Chapter Text
you only get another week.
it's unceremonious, in a way. you're sitting with deku on the bed you've been sharing with him for months, bitching about the lack of variety in your meals. it's not real bitching—you know eraser can't get anything other than instant ramen and similar nonperishables, not right now—but fuck, what you wouldn't do for some real damn spicy soba. deku says something thoughtful-sounding about katsudon, and then the ground starts to rumble.
you freeze. deku’s hand finds yours and grips tightly. "earthquake?" he mumbles, but the question in his voice is colored with dread.
the seconds pass for what feels like an eternity, and the rumbling only increases, albeit gradually. "where's the kid?" you ask, voice low. you're reminded, inexplicably, of the lightless cell that started all this; of how you hadn’t been able to bring yourself to speak above a whisper.
"she should be with aizawa," deku murmurs. he's got such a death grip on your hand that it feels like your knuckles are creaking. you don't pull away.
"should check," you mutter. for a moment, you try to come up with an explanation as to why, but deku is already tugging on your hand as he stands, so you figure you don’t have to.
you pause just long enough to feel along the wall for eri's picture of the two of you, plastered there with bits of toothpaste. you take it down and fold it to stick into your pocket, because you've finally realized what the thing that’s been taunting you in the back of your head is: a new, different kind of dread.
it's telling you that once you leave here, you won’t be coming back.
—
togata catches up with the two of you just as you've reached the hallway to eri's room. "this isn't an earthquake," he tells you, and his voice is so grim and certain that you don't even think to ask him how the fuck he knows that.
deku opens eri's door, and you're immediately greeted by eraser's voice, muttering soothing nonsense over the muffled sound of eri's crying. she must be scared shitless. briefly, you wonder if she even understands what an earthquake is, before the question is struck out with another: is she really so naive to think it's an earthquake to begin with?
you get your answer quickly.
"he's back," she's whimpering, and the thing that's been clenching in your chest rears its head and roars. "h-he's back, he's going to hurt you all, please, you have to go—"
"we're not leaving you behind," deku refuses immediately. he lets go of your hand and you listen to him take a few steps forward. eri hiccups. "we won't let him hurt you again, eri."
"please," she begs, "please, you have to—he'll hurt you, he-he'll take your quirks—"
"we'll protect you," togata swears from where he's stood behind you. eri doesn't react like she's surprised by him; either she doesn't care if he's here or she's more afraid of whatever's coming. your heart hammers angrily against your ribs with the thought.
"we need to evacuate," eraserhead announces. his hero voice is stern and steady, and it makes you stand up just a bit straighter. your hands flex stiffly at your sides. "even if it overpasses the safehouse, we can't take the risk of being here if it doesn't."
you don’t think to ask what it is.
"i'll take eri," deku offers immediately, and then several things happen at once.
the rumbling in the ground reaches its peak. there's the clatter of something falling over, followed by eri's startled cry, and then a boom; for a second, you think your quirk has gone off as a reaction to your rapidly increasing adrenaline. but it's not your quirk—it's something colliding with the building itself, and you hear and feel the whole thing shake around you.
"bakugou, grab midoriya," togata orders immediately, "eri, i know you're afraid, but you have to trust me—"
"i can go on my own!" deku protests, "i can—"
"you can barely fucking walk still!" you bark at him, "get over here and get the fuck on my back!"
"kacchan—"
"now, midoriya!" eraserhead shouts, and it's such a polarizing feeling to hear him raise his voice that you freeze, just for a second. deku must think so, too, because you feel his hand touch your arm barely a moment later, and you hunch down so he can hop onto your back. you loop your arms under his thighs and sway a bit as you straighten, and it feels like something slots back into place—like you're not so blind anymore, with his good arm around your shoulders and his knees digging into your sides.
"it's okay," togata is saying to eri. his voice is rushed and it leaks into the reassuring tone he's trying to offer. eri is sobbing, now, sounding desperate and afraid and so much like the child that she is. "it's okay, i've got you, i'll keep you safe—"
the boom repeats, and you feel the building shake again, and eri screams.
"move!" eraser barks, rushing past you.
when you turn and dart out the door after him, it's almost like the last time you had deku on your back was hours ago, rather than months. he taps on your shoulder and leans his weight side to side and you respond like he's got puppet strings tied to your legs, racing through the halls. you can hear eraser in front of you and togata close behind, babbling his best attempts at reassuring the crying kid in his arms even as he runs. deku's grip is deathly tight on your shoulder when he's not directing you; you have a feeling he wants to turn around and reassure eri, too, but you'll both be blind if he does.
"through here," eraser says in front of you. deku swipes two fingers down across your collarbone and you duck, hunching your back and bending your knees to get lower. cold air and the smell of dust hit you, and for a moment you almost stop moving entirely—almost stop dead in your tracks, the phantom feeling of sleeping under a lean-to in the rain mixing with the way eri's sobs are piercing your ears—but deku's good hand squeezes your shoulder and you keep moving, even through the sound of a heavy door closing behind you.
—
the escape tunnel spits the group of you out into the woods somewhere; you know this from the smell of wet leaves and the feeling of uneven dirt beneath your shoes. the cold air bites at your arms, bare from the absent sleeves of your muscle shirt, and you feel deku shiver against your back in his shorts and thin t-shirt. it reminds you, yet again, of that lightless cell; of the brief time you'd been able to see your breath in front of you, your quirk useless without sweat.
it occurs to you, somewhat suddenly, that you’ve been with eraser so long that it's entirely possible the weather has begun to get colder, which is just your fucking luck.
eri's cries have softened into sniffles and hiccups, but you can still hear togata murmuring absent reassurances behind you. now that you've finally stopped, deku twists on your back to look at them, and you half debate doing the same—for all the good it would do—when you hear eraser's footsteps bringing up the rear and stopping to stand beside you.
"no sign of anyone," he says, and you catch yourself wondering if that’s particularly a good thing. "we need to get as far from here as possible before sundown."
before sundown. if it's this fucking cold before sundown, you think, then how bad is it going to be afterwards?
—
for a while, the only sounds are all of your footsteps against the forest floor and deku's breaths near your ear.
eri is deathly silent. you can still hear togata carrying her behind you. in front of you, eraser leads your mismatched pack. their presence brings the barest sense of comfort—it's not just you and deku alone together, this time—but knowing eri is here too buries that tentative ease before it really has a chance to emerge. she's so small, and it's so cold that even you can feel it, and she has an unstable, unknown quirk that's being hunted down by whatever has already run you out of the only safe place you're aware of for miles.
you wonder if there's enough raw bird eggs and pine nuts in this forest to feed all five of you.
—
you walk for what feels like a few hours, but you're not entirely sure.
for all the training you've been doing with togata, there's not much that could've competed with carrying deku on your back across the uneven forest floor. the ache in your shoulders and lower back is familiar, if distantly, but you almost drop deku flat on his ass in your haste to put him down before your knees give out. you hit the ground in front of him without bothering to turn and face him first, and you feel his good hand press flat against your spine as you hunch over your lap and swallow down the groan that tries to leave your chest.
"togata," eraser says, and it's only long exposure to the way he talks that lets you recognize the exhaustion there, "patrol, kilometer diameter. if you see anything, get back here as quickly as possible."
"yessir," togata answers, lacking any of the obnoxious grandeur you normally expect from him. you hear his footsteps and then the shuffle of clothing, and a smaller, more tentative hand rests against your back underneath deku's.
there's that odd whoosh of displaced air, the sound of togata's quirk, and you know he's gone. eraserhead exhales slowly, then: "i'll look for food. stay here so i don't lose sight of you three."
his footsteps crunch away over dead leaves and sticks, and if you try then you can still hear him move in a loose circle not far from you. but it's cold, and eri is sniffling in deku's lap behind you, so you focus on that, instead.
your muscles ache at you in protest as you shuffle enough to turn around and face them. you kick your legs out until your foot hits deku and then stretch so they're on either side of him and open your arms, and deku has spent enough nights huddled against you that he doesn't need instruction.
you listen to him scoot forward and feel his legs drop over yours on both sides of you. eri's small weight leans against your chest before she's pressed there more solidly between you and deku, and you wrap your arms around the both of them, dropping your forehead down to deku's shoulder.
"k-kacchan," eri mumbles, as her small hand reaches to touch your arm, "y-you're w-warm."
you don't like the way her teeth chatter, don't like the way her palm is a chilled spot against your arm, so you tighten your hold on her and deku and make some rough noise of agreement. she doesn't move her hand, and you feel her shift just enough to put her head against deku's other shoulder, and deku's good arm wraps around her. he grips at your shirt next to her back.
there's a long quiet. you listen, distantly, to eraser moving around the three of you. eri sniffles some more, and squirms only once, enough to tuck her knees up between her chest and where your arm boxes her in between you and deku.
softly, she asks, "what… wh-what are we gonna d-do?"
your breath catches just barely in your lungs before deku answers, equally as soft, "we're gonna be okay."
—
you drift in and out of sleep like that, with your head on deku's shoulder, hunched over eri between you. faintly, you recognize eraser coming back with something edible he gives to eri and deku when you mumble a noise of refusal. togata returns not long afterward with nothing to report. he and eraserhead move a small distance away and talk in hushed voices, and deku murmurs on and off to eri, who you're not sure is any more awake than you are.
you're proven right when deku whispers, "kacchan?"
you make a vague noise of acknowledgement. eri's quiet breathing has evened out, and her weight lays limp between you and deku, kept upward by your arms around them. when deku doesn't answer right away, you start to lift your head off his shoulder, but the feeling of him gently knocking his temple against yours stops you.
"we're gonna be okay," he repeats to you, quietly, next to your ear. his voice is shaky but resolute. his good hand is gripping your shirt so tightly that you can feel the fabric pulling up your back from the force of it. you can almost, almost, picture that insufferable grin of his—that desperate mimicry of all might, of his teacher, of his hope—and it's what makes you push one hand into the overgrown curls at the back of his head and press your temple more firmly against his.
"yeah," you agree. your voice is rough, and your palms are dry, and your chest is tight, but neither of you say anything about it.
—
"look!" eri breathes excitedly. "it's a butterfly!"
it must be one of the last ones alive, you think. you listen to the patter of eri's footsteps across the ground, passing you from where she had been walking with togata in the rear. eraserhead's steps fall silent as he stops, probably to make sure she doesn't get snatched the moment she gets out of arm's reach of any of you.
her voice comes from your right as you keep still, togata's presence close behind you. "oh," eri says, and her tone is soft and dripping with concern, the way deku used to sound when he'd find heat-exhausted bees when you were kids. "it must be really tired. hi, little g—"
she cuts herself off with a strangled, panicked noise, and you're immediately accosted with adrenaline.
togata's and eraser's footsteps both surge toward her. she's already crying, gasping stuttered swears that she didn't mean it, and eraser's switched to his soothing voice faster than you can pause to realize that eri is still with you all and not plucked away like a flower petal from its stem. your grip on deku's legs is so tight you're sure you'll leave bruises, but they probably won't be any darker than the one he'll leave on you, courtesy of his death-hold on your shoulder.
"i'm sorry," eri is babbling, "i'm s-sorry, i-i didn't—i didn't me-ean t-to, i'm sorry—"
"hey, hey," togata interrupts her gently. his voice is breathy with the hushing sounds he makes. "hey, it's okay, look; it's right here, see, you didn't hurt it, it's okay."
what the fuck is happening? you want to ask, but you're hesitant to break the shaky calm that slowly falls over eri as her sniffling stops and togata's reassurances get a little more confident.
deku makes a noise like he can't believe what he's seeing, suddenly, and starts squirming on your back. you tighten your grip even further on instinct but he whacks you in the collarbone with his good hand, the little bastard, and the sting is enough to get your hold loose again where he can slip away to his own two feet and walk.
you grope angrily for his good hand once he's down so he doesn't go far. you tell yourself that it's because you know he'd get overzealous and wander too far for you to get to him before something bad happened, and not because you feel like you're standing in a void without him tethered to you somehow.
"eri," deku says, quiet and awed, "you… you made it a caterpillar again."
fuck, you think.
—
it's a rewind, and it works on living things, and none of you know anything else about it.
after eri calms down fully, reassured that the butterfly hadn't simply disappeared and the caterpillar it's been turned into is still alive and moving, eraserhead very gently asks her what she had been thinking about before she rewound it. there's a bit of hiccuping and a false start to more tears, like she expects to get in trouble, before eri manages, "i-it just… it looked tired, a-and i wanted to h-help it."
deku's grip on your hand tightens so quickly that you feel some of your knuckles pop. you don't know what's going through his head—his normally endless rambles are absent, and it feels wrong, somehow, to stand beside him and hear only silence—but you have a feeling that it's either really good or really bad, if the way he's squeezing your fingers is any indication. you manage to adjust your palm in his death grip just enough to squeeze back and his hold loosens so suddenly that you don't have to guess at whether he'd been channeling his quirk.
"okay," eraser says. it's not a praise nor a condemnation; the simple acknowledgement of it washes over you and you feel the tension in your shoulders ease out of reflex. eri's sniffling trails off. "you used your quirk on it, that's all."
"b-but…" eri starts, breathy from her tears, "but my quirk is—"
"your quirk is just your quirk," eraser tells her, firmly, and there is no room for argument in his tone. the familiarity of it has you as the one gripping deku's hand, instead, hyper aware of the heat beneath your palms. "you're the only one who gets to decide how to use it, okay?"
eri hiccups softly, sniffles once, and murmurs, "okay."
—
as the group of you settles for the night, eraserhead taking up the mantle of first watch, togata suggests a fire.
you know exactly where he's going with it and make your displeasure known by baring your teeth in his direction. you don't know what he looks like, but something in your gut says he has the same insufferably innocent grin as deku gets when he's being a little shit, and you have a feeling it's being directed at you now.
but it'd be easier to be irritated with the bastard if you couldn't feel deku and eri shivering as the two of them pile onto you, leeching your natural warmth as much as they can.
"then get firewood, smartass," you grumble. togata laughs cheerily and you hear his footsteps wander away, crunching through dead leaves as he sets about to hunt for kindling. the sound of him and eraser exchanging brief words in low voices reaches you, but it's overcome by eri clambering across your legs to lodge herself between you and deku like a hastily-fitted puzzle piece.
"kacchan," she says thoughtfully, soft with tiredness, "what's your quirk?"
this, you think, is exactly why you didn't want togata to suggest a fire.
you sit there deliberating—wondering how you can explain your quirk to this kid without making her afraid of it—for all of two seconds, before deku takes it upon himself to start talking.
"kacchan's quirk is amazing," he tells eri wistfully. you bristle as deku continues, "his sweat is like nitroglycerin—that's a highly volatile and explosive substance, but it's not exactly what kacchan sweats, thankfully, or else he'd probably be exploding all the time—but he can explode it when he wants to, and he can control how big or small the blast is, and he uses it to fly—!"
"you can fly?!" eri demands of you, all traces of her exhaustion gone. your first instinct is to tell her no, you can't fly, not anymore, not with the knowledge that you'd be lost and disoriented and a disaster in the air without your eyes, but you don't have it in you, not with the way her tiny hand is excitedly tapping your arm as she waits for an answer.
"sometimes," you relent, and eri makes an awed noise. you hear deku huff a quiet laugh.
"can you show me?" eri asks next, and it takes everything in you not to grimace.
what will happen, you wonder, if you set off your quirk and it sounds too similar to the gunshots her kidnappers—because that's what that yakuza bastard thug is, a kidnapper—used to terrorize her? what happens if it's too frightening for her, no matter how small you make the sparks? what happens if she sees the destruction of it; the capability to burn, to bring down buildings, to blow someone's head out like you did to the dead-eyed man who blinded you?
deku's good hand grabs one of yours, squeezing your palm, just as you hear togata's footsteps wander back to the three of you, followed by the odd clatter of sticks hitting the ground in a pile.
"time for a fire!" he says cheerily, and you hear him settle on the ground and set to work arranging the sticks in whatever shape he's decided they will burn for the night.
deku's hand adjusts in yours so he can lace your fingers together. eri's small palm rests gently on top of yours. togata pokes your leg with a stick and you scowl and snatch it away from him with your free hand, just to give it back for him to hold so you can light it.
there's barely any sweat on your palm to detonate to begin with, but you still try to keep the sparks as minimalistic as possible, even as you set them off quick and steady to get the stick to catch fire. the warmth of it snaps against your fingers like it's itching to crawl out of the cage of your hand, to find more fuel to devour for a bigger blast. togata makes an approving hum and you close your fingers to smother the fireworks immediately, then damn near jump six feet in the air when you feel eri's tiny hands grab your fist.
"wow!" she exclaims over the steadily growing sound of burning wood. she opens your first and turns your hand this way and that, like she'll find some magician's trick to explain away what you'd just done. "that was so cool, kacchan, like-like fireflies!"
you are, inexplicably—or perhaps not so inexplicably at all—reminded of being five years old and watching green eyes widen in admiration at the fireworks crackling around your fingers.
"yeah," deku agrees softly. you can hear the smile in his voice. "like fireflies."
—
"we're headed for another safehouse," eraser tells the group of you the next morning. your shoulders ache as you hoist deku onto your back. you hear togata murmuring to eri as he picks her up, too. there's something in eraser's tone that makes you bristle, tightening your grip on deku's thighs.
"i thought they were all widespread?" deku questions warily. his good hand squeezes your shoulder gently, thumb swiping back and forth over the skin there. you don't think about how it chases away some of the ache in your back.
"they are," eraserhead says simply.
—
"bakugou," your teacher calls, softly, after deku and eri have fallen asleep on you for the night. you grunt and turn your head toward his voice, unable to sit up without dislodging the pair of leeches that have decided you're a good bed. his footsteps wander slightly closer and there's the rustle of clothing and the scuffing of dirt as he sits on the ground near your shoulders.
"i think you deserve to know," he murmurs, "that the safehouse we're relocating to is where your parents are being held."
you think your heart might stop, just for a moment.
you can already hear your mother's shouts, can already feel her striking the back of your skull, can already hear the deafening silence from your father as he watches it all unfold.
you can already hear aunt inko's tears as she cradles her son and makes him swear to stay away from all things heroic, all things dangerous, all things having to do with you.
you swallow thickly and croak, "just keep them away from the kid."
eraserhead's hand touches your shoulder, featherlight, as he vows with a solemn voice, "i will."
—
eraserhead brings your ragtag group back to the road where togata found you and deku. it probably isn't the exact spot, but as you step up onto the asphalt and feel the evenness of it beneath your shoes, the same foreboding sense of dread is hanging over your head. you're antsy, flighty like some cornered animal, and you can't get rid of the feeling that that's exactly what you are.
eraserhead leads you all along the road for a while. deku's palm is gently swiping back and forth on your shoulder, like he can physically brush away the tension there, when the quiet rumble of a car engine reaches your ears.
you stutter to a stop, leaning forward with deku's weight on your back as he inhales sharply, gripping your shoulder. you hear togata come to a stop beside you. eri makes a soft, scared noise.
"togata—” eraserhead says, fast and stressed, and several things happen.
the car engine roars. it grows louder at a pace far too fast for your liking, and you’re already taking steps back, away from the road, deku’s grip on you deathly tight. you hear eri gasp, then togata’s footsteps rush past you, then eraser swears loudly—something shoves against your shoulder, pushing you further away from the road, and eraser barks at you, “move!”
you move.
there is something instinctual, now, about the way you listen to deku’s signals. you can hear togata and eraser’s footsteps on either side of you, and part of you follows those, keeping them near you to know you’re going in the right direction, but it’s deku that keeps you from hitting trees and tripping over burrows. adrenaline rushes in your ears, burns with heat beneath your palms, and you can feel your heart hammering in your chest like it’s determined to break out from your ribcage, and—
and there’s a gunshot.
eri screams. deku’s weight on your back jerks, but the noise he makes is startled instead of pained, and then he twists, and you know he’s looking, trying to search for how much time you have, how much more distance you need, how much of a chance you can hope for, but it’s the wrong thing to do.
your foot hits something.
it catches on the toe of your shoe and you go lurching forward, and your only instinct is to throw your weight sideways so you can launch deku off your back and further toward where you can hear eraser and togata, and then you go skidding across the forest floor, trying to keep your arms over your head to avoid colliding with anything dangerous.
your back hits what you can only imagine is a tree trunk. you feel your spine pop and grunt with the impact of it; your arms burn and ache from scraping over the ground, and your shoulders are coiled uncomfortably with the odd way you had to twist to throw deku off you. your ears are ringing, head pounding, but you can hear footsteps, can hear deku’s frantic calling of your name, can hear the crunching of forest debris as someone scrambles toward you.
whoever it is grabs you by the hair and hauls you upright, and the snarl in your throat dies at the feeling of something cold and round pressing against your temple.
“kacchan!” deku shrieks.
your quirk is roaring under your palms, burning beneath your skin, but when you turn your hand to face the person standing behind you, holding you up, it disappears. nothing detonates.
“midoriya, no—listen—midoriya!” togata barks. there’s the sound of scuffling, of deku bellowing his outrage, of eri sobbing a bit further away. your chest is tight. distantly, you think you might be holding your breath.
“hand over the kid,” sneers an unfamiliar voice; not the one holding you up, but somewhere to your left, “and maybe we won’t shoot all of you pitiful fuckers where you stand.”
“let go of him!” deku roars back, full of fury like you’ve never heard before.
“which one even is this?” says the person holding you. their grip on your hair tightens so they can drag you up even further, keeping the gun pressed to your head. your knees lift from the ground and you struggle to put your weight on your feet instead, snarling your anger even as they bark out a surprised laugh.
“shit!” they crow, “the fuck did that to you, kid, huh? you must be blind as a fuckin’ bat, huh, can’t see shit! look, watch!”
the pressure of the gun leaves your temple. immediately, you start to surge to your feet and swing your fist around to strike whoever this bastard is, but something heavy and solid strikes you in the side of the head without warning and you crumple onto your stomach to the sound of deku’s enraged screaming and eri’s terrified sobs.
“let go, togata!” deku demands, furious and desperate. eri is talking, too, frantic and rambling, but the ringing in your ears is too loud to make it out. you push yourself up onto your elbows, gritting your teeth against the feeling of blood running from your skull and down your jaw. the first unfamiliar voice says something, bored sounding, and there’s a burst of footsteps—
footsteps away from you.
eri’s sobbing, away from you.
deku’s howl of fear and rage, away from you.
the warmth of your quirk returns to your hands, blooming like a flower under the sun, and you roll onto your back and throw your arm toward the person who’d struck you and detonate it.
the recoil of the explosion that erupts from your palm sends pain shooting through your arm and into your shoulder. the person screams, something animal and horrific. the thud of their body hitting the ground echoes in the aftershocks of your quirk. you don’t hear them move again.
you don’t think about it.
“you little fucker!” the first unfamiliar villain shrieks, shaking and full of fear. you scramble to your feet, your quirk crackling around your fingers, and aim toward their voice before they have a chance to say anything else.
the scream that comes from them is almost as haunting as their friend’s.
there’s heat brushing against your skin that isn’t from your quirk, as you stand there, panting and wincing at the feeling of blood gluing your hair to your head. you think back to being in the forest with deku, when you considered burning the first lean-to you built to cover your tracks. you think back to dismissing that idea—to knowing that it would set a fire you wouldn’t be able to control afterwards.
you take a wavering step backwards, away from the warmth that’s growing more insistent by the second. you can hear it, now; the burning of dead leaves and fallen sticks, smoldering and popping against the thin layer of frost you know would have gathered the night before. another step back, another step away, and your back hits a tree—the same one, you think distantly, that you must have hit when you fell.
you press your hands against it, breathing fast.
you can’t hear anything over the rapidly growing sound of flames.
you don’t remember which direction you heard the others’ footsteps retreating in.
your shoulders are too light—your hands are empty—your back is cold—
you are blind.
“kacchan!” deku cries.
your head snaps toward his voice—too far away for you to reach out and grab, too far away for you to find, too far away for you to hear as any other than an echo—and something—someone—grabs you, lifting you up and over their shoulders in a fireman’s carry, and you almost choke with the abruptness of it.
your quirk crackles, the sound mingling with the flames, and as he runs, togata crows, “don’t blow us up!”
—
“kacchan,” deku gasps, slamming into you before togata’s even fully put you back on the ground. you both go tumbling into the dirt, deku’s good arm around your neck, gripping so hard he’s damn near strangling you, but you can’t be bothered to stop him; you’re crushing him against your chest like he might disappear if you loosen your hold.
“don’t ever do that again,” he babbles, face pressed against your shoulder. you can feel his tears soaking through your shirt. he’s shaking with the force of them, trembling in your arms, and you bury your face in his hair. “don’t ever let go like that again, kacchan, i swear, i swear, i’ll—i’ll beat you up so much—”
a smaller weight knocks into your side, squirming and wiggling to get under one of your arms, and eri’s tiny hands ball in your shirt, her own crying just as loud and ugly as deku’s.
she’s gasping for breath, hiccuping so violently that she jumps with each one, and you crush her to your chest all the same, gently pressing your hand over the back of her head so she can hide in the shoulder that hasn’t already been claimed by deku.
“don’t you dare,” deku whispers fiercely, drawing in stuttering breaths, and you feel him pull away just enough that he can lean up and press his forehead to yours. “don’t you dare ever let go like that again—swear it, kacchan.”
you swallow thickly and aren’t all that surprised to feel the hot streak of tears fall over your jaw.
“i swear,” you whisper back.
—
(you will sooner die.)
—