Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Toshinori Yagi, age better not to think about it, had reached a point in his life where he couldn’t care less about first impressions, mostly for two reasons. One, he really didn’t trust snap judgements, since experience had taught him too many times that there’s always more than meets the eye, sometimes quite literally – seriously, who could have thought that what looked like a washing machine was actually a person? Two, his chances at making a good first impression had been drastically reduced (utterly annihilated) a few years before due to a work-related injury, or so to say, so he had learned not to care about what people thought and, sometimes, said out loud upon meeting him.

However, on a fateful day in the midst of this or that season, for the first time in years his unconcerned attitude towards first impressions was put to the test.

But he realized it after his little sodden accident. He had to throw himself in between a flying tray full of hot beverages that a waitress had unintentionally tossed after being scared by a kid who had just removed his head from his neck (useful quirk when you’re done with listening to people) and the small, frightened woman who was about to get hit by an unexpected cappuccino shower.

He had done it, of course, out of habit. You don’t work heroics for an entire lifetime just to stay put when you see an upcoming disaster folding out in front of your eyes, even when you know that, given your current ‘condition’ and the fact you’re keeping your hero identity secret to the general public, you will have to fall unceremoniously on the ground to save everyone - except yourself. But, to be honest, saving himself had never been one of Toshinori’s main priorities.

And it was then, lying in a pool of coffee-scented mess, that Toshinori Yagi, age I never expected to reach this number thought, for the first time in a long, long while that he would have loved having made a decent first impression, just for once. Maybe it was because he had accidentally hit his head in the process of shielding the woman and catching all the five ceramic mugs, or maybe it was because he was feeling tired and sleepy after having worked a bit too much, but the woman’s worried face as she uselessly tried to dry him with a single paper napkin struck something in him that he thought it could never be stricken.

She was small, though how small he really couldn’t say, given his peculiar position and the fact that she was kneeling down beside him. Her face was almost perfectly round, her eyes a lovely green and her hair a deeper shade of the same color. She reminded him a bit of Nana, but that was probably because of her hairstyle – or because she was checking on him as he laid splattered on the ground. There was something enthralling in the tenacity with which the woman kept patting him with her napkin, as if it wasn’t already soaked wet and dripping a lukewarm caffeinated mixture, and Toshinori found himself unexpectedly enjoying that kind of attention. When the waitress finally came back and shoved a giant roll of kitchen paper into the woman’s hands, he could see fire burning in those green eyes as his dryness became her ultimate mission.

It took her a few minutes more (and a lot of patting) to reach a level of unwetness she deemed sufficient for him to finally get up.

“Are you ok?” she asked, getting up herself and adjusting her skirt. She barely reached the half of his torso and she looked extremely soft – Toshinori had to fight the urge to poke her cheeks to check if they were really soft as they appeared. Passing his hand through his hair and noticing with perfectly concealed horror that it was slightly damp and sticky, he tried to reassure her that he was perfectly fine. He planned on saying something cool, maybe a bit mysterious, surely composed. As if to say, look, I know I just bathed myself in overpriced coffee beverages but let me reassure you, I’m a perfectly normal individual and I usually don’t do these things.

He ended up just nodding and giving her a thumb up.

Which, in retrospective, wasn’t really the coolest thing to do, but it still bordered on fairly decent, at least. That is, until he felt a few drops of blood dripping down his chin and falling on his already ruined beyond salvation, once white now imaginatively beige t-shirt.

Chapter Text

Toshinori Yagi, age I swear it was just 25 the other day, sat pleasantly satisfied despite his soggy situation in front of the woman he had more or less saved and who had introduced herself as Inko Midoriya. She had invited him for a drink as a thank you for having shielded her and he had gladly accepted, successfully ignoring how he was starting to get encrusted in his damp t-shirt.

At first their conversation went absolutely nowhere. She was shy and reserved (and probably mildly worried he could die at any given moment) and felt so guilty for the situation that she kept repeating the same whispered ‘thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry’ over and over again. On the other hand, he had absolutely no idea on how to properly initiate a conversation that had nothing to do with heroes and work – ‘you remind me of my deceased master’ didn’t seem a good starter, plus it was still related to heroics anyways – so he just nodded at her and kept sipping his tea. However, everything changed when she asked him if perchance he had used his quirk to catch all the mugs at once before they hit the ground. He couldn’t risk to have her ask more questions regarding the nature of his quirk, so he told her it had been a fortuitous combination of good reflexes and a lucky chance, because he was, in fact, quirkless (not technically  a lie there, just some sort of re-interpreted truth). That seemed to switch something in her, because she instantly became way, way more talkative. It turned out that it was because her son was quirkless, too, and she was desperate to talk about it with someone who could actually understand. He couldn’t blame her, really.

When she mentioned her son for the first time, Toshinori’s eyes instinctively went looking for a ring around her finger, but there were none. For some strange reason unknown to Toshinori himself, the lack of a wedding ring sparked a tiny, minuscule hope inside of him. For what, he preferred not to know, because that feeling scared him a bit. When she mentioned that her son being quirkless was the exact reason for which her ex-husband had left her years and years before, he felt that minuscule hope flare up. And that scared him a lot. He also felt mildly disgusted at her ex-husband’s priorities in life, but then Inko made a huge, heartwarming smile while praising her son for growing up so well even without a real father figure, since she never really brought anyone else home, and that made him completely forget anything that wasn’t how cute she was and that she was, apparently, single.

Maybe it was because she looked like everything he wasn’t – small, soft and healthy, radiating what he could only define as normality – or maybe it was because she kept talking about her ordinary, very civilian and absolutely not heroic life, and that sounded like music to Toshinori’s tired ears, but he thoroughly enjoyed Inko’s presence. He felt strangely at ease with her, as if her softness wasn’t just confined to her rounded features but extended to her whole character and could somehow soothe the raw edges of his mind.

He found himself captured and lost in her words, nodding and listening, almost stealing and reliving the bits of her life that she was sharing with him.
Her greatest worry at that moment was that she feared her son was being bullied in school for being quirkless and she had no idea how to help him without making things worse. She paid the utmost attention when he gave her a few tips on how to bring up the issue with the kid, even though it was just the most generic advice mixed with some old memories and feelings. To be honest, she probably was more informed on how to deal with a bullied kid than he himself was, but he knew from experience that sometimes you just need someone else to tell you what you already know. And maybe hearing things from someone else was exactly what her kid needed, too. And Toshinori couldn’t help but think he could be that someone else. He could meet and talk a bit with this son of hers, who was apparently infatuated with heroes (and especially All Might), maybe even train him a bit just to give him enough confidence to ignore his bullies, and if the kid turned out to be promising he could – he shook his head and focused back on her and her words.

He knew, of course, that the luxury of a romantic relationship was completely out of his reach. He could barely afford crumbs of regular relationships after all, and beside that, he highly doubted she could find him interesting in that kind of way (especially after having seen him nonchalantly dripping blood from his mouth). But lately everyone – ‘everyone’ meaning Naomasa, Recovery Girl and Nezu, who made up the entirety of the ‘recent contacts’ list on his phone – told him he needed to meet new people and make some friends, possibly outside work, and maybe they weren’t that wrong after all.

However, making acquaintances was a troubling matter. And with a regular, small and cute civilian like Inko, the matter was even worse.

Was he supposed to be sincere with her? Well, of course he was. Building a relationship – any kind of relationship – upon lies, even when they were just untold truths, wasn’t really an advisable thing to do. But he didn’t have a real choice there, since being completely sincere meant expose her to a whole array of potential dangers he didn’t even want to begin to list. Maybe his view was a bit too negative and his mind too fervid and anxious, but it could take just one sentence said at the wrong time and in the wrong place to put her in a troublesome (deadly) situation.

He had managed pretty well along the years by getting scarcely involved with other human beings, usually interacting as few as possible and only with other pro-heroes. Naomasa had been the only exception, but being a police officer meant that he was already putting his life on the line on a daily basis and that he had been trained to deal with a certain kind of individuals. A worried, soft mother was a completely different story.

If he really wanted to know her a bit better and establish something with her, he had to resign himself to lie – or better, to artistically rearrange the truth – just enough to keep her safe.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to pay for the cleaning of your shirt?” Inko asked for the fourth of fifth time.
“It’s ok,” Toshinori said, “I have shirts.”
He smiled, more to keep himself from crying over his nonexistent conversational skills than else.
“Well then,” Inko said looking at her phone, “I think I’ve bothered you long enough, haven’t I? And are you really sure you don’t want me to wash-”
Toshinori stopped her, reassuring her once again that she had absolutely nothing to worry about.
“Ok, ok,” she said. “Well… Thank you. For listening and for giving me some advice – by the way, do you know how to remove coffee stains from clothes?”
He was about to tell her that he just planned to remove the coffee stains (and the blood ones she had gracefully omitted to mention) by removing the whole shirt from existence, but something in her eyes told him that such a waste wouldn’t be tolerated in her presence, so he just shook his head.
“You’ll need dishwater detergent, not laundry one, and vinegar and-” Inko stopped talking and started looking in her purse. “Let me write this down for you.”

She rummaged the contents of the purse until she found a piece of paper, blank on one side and printed on the other, muttering to herself that she really needed to start carrying a notebook or something with her for these kinds of occasions. She quickly scribbled down on the white side all the necessary steps to bring back his shirt from the land of the trashcan as he watched in silence.

“Here, this is for you,” she said once she was finished.
She handed him the piece of paper and got up from the table. Picking up her things she thanked him again, excused herself a few times more, tried to suggest she could still pay for the dry cleaner’s after all and finally bowed, took her leave and left him sitting at the table alone.  

Toshinori stared for a while at the instructions, noticing how neat Inko’s writing was, her characters small and cute just like her. It wasn’t really like having received her phone number, but at least- shit, Toshinori thought. He had her name, but absolutely no way to contact her. Sure, he could nag Naomasa a bit to dig up information about her, from her address to any eventual library fine for not having returned a book in time (he really couldn’t think of any other crime she could possibly have perpetrated), and he was pretty sure that, if he hurried, he could still run after her – or better, above her – to find out where she lived, but both options sounded a bit too much like stalking and he wasn’t a big fan of that.

He looked at the piece of paper again, and turned it on the printed side.
“Musutafu’s Cultural Center - Sweets Cooking Course!”
It looked like a flyer of some sort, promoting cooking lessons.
“Please fill out the form and hand it at the front desk.”
There was no form to be found. Upon further inspection, Toshinori noticed how the lower part of the sheet of paper had been neatly ripped off.
The first lesson was, apparently, the next day.

Well, it was a shot in the dark to be honest, but at least it wasn’t stalking… wasn’t it?  

Chapter Text

Toshinori Yagi, age how much would the tabloids pay to know, I wonder, knocked tentatively on the classroom’s door.

He had almost reconsidered his decision of enrolling in the cooking course when he had to deal with the peppy group of secretaries behind the desk in the cultural center, who started praising him for his interest in baking and ended up commenting on how good those big and juicy hands were and how they could knead any dough. He was quite sure they had stopped referring to baking during the early part of their conversation and that made he feel rather uneasy, to be honest, but unfortunately (for him) he was used to overhear certain kinds of comments and opinions - though usually they were about All Might’s more or less private parts.

“Come in,” a stern voice said from the other side of the door.

He opened it slowly, taking a few hesitant steps into the classroom. According to the notes the secretaries had given him (ominously marked with a winking smiley), the teacher was a certain Ms. Rottenmeier, a rather famous figure on the local baking scene.
She scrutinized him from head to toe, shaking her head.
“You’re Mr. Yagi, I suppose? You’re late. We were waiting for you.”
Toshinori looked quickly around the room, searching for Inko. He found her sitting alone at one of the huge double desks arranged in the room, staring at him in surprise. But it seemed more like a happy surprise and not a scared, I’m going to call the police on you kind of surprise. So yes, since she was there, he was exactly the Mr. Yagi everyone was apparently waiting for. He nodded.

“I’m sorry, I was… held up at work.”
That was actually the truth – he had been held upside down for quite some time by a villain who had covered his surroundings and himself in vines. Finding the villain’s true body while avoiding the distruction of a bunch of buildings had required him longer than intended.
“I’m sure your work is really important, Mr. Yagi,” the teacher said, slowly tapping a wooden spoon on the palm of her hand.
Toshinori smiled and gave a hint of a bow.
“Yes, well, thank-”
“I wasn’t finished,” Ms. Rottenmeier said, suddenly hitting the desk with her spoon with so much strength that the pans and pots on it trembled a bit. “However, I don’t care a bit about your poor excuses. Unless you’re the number one hero and currently saving the world, you’re required to be here on time.”

Toshinori almost chocked on his own breath trying to contain the laughter that was about to escape out of him, and that threw him on a bad coughing fit. He covered his mouth as much as he could, pushing back a clump of blood in his throat.
The teacher looked at him and shook her head in disappointment.
“If you could please find a seat, we might be able to finally start the lesson.”

He surveyed the room again, this time pausing a bit to check all the other participants. No desk had been left completely free, but here and there a few seats were available, though his choice was an easy one. Obviously because sitting close to Inko had been his intention from the start, but also because all the other partnerless students were throwing very meaningful looks at him, ranging from ‘please don’t come here I don’t want to catch whatever it is that you’ve got’ to ‘if you sit here I’m running away screaming’. He was sure that one of them was trying to threaten him by stroking a huge rolling pin. Inko was the only one waving and smiling.

He sat next to her and she handed him a clean, white handkerchief.
“Here,” she said. Then, after checking on Ms. Rottenmeier, who had started to hand out papers to all the students, she leaned close to him. “So you were enrolled in this course, too! What a coincidence!”
Toshinori cleaned is mouth and, after thinking about it a few seconds, put the handkerchief back in his pocket. It was slightly too decorated now to give it back to her – he made a mental note to try and wash it (centrifuging it with a dash of One for All) to return it during one of the next lessons.
“Well, it’s not really a coincidence,” he said.
Inko made a worried face and took a step away from him.
“I mean,” he added quickly, “I saw the promotional flyer you gave me and decided to come.”
She seemed to relax a bit.

“Let me guess,” Inko said after the teacher handed them the recipe of the day and moved towards the other desks, “is it to surprise your spouse?”
He shook his head.
“I’m not married.”
“Then… Your partner? …Significant other? A son or daughter, maybe?”
“None of these, but you’re kind of close. You could say it’s for a girl.”
“Oh,” Inko said giggling. “You want to impress her by honing your baking skills?”
“More or less.”
Well, she was surely going to be impressed by the utter lack of any baking skill to hone, that was for sure.
“She’s a lucky one, then,” Inko said.
A quick, irritated tap of a wooden spoon on a desk marked the end of their conversation.

Two hours later, Toshinori was standing in front of what was supposed to be his Lemon Coconut Cake.
He kept glancing at what Inko had made and somehow he felt relieved - sure enough, his cake wasn’t as cute and perfectly squared as hers, since it was slanting on one side, and his creamy cheese frosting was more desperately splattered on it than evenly spread, but aside from that, they were practically the same.

Ms. Rottenmeier began walking through the rows of desks, checking each student’s cake. As everyone quickly found out, she was hard to please and prone to reprimands.
“This looks very promising,” she said looking at Inko’s cake once she got to their desk. She stared at the cake, poked it a bit and sniffed it. Then she cut it in half with a knife so sharp that almost looked like a scalpel, and checked the inside. “It seems baked to perfection.”
Inko blushed and hid her face in her hands.
“That’s suspicious,” Ms. Rottenmeier said, throwing her a freezing glance. Then, before Inko could attempt to answer, the teacher moved to examine Toshinori’s cake.
“This one looks… almost passable. Almost.”
As she had done before, she examined the cake, poking it and sniffling it with a distrustful look on her face, but when she tried to cut it in half with a swift, precise movement, her knife got stuck in something.

“What the hell is this?” Ms. Rottenmeier asked, breaking the cake in two with her hands and extracting some sort of yellow clump from the inside.
Toshinori looked back at the recipe on his desk, blowing away the flour and sugar on it and quickly passing his finger along the instructions until he found what he was looking for. He tapped on the printed words.
“One squeezed lemon?”

The disgruntled sound that came out of Ms. Rottenmeier’s shaking body was a loud one, though it wasn’t loud enough to cover up the soft, delighted giggle that Inko made. She was trying to cover up her mouth, fighting back a laugh, a small tear in her eye. It was the most blissful thing Toshinori had ever seen, and once again he felt that chord he thought it didn’t even exist, or at least had been well hidden in a secret place, being gently stricken.
“It’s not even cut in half?!?” Ms. Rottenmeier exclaimed in horror upon closely examining the remnants of the lemon.
Toshinori shrugged.
“I’m… sorry…?”
“You’d better be!” the teacher exclaimed, almost throwing in disdain the baked squeezed lemon back in its place. With a last, deadly glance towards Toshinori she left to check the other students’ works.

“You really didn’t cut it?” Inko asked, still giggling a bit, as soon as Ms. Rottenmeier was out of earshot.
“It said one squeezed lemon on the recipe. Didn’t mention anything about cutting.”
Inko laughed again and Toshinori thought that if squeezing fruit with his bare hands amused her that much, he was ready to squeeze a watermelon, too.

Chapter Text

There was actually also a third reason for which Toshinori Yagi, age is just a number but sadly an increasing one, didn’t really bother that much with first impressions. He perfectly knew that, if he really wanted to, he could play the first impressions game on the easiest mode ever, just by pressing the right (metaphorical) switch. He just needed the perfect occasion – and the perfect occasion came unexpectedly just a few days after his first cooking class.

Under usual circumstances the presence of civilians during a villain attack – especially small and cute civilians hiding behind a lamp post – was something that never failed to trouble him, worried as he was that they could end caught up in the fight. But this was no usual circumstance, after all. Of course, he knew just too well that one should never underestimate an opponent, no matter how weak or incompetent they might seem, and he was perfectly aware that he couldn’t be so overconfident with his own abilities, given his ‘condition’ and the restraints it put on him. However, the villain he was facing was nothing more than a petty thief with a flashy quirk and if Toshinori was making a judgment mistake, it was that he was overestimating him. So, as soon as he caught a glimpse of Inko, he quickly evaluated his options.

During their unexpectedly caffeinated first encounter Inko had mentioned (multiple times) how her son was apparently a huge hero fanboy, with a strong preference for All Might, and how worried she was for him, since it seemed to her that he was gradually losing confidence in himself, as well as his light-hearted and positive attitude. Which lead Toshinori to think that maybe he could pay a visit to him as his hero persona, too, just to cheer him up a bit – wasn’t he supposed to save people and their hearts, after all? However, there was no way he could casually meet the boy without either revealing his secret to Inko or without stalking her until he found her house, found out what her kid looked like and then ambushed him. 

But meeting her as All Might just by chance was a completely different story. Maybe he could save her again, and talk with her a bit. He could find a nice excuse to escort her home where he could casually meet the boy. He just needed to bend the situation a bit to his will – just a small rearrangement of the truth, a slight push in the right direction. Or better, a slight punch in the right direction. In fact, instead of punching the villain unconscious right there on the spot, Toshinori accidentally sent him flying exactly against the aforementioned lamp post.

Inko screamed her heart out as the villain’s body plummeted towards her at full speed and hit the lamp post with a loud clonk, just to fall on the ground a moment later. And then, before she could even start to think if she was supposed to run away or check if the man lying on the ground was still alive or not, he was there. It took her a few seconds to actually process the reality of his presence, mostly because she was used to have him around the house, if one could say so. When finally something clicked inside of her and she realized she wasn’t standing in front of one of Izuku’s posters, but in front of the real thing, she felt like screaming again. She managed to keep her composure, in a way or another.

“I’m so sorry, madam,” All Might said, picking up the unconscious body from the ground and hoisting it on his shoulder. “I should have been more careful. Are you ok?”
Inko nodded, though, given how much her legs were shaking and how fast her heart was beating, she didn’t really feel ok at all.

The easy part was done, Toshinori thought. Now he just needed to find a way to chat a bit with her.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked.
“Ah, well, no, I… Actually…”
Inko started searching for something in her purse, until she found a notebook and a pen.
“My son is a huge fan of yours,” she managed to say as she turned visibly red with embarrassment, “so if you could… Maybe…”
She offered him the notebook, her hands shaking a bit.
“Of course, of course,” he said, adjusting the body on his shoulder so that he could have both hands free.
Then, instead of taking the notebook, with a swift gesture he knocked it out of her hands, making it so fast that she thought she had dropped it.
“Ah… Oh my…” she said, pulling the fallen notebook back to her (probably with her quirk).
“It’s my fault,” said Toshinori. Well, it was. Literally. But in that moment he meant it in a different way. “I really should have been more careful. You’re probably a bit shocked. Do you have someone who can escort you home?”
Inko shook her head, adding quickly that there was no need, she was feeling fine, her hands were just trembling a bit, and that was it.
“I’d feel more at ease if someone could accompany you,” Toshinori insisted. “Let me check with the police.”
He took a small, quick bow then hurried towards a group of police officers who had just arrived on the scene.

Inko sighed. For a split second she had thought that All Might meant he would have escorted her home. It was just like the beginning of Once Saved, Twice Shy – and, let’s face it, the beginning of at least another dozen of cheesy romance books she recently read – where the handsome hero saves the very unremarkable civilian from a villain attack and then he brings her somewhere safe and well, one thing leads to another… She felt her cheeks become red. That was definitely not the reason why she would have loved to be escorted home by All Might. She was just thinking about how ecstatic Izuku would be to finally meet his idol, that’s it. He would probably beam with happiness for at least one week, maybe even longer. And that would made her feel happy, too, instead of feeling completely helpless. But obviously All Might meant to have someone from the Police Department escort her, that made much more sense.
She watched as he dropped the unconscious body next to the officers like it was a bag of feathers and started chatting with them.

“Excuse me, do you have the time?”
The four police officers all froze for a second, staring at him with unconcealed awe mixed with a dash of perplexity. Then they shared a puzzled look.
“It’s… It’s 15.37, sir,” one of them said uncertainly after a while.
“And 48 seconds,” another one added quickly. “49 now.”
“Thank you, friendly officers! You did a good job today.”
They looked slightly confused.
“Ah… You too?”
Toshinori vigorously patted one of them on the back.
“Please inform Detective Tsukauchi that someone will take care of the paperwork,” he said. That was a not-so-secret code for please inform Naomasa that he’ll have to randomly fill in all the necessary forms because I’d rather spontaneously catch fire than doing that. “Have a nice day!”
He patted another one, then twirled on himself and left the officers to their own devices.

“It seems they won’t be able to bring you home for a while,” he said to Inko once he got back to her. “They’re busy with paperwork.”
“I see… Well, no need to worry, really…”
Inko fell silent, trying to gather the courage to remind him that she was still waiting for an autograph. It seemed rude and mildly inconsiderate, but she needed at least that for Izuku and she really couldn’t let this occasion slip away. She cleared her throat, took a deep breath and-
“I’ll bring you home, ok?” 
Inko stared at him blankly, fearing she had misheard him but feeling too ashamed to actually ask him to repeat what he had just said.
“Come,” said All Might offering her his arm, “where do you live?”

Remembering her address in that moment proved quite more difficult than expected, but in the end she managed to mutter it in a very shaky voice as she grabbed his arm, her hands unconsciously fondling his muscles, as if to make sure he was a real thing and not some sort of vision caused by the stress of the situation coupled with her recent high intake of cheesy romance novels. All Might nodded at her and took a good look around. Only then Inko realized that there was a bunch of people staring at them, with more probably to come due to the commotion, and suddenly she felt all of their eyes piercing right through her.
“This way,” said All Might pointing in the most melodramatic way possible at a police van parked close by, bringing her towards the van's side that was hidden from the bystanders' view and pretending to help her getting inside.
“I'm sorry,” he said with a small bow. “Privacy safety protocol. Are you ready?”

Inko nodded, not really sure about what she had to be ready for – as she had tried to explain him, in a sloppy mishmash of muttered words, her apartment wasn’t really far from where they were, just a ten minutes’ walk, maybe fifteen if they were to walk slowly (which she would have liked since she found particularly enjoyable walking arm in arm with him). But an instant later she realized that he had absolutely no intention of walking slowly. Or, generally speaking, of walking. He swooped her up like she weighted nothing, causing her heart to skip a few beats, and the next thing Inko knew was that they were at least two hundred meters up into the sky, the city flowing by in a flash under them, the wind wildly ruffling her hair. 

She felt as she was riding on a rollercoaster, afraid of falling yet slightly inebriated by the sudden flight and strangely sure that she was going to end up perfectly safe – she was, after all, in the safest place in the whole world. Oddly enough, despite the blowing wind and the chilly air, she felt perfectly warm and cozy, so much that she found herself pressing her cheek and her hand against All Might’s chest, realizing that maybe she was way more touch starved than she thought.

When was the last time someone held her like that?

Well, not really like that, no one ever held her in such a way while flying across the sky, that was definitely the first time it was happening. But still, the only human contact she had during the last ten years or more, aside those stiff, mandatory hugs with old acquaintances and a few very awkward dates, had been Izuku’s hugs and kisses, and for how much he loved them and loved him the kind of contact she longed for was a very different one. She closed her eyes for a bit, enjoying the ride. Pretending wasn’t a crime, after all, and she perfectly knew this was just some sort of hero routine for him, that there was absolutely nothing to read between the lines and that she was just being escorted home because that was his job.

But that didn't mean she couldn't get a kick out of it, did that? 

Chapter Text

The ride didn’t last that long unfortunately, since in a few minutes Inko found herself landing – what a strange concept when you’re not on a plane – behind her apartment building, away from the trafficked main street. Privacy safety protocol, probably.

“Here we are,” said All Might. “Thanks for flying with us. We hope to see you on board again soon.”
Inko giggled as she tried to regain her balance, still a bit unsteady on her feet.
“Is your son at home? I still owe you an autograph, if I recall correctly.”
“I don’t know. School should be over, but I’m not sure he’s back yet,” she said, checking the hour on her watch. “We could… see? If you want to… come upstairs...?”
The last few words were more whispered than spoken, and Inko couldn’t bring herself to actually look at him in the eye as her question awkwardly escaped her lips. She was so sure he was going to politely decline that when he laughed and told her “of course madam” it took her a few seconds to actually realize it.

They walked as inconspicuously as possible around the building and when they reached the main entrance Inko searched for the keys in her purse. She didn’t know she had so many things in there – seriously, that was where the potato peeler went? – but somehow she managed to find them. The fact that they were attached to an All Might keychain, however, didn’t really help to calm her nerves, and opening the door took her definitely too many attempts. She fumbled with the keys so much that they fell from her hands a couple of times, but she was quick in catching them with her quirk, so maybe All Might didn’t notice.
If he did, though, he didn’t say anything.

Once inside, she hurried to the lift and pressed the button to call it. And that’s when  she asked herself a question she never thought she would have to ask: will All Might fit in the elevator?

She soon found out that the answer was barely. He had to crouch to enter and he ended up taking all the space inside, to the point that Inko thought about letting him go alone. But he was squishing himself against the wall and gesturing her to enter, and refusing seemed rude – what if it offended him? – so she carefully wriggled her way inside.
He smiled nervously and laughed.
“I usually take… the stairs,” he said. “Or similar.”
She nodded very, very lightly, to avoid hitting her head against his abs. That kind of very enjoyable physical contact was acceptable when holding onto him for dear life in midair, but looked a bit out of place in that specific moment. Inko felt almost relieved when they finally reached her floor, especially since at a certain point of the ride the elevator made a very suspicious clonk that made both of them throw a worried glance at the plate fixed on the wall showing the maximum weight capacity.

“Here we are,” Inko said, hurrying towards her front door to open it and fumbling again with the keys. She didn't add anything about hoping to see All Might riding again in her elevator.
Once inside, she took a quick look at the floor – there were no shoes messily left there, nor there was any sound coming from the living room.
“Izuku…?” she called anyways, just to be sure. No one answered, and Inko left out a huge sigh. Partly because she was feeling really sorry for her son, who was missing what was probably the most exciting thing happening in their apartment since the time they found two surprises in a bag of chips instead of just one, partly because she felt uneasy knowing he wasn’t home yet. She could just hope he had stopped by the comic book store to check this or that merchandise (not even knowing what kind of merchandise was in his house right at that moment) or that he went to the arcade to play one of those games he really liked but they couldn’t afford. But the idea that he was out there being bullied by his ‘friends’ was like a woodworm gnawing away at her mind.
“I’m sorry,” she said, inviting All Might to come inside. “Izuku isn’t home yet.”

“Talk about bad luck!” Toshinori said. “It’s always a pleasure to meet fans. It’s the best part of the job, actually.”
He felt sincerely disappointed. He had thought a bit about this kid, to be honest, and while he had rationally discarded the thought that he could possibly have found a successor just because the whole concept of quirkless kid being bullied stroke (another) peculiar chord in him, he really wanted to try and do something for him. He was going to be a teacher starting from the next school year, a bit of practice with just one kid before being placed in front of a full classroom would have been perfect.

The good thing was that at least he now knew where Inko lived. Her apartment was exactly how he had imagined it, small, cute and deliciously reeking of a normal, tranquil life. She noticed him looking around and pointed nervously at a bunch of pictures on the wall.
“That's my son! Look at him!”
He took a good look at the pictures of a young green haired boy, the spitting image of his mother. He stared intently at them while he dutifully disregarded the dirty (All Might themed) pair of socks that flew quickly from the couch, where it had been left probably by the very same kid in the pictures, right into Inko’s hands, just to be mercilessly shoved into the purse she was still carrying. 
“Isn't he cute?” she asked, acting like nothing had happened.
“Indeed,” he said. He didn't mention anything about the socks, being the gentleman that he was.

The rest of his visit passed by rather awkwardly, but honestly that was to be expected (his meetings with civilians always ended up being awkward – usually for the civilians, sometimes for him). He tried to linger there as long as possible, accepting her offer for tea and drinking as slow as he could, but after half an hour the boy wasn't home yet, they had already talked about the weather and commented how nice the neighborhood was and he was getting closer to reach his muscle form limit, so he eventually gave her the autograph she was waiting for and bid her farewell.

Inko tried to bring him to the front door, but he shook his head and pointed at the window instead. It wasn’t just to show off or to passively remind her of the uncomfortable ride in the lift – he really didn’t want to be seen coming out of her apartment, to avoid compromising her more than needed. She seemed to understand that, and while mumbling to herself privacy safety protocol, yes she went to open the sliding doors for him. She stopped in her tracks when she heard the unmistakable sound of keys turning into a keyhole.

She quickly glanced towards the front door in expectation, but nothing happened. Some other muffled sounds and the happy barking of her neighbor’s dog definitely told her that her son wasn’t home yet. The disappointment and the sadness on her face were plain to see. 

“I'm sorry,” she said, turning back towards him. “I hoped it was Izuku coming back home... He's going to be so disappointed knowing he missed you. He's such a huge fan.”
Toshinori took a last good look at the house - there were posters with his face even in the living room, since, as Inko told him, the boy had run out of walls in his bedroom. He actually had tea in his own mug, he caught a glimpse of the All Might Official Guide Book of that year on one shelf and the doormat was an All Might one, too - not to mention the dirty socks still hidden in Inko's purse. It was a bit unsettling, to be honest, but at least it made it very easy to believe Inko's words.

“Listen,” he said. “My work schedule is kind of... hectic, I'd say. So I can't really promise anything right now, but I'll try and stop by another time. Ok?”
He watched as Inko took a few steps back, clutching her hands to her chest, looking as scared as he had just told her he'd be back to mercilessly murder her, her family and the whole neighborhood.
“...Ok?” he repeated, way less convinced than before.
She muffled a small gasp then quickly nodded.
“Ah, yes, of course!” she said, finally looking slightly more at ease, “I - I just didn't expect you to - no, I mean - it's ok!”
He smiled and with a small bow he finally left.

Inko followed him with her eyes until he became just a tiny spot on the horizon, then remained to stare at the blue sky for a while longer, letting out a deep sigh from time to time. The sound of the front door opening, followed by Izuku meekly announcing that he was home, startled her.

“You’ll never believe what happened, Izuku,” Inko said, finally closing the window and turning back towards the doorway. She noticed immediately how his uniform was spattered with mud here and there and how the new All Might charm he had recently hung up to his schoolbag was missing, but she just pushed back the lump she felt in her throat and went to take him by the hand, dragging him to the kitchen table, where All Might's autograph was waiting for him.

Chapter Text

Toshinori Yagi, age the last time I was late for school was definitely a long time ago, dashed across the classroom, reaching his desk and sitting down next to Inko just a second before Ms. Rottenmeier arrived, announcing the beginning of their second lesson.

“Problems at work?” Inko asked with a soft giggle, taking a bottle of water out of her purse and handing it to him.
“Sort of. I couldn’t really… grasp a last-minute problem,” Toshinori answered. That was, technically, not untrue, since he had to stop an oily villain that wriggled out of his hands a bit too much. “It took me some time to tackle it down.”
He took the bottle, twisted the cap off and drank the whole thing in just one long gulp. 
“Thank you,” he said once he finished. “I’ll get you a new one at the vending machine later.”
She shook her head and made a gesture with her hand to tell him there was no need.
“And I need to give you back your handkerchief, too,” Toshinori added. To be honest, he just planned to buy a new, identical one – he had kept using hers and it was now in a hopeless condition. 
“Don’t worry,” she repeated. Then she tried to hide a laughter, without much success. “I have handkerchiefs.”
He shook his head, pretending to be somewhat offended by her subtle allusions at their previous conversation, faking a bit of interest in the kitchen tools lying on the desk in front of him. Then he smiled and leaned in towards her.

“And what about you? Done anything exciting this week? Met anyone new?” Toshinori asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.
“No, not really,” Inko said. She brought her finger close to her lips and nodded towards Mrs. Rottenmeier, who was walking down the room handing out the recipe for the lesson.
“Oh. Nothing? No one?” Toshinori asked again once the grim-faced teacher went back to her desk. He felt as subtle as a lit-up neon sign in the dark, but he kind of wanted to check if she was prone to (more or less) accidentally letting slip that she had met All Might. Obviously, that was the only reason behind his question, he absolutely had no interest in listening to her gushing about him. He just wanted to test her for... safety reasons. Yes.
“Well,” Inko said, either too busy checking out the ingredients for the lesson to notice Toshinori’s strange insistence or too polite to tell him to mind his own business, “I did meet someone, actually.”
Toshinori let out a muffled "uh", trying to sound interested in her story but not too interested.
“I had a little accident and this guy helped me out and escorted me home. So I invited him in for something.”
“Nothing serious, I hope?”
Inko suddenly blushed and almost knocked a couple of bowls off of the desk, catching them in midair with her quirk.
“No!” she said, the pitch of her voice slightly too high. “It was just for a cup of tea!”
Toshinori laughed a bit too hard, earning one deadly look from Ms. Rottenmeier.
“I meant your little accident,” he whispered. “I hope it was nothing serious.”
“Oh – well – I…” Inko said, still blushing heavily. “Yes. Yes, it was just a big scare, nothing more.”
“I’m glad to hear that. But still… Isn’t it a bit risky to invite strangers at home?”

Of course it was, and he was sure that she was sensible enough to avoid doing it. But everything changes when the stranger in question is the Symbol of Peace – you really don’t expect him to rob you or hurt you (or worse). You probably wouldn’t expect him to ask villainous questions like the one he just asked, either, to force a poor, cute and soft looking woman into confessing she was escorted home by said Symbol of Peace, but that was what was actually happening. Toshinori did feel a bit bad about that, but at the same time, some part of him was just dying to hear her swooning over her meeting with All Might.

“Well, it wasn’t properly a stranger stranger,” Inko said as she started to follow Ms. Rottenmeier’s barked instructions, “after all he was All…”
She stopped for a fraction of a second. Toshinori probably wouldn't have noticed her hesitation if he hadn't known the truth.
“All… bert.”
“Allbert?”
“Albert, yes. From the office. A new guy. I hadn’t really met him before but he is kinda famous… at work.”
She focused back on her work, mixing the melted butter and honey and pouring them in the ramekins in front of her, measuring the flour and adding the baking soda and a pinch of salt.

Toshinori spent the next few minutes just staying there doing nothing, smiling at the pineapple on his desk, throwing occasional glances at Inko.
In a way, that was even better than listening to her prattling about All Might. The fact that she had been smart and cautious enough to avoid mentioning their meeting was something strangely refreshing and well – promising. If she really could keep his secret, and if he was careful enough, then maybe he could-

He thought about Nana.

With a poorly hidden sigh, Toshinori tried to focus back on the recipe and what he was supposed to do - both in that moment and in general. He was going to meet Inko as All Might again as he had promised, have a nice talk with her kid as he did with a thousand other fans and that would be the end of it. He mindlessly grabbed the butter and the honey and threw them as they were in the ramekins, then tried to catch up with whatever Mrs. Rottenmeier was saying. He’d keep attending the course – by the way, was it a cup of flour or baking soda? Whatever – and talking with Inko as himself, and maybe after that they could be friends, just friends (with secrets), and she wouldn’t get any more visits from Albert, and she’d be perfectly safe.

“As you might know,” Ms. Rottenmeier said a few hours later, pacing the hallway menacingly, “this Pineapple Upside Down Cake has been featured in Quirky Recipes Weekly as the best picnic dessert for this season. It was mentioned on TV, too.”
She stopped next to Inko and Toshinori's desk, examining both of their works.
“Miss Midoriya, your baking is once again perfect, I'd say,” Ms. Rottenmeier commented, tasting one of Inko's little cakes. “Suspiciously perfect.”
Just like the previous time, she completely ignored Inko’s attempt at saying something in reply, turning her attention immediately towards Toshinori.
“Mr. Yagi,” she said, tapping with her fork the top of his cakes, “if these had been baked in a slightly larger cake pan, I'd definitely bring them to a picnic.”
“Really?” Toshinori asked in surprise.
“Yes,” the woman answered. “As stools! These things are so hard that they belong to the carpentry course next door!”
She turned on her heels and moved on to examine the other student’s cakes.

Inko gently patted Toshinori’s back.

As they were tidying up their desk and gathering their things before leaving the classroom, Toshinori’s gaze fell upon Inko’s recipe sheet. It was full of scribbles and notes.
“It’s so that I can bake them again at home easily,” she said, looking at his perplexed face.
“Oh, of course,” he muttered, suddenly remembering that the people there probably enjoyed baking Ms. Rottenmeier’s infernal recipes and were not attending just to spend time with a stranger met in a café hoping to become something more than  strangers but definitely not more than friends, because that would be incredibly problematic, even if, he had to admit, rather… interesting.
“I’m meeting a friend in Batu on Sunday, these will be the perfect snack. Oh, and Izuku surely won’t mind if I make more.”
“Batu, eh?” said Toshinori, trying as hard as he could to recall where he had heard the name lately. Batu was a nice village in the mountains near Musutafu, a common tourist attraction and ideal for one or two-day trips away from the city, and he had been there a few times, too. So he obviously recalled the name, but it wasn’t just that – he knew he had read about it very recently, but where… he couldn’t remember.
“I used to go there with Izuku when he was a kid,” Inko said. “I haven’t been there in a while. But I have a... commission to do,  so I thought it could be a nice excuse to catch up with a friend.”
Toshinori nodded, still trying to remember – was it on TV? Or on that boring travel magazine in Recovery Girl’s office? – but especially trying not to think too much about what kind of friend this friend of her was. 
Inko let out a huge sigh.
“Provided I’m not going to be stood up again,” she added.
Then she shook her head, gathered her last things, bid him goodbye and walked away.

A few hours later Toshinori was slouching on the couch in his own apartment, trying to nibble on one of his Pineapple Upside Down Cakes without much success - they could probably absorb a full smash impact with little to no damage, given how hard they were. He glanced towards the pile of papers Naomasa had friendly left on his doorstep - and that’s when it hit him. Batu was mentioned in one of the villain activity reports that the detective had on his desk and that Toshinori had lazily browsed the last time he was at the Police Station. At that time he had dismissed the report as something not really needing any immediate attention, but for some strange reason it felt now fundamental to have the Number One Hero look thoroughly into it.

It was his job, after all.

Chapter Text

Inko tried to focus on the page she was reading, but her mind kept wandering somewhere else. The fact that The Hero Next Door was a rather boring book, with lots of clichés poorly executed, didn’t really help.

Izuku had been thrilled with All Might’s autograph, and she couldn’t have been more grateful for that, but all that sudden enthusiasm had triggered something – the comeback of that old, insane idea of seriously becoming a hero that from time to time seemed to haunt her son. Of course, every little kid dreams of becoming a hero, it was something that used to happen way before quirks started to spread and it was something obviously still bound to happen in that day and time, but there is a fine line between make-believe and believing in what’s impossible, and this time it seemed to Inko that Izuku had irreversibly crossed it. And that scared her quite a bit. Not because hero work was scary – but because she knew that sooner or later her son’s dreams would be utterly crushed by cruel reality.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and shook her head, trying not to think about it too much. He was still young and he was such a smart kid, he would soon figure out by himself a way to channel all his passion for heroes and their work into something else – he could become a police officer and still help people and fight villains (though the idea was still a little bit scary, to be honest), or he could become a well-known hero reporter, commenting heroics on tv. He could even end up presenting the Hero Billboard Chart event! Or he could study to become some sort of technician, developing gimmicks and other useful things, or maybe choose a more academic path and end up managing a hero agency, even a big one. He had so many possibilities in front of him, he just needed to find his own path.

She opened her eyes and focused back on the printed words on her book.

Mary Sue’s delicate pure heart suddenly skipped a beat when she heard the vigorous, gallant tapping on the door-

How on earth could someone tap on a door gallantly? Inko couldn’t really stand that kind of flamboyant prose, with random adjectives and adverbs casually thrown all around. Not to mention that what was about to happen in the story was so obvious that she was tempted to close the book for good.

However, out of respect for the author, she forced herself to go on.

…gallant tapping on the door-

Inko stopped again. Maybe the writing wasn’t that bad after all, since she had almost heard a tap on something. It wasn’t gallant, it sounded just like a very regular tap, and it wasn’t on the door, it was definitely closer than that and more sounding as someone knocking on… Glass? Definitely glass, yes. It couldn’t be just her imagination now, could it? She lowered the book in her lap and glanced towards the balcony. Thank goodness she was already sitting on her couch because if she hadn’t, she would have fainted right there on the spot, her ‘delicate pure heart’ not skipping just one, but a whole bunch of beats.

All Might was gallantly tapping on her window, full costume and all. 

Toshinori watched as Inko slowly lowered her book and stared at him as if he was some sort of apparition that wasn’t supposed to be there.

She wasn’t that wrong after all, he really wasn’t supposed to be there if he wanted to keep her as safe as possible. But he had promised her to meet her kid, and he had already decided that he wasn’t going to meet her as All Might anymore after that. And he made sure no one saw him, he had transformed just behind her apartment building – he needed to remember to pick up his clothes from under the bushes there – and had jumped immediately up on her balcony. They were high enough not to be seen clearly from the ground and the window wasn’t facing any other at the same height, so he was pretty sure no one had seen him yet – now if only she could hurry a bit and let him enter… After some more long, interminable seconds he waved at her, not sure if knocking again while she was staring was to be considered rude or not. However, waving seemed to work, because she broke out of the trance she was in and hurried to the window.

“I’m here!” he announced with a small bow, done out of courtesy but also to avoid hitting his head against the window frame as he entered the apartment. “Is your son at home today?”

An inhuman screech coming from the hallway told him that yes, her son was at home and he had already noticed his presence.

Inko tried her best to calm Izuku down, but it was a rather impossible task. He basically assaulted All Might with a cascade of words - she knew he could get a bit overtalkative when it came to heroes and stuff like that, but she had never heard him speak so much and so fast all at once. She was worried that All Might could, sooner or later, start to reply rather briskly, annoyed by Izuku's constant yapping, but somehow her son's enthusiasm was incredibly well-received.

After a while her worries were completely dispersed, leaving room for an almost bittersweet feeling. At first, she thought that the bitter part came from that minuscule tinge of jealousy she was savoring. It wasn’t that long ago when with hugs and kisses and a bit of trafficking in the kitchen she was able to brighten up Izuku in that very same way, without anyone’s help. But it wasn’t that – or at least, it wasn’t just that.

There was something peaceful in that scene, for how absurd it was and even though Izuku’s high pitched voice and All Might’s boisterous laugh weren’t really something you could consider peaceful. It was some sort of domesticity, intimacy even, that on one side was heartwarming, but, on the other one, made her feel guilty. Maybe she should have gone out more, she should have met new people, fallen in love again. Given Izuku a dad. Some other parent figure who could show him how to stand up for himself instead of being always submissive, always scared of everything and everyone. Some sort of role model who didn’t just exist in paper and plastic, but was real and present.

With a huge sigh Inko tried to ignore those sad thoughts, redirecting her attention towards the soft whistle coming out from the kettle. At least she had managed to set up – more or less – a meeting between Izuku and his idol.

She giggled a bit. The whole situation reminded her way too much of That Exceptionally Dark Night, a cheesy hero romance where a single mother gets purposedly involved in a villain attack just to meet her kid’s favorite hero – except that in the book it turns out that the hero was the mother’s long-lost one-night stand from so many years before and, of course, the father of her son, while Inko was pretty sure she never had a one-night stand with All Might.

Unfortunately.

She almost choked on her giggle – that definitely wasn’t the kind of thoughts she needed at the moment. Or ever. How did it get there? She buried her face in the closest kitchen cloth she could grab. Well, to be honest, in the last few months she had felt quite lonely (or rather, quite lonelier than before) and probably her plan of coping with the loneliness by gorging herself on romances had somehow backfired. The fact that she favored hero romances and that All Might looked exactly like all those fascinating heroes-turned-into-love-interests didn’t help, either. But, at the end of the day, she surely was no frilly Mary Sue, so it was definitely better to push away those thoughts as soon as possible. And maybe it was time to try another book genre – like that new book about a detective and his cat (and no heroes) that had caught her attention.

Izuku’s squeal of joy and consequent dash at full speed towards his room brought Inko back to reality. She took advantage of that moment of silence to bring a warm cup of tea to her guest.

“I’m sorry,” she said while glancing over her shoulder towards the hallway, partly worried by the suspicious sounds coming from Izuku’s room, “he doesn’t know when to stop.”
All Might shook his head.
“Don’t worry, really. I’ve told you, it’s the best part of my job.”
“Well…” Inko said, her gaze fixed on the steaming cup of tea. It was (again) the All-Might themed mug, probably the biggest one they had in the house. Yet, it looked tiny in his hands. Speaking of which, now that she could see them up close and not through who knows how many layers of effects and filters on a glossy magazine page, Inko realized how rough and scarred they were. Nonetheless, they looked… gentle.
She wondered how small her hand would look compared to his… How his hand would feel in hers.
Not again, she thought, suddenly realizing that she hadn't finished the sentence she had begun, lost as she was in her own thoughts. “Thank you.”
All Might smiled at her. It looked a bit different compared to his usual smile, less dazzling, but warmer and softer.
“I think Izuku really needed this. You know, he’s…”  Inko hesitated for a while, unsure of how much she was allowed to say before hurting her son’s pride. “He hasn’t felt this special in quite a while, I fear.”

Before All Might could answer back, Izuku re-emerged from the hallway, holding as many things as his arms could carry and dropping them on the couch.
“Izuku!” exclaimed Inko, her eyes darting from the pile of merchandise to All Might, sure that this time he was going to be upset. But he just took the marker her son was offering him and cracking his knuckles he let out a cheerful “let’s get to work!”

After he signed more or less everything Izuku owned and could be signed, including Izuku himself (who promptly exclaimed “It’s not toxic mom, I swear” when Inko found out), All Might – with some degree of difficulty, given her son’s unwavering enthusiasm – managed to get up from the couch to take his leave. 

“Well,” he said as he stepped out on the balcony, “I hope I wasn’t too much of a nuisance.”
“Not at all,” Inko said, while Izuku behind her kept blabbering incoherently. “Please feel free to stop by whenever you want.”
“Thank you. I will.”
He didn’t really look at her when he said that, pretending to be distracted by a couple of birds flying close to the building. But, deep down, that didn’t really surprise Inko. She knew he wasn’t going to stop by again.
He bowed a bit, made a victory sign aimed at Izuku and then leaped off the balcony, disappearing from her view a few moments later.

Chapter Text

It was a nice, warm and sunny morning in Batu and Toshinori Yagi, age sometimes I really need to stop and count because I don’t remember it on the spot was trying his best to disappear behind a newspaper. He was sitting on a bench partly hidden from the entrance of the station by a huge promotional poster, and, for good measure, he was slanting a bit on one side to ensure that a nearby tree could provide him with additional cover.

Wasn’t it a funny coincidence that he was assigned patrol duty in Batu exactly on that day?

…Actually no, it wasn’t. It wasn’t funny and, especially, it was no coincidence. No one ever assigned him anything, at best Naomasa forwarded him what sounded suspicious and worth to be checked out. He was there on his own free will. After all, he had to made sure that Inko didn't get involved in a villain attack. Again. The fact that the first time it had happened exclusively because of him was further reason for him to be there - he had to prevent it from happening a second time as some sort of apology, and if that implied finding out what kind of friend her friend was, well, that was just a very small collateral effect in which he wasn’t interested at all, really. 

Anyways, just to be sure (“on a completely hypothetical level, I swear”), he had discussed with Naomasa what was effectively considered stalking and what not when he had visited the detective’s office to check out those villain activity reports one more time. In the end they had concurred that, as long as All Might was on patrol, keeping his eyes on a specific civilian among the others was just part of his job, and definitely not a crime.
“But I’m not bailing out any Toshinori Yagi if they get arrested,” Naomasa had added. 

Since he had no idea when Inko was supposed to meet her friend, Toshinori had arrived in Batu early in the morning. He was confident she was going to get there by train since Batu was particularly difficult to reach by car, and she wasn't probably going to show up too late since she planned to bring something to eat. In the end, he waited for three or four hours before spotting her coming out of the station, wearing a cute dress and a pink cardigan and clutching a small basket and her purse.
She started to look around, searching for someone, so he tried to shrink inside his oversized hoodie and held the newspaper as close to his face as possible. 

Inko strolled in slow, lazy circles in front of the station, throwing hopeful glances towards the entrance doors every time they opened. After a while she decided to sit down on one of the benches on the sidewalk, her eyes still searching for her friend. Eventually, she took a book out of her purse and started reading it, looking up from the pages every now and then.

Toshinori kept peeping through his newspaper, forgetting a bit too quickly about checking all the other passers-by and all that stuff about reports. Making Inko wait like that wasn’t very friendly, he thought. He would never do that. Unless he got caught in a villain attack, those things had the upsetting tendency of happening at the wrong moment and in the wrong place and sometimes getting out of them even after the villain had been apprehended was a whole ordeal on its own. But at least he would surely try to warn her as soon as possible of his delay.
He giggled at the thought of himself trying to compose a quick text message (a difficult task when your thumb can press six characters at a time) in the middle of a fight, telling Inko he was running late. Like for their date, for example.

He buried his burning face in the newspaper.

It took him a while and a good dose of willpower to discard that dangerous train of thoughts that had almost run him over and to find the courage to take a peek at Inko again. When he did, he tried to focus more on the surroundings than on her.
That group of loud tourists.
The chubby sparrow bouncing along the road.
The colorful flowers blooming in the bush close to where Inko was sitting.
…How her hair shone of a bright, emerald green in the sunlight, how cute her outfit was, how she seemed completely lost in the words she was reading – she suddenly closed her book with a gasp and Toshinori almost jumped on his feet rushing towards her. It was a false alarm - she had just been startled by her ringing phone.
However, since he was already standing and since he had accidentally crumpled the newspaper in the heat of the moment, he decided to move a bit closer.

Inko closed the call and stared at the screen of her phone until it went black.

She got stood up again. To be honest, it wasn’t such a big surprise – it had happened for the last three or maybe four times she had tried to organize a get-together – but it hurt nonetheless. Sure, her friend had apologized quite profusely and had sworn to meet up again as soon as possible, but still… Inko couldn’t help but think that maybe she was trying to impose an unwanted friendship on someone that clearly wasn’t that interested. And that meant that, all things considered, she had reached a point in her life where she basically had no friends at all.

But that was going to change, right? She had started to going out a bit more now that Izuku wasn’t a kid anymore, and wasn’t that the exact reason she was attending Ms. Rottenmeier’s course? To have fun and meet someone new? And it was starting to work out, after all! True, for now she had only talked with one of her coursemates and Toshinori seemed to be rather on the peculiar side, but after you got past his strange appearance you could immediately see what a good person he was. He reminded her a bit of the lanky librarian in The Dewey Decimal Hero – save that the lanky librarian turns out to be the handsome hero who saves the main character as well as the whole country, while Inko highly doubted that Toshinori could perform any heroics (aside catching flying cappuccinos) given his bad health.

The high-pitched screech of a train arriving at the station reminded her of where she was. Her get-together had been canceled, true, but she still had to visit Batu Shrine, after all. If she hurried, she could probably get to the shrine and come back to the station in time for the next train bound to Musutafu.

She was making sure she had everything – her book was in her hands, the phone back in her purse and her basket was at her side – when the bench she was sitting on trembled and squeaked as someone sat down next to her.

“Is there anything I can do for you, madam?”
Inko turned towards the man who just spoke to her, ready to pick up her things and run towards the station, her mind already filled with anxious thoughts about bad encounters with robbers, muggers or worse, when she realized who her company was.
“I didn’t want to startle you,” he said, slowly pulling up the hood of his sweatshirt to let her catch a glimpse of his face underneath it. “But I have to stay a bit undercover.”
She giggled.
“You’re wearing an All Might hoodie,” she said.
“Sometimes the best place to hide things is out in the open,” he answered, nodding to the passers-by.
He was unexpectedly right. Had he been there in his costume or in that funny yellow suit he really seemed to like, there would be a huge crowd gathering around them, without any doubt. But no one seemed to pay any particular attention to the huge All Might fanboy sitting next to her.
“The question still stays, by the way. Is there anything I can do for you?”
Inko shook her head.
“I was just waiting for a friend,” she said. Then she gathered all her courage and tried to keep the conversation going. “What about you?”

“I’m just here for work. More or less.”
“Am I... Am I holding you up then, is there any…?”
She looked around, possibly expecting a villain to strike at any given moment.
“No, don’t worry!” he said, trying to sound as reassuring as possible. “I was just patrolling the zone, it's just boring routine. I don’t have much more to do than watch people.”
She nodded, then fell silent for a while.
“My friend stood me up, actually,” she said with a trembling voice.

Toshinori knew that. Or rather, he had come to that conclusion, having unintentionally overheard her phone call after getting closer to her using an eccentric guy with a huge hairdo as a temporary hiding spot. He wasn’t planning to interact with her, he just wanted to make sure that she was all right – but he could have sworn she wasn’t. Her voice had been so dull and so heartbroken during the call that he had felt the immediate need to try and cheer her up, sitting down next to her and blaming unexisting coincidences for their totally uncoincidental meeting. But then had recalled Naomasa’s words, and well, Toshinori could hardly hide behind accidental happenings now, since she had told him about her date in Batu.

But All Might could.

He was there because of her, he couldn’t deny that, but the activity reports existed for real, after all, so it wasn’t completely unimaginable for a pro-hero to patrol the zone – and she never mentioned to All Might her intention to go there, so there was no way she’d end up thinking he was stalking her. It was a win-win situation, after all. Or rather, a win-win-win situation: All Might could cheer her up and check on her, Inko wasn’t going to get worried about being stalked and Toshinori wasn’t going to get arrested.
For now, at least.

Chapter Text

“I was kind of expecting that, tough,” Inko added before Toshinori could say something.
And maybe it was better that way, because he wasn’t really sure of what he could say.
I’m sorry but a part of me actually is happy that your friend is not here didn’t sound much appropriate.
“She’s just an old acquaintance from my previous workplace, after all,” Inko added. “And I know that spending an afternoon with me isn’t that interesting.”
“That’s not true.” He suddenly realized his words could be interpreted in the wrong way - or the right one, depending on the point of view - so he tried to explain himself. “I mean, I’m sure there is another valid reason why your friend had to cancel your meeting.”

“Who knows,” Inko sighed. Then she took a quick glance at the hour. “I don’t want to hold you up any longer. I guess I’ll go to the shrine and then home.”
“Batu shrine?”
“Yes. Do you know how popular their omamori are?”
Toshinori nodded.
“Usually my neighbor visits Batu around this time of the year and brings back a charm for all the families on our floor. But she’s quite ill now, so I’m here to get one for her.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
She quickly shook her head, as to dismiss his comment.
“But I’m here for my own reasons, too. I’m thinking about getting something for Izuku. Mid-terms exams are around the corner.”
“That’s still very kind of you,” Toshinori said, “even if I’m sure he won’t have any problem with his studies. He seemed quite the smart kid to me.”
“I know,” Inko said with a sigh, “but I’m a bit worried. You see, he’s so determined to achieve the best possible results because…”

She fell silent for a while.

“He has this silly idea, you know? Of attending UA next year, and I fear he’s in for the biggest disappointment of his life.”
“Entrance exams are quite hard, that’s true, but I bet he can make it.”
He wasn’t lying – Inko’s kid had shown an impressive knowledge of heroes and heroics mechanics in the short time they had talked together, and his remarks over this or that fight had been cunning and unexpectedly on point. He clearly was smart and motivated enough to storm through the entrance exams for the general studies course, as well as management and support if he was more interested in that.
Inko shook her head, a feeble smile on her lips.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t know if he told you but…”
She hesitated, searching for the right words in her mind.
“He’s quirkless.”
It didn’t come as a surprise, since Toshinori already knew.
“I see,” he commented. “But that shouldn’t stop him to score high enough in the entrance exams-”
“He’s aiming at the hero course,” Inko said, her eyes now watery and her voice slightly trembling. “Can you imagine? Being quirkless and wanting to be a hero?”

Toshinori’s words died on his lips. He really couldn’t tell her that no, he couldn’t imagine what it was like because he knew.

He knew it just too well. And maybe that was why he had enjoyed so much his small conversation with the boy, because even if they hadn’t talked about that, he had seen himself reflected in the kid. But that thought was dangerously linked to that other one-
That he could-
He had intended to find his successor at UA after all, hadn’t he? Sure, he meant in the hero course, yes, but still… He had thought he could observe, study, examine the kids and then aseptically pick the best one to inherit One for All, but… was that really what he was supposed to do? Wasn’t a totally fortuitous meeting somehow more meaningful than a structured, artificial one?
Didn’t Nana choose him on a whim, after all?

Inko mistook his silence for awkwardness.
“I know,” she said, rubbing gently the corner of her eyes, “he’s crazy, isn’t he?”
“He is,” Toshinori answered. In spite of Inko’s efforts, one small tear had managed to escape her and was slowly rolling down her face. He really couldn’t give her his handkerchief – partly because it was used, crumpled and stained, but mostly because it was hers in the first place – so he gently wiped her cheek with his fingers. “But it’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
She quivered a bit under his touch, but still managed to give a hint of a smile.
“You think so?”
“I’ll be honest with you,” Toshinori said. “I don’t think your son can make it in the Hero Course without a quirk. But UA was my alma mater, you know?”
She nodded.
“I could give him-” The quirk he needs? “-a few tips maybe?”
“You’d really do it?”
“It would be my pleasure,” Toshinori said, completely smashing any remaining leftover of his resolution of never, ever meeting Inko as All Might again.

After that, Inko’s mood turned completely –her sad smile turned into a real, genuine one and she started chatting about her son, and her neighbor, and a bit of everything, throwing in a hundred of ‘thank yous’ here and there. And, just like their first chat on that day a few weeks before, Toshinori felt totally at ease, almost lulled by her voice, completely lost in all those details of a very normal life he found so interesting.

“Do you want an onigiri?” she asked out of the blue, pointing at the basket next to her.
He gladly accepted her offer and watched in awe as she produced the most perfect onigiri he had ever seen from a cute lunch box. And it didn’t just look perfect – it tasted delicious, too, but given how Ms. Rottenmeier had praised (in her own wicked way) Inko’s work during their lessons, there was nothing to be surpised at.

He gulped it down quite unceremoniously, especially because he hadn’t eaten anything in hours and maintaining muscle form required quite the energy.
Inko didn’t seem to mind his voracity and let out a small laugh.
“Do you want more? I have a few in here. And a couple of sweets.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded and quickly offered him a second one.
He gobbled down that one, too, and was about to accept the third one when he realized that a newly arrived group of tourists was staring at him quite thoroughly.
“Hmm,” he said, pulling down the hood of his sweater on his head even more, “I’ve got a proposal for you, Miss Inko.”
She seemed to realize the unwanted attention from the group of strangers and nodded towards Toshinori.
“Why don’t we visit the shrine and then find a quieter place to eat?”

Toshinori watched as Inko got in line at the small shop in Batu Shrine.

He found it quite ungentlemanly to let her go alone, but the shop was simply too small and too crowded for him, and he couldn’t risk being recognized. At least he made sure to wait for her in a spot that allowed him to keep a close watch.

She took a look at the different charms sold there, trying to avoid bumping into the other customers, checking the tags on the stand, stopping from time to time to think. She turned towards him and he waved at her, but maybe that wasn’t the reaction she was expecting, because she quickly averted her eyes and hid behind an elderly couple. After a few minutes, she queued up to pay for her purchase, waiting patiently for her turn.

He had noticed it already the first time he had met her – both the first first time and the second first time – but he couldn’t help noticing it over and over again. She was beautiful. Not that kind of extremely fit, almost fake beauty praised and honored by the media, no, Inko’s beauty was more a natural, human one, something that maybe didn’t immediately catch the eye but that slowly surrounded you. It was a comforting soft sight for his tired eyes, just as much as the kindness in her voice comforted his mind. And yet, for how soft and kind she was, he couldn’t help but glimpse an underlying strength in her character that made him quite sure that, should the need ever arise, she wouldn’t hesitate to bite back.

Had he been in a different situation, he might have considered for real the possibility of pursuing a romantic relationship with her. If it didn’t mean to put her in danger, for example. Or if he didn’t look like a… Whatever he looked like nowadays, he preferred to avoid lingering on his image reflected in the mirror whenever possible. But as things were there wasn’t much he could offer her, aside from a broken body and the risk of being targeted by a bunch of villains, so for the time being – and for the rest, too – he was just content in watching her, aiming towards a perfectly safe friendship. And well, maybe he could just… Hold her hand? That wasn’t such a wild thought after all, holding hands didn’t really involve any romantic feelings, no? It was just a… slightly slipped arm-holding, and holding someone by the arm was just good manners and nothing more. Yes. Being friends and holding hands seemed proper activities to look forward to.

He was still lost in his very proper thoughts when Inko came back from the shop.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she told him, adjusting her purse on her shoulder.
“Found what you were looking for?”
“Ah, well, I- Yes!” she said, her cheeks suddenly turning red as her eyes darted everywhere to avoid looking at him. “You- you want to find a place to eat? If you’re still up for it?”
Toshinori nodded and started to walk towards the entrance of the shrine.
“Ah, uhm… I…”
Inko stopped and looked at him rather embarrassed.
“The park… it’s that way?” she said, pointing in the opposite direction of where they were going.
“I know. I thought we could go a bit further up in the mountains.”
“Ah,” Inko said, looking up at the side of the mountain. “It’s very nice there actually, but we have to take the cable car. And it’s going to be crowded and it’s – well – rather small…?”
“Really?” he asked, offering her his arm and starting to walk again, heading towards the big welcome sign at the entrance of the shrine stating a bit of information and the different rules for visitors.
“Y-yes,” she said, letting him guide her but still a bit confused.

She seemed to realize what his intentions were only when he brought her behind the sign, hidden from the view of the other visitors and, after making sure she had a good grip on her purse and basket, picked her up and jumped off the ground.

She was clutching him, pressing herself against him in the fear of falling, so he decided to reassure her a bit by holding her a little bit tighter. But he did it just for safety, it had nothing to do with how soft and warm she was. And it was by pure coincidence that he just slightly miscalculated his movements a bit so that they fell towards the ground faster than intended, which caused Inko to hide her face in his chest with a muffled scream.
Completely not intended.

They landed in a nice spot among the trees not that far from the cable car station and sat down in the grass. Inko asked him some more things about UA – how tough the other courses were, were they held in high regards as the hero course in their respective fields of work, did he personally knew the teachers for the upcoming year (he kind of glossed over that point) and so on, and he tried his best to answer, until he found himself somehow telling her about his own time as a student. He did skip over Gran Torino’s teaching methods though, since he didn’t want to scare her unnecessarily. And well, he didn’t want to remember, either.

They shared the remaining two onigiri and ate Inko’s Pineapple Upside Down cakes, which, Toshinori had to admit, were on a completely different level than his ones, and not only because you could actually bite them without breaking a tooth or two.

Inko stared at the tiny, puffy white clouds running across the blue sky above them, unsure of what to say next.

She still couldn’t fully grasp the reality of the situation she was in – she was basically having a picnic with All Might, who was currently lying in the grass next to her, enjoying the warmth of the sun and praising her culinary skills. Somehow it was easier to believe that she had fallen asleep on the train to Batu while she was reading Deception with an Unlikely Villain and that her subconscious had sent her on a silly, romance books-propelled dream. But not only it was too real (yet at the same time so unbelievable) to be a dream, she had also pinched herself a few times here and there and it hurt every single time, so she was quite sure she was awake.

“I mean, I ate something similar the other day and they were basically bricks.”
Inko giggled.
“They’re not that difficult to make. You just need to be careful in weighing ingredients.”
“Yes, well. I’m more on the spontaneous side of cooking, to be honest.”
“You know,” Inko said tilting her head to one side, keenly examining his features, “you kind of remind me of-”
A sudden, unnaturally strong gust of wind interrupted her.
Even though All Might moved rather slowly, sitting up and lazily stretching his arms as if it was something he had already planned to do, she couldn’t help but glimpsing some sort of alertness in his eyes that wasn’t there before.

She was about to ask him if he thought something was wrong when she noticed a fallen leaf stuck on his head.
“Come here,” she said, reaching out with her hand without really thinking about it, “you’ve got something stuck in your hair.”
She carefully plucked the leaf and adjusted his hair with a few gentle strokes. Only when he shivered under her touch and looked at her as if he was almost scared she realized that maybe she had crossed a very definite line she wasn’t supposed to cross, not now, not ever.

She started to apologize, but before she could even finish one word a loud thunder broke the silence.

They both instinctively looked up to the sky, now way darker than just a few seconds before and full of gray clouds.
A few, heavy drops began to fell, and it took less than a minute for those sparse drops to transform into a fierce downpour.

It looked like just a sudden burst of bad luck, but Toshinori couldn’t stop thinking about the villain activity reports he had checked the day before. There was something definitely unsettling in that torrential rain and the strong winds it had brought along and, if he recalled correctly, more than one report – if not all of them – had mentioned different instances of bad weather or sudden changes in the atmospheric conditions right before a villain attack.

“It’s probably just a heavy thunderstorm or a downburst,” he said to Inko, trying to underplay the definitely suspicious nature of the rain as he unzipped his hoodie, taking it off and placing it on her shoulders. “But I think it would be best if I go check it out at its source.”
Inko threw him a very worried glance, to which he responded with a laugh.
“Don’t worry, I’ll bring you back to the station first,” he added, adjusting the hood on her head so that she could be a bit more sheltered from the rain. “But please be advised, I fear that the return trip will be somewhat rough.”

He was right. The winds were incredibly strong and coming from so many unexpected directions, and keeping a straight path was almost impossible. He had to focus on flying so much that he couldn’t even appreciate how tightly Inko was holding onto him.

He landed just behind the station building.
The streets were now empty, the crowd gathered inside the shops and the station.
“Can you go back home alone?” he asked as he gently let Inko down. The rain was still pouring down copiously, but there, at the feet of the mountain, it didn’t seem to be as ominous and powerful as it was before. Furthermore, judging by the looks of things, the trains were still working.
Inko nodded, still frightened for the turbulent flight.
“I’m sorry,” he said with a small smile. He really didn’t feel good leaving her behind like that, but he had no other options, so he waved at her and prepared to jump off again.  

“Wait,” she said, searching frantically in her purse and taking something from it. “Please take this.”
He took the small bundle from her hands and stared at it quite confused. It looked remarkably like-
“Oh my, not that!” Inko almost screamed, hastily taking back the dirty All Might themed socks he absolutely did not see the first time he visited her apartment.
She shoved the socks back in her purse and took another package out.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to – this should be the right one I hope – I wanted to give it to you later as a thank you for talking about UA with Izuku but then I thought that it was probably better to give it to you right now even if maybe it’s not really an appropriate moment,” she said as fast as she could, pushing the small parcel in his hands.

He opened it cautiously in spite of the urgency of the situation.
It was one of the omamori sold at the shrine.

“It’s for a safe return home,” she said, her gaze fixed on her shoes. “I didn’t – I wasn’t sure, but then… I mean, there were others too, and maybe it was just a bad idea, I don’t know, but since I was already there I thought… And this can more or less apply to any situation, I guess?”

Unconcerned with the heavy rain still falling on him, Toshinori stared for a while at the charm in his hands, then at the woman in front of him, almost swallowed up in his oversized drenched hoodie, fidgeting around, torturing her hands and mumbling something about being insecure and hoping he didn’t find her gift offensive.

Usually, people told him to go.
Urged him to go.
Move forward, go beyond.
That was his duty and that was who he was, and he had never, never ever regretted it, not even for a second. And yet now there she was, telling him to come home safely. Hoping he could come home safely.

And maybe it was because of the adrenaline already pumping into his body, anticipating the possibility of a fight, or maybe it was because he had always suspected that in muscle form he had way less blood going into his brain, but he did something that went beyond his wildest dreams of maybe holding hands with her.

It was then, under the pouring rain and the loud sound of a train horn that Toshinori Yagi, age definitely too old for this, kissed Inko Midoriya.
Coincidentally enough, in that same moment and under the very same pouring rain, Inko Midoriya, age 40, kissed All Might.

Chapter Text

Toshinori Yagi, age a shitload more than a few days ago was sitting at his desk in the classroom, staring out of the window, his mind completely blank.

He wasn’t sure of what had happened.
Or well, he perfectly knew what he had done, he remembered that quite clearly, it was what had happened next that confused him a bit. He knew he had rushed back towards the center of the storm, and that there were indeed villains, and that he had managed to take a few of them down and dragged them to the nearest police station, making sure they were properly taken in custody. But it seemed more like someone else had done all of that as he watched, not him. The rest was even more blurred - he went home and then… he wasn’t sure. The only thing he remembered was that he had checked the hour and noticed that two days had passed and it was almost time for their lesson, so there he was.   

“Mr. Yagi?” Ms. Rottenmeier asked from her desk, with an unexpected hint of worry in her voice. “You are here early.”
Toshinori seemed to notice for the first time that the rest of the classroom was completely empty.
“Oh. Yes. I guess I am.”
Ms. Rottenmeier looked at her watch and then back at him and sighed.
“You’ve been sitting there for almost an hour. Are you sure you’re ok?”
He nodded. Just as when it seemed that the teacher was about to say something else, the door opened and some other students entered the classroom.

Inko arrived last, just as Ms. Rottenmeier was about to start the lesson. She was completely out of breath and as soon as she reached her desk she threw her purse on it and, sitting down, she hid her face in her hands.

Toshinori made some sort of confused sound that was meant to be a greeting but she didn’t answer back, so he kept staring at the pots in front of him trying to remember to breathe from time to time. When Ms. Rottenmeier started to bark out the instructions for their brownie bottom cookie dough cheesecake, Toshinori finally turned towards Inko, knowing just too well that it was best to follow what she was doing rather than trying to understand what the teacher was saying.

But Inko hadn’t started working yet and judging from the way she was staring out of the window, giggling and clutching the chocolate bar she was supposed to be melting for the recipe, she had no intention to begin any time soon. Also, upon a closer look, she looked like a complete mess.
Her hair was unkempt, just as if she hadn’t brushed it that morning, and she was wearing her cardigan inside out.

Toshinori threw a quick look at the written instructions and tossed a bunch of ingredients in a pan with one hand while he broke eggs with the other, looking at neither of the two things but keeping his gaze fixed on Inko. She was still lost in her thoughts, not really paying any attention to what was happening around her. That was when Toshinori realized that she hadn’t greeted him yet.

Was she mad at him? Well, she had all the reasons to be mad at him, to be honest, but not with this him – this him wasn’t the one that had villainously kissed her just to run away a moment later.
Unless... she knew.
Maybe she did, and she had decided to inform the media not only of his real identity, along with his current condition , but also of his deprecable romantic behavior. But then again, if she had, he would have already been swamped by reporters and for how distracted he was lately, he was sure that Toshinori hadn’t met a single one.

In any case, he really needed to talk to her.

“Inko…?”
She giggled, clutching the chocolate bar even tighter.
“Inko, are you ok?”
“Ah!” she exclaimed, having suddenly realized where they were and what she was supposed to be doing. “I… I think I’ve spaced out for a while.”

Toshinori nodded, then, since she wasn’t moving yet, took the chocolate bar from her hands, unwrapped it and threw it with her butter in the pan he was using to melt his own ingredients. He gave a few enhanced stirs to the mixture to try and catch up with the teacher and then poured half of it in a bowl and the other half into another. He stared at the two bowls, then handed Inko the one without the giant clump of chocolate floating in the mixture.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” he asked, as he took a fistful of sugar and threw it in her bowl, doing the same for himself after that.
“Yes,” she said, trying to fix her hair. “I think.”
“Your… Your cardigan is inside out.”
Toshinori cleaned his hands into a kitchen towel, then he helped her taking her sweater out and putting it back on, on the right side this time.
“Thank you. I might be a bit scatterbrained today.”

Toshinori grabbed some eggs, squeezed them into another bowl then handed it to Inko as she tried to find at which step of the recipe they were supposed to be.
She gave up pretty quickly and turned to him.

“Would you… Would you kiss someone and then disappear ?” Inko asked with a whisper.
“No!” Toshinori answered quite loudly, spilling the entire bag of flour in his bowl, then taking a few handfuls of it and messily throwing them into Inko’s bowl.

“Mr. Yagi,” Ms. Rottenmeier said from across the room, “I do not know why you feel so strongly against pouring the batter into the pan, but that’s what you’re supposed to do.”
He excused himself and bowed meekly.

“I mean,” he said to Inko after a few seconds, “that doesn’t sound very gentlemanly to do.”
“I know. But… Well. Do you remember… Uhm… Albert?”
Toshinori pretended to think about it a bit, then nodded.
“Well, I met him the other day. And he… We… Kinda kissed.”
Toshinori tried his best to pretend that that was a piece of information just like any other, but he lasted just a few seconds, then he almost choked on his remaining lung, collapsing on the desk under an unexpected coughing fit.
“Oh my, are you all right?” Inko asked, offering him a kitchen towel and gently patting his back.
“Yes,” he said with a last cough, regaining his composure, “I think I just inhaled some flour.”
“Oh. Ok. I was saying… we kissed. But then Albert had to leave in a hurry.”
“That’s rude,” Toshinori commented, placing both his and Inko’s pans into the oven. To be honest it had been more than rude, especially since he was the one who initiated that… intimate exchange and then left, but after all, Toshinori had no reason to feel too outraged by Albert ’s behavior. In the end it seemed that Inko didn’t know about his secret identity - or rather, about his real identity - so it was better to be just moderately indignant.
“Yes but – I mean, I know he had his reasons.”
Toshinori, astonished, stared at her in disbelief. How on earth could she be so understanding when she had all the rights to be furious with him?
“Well,” Inko added, “have I told you that he’s… Very busy?”
“That’s not a very nice excuse,” Toshinori said, not really knowing why he was digging his own grave even deeper than it already was.
Inko shook her head.
“He really needed to go. It’s not the fact that he did that worries me,” she said, tapping gently with a spoon the brick of cream cheese they were supposed to be using next.
“It’s… not?”
“No. It’s just that… I don’t have a way to contact him, and he didn’t contact me either after… that . Which probably means he didn’t like it, don’t you think?”
“Hell no!”

“Mr. Yagi. Whatever you have against ovens today, please keep it for yourself,” said Ms. Rottenmeier with a sharp voice.
“Sorry.”

They kept working in silence for a while as the teacher’s eyes were fixed on them. As soon as her attention was caught by someone else, Toshinori turned back towards Inko.
“I mean, probably he has a good reason for not contacting you.”
For example, he might have panicked so much about what he did that contacting you never even crossed his mind, Toshinori thought.
She let out a deep sigh and stared at the bowl with the other ingredients she was supposed to be mixing together, so Toshinori took it and began whisking quite furiously.

“You’re very kind today,” Inko whispered. “But I’m not really sure about it…”
“Maybe he hasn’t realized that you don’t know how to contact him,” he said, still trying to follow Ms. Rottenmeier’s instructions.
“You think so? I mean he never gave me his number and… he’s very busy I guess…”
“That’s it,” Toshinori said, pouring the bubbly, unreassuring mixture he had obtained into both of their pans and placing them back into the oven. “It might be he’s so stupid he didn’t realize you have no way of contacting him. And he’s busy. Not that I approve his behavior, mind you, but sometimes it happens.”
Inko shrugged.

Since Ms. Rottenmeier had thrown them another deadly glance while tapping her wooden spoon on her desk, they kept working in silence for a while, preparing the third and final layer of whatever it was that they were preparing.

When they were finally done, Toshinori let out a sigh of relief. Somehow, the two cheesecakes he had made weren’t really different from those of their classmates. More or less.
During the process he had kind of lost track of which one was the one he began with and which one was Inko’s, so as Ms. Rottenmeier was approaching their desk for her usual check, Toshinori gave a last, quick look at the two plates in front of him, decided which one looked slightly better and pushed it in front of Inko.

When the teacher reached them, she took a look at Inko’s cheesecake and smirked quite contentedly.
“Are you starting to show your true colors, Miss Midoriya?” she said, cutting the cake and testing it. Her smirk turned into a frown. “This looks barely decent. But the taste is suspiciously on point.”
She gave a last, almost indignant look at Inko, then moved towards Toshinori’s cake.

“Mr. Yagi, yours looks like it just survived an accident.”
Her voice sounded strangely happy once again and with a contented smile she proceeded to the tasting.
“And it tastes as a cheesecake would.” She purposely waited a few seconds, then added something before Toshinori could say anything. “If it was made with veined blue cheese.”
“But how is this pos-”
Toshinori stopped in the middle of his sentence - a bit because Ms. Rottenmeier had already left his desk, a bit because he couldn’t really argue with her without blurting out that his cheesecake had to taste exactly the same as Inko’s since they were made together. He just rolled his eyes and shrugged.

“Thank you,” Inko whispered after the lesson had officially ended, sloppily gathering her things. “You really saved me there.”
“Don’t worry, she would have preferred yours anyway even if you had the other one,” Toshinori said.
“Not just for that… I wouldn’t have had anything if it weren’t for you, I fear. I’m sorry, I was really distracted.”
“It happens,” Toshinori said, watching mildly amused as Inko tried to fit a big spatula in her small purse.

In the end, seeing her so positively flustered wasn’t bad at all. It was as if she had actually enjoyed their… unexpected shared moment of intimacy and that made him happy, because he had enjoyed that, too. However he now had to face the consequences of it - he needed to explain her as soon as possible that it had been just a moment of weakness on his part, because she was so kind and beautiful (and smelled nice), but he really couldn’t put her in such danger. Of course, she was going to get a bit mad with him - with All Might - but he was sure she’d understand. Then he could go back to his original plan of just being friends, maybe trying to avoid being too close and too alone with her to prevent any other unexpected moment of intimacy that would surely be met with less enthusiasm and more disgust.
Yes, he could still make things right.

“It keeps happening, isn’t it?” Inko asked, realizing what she was trying to do and shaking her head. “At this point, I hope I’ll find the way back home without getting lost.”
“I can go with you if you want?”, Toshinori asked, forgetting completely his good intentions from a moment before.
“That would be lovely,” Inko answered.

As they were passing through Musutafu’s shopping district, Inko caught her reflection in one of the many shopping windows.
She was a total disaster.
She had never been one of those people who spend infinite hours in front of a mirror to get that perfect look, that was undeniable, but at least she usually went out of her house wearing matching shoes - something that did not happen that day, she noticed in horror.

She tried to fix her messy hair as best she could, but her gaze kept moving towards the man walking beside her. Maybe it was because he didn’t seem to be one of those people, either, but instead of mocking her for being in such a pathetic state he had been extremely understanding with her, showing her a kindness that was definitely uncommon in people you barely knew - and too often in people you’ve known for a lifetime, too.

She felt a strange, fluttering feeling in her stomach, but since the last days had been a hell of an emotional rollercoaster, she really didn’t pay any attention to it. She paid definitely more attention to Toshinori’s profile, coming and going in the shopping windows as they kept walking.

There was something familiar in him she really hadn’t noticed before that moment, for some strange reason. For a split second she got the wild crazy impression that he almost looked like-

A scream in the distance made her almost jump.
She froze in her tracks, as Toshinori moved a step in front of her. He looked incredibly tense, way more than usual, as he tried to understand from where the scream was coming.
Was that a villain attack?
If it was, there was a good chance All Might would get on the scene.
Inko’s heart started beating incredibly fast as she tried to get on her tiptoes to catch a better view of what was happening in the distance, when something swift passed above them. She looked up in the sky with anticipation, but she soon realized it was some other hero and not him.  

She looked around a bit more, since it was common for more than one pro hero to arrive on an attack site, but after a while, it was clear that All Might wasn’t there. Inko sighed and turned towards Toshinori. He was still rather uneasy, still staring nervously in the distance.

“Are you ok?” Inko asked.
When it was clear that whatever the problem had been it was now solved he turned towards her, smiling and looking more relaxed than before.
“Yes, I am. Sorry, these... Kind of things makes me a little bit nervous.”
He offered her his arm and they began walking again.
“Me too, actually,” she said.

They kept walking until they arrived at Inko’s building. Only after she waved Toshinori goodbye, thanking him once again for taking care of her since she felt so scatterbrained, she remembered that strange thought that had crossed her mind earlier during their walk. She hesitated in front of the lift door for a second, then retraced her steps and exited her apartment building.

Toshinori was already just a dot in the distance, albeit a tall one.

Inko shook her head - she wasn’t thinking too clearly, obviously. The only thing he reminded her of was her mop, which had saved her a lot of times, true, but just from dust and dirt and not from villains.

Chapter Text

Toshinori Yagi, age at least 4 hormonally confused teenagers , was hiding behind a bunch of bushes on a chilly peaceful evening while staring nervously at Inko’s balcony above him.

According to Apologizing for Dummies , which he had read at least five times during the previous day, every good apology began with a trip to the florist and that explained why he was holding a bouquet of roses. However, it didn’t explain why said bouquet was the size of a shrub and heavy as hell. That was because Toshinori, having absolutely no idea of what kind of flowers he was supposed to get, had asked for the florist’s advice, telling the man behind the counter that he had made an oversized mistake , and that he needed something equally proportioned .

Maybe he should have chosen his words better.

Anyways, the positive thing was that the bouquet at least matched the huge box of pralines that Toshinori had bought, because, apparently, chocolate perfectly covers the bitter taste of apologies . He wasn’t really sure about that, to be honest, but he had nothing to lose. Especially because, if everything went according to his plan, he wasn’t going to see Inko anymore (as All Might, at least). The steps were clear: first, apologize both for the vile act he had committed and for leaving without a trace for so many days. Second, explain to her that, while he had appreciated very much their… labial approach , it was best for everyone - especially her - if it remained a single, one-time only, definitely not to be repeated event.

Yes. It was as simple as that.

Toshinori took a deep breath, made sure no one was around and then buffed up and jumped on the balcony.

Inko was sitting at the dining table with a worried, almost scared expression on her face. At first Toshinori thought that it was his fault - maybe she had already caught a glimpse of him and was now getting (rightfully) mad - but after a while he realized that the source of her worry was something else, since she was still lost in the screen of her phone and wasn’t aware of his presence. When she finally noticed him standing there, Inko’s face lighted up a little as she hurried to the window to let him enter.

Amongst all the fake conversations Toshinori had had in his mind, he never thought about what he could say to greet her, so he resorted to a less shouted, more awkward version of his own catchphrase.

“I’m here,” he muttered while bowing his head.
He suddenly remembered the praline box and the flowers, so he shoved them both in Inko’s hands while avoiding looking at her in the eyes.
At least, Inko seemed to be equally embarrassed, and that somehow made Toshinori feel slightly less uncomfortable. However, even if she was smiling, her cheeks slightly red as she stuttered a few thank you’s, he could easily see that on her face still lingered that trace of worry he had noticed moments before.

The thought that she could (already) be in some sort of danger made him forget every single page of Apologizing for Dummies and all the awkwardness of that meeting.

“Is it a bad time?” Toshinori asked.
“No, no,” Inko said, placing the box down on the table and looking around for somewhere to put the flowers in. She opened a few cabinets until she found a vase. She examined it, thought about it for a while, then searched again until she found a bigger one. “It’s just… I’m worried about Izuku.”
She filled the vase with water, then placed the bouquet in it. Admittedly, it looked more like an overgrown bush than a bunch of flowers for how big it was, but it was too late for second thoughts about it.
“Something happened?”
“No… or well, yes… I mean, his class went on a school trip this morning,” Inko said as she picked up her phone, “he should have been home by now, but apparently there was a bad accident on the highway and the school bus got stuck in traffic.”
She gave a quick look at the screen and sighed.
“But he’s ok,” she added, “they were far from the accident spot. Just got a bit delayed, that’s all.”
Toshinori smiled, feeling a strange sense of relief that somehow went beyond the regular comfort every hero feels knowing that ‘nothing happened’.
“That’s good to hear.”
“You must think that I’m paranoid,” Inko said, plopping down in one of the chairs. “But it’s getting dark and he never had to come back home so late, and what if his ‘friends’-”
“I can go and pick him up if you want?”

That was, without any doubt, an unexpected change in his plan.

But how could he sit down and tell her all the awful things he planned to tell her when she was clearly distressed? He simply couldn’t ignore how worried she was and announce he had no intention to see her again and leave. And well, picking up her kid - and thus saving him from potential danger - was, in a sense, just hero work, which meant it was something strictly professional and nothing more.

“Are… are you sure it’s not a bother for you?”
He shook his head. There was also the fact that he had promised to talk with the kid a bit about Yuuei, too, and that was the right occasion to do so before disappearing completely from both their lives.
“He attends Aldera Junior High, doesn’t he?”
“Yes. Izuku said he’ll text me when they get there, it won’t take long I hope. It would make me feel so relieved if you really could…”
“Don’t worry. I’m glad I can help.”

Toshinori stopped, not sure what to say after that. Now that the small issue ailing Inko was more or less fixed he felt extremely embarrassed again.

He took a deep breath. 
Obviously, he couldn’t announce that that was their last meeting ever just to land a few minutes later on her balcony to drop her kid, no, but he could still carry on part of his plan and begin with his apology. That sounded reasonable. Unable to choose which of the seventeen different ones he had rehearsed was the best, he decided to resort to improvisation.
However, Inko interrupted him with a loud gasp before he could even begin to speak.  

“Oh my,” she said, jumping off of the chair she was in, “I’ve left you standing there!”
Toshinori tried to tell her that it wasn’t a problem, but she quickly dismissed his words and, taking him by the arm, brought him to the couch and made him sit on it.

The couch made a worrying screech, but Toshinori ignored it.

“Do you want anything to drink…?”
He shook his head, but that was, apparently, the wrong answer: Inko stared at him with a confused expression on her face for a few moments, as if she was considering what she was supposed to do now that escaping behind the kitchen counter wasn’t an option.
She wiggled a bit on her spot fidgeting with her fingers until she finally decided to sit down next to him without saying a word.

Toshinori took advantage of that moment of silence to speak.  
“I… I am sorry for the other day,” he finally managed to say. “I got stuck with the reports for those villains and-”
“So there were villains?” Inko asked him, turning quickly towards him.
“Yes, and I’m not really good with paperwork, I have to admit that, so I got stuck-”
“Are you ok?”
Toshinori looked at her, not really sure about what she was referring to. Surely, paperwork had devastating effects on him, but usually nothing to be really concerned about.
“I thought it was just a false alarm,” Inko said with a hint of worry in her voice. “I’ve tried to check the news to see if there was any mention of a villain attack in Batu, but there were none…”
“The police suspects there are more people involved and wants to keep it secret for the time being,” he said an instant before reminding himself he really shouldn’t be telling her any of that.
“You didn’t get hurt, did you?” she asked, gently turning his face towards her and examining it, left side, right side, lifting his chin as her eyes darted all around him, trying to find any sign of him having being injured a few days before.

He didn’t answer.

However, he pulled her close and kissed her.
And that was a slightly major change of plans.  

Unlike the first time, this kiss wasn’t rushed - it was slow and gentle, almost nonchalantly lazy, while in reality Toshinori’s insides - or whatever was left of it - were on the verge of exploding as a thousand different thoughts ran wildly through his mind. But he decided to ignore every single one of them, as well as the voice (strangely reminiscent of Gran Torino’s one) shouting at him to run away immediately from there and never come back. He preferred to lose himself in that sweet, laid-back moment.

When a good ten minutes later Inko’s phone beeped loudly, forcing them to move away from each other (and breathe), Toshinori felt equally annoyed and relieved by that interruption. He was now even more unsure of what he could say than before, so he just glanced towards the phone.
Inko pulled it towards her, grabbing it and burying her red face in the screen.
“I… I think Izuku has arrived at a school,” she whispered with a trembling voice.
He nodded.
Getting up from the couch felt extremely awkward, and neither of them said anything until Inko opened the window.

“I’ll be back soon,” Toshinori managed to say as he threw himself off of the balcony.

As soon as All Might disappeared from her view, Inko ran towards the couch and threw herself on it, hiding her face into a pillow.

She was so sure - a hundred percent, no, a thousand percent sure - that he was going to politely tell her that their kiss in Batu was just on the spur of the moment and that it had absolutely no meaning for him and it was just a single, one-time only, definitely not to be repeated event (or something like that).

But… he had kissed her again.

She had even prepared a few conversations in her mind to tell him that yes, she could perfectly understand what he meant, and that surely some Privacy Safety Protocol was to be taken into consideration there, she was aware of that, of course. And she was going to say all of this while keeping a very straight, composed face that couldn’t let transpire the emotional turmoil his kiss had thrown her into. She had even practiced her last goodbye - a cute, absolutely dry smile while leaning against the window frame as he jumped away from her balcony - since she was so certain that his visit was going to be the last one.

But now there she was, waiting for him to come back.

She quickly got up and rushed towards the bookshelf, grabbing one of the books in haste and leafing through it. It was as if All Might had completely skipped the central part of His Honor, Her Quirk , where the ever-in-peril hero painfully tries to deny the romantic feelings he has towards the main heroine because he fears their relationship could put her in danger, and jumped straight to the book’s ending where he finally gives in to his feelings.

She stopped, the book still in her hands.
That was completely crazy.
All Might’s behavior had nothing to do with the actions of a fictional hero in a cheesy, clichéd story, and she probably should stop taking romantic advice from that kind of writings.

She put the book back on the shelf and sighed.

A quick trip to the bathroom was definitely needed, to refresh herself in hope that her burning cheeks could turn back to normal before Izuku could see her. She washed her face, wondering if she was supposed to put some makeup on or not, or at least a few drops of perfume or some lipstick… No, that was definitely too much but some chapstick maybe? She shook her head and just tried to fix her hair.
The sudden memory of All Might’s fingers running through it as he held her so tight she thought he’d never let her go made her insides twist on themselves.

She needed to think about something else before setting her whole face on fire again, so she decided to keep her mind busy by folding a load of clean clothes that were lying around. By the time she heard Izuku’s excited noises coming from the balcony, a quarter hour had passed and she had managed to fold a grand total of one sock.

Toshinori sat nervously at the kitchen table, nodding at whatever the kid was telling him about some obscure hero he saw once in a short article on a shutdown newspaper of thirty years before. To be honest, his knowledge was impressive, even more for a young boy of his age, his enthusiasm nothing but commendable, and in any other circumstance Toshinori would have loved to listen to that plethora of anecdotes. However, following him at that moment was just too hard, since his head was too full of thoughts that went short-circuit every time his eyes met Inko’s.

Stopping on the way back to the apartment to get some take-away after having more or less kidnapped Inko’s son in secret from a dark alley close to his school had probably been a bad idea - not as bad as kissing Inko again , but bad nonetheless. The food was actually delicious (the boy had suggested the place, claiming it was one of his mom’s favorites) and Inko had appreciated the gesture, true, but now he was stuck at the dinner table in an extremely uncomfortable situation.

He couldn’t - he flinched at the mere thought of that word - dump Inko in front of her son, there was a limit to how improper he could be and he had already passed it by far that evening. Which meant that he was left with just one option - wait until it was time for the kid to go to bed, and then dump Inko, this time trying not to kiss her again in the process, because heaven only knew what was going to happen if they started kissing again late at night without any fortuitous beeping to interrupt them.

“It was at least this big!” the boy exclaimed, stretching his arms out as far as he could and accidentally sending a glass flying in the air. Inko caught it with her quirk before it fell on the ground and scolded him.
“Izuku! Be careful!”

Toshinori smiled, watching as the boy apologized profusely, just to rush back to his story with the same enthusiasm as before.

Maybe eating with them had been a bad idea, yes.
But it felt… good. Not the same kind of good as those ten minutes or so on the couch, which probably ranked pretty high in Toshinori’s personal “best ten minutes or so of my life” list, of course. This was a fundamentally different experience. But, somehow, it was equally good.

A pang of guilt hit him as hard as a punch in the face.
He was just pretending, after all. He was pretending to be there for other reasons than to break Inko's heart, pretending he was someone else - or at least, pretending he wasn't also his other self. And as if that wasn't enough, his other self was also pretending he wasn't also this himself - everything was just a big, complicated lie and he was villainously fooling Inko and her son.

He glanced towards Inko, who was laughing and telling her son she didn’t believe a single word of what he had just said, while the boy claimed that it had to be true because he had read it on an old abandoned website.

How did he manage to stoop so low?
When did he begin thinking that omitting a big chunk of truth wasn’t lying, after all? How could he possibly face Inko again during their next lesson and pretend nothing of... that had happened?
He truly was the worst villain of them all.

To hell with his plans and the need of keeping things secret, there was only one thing to do and he had to do it fast.

“There’s something I have to tell you.”

Both Inko and her son turned towards him as they fell silent.

Well, maybe not that fast. Maybe he should put a little bit more thought in his newly found resolve of telling Inko the truth. The kid was surely a good kid to the core, and Toshinori was strangely sure he’d never go and sell his secret for a few minutes of fame, but there was no meaning in giving him that burden for nothing.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” he announced with a smile.

Toshinori closed the door behind him and went standing in front of the mirror, deflating back into his normal form. Inko was going to be so… disappointed? Yes, probably disappointed. Maybe a bit angry, too, it was reasonable. But he didn’t really picture her as someone who could get infuriated and make a scene. And that was probably worse, because she was going to politely tell him to get away from her as fast as he could and never, ever bother her again.

And he would have to oblige. 
And face the consequences of his actions, even if it meant to have his secret identity exposed and to work even harder to make sure that not even the worst villain - himself included - was going to even begin to think to hurt Inko.

With a deep sigh he took a good look at himself.
There wasn't much he could offer her beside the truth.
He just needed to get ready for that.  

“All Might?”

Toshinori turned in panic towards the bathroom door, buffing up.
It was still closed.

“Mom says you can use the towels in the cabinet under the sink,” the boy said from behind the door.
“Thank you, my boy!” Toshinori said, trying to sound as natural as possible and not as if he had lost a few years of his life.

He waited a bit longer, then flushed the toilet, washed his hands and his face and went back to the living room.

Inko had already cleaned the table and was washing the dishes, while the boy seemed to be checking something on the TV. It wasn’t the perfect time, maybe, but, as long as the kid was distracted with something else, he could talk with her in private, their voices hidden by those coming from the living room and the noise of the water running from the faucet.
He moved closer to her.

“Do you need a hand with-”
“All Might!” the kid exclaimed, “I’ve found it! This is the video I was talking about!”
Toshinori turned towards the boy and tried to blather something about having to help Inko with the dishes, but she spoke first.
“I’m fine,” she said with a smile, nodding towards Izuku. “Please go, don’t worry.”
Toshinori sighed.

He ended up on the couch, watching some sort of amateur video of a less known hero taking down a bunch of villains. After that, they watched another one, and another, and so on, until Inko sat down next to him. They were so close that her leg was brushing against his, and he felt worse than a villain for how much he enjoyed that sweet, innocent physical contact. Unable to look at her, Toshinori pretended to be focused on the images on the screen.

After a while - the boy was still going strong with a comparison between different types of long-range quirks - Toshinori felt something soft and pleasantly warm leaning against him.
Inko had fallen asleep and was now lightly snoring.
He couldn’t help but smile.

There he went his chance to talk to her. Was there any sense in waiting for the boy to fall asleep too - provided he would, since he was still bursting with energy - just to wake Inko up and unload on her everything he needed to say? Probably not. And maybe it was better this way - maybe he could find a better way to tell her.
He wasn't sure there was one, though. 

When the umpteenth video providentially failed to load for who knew what technical issue, Toshinori managed to interrupt the boy, pointing at Inko and suggesting that it was time for him to leave.

The boy didn’t seem too eager for that, nonetheless he nodded in understanding and accompanied him towards the balcony.
Before he could find another reason to keep him there longer, Toshinori waved at him and jumped down.

Chapter Text

Toshinori Yagi, age please I don’t care anymore just end me quickly stared at the colored blobs of flour and sugar in front of him. He was partially sure one of them had just moved on its own, and he was also completely sure they weren’t supposed to do so. Mrs. Rottenmeier had repeated at least twenty times that the recipe of the day required a whole lot of concentration, but with a head full of thoughts and a chirpy distraction skipping all around him, Toshinori really couldn’t focus on that culinary nonsense.

Inko was… happy.
Sparkling.
Radiant, even.
She was whistling and singing softly under her breath, moving gracefully here and there to grab a bowl or to place her tray of perfectly round, (inanimate) pastel-colored circles of batter in the oven. Sometimes she whispered the words loud enough for Toshinori to hear them, sometimes they were just a soft murmur accompanying her as she flawlessly followed the teacher's instructions.

Toshinori had planned to meet Inko in front of the Cultural Center’s gates before the lesson started, to take her somewhere more private - by any means as far as possible from that bunch of eavesdropping secretaries - and tell her the truth, but as he was waiting for her, Naomasa had called him with some unsettling news over that band of villains he had faced in Batu and by the time the detective had explained everything, Inko had already arrived and taken her place in the classroom. And well, the room was full of people, so talking to her about private matters was definitely impossible.

The sudden touch of her hand on his arm startled him.

“Let me see,” she said, leaning in closer to Toshinori’s tray of ominous blobs and poking one with a fork. “Just put them in the oven for another five minutes, but at a slightly lower temperature.”

She gave him a reassuring pat on his back and returned to her own biscuit shells while he did as she instructed. However, when he re-emerged from placing the tray in the oven - he had to kneel down to set the timer and regulate the temperature, since the oven was too low for him - he found her waiting for him with a very curious smile on her face.

“...What?”
“There’s something you haven’t told me,” Inko said, quickly turning away from him as she started gathering the ingredients for the next step.

A shiver of terror ran down Toshinori’s spine.
She knew.
How?
And why would she wait until they were in the middle of baking macarons to confront him?
It didn’t make much sense. Was she planning to unmask him in front of everyone? Not that she didn’t have all the reasons to do so, but he never thought…  
He tried to sound as casual as possible.

“Told you… what?”
“Who your mysterious girl is,” she said, carefully avoiding his gaze and focusing a bit too much on stirring the ingredients in her bowl.

He let out a tiny, indiscernible sigh of relief. To be honest, he had no idea what she was talking about, but she didn’t seem to have the intention to reveal his secret identity nor his deprecable romantic behavior to the whole class, and that was a positive thing.

“You know,” she said, mistaking his confused silence for awkwardness, “you told me you’re here because of a girl.”
“Oh. Well. Yes.”
“But you never told me her name.”

Toshinori stared at her in silence for a while, watching as she almost dropped her whisk in the bowl, considering the possibility to tell her that she was the mysterious girl, but the room was still full of people and it wasn’t the right moment. Not that the right moment really existed… But a private moment was surely better than that.

Which meant that he needed to come up with a name, unless he wanted to answer even more questions. And well, wasn’t he All...bert, after all?

“Inés,” he said, regretting immediately his choice. Was it too obvious?
It didn’t seem so, since Inko quickly nodded and went back focusing on her work.
“I was wondering,” she said mixing frantically whatever was in her bowl, “is she… You know?”
“Uh?”
“I mean, is she… like… Your girlfriend now?”
That was a very difficult question.
Was she? Not that it really mattered though. Even if she were, she was going to be so upset with him (and also very disappointed with him being who he was) that she was going to dump him on the spot. Which saved him the trouble to dump her, actually.

“I-I’m sorry! I didn’t want to pry like that!”
He shook his head.
“Don’t worry. It’s just… I’m not sure what we are, me and her. It’s complicated.”
“I… I kinda understand,” she said with a deep sigh. Then she turned towards him and gave him a bright, sweet smile. “But I’m sure things will work out for you.”
Before he could say anything else, the timer on the oven rang, and they both went back to their work.

Thanks to some kind of miracle, Toshinori’s colored blobs looked more like the biscuit shells they were supposed to be and way less like living things. He gathered the ingredients he needed for the filling and began mixing them together while Inko resumed the cheerful singing from before.

However, after a few minutes, she stopped again.

“Why don’t we go out together sometime?”

Years upon years of dodging punches and kicks and quirky stuff thrown at him had not prepared Toshinori for that. Inko’s question hit him mercilessly in the face and left him without words, only a vast assortment of mumbled sounds.
Did Inko want to go out with him ? With this him? But what about the other him? Should he feel flattered or mildly hurt? Or both?

“I mean,” she added, giggling a bit at Toshinori’s worried face, “me and Albert and you and Inés.”
Toshinori spent the next minute doubled on the desk, coughing.

When he finally managed to breathe again and after having bowed in excuse to a very annoyed Mrs. Rottenmeier, Toshinori turned back to Inko.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I mean, I don’t think Inés wants to go out with me.”
“Why not?”
Well, for starters, because the very same idea of that… complicated double date implied that Inés - the real Inés - wanted to go out with the other him, which wasn’t this him.
But he couldn’t explain that to her at that moment.
Thankfully, he had another, perfect reason why nor Inko, nor Inés (or any other human being on the planet) wanted to go out with him.

“I’m…” he took a look at himself, lingering a bit on the few blood stains on his shirt from the earlier coughing fit and noticing for the first time that an uncooked biscuit shell was stuck on him, “I’m not what you could call a good catch.”
“Ah, don’t say so,” she said nudging him, “you’ve got your own charm.”
He gave her a feeble, unconvinced smile.
That was the most polite way someone told him he looked like a freak he had ever heard.
“And you’re kind! It's so hard to find kind people nowadays,” she added as she began piping her buttercream filling.  
“Well,” Toshinori said with a deep sigh as he started mixing sugar and butter, “the thing is… There’s something I need to tell her.”
“Is there?” Inko asked, sliding the vanilla beans he had completely forgotten close to him.
“Yes. And I think she won’t like it that much.”

He picked a knife and poked the vanilla beans.
Of course she wasn’t going to like it. He tricked her and lied to her, and, on top of that, in the end he was just this very less appealing version of himself. His only hope was that she could understand that hurting her had never been his intention.

“I don’t really know what’s going on between the two of you,” she said, gently taking the knife from Toshinori’s clearly inexperienced hands and showing him how to scrape the vanilla bean, “but why don’t you bake her something?”

“...Uh?”
“Isn’t it the reason why you’re here? To impress her a bit with your baking skills?”
He gave a small, weak nod.
“You see,” she said as she expertly kept scraping the bean, “if you put your feelings in what you bake, they will surely reach her. Even if she gets upset for what you tell her.”

“You really think it could work?” Toshinori asked, a hint of doubt in his voice.
Inko smiled.
“Of course!” she said, as cheerful as possible.
She really couldn’t tell Toshinori that she had just quoted one of the cheesiest lines of The Chocolate Quirk and that she thought it could work just because it had perfectly worked in the book, when the hero confesses his true identity to the main character.
But wasn't it true that somehow cooking can help communicate one's true feelings? 
After all, she would surely appreciate such a gesture.

The thought of All Might baking something for her set her cheeks on fire.

And well, it wasn’t really the same thing, no, but they did eat together the food he had brought! Well, apparently it had been Izuku’s idea (she had casually asked her son a few questions here and there the next day) and there had been no confession of any sort, but wasn’t it just the beginning?
...Maybe?
She wasn’t sure, to be honest.

All Might had left as she was sleeping - at first she had just pretended to fall asleep so she could snuggle a bit against him without Izuku really understanding what was going on, but in just a minute she had fallen asleep for real - and once again she had no way of contacting him and, she suspected, he had no way of contacting her beside landing on her balcony, but... This time she wasn’t feeling as anxious as before. She had given it a bit of thought and realized that he probably couldn’t give her his contacts so easily - what if they fell in the wrong hands by mistake? - and he surely didn’t have a lot of free time, being the number one hero and all of that. So she had come to the conclusion that she just had to wait until his next visit.
And maybe his next visit could be when Izuku wasn't home.
Well, so that they could talk obviously, not-
Not that -

“...Inko?”
Toshinori’s voice brought her back to reality.
“Inko, you’re scraping the desk…?”
“Ah!” she said, quickly putting the knife back as if she had never used it, “I… I got distracted.”
“I think I’ll give it a try,” Toshinori said with a smile. “To the baking thing, I mean.”
“You know what,” she said, cleaning her hands in a kitchen towel and searching for her phone in her bag, “I’ll give you my number. Call me if you need any help when you bake.”

She watched as Toshinori tried to clean his hands in his shirt, smudging an undercooked macaron shell across his chest and then tried to clean his hands from that on his trousers, just to end up fumbling with his phone moments later as he saved her number.
She hid a giggle behind her hand.
Whoever this Inés was, she was a lucky girl. And, if she was so blind to stop at Toshinori’s outer appearance - which, by the way, wasn’t even that bad as he thought it was - then she was also a bit stupid, in her opinion.
Well, a lot stupid.
Complete dumbass.
She probably didn’t deserve him anyways if that was the case.

Inko kept watching Toshinori for a while longer, as he tried, a bit messily, to stuff his piping bag, squeezing it to fill it as much as possible without realizing that the buttercream was already coming out from the other end.

What on earth could be this terrible thing he had to tell Inés?
Probably that he once forgot to return a book to the library on time, that was it. She really couldn’t think of any other crime someone like him could possibly have perpetrated.

“Watch out,” she said, gently touching his arm and pointing at the growing blotch of buttercream on the desk.
“Oh fuck,” Toshinori exclaimed. Then he suddenly realized Inko was listening and tried to apologize for his language. “Shit I’m sorry - oh - I’m…”
She giggled a bit and reassured him it was fine. 

Yes, Inés was indeed a very lucky girl.

Half an hour later, Toshinori had managed to produce a bunch of decent looking macarons.

True, they were not arranged in a perfect shape like Inko’s and most of the class, his construction was more akin to debris of a skyscraper after a violent battle than cute pyramid , but presentation wasn’t that important after all.

Mrs. Rottenmeier approached their desk with a grin on her face.
She took a look at Inko’s macarons, then at her, then again at the perfect, round, tiny sweet sandwiches she had made. Mrs. Rottenmeier picked one and ate it in silence.
“Hm,” she said with a smirk that - strangely enough - didn’t give any sarcastic vibe, “Excellent. Finally.”
As usual, before Inko could ask her to explain herself, Mrs. Rottenmeier moved onto Toshinori’s macarons.
She took one tentatively, almost waiting for the rest of them to explode and carefully bit into it. She took a good look at Toshinori, raised an eyebrow, then glanced quickly towards Inko.
“These could work,” she said. But, before Toshinori could even begin to feel surprised, she added her usual remark. “As yo-yos.”
Mrs. Rottenmeier didn’t wait for an answer and left the desk, muttering something indistinguishable to herself.

“Let me know when you make up your mind on what you want to bake,” Inko said as she finished packing her things. “I have a hundred different recipe books at home, I can take a few pictures for you.”
Toshinori nodded.

After all, it wasn’t such a bad idea. If he settled on something simple and paid attention he could probably make something decent and then he could ask Inko out for a date - well, All Might could - and tell her the truth.

Was some sort of barely edible bribe going to change how things would go?
Probably not, and Toshinori knew this just too well. Inko was going to be disappointed anyways and either she was going to dump him on the spot or she was going to give him enough time to tell her he planned to quietly disappear from her life. And yet, if making something for her could prove that at least he genuinely cared for her notwithstanding the mess he had made, he was glad to make it.

Chapter Text

With one deep, loud sigh, Toshinori Yagi, age every day it increases by ten years at least, realized that it was time to seriously reconsider his plans for that day.

Earlier on that very same morning, he had left a sticky note on Inko’s window telling her he was going to drop by before evening. Thanks to what her kid had told him ( All Might) the last time he had seen him and thanks to what Inko had casually told him (Toshinori) over the phone as they were chatting over sweets, he knew for certain that Izuku, that afternoon, was going out with a young neighbor couple living one floor above Inko to watch the latest hero movie.

And that was a perfect occasion to be alone with her, to finally tell her the truth.

The rest of the morning had gone by trying to bake a bunch of simple cupcakes and, unexpectedly, Toshinori was kind of satisfied with the result. They didn’t look like the picture Inko had sent him at all, probably also because he had baked them in a few mugs he had since he had no proper cupcake molds, but the taste was actually good, even if they were a bit on the sweet side.

Around noon he had packed the cupcakes into a box and since he still had a few hours left before meeting Inko, he had paid a visit to Naomasa’s office to check on the latest news.

And that was when things had gotten worse.

While he was there, the detective had received several worrying activity reports on that band of villains from Batu and Toshinori simply had to go to check what was happening.

As the police suspected, the villains had found a way to amplify their quirks to create hindering weather conditions to support their petty acts of villainy, and were in the middle of a robbing spree. And well, for sure the hindering part of their plan had worked perfectly. Of course, All Might had managed to bring to justice once and for all every member of the gang, but it had taken him way longer than intended and had left him drenched and partially frozen and almost late for his first (and last) date ever.

And that was the reason why he was standing under Inko’s balcony soaking wet, a worn out box of probably worn out cupcakes in his hands and the lingering fear he was dying of hypothermia in his head.

And then things got even worse.

With a sudden flash of light and a roaring thunder echoing like an evil laugh, it started to rain. Naturally, this time.

Toshinori took a look at the time - he still had a few minutes left before being officially late - and thought about what to do next. The most reasonable thing to do was to wait a bit, possibly sheltered from the rain, eat a cupcake or two to get a bit of energy (having accidentally used too much sugar didn’t sound that bad now) and then see if he could manage to buff up and meet Inko.

The other possibility was to just ring her bell as he was and talk to her - but what if she wasn’t going to believe him? What if she asked him to show he really was All Might and all he could do was cough up blood and die on the floor of her apartment? 
To be honest, he was starting to feel quite bad.
Not to mention that if he was going to meet her like that, she was surely bound to get worried for him - for Toshinori that is - to the point she wasn’t going to hear anything he had to say until he was safely inside her house, warm and dry.

“Good heavens! What happened to you?”

Yes, that was exactly what she was going to say, with that exact tone of worried voice that somehow was both a scolding and a kind reassurance that everything was going to be ok.

“You’re soaking wet! Come inside.”

Let’s face it, she wasn’t going to leave anyone outside in that pouring rain - it had worsened in those few minutes Toshinori had spent trying to decide on what to do, but being already wet to the bone he really hadn’t noticed - and surely she wasn’t going to leave outside someone she knew.

“...Toshinori?”

He took his gaze away from a puddle that was forming on the road and noticed with horror that he wasn’t simply imagining her voice - she was there, standing in the entrance of the apartment building, trying to catch his attention while covering herself as much as possible from the rain.

“...Inko?”
“What are you doing still there! Come inside,” she said, gesturing him to follow her.
For a split second, Toshinori considered the possibility of tossing her the cupcakes, declaring he was really sorry and then run away. But he needed to face the consequences of his actions, and she deserved a proper explanation.

He lowered his head and followed her.

“I saw you from the balcony,” she said as she repeatedly pressed the button to open the lift doors, “I was there for, uhm, reasons. And I noticed you on the street.”
When the doors finally opened, she rushed inside, dragging him with her.
“You couldn’t hear me from up there, so I came down.”
She hastily pressed the button for her floor.

“How did you get wet like that? It’s been raining for just a few minutes,” she said, taking a good look at Toshinori and staring at the small puddle he was making on the floor.
He looked around in panic. He couldn’t tell her what the real reason was without initiating the whole confess-your-secret-identity thing and he wasn’t ready - just a few moments more, he just needed to get a bit of strength and courage-
“I’m particularly absorbent.”
That was a good moment for the hypothermia to definitely kick in, ending him as quickly as possible.
But Inko simply nodded, as she really hadn’t listened to what he had just said.
She kept staring at the lift doors, tapping her foot and grumbling.

When the lift finally stopped, she rushed towards her apartment, closed the front door behind her with a slam and hurried towards the window. She checked the balcony a few times and then, with a deep sigh, she turned towards Toshinori.

“You’re going to catch something,” she said. 

Inko threw another quick look at the window.

It seemed that All Might hadn’t arrived yet. She was so worried that he might get there when she was downstairs and think she wasn’t home and leave, but she had been away for less than five minutes, she had left the TV on and she had kept checking the sky when she was calling for Toshinori. It was safe to assume that All Might was just running a few minutes late. Or at least she hoped so.

She let out a sigh of relief and finally gave a good look at her guest.
He was a mess - way more messy than his usual mess - and he was dripping water on the floor.

“Stay here,” she said, hastening towards the bathroom to grab a few towels. When she returned to the living room, she cast another glance at the balcony - still empty.
She placed the towels on the table and picked the biggest one.  
“Inko, I... I need to-”
“Don’t worry,” she said, stretching the towel and gesturing Toshinori to bend down a bit and placing it on his head. “Dry your hair a bit before you catch a cold.”
“But… I’ve got… Here,” he said, offering her the box he was carrying.
“Oh my, where are my manners?” she said, taking the box from his hands and placing it on the table. Well, she knew where her manners were - they were on the balcony, worriedly checking if All Might was in sight. She gave another good look at Toshinori. Was she forgetting anything else? “Good heavens. Give me your jacket, too.”
“No,” he said, “I mean… There’s something…”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, casting another quick glance at the window and silently cursing the dark gray clouds in the sky. “You really risk to get sick if you keep that wet jacket on.”
He tried to protest again, but a bad coughing fit interrupted him.

For a while, Inko forgot to keep checking the window and focused on her trembling, clearly already sick guest.
“See?” she said, offering him another towel and stroking his back as he coughed.
He finally seemed to agree with her and took his jacket out and handed it to her.

And that was when Inko realized that things were a bit more worrying than expected.

First of all, even Toshinori’s shirt was soaking wet.
Secondly, it was badly stained with blood.
And lastly, due to the white fabric being wet and stuck on him, she could perfectly see a huge, ominous wound on the left side of his chest.

Normally the last two things would have been enough to make her scream and call an ambulance as quickly as possible, but by now she had gotten acquainted with Toshinori well enough to know that her panicked reaction would only make him panic, too, and that he would end up rushing out of her apartment way before any ambulance could get there. And well, she knew that his health wasn’t really the best and she had already seen him coughing up blood from time to time. And the stains on his shirt didn’t seem to be directly connected to that scary looking wound, which looked more like a scar rather than a fresh injury.  

So, since aside being wet and cold he didn’t seem in pain, Inko just went on folding Toshinori’s jacket over her arm, while she gently asked him if he needed any help with anything. 

Toshinori stared down at his shirt, embarrassed. Though Inko had had the grace to avoid saying anything, he had noticed how her worried eyes had lingered on him.
“It’s… It’s just a scratch,” he said.
It wasn’t a lie after all - he was pretty sure that part of the blood wasn’t even his, and that it looked way worse than what it was because the stains had spread due to the wet fabric.
Inko looked at him, not really convinced.
“It looks bad, I know, but it’s because of… an old injury,” he said, trying to cover his left side with his arms.
She looked at him in silence for a while, then decided to speak.
“What happened?”
“I - I slipped as I was walking and probably scratched-”
“No, I mean, what happened there?”
She was pointing at where his scar was.
“I got this during a... Uhm… A villain attack.”
Technically true.
“Is this why they make you nervous?” she asked, her voice just a soft whisper.
“More or less.”
She nodded and gave him a small smile.
“Anyways, you can’t keep that on or you’ll freeze to death. I’ll give you one of Izuku’s shirts and something to stay warm.”
As he had suspected, trying to talk with her at the moment was just meaningless, and well, he was starting to feel really, really bad. The offering of something warm was too tempting to refuse it.
“That would be lovely,” he said with a small sigh.

Inko disappeared in the hallway, just to come back a few minutes later.
“The bathroom is the first door on the right. I’ve left the hair dryer out. And the disinfectant and the band-aids too, should you need them.”
“Thank you.”
“And here’s a shirt, I hope it fits. And…”
She hesitated a bit, then handed him a soft bundle he recognized instantly.
“Something you can put on to stay warm while your clothes dry.”
He looked down at his own All Might hoodie and smiled.

It took Toshinori a good ten minutes before he finally felt dry and warm again. He was still checking himself in the mirror, trying without much success to fix his hair and wondering what was the best way to start his apology turned into a confession (or was it more a confession turned into an apology?) when he heard Inko screaming from the living room.

He rushed out of the bathroom, his mind already racing towards the worst possible case scenario - villains, villains who knew about him and knew about Inko and were now there because they also knew he felt so bad he didn’t have the strength to fight a pickle and-

Inko was standing in front of the table, the worn out box of cupcakes in her hands.
“What happened?” Toshinori asked, his eyes still darting around the room, looking for something - someone.
Inko stared at him in disbelief.
“Inés,” she whispered, showing him the box, “she’s waiting for you!”

It took him a while to understand what she meant, and he felt stupid and guilty for it. It was obvious, wasn’t it? He still hadn’t told her the truth, so for what she knew, he still was just Toshinori who was planning to meet Inés on that very same day.

“Oh, yes, well, probably…”
“What do you mean, ‘probably’!” Inko exclaimed. “How late was your date?”
“I- uhm, I’m not sure… Half… half an hour ago? It wasn’t even a real date I just-”
“That’s no excuse,” Inko said, casting a quick glance towards the window. “She’s waiting for you and you’re not arriving and outside it’s pouring and you’re not letting her know, I bet she’s worried sick!”

The trembling in her voice felt like a slap in his face.
Of course she was worried sick. The way she had rushed back home, how she kept checking the window… Inko was clearly worried for him - well, for All Might. Who was now officially late and hadn’t even had the decency to contact her.

“Please call her,” Inko said. “You can use the landline if you need to.”
Toshinori attempted a feeble smile and shook his head, picking his phone from his pocket.
“I can use mine. I’ll call her right now.”
“I’ll set your clothes to dry in the meanwhile. But I’m worried it will take a while.”
“That’s ok,” he said as he watched her throw a last glance at the window and then disappear in the hallway.

Toshinori stared at his phone screen, thinking.
He still felt too weak to just explain everything to Inko and he probably had given her enough worries and delusions for the day. And his cupcakes were probably all ruined and terrible, and maybe her kid was going to come home soon and…
And maybe it was all just an excuse.
But for sure his confession could wait a bit more, no?
Just a little while.

“I’m so glad you called,” Naomasa’ s voice said from the other side of the line, “I need to ask you a few things - am I reading this right, did you drop a frozen villain on the ground and walked away with a frozen leg…? Was the leg yours, because it’s phrased really weirdly here and it wouldn’t be the first time-”
“Uhm, yes, I think so,” Toshinori said, staring at the empty hallway.
“...Are you all right?”
“Eh?”
“You sound strange. Are you sure you’re ok…? Are you still frozen?” Naomasa asked, switching from a mildly, jokingly jaded tone of voice to a more worried one.
“No… I… I need a favor.”
“Ok. Just ask.”
“If I text you a number, can you call it and pretend that you’re a police officer and that All Might has asked you to call to pass a message?”
“That... that’s not pretending, that’s exactly what it is and why are you whispering?”
“You need to add that I - All Might - have been like… I don’t know, forced to stay there to fill in necessary paperwork?”
“I wish we could do that, honestly,” said the detective, following with a long, deep and clearly accentuated sigh.
“Well,” Toshinori said, throwing a worried glance at the hallway after having heard the sound of a closing door, “will you do it or not? I don’t have much time.”
“Wait - has this anything to do with that woman you’re stalking, perchance? I can’t be involved in any of this-”
“No - I mean, yes, but - I’m not stalking her, I swear! ...Please?”
There was a moment of silence, followed by another, even deeper sigh.
“Ok. Just don’t make me read any of this on questionable newspapers tomorrow. Or regular ones.”
“I know, I know! I’m just trying to fix things! Please, do this for me ok? I swear I’ll take care of my re-” Toshinori looked up to see Inko entering the living room. “-take care, bye, love you!”

Inko froze in her tracks and turned towards him.
“Good heavens,” she said.
“What…?”
“Was that… a love confession?”

Inko giggled while Toshinori tried to explain her for at least the fifth time that it wasn’t really a love confession, it was just a way to bid farewell and he was sure everyone was saying it nowadays, even to strangers. He kept waving his hands all around, visibly panicking, and she couldn’t help but find the whole situation incredibly cute.
Inés was really a lucky girl.

She was about to tell him there was no need to worry so much when her phone rang.

Answering unknown numbers wasn’t something Inko usually did, but this time she didn’t think it twice. Not only All Might was almost an hour late, Izuku was also out in that terrible weather. He wasn’t alone, and it wasn’t the first time he had gone out with their neighbors, who were extremely reliable for that matter, but she was a worrywart at heart and she couldn’t change that.
She answered immediately.

“Good evening, this is Detective Tsukauchi speaking.”
Inko felt her heart sink in her chest.
“I’m calling on behalf of All Might,” the unknown voice said. 
Admittedly, she felt slightly more relieved in knowing the police wasn’t calling because of Izuku. But just slightly.
“Did something happen?” she asked, moving from the couch where she was sitting with Toshinori and hurrying towards the window, checking outside even if she knew it had no meaning.
“Ah, no, please, don’t worry. I’m just relaying his message since he’s busy with a villain investigation right now. He wished to contact you directly, but there are some... Circumstances preventing him to do so.”
“I understand,” Inko said. It wasn’t a lie after all - she felt a little bit bummed, true, but she knew how busy All Might was - if his life was anything like the life of the heroes in her romance books, he surely had no time to spend in activities like… Well, like sitting on the couch to chat with a friend, for example.
“He wishes to let you know he’s ok and he’s extremely sorry he can’t be there.”
“Thank you for letting me know. Could you… Could you pass him a message, too?”
“I suppose so, yes.”
“If I’m not imposing too much, could you let him know that I’ll be… Uhm… Waiting for further instructions, please?”
“Of course. Consider it done.”

When Inko returned to the couch, she looked way more relieved than before.
“Sorry,” she said with a tinge of embarrassment in her voice, “I really had to answer that. I’m a worried mom, after all.”
“Of course,” Toshinori said, nodding. “Is everything ok?”
“Yes. But, more importantly,” she said, clearly trying to change the subject, “how are you feeling?”
“Way better, thank you.”
Physically, at least. Morally speaking, he felt rather shitty.
“I’m glad to hear that. Do you want something warm to drink while your clothes dry?”
“It would be wonderful, thank you.”

They spent another hour or so chatting about everything and nothing while drinking hot tea and eating questionable cupcakes - he had casually mentioned he planned to throw them away and make a new batch for Inés, but Inko had scolded him and claimed it would be a waste since he had worked hard to bake them.

They were so engaged in their conversation that the sound of the front door opening startled both of them.

Inko’s kid quickly tossed his shoes on the ground and his drenched jacket on the coat hanger and hurried towards the living room.
“Mom I’m back,” he said excitedly, “is-”
He stopped when he noticed Toshinori sitting on the couch.
“Oh,” he said. “When you said you might had guests I thought-”
“Hahaha,” Inko said nervously, getting up and making shhh gestures not meant to be seen by Toshinori to her son, “this is Toshinori, one of my classmates, he got stuck in this bad weather so I’ve invited him inside.”
The kid made a quick, small bow, then turned towards Inko.
“So is All-”
“-How was the movie?” Inko almost screamed, cutting him off. “Was it really good as they say it is? Did you have fun? You haven’t eaten too much popcorn again haven’t you?”
Luckily enough for Inko, her son understood that the All Might subject had to be dropped for the time being, and launched himself in a lengthy explanation of the movie, getting excited over the plot, the actors, the fighting scenes - basically, over everything. When Toshinori asked if the movie was better than the latest Vindicators one, the boy basically vomited a verbose comparison of the two, getting completely lost in it.

It didn’t take long before the conversation evolved into an enthusiastic exchange between the two of them on the whole action movie genre, interrupted only when Inko asked Toshinori if he wished to stay for dinner, since they seemed to have still much to discuss (and since his clothes were, regrettably, still a bit damp).

Against all the common sense Toshinori had (which, at this point, probably wasn’t even that much to begin with), he accepted.

Toshinori was forced to listen to the kid explaining him about this obscure hero he had found again, and he had maybe a bit too much fun commenting with this or that piece of trivia the kid himself had (unknowingly) told him the last time they ate together and watching his surprised reaction.

When it was finally time to go home - the kid this time didn’t try to monopolize him and after dinner just sat down to play videogames - Toshinori considered taking Inko on the side to explain everything to her. He felt way better than before, he had rested enough and dinner had given him enough energy, but after taking a look at her smiling face, he decided to wait a bit more. A few days weren’t going to change things, after all.

“You know,” Inko said as she opened the apartment door to let him go home, “why don’t you come back sometime?”
“Ah,” he said, uncertain of how to answer that. Of course he would love to, but chances were that after their next encounter, she wouldn’t want him anywhere near her. “Yes. Maybe.”
Inko’s smile faded away as she leaned against the door.
“I mean,” Toshinori added, realizing that from her point of view he probably sounded a bit too unexcited, as if he hadn’t enjoyed the evening and wasn’t really keen on spending time with her again, “I don’t want to impose on you, I-”
“I could help you preparing something for Inés,” she said.
“That would be lovely, but are you sure it’s-”
“Not a bother, not at all! We could make macarons!”
“You do remember how my last ones turned out don’t you...?”
“They’ll be all right, don’t worry. It’s just that I’ve seen this website where they decorate them with tiny little flowers on the side, and they would be just perfect! So?”
Toshinori lowered his head, sighing. There was no way he could turn down her offer without sounding like a total jerk - at least not without explaining her everything, and he had already too many things to make up for to add another one to the list.  
“So… I’ll let you know when I’m going to meet Inés again, ok?”

They wished each other a good night and then he finally went home. 

Inko closed the door and hit her head on it.

What was she doing, exactly? Trying to… bribe him to visit her again?

Of course Toshinori wasn’t going to be excited to spend time with her and Izuku - he surely had better things to do with other people (Inés), she perfectly knew that. But when he had answered her in that meek, standoffish tone she had felt so bad and… hurt? But the evening had been so pleasant for her that she had even forgotten to check out of the window from time to time to see if All Might was there…

A sudden thought crossed his mind.
What if he had come, after all? And he saw her eating with someone else? True, Toshinori was just an acquaintance, a classmate, maybe a friend and nothing more, but All Might had no way of knowing it. And she didn’t even have a way to contact him and explain!

For some reason, she felt the most wretched, treacherous woman ever conceived. Not even those annoying antagonists in her books were so villainous.

She hit her head on the door again.

Chapter Text

Toshinori Yagi, age soon scientists will use me to relative date other kinds of fossils, took a deep breath and rang Inko’s intercom. That was the first and last step in his plans for the day - aside baking macarons, but he was kind of hoping that Inko could take the lead for that.

He had left a sticky note for her, telling her he - All Might - wanted to meet her the next day, if she didn’t have other commitments. He knew she hadn’t, because he - Toshinori - had asked her when she was free to meet and bake something, and she had given him a few possible dates. So he had picked one for this himself and another for his other self.
In retrospective, it sounded way more complicated than what it was.

As he made his way to Inko’s apartment, he felt a strange mixture of guilt and happiness in the foretaste of the day he was about to spend, but the more he dwelled on the happiness part, the guiltier he felt. Luckily, before he could change his mind for the hundredth time and improvise a confessiopology (or maybe an apologession?) plan on the spot, he reached the front door where Inko was waiting for him.

She invited him inside and led him towards the table where she had already prepared everything they were going to need for the day. Her kid was sitting in front of the TV, watching some hero stuff, his nose buried in a notebook in which he was frantically writing. Much to Toshinori’s amusement, the boy gave him just a meek, not-so-interested greeting.

A small chitchat and a cup of tea later, and they were already at work.

Following Inko’s instructions proved to be way easier than Ms. Rottenmeier’s, probably because there was less barking involved (and more smiling, but he tried his best not to focus on that) and because Inko made sure to properly show him what he was supposed to do and how. From time to time the boy would come and check on their progress, just to be shooed away by his mother, who didn’t want him to stick his finger everywhere for “tasting purposes”.

In the end, baking the macaron shells turned out to be actually fun.

When it was finally time to prepare the buttercream filling, Inko picked some small bottles of food coloring and turned towards Toshinori.
“What is Inés’s favorite flower?” she asked.
“I… I’m not sure,” Toshinori answered. He gave a quick look around the house, hoping to spot a vase of flowers or at least any kind of hint, but without much success. Sure, Inko had seemed to like the roses he had brought her the first time he had tried to confess her the truth but ended up kissing her again, but that didn’t mean they were her favorites.
He tried a different, slightly less subtle approach.
“What is your favorite flower?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Inko said, giggling a bit and picking up her phone to scroll through some pictures. “If it’s for Inés, it can’t be my favorite flower.”
Well, thought Toshinori, actually…
“But if you don’t know, then…”
Inko stopped leafing through the pictures and stared at him for a while.
“Sunflowers,”  she said, turning her phone towards him and showing him the picture of a perfectly round macaron with tiny little yellow flowers on the side. “I think they suit you.”

Inko watched as Toshinori carefully lay down the piping bag with the yellow cream and picked up the brown one, starting to pipe the center of the tiny sunflowers. The first three attempts had been a complete mess (yet Izuku had disposed of the evidence without too much hassle). The next two had been somehow passable, with irregular flowers that weren’t as smudged and blotchy as before. The one Toshinori was working on at that moment was coming out quite nicely. The petals were still all uneven, but the sunflowers were beginning to be recognizable.

And, much to Inko’s surprise, that kinda angered her.

She took a step back from the table where they were working, almost frightened.
Luckily, Toshinori was just too focused on his work to notice her sudden movement and how pale she had become.
What… What was that feeling?
She closed her eyes, shook her head and took a deep breath before looking at Toshinori again. He had begun to decorate the next macaron, which was coming out... very nicely. It still lacked the definition and detail of those in the picture, but it looked good enough to be sold, probably. And then she felt it again, some sort of resentment, a tinge of irritation towards him and his work.

She kept watching him in silence, confused.

Apparently, how better Toshinori’s macarons came out, the more Inko felt annoyed by them.
Was it because she wasn’t expecting him to be so good at it? She picked up the one he had just made, examining it.
No, it wasn’t for that. She was actually proud of him, and yet…
Maybe she was feeling a bit envious because he got better than her at decorating them?
She took the macaron she had decorated to show him the right movements he was supposed to do and compared it with his.
Hers was, unquestionably, better.
So it wasn’t for that, either.

She put the two macarons back on the table and cast a quick glance towards her bookshelf. It wasn’t the right time to turn to cheesy literature for advice (if there ever was a right moment for that), but her options were kind of limited - for obvious reasons, she really couldn’t discuss that with Toshinori. Nor with Izuku.

She tried to focus on the cover of the books - surely there must have been one where the main character felt just like she was feeling…? None came to mind, not even that annoying protagonist from Quirky Jealousy -
She almost let out a loud gasp when the sudden realization hit her.
Jealousy.
That was the strange feeling that was tormenting her.
But that couldn’t be! What was there to be jealous of, anyway?

Toshinori was just her friend - sure, he was gentle, and kind, and he made her giggle and laugh, but that was it! And well, yes, there was something cute about him, maybe his strange hair - how inappropriate would it be to ask if she could touch it to check its fluffiness? Because she had been wondering about that for a while, now that she thought about it - or maybe it was the fact that he was so tall and his hands were so big yet thin and elegant and-
Shit , she thought - and then she mentally reprimanded herself for using such a language, even if it was just in her head.

Inko turned around, to take a look at her couch, as if it could confirm her that she wasn't, in fact, moderately interested in Toshinori and consequently jealous of poor, innocent Inés.

She had been on that very same couch just a few days before, smooching All Might, of all people and she was going to meet him the next day, too! And well, some more smooching was, maybe, to be expected. And the mere thought of it was enough to set her cheeks on fire and make her heart beat as fast as it could while her stomach wriggled on itself!

So then why, why on earth at that moment the thing she wished the most was that those stupid sunflowery macarons were for her and not for Inés?

“Shit,” Toshinori whispered, bringing Inko back to reality. “My hair got into the buttercream.”
Yes, Inko thought, make them all hairy and-
She shook her head and took a deep breath.
“Here,” she said giggling and pulling out the hairband she had in her hair, “use this.”
She made him bend down a bit and pulled his hair into a tiny ponytail, making sure to keep his long bangs pulled back from his face.
“Thank you,” he said, picking up the piping bag again and a new macaron shell.

Inko watched as he carefully piped the buttercream in the center of the macaron, not too much but not too little, then carefully placed another shell on top of it and started to pipe out one tiny little petal after the other.

Maybe she was just much more confused than she had just found out she was, but strangely enough, when Toshinori was so focused and with his hair pulled back like that he kinda reminded her of-

“All Might!”
Izuku’s sudden loud scream startled both Inko and Toshinori.

She turned quickly towards the windows, her heart in her throat - was he there? Did he see her playing with Toshinori’s hair, which, by the way, was as fluffy as she thought it would be? Was he mad? What if he was jealous? He could probably snap Toshinori’s spine in two with just one hand if he wanted to. And that sounded somehow hot... but that was not the moment to think about that.

Toshinori froze in his tracks and turned towards the boy.

Did the kid know? How was it possible? Was it because of the hair?

He was so sure no one would recognize him in his true form now, even in full costume with his hair pulled back and his bangs up - if anything, people would mistake him for a huge fan (of himself, which he totally wasn’t, especially after all this… villainous affair with Inko). But then again the kid was just too perceptive, too observant to be put together with the rest of his fans…

He gulped down. Was this the way he had to tell Inko the truth? If it had to, then be it, he had kept the thing going on far too long, honestly.
Taking a long, deep breath he tried to speak.
“I-”

“All Might's on TV!”
The kid crawled quickly towards the TV, sitting as close to the screen as possible. “I need to record this!”

It took Toshinori a while to realize that no, his secret identity was still secret (at least for now) and that he needed to start breathing again if he wanted to keep being alive. And only then he noticed that in his fear he had accidentally squeezed the piping bag a bit too much since it had basically exploded on the table.

“I’m sorry,” he tried to say to Inko, hoping she wasn’t going to get too mad for that too - he already had plenty of things to apologize for.
“Uh?” she answered, not even looking at him, lost in the images on the screen.
Of course , Toshinori thought, staring, too, at himself as he was being interviewed. Of course she’d be more interested in that him, he knew it just too well. And yet… It hurt a bit. Because, after all, it was still him.
But not only he couldn’t blame Inko - he had absolutely no right to do so, given his whole behavior.

“I’ve… uhm… spilled a bit,” he said when the interview ended.
Only then Inko noticed the huge blob of buttercream on the table and the exploded piping bag.
“It was so sudden and I got startled and-”
“It’s ok,” she said, interrupting him. She giggled a bit. “I got quite startled, too.”

It took them a few minutes to clean his mess and to start again, but at the end of the day, Toshinori had a cute box (courtesy of Inko) with a dozen sunflower macarons in it.

Was it going to have any meaning at all?
He still had doubts about it.

“Mr. Yagi,” Inko said, imitating Ms. Rottenmeier’s snotty voice as she took one of the macarons they had discarded and took a bite of it, “these are very good.”
“As what? Wheels for tiny cars?”
Inko laughed and then shook his head.
“No,” she said in her normal voice, “as macarons. They’re very good. And I’m sure they’ll carry their message across.”
He could almost swear he heard a strange, unexpected trace of melancholy in her voice, but she probably was just a bit tired - as he was- from spending the whole afternoon baking.
“I hope so,” he said.

Inko sat at the table, staring at the last macaron left.

Toshinori had insisted to help her clean the kitchen once they finished baking and as they were doing so, Izuku had helped too, cleaning the leftovers, leaving only one survivor behind.

She picked it up from the plate and took a small bite.

By all means, it was far from perfect and yet... it tasted better than any other she had ever eaten - including hers, and those that Ms. Rottenmeier had made and that had seemed to Inko the absolute confectionery perfection just a few days before.

When did things become so complicated? She hadn’t noticed, really.

She felt as the worst two-timing ever existed, even if she wasn’t even sure she had a relationship with All Might after all and even if she had done absolutely nothing with Toshinori.

That night, Inko fell asleep on the couch, surrounded by more or less all the cheesy romance books she owned. The only one she hadn’t consulted was The Dewey Decimal Hero , because, let’s face it, there was no way that the solution to her little confusion problem was that All Might and Toshinori were the same person.

However, from her anxiety and caffeine-induced literary submersion Inko had gathered two interesting conclusions: one, almost every single book she owned featured a jealous character and two, regrettably, said character was always, without any doubt, the villain of the story.

Chapter Text

Toshinori Yagi, age a nonzero complex number, gently tapped on Inko’s window and waited.

He watched through the glass as Inko’s head popped from the hallway and looked around, uncertain if she had heard something or not, spotted him and then hurried to let him enter.

He felt even more embarrassed than the last time.

Somehow, he managed to greet her in a cheerful way, though he tried his best not to be too cheerful since he was there to basically break her heart. He also made every possible effort to restrain himself from blurting out everything the minute she opened the window and then jump from the balcony.

“So, uhm, do you… Do you want to come inside?” Inko asked.
He shook his head and pointed to the city behind his back.
“I… Actually, I thought we could go somewhere,” he said. “If… if you’re ok with it.”

After having paced back and forth in his apartment for a couple of hours, Toshinori had come to the conclusion that carrying out his confessiopology in Inko’s living room probably wasn’t the best thing to do. Of course, chances were that she was going to take out her slipper and hit him on the head as she kicked him out of her house, yes, but what if she didn’t? What if she wanted him to go away but wasn’t so openly vocal about it? What if she wanted to run away but she couldn’t? The idea that he could end up trapping her in her own apartment... scared him.

No, he needed some sort of neutral ground where he could talk calmly with Inko, giving her all the time and space she needed and the possibility to act how she wanted to.

Luckily, he had the perfect place in mind.
Well, perfect.
Decent maybe.

Inko nodded, then looked around, slightly confused.
“I… Uhm.. Should we…?”
“Ah yes, well... this way?”
He moved a bit to let her step out on the balcony.
“I - I guess I’ll just take my purse and - uhm - leave the window slightly open just in case we - uhm, come back here?”
She phrased it like a question but she didn’t give him time to answer - not that he had an answer for it anyway - and went to grab her purse and a light jacket from the hallway.

“Are you ready?” All Might asked her.

Now, that was a difficult question to answer.
She didn’t feel ready at all.
She had thought she did, that morning, after the longest shower of her life and a few monologues in front of the mirror, but now that All Might was standing there in front of her, all her doubts and insecurities had suddenly resurfaced.

She had reflected a lot on her feelings and had decided that what she felt for Toshinori was, at best, just some sort of tiny, little, unexpected dismissable insignificant crush, due probably to the fact that she hadn’t had any domestic interaction with basically any other human being aside Izuku for years . Wasn’t it nice to cook together? Of course it was! It was that sort of complicity with another adult human being that she was missing in her life. She just hadn’t realized how much she was missing it. And well, she couldn’t have that with All Might, or at least not yet, because he was, well, All Might. He probably had a life outside his hero work, but she couldn’t expect to be immediately part of it.

No, he definitely needed time before that could happen. It was like the hero of Quirk! Check Me Out,  who is so famous that he needs to run security checks on the main character to make sure she is not a villain with vicious intentions. Actually, Inko couldn’t exclude the possibility that All Might had to check her criminal record before inviting her out for their date.

And so she had decided to put aside her pointless little crush to focus exactly on the time she was going to spend with All Might, getting closer to him, so that sooner or later they could have that sort of… domesticity Inko longed so much for.

However, now that All Might was standing right in front of her, awkwardly telling her he thought they could go somewhere (like a real date!), she almost felt as she was… pretending. Or lying. And, let’s face it, she wasn’t a good liar, he was probably bound to notice that she had a terrible secret she couldn’t confess.
Maybe he had already done it!
And maybe that was the reason why he was staring at her with such a worried face!
...Or probably it was because she hadn’t answered his question yet, as she had gotten lost in her thoughts.

With a slightly too loud sigh and a quick shake of her head, Inko decided that it was now too late to have second thoughts. She was going to stick to her plan and have a good time with All Might and that was surely going to disperse whatever feeling she might have for other tall, rather dorky, sweet, kind men suddenly appeared in her life.

“Are… Are you ready…?” All Might asked again.
“Yes,” Inko whispered, stepping on the balcony and leaving the window slightly ajar behind her.  

All Might picked Inko up with such an ease that made her forget completely her last breakdown on the scale from just a few days before, and, in the blink of an eye, they were flying in the air.

Just to stay true to her resolution of having a good time, she did her best to enjoy being carried like that, completely wrapped in All Might’s arms and feeling exceptionally safe, snuggling even closer to him. Unfortunately, their journey didn’t last more than a few minutes, and soon he was helping her stand on her own two feet on what it looked like the roof of a tall building.

After giving a quick look around, Inko realized that they were standing on the top of Musutafu’s Cultural Centre. It seemed to her a very bizarre choice at first - why there, of all the places? - but then she noticed that it was the tallest public building of the area, excluding some private skyscrapers that were bound to have, well, a private terrace, too. It was a nice way to enjoy the hustle and bustle of the city on a warm afternoon, without being seen by its gossipy citizens.

All Might took her by the arm and brought her towards a sunny spot overlooking one of the less busy streets. There was a picnic blanket spread on the ground, with a cute box and two bottles of iced tea next to it. He sat down and invited her to do the same.  

Inko felt her cheeks starting to burn as her heart began to beat incredibly fast. Had he organized this? Some sort of… city picnic? For her? It was such a sweet thought!

She sat down beside him, her heart on the verge of explosion. She felt happy and excited, and well, maybe even a little bit worried - but it was a thrilling kind of worry, and not a frightening one. They were pretty much alone, and he had set up some sort of romantic mood with the picnic blanket and all, and well, they were both adults... But they were also still in a public place! Surely he didn’t… They couldn’t…

He cleared his throat and started talking.
“Inko,” he said, picking up the box lying on the ground close to him, “there is something I need to tell you.”
He sounded so serious, almost solemn.
Her gaze fell on what he was holding in his hands.
It looked exactly like the food boxes she had at home, and that made her giggle. Who would have guessed that she and All Might shopped for kitchenware at the same discount shop?

However, for some strange reason, her smile suddenly disappeared.

It was a box just like the one she had given to Toshinori.
Toshinori who, by that time, was probably somewhere with Inés, eating his annoyingly good macarons with her, laughing at how silly it was to be worried about whatever it was he had to confess, ending up in an awkward silence that would surely make the two of them get closer, while the world around them would slowly disappear, until they kissed, a sweet and gentle kiss at first as they held hands just to become something deeper and more passionate and-
And…
And she was a liar, and a villain, the worst villain of them all, and there was no way Inko could ignore her feelings anymore.

“I don’t think there is a good way to tell you this,” Toshinori said, his eyes lowered on the box he was holding, trying to find the courage to look at Inko.
It took him a while and a deep breath, but he finally raised his gaze.

Inko was crying.  

That… wasn’t a good start. Not at all.
Of course, some crying was bound to happen, he knew that and he had tried to adequately prepare (he had a packet of paper tissues in one pocket and a brand new handkerchief in the other). But was this supposed to happen before he started talking?
Was it because of the box?
Maybe she had recognized it and she had already understood everything?
He felt his heart sinking down to his feet.
How could villains do their foolish acts of villainy and bear with the guilt?
Mustering all the courage he could find he tried to ignore her tears and carry on with his monologue.

“You see, I wanted to tell you before but-”
“I can’t do this.”
He stopped, confused.
“What?”
“I can’t do this,” Inko said as she started to cry even more, tears flowing down her cheeks. “I’m a terrible person!”
“Inko I- I’m sorry but-”
“I like you,” she said sobbing, “but I like someone else, too.”

Oh.

That was something he had never even considered, especially since they had - well, kissed, and more than once, and she had seemed happy about that, so...
Wait.
Wait, was this someone else Albert then?
He had thought he was Albert, but... maybe he wasn’t?

“And... I don’t think you deserve this - you’re such a good person and I - I…”
Her words became unintelligible as she sniffed and sobbed and tried to talk at the same time.
Toshinori waited in silence, not really knowing what to say, or what to do.
“So I don’t think I can see you again,” Inko whispered after a while. “I’m sorry.”

He nodded, slowly, unsure of exactly what had just happened.
He… had just been dumped, most likely.
Toshinori wasn’t sure he had any right to feel that upset about it, since he was basically there to dump Inko in the first place, and yet… it hurt.
There was someone else.
At least he didn’t have someone else! He just was someone else, and that was something completely different.

But well, she had someone else.

He didn’t say anything as Inko slowly got up on her feet, trying to (unsuccessfully) dry her tears with the sleeves of her jacket, sniffling. He wasn’t sure what to do anymore - there was no real reason to tell her the truth now, aside cleaning his own conscience. For the rest, she was better without knowing his secret after all - maybe it wasn’t fair to her but it was surely better for her safety.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, as a new wave of tears fell down her red, puffy cheeks as she sniffed and sobbed. “I… really am. I… Goodbye.”

She didn’t wait for his reaction - not that there would have been one, confused and astonished as he was - and clutching her purse she took a quick bow and then ran towards the emergency stairs, disappearing from his view.

After a few, interminable minutes, Toshinori deflated, letting himself fall on the ground, staring at the sky above him.

He didn’t feel that good, to be honest, but it was as a huge weight had been lifted from his chest. It wasn’t the way he had imagined and he was still a tacky liar, but wasn’t it better in this way? He wasn’t the one who had broken her heart, and Inko wasn’t aware of things that could potentially put her in danger.
After all, it was for the best.

He still felt like shit, though.

He waited a little bit longer, just enough for Inko to get out of the building and into the streets, probably hurrying home - or hurrying to meet the... other Albert ? - and then he got up, picked his things and meekly left the building, using the stairs.

Chapter Text

Toshinori Yagi, age far, far older than any other fellow human being,  was aimlessly walking in the busy streets of Musutafu’s shopping district, trying to convince himself that he wasn’t just wandering around but that he was actually engaging in some useful “undercover patrolling”.

As he dragged his feet along the way, bumping into basically every other person coming from the other direction and leaving behind himself a wake of “ I’m sorry, madam ” and “ My bad, sir ”, something of a very familiar green caught his eye.

Sitting there, in the corner of the same café where he had met her what felt like an eternity ago, was Inko, sunk into an oversized armchair and clutching a giant steaming mug of something. Her hair was messy and her eyes were puffy and red. It was obvious that she had cried again - or that maybe she had never stopped - and that felt like a punch in Toshinori’s nonexistent stomach.

He knew just too well what the most sensible thing to do was: walk away as fast as he could and leave her alone, hoping Inko hadn’t already caught a glimpse of him from her seat - he was still wearing the same clothes he had before, after all.

Of course he knew.

He knew it when he looked around and spotted a clothes store just a few steps ahead.

He also knew it when he entered said shop and purchased the first unremarkable t-shirt he could find and he knew it even when he pushed his other shirt and jacket in the first trash can he saw, together with the rolled up picnic blanket and the damned box of macarons.

He perfectly knew it when he stepped into the café.

However, he didn’t care about it.

To be honest, there was some sort of reasoning behind his behavior and it had nothing to do with the masochistic hope of finding out who the other Albert was, or so Toshinori wanted to believe. But unless he planned to keep lying and meeting Inko in his true form - a thing that would probably lead to disastrous consequences - he needed to disappear completely from her life, and that meant dropping out of Mrs. Rottenmeier’s course, too. That, in itself, was an easy thing to do (though the idea of facing that bunch of secretaries again unsettled Toshinori quite a bit). But well, Inko had his phone number and they were starting to be friends, more or less, and surely if he was to disappear like that she would try and contact him just to know what had happened. And he could just lie through text to her, claiming he had to leave to go and look after an ill relative or that he was being transferred somewhere else for work, true, but telling her in person seemed definitely better. 

Inko took another deep sigh and stared at her untouched drink. She wasn’t sure it was something she liked since she had just ordered the same thing as the person in front of her. She just wanted something warm to hold on to while sitting with her own thoughts for a while.

Her first instinct had been to run home and close herself in her room with ice cream or chocolate or both, but there was a chance that Izuku could already be there, and how was she going to justify her behavior with him?

She had realized that she needed to calm down and gather her composure first, at least until later that night, and so she had stepped into the first café she had seen, hoping to relax a bit and find some peace of mind. However, no matter how hard she was trying not to think about what had happened, the whole scene kept replaying over and over again in her head, to the point that it didn't seem real anymore. It was more like a strange dream and she almost expected to wake up from an uncomfortable nap in an awkward pose on the couch. 
But she was already awake. 

She had... dumped (Turned down? Rejected?) All Might, one of the most - if not THE most sought-after bachelor in the whole country (...world?), number one hero, Symbol of Peace.
For reasons she really couldn’t understand herself.
But she had felt so... confused, happy and jealous at the same time, in such a way that had frightened her. The pang of jealousy and the consequent wave of guilt she had felt had been too much to bear, and so she had done the only thing she could do at the moment - she had run away.

As she had made her way out of the Cultural Centre she had thought that maybe - maybe - once she had sorted out her feelings, once she had gotten over that… thing she had for Toshinori, whatever that was, she could face All Might again. But now she realized that he probably didn’t want anything to do with her anymore - she had had her chance at winning the lottery, and she had wasted it. And, anyway, she had no way of contacting him.

She felt the tears starting to come back again and searched her purse for something clean to blow her nose in when something poked her shoulder. She turned to her right and saw a familiar hand offering her a white, brand new handkerchief.

“It’s yours,” Toshinori said, handing her the handkerchief and sitting down in the armchair in front of her. “I mean, it’s not the one you gave me, I have… uhm… lost that one. So here’s a new one, you can keep it.”
She smiled meekly and blew her nose.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“I saw you from the street,” he said, looking around the café and scratching the back of his head. He didn’t add anything else, but it was obvious that he was worried about the disastrous state in which she was, but was too kind to ask directly what had happened.

“I… I’m sorry you had to see me like this,” she said, trying her best to push back a new wave of tears.
“It’s me who should apologize. I really didn’t want to disturb you.”
Inko shook her head and smiled a bit.
“It’s ok,” she said. “I don’t mind a bit of company, to be honest.”
That was, somehow, true and false at the same time. She really needed to take her mind off of her catastrophic meeting with All Might, and a chat with someone else was probably going to help. Except that the someone else in front of her was Toshinori, who was the main source of her problems right at that moment.

“You see,” he said after clearing his throat, “there is something I wanted to tell you.”

Inko sniffed as a sudden realization hit her.
Inés.
What else could he want to tell her? He had just met Inés, hadn’t he? And he gave her the macarons they had made together, and Inko had told him let me know how it goes when she had waved him goodbye as he had disappeared behind the lift doors, and now there he was, ready to tell her how it went...

She tried to look at him through her watery eyes - he didn’t look particularly happy, to be honest, but that could be because he felt slightly awkward, with her sitting there about to flood the whole place.

He seemed… strangely relaxed, though. She really couldn’t put her finger on it, but he looked more serene than usual - as if whatever was bothering him before, wasn’t doing it anymore.
Which meant that he really had met Inés and talked with her.
And if he wanted to tell Inko how it went… Even after seeing her in that state, it was probably good news.

Poor Toshinori, maybe he thought that hearing that could cheer her up!
Well, he couldn’t know it was going to make her feel even worse.

She really didn’t want to hear that. She had already decided that she didn’t need to tell him she thought she might have feelings for him, she could spare him that. But, on the other hand, she couldn’t pretend to be happy about his relationship with Inés - it would just make her even more jealous and she hated that feeling. And the only way to never hear about that (at least for the time being) was to stop him right now, somehow, and avoid meeting him again at all costs, finding an excuse to skip one, or two, or maybe more of Mrs. Rottenmeier’s classes.

Wasn’t it in Mad About Your Quirk where the main heroine claims she has to leave the town to take care of a distant, ill relative…? That could work. And it could justify her tears, too! Yes, she could pretend that she had just received some distressing news and inform him they weren’t going to see each other again for a while, and then leave.
At least until she could sort out her feelings or, even better, until she got over them.

“Well,” Toshinori said, breaking her train of thoughts, “the thing is I - there’s a… uhm, distant relative of mine who’s ill and-”

A loud crash interrupted him, as every patron in the café turned their face towards the window. Outside, something had just exploded.
In just a few seconds another explosion from somewhere further away on the street made everyone scream - and then another closer, louder blast covered everyone’s voices.
Suddenly there were explosions everywhere outside the café, some frighteningly close, some more distant.
Panic ensued.

Toshinori cast a quick glance outside the window and then at the café. It was full of people and someone was bound to see him, and, of course, Inko was going to realize who he was. But apparently someone was trying to blow up the entire city and he couldn’t just stand still doing absolutely nothing.
He stood up.

Maybe, if he was lucky, and if he was quick, between the chaos and the turmoil of the situation he could still manage to keep his identity more or less secret.

Just an instant before he buffed up and darted outside, two other patrons stood up and with a loud and clear voice began giving instructions to lead the civilians to safety.

“Please do not panic,” said one of them, “we’re pro-heroes. We’ll get you out of here safely.”
The one who had just talked nodded towards his companion, then rushed out of the café as the people there started to cheer for them.

Toshinori thanked his lucky star. If he wasn’t mistaken, the hero who had spoken was Invincible Shield, a well-known pro-hero specialized in rescues and evacuations. The other one was unknown to Toshinori and looked pretty young, so he was probably Invincible Shield’s intern or his new sidekick. In any case, it was exactly what Toshinori needed in order to leave as quietly as he could to go help with the villain attacking the city.

“Please follow me,” said the other pro-hero, heading outside and leading the café patrons into what looked like a transparent barrier. Outside, a network of similar tunnels stretched from all the buildings and a few gathering spots on the street towards a safer place, far from the explosions.

“Let’s get out of here,” Toshinori said towards Inko.
She was trembling, but she nodded and followed him outside the café.
“It’s going to be ok,” he said, as he let her pass in front of him. “That’s Invincible Shield, he’s one of the best for evacuation missions. Nothing gets past his barriers if he doesn’t want to.”
Inko turned a bit towards him, a very small smile on her face.
“You sound like Izuku,” she said.
Toshinori pushed her gently towards the flow of people.
“I have my share of knowledge, too.”

Thanks to the joint effort of Invincible Shield and his companion, all civilians were orderly rushing away from the attack site, protected from the blasts that were still happening all over the place. However, for how safe it was inside the barrier, the air trapped in it was incredibly dusty due to the previous explosions, and the pungent smell of sulfur and dirt mercilessly invaded Toshinori’s single lung, forcing him into a bad coughing fit.

“Toshinori…?” Inko said, trying to stop and turning towards him.
The escaping crowd pulled her a bit further away from him.
“Go,” he said, gesturing her to follow the others. “Don’t worry.”
She tried to put up some resistance and to walk towards him, but it was impossible.
“It’s ok, I’ll catch up later,” he told her.
She didn’t look convinced at all, but there was nothing she could really do.

He felt a bit guilty about it (as if he wasn’t feeling guilty enough), but that was the perfect way for him to quietly disappear into the crowd, find a sheltered spot and buff up to go catch the villain.
Inko nodded as she got pulled further away.
He gave her a thumb up the last time she managed to turn around a bit, waited a few seconds more and then made his exit.

The thing about Invincible Shield's barriers was that, for how powerful they were in not letting anything unwanted inside, they weren’t as strong in keeping things trapped. Actually, whatever wanted to get out, was able to do so with little to no effort.

And that was how Toshinori slid unnoticed outside the transparent tunnels, hid behind a building and disappeared from everyone’s sight.

Coincidentally enough, a few moments later All Might made his entrance on the site of the villain attack, much to everyone’s relief.

Chapter Text

There was only one professional term, learned during years upon years of working in the heroics field, to describe the kind of villain Toshinori was (technically not) facing at the moment, and that word was a huge pain in the ass . Which is actually six words, but Toshinori didn’t have time to focus on such numerical rigidities. 

The villain himself was just another big-headed fool, nothing more than a Sunday exhibitionist, but his quirk was rather annoying, granting him the ability to create a humongous number of small little spherical sponges that could blast off at any given moment, possibly at their creator’s will. Even though the explosions themselves weren’t that dangerous, at least for the pro-heroes on place, the fact that they were unpredictable and happening all over the area, and the amount of dirt and debris they lifted up made localizing the villain a difficult task. 

Toshinori, just like the others, was trying is best to manage damage control while trying to pinpoint his opponent’s position when he suddenly thought he heard someone calling him. 

Which, to be honest, wasn’t really strange. First of all, his colleagues were trying to communicate between each other to come up with a joint plan to end things as quickly as possible and were shouting instructions here and there. And, secondly, it was rather common for a fan or two to be in the middle of a villain attack and to call out his name just to be noticed (even if this usually lead to being noticed by the wrong people). 

However, if Toshinori had had the time, he could have dwelled a bit more on the hunch at the back of his head telling him that something, in this case, was a bit different. Alas, time is a luxury you rarely have when fighting villains - especially those who are blowing up half of the city, one bit after the other. 

But then someone called him again. 

This time he was certain that someone had shouted his name, it wasn’t just a feeling. 
And yet, that strange sensation that something wasn’t completely right still lingered on his mind. But before he could focus on that he realized who was calling for him and immediately forgot about everything else.

There she was, trembling in fear, trying to hide (once again) behind a lamp post.
Inko. 
Ah, how he would have loved to have the possibility to explain to her that lamp posts aren’t the most advisable hiding place… But he had lost that chance, he thought as he cracked a small, bittersweet smile, hadn’t he? And, besides that, he still was in the middle of a villain attack. 
Even worse, they both were still in the middle of a villain attack. 
And there, just a few meters away from Inko, lying on the ground, was one of the villain’s bombs, and it definitely looked like it was about to blast off. 

Toshinori rushed towards the bomb, landing just in time to kick the explosive stuff far away in the air.

“A-All Might! I-” 
Inko finished her sentence with a scream, as another bomb exploded close to where they were. 
“Weren’t you under Invincible Shield’s barrier?” Toshinori asked, realizing just a bit too late that he wasn’t supposed to know that. However, Inko didn’t seem to find the question strange. Probably, she was too scared to notice. 
Or… distracted?
After having regained her composure, she had started to frantically look around, almost ignoring Toshinori, paying more attention to the phone she was clutching in her hands than to him. 
“You… You can easily get out of those,” she said, finally turning towards him.
“How did you-”
“I’ve read it in one of Izuku’s notebooks,” she said. “Listen, I-”
Another bomb exploded nearby and she instinctively covered her ears with her hands.
“This is no place to talk,” Toshinori said, taking Inko by the hand. “Come, I’ll bring you back to-”
“No!”
She freed her hand from his and took a few steps back. 
“No,” she repeated, faintly shaking her head as her eyes darted again from one spot to another, searching for something that was clearly not to be found. 

Toshinori stood there, undecided on what to do. 
After a few, interminable moments of awkward silence covered by the rumble of the explosions and the voices of the other pro-heroes, Inko burst into tears. 

“Please help me,” she whispered, sniffling. 
“I… Of course I will, that’s what I’m trying to do. Just let me bring you back-”
She shook her head with more conviction than before. 
“I know I have no right to ask you this,” Inko said, her voice trembling, her gaze fixed on the ground, unable to look at Toshinori. “But I… I need your help. I need to find someone.”
“Inko,” Toshinori said, offering her his hand once again. “All the civilians have been evacuated. There is no one else here beside you, me and the other pro-heroes.”
Another bomb exploded just a few meters from the lamp post. 
“And a villain,” he added. 
She tried to say something back, but he interrupted her before she could even begin.
“I promise you I’ll look for this person. But first you need to get away from here.”
He didn’t say it openly but that was, in a certain way, his last warning. If she was going to put up more resistance, he was going to do what his job called him to do and forcibly pick her up to bring her to safety, whether she wanted it or not. 
Somehow, she seemed perfectly aware of that. 

“Listen,” she said, finally staring directly into Toshinori’s eyes with a sheer determination that the tears and the fear couldn’t dim. “Of all the people… I really shouldn’t be asking you to find him .”
The way she said that last word - him - sent a shiver down Toshinori’s spine.
Could it be?
... Albert ?
“But you have to help me.”
She was asking him to find her… her other guy ?

It wasn’t that the idea of leaving Other Albert to his own fate didn’t cross Toshinori’s mind - he was, after all, human, and as such susceptible to unexpected, nerve-shaking pangs of jealousy. Nonetheless, he knew much better than that, and it took him the shortest fragment of a second to discard said idea. And this was, very obviously, due to his heart of gold and innate sense of heroism - surely it had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the recently acquired curiosity to know who the hell this other mysterious guy was.

However, there was still the small issue of being in the middle of a villain attack, issue of which both were kindly reminded by a bunch of bombs exploding all around them.

The only thing Toshinori could do was to shield Inko the best of his ability. 

Inko found herself pressed between the wall of a building and All Might, and silently cursed herself for that (not even so) faint trace of pleasure and excitement she felt. 
That wasn’t the time, and it wasn’t the place, and she had absolutely no right to be enjoying that kind of thrilling physical contact with him. 
Or with anyone else, given the situation, but especially with him.
She was running out of time, and she couldn’t waste the chance she’d been given. She knew perfectly well that every other pro-hero wouldn’t really listen to her and simply take her somewhere else and she didn’t want it to happen. 

She needed to find Toshinori. 

After she had been dragged away by the panicking crowd, she had found herself in one of Musutafu’s parks, which was completely covered by Invincible Shield’s barrier and served as a safe area where civilians had been gathered. She had waited a bit, and had carefully observed the new groups of people being escorted inside the barrier, but Toshinori wasn’t among them. She was positively sure she couldn’t miss him in the crowd - not when he was so tall and with that bush of hair he had on his head, but for how much she had looked for him, he was nowhere to be found. 

And then she had overheard Invincible Shield’s sidekick say something along the lines of ‘all civilians have been evacuated’, and she had started to panic. 

What if Toshinori had another coughing fit? 
What if he was stuck somewhere, unable to walk away? Unable to ask for help? 
What if he had been severely injured and the heroes hadn’t noticed! 
What if… What if !

And so Inko had done the only thing her worried, panicking self could do - she had slipped out of the barrier and she had tried to run back to the café, to the same spot where she had left Toshinori. 
But he wasn’t there. 
She had tried to look for him, and she had ended up running towards the centre of the attack, calling his name hoping he could hear her. When All Might had landed just right next to her, she had felt relieved - extremely embarrassed and guilty, but relieved. She knew that he was going to help her, no matter what. 

Or at least, she had thought so.
She wasn’t that sure anymore, to be honest. 

She gathered all her strength and tried to push All Might away from her. 

Common - as well as hero - sense dictated that it was time to go, that Inko couldn’t stay there anymore, since it was getting more and more dangerous. Chances were that the villain had spotted them, while pro-heroes had no idea yet of where their opponent was hiding, and that wasn’t good. And yet, instead of just picking Inko up and take her away, Toshinori took a small step back and gave her the room she was stubbornly asking for by trying to push him away from her.

Her hand lingered on his shirt, grabbing the fabric between her fingers. Apparently, she hadn’t recognized it as the same shirt that Toshinori was wearing just half an hour ago. 

“I won’t ask anything else, I promise,” she whispered, leaning gently against him. “But please… He’s… He’s not very good with villain attacks.”

Oh, perfect . So this was his rival? A pusillanimous individual, ‘not very good with villain attacks’? Or even worse, one of those self-proclaimed quirk pacifists , who had the nerve to constantly complain about hero society but never had the guts of doing anything at all to change it? Why couldn’t this Other Albert be like, another pro-hero or something? Then he would have lost on some sort of a common ground. It would have been a fair loss, at least. 

“And he’s… His health isn’t that good, and I’m scared he might be in pain right now,” Inko whispered, sniffling. 

That was the proverbial icing on the cake. Of course she couldn’t fall for another big muscled guy he could casually, extremely casually meet and, well, maybe pat on his back, maybe a little bit too hard, no! She had to fall for some sort of sickly idealist! There was no way he couldn’t compete with that. And the most annoying part of that was that this other delicate conscientious objector probably still had his stomach and both his lungs inside him. 

Oh, how he hated Other Albert . 

“He… He wasn’t under Invincible Shield’s big barrier,” Inko said, thinking his silence was a request for more information, or that he might haven’t made up his mind already and needed to be persuaded some more. “But he was with me just a few minutes before and-”

Before Inko could finish her sentence, Toshinori spotted an incoming bomb out of the corner of his eye, twirled on himself as fast as he could and punched it away, not really caring where it ended. Damage control was surely important, yes, and the paperwork for collateral damage was maybe the one he dreaded the most, but he was too focused on what Inko was saying to pay too much attention to anything else. 

Other Albert was there with her just a few minutes before? But he was there with her, too!

That… That could mean only one thing!

...Toshinori had already seen Other Albert. 

Was he one of the café’s patrons, maybe? 
If only he had known - he would have looked around better! 
He tried to recollect his memories as best as he could but everyone else beside Inko was just a fuzzy figure in his mind. Was there a... sickly person? Some entitled, diseased non-activist? 
An ill and pathetic individual, maybe?
He really couldn’t remember. 
But he needed to know.

“What?” All Might asked, placing his hands on Inko’s shoulders and shaking her a bit - which, to be honest, was already too much. Realizing this, he stopped immediately. “I’m sorry. What were you saying?”
“That… That I won’t ask you any-”
With a swift gesture, All Might deflected another bomb aimed at his back, then turned back towards Inko.
“Not that part. After that.”

She felt confused. 
Why was he asking her to repeat herself? Was he just making fun of her and her request? 

“Uhm… I... That he’s not good with villain attacks?”
“After!” All Might said, gently pushing Inko on one side and kicking away another bomb aimed at them from who knew where. “After that!”

She was starting to feel restless. He wasn’t the kind of person - nor the kind of hero - to ignore a request for help, she knew that much. But she was really starting to have doubts about it.

“That… Well I don’t really know much about his condition , I have to admit but-”
He shielded her from a few other explosions. 
“The last thing you said.”
“Oh, that - he was with me?” Inko asked, her voice sounding even more frightened than before. Did he… Did All Might think that she had planned her meeting with Toshinori?
That she… rejected him and went running to her other crush? 
That wasn’t what had happened at all ! 
It was exactly like the plot of Quirky Deceit , where the hero misunderstands the main character’s intentions and it takes him the whole book to finally understand what was really going on... and Inko didn’t have all that time, that was for sure. 
Toshinori was out there, scared and alone, possibly getting hit by who knows how many of those dangerous bombs and maybe coughing his soul out of his body! 

“I - I wasn’t planning to meet him today!” she said, her voice coming out in a tone way more apologetic than she wanted to. “I just… I was…”
Suddenly, she couldn’t find her words anymore. 

Were there words to be found, though? How could she say to him that she met Toshinori just by accident, as she was crying her heart out in an oversized chair in the middle of a café, after having purchased an overpriced drink she didn’t even taste, just right after their disastrous meeting? You know, after I suddenly ran away from you after rejecting you I decided to stop in this nice café to have a mental breakdown…?

All Might caught a huge chunk of debris falling from above them and tossed it away.
“I mean,” Inko tried to explain, “He just… It happened! I was… After that… You know? I was just sitting there! Alone! And then he came in and sat in front of me and… And-”
Inko stopped. 
She couldn’t take it any longer. 
“Please help me find Toshinori,” she said. 

Toshinori’s mind went blank. 
Completely empty, not a single thought in there, way more deserted than when he had to attend a few meditation sessions with a highly recommended specialist after his work-related injury . 

... Who?

A few bombs landed and exploded right on his back. 
He didn’t notice.  

... Who?!?

“Inko,” Toshinori said, finally snapping out of his bewilderment. “Inko, there is something I-”
He dodged another bomb and sent it back to the sender (or at least he hoped so). 
“Something I need to tell you but now it’s not-”
He felt a sticky thing hitting his shoulder. 
He ignored it. 
“I don’t think this is the right mome-”
The bomb on his shoulder exploded. And then another came, and another one. 
“But please let me explain-”
A whole bunch of that bothersome stuff blasted off all round them.
What where the other pro-heroes doing?
He let out a deep sigh. 
“Inko,” he said, “give me one minute. Please.”

He turned towards the villain - or, rather, towards the general direction he thought the villain was. He wasn’t sure, but all that stuff had to come from somewhere behind him and, anyways, he didn’t have time for a refined intervention. Having a general idea was enough - he charged up a Detroit Smash and just targeted the whole area. He watched as the villain got shot upwards from his hiding place (along with two other pro-heroes, he made a mental note to ask the people at his agency to send an apology card and a gift basket) and once he was in the open, he darted towards him. 

It took him a few seconds to knock the villain unconscious, throw his body into another pro-hero’s arms, bow apologetically and dash back to where Inko was waiting.

She looked somehow more relieved than before, now that the villain was out of the picture, but her eyes were still looking relentlessly all over the place. 
“Please come with me,” Toshinori said offering her his hand. 
She looked around a bit more. 
“I… I need to-”
“I know. Please.”

Inko stared for a while at All Might’s hand and hesitated a bit. Of course, now that the attack had ended they were (probably) out of imminent danger, yes, but chances were that Toshinori still needed help. But there was something in that please All Might had told her that convinced her to follow him. 

As soon as she took his hand, he dragged her away from the hustle of the aftermath of the attack, through the back alleys of the shopping district, until he found a passageway so narrow he almost didn’t fit in. 
Looking around, he nodded to himself.
What were they doing there? Did he know where Toshinori was? Maybe he had seen him hiding there - but how did he know it was him? 
The sudden thought that All Might wanted to get away from any witness to do something… bad with her crossed her mind, but it was immediately discarded when she took the courage to look at him in the eyes and realized that he was, if possible, even more scared and confused than her. 

“Well,” he said, trying to come up with other words but ending up with unintelligible gibberish which turned into a bad cough. 
“Are… Are you ok?” Inko asked, gently laying her hand on his arm.
Maybe those were the effects of having to fight villains continuously. Deep down, she was a bit relieved that Izuku wouldn’t have to go through that. 
All Might almost jumped at her touch, then tried to get close to her but suddenly moved away. 
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
And then he pulled her into a tight hug.

Is this how I die? Inko thought, squeezed into All Might’s arms, completely trapped. It’s not that bad .
She cursed herself for that thought. It didn’t matter how nice that felt and how safe it made her feel, even against all the emotions of the attack - she had no time to waste, and surely no right to be there enjoying hugs, almost forgetting about Toshinori. 
She needed to find him, or at least to try to call him again on the phone, just to know if he was safe. But, right in that moment, moving proved to be quite hard. Especially because she didn’t even know if she wanted to move. 
Slowly, very slowly, she hugged All Might back. 

“All Might,” she tried to say, unsure if he could hear her since her face was completely buried into him, “I really need to go.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, squeezing her a little bit tighter. 
“Listen, I…”
Inko’s words died on her lips. There was something strange going on - though maybe strange wasn’t even the right word. She could clearly hear a faint whistle and feel a waft of air moving around and it seemed as if All Might was… Disappearing? Evaporating? Deflating ? in her arms, for how silly that could sound.
Instinctively, she tried to grasp him tighter, as to keep him there. 
And then it stopped. 
Whatever it was that was happening.  
She let her hands run along his back, but there was no trace of the muscles she was touching just a few moments ago. In their place, there were just… bones.
She patted him a bit more. 
There was definitely less All Might than before. 
But how was that possible? 
She touched him again. Just to be sure. 
Somehow, it felt different. Incredibly different from before. Frailer , maybe. 
He coughed again and she felt all of his body shaking. And well, he was still hugging her, yes, but his arms felt so much thinner now, and even if her face was still pressed against him, she wasn’t feeling as overwhelmed as before. 
“I’m sorry,” he said again, his voice sounding both unknown and familiar at the same time. “I really wanted to tell you, but-”

Inko pushed him away, and the fact that she actually managed to do it, and fairly easily, came to her as a big surprise. And yet, it paled in comparison with the surprise she had when she looked at him. 

Toshinori tried his best to recall at least half of one of the hundred different apologies and explanations he had practiced just a few hours before - though it felt like at least a lifetime ago - but nothing came to his mind. Especially now that Inko was staring at him looking at the same time like a deer caught in the headlights and like a car ready to run over him. 

“You… You have all the rights to be angry with me,” he said, lowering his head and staring at his own feet. “And I perfectly understand if you don’t want to talk, but at least let me explain…”
Inko kept staring at him in silence. 
Her mouth was slightly open. 
“Yes, well, where should I start… You… You might wonder why I look like this…?”
Silence. 
“Or maybe not… Maybe you’d like to know first why I didn’t tell you before?”
Not a single word.
“Ah,” Toshinori said, scratching the back of his head, “this is actually worse than I had imagined… Maybe I should start apologizing?”
Inko was still silent, but Toshinori thought he caught her eyes twitching imperceptibly and he took that as some sort of agreement. 
“Ok, now, how did it went… Chapter One, Acknowledging the Injury . So, well, yes, I think there is more than one, regrettably, so maybe, going in chronological order, the first one would be…”
“...book,” Inko whispered faintly. 
“What?”
“Just like the book,” she repeated, a little more convinced this time. 
“Apologizing for Dummies ? Yes, I’ve been… Ehr, studying that lately, yes…”
“What? No, not that one. The Dewey Decimal Hero ,” Inko said. “It’s like… the only one I didn’t check last night. I thought it was impossible!”
Toshinori nodded, though he wasn’t really sure to what he was nodding to.
Did Assessing the Injury came before Recognizing Feelings or after?
“And now I feel so…”
Well, whichever it was, Inko decided it was Recognizing Feelings time, apparently. 
“I feel so…”
“...Mad?” 
“No. Relieved.”
“...What?” Toshinori exclaimed, getting so surprised he had to push back a coughing fit with some difficulty.
“Relieved,” she repeated, letting out a deep sigh. “I thought I was crazy. But this… This solves all of my problems, actually. I am a bit surprised, though. I could never have imagined it.”
She seemed lost in her thoughts.
“So… So you’re not mad?” Toshinori asked again, trying to recall without much success if there was any example of that in Apologizing for Dummies . Admittedly, the book hadn’t proved to be as useful as he thought he could be. 
“Why would I be mad?” Inko asked.
Oh , Toshinori thought, is this some kind of maieutic assessment of the injury?
“Well,” he said, “for starters, I didn’t tell you that I am…”
He fell silent, as a passer-by turned into the alleyway and walked past them. 
“...You know,” he said, making gestures. “And then I kinda went to check on you that day in Batu, and then we k- I mean, I ki...kis…”
His words became a feeble whisper until they stopped completely. A young lady with a stroller passed by them.
“...That,” he said, when they were finally alone again. 
A few seconds later a bunch of running kids filled the alleyway with giggles and laughter. 
“And well, I knew I had to tell you and I was about to, but then I… We… We sat on the couch ,” he said. “And-”
“They say All Might was here!” 
A group of students walked into the alley. 
“Really? Maybe he’s still around here, giving reports to the police?”
(A bunch of kilometers away from that alley, Detective Tsukauchi suddenly felt the inexplicable need to roll his eyes.)
“Maybe we should go somewhere else,” Toshinori said, when he realized that the newcomers weren’t going anywhere. Even if Inko didn’t seem upset, he still had too many things to explain her and he didn’t want to be casually overheard. “This seems to be a weirdly popular spot.”
Inko nodded.

As they were about to move, a strangely familiar woman turned into the alleyway. 
They both fell silent, frozen in their tracks, as they watched Mrs. Rottenmeier, wearing an All Might hoodie and carrying one of those popular bags showing a bunch of All Might merchandise, passing just right beside where they were standing. She didn’t see neither of them, since her face was buried in a copy of Quirkopolitan . The cover of the magazine displayed in huge, pink letters the title Relationship Quiz! Would All Might hold your hand?

“We definitely need to go,” Toshinori whispered as soon as Mrs. Rottenmeier turned behind a building.
“Yes,” Inko agreed. 
“I’ll bring you home. We kan keep talking on the way.”

Even if their teacher had already disappeared from their view, they hurried away as furtively as they could, pointing towards the big central street at the heart of the shopping district.

They walked in silence for a while, until Toshinori managed to put his thoughts back in order and resumed his apology.
“You see, I think that the main reason I didn’t tell you before was just… I didn’t want to involve you. In all of this,” he said, gesturing towards a shop window, where a few TVs on sale were showing an interview with Invincible Shield.
“I understand, really.” Inko said.
“What I mean is that… There are people out there who don’t have a very nice opinion on me, or so to say. And they’d be more than delighted to hurt someone who… Who’s close to me, just to get their revenge.”
He stopped in front of a flower shop, pretending to be interested in a vase full of pink carnations. 
“Of course,” Inko answered. 
“I know you probably think that I’m exaggerating and that there is a whole justice system meant to actually protect you, but that’s not how it really works and you risk to get… hurt. Well, more than hurt, actually. Like…”
“I get it.”
“You do?”
Inko nodded, as she gently picked up a flower and smelled it. 
“It’s just like His Superhuman School . The main hero is scared that his enemies, and in particular his arch-nemesis who’s insanely powerful could target the main character just for revenge, like he did with the hero’s mentor in the opening flashback of the story.”
They started walking again.
“That’s… That’s definitely realistic. Yes.” 

It was, to be honest, a little bit too realistic - but with all the books and movies and TV series about heroes, Toshinori was sooner or later bound to find a story that could recall his own. It was still quite a strange coincidence, though.

“It’s from one of my favorite authors,” Inko said. “ Little Milano.”
“Never heard the name. What happens next in the book?”
“Well… If I remember correctly, the hero tells the main character that they can’t see each other ever again.”
Toshinori nodded.
“Yes. Well. That’s a very logical conclusion and I’m sure you-”
“Until the main character dies,” Inko said, interrupting him.
“What do you mean she dies ?”
“Well, not really. But she gets run over by a car and the hero thinks she’s dead.” 
“And, obviously, the car was driven by a villain, I imagine,” Toshinori grumbled, as he slowed down his pace a bit and switched places with Inko, letting her walk close to the shops while he stayed on the side close to the street. They were still in the shopping district, where traffic was heavily regulated, but one can never be too prudent.  
“No,” Inko answered.
“No?”
“No. It was just a regular car. It was an accident.”
“That’s terrible,” Toshinori muttered. “ What happens next?”
“The hero realizes that it’s always possible for something bad to happen and that his worries were maybe well-founded, but excessively amplified by his raging martyr complex.” 
“Oh. That’s… That’s an interesting book.”

Interesting , yes, and at the same time utterly annoying. Because now his conviction that it was best for everyone if he just disappeared from Inko’s life was starting to crumble. It didn’t matter much that Toshinori hadn’t realized yet that said conviction was as solid as a soft pudding - sometimes you just hold on to something you believe because it’s the easiest way. 

“I could lend it to you,” Inko said with a giggle. “You can pick it up now if you want to come upstairs with me when we get home. Maybe we could have a cup of tea.”
“Oh, thanks. And yes, tea sounds good. I still have a lot of things to tell you. I think I haven’t reached chapter five, ask the injured how you can make it better , yet.”
“Well, talking a bit could make it better.”
Toshinori nodded.
“We could sit on the couch,” Inko added, hiding a small laugh with her hand.
The soft, squishy pudding sustaining Toshinori’s convictions finally gave in. He tried to say something back, but all he could do was coughing. 

Suddenly, Inko let out a huge gasp.
For the surprise, Toshinori’s fit ended. 

“No we can’t,” Inko murmured, shaking her head. “We can’t… Inés!”
“What?” Toshinori asked. 
“Inés,” Inko repeated. “She… You...I mean, weren’t you…?”
She hid her face in her hands.
“I’m a homewrecker ,” she muttered to herself. 
This time it was Toshinori who had to hide his laughter, without much success. He just hoped Inko knew it wasn’t a sneering laugh - quite the opposite, actually.
“It was you,” he said.
“Eh?”
“Inés. It’s you. I thought it was obvious by now?”
“It wasn’t!” Inko said, her face completely red.
“Well, I just… made her up. I couldn’t tell you it was you, so I made her up, like you did with Albert.”
“But I- watch out!”
Before Inko could warn Toshinori, he bumped into a passer-by coming from the other way. 

“I’m sorry,” Toshinori said, “I didn’t-”
“Inko!” the passer-by exclaimed, completely ignoring Toshinori. “What a coincidence!”
“What a coincidence, indeed!” said Inko with a cheerful giggle.

The stranger was a tall, rather burly man. He spoke with a strong accent and asked Inko a few questions about what she was doing, and if perchance there was a bookshop selling English books nearby and which traditional confectionery store was the best in town. He kept fixing his very blonde hair as he talked.

When he finally left a good five minutes later, informing Inko that he hoped to see her again , they resumed their stroll and Toshinori finally asked the question that was bugging his mind.
“Who was that?”
“Albert,” Inko said.
Toshinori stopped.
“Who - What- Who? ”
“Albert,” she repeated. “A new guy from the office.” 
“But… I thought… I mean, wasn’t Albert just…”
He pointed at himself. 
This time, Inko didn’t even try to hide her laughter. 
“It was you,” she said. “But I didn’t made Albert up. I just… borrowed his name, that’s all.” 
Toshinori sighed and turned back, staring at the tiny point on the horizon Albert had become. 
“Do… Do you like him?”

Before Inko could actually answer that, he started to cough again. 
Admittedly, he was starting to feel the aftereffects of the attack. The explosions hadn’t been particularly problematic, but they hadn’t been healthy , either, and, more than that, it was the several tons of dust he had inadvertently breathed in that were starting to take their toll on his remaining lung. And, on top of that, it had been quite a stressful day. 

Inko shook her head as she offered Toshinori her brand new handkerchief.
“No, I don’t. I mean, he’s a nice guy, but I don’t like him in that sense.” She lowered her voice, as her cheeks became red. “I already have two people I like, and they’re giving me enough worries as it is.” 
She gently stroked his back as he coughed a bit more.
“...Two?” he asked, after the fit finally passed.
“You,” Inko said. “...And you again, I guess.”

Toshinori took a deep breath. 
He needed it - both literally and figuratively speaking. 
Maybe Little Milano , whoever that was, wasn’t that wrong. 
Maybe he was worrying too much and he did have a raging martyr complex.
And maybe he was just scared , and that didn’t really work well with the whole Number One hero thing, didn’t it? 

“How do you feel though?” Inko asked, thinking his silence meant he hadn’t recovered yet from his fit. “Do you want to stop somewhere to get something to drink or do you think you can manage to get home?”
“I’m ok. But you know,” Toshinori said with a smile. “Every time you get worried about me I get this… this urge.”
“Urge of wha-”

And it was then, in the middle of a busy street of Musutafu’s shopping district that Toshinori Yagi, age miraculously rejuvenated and ready to reach at least the ripe old age of 129 kissed for the second first time Inko Midoriya.
Coincidentally enough, Inko Midoriya, age 40, kissed him back.