Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Inko looks at the upteenth stack of Izuku’s old drawings popping up from a worn-out box hidden in the closet she’s currently reorganizing. She probably put the stack there herself, years ago, incapable of just throwing it away. She picks it up in her hands and checks the first drawings – as expected, it’s a bunch of portraits of All Might.

She finds herself smiling, thinking that the real All Might, currently sipping tea at her kitchen table, would probably love to take a look at them.

She can’t claim to know him just after a few days spent under the same roof, that would be a little bit preposterous, she knows that. But they had some pleasant conversations, about everything and anything, and of one thing she’s quite sure – he seems genuinely interested, maybe even fascinated, by the simple normality of domestic life.

He follows her around the house and watches her even as she does the most tedious chores (and he always asks if he can help her, even when it’s clear he has no idea how to), and he seems to enjoy whatever story or anecdote she tells him, especially those involving the antics of a young Izuku.

Normally, she would have already reported him to the police for stalking her and her son, possibly after kicking him out of her house.

But she knows he means no harm (a rather strange concept when you think it refers to the former Symbol of Peace).

She assumes that his particular infatuation with the mundane aspects of life is a direct result of having spent so much time under the spotlight – and probably a side effect of being, she suspects, alone. Maybe she’s completely mistaken, but he doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends, and for what she was able to see, he mostly talks only to Izuku.

…Just like her.

Maybe it’s because of this odd similarity that she’s starting to appreciate his company.

She grabs the drawings and cheerfully strolls towards the kitchen.

She sits down at the kitchen table, right next to All Might, holding the stack in her hands and smiling.

He looks at the papers and then at her, a worried expression on his face.

“I’m… not good with paperwork.”

“Yes, I know. I saw you grading papers yesterday,” Inko says, remembering the mess her table had been the day before and how little he seemed to have accomplished throughout the whole afternoon. “But I think you might find this paperwork interesting.”

She picks the first drawing and shows it to him.

It’s his portrait, signed by Izuku Midoriya, age 6 ½. His worried expression melts into a huge smile.

And that makes Inko smile, too.

They flip through the stack, laughing at the improbable poses and scenes. There’s a lot of All Might in there, but as one can imagine there’s a lot of Inko too, a plethora of self-portraits as a hero and all those things you could expect to find in a kid’s portfolio.

Towards the end of the stack they reach a group of drawings stapled together and titled “All Might saves Mom – THE MOVIE”. It’s made to resemble some sort of a comic and features the dastard villain Poopman, who apparently has just kidnapped Inko, fighting against All Might.

There’s some dialogue written here and there and they find themselves reading it out loud, just for the fun of it.

“Thank you for saving me All Might,” reads Inko reaching the second to last page, “Why don’t you come to our house for dinner? We’re having curry tonight.”

She pauses, considering what she just read.

“You know what,” she says, turning towards All Might, “that’s actually a pretty neat suggestion for tonight’s dinner.”

“It sounds good. Well, let’s see if I agree: ha ha ha, thank you… Mom? Well that’s what it says. Thank you Mom, I’d love to,” he reads.

“Then it’s settled!”

All Might nods and reads the last sentence at the bottom of the page.

“And then, after dinner, we could…turn the page. Oh, I guess that ‘turn the page’ is just instructions.”

“Maybe it will be another interesting suggestion,” says Inko. It will probably be just playing videogames, or maybe watching a movie. And that doesn’t sound bad at all, actually. She might even suggest it anyways. Well, the movie part. She's not good at videogames.

However, young Izuku had completely different plans for them in mind.

Like kissing.

There’s no way to misread the situation, since the word “KISS” is written here and there on the page, and it’s also very clear it’s them, since their names (well, “All Might” and “Mom”) are written over their head and highlighted in bright colors. There’s also a bunch of glittery heart-shaped stickers plastered all around them, forming a heart-shaped frame.

It takes a lot of courage for Inko to take her eyes off of the page and to look at All Might.

She feels like she has to say something to break the awkward silence that has fallen upon them - what if he thinks this was all made on purpose? She even told him it could be another interesting suggestion! She needs to laugh it off and tell him something like kids are so imaginative, and then she’ll quickly change the subject and everything will be ok.

Too bad she can’t say anything at all, because he’s not looking at the page anymore, he’s looking at her, and in the instant their eyes lock she feels so embarrassed that nothing intelligible can come out of her mouth.

There must be a coherent thought somewhere in her head, though. She just needs to focus.

His eyes are a lovely shade of blue.

That’s… definitely not the kind of thought she needs right now.

Though, it’s true. She never noticed it. To be honest she feels like she never actually noticed he had eyes until now. Which is pretty silly, because it’s obvious he has eyes, but she never really stopped considering them. She never stopped considering all the rest of him, either. As a real person. He’s always been this constant, yet unreal presence in her life for the past fifteen years or so and she never thought of him as someone who could be sitting next to her at her kitchen table, looking at old, silly drawings. And looking at her. Staring at her. Like he just realized for the first time, too, that she has eyes.

Is he… considering the possibility?

...Because she is. She’s not entirely sure why, but she is. Just like she stopped and considered the possibility to have curry for dinner. The only difference is that eating curry doesn’t come with an incredibly huge dose of awkwardness and a heavy load of emotional consequences (usually).

“Well,” he says after a few seconds that felt more or less like an eternity, “it’s just a suggestion.”

This would be a nice moment to actually look away from him and to blather something funny to set aside this whole ordeal.

“One doesn’t have to follow it blindly,” he adds, since she doesn’t say anything.

It’s like he’s pointing her toward the exit, telling her here, you can graciously get out of this embarrassing situation if you want. There’s a million things she can say now to dismiss this as an awkwardly funny moment, it would be so easy.

But then… why doesn’t he do it himself? Why does he keep staring at her? The answer seems strangely clear to Inko. He considered the possibility of kissing her and he didn’t discard it.

And… She thinks she doesn’t want to discard it, either.

“No,” she says. “Why should we wait after dinner?”

That’s it. She said it.

He seems surprised. She can’t blame him, she’s pretty much surprised herself.

He stares at her a while longer, and doesn’t say a thing. The certainty she had just a second ago is starting to crumble away as she thinks that maybe he’s just used to stare into the eyes of people he’s having awkward moments with. Maybe he never considered the idea of kissing her and he’s now quite shocked, and maybe even disgusted, by the fact that she actually did.

She’s about to laugh nervously and tell him that she was joking when he smiles and moves slightly closer to her.

“Why, indeed?” he says, his voice low and dropped to almost a whisper.

Slowly, he moves his hand to gently touch her cheek, hesitating as soon as his fingers brush against her skin. She never realized how much she longed for that kind of physical contact until now, when she finds herself taking his hand and pressing it against her face. Even if they’re sitting, he needs to bend down a bit to reach her, as he pulls her towards him.

She closes her eyes, while everything inside of her is on the verge of explosion.

They’re so close right now that there’s no way they could stop-

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

Izuku’s voice throws her violently back to reality.

How do they even begin to explain him what they were doing…? By telling him that it was his idea?!?

She desperately looks in panic at All Might who… is comfortably sitting on the other side of the table, at a very reasonable distance from her. He’s sipping his cup of tea, and seems completely unfazed by Izuku’s presence.

“Midoriya, my boy, what’s wrong?” he asks, turning slowly towards Izuku.

“What are you doing,” repeats Izuku getting closer to the table and hastily gathering his drawings, “why are you looking at this stuff? It’s embarrassing!”

Inko stares at her son stacking the papers scattered on the table, while All Might laughs and tells him there’s nothing to be embarrassed about, on the contrary, could he please have one of his signed portraits? He’d love to keep one.

If it wasn’t for her heart still pounding extremely fast in her chest she’d think she imagined everything.

Chapter Text

According to Inko’s calculations, Izuku shouldn’t be at home yet.

Which means that, unless All Might decided to go out somewhere, he’s waiting for her just behind her apartment door. Well, maybe he’s not really waiting for her.

Or maybe he is.

She’s not sure. Since they had that… moment in the kitchen two days before, they haven’t had a single chance to be alone (as Izuku was always around and she has no excuse and no courage to knock on the guest room door in the middle of the night).

To be honest, she doesn’t even know if there has been a moment in the first place. Maybe she imagined it. Maybe he was just being… friendly.

She thought about it a lot – she thought about it too much – and in the end she came to the conclusion that there’s only one way to find out what actually happened, and it’s talking with him.

She takes a deep breath, counts to ten and opens the door of her apartment.

“Miss Midoriya!”

She takes a look at the flashy stranger who just greeted her. She has never seen him before, but she immediately recognizes the bright teal and fuchsia suit he’s wearing: he’s one of those annoying door-to-door salesmen everyone is talking about. Apparently, once they’re inside your house, they don’t leave until you buy something. They have an annoyingly aggressive sales strategy and, as if this wasn’t enough, many of them have manipulative quirks they blatantly use to boost their business. It shouldn’t be legal, but well, lately the whole justice system has other major, pressing issues on its mind.

As soon as the salesman calls her name, All Might turns towards her. He’s sitting on the couch, his expression a mix of guilt and a plea for help.

“I am Stan from the ELF Company,” the stranger says, approaching her with the biggest, fakest and less reassuring smile she’s ever seen, “the Electronics Lovers & Friends, the most prominent manufact-”

“I know, I know,” she says, dodging his handshake as she takes off her coat. She doesn’t really like to be that rude, but she doesn’t have any other option if she wants to push him out of the house as soon as possible.

Even if that means being alone with All Might.

Maybe because that means being alone with All Might.

She feels rather confused. But anyways, the annoying stranger has to go.

The salesman doesn’t seem to be too bothered by her rudeness and takes advantage of her silence to try and get a word or two in.

“As I was telling your husband-”

Inko turns quickly towards the man, her cheeks already on fire.

“My WHAT?”

“Your husband,” the seller slowly replies, articulating the world husband very loudly and clearly, while pointing at All Might who’s now coughing violently on the couch.

“He’s… not… We aren’t…” she whispers, as the words “husband” and “married” die on her lips, her thoughts running wildly back to their moment, fueling her embarrassment even more.

And that’s enough for the salesman to step in, in full force. He gets behind her and gently guides her to the couch, where he makes her sit just next to All Might, who still hasn’t stopped coughing.

“Have you ever considered,” says the salesman, “how appliances could improve your relationship?”

They both gasp at the word “relationship”.

“At ELF we like to think about your needs as a couple and a family first,” the salesman continues.

That’s too much to bear for the both of them. They desperately try to tell the man that they aren’t married but all they can produce is a bunch of confused sounds.

He doesn’t seem to be too perturbed by it and continues with his script.

“Just think about all the things you could be doing if you didn’t have to do chores around the house!”

He produces a foldable poster full of numbers and diagrams from one of his pockets.

“Just take a look at these,” he says, “and you’ll see how many hours of free time you can regain for yourself if you decide to purchase our finest appliances!”

Neither Inko nor All Might are looking at any of the charts the salesman is pointing at, but he doesn’t seem to care.

“For example, did you know that people spend an average of fifteen minutes a day vacuum cleaning their house?”

He’s probably waiting a surprised reaction, but it doesn’t come. Inko is too busy hiding her face in her hands while All Might is trying to (unsuccessfully) disappear between the cushions on the couch.

“But if you purchase our Goomba XX-546 V,” the salesman continues, “that’s fifteen minutes of free time just for you! Multiply it for the seven days of the week and you get almost two hours you could spend walking together on the beach!”

He turns the poster, showing a tropical beach pictured on the other side.

Finally, Inko looks at him. There’s something completely wrong with the salesman’s math, but right now she can’t really pinpoint what it is. She’s more focused on the beautiful, relaxing tropical beach she’s looking at, with the pearl white sand that feels almost like silk under her feet and the rhythmic, reassuring sound of the waves crashing on the shore… When did she get there? She kind of knows that it’s probably just the salesman’s quirk, but it’s such a lovely place to be… She just hopes that at least All Might is, somehow, resisting all of this.

But apparently he isn’t, since he’s standing next to her, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his skin.

He looks at her, smiling, and she can’t help but return the smile.

There’s a voice telling her to take All Might’s – no wait, her husband’s? – hand (and purchase a Goomba XX-546 V), and it sounds strangely similar to the salesman’s voice, but to be honest, why should she care? She’s in a wonderful place and the weather is just too perfect and she’s holding… wait, is she really holding All Might’s hand?

Suddenly, the only thing she can hear is her own heart beating incredibly fast, and she’s back on her couch, in her living room, out of the salesman’s illusion.

However, she is holding All Might’s hand.

Well, she knows she should let it go. And maybe act a little bit embarrassed, or even better, upset, and kick the ELF salesman out of her apartment.

But holding hands feels so nice…

He can let her go, if he wants. Actually, he’s the hero and all that stuff, he’s the one supposed to not fall for such a cheap quirk, while she’s more than excused for doing so. 

She decides to pretend she’s still under the effects of the illusion for a little while longer.

The salesman is still chanting something about the beach and how their new Goomba XX-546 V will be able to vacuum up to three handfuls of sand in one go, so they won’t have to worry about getting that in their shoes and on the floor of their house. He blathers something else for a whole minute or two, but she’s not really listening to him anymore.

All Might is still holding her hand.

She starts to suspect that he’s pretending, too.

After a while the salesman starts to sound slightly distressed by the whole situation. He’s repeating “purchase a Goomba XX-546 V” way more frequently than before and he seems to have run out of random facts and statistics about it.

In front of him, Inko and All Might are still holding hands, not saying a word. They switch, however, from a simple, casual grip to interlocking their fingers, which causes the both of them to blush excessively and let out some sort of indecipherable giggle.

The salesman falls silent.

“Listen,” says All Might after some more time has passed, “about the other day…”

Inko nods, as she feels her heartbeat accelerating at unhealthy levels.

“I’ve thought about it…”

Oh yes. Yes she thought about it, too.

The ELF seller mutters something, but neither Inko nor All Might pay him any attention at all.

“…And I think that… we…”

He doesn't seem really sure of what he's trying to say, but Inko can't help but notice that he is getting closer to her. The salesman is still there, looking at them in disbelief, but he thinks they’re already married, doesn’t he? So he won’t really complain if they, for example, decide to kiss?

She softly squeezes All Might’s hand, and he seems to understand, because he stops trying to say whatever he wanted to say and bends down even closer to her -

“I’m back!” Izuku says cheerfully, closing the front door behind him and stepping into the living room.

And it happens again – Inko is about to panic when she realizes that she is still  sitting on the couch, but All Might is standing definitely farther than where he was a second ago.

Like before, she feels rather confused. Her only consolation is the equally confused look on the salesman’s face, who seems to have no idea how he ended up handing a brand new Goomba XX-546 V to All Might, who, in turn, is paying for it.

But a sale is a sale, and the he doesn’t complain, not even when he gets shoved off out of the apartment.

Chapter Text

Inko looks at the faraway sparks glimmering in the sky.  Someone is testing out some fireworks – or they’re having fun with their quirk, it’s hard to say from the distance.

It’s chilly, but she doesn’t mind spending a few minutes on the balcony breathing some fresh air. There’s a lot going on in her head now, and she needs to put her thoughts in order – if possible.

The other day she had another… moment with All Might. And then, just like before, they got interrupted, the feeling was lost and everything regressed as it was before (save, maybe, for her own increased awkwardness around him). And right now, she doesn’t now what do to. She can’t just walk up to him and say, “Well, do you remember how yesterday we were kind of about to maybe make out a little? Do you want to give it another try?”

Maybe she should, but… she can’t. She’s not that brave and she’s not that bold.

“May I join you?”

All Might’s voice startles her.

“Of course,” she says. She tries her best to sound as calm and relaxed as she can, but her voice trembles a little. She’d like to think that it’s a strange coincidence that he arrived just when she was thinking about him, but let's be honest, she’s been thinking about him the whole day, so it’s not really some fateful happening. In any case, she doesn’t know if she feels more excited or scared.

And maybe it’s because of her confusion that she doesn’t notice that All Might is closing the door – which can be opened only from the inside of the apartment – behind him. She realizes it only when she hears the metallic “click” of the lock. She lets out a tiny, worried gasp.

“Uh oh,” says All Might who seems to have understood that they’re now locked outside, “I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head.

“No, I should have warned you.”

He looks incredibly mortified. Or is he… embarrassed? Surely enough he is way more nervous than usual, since he keeps looking everywhere but at her and he doesn’t seem able to stay put, though the balcony is so small that he can’t really move around that much. She tries to reassure him telling him that Izuku will probably find them soon – it’s almost dinner time and she had already called him a few minutes before. He nods and begins to restlessly look inside the apartment, probably trying to spot Izuku.

Maybe it’s just her, but he doesn’t exactly seem thrilled to be there, even if he stepped out on the balcony of his own accord.

Maybe, after all, she really imagined everything. Maybe she was the one pushing their… moments on him and right now he thinks that she will, somehow, take advantage of this situation, and feels trapped and uncomfortable.

Whatever the reason, she can’t possibly bear to see him so anxious. Maybe it’s because she feels sorry for him not feeling at ease, or maybe it’s because she feels sorry for herself – she doesn’t know, but she needs to let him know that he can relax, nothing is going to happen. Unfortunately (for her).

Maybe she can make some small, meaningless talk to distract him?

She tries to say something, but as soon as she opens up her mouth to speak, she sneezes.

He finally turns his attention towards her.

“Do you feel cold?” he asks.

She’s about to tell him that no, she’s fine, but she gets interrupted by a second sneeze.

 “You’re going to catch something. Here, take my-” he stops in the middle of the sentence, and looks at himself. He’s just wearing a shirt, no sweater, no jacket.  “…shirt?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, chuckling. And then she sneezes again.

“We need to get inside,” All Might says, checking over the ledge of the balcony. Much to her horror, he seems to be evaluating the distance from the balcony to the ground.

“You… You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking,” she whispers.

He turns towards her, genuinely confused.

“Why not?”

“Because…” she says, searching for the right words. She doesn’t really want to tell him she thinks he’ll just end up splattered on the ground. “Because you get down and then what? The front door is locked from the inside.”

“True,” he says, “but then I can ring the bell. The boy will hear that.”

He’s right. But this still looks like a terrible idea.

“I think I can still manage a jump like this,” he says, sticking his head over the ledge again. They’re quite up.

“…Or maybe not,” he adds in a whisper.

But she doesn’t hear that last part, because she cuts him off with a blunt, cold, “no you can’t” that escapes her lips before she can think about it.

She realizes a little bit too late that she’s telling this to the same man who could easily leap over the whole building in the blink of an eye. The same man who could basically fly over the city.

For heaven’s sake, she saw him in action so many times, he did way, way worse than jumping from a balcony.

And yet, she dared to tell him that he can’t jump.

He’ll probably think that she’s an annoying, insolent little chubby woman who can’t mind her own business - and who doesn’t even have the courage to look at him in the eye after telling him what he can or can’t do. She keeps staring at her own feet, even if she can clearly feel his gaze fixed on her.

He’s probably annoyed. Or worse, mad.

But… well, it’s true, she doesn’t really know the extent of his “condition”, but she’s not blind either. She knows she’s right.

However, this won’t probably prevent him from getting pissed at her – actually, he could be even more pissed if she really is right.

After a while, he lets out a small laugh, breaking the glacial silence that has fallen upon them.

She takes a deep breath and finally raises her eyes to look at him.

He doesn’t seem properly… mad. He is standing somewhat menacingly in front of her, towering over her with his arms crossed, but more than enraged, he seems amused.

“Oh,” he says. Just that.

His voice is calm and soft. He doesn’t really sound mad, so it must mean only one thing: he’s beyond mad. That’s it. Her… impudence was probably so bad that it didn’t just irk him, it deeply offended him.

But still.

Being offended is still not a good reason to get splattered on the ground. Hopefully, it’s not a good reason to splatter her on the ground, either (not that she really thinks he’d do that, but sometimes her mind races way too far and way too fast for her common sense to follow).

“Are you going to stop me?” he asks.

“If…” her voice is just a whisper. She really can’t believe she’s going to say what she’s about to say. “If I need to, yes.”

“How?”

He takes a step forward, and considering the size of the balcony, she finds herself cornered against the wall.

How, that’s surely a good question. She has no idea, and she also has nothing to say to at least pretend she can back up her words with actions. So she just grabs the hem of his shirt, her hand trembling way more than she wants to show. But maybe, if he really jumps, between her physical strength and her quirk she can manage to pull him back. He doesn’t seem to weigh that much, honestly.

All Might looks at her and then at her hand tightening on the fabric of his shirt.

After a while, he lets out a deep sigh that sounds more as a sigh of relief than a snort of irritation and moves in even closer than before, leaning with his forearm on the wall, above her.

It’s not just her hand that is trembling now, it’s her everything, and she suspects that it has nothing to do with the fear of him getting mad at her but more with the fact that he’s incredibly close.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

She looks at him, confused. That’s not the reaction she was waiting for.

“For speaking your mind,” he adds. “I appreciate that. Not everyone does it. Almost no one does it, actually.”

She should probably say something back, but now that she realized he’s not mad with her and has basically pinned her against the wall not to kill her but probably with very different intentions in mind, words are a little bit too difficult. It takes her a lot just to nod, and even more to finally speak.

“So… You’re not jumping down?”

“No,” he says, getting even closer to her than before. “But… I fear I might fall anyways.”

“Then,” Inko says, almost not hearing her voice over the deafening sound of her own heart beating, “may I suggest you to find something to hold on to?”

“It sounds reasonable,” he says as he slides one arm around her waist, pulling her close, “but strangely enough, it seems to have the opposite effect.”

She gently tugs his shirt to invite him to bend down to close the distance between them and he happily obliges.

“Were you stuck on the balcony again?” asks Izuku opening the door.

Inko doesn’t really know how All Might managed to move so quickly without falling for real from the ledge in such a confined space, but there she is, looking at the distant lights like nothing happened, with him standing on the opposite side, telling Izuku nonchalantly that yes, they were stuck because of him and that they should go back inside now, before someone catches a cold, or worse – and she’s sure that he quickly glances at her for a split second – falls. 

Chapter Text

A strange, rattling sound coming from the kitchen wakes Inko in the middle of the night.

Normally, she’d reach for the baseball bat she keeps hidden under her bed as she imagines several scenarios in which she gets brutally murdered by whoever entered the apartment, but this time is different - Izuku is home and so is All Might. And that last part is definitely a wild thought to think.

However, knowing that they’re both home reassures her a little bit (but just a little, because her imagination at such a late hour is running wildly) about the murder thing and suggests her that probably one of the two is the source of the noises she’s hearing.

She tries to go back to sleep, but her mind is lingering a little bit too much on the All Might is home thought, making it impossible for her to fall asleep again. She keeps thinking back to what he told her on the balcony just a few hours before – was he serious? It really sounded as he was serious. But, like before, they didn’t have time to… further explain themselves. Once they were “rescued” by Izuku, they had dinner (though her stomach was so crumpled she almost didn’t eat at all) and then they watched a movie, all the three of them together, and then Izuku dragged All Might to his room to check this or that hero stuff and well, it got late and she went to (try to) sleep. And now she’s awake again because someone-

Oh.

Giving that the noises she’s hearing seem to come from the kitchen, she thought it was probably Izuku looking for a late night snack, but what if it’s actually All Might…?

She finds herself getting out of the bed and opening the door of her room before she can actually realize what she’s doing. She stops only because she catches a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror – she’s not really… presentable. Her pajama is anything but flattering, and her hair is a mess. She can fix the second problem relatively quickly, but her outfit is another matter. Should she change…? But then, wouldn’t it be really strange if she was walking around the house at night fully dressed? She could perhaps look for something casual enough to pass for a pajama but maybe slightly more fitted and less pink and especially without –

The noise starts again but this time, with the door open, she recognizes it. It’s someone coughing, and from the sound of it, it seems quite bad.

She forgets about her wardrobe issues and quietly patters towards the kitchen, until she spots All Might bent on the sink, coughing.

The lights are out, but the pale azure glow coming from the window is enough to let her see that this one must be a fit much worse than usual. She knows he tries his best not to be seen by her – and, she suspects, even by Izuku – whenever he doesn’t feel well and maybe it would be best to just leave him alone, to avoid mortifying him. But he seems to be in pain, and he probably doesn’t know where the medicine cabinet is (and probably wouldn’t ransack it anyways without asking it first). And it seems he wanted to drink something warm, since he’s in the kitchen and a few cabinets are open, but he probably doesn’t know where the tea and cups are, either.

After a while, she decides that he might end up embarrassed, that’s true, but she can’t have him cough to death in her kitchen.

She waits for the current fit to be over and then approaches him, being careful to make enough noise to let him know she’s there.

As expected, he notices her and tries to quickly wash his mouth and regain some composure.

“Hey,” she whispers, “is everything ok?”

He smiles at her and nods slowly.

“Did I wake you?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she says, shaking her head.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” he says. “I didn’t-”

He needs to interrupt himself to cough again and she’s pretty sure she can see a drop of blood, but he tries to pass it as a tiny, annoying inconvenience. It’s soon clear to the both of them that it’s the beginning of another fit. Reluctantly, he has to turn away from her and bend again on the sink.

She doesn’t know if he’ll get mad at her or not, but as he’s coughing she begins to gently stroke his back, hoping to alleviate his pain, even if just a little.

He quivers a bit when she touches him, but she can’t really tell if it’s because of her or because of the cough.

When the fit is over he cleans his mouth and chin again.

“I didn’t want to,” he says, finishing his sentence from before. “But I hoped it. A little. But just a little, because I didn’t want you to wake up because of me.”

Does he really mean he wanted to meet her in the middle of the night? Possibly hoping she could help him? Her heart skips a beat, but she tries her best not to show it.

“Come and sit down a bit,” she says, accompanying him to the closest chair. He’s shivering.  “It seems you’re the one who ended up getting a cold. How do you feel?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” he says. His breath is heavy and he has to push back another cough.

“Yes, and I’m the Queen of England.”

“Fancy meeting you here your majesty,” he says, laughing and coughing at the same time. “Have I told you already that I was hoping to meet you here?”

She tries to smile as if he just said something funny and not something that just set her cheeks on fire and made her insides spin on themselves.

“You did. Now just wait here a minute, I’ll go get you an aspirin.”

He grabs the sleeve of her pajama.

“Please stay,” he says. Then he seems to realize what he just did and lets her go. “I mean, there’s no need to go. I’m ok.”

She probably needs to sit down, too, since her legs are wobbling and she’s probably having a heart attack, but she manages to keep her self-control.

“Let me at least prepare you something warm,” she says heading towards the stove. And then I’ll go and get you an aspirin and the rest of the medicine cabinet, she thinks.

When the water is about to boil, she hears him laughing quietly.

“What?” she asks, turning towards him.

“Nice buns,” he says.

“WHAT-”

“Nice buns,” he repeats, pointing at her pajama. The pink, unflattering pajama she completely forgot she was wearing, featuring happy little bunnies printed all over the fabric.

She feels incredibly self-conscious now, but she still manages to laugh a little.

“You’re delirious,” she says as she gets back at the table with a steaming cup of tea. “Do you have a fever?”

“I don’t know,” he answers.

“Let me check.”

Maybe it’s because she’s still half asleep, or maybe it’s because she has been living alone with a kid for just too long to remember proper adult ways to check one’s fever, but she finds herself pulling back his hair and putting her forehead against his before she can realize what she’s actually doing. 

When she does, it’s already too late.

She should probably either awkwardly excuse herself and pull back or act cool and pretend this is completely normal and just walk away informing him that he is, in fact, burning, and probably has a fever. But she stays there.

The fact that he grabbed her pajama again doesn’t help, either.

Oh well. She got so close, she can as well take that extra, incredibly short step and kiss him, can’t she? He wanted to see her. And he told her not to go. And he’s still holding onto her. Not to mention what happened on their previous… moments.

Feeling incredibly courageous, she slowly leans in for the kiss.

And, as slowly as her, he backs off.

She wishes the ground would open under her feet and swallow her whole, instantly.

She’ll never be able to look at him in the eye again. Heck, she’ll never be able to stay in the same room as him. Just to be safe, she should move to another city. Transfer abroad. Get shot into outer space. And it would still be too close.

So, in the end, she did imagine everything.

Maybe she can still get away from this with only a very broken heart and a huge embarrassment – she can pretend she never intended to kiss him at all, and if he mentions it she can claim he was delirious due to the fever and he was the one imagining things.

Yes. That could work.

Now, if only he could stop grabbing her and could instead let her go, she could quickly run to the bathroom, grab the aspirin box and throw it at him and then finally go cry in her room.

But he keeps her there, their foreheads still touching.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers after a while, “I… don’t want you to get sick, too.”

Oh. That… changes things. He's just concerned for her - and that's actually incredibly sweet and makes her want to kiss him even more. She’d let out a huge sigh of relief, if she only could remember how to breathe.

“Don’t worry,” she whispers back, leaning in again, “I have plenty of aspirins.”

“That’s good mom,” says Izuku as he enters the room, turning the light on and rubbing his eyes. “I think I’ll need one, I don’t feel well.”

Inko looks at him and then at All Might, who did his thing – his usual thing, she’d like to say at this point - and is now coughing to death again on the sink (and he doesn’t seem to be faking it, but then again, moving at inhuman speed probably takes its tolls, especially when you’re sick).

“I’ll get one for you both,” she says.

Chapter Text

Inko doesn’t particularly enjoy doing her household chores, but she has to admit that sometimes – specifically today – they help her keeping her mind busy, so it doesn’t wander through a jungle of thoughts she’s now tired of exploring.

The other day she almost kissed All Might. Almost. But then they got interrupted by Izuku, and then… Well, both he and All Might weren’t feeling well at all, so she had to patch them up as best as she could. And then she was planning to send them both to bed, maybe Izuku first, and she thought she could maybe linger a while with All Might in the guest room, just to be sure he was all right and could sleep… But before she could do any of this, Izuku proposed a “sleepover for people with a cold” and ended up camping in All Might’s room the whole night.
He stayed there the next day, too.
And today he’s still there.

The only positive thing is that she didn’t end up seducing (…abusing?) her partially drugged, partially delirious guest.
She’s not that desperate.
Yet.

She shakes her head and tries to focus on the work in front of her. If she scrubs the floor with all the strength she has, maybe she’ll end up tired enough to fall asleep as soon as she lays her head on the pillow instead of tossing and turning in her bed searching for a good reason to accidentally enter the guest room in the middle of the night.

She mindlessly turns the TV on, just to try and shoo away the thoughts in her head and to have some sort company. She doesn’t even check what it’s on, anything is fine as long as it keeps her distracted.

She picks the mop in her hands and starts to forcefully clean the floor.
“Ouch, that hurts!”

Inko stops mopping. That was the TV, right…? For a split second, she thought it was the mop.
She turns it upside down (or she turns it back upright? She’s not sure) so that the head with the fibres is facing her.

“I’m a prince, you know!”
“Sure you are,” she says, giggling. She turns around to check the TV – as she thought, it’s one of that old, soppy Pisney movies where everyone sings and dances every ten minutes or so, for at least ten minutes straight.

She goes back to her mop. To be honest, it does look like a person, somehow.

“Would you like to dance with me?”
“Well,” Inko says, “Since you asked me.”

The music begins and as the characters in the movie start to dance, Inko, too, takes a few tentative steps. She lets the mop twirl in her hands, and that’s when it hits her – it doesn’t just look like a person, it looks like him.

Actually, giving that the fibres are yellow and the head is mounted on a long, thin stick, the resemblance is uncanny.

She laughs a little, then she shakes her head and tries to focus on the music and what the characters are saying. But, of all the possible lines in this world, the prince just has to tell the heroine “don’t worry, I am here” and that’s just too much for Inko to bear.

She’s not sure what she finds funnier – the fact that her mop looks like All Might or the fact that she is actually irresistibly attracted to someone that looks like her mop – but she just can’t stop laughing. She laughs so much that she ends up slipping on the small, still wet patch of floor she just scrubbed. She tries to break her fall leaning on the mop, but that slips too and she has to let it go to at least fall on the couch and not on the ground.
The mop glides away on the floor, until it reaches the hallway.

It stops just in front of a pair of feet.
Which, obviously, belong to All Might.
Maybe he didn’t see a thing. Maybe.
Inko can only hope.

Slowly, he picks the mop up.
Inko tries her best to muffle a laughter. Seeing them together is just too much.
“Are you ok?” he asks, as he gets closer to the couch. He handles her the mop.
“Yes,” she says, her eyes a little bit teared because of the laughter, “I’m fine. Thanks.”

Maybe he really didn’t see what happened. And that’s a relief, because now, if he asks, she can simply tell him she just slipped on the wet floor. It’s kind of awkward, yes, but it’s not as awkward as telling him she slipped because she was laughing too much while dancing with her mop that looks like him.

“Ok,” he says, “but next time you should pick your dance partners more carefully.”
She feels her cheeks catching fire.
Damn. He saw her.

“He’s just a little bit stiff,” she says, getting up from the couch and placing the mop in its bucket. Then she looks at him. He seems to have fully recovered from his cold, which means he’s now completely sane and lucid. However, given what she’s about to ask and what it implies, maybe this time she’s the delirious one.
“Do you think you can do any better?”

He smiles. She can’t help but notice that it looks like a sly smile, as if he was expecting her question.
“There’s only one way to find out, I guess,” he says, bowing courteously. “May I have this dance?”
She bows her head in a small curtsey and offers him her hand.
“Of course,” she says.

He takes her hand and kisses it gently, just the lightest touch, but she feels her skin burning just as if she had put her hand in a bucket full of lava.
He pulls her close to him and they start dancing.

He is, unexpectedly, a very good dancer.

She presumes it might have something to do with years and years of attending galas and other formal events and she can’t help but wonder if he actually held his dancing partners just as he’s holding her now, close and tight, surely more than etiquette requires. He leads her across the living room and around the couch, but it doesn’t take long before they slowly come to a halt.

The music is still going on, and neither of them is tired, or bored – but the formal touch of the dance has gradually lost whatever formality it had and has evolved into a hug, which quickly becomes a tight hug, and dancing is almost impossible now.

“So,” he says, “was it better or not?”
“Hmm,” she says, pretending to be thinking about it, “maybe.”
“Maybe?” he repeats, bending down closer to her face.
“Maybe.”
He lets his hand slowly glide along her side, up to her cheek.
“Then maybe we should go dancing sometimes, so I can convince you?”
“I’d love that,” she says, closing her eyes as he gently pulls her face towards his.

“There’s a Pisney marathon!” exclaims Izuku, entering in the living room.
“Yes, it started already,” says All Might while… mopping the floor?
She really doesn’t know how he does it, it must be some hero stuff because she was there in place of the mop just a second ago and now she’s sitting on the couch watching the prince still dancing and singing. Not to mention that All Might has apparently scrubbed half of the floor already.
“Give me a hand here, my boy, and we’ll watch the rest together, ok?”
He glances quickly at Inko, as if to tell her that he's sorry it happened again, but he'd love to at least include her in that together.

She lets out a deep sigh.
“Maybe,” she says.

Chapter Text

Inko knows that a nice day of shopping sometimes can be therapeutic.
Sometimes. Not today, though. Not when it involves shopping with Izuku and All Might.
And especially not when Izuku has just left the two of them alone because he felt the need to check out every single thing in the huge videogame section of the store they’re in right now.

Well, to be honest, lately she found herself wishing for Izuku to leave them alone a few times.
Ok, maybe more than that.
Let’s say on a daily basis.
But not today. Not like this. They’re in a crowded place, and there’s already enough people staring at All Might as it is.

Someone probably recognizes him, someone just stares either because he stands out (quite literally due to his height) or because of how he looks (…handsome? She really doesn’t understand those who seem to get scared by him). They don’t need everyone staring because they engage in obscene acts in a public place.
And she really can’t tell him “oh, let’s hide behind that discounted refrigerator and make out”, she’s not that bold and anyways responsible adults don’t hide behind refrigerators on sale to smooch.

So, right now, they’re just wasting time together, trying, if possible, not to be too together.
Thankfully, they’ve found some sort of promotional stage where a young lady is explaining to passers-by how the new BOMBOVEN 547 works.
Inko doesn’t really care about it, and she suspects that All Might cares even less than her, but it’s something to look at while they wait for Izuku to come back.

From time to time, new spectators try to squeeze into the crowd and Inko and All Might bump into each other.
From time to time, they just willingly bump into each other.

Slowly, with the unspoken promise of a free tasting of whatever it’s going to come out of the oven, the crowd grows, and they’re forced to stand even closer to each other than before.
She really can’t take it anymore. Her back is basically leaning against him, and just feeling him so close is making her heart buzzing so strangely…
Wait, that’s not her heart. While her heart is undoubtedly beating way faster than it should, the sound she’s hearing is coming from somewhere else. It’s the new BOMBOVEN 547. And not only it’s buzzing, it’s also vibrating rather suspiciously. But the promoter doesn’t seem to care about it, and no one else in the crowd is paying any attention to the strange sound, so she just supposes that it’s either her imagination or the way it usually works.

After a few more seconds, the timer cheerfully rings.

And the oven explodes.

When she realizes what has just happened, she’s already dead. Or at least, she thinks she is.
Sure, she would have imagined death to be slightly more… colder, and definitely not scented like her own fabric softener, but isn’t that better? Her feet are still aching from the long shopping day, though. That’s a little bit of a disappointment.

“Are you ok?”

Funny. That’s definitely All Might’s voice. Maybe he’s dead, too.

If it’s true, it’s going to be a huge inconvenience. She really didn’t talk about it with him, because it’s not something you can randomly discuss between a moment in which you’re about to kiss and a moment in which you’re watching old cartoons on the couch with your son, but she was hoping that, if something were to happen to her, All Might could take care of Izuku.
The truth is, she can’t think about anyone else she’d trust enough. 

But that’s not going to happen, because apparently, he’s dead too.
Izuku is going to be devastated, poor kid. What if he can’t recover from this? What if he can’t attend school anymore? What if he turns out a villain!
She feels the tears starting to well up in her eyes.
Strange, she thought dead people couldn’t cry?
She tries to wipe her eyes and she realizes that probably she’s not dead at all. She just had her eyes closed and her face pressed against something.
…Someone.
Namely, All Might.

As soon as she realizes it, she tries to step back from him, but there’s not much room for movement – apparently, they’re standing somewhere in between two lines of refrigerators (on sale).

She can catch sight of the BOMBOVEN 547 promotional stage on the other side of the room, so either the explosion neatly propelled the stage to the opposite side of the store or, more likely, All Might just moved out of the exploding oven and took her with him. Judging by the relatively small commotion and from what she can see between a fridge and the other, no one seems to be injured. It was probably just a loud noise, nothing more.

She turn towards All Might, who somehow seems in a worse condition than usual.
“I’m sorry,” he says, trying to wipe some blood from his chin with the back of his hand, “reflexes.”
Inko shakes her head as to tell him that there’s nothing to be sorry about, then she searches her purse for her handkerchief and mindlessly gestures All Might to bend closer to her.
She cleans his face, then she searches her purse again for a bottle of water, opens it and hands it to him.
“Here, drink this,” she says.
He takes the bottle, but instead of drinking, he just looks at her, partly amused, partly confused.
“Ah,” she says, realizing she might have treated him almost like a kid, “I’m sorry… mom reflexes?”

They both laugh, until their laughter softly dies, leaving room for an awkward silence.
He nervously drinks the whole bottle in one go.
He looks around for a trashcan where he can throw the empty bottle, but there seems to be none.
She looks around, too. There’s no trashcan. There’s no one, either.
There’s only refrigerators, and they’re on sale and she’s hiding behind them with All Might.

She takes the empty bottle from his hands and anxiously tries to put it back in her bag. It takes her three attempts before she manages to do it.
“Feeling better?” she asks, carefully avoiding looking at him in the eyes.
“Yes,” he says. “Thank you.”
“It’s me who should thank you,” she says.
“What for?” he asks, as he focuses his attention towards one of the fridges.
“You saved me,” she says, pretending to check a price tag.
“Well, it turns out there was nothing to be saved from, so I’m not really sure it counts,” he says, meticulously examining a door handle.
“It does,” she says. “So… thank you.”
She finally decides to look at him.
He does the same.
For a while they don’t say anything. Then he tentatively steps towards her, and given the small aisle they’re in, it’s enough to reduce the distance between them to a few centimeters.

It would be so easy now to just take the smallest step, pull him towards her and kiss him. But what if someone sees them? One thing is getting caught by Izuku – awkward, yes, potentially disastrous, true, but still private. But what is someone else catches them and recognizes him and the next day it’s the talk of the whole country? Maybe it’s better if they go back into the crowd, in the main hallway of the store, where there’s a lot of people and they won’t just stand there hopelessly staring into each other’s eyes, hoping the other one decides they don’t care if they get caught making out hidden between rows of discounted appliances. She’s tired after the shopping day, he’s probably tired, too, and has just probably strained himself trying to escape… a little bit of rest in one of the many cafés around the mall will surely do them good.
She could just offer him something as thanks.
“Can I…” she tries to say, her voice slightly trembling, “can I offer you something as a token of my appreciation?”
That came out way more ambiguous than she meant to.

“Well,” he says after a while, “there is something.”
She doesn’t know if he’s referring to a cup of something or to the other very different thing she’d actually like to offer right now (but that she didn’t mean to offer).
“But this is probably not the right time.”
He says that as he gently puts a strand of her hair back in place behind her ear.
“I agree,” she says, fixing the rim of his shirt, still messy from their escape. “Maybe we should go back.”
“We could sit down and drink something,” he says as he softly pushes her against one of the fridges.
She’s going to explode just like the BOMBOVEN 547 did. She just hopes she’s not going to make the same sound.
“There is a very nice café on the second floor,” she whispers.
“We could go there,” he says, taking her face in his hands. “But…”
She puts her arms around his waist and pulls him even closer.
“But..?”
“Before that,” he says, letting his hand sliding along the back of her head, his finger passing through her hair, “just for a while… maybe we could-” 

“Mom? All Might? Are you ok?”
“…save more than 45% on electrical bills by switching to a refrigerator with a better energy efficiency index – oh, young Midoriya! What’s wrong?”

Inko stares at All Might as he turns towards Izuku, closing the door of the fridge he was apparently checking. She’s holding a brochure about the advantages of replacing old appliances with newer ones. There were no brochures close by. She’s sure of it. 
She has no idea how he does it.
Reflexes, probably.
“There was some sort of explosion where I left you and then I couldn’t find you anywhere,” Izuku says, looking rather agitated.
“It was just a loud noise,” All Might says. “I’m sorry you got worried.”
Izuku lets out a huge sigh of relief.
“I got really scared for a while,” he says. He tries to laugh it off, but Inko knows that the thought of finding them both exploded to death must have shaken him a little bit more than he was expecting.
She looks at All Might, who slowly nods in return.
“My boy,” he says as he pats Izuku’s shoulder, “why don’t we sit down somewhere and get something to drink?”
“Yes,” says Inko taking Izuku by the arm, “We were just thinking about it, weren’t we?”
She glances at All Might.
“Indeed,” he says. “I’ve heard that there’s a very nice café on the second floor.”

Chapter Text

The light bulb in the living room dies with a soft, muffled bang.

Inko looks up at the ceiling and sighs. It had to happen, sooner or later, but it seems that recently the house is just falling apart. She gets up from the couch and goes looking for the necessary materials she needs to fix the issue – a new light bulb, quite obviously, and at least two of house Midoriya’s great classics, her personal essential tool for circumstances like this.

The light bulb happens to be stored in the cabinet she just recently reorganized, where Izuku messily hid his old drawings, including the one that started this whole… ordeal she’s in.

The rest of what she needs lays on the bookshelf back in the living room.

She takes the unabridged version of “Quirks and Peace” (parallel text edition) and the fully illustrated vintage edition of “Les Quirks Miserables” and places them on a chair. That should be enough culture to… elevate her. She brings the chair under the broken light bulb and climbs on top of that and the two books. Perhaps it’s not the safest thing to do, but the great classics never let her down – literally speaking. Plus, it’s not going to take long, she just needs to replace the bulb and-

“Do you need any help?”

All Might’s voice right in her ear startles her and her foot slips on the dust jacket of Les Quirks Miserables, causing her to lose her balance.
At least it turns out that yes, he can pretty much help her, by catching her before she definitely falls.

She should at least pretend to be slightly shocked. By his presence, by her slipping, by the fact that he caught her – it doesn’t matter. She should quickly excuse herself, she should be embarrassed by the situation they’re in and she should tell him she’s very, very sorry for stumbling like that against him. But the truth is that she’s not sorry at all.

If her foot hadn’t slipped accidentally, she would have considered slipping on purpose.

He doesn’t look incredibly displeased by the situation either, since he’s just smirking and not profusely excusing himself for startling her. He seems to be particularly amused by the fact that it’s the first time he doesn’t need to look down to stare into her eyes, but he actually has to look a little bit up – as a matter of fact, she’s a few centimeters taller than him right now.

“Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” she replies, feeling her cheeks burning so much that she has to look away.
“You don’t come up here often, do you?”
His voice is soft, almost a whisper, but she’s so close she can hear him perfectly.
“Only when I have to change lightbulbs,” she says giggling, finding the courage to look back at him. “My name’s Inko. Nice to meet you.”
She had been wanting to tell him to drop the formalities for a while now, but she never found the right moment. She guesses that this can be it.
“It’s very nice to meet you too, Inko. I’m Toshinori.”
They both have to let out a small, embarrassed chuckle. 
“So tell me, Toshinori,” she says, feeling a strange thrill in using his name for the first time, “how’s life up here?”
“Not bad,” he says. “The view is nice, but usually I don’t get much company.”
“Oh,” she says, as she starts playing with his hair through her fingers, “it’s a shame.”
“It is,” he says, tightening his arms around her, shifting their impromptu embrace to a regular hug.
“Maybe I should come up here more often, then.”
“I’d love that”, he says, “but I’ll warn you – there’s not much to do around here.”
She smiles as she makes a soft, small snort.
“Well, we could fix that, too.”
She passes her hands through his hair, and, judging from how he tilts his head to follow her touch, he appreciates.
“What do you have in mind?” he asks.
“It’s just a suggestion I took from an old story I’ve read the other day,” she says as she closes her eyes and leans in to kiss him.

“All Might, you have to come and see this video,” Izuku says entering the living room, his phone in his hands.
“Sure,” he answers, “let me just finish this.”
He screws in the new lightbulb and hands the old one to Inko. She’s sitting on the couch, Les Quirks Miserables in her hands, open on a page with a beautiful illustration of a girl and a heavy bucket.
Inko didn’t see a thing, but at this point, she’s not surprised anymore.

“Here’s the broken one. Next time,” He pauses for a while, probably considering what he means with “next time”. “…just call me.”
She nods and smiles.
“I will. Thank you, Toshinori.”

She covers her chucke behind the pages of the big book she’s holding, as he tries his best to hide his blushing face from Izuku, who’s now shoving his phone under his nose while blathering something about heroes and stuff like that.

Chapter Text

Inko mindlessly pours the cream in a bowl and starts whipping it. She’s not sure it will be enough for her cake, but then again, it might be that there was no whipped cream in the recipe at all, or that she’s not baking a cake. She doesn’t even remember which recipe from “Baking as a Therapy: 150 quirky ideas to relax and treat yourself” she decided to try. She just wanted to focus on something different than the pressing thought that’s running through her mind since Izuku asked her permission to go out with some friends, but apparently she’s not focusing at all.

She’s going to be alone with All Might – with Toshinori, she reminds herself, they’re on a first-name basis now - for a couple of hours.

Just right after breakfast, Izuku told her he had talked with one of his classmates and they were thinking about meeting in the afternoon, to review their homework and maybe have something to eat. He looked slightly surprised when she hastily – and rather enthusiastically – gave him permission before he could even promise to be back in time for dinner and without spoiling his appetite, but luckily he didn’t ask any question.

The telephone rings, and Inko hears Izuku running out of his room to answer it. She can’t really listen to what he’s saying, but judging by the cheerful tone of his voice it must be someone calling for him. The fact that she hears Toshinori closing the door of Izuku’s room behind him and walking towards the kitchen confirms it.

“Need a hand?” he asks, once he’s at the kitchen door.
Ah, yes. She does need a hand. She needs his hand, or even better, both of his hands.
On her, possibly, after having tossed away the bowl she’s holding and maybe after having pinned her against whatever surface he prefers in order to kiss her. But, if one of his two hands prefers to wander around or to linger close to her face or maybe to pass through her hair, she’d be perfectly ok with that, too.
“Of course,” she says, pushing back her train of thoughts and focusing on the recipe. There are probably eggs to be added somewhere, whatever it is that she’s baking. “Please keep whipping this as I get some eggs.”

There’s no need to rush things now.
They just need to wait until Izuku leaves, then they’ll have time to… talk and sort everything out.
Well, talk. Among other things, maybe.
They just need to wait a little bit longer.

For now, she’ll focus on the (improvised) recipe. If she stays relatively away from him and he stays relatively away from her, and If they both have their hands occupied with something else, nothing is going to happen – and they’ll have a hopefully edible dessert for when they finish… talking.

He looks at the bowl and the hand mixer she handed him and seems rather perplexed.
Maybe it’s not the kind of help he was expecting to give. Maybe the kind of help he had in mind was more akin to what she was thinking before...?
For a split second she thinks he’s really going to throw the bowl away and her heart starts beating incredibly fast.
But he keeps bowl and mixer in his hands and timidly whispers something.
“I have no idea how to do it.”

She chuckles and shakes her head as she takes the bowl back, not sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed.
“You just whisk it like this,” she says showing him the motion, “until it becomes all fluffy.”
He nods, and she lets him try. He starts whipping the cream incredibly gently. She chuckles again.
“No, wait,” she says, “you have to switch the hand mixer on.”
“Ok”, he says, turning the power button from “off” directly to the tenth and last speed setting, “TURBO ULTRA”.
Inko never really went past setting number three, and even that happened only once and she found it a little bit too rough.

In a second, a whirlwind of half-whipped cream floods the kitchen.
Instinctively, Toshinori takes the mixer out of the bowl, but that just makes things worse, as more blobs get flung around.
Inko takes the mixer from him and turns it off, then proceeds to assess the situation.
Contrary to what one could imagine, there is still whipped cream in the bowl. The problem is that there is also whipped cream everywhere – she spots a blob on the ceiling, one on the fridge and several on the floor. 

Toshinori looks at her with the guiltiest expression she’s ever seen. She slowly brings one hand in front of her mouth – it’s actually to cover a laugh, but he takes it as a way of expressing her disbelief at the mess he just made and he starts to panic. He places the bowl on the counter, sputters some nonsense about being incredibly sorry for ruining the cake (she’s not sure it was a cake to be honest, but if he thinks it’s a cake and wants a cake, she’ll bake a cake) and for ruining her kitchen and she suspects that, if she doesn’t stop him, he’ll end up apologizing for everything that’s bad in the world.

She lets out a gentle laugh and tells him there’s nothing to worry about. And that’s when she notices that a blob of cream landed on his cheek and she completely forgets to keep her distance and her hands occupied with something else.

“Come here,” she says, placing the mixer down on the counter and gesturing him to get closer to her, “you’ve got some on your face.”
“I’m truly sorry,” he repeats, “I didn’t know…”
“It’s ok.”
She plucks the whipped cream from his cheek with her finger.
“You’re not mad?” he asks, gently catching her wrist.
She’d like to smile to show him that she’s not angry for something so silly and that she actually found the scene rather funny, but the sudden touch has startled her and he’s slowly bringing her hand towards him, so she just manages to shake her head.
“Thank goodness,” he says, bending down to reach her hand and licking away the whipped cream from her finger. “It’s good.”
All her senses are short-circuiting at the moment, she tries to think of something to say but the feeling of his tongue on her skin was just too much.
“Want to try?” he asks, scooping up some cream from the bowl with his finger and offering it to her.
She feels everything inside her turning upside down and she doesn’t really know if she’s still breathing or not. Probably not. But it doesn’t really matter right now.
She moves closer to his hand to do as he did with her, but at the last second he moves his hand away and touches her nose.
“Got you,” he says.
And before she can laugh, or pretend to be annoyed, or have any kind of reaction, he pulls her closer and kisses her nose. 

Well, maybe there is no point in waiting for Izuku to go out. Maybe they can… talk right now and then they can continue talking later. And maybe they’ll talk tonight, too.
Yes. She really needs some… good conversation.
“You’ve got some more on you,” she says, scooping up some more whipped cream from the bowl.
She doesn’t even pretend she’s not doing it, she doesn’t even try to trick him like he did. She just scoops it up slowly and just as slowly she puts her finger on his lips.
“Ops,” she says, pulling him towards her.

“What are you making?” asks Izuku as he steps inside the kitchen.
“I… I don’t know,” Inko says, slightly confused.
Toshinori is standing at the opposite side of the room, bowl and mixer in his hands, and she’s standing there with the eggs she never even began to get out of the fridge… and strawberries. She forgot they had strawberries. Is… Is this a suggestion? How on earth did he manage to have time to look in the fridge, spot the strawberries and decide they could go in the thing she’s making – especially since she doesn’t even know what she’s making herself? She’ll have to ask him how he does it. She’ll ask him later, when they’ll finally have time to… talk.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Izuku asks her.
“I’m… Improvising,” she says.
“I hope it’s something good. I’m staying at home, both Iida and Uraraka had to cancel our meeting.”
“WHY?” she asks, her voice a little too shaky and her pitch a little too high, but still not loud enough to cover the soft thud of Toshinori’s head hitting against the cupboard.
“I don’t know, something came up,” Izuku says. “Maybe we’ll go out tomorrow. But at least we have cake here!”

Inko sighs dejectedly.
At least they have cake.
Maybe. If that’s what she’s baking.

Chapter Text

Inko stares at her reflection in the mirror and sighs.
She had hoped that today Izuku could go out with his classmates, but apparently her son is friends with the most responsible teenagers ever, who are either going to help their parents or visiting relatives at the hospital. While she’s actually very happy to know he hangs out with extremely good kids, she can’t but feel a little bit disappointed.

She has to take matters in her own hands if she wants to… talk with Toshinori.
She clears her throat and rehearses her line.
“Oh, Izuku, you’re here! I was just looking for you. Could you please do me a favor and run to the store to get me a bottle of Clean-It-All?”
Yes, that could do. She sounded pretty natural.

Her plan is rather simple: she’ll knock on Izuku’s door and if he’s there, she’ll say her line. If he’s not, as she suspects (when possible, Toshinori avoids spending time in Izuku's room, probably usettled by all his tiny replicas scattered around), she’ll knock on the guest room door. Izuku will have to go out, and she knows for sure that the store she’s planning to send him to doesn’t have any Clean-It-All. They do have, however, at least other fifteen brands with bottles that all look the same. It will take a while for Izuku to realize that they don’t have what she asked for, and then he’ll have to call her. She’ll tell Izuku to pick up something else, and she’ll know he’ll be home soon after.

Hopefully, in the meanwhile, she’ll have had a chance for some… conversation with Toshinori.

It’s perfect.
It has to be.
She takes a deep breath, fixes her hair as best as she can and she leaves her room. 

As she suspected, there’s no one in the living room and no one in the kitchen. The door to Izuku’s room is slightly open and no sound is coming from inside, so it’s probably empty.

This leaves out only the guest room.
They must be in there. Her plan can work.
She stops in front of the guest room’s door, cleans her throat once again and lifts her hand up to knock.

“Mom?”
Her heart skips a beat and she almost jumps for the scare.
“Oh, ehr, yes… Izuku… I’m… no, you… you’re clean!!!” she says, panicking and turning around to look at him.
But there’s no one in the hallway.
“Mom? Are you there?”
Izuku’s voice is coming from the bathroom. In an instant she forgets her plan and runs towards the bathroom door.
“Izuku? What’s wrong? Are you ok? You don’t feel well? I’m calling an ambulance!”
“No, wait! I’m fine,” he says from the other side, “I’m just stuck.”
“Stuck?” she repeats.
“Yes, the door won’t open.” 

Toshinori comes out of the guest room, probably alarmed by Inko’s worried voice.
“Is everything ok?” he asks.
“Yes, but Izuku is stuck in the bathroom.”
And then she realizes it. She was too worried about her son possibly dying on the other side of the door to realize it before, but now it finally hits her.
It hits her so hard that she has to repeat it.
“Izuku is stuck in the bathroom.”
 Toshinori hurries to her side.
“Izuku is stuck,” he repeats slowly, pointing at the bathroom, “on the other side of this door.”
“Yes,” she says with a trembling voice. “He’s stuck.”
“The door is not opening,” he says, halfway a question, halfway an assertion.
He looks at Inko, then at the handle. He tries to open the door, but nothing happens.
“It’s not opening,” he says, this time definitely a statement.
“No,” Inko says, struggling to hide the inappropriate excitement in her voice. “It’s not opening. Izuku is stuck on the other side.”
They look at each other.

On the other side of the door, Izuku is rather perplexed.
He knew his mom was going to freak out, that was to be expected. Actually, he's almost surprised she hasn't called the police, the firefighters and the ambulance she mentioned before.
But All Might? He sounds incredibly worried, too.
It’s nice though, knowing that they both care so much.
He hears a soft thud on the door.
Good, they’re trying to force it open, probably.

Inko is not sure of who made the first move – maybe it was her, grabbing the collar of his shirt like her life depended on it and dragging him down, or maybe it was Toshinori, pushing her against the bathroom door as his hands ran along her neck and through her hair, gently lifting her head up, but to be honest, she doesn’t really care about it right now. The kiss that followed started out a little rough, a little messy, with both of them trying frantically to kiss everything they could at the same time, lips, necks, that sensitive place behind the ear whose existence Inko had completely forgotten and then lips again, until they managed to calm down and found a sweeter rhythm, still needy, almost desperate, but somehow more relaxed and less hurried.

It takes a while for them to stop and catch their breath.

The world around Inko is spinning incredibly fast and the only thing she can hear is the loud, accelerated beating of her heart. She hides her face in his chest.
“Well,” he says, lightly stroking her hair to fix up a few strands he scrambled just moments before, “it was an interesting suggestion, indeed.”
She chuckles, her face still pressed against him. He’s right. It all started as a suggestion – and it was definitely interesting.
“Indeed,” she repeats, finding the courage to look at him in the eyes. She feels her cheeks burning like hell, but he’s blushing, too, and that somehow calms her a little. “Maybe we should consider it some more.”
“Ah, yes, I’d love to,” he says as he leans in to kiss her again. 

“If I can suggest something,” Izuku says after a while since they stopped talking, “maybe I can just try and force the door open?”
“NO,” they both say, almost screaming.
“You’ll break it,” his mother says in a rather agitated voice.
“Young Midoriya,” adds All Might gravely, “you should respect… doors… more.”
“Oh. Ok,” Izuku says, slightly unconvinced. He wasn’t planning to wreck the door completely, he just wanted to force the lock, which is probably already broken. But then again, it could be simply stuck and he has no idea of how much it could cost to change it – or maybe they’ll even have to change the door completely anyways – and he knows they don’t have a lot of money at the moment.
He’ll just wait until his mother and All Might figure a way to get him out of there.

They start kissing again.

She’s doing her best trying to stay on her tiptoes to gain a few centimeters in height, but he still has to basically fold over himself to reach her.
He decides to fix the problem by picking her up but since neither of them is actually paying any attention to their surroundings she ends up kicking a vase off of a drawer.
She had forgotten there was a vase. She had forgotten there was a drawer. She's still forgetting they are in the hallway of her apartment, and that she has a son, and that he’s stuck in the bathroom.

The vase hits the floor with a soft clonk and rolls away, but they don’t really care. What they do care about, though, is the sudden presence of the drawer, which turns out to be an excellent place for Inko to sit, allowing Toshinori to proceed with their ongoing activities with his hands free. And that seems extremely important to both of them, especially now that Inko’s hands have found a way to get under his shirt. 

Izuku hears something falling on the ground, then some undecipherable other noises.
“Is… Everything ok…?”
“YES,” his mother answers very nervously. “We are just… looking for the screwdriver.”
“I don’t think it’s there,” says All Might with some difficulties, “but please, keep looking.”
He sounds almost… exhausted. Unlocking the door seems to be way more difficult than what Izuku had imagined.
Maybe he should just think about another way to get out of the room...?

“I think I can get out of the window and jump down safely,” Izuku says.
He waits for the worried voice of his mother telling him there’s no way she’ll let him do something so dangerous. But instead he hears her telling something about people jumping from the balcony to All Might, and then there’s a long silence. 

“Don’t,” says All Might after a while, “we… need you to stay in there.”
Izuku hears his mother making some baffled sounds. She’s probably crying at this point, thinking he’s going to jump anyways and get splattered on the ground.

Inko has to use both her hands to cover her laughter. She’s lost it completely when Toshinori told Izuku in a very serious, All Might-y voice that they needed him to stay in the bathroom.
While she tries to regain her composure, Toshinori gestures her to wait a second and goes back to the door’s handle.

“We’re… discussing what’s best to do,” he says as he pointlessly shakes the handle and gives a few knocks here and there, just to pretend to be doing something. Then, he turns his attention back to her.
Inko invites him to get closer and embraces him as he kisses her neck.
“You know…” he whispers, once he gets closer to her ear.
“I know,” she says softly, letting out a little sigh. “We should get him out of there.”
He caresses her cheek and lets his hand glide down her arm, until he meets her hand and intertwines his fingers with hers.
“We’ll… talk about this later, ok?”
“Ok,” she says, pulling him closer for one last kiss. She meant for it to be a small, quick kiss, just to let him know that yes, she’s perfectly ok in talking about this later, but she lingers a little bit too long on his lips, so he kisses her again and what had started as a quick affirmation of her intentions becomes a… lengthy explanation of them, and she ends up forgetting once more of her son locked up in the bathroom.

That is, until he gets out.

“Finally,” says Izuku as he opens the bathroom door. “You really fixed it.”
This time, Inko notices it. Maybe it’s because Toshinori was kind of distracted and thus he reacted later than usual or maybe it’s because she’s getting used to it.
She doesn’t really see him, but she can perfectly feel as he puts her down from the drawer and puts the small vase they kicked down in her hands and then turns around like nothing had happened, all in the blink of an eye.
Izuku is staring at them.
Maybe this time he noticed, too.
“…Yes?” Toshinori asks tentatively.
“You both look really worried”, Izuku says. “I was just locked for a few minutes, I’m perfectly fine.”
“Well,” Inko says, letting out a sigh of relief, “yes, I guess we were… worried.”
She looks at Toshinori.
“Really worried,” he says. “Sorry.”
“Maybe we should go somewhere else to… talk about how worried we were,” Inko says.
“Yes,” Toshinori says as he starts walking towards the living room, “there’s so much to… talk about.”
“I’ve never been so… worried in quite some time.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been so worried in my whole life.”

Izuku watches as his mother and his mentor walk down the hallway, as they keep talking to each other.
His mother gets stuck with the sleeve of her sweater in a handle sticking out from a cabinet, and they laugh. And just a few steps after that, All Might bumps his head on a door’s jamb, and they laugh again.

An old thought crosses Izuku’s mind.

It has been quite a long time since he thought about it, but there was a time – when he really didn’t understand how relationships work and how complicated they can be – he thought that maybe his mother could marry All Might. Of course, those were just the wild fantasies of a kid who really, really wanted to have his favorite hero as his dad, but
Looking at them right now, he thinks – he knows – they’d make a good couple.

If only they could see that, though. During the days they’ve spent together, every time he walked in on them they were acting so… distant.
Like the time his mother preferred reading old, boring books or watching old cartoons rather than talking with All Might. But then again, if when they talk he bores her to death with subjects like saving money and energy buying a new refrigerator… That must have been dull even by adult standards, really. Of course she’d rather do something else.

Maybe… Maybe he could step in and meddle a little bit?

Of course, he knows he can’t force them to like each other, but maybe, if he finds a way to let them see each other’s best qualities, he’s sure they’ll at least become good friends. Then, if something more were to happen… He’d be perfectly ok with that.

His mind starts racing, thinking about what he can do, what he can plan to make them come a little bit closer. He needs to devise a strategy soon, because holidays are almost over and sooner or later All Might’s apartment will be habitable again. For starters, he’ll observe them a little bit more. He knows he tends to monopolize the discussion with hero stuff when they’re together, so for the time being he’ll try to avoid that and he'll attempt to steer the conversation in some other direction.

Yes, that could work.
He’ll start right now, changing the subject from the most boring one ever of how worried the two of them are (really? That’s even worse than talking about refrigerators) to something else, just so they can start knowing each other a little bit better. 

Smiling contentedly, he runs after them.

•● ❤ ●•

 [That was it. That was the ending I had originally planned for this fanfic. You know, it ends with him interrupting them again even if it’s not written, ah ah ah, so funny, the unwritten promise of eternal interruptions… But… You’ve suffered so much through this… THAT YOU HAVE UNLOCKED THE SPECIAL TRUE ENDING OF THE FANFIC, PLEASE ENJOY RESPONSIBLY]

•● ❤ ●•

Izuku walks back into the hallway, quite shocked.

Well.
It seems that, in the end, his mother and All Might won’t really need his help to know each other a little bit better.
They were already… knowing each other rather well on the couch by themselves.

He thought he knew, more or less, how kissing worked. He might have zero experience on the subject, that’s true, but he has watched a lot of movies and he has seen plenty of people kissing someone else. But that… That wasn’t a kiss like those in the movies.

That looked more like a battlefield. A fierce, messy battlefield in which they both were winning and at the same time they were both letting the other one win.
And the hands. There were hands everywhere. It was as each of them had at least a few hands more than normal. And he’s pretty sure one of his mother’s hands was resting on All Might’s… behind. But while that was surely rather… impressive, and quite shocking, it wasn’t the most troubling thing. 

What troubled him the most wasn’t even that, somehow, he knew they knew he was there.
At first it was just a hunch, a funny feeling that told him that running away and pretending he never saw anything wasn’t going to work.
Then it became quite clear when they stopped and stared directly at him.
He was waiting for something – an apology, even if there was nothing to actually apologize about, or an explanation, even if what was happening was already quite clear – any kind of reaction. He thought they’d be… embarrassed. But no.

They stared. 

And then – and that was the most shocking thing – then his mother, very slowly and without the slightest hint of embarrassment, turned her gaze away from him and went back looking at All Might, gently turning his face back towards her and starting to kiss him again.  

That’s when Izuku understood he had to go back in the hallway.

He walks to his room and sits on the bed. It’s not that he’s not happy – to be honest, he is – he just… would have liked to be informed of the situation in some other way.
He takes his phone in his hands and checks his messages.
Apparently, Iida's brother had to see his doctor for a check-up sooner than expected, so his classmate is now free and is asking him if he still wants to hang out.

Well, he’d like to.
But to go out he’d have to cross the living room.
He smiles and quickly writes a message to say he really can’t right now but they can organize for the next day.

Because, well…
His mother and All Might are probably still on the couch, and he doesn’t want to interrupt them.