak too, right?" He grinned, holding out a tatty recipt with a simple deisgn you had a strange feeling you would be seeing alot more of. "I'm Ran."