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Akira loves the Bakugou family house.
It’s bigger than the central city apartment he lives in normally, and instead of a big balcony, there’s a front yard and a park nearby with a playground. He has his obaa-chan and oji-chan too, and when he visits they make him all of his favorite foods and play all of his favorite board games with him.
“Jeez ma,” Papa said once, when Akira wasn’t supposed to hear him. “You’re spoilin’ him.”
And Obaa-chan smacked him upside the head, because that’s just the kind of thing she does.
Akira has his own room to stay overnight in the Bakugou family house.
It used to be Papa’s room, and it still has all of his old games and toys in it. All of his old All Might posters and All Might sheets (Izu-chan says Papaʼs more of a fanboy than he likes to admit). When Akira stays overnight, he brings some of his own things too. He brings his stuffed fox, and his Hero Deku plushie.
Papa makes sure to pack his bag for him (a yellow suitcase) and Akira helps, finding and packing his toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste.
The first night he stayed by himself he got homesick for Tou-chan sometime in the night and had to wake up his grandparents and ask to go home.
He doesn’t feel that good about having had to do that, since adults always seem like they haven’t gotten enough sleep, especially the old ones.
Papa and Tou-chan were both on the phone with him as soon as he called, and after he heard their voices he felt better, enough to go back to sleep again. But they’d come over anyway. They’d slept on a futon in the living room while Akira went back to Papa’s bedroom upstairs, and for some reason Akira hasn’t felt homesick while being here since.
There’s pictures of Papa when he was a little kid in this house. He looked just like Akira, just like everyone says.
All of his trophies are here too. Sometimes Akira looks up at them and feels even more determined to be just as strong and smart as Papa, so he and Tou-chan can have their own trophy case for him. Sometimes he just feels…small, and it all feels unreachable, because his Papa is so, so amazing, and Akira’s just…whatever he is.
They have memories in this house. On the street outside is where he first started riding his tricycle. It was Papa’s once and Papa’s parents kept it, because “they always knew he’d soften up and maybe have a kid of his own someday.” And Akira knows that he and Tou-chan are the people Papa is soft for, because when he wears the mask and the gauntlets he can break through anything and he never ever quits, but he always lets Akira and Tou-chan choose what movie they go out and watch, and when there’s only a bit of ice cream left in the fridge, he lets Akira have all of it.
There’s a picture of Akira that was taken in the living room, from when he was first learning to walk. Obaa-chan gave him his first haircut in the kitchen. Oji-chan’s classical music CDs were the only thing that could get Akira to sleep for a few months when he was a baby, and those are here too.
They come here a lot, especially on the weekend. Papa likes it here too, Akira can tell, and so does Tou-chan. They all wear comfortable clothes and relax and talk. Sometimes Tou-chan falls asleep on Papa’s shoulder and Akira falls asleep cuddled up next to them.
The Bakugou family house feels like home.
For some reason (Akira can’t exactly figure out why) the Todoroki family house doesn’t feel like that.
It’s really big. Lots of rooms and a long hallway and even a courtyard with a pond! Akira likes that it has a lot of the same furnishings as their own apartment. Tatami flooring and traditional Japanese-style furniture and decorations. It’s set up the same way Tou-chan set up their home, but it’s colder somehow, formal.
His aunt and his other grandparents live there. Akira has an uncle Natsu who has his own apartment, but sometimes he visits the Todoroki family house too and he has this look on his face when he walks around that Akira doesn’t understand, like he’s sad or tired or both. Natsu-chan looks much more energetic when they meet him in his own home, so it must be this house that makes him sad.
Tou-chan’s face changes when he comes into this house too, but it’s not as easy to tell, because whenever he looks at Akira or Papa he looks happy again, no matter where they are.
Sometimes Papa takes Tou-chan’s hand and squeezes it right before they cross the threshold of that house and into the genkan to take off their shoes.
Tou-chan is happiest in this house when they serve soba. That’s when things are the best, when they’re eating, because Fumi-chan makes everyone’s favorite foods when they come over, and everyone has something to do, and that makes things kind of easy.
There’s an old playroom with two computers and some board games and toys where Tou-chan takes Akira to play sometimes when the rest of the adults are talking. Rei-chan, his other obaa-chan, comes too, and sometimes Tou-chan puts Akira in his lap so they can play as one team for the board game and Rei-chan can play the other.
Akira’s other oji-chan doesn’t join them, except for the time Akira asked him why he wasn’t coming too (since Rei-chan was his wife, and if Tou-chan didn’t already have Akira on his team, he would have been on Papa’s team, because that’s what married people do).
All along Akira thought that these toys used to belong to Tou-chan when he was a kid, just like Papa’s toys in the Bakugou house. But when he actually asked, when they were playing with hero action figures, Tou-chan said no, they belonged to his older brothers.
Akira thought this was okay, maybe, because he has friends in his nursery school class who have older brothers, and that’s where they get some of their things. Hand-me-downs.
But then there were three tricycles in storage that Fumi-chan brought out for Akira, and Akira asked which one used to belong to Tou-chan, but it turned out it was none of them. They belonged to Fumi-chan, Natsu-chan and another uncle that Akira’s never met, who passed away before Akira was born.
It doesn’t make sense. Papa’s told Akira before, about how some families are different from others, about how some kids have a mom and a dad, and some have two moms, and some, like Akira, have a Papa and a Tou-chan. He told Akira about this before he started nursery school, and Akira thinks he understood.
The Todoroki family is also different from the Bakugou family. But if they were just different, then wouldn’t there just be no tricycles for any of the kids?
Why is Tou-chan the only one who didn’t get one? That doesn’t seem fair.
There’s another room in the Todoroki house with a sign that says it’s a training room, but Akira isn’t allowed to go inside and no one will talk about it.
There aren’t that many photos of Tou-chan in this house either. There’s a thin photo album that has some. There’s a few photos of Tou-chan when he was a baby, and then there’s official school pictures of him. He looks different. Tou-chan doesn’t smile in his school pictures. In his middle school picture he looks kind of mad.
Akira only asked to look at the pictures once, because looking at pictures isn’t that interesting, and he wanted to see if he looked like Tou-chan when he was a kid, because everyone says he’s mini Katsuki, and he wanted to look like Tou-chan too.
Tou-chan didn’t have a mark on his face when he was a baby. But he did have it in his first school picture, when he was five. Akira doesn’t think about that at first, because to him Tou-chan’s face has always been like that, and it doesn’t make any difference. He starts wondering about it later, when he thinks about what feels wrong about the Todoroki house.
When Akira was little, he picked up on the fact that Papa kisses the blotchy, red mark on Tou-chan’s face right before they all go to bed, and because Papa did it, Akira did too. He didn’t think about it before, but now he thinks that maybe there’s a reason.
Where did that mark come from? Was it an accident?
It’s a scar, but it’s not like the rest of the scars Papa and Tou-chan have from their hero work. And like the big scar in the center of Papa’s chest, the one that must have hurt so much Tou-chan can’t even talk about it, no one mentions anything about how Tou-chan got hurt.
Akira scrapes his knees all the time. He got a cut in his forehead once when he was running around in their apartment and banged his head against an open cabinet door. But nothing that looks like this.
Papa must know. Tou-chan and Papa have known each other forever, even before Akira was around, they sleep in the same bed, and Akira’s seen them kiss each other on the mouth. Also, Papa knows everything. Mina-chan, who’s also known Papa forever, says he’s a “busybody for a good cause.”
Whenever they’re out and Akira really has to pee, Papa always seems to know where the closest bathroom is. Whenever they go for a hike, Papa always knows exactly where theyʼre going. And he knows all the recipes in the world by heart.
Akira waits for when itʼs just him and Papa before he asks. And he decides to start with the tricycle and the toys.
Papa freezes for a second and then he says that he expected this would come up sooner or later, but he didn’t think it would be this soon.
He says that maybe he should have expected it though, because Tou-chan’s always been perceptive, and Akira’s always been a perceptive kid. Akira doesn’t get compared to Tou-chan that often, so he likes this.
“Come on,” Papa says, and Akira follows him into the kitchen and watches as he starts making them a pot of tea.
Akira follows him around the kitchen as he starts to explain. The way Papa talks now is different than how he usually talks. Careful. Measured.
“You want hot chocolate or something?” Papa asks.
It doesn’t seem like a hot chocolate kind of conversation. “I’ll have tea with you.”
“Okay.”
It takes a while before Papa gets to the point. Which is weird and not like him. When he finally does, what he says doesn’t seem right:
Tou-chanʼs Papa didnʼt want him to ride tricycles or play with toys.
“But thatʼs not fair.”
“It isnʼt,” Papa says firmly.
They’re both sitting on the stools next to the counter now, sipping on their tea. It’s something Papa and Tou-chan sometimes do, and Akira used to have a high chair that was pushed up to this counter, but now he’s too big for it. Akira feels very much like an adult, talking about this with Papa, and he tries to time his sips with Papa’s, and tries to copy the way he holds the cup and holds himself.
“So then…why?” Akira asks. “Why would someone do that?”
Papa talks about Tou-chanʼs quirk a little, and from what Akira understands from what Papa says, Tou-chan never got to have any fun at all. He was always training, and he didn’t get a choice in that.
Then Papa says the rest of the story isnʼt his to tell. Itʼs Tou-chanʼs. And Tou-chan will tell Akira when he’s older. And yes, Akira trusts that, but—
“But why?” Akira asks again. “Why would his dad do that to him just because he had a special quirk?”
Training all day. It sounds awful. The thought of it makes Akiraʼs stomach all queasy. And suddenly he feels bad for even talking about this without Tou-chan here.
Papaʼs face crumples for a moment, and he starts to say something and then he stops. Heʼs looking at the ground and frowning but he looks mad too. And tired?
“Thereʼs no reason to do that to a kid. None,” Papa looks back at Akira and his expression slowly changes, furious to warm as he talks. “Before we had you, there were polls about a dime a dozen tryinʼ to guess what kinda quirk youʼd have. But Shou didnʼt care. Neither did I. We…we wanted you to be healthy. And you were…”
“Six pounds three ounces, lookin’ like me,” Papa grins for a second, then shakes his head. “Sometimes…people are selfish. They think of themselves before the people they’re supposed to care about. And they don’t know when to stop.”
“But…it’s all okay now?” Akira says. “Is it because it was a long time ago?”
That doesn’t seem right either.
“It’s cause your Tou-chan’s a forgiving little shit. And he wouldn’t want you to hold a grudge over this either. He wants…he wants to move on. He thinks people change, and he’s right about that.”
Oh.
“But you don’t…you don’t forgive that,” Akira takes a guess. “What he did. Even if he changed.”
Papa doesn’t say yes or no. Just takes a long gulp of tea from his cup, and finishes it.
“You hungry? I can make you a snack,” Papa says, getting up from the stool and heading over to the kitchen cabinets, opening one and taking out a bag of crackers. “Pro-hero animal crackers. What a fuckin’ idiot.”
He’s talking about Tou-chan.
“I like em,” Akira shrugs.
He likes the cracker Deku sheep. The cracker Shoutocat, the cracker Dynamy and Dynamight chihuahua.
“You don’t get that from me, that’s for sure,” Papa dumps out a bunch of crackers on a small plate, and gives it to Akira.
And even though he said he doesn’t like these, he steals a couple from Akira’s plate. Akira’s happy to share, so he lets it happen.
After a few minutes of quiet snacking, Akira hears the door open. Which means Tou-chan is back.
He runs to the door immediately and Papa follows. Tou-chanʼs always sweaty and sooty after his patrol, and todayʼs no different but Akira runs up and hugs his legs anyway.
“Hmm?” Tou-chan pats down Akiraʼs spiky hair.
“We missed you,” Papa explains from behind him.
Thatʼs always true when either of his parents go out for patrol. Akira gets anxious about it too. But today something hurts.
“Itʼs alright,” Tou-chan crouches down to Akiraʼs level, and Akira gets a good look at all the little scratches and cuts on his face. “Iʼm safe. Papaʼs safe. Were you worried about that?”
Akira shakes his head. “No. Youʼre strong. You have support.”
Thatʼs what he always says to himself. To calm down. It usually works. When it doesnʼt, things get bad, and Akira thinks he could fix it if he could just grow up and be strong enough to be out there with them. That way it wouldnʼt hurt as much as it does being small and waiting at home by the phone.
Tou-chan fusses over him a bit more until Papa tells him to get in the shower already. Then Akira grabs the medicine kit that has all the bandages and he hands it to Papa. He knows the drill.
Papa ruffles his hair in thanks and he opens the bathroom door.
Akira hears him say “Jesus, Shou” and that probably means heʼs hurt more under the suit. And itʼs probably bad.
When it isnʼt bad, Tou-chan will usually shower first, come out in sleep shorts and a t-shirt and Papa will patch him up in their bedroom. Akiraʼs allowed to watch and even allowed to help.
But by now Akira can tell that they donʼt let him see the worse stuff. Maybe they think itʼll make him more anxious than he already is.
This time itʼs too much. “Is Tou-chan okay?”
He sniffles and wipes his nose. Papa comes out of the bathroom right away.
“Hey. Hey, heʼs fine,” Papa scoops him up, balancing him on one hand, and takes him inside. “Look.”
Tou-chanʼs gotten out of the top part of his hero costume and heʼs sitting on the edge of their bathtub. Akira can see the bruising all along his right arm before he grabs a towel from a wall hook and covers it. He can see why Papa reacted like that. It looks…it looks like it hurts bad.
He sniffles a bit more because he doesnʼt want Tou-chan to hurt and thereʼs nothing he can do to help. And to make it all worse, heʼs being a baby and heʼs gotten in his parents’ way.
“S’okay, see? He’s good. Nothing that won’t heal up right quick. And I’ll be here, and you’re here, and we’re gonna make sure Tou-chan rests up, right?” Papa asks, and Akira starts to nod even while his vision is getting blurry with tears. “Gonna make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”
“Right.”
Tou-chan sits down on the bathroom floor and pats the tile. “Katsuki, give him to me.”
“Don’t strain yourself,” Papa warns, and he kneels down on the floor next to him.
Akira unhooks his arms from around Papa’s neck and gets down from his arms.
Then Tou-chan takes him in his lap with his good arm and they just sit for a moment. Then Tou-chan lets the towel slide off of his forearm and he explains about bruises. He talks about how they happen. Small blood vessels burst when thereʼs an impact against them and thatʼs why the skin turns that angry purple color.
He tells Akira about how the body heals and about his support team and the healing quirks they applied to his arm to make it heal even faster. He tells him about cuts and scars, and clotting, and how skin tries to make itself whole again and that can leave marks. And more than what Tou-chan says, just his voice is soft and calm and gentle enough that Akira believes him and theyʼre safe again.
“What…what happened?” Akira asks.
“This dumbass was holding up a building and got hit by a desk flying around in the wind,” Papa supplies.
“You read my report already?” Tou-chan asks.
Papa snorts. “What kinda chump do you think you married?”
“It wasnʼt Inasaʼs fault,” Tou-chan says, turning to Akira. “He was invaluable today.”
Papa hmphs. He probably doesn’t think so?
“A desk?” Akira asks.
“Yes,” Tou-chan confirms. “A heavy one.”
So no villain. This must have just been a rescue.
Akira exhales, takes a few more breaths.He’s starting to feel better.
Then he looks at his own hands. “Sorry.”
Tou-chan ruffles his hair. “No apology necessary.”
“Youʼre good, kid. If anyone owes us all an apology itʼs that windy fucker. I let him come to my wedding and he canʼt keep track of his own quirk around my husband?”
“Katsuki.”
“Donʼt Katsuki me.”
Akira’s even more relieved. Because if they’re fighting like this (like they always do) then that means things are gonna be fine. As long as Papa and Tou-chan are together, they always are.
*
That night Akira can’t stop thinking about the training room. He doesn’t even know what kind of training it must have been. He can think of a few kinds of training. Running and lifting, which Papa and Tou-chan regularly do. Lap-swimming, which Tou-chan does more than Papa.
There’s practice sparring which is a kind of training too, but Papa’s only recently been teaching Akira how to fight, and even that’s focused on self-defense and controlling his own quirk.
Tou-chan always seemed concerned about even that. About Akira getting hurt. And Akira didn’t get it. He thought Tou-chan was treating him like he was still a little kid, and he didn’t like that, but maybe that’s not it after all.
He has so many questions. Things he’s not sure how he should even ask.
Was it lonely? Did it hurt?
It must have hurt. Akira can’t see how it wouldn’t.
He thinks of all the times he’s been hurt. The time he was helping Papa cook and touched the hot stovetop. When he was running down the sidewalk because he saw a cat, tripped and scraped his leg. When he got named class monitor, some other kid said it was only because of who his parents were and Akira didn’t know what to do anymore.
He thinks of Tou-chan’s gentle voice, how he cooled Akira’s smarting fingers with his own. He thinks of Tou-chan’s tight hugs and how good it feels (safe) to be with him and know that he’s always gonna be around.
It feels heavy...to think of Tou-chan not having that. It makes his eyes sting with tears all over again.
So he gets up, walks over to his dresser, and breaks his piggy bank with a single chunk of explosive ice from his quirk (he’s been practicing).
Heʼs been saving up for a long time, so hopefully heʼll have enough.
Tou-chan never had a kidʼs bike, and that wasn’t fair, but Akira could get him an adult bike, all his own.
The next morning he brings the money to Papa, holding it out in his outstretched hands.
“Quite the fortune ya got there,” Papa looks him over.
“Iʼm gonna buy Tou-chan a big person bike,” he says. “This is all Iʼve got.”
“Guess we gotta go shopping then.”
“Just you and me. I want it to be a surprise.”
Papa crosses his arms over his chest. “That so, huh?”
“If we take him then he’ll end up getting toys and games for me instead. He never buys stuff for himself.”
“That’s him, alright,” Papa says, and Akira hears him say dumbass under his breath, but he pretends like he didn’t hear it.
Then they compare schedules, make a secret plan, and shake on it.
Certain people on TV say that Papa’s hard to work with. Akira thinks they’ve got straw for brains and have no idea what they’re talking about.
*
Papa takes him shopping two days later. In the afternoon. Tou-chanʼs doing paperwork at the agency office, so he has no idea.
Thereʼs loads of bikes inside the shop. Mountain bikes and city bikes and ten speed and twelve speed bikes.
“Which one do I have enough money for?” he tugs on Papaʼs shirt sleeve.
“You just pick the one you think Tou-chanʼs gonna like. Iʼll spot you the difference.”
Right. Papa must have spent the last two days emptying his piggy bank for sure.
Akira thinks he might be going overboard, but he and Papa go through the entire store bike by bike until they settle on this teal-coloured one with bright white brakes.
“You sit on it so we know it works for Tou-chanʼs height,” Akira shoves Papa forward.
Papa and Tou-chan are basically the same height. Tou-chan is a little taller.
“Okay, okay, hold your horses,” Papa says, but he does what Akira wanted and he sits on the bike.
“Well?”
“Yeah. Feels great. Heʼll like having this basket thing too.”
Akira thinks back to what kidʼs bikes usually have, he thinks about his tricycle. “Thereʼs no ribbon.”
“I donʼt think weʼll have a lotta luck with that here.”
Hmm. Theyʼll figure that part out later. For now Akira needs to take Papa to the register so they can get this bike and pay.
He hopes theyʼll have enough. He waits as the register attendant counts out his coins and then looks over the counter to praise him for his judicious saving.
“Did we make it?” he asks.
“Almost,” she says.
Heʼs on pins and needles as Papa takes out his wallet and hands her a card to swipe. The way that works is thereʼs money somewhere else and the card tells the machine where it gets swiped where to get it.
Then the machine prints out a receipt, which means they won. And Akira lets out a small gasp and a reverent fuck yeah that makes the shop attendant gasp and Papa laugh for a whole minute.
Tou-chanʼs going to be so happy (hopefully). It was definitely worth giving up his life savings for.
*
“Do you really think Tou-chan will like this one?”
They’re walking home and Akira’s holding Papa’s hand and showing him the right way to go.
“New game. You tell me how many times you asked me that already and Iʼll answer it again.”
Akira may have asked him quite a few times on their way home. But he wasnʼt keeping count.
“Um. Three?” he throws out a guess.
“Nah.”
“Four?”
“Nope.”
“Five?!” Akira’s starting to get annoyed.
“Probably around seven. But donʼt worry, alright? You and your Tou-chan can ask me shit as many times as ya want.”
“So you do think heʼll like it?”
“Heʼll fucking love it,” Papa says. “It’s from us.”
*
It’s not easy to hide the bike, so they just leave it in the entryway and Akira brings his coloring equipment there to wait for Tou-chan to come home.
Papa calls him a ‘goddamn tripping hazard’ but brings him a cup of orange juice and some apple slices anyway.
By the time Tou-chan actually shows up Akira doesn’t know what he wants to show off first, the bike or his drawings. Papa seems to find this funny, and he and Tou-chan smile at each other (they’re probably going to kiss or something).
“We’ve had a busy day,” Papa says.
Akira’s been busy since they got home for sure. He made eight whole drawings. He wonders what Papa was doing, then takes a few sniffs, and smells the dinner that’s cooking. It smells like curry rice.
“I see,” Tou-chan says, and sure enough he leans down to kiss Akira’s hair and then he kisses Papa’s cheek.
Which is…okay. But Akira has something to show him. Then they’ll have time for all that. As Papa calls it: being a buncha saps.
“This is for you,” Akira shows him the bike, which he decorated with all the ribbon and glitter glue he could find in the house until it shines.
“Just for you,” he adds, to make it sink in. “I wrote your name on the ribbon.”
(Papa helped.)
“Thank you,” Tou-chan looks it over, and his eyes are wide. He looks impressed, which is good.
But Akira has to check. “Do you like it?”
“It’s wonderful,” Tou-chan says. “I…”
He never had one of his own. Akira knows that.
“It’s okay,” Akira says quickly. “I can teach you. Yours is the same color as my trike.”
Tou-chan is always teaching him and helping him, so now Akira can be helpful back.
“That’s very kind,” Tou-chan says, and he gently rings the bell that’s hooked onto the handlebars. “Did you decorate this yourself?”
Akira nods.
“It was his whole idea to buy it,” Papa says. “He’s a good kid.”
This is starting to get embarrassing.
So Akira yanks Tou-chan down and changes the subject. “How’s your arm?”
“Oh,” Tou-chan rolls up his sleeve so Akira can see where the bruises were. “Much better.”
They were purple before, and angry looking, but now some of them have faded now, they’re more red.
Akira sighs, relieved. He hugs Tou-chan as hard as he can. He kinda wants to crush him with his love.
And there’s still so much he wants to ask. There’s things that he wants to know that only Tou-chan could tell him. About their family. About what he comes from.
That can wait though. “I’m glad you like the bike.”
(I’m glad you made it home safe.)