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“Stay there! Don’t move!”
Eijirou likes to follow rules, so he stays as still as he can, stuck in a very silly pose. But according to Izuku, “it will be so worth it”. So he stays.
The shutter clicks a few times, then Izuku shuffles towards him in the sand, camera in hand.
“Okay, i’m almost done, just gotta—” He cuts himself off and bends over to re-adjust Eijirou’s calf until its hovering right above the structure they just spent hours on. “Can you keep your leg still like this?”
Eijirou nods, worried he'll move too much if he speaks, and Izuku nods with a hum, scurrying back over to the bank.
“Okay, make that scary face again!”
Eijirou hardens his hands, his cheeks, and his raised left leg. The shutter of Izuku’s camera clicks faster now.
“Oh, that was perfect, Eijirou!” Izuku beams, running back in his direction. “You can relax now, I think I got it!”
He loves it when he gets excited. In any way, really, but something about watching his face light up any time he gets to learn a new trick or technique makes Eijirou want to squeeze him until he pops.
Bakugou told him it was something called “cute aggression”.
“Ei, you’re the best Godzilla ever, look!” He shouts, turning the small preview screen to face him.
Ei.
And wow.
He really is the best Godzilla ever. Cloaked in shadow, backlit by the setting sun, it looks like a still from a monster movie. The warm yellow from the sky bouncing off of his hardened shards, mixed with Izuku’s perfect angle makes their sandcastle appear much larger and more menacing than it actually is; every bit of this photo is perfect. And when Izuku clicks to the next image, even better than the one before, his filter disintegrates.
“Izuku, these are amazing.” He says, truly in awe.
Of his boyfriend.
They’ve only been dating for a few weeks, and this is their first big date outside of the coffee and meals and movies they’ve shared, but this is the first time it feels real. The first time it doesn’t feel like they’re just friends hanging out.
They’re boyfriends on a boyfriend trip to the beach doing shirtless boyfriend things, like building sandcastles and pretending to be godzilla.
He’s an adult, he swears.
At the praise, Izuku looks up at him. Eijirou’s breath catches.
Soft, freckled skin, painted orange by the sky and red by the sun, eyes sparkling as the day ends around them, Izuku is beautiful. He’s strong, and powerful, and funny, and dorky, and everything else Eijirou loves about him, but right now, he’s just beautiful. And his.
Eijirou knows they should be careful. They’re off-duty, but they’re well known (and very much in public), but he’s had enough will power for the day.
He leans down to steal a kiss that comes quicker than expected, as Izuku rockets onto his toes and meets him halfway. The camera makes a single click as Izuku turns it off and lets it fall lax around his neck. Eijirou thumbs across his jaw to pull him closer and Izuku wraps a strong arm around his waist, before pulling back with a giggle.
“What?”
“We’re going to wreck the castle!” Izuku laughs.
Eijirou looks down, completely forgetting their surroundings until he realizes what he’s standing on.
“Oh no! I destroyed the moat!” He cries, devastated that he ruined Izuku’s hard work, then Izuku grabs his hand.
“It’s okay, I already got the pictures!” he says, dragging them both back to their little beachside home-base. Eijirou’s biggest blanket, a cooler filled to the top with drinks and food, and a few rolled blankets, because apparently bringing his pillows to the beach is a bad idea. Kaminari was right, sandy pillows didn’t sound fun.
Without breaking their grasp, Eijirou drops to the ground onto his pillow-towel and pulls Izuku down with him. He squeals, then collapses into the space between his knees like the spot was made for him.
Because it was.
“Do you know when the fireworks start?”
“Umm, I think eight?” Izuku says, just as the telltale sound of a roman candle whirs from across the beach. “Or now!”
“We better eat quick, then,” Eijirou laughs, unpacking their cooler. “Onigiri! Nice!”
“Mom made them this morning!” Izuku says, partially unwrapping one to hand to him as Eijirou pops the cap on a miraculously still-cold melon soda.
“Trade?”
“Mmhmm!”
They eat, and Izuku tells him a story about the time he and Bakugou tried to make onigiri when they were kids, how Izuku had gone through a whole package of nori trying to get it right, and how Bakugou yelled the whole time, despite eating every bite of the one he’d made for him. It makes him wish they knew each other as kids. All of them. The three of them would’ve been unstoppable.
They kind of already are.
The sunset melts into the ocean, painting the sands from orange to red to pink to purple, making way for an easy moonrise. Pale, white light dusts the water's surface, cooling the salt spray in its wake.
Izuku’s head thumps on his chest, “Do you ever wish this was it?”
“Whatcha mean?”
“Like, do you ever wish we were just…no this is stupid, forget I said—”
“No, what do you mean?” Eijirou says, shifting in place so they’re closer to face-to-face. Izuku’s cheeks are blushed by the sun, more of his freckles have come out to play, and he resists the urge to lean down for another kiss. Not yet.
“I just mean, do you ever think about what it’d be like if we weren’t heroes? Like, if heroes didn’t exist. If quirks weren’t a thing, do you ever wonder what it’d be like?”
Eijirou feels Izuku’s heartbeat quicken against his leg.
“All the time.”
His heart rate slows.
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah dude, all the time! I love being a hero, and I couldn't imagine doing anything else with this life, but yeah. I do wonder what it would be like for my boyfriend to not be on billboards everywhere I look.”
Izuku tips his head back and laughs, “Oh, I would definitely not be on any billboards, you’re not wrong there, Ei…Eijirou.”
The correction makes Eijirou dizzy, “You can call me that, you know. I like the nickname.”
“O-oh, are you sure? Sorry, it just kinda slipped out, I…never mind.”
Eijirou grabs Izuku's shoulders and spins him around to face him head-on. The fleck of remaining sunlight halos him at this angle and Eijirou resists the urge to yell. He can’t have this beautiful boy thinking he’s doing anything wrong by calling him a nickname that makes his heart do backflips.
“If you’re saying you call me Ei in your head, but not out loud, i’m gonna cry, dude.”
“Oh, oh no i’m sorry, I—”
Eijirou shakes him a little, “You’re so damn cute, but so ridiculous. You’re my boyfriend! You can call me nicknames, that’s allowed.”
Izuku forgoes words, burying his red face in his palms.
Eijirou pulls him closer by the back of his neck and places a kiss on the top of his head. “Hell, you could call me shitty hair too, I wouldn’t care. It’s from you, that’s all that matters.”
Izuku makes a silly noise, “I'm not calling you that! That’s Kacchan’s name for you, and it’s not even right. You have really nice hair.”
Eijirou shrugs, “That should tell you how much I don't mind!” He says, pulling the loop of his hair tie and letting his overgrown black-and-red hair shake out into the cooling sea breeze.
“Have you ever thought about letting it grow out?” Izuku asks.
“If only I hadn’t tied my whole hero persona to the color red.” He laughs, only partially in jest.
“Red Riot could just have red tips and still be Red Riot, you know.”
“I know, but it feels like my brand!”
“Midnight would be proud, you know how much she loved brand recognition.”
“Yeah, she would.”
The melancholy settles into their skin, serving as a reminder that they aren’t just normal people with normal day jobs that take normal trips to the beach.
They have real responsibilities to these people.
And tomorrow, when they wake up, all sunkissed skin and beach waved hair, they’ll go back to being some of the top heroes in the country.
But for now, they can be just two guys on the beach, marking something off of Eijirou’s ever-growing bucket list.
<x> make a sandcastle
<x> ruin a sandcastle
<x> watch fireworks with someone i love
He even has pictures to prove it.