terriblepurpose | Deer Country Contact

Midoriya asks Paul for a few hours, to dress warmly, and to pack his supplies for collecting nature samples. He's confident no one knows about this place in the Rocks, where even Beasts have a difficult time traversing. It's at a dizzying height and too dangerous to get to without superpowers. Midoriya only discovered it when he was combing this area in much more dire circumstances.

Thanks to a careful application of super strength, Blackwhip, and Float, he lowers them down into an otherwise treacherous crevasse beset by chaotic ocean winds. Tucked away against one sheer rock face is a narrow fissure just wide enough to admit one person at a time. Midoriya instructs Paul to enter first with a Moon Orb light.

The cave is the size of a house and oddly warmer than the frigid weather. A distant mineral smell suggests something thermal at work like the natural hot springs nearby. Stalactites and stalagmites curtain the walls. In the distance, a few bats that braved the wind rustle their wings sleepily. After situating themselves on the gently sloping entry, Midoriya closes the lid on the lantern.

Capped stalks and filaments of cave fungi glow green to purple. Beetles luminescent with false chartreuse eyes tentatively emerge from a far wall. Their glowworm larvae speckle the ceiling like lapis stars. There didn't seem to be much life in this remote cave, but it does in fact teem with it.

"Oh."

The exhalation is too soft to bounce off the slick cave walls, a gentle heave and fall of Paul's shoulders only marked by the faint shadows cast by the teaming natural light in the crevasse. When he brings his knit hands to cover his mouth, it is a barely perceptible gesture in the gloom.

"It's beautiful," Paul says, through his laced fingers, covered lantern set down by his feet, his eyes turned upward to the glowing filaments above, "How did you find this?"

There are more things in the world than many people might guess that evoke awe in Paul. This cave and its contents are among them. The question is an open, edgeless one, tinted throughout with his amazement - and then, with his affection, as his gaze turns to Midoriya in the pallid light of the cave dwelling creatures all around them.

Edited 2023-03-10 05:50 (UTC)

He pauses while unbuttoning his puffy jacket. Paul's reaction is also part of the experience. Midoriya waits too keenly for it despite reassuring himself Paul is thrilled with this place. When attention is turned on him, he flushes a pale pink that has nothing to do with windchill. It's a murky shade in the faint cool light. His eyes catch the green and hold it like jewels. Some days, like today, they're mostly clear of Corruption, though the shadows around them remain firmly in place.

"I was looking for some--something else."

It's one of his half-truths, and he knows by now he's a terrible liar. This makes him immediately nervous in contrast to the careful and confident way he climbed here. He doesn't want to spoil Paul's birthday gift by talking about patrolling the skies in a desperate search for the lost multiple times in the last year.

He should probably take his hand. Do something smooth. Isn't that what people do? He's been dating Paul and Kaworu for about a year. They mostly just carried on doing the things they liked, but with kissing. Midoriya has made his best guesses on what constitute normal outings with boyfriends, but the three of them are far from normal.

"...Surprise?" he ventures a word borrowed from English. Midoriya is not smooth.

The half-true answer only dims Paul's happiness for a moment. Midoriya is as ceaseless in his endeavours as Paul used to be; it isn't as though Paul is truly surprised that this discovery was made in the search for things more precious than glowing worms.

He remembered it, and he thought of Paul when he did. That's the part that wards off any faint darkening of heavier realities intruding on the moment.

"Surprise," he says, honestly, matching English for English. He drops his hands as he steps towards Midoriya to close their tiny gap, and then leans down to touch their foreheads together, angling the rest of himself just far enough back that Midoriya can keep unbuttoning his coat between their chests. Very gently, he brushes his knuckles underneath one of his shadowed eyes, skimming over practically invisible freckles in the gloom.

"Thank you." That, he says in Midoriya's mother tongue, which will always feel a little bit like love when it trips off the tip of his own. "I love it."

After everything terrible that's happened lately (to them, because of him), he wants to make a net of his fingers and catch this feeling like he caught his voice. Perhaps he could weave it watertight and wear it over his heart. Perhaps he could just stay here a few seconds longer, looking at the reflections in Izuku's eyes.

"It was lucky I found this place at all. Like a secret area no one knows about in a video game. You were the first person it made me think of."

Midoriya would never have found this place ordinarily. He's not a true explorer, and he's not prone to seeking hiding places in nature unless he's truly distressed. He's a city boy. When he finally paused, even just for a bit of stolen time, it was because of seeing these little ceiling dwellers and those glowing caps for the first time.

Like Paul-who-returned, the cave was a respite, a reminder to shelter somewhere close and warm. Stop and smell the roses. Fondly regard the glowworms. It was Paul who found a constellation in his freckles.

"Happy birthday."

The cave is more suited to just his sweater. He drops his too-warm jacket and gloves where he knows it won't disturb anything and cups Paul's cheek in one scarred hand. This he knows, the reciprocation of given touch, and he presses a small kiss to his lips as his restless thoughts scatter like birds. He settles more into himself when he isn't entertaining a flock of them.

"I've never kissed someone in a glowworm cave..."

"Neither have I." Paul tilts to rub the tips of their noses together, once, before he draws back a little. His hand finds a natural resting point on Midoriya's shoulder, and he thumbs the firm muscle there idly.

"I told Falco a story in one, once." A good memory, even in its context. Paul glances upward again, scanning the cave ceiling in evaluation. "Well...I don't know if they were worms. The lights were different...you know, caves like this, some of them have been their own ecosystems for thousands of years. You can find species in some of them that don't exist anywhere else."

That's a different kind of story than the one he told Falco - but then again, not that different, if he thinks about it from the right angle. The feeling is the same, all soft and close.

"Maybe we should name one of the glowworms after you. Would you like that, mm?" He looks back down, a teasing smile pulling up one corner of his mouth. "Name the mushrooms after Kaworu. Hero worms and angelhead caps. What do you think?"

He wrinkles his nose playfully against his. Midoriya likes seeing Paul relaxed and knee-deep in one of his favorite hobbies. It makes him feel the same way Paul feels during the telling of a story, coupled with half disbelief that he could be fortunate enough to observe, for example, the way Paul's mouth turns slantways. (He should have taken that as a warning.) He's taken off guard with a small eh? at Paul's suggestion.

"Me? A worm?"

He couldn't be offended. He's taken aback that Paul would think to name a whole species after him. As he rests his hand on the back of Paul's arm, his eyes follow upwards, wondering if the worms might feel up to the task of being called heroes.

"Someone might have beaten you to it... Did you think I'd bring you here without doing a safety check first? I came back a second time with a field guide to make sure it'd be safe to hang out. The air is fine, but I couldn't identify everything."

So there's still hope for someone (Paul) looking to name an undiscovered species.

"Corruption is really low too. Hardly anything can get up here to bleed in the first place. There's an entry point for some geothermal heat, but plenty of ventilation..." he rambles in the way that some people might find grating--like when he's analyzing some delicious food as a guest at dinner.

A joke flits across Paul's mind - that he could say something about assassinating the field guide, and keeping this all only between the pair of them - but he thinks better of it. He's pleased he thinks better of it, another new reflex that's strengthening itself over time.

"Only the very best worm," Paul assures him, instead, half-turning as he slides his arm over Midoriya's shoulders comfortably and refocuses on the glowing expanse of the cave, "A thoughtful, responsible worm."

He doesn't need Midoriya's protection and safeguarding, or so he would have once liked to tell himself. He doesn't need it, the way he needs air or water or a clear sense of his environment at all times, but he's come around to accepting that there is a greater part of him that wants it than craves total, unrealistic independence.

So yes. It's better not to make the joke about assassinations, because it would bruise something sweet and soft in the gesture.

"Do you know where the entry point is?" He asks, when there's a lull in Midoriya's outpouring of words. "Or do you think it's somewhere deeper than we can reach?"

The part of them that wants to do everything on their own doesn't take themselves into account. It forgets how to lift their spirits. There's a bolstering comfort in Paul's arm snaking around him, and Midoriya leans his mop of moss-colored hair against his shoulder.

He throws Paul an apologetic look for getting carried away with his rambling instead of looking at the beauty around them properly. The glows are captivating even to his untrained eye. He nestles closer than he meant to. He missed him.

"The book only covered species in the general area. It said nothing about this place. So no, I don't know where it is, and I doubt there's anyone who does."

But he knows where this is going, considering Paul's penchant for wandering off after something fascinating. His fingers spread against Paul's shoulder blade, and he nudges him in a likely direction based on the way the warm air tickles his nose.

"Let's look for it."

Paul has had reason to reflect on love, lately, and the ways that it's a curious thing. If he had to choose between marvelling at the wonders of this cave, unknown and unexplored, or spending his time contemplating the already memorized curves and shadows of Midoriya's face and the familiar babbling rhythm of his voice, he'd choose the latter every time.

How fortunate he is to not have to choose. Paul sneaks in one more kiss to the top of Midoriya's head, because he can, before he gives into the nudge on his back.

"Just don't let me lose track of time, all right?" He's half-teasing, but only barely half. "I want to be sure we make it back in time for dinner."

Checks and balances. None of them ever letting the others wander too far, however happy they are to wander, without being able to be called home. That's the gift he gets every day, birthday or not, and gratitude thrums in his marrow as he breaks away just far enough to hop lightly down a level, careful not to crush anything delicate under his boots.

"Maybe we'll find something segmented," he adds, hopefully.

He retrieves his backpack and lantern as his hair tingles pleasantly.

"Don't worry, I only forget the time when I'm alone." And though sometimes he makes it to things only just in the nick of time, he's not often late. Ever conscious of others first, it reminds him to gently tug (or be tugged by) his links with them.

He lets Paul take the lead because, "You have lighter feet than me." Even if, in an urge to show off, they've collapsed a basement ceiling before.

It's a suitably slow pace to allow them to catch sight of the odd lizard hibernating in the moss and carefully push glowing curtains of fungi aside. A few slopes, jumps, and judicious uses of Blackwhip later, they come upon a steamy vent too small and slick to wriggle into. The fungi on the ground and walls grow thicker around here. This mouth, or one of them, promises a concentrated collection of lifeforms. Midoriya regards it with wonder.

"Can this small hole really warm the entire cave? Well at least I don't have to keep you from trying to crawl into it."

Midoriya squats carefully on a bare patch of stone, mindful of his sneakers, and gives Paul his mildest look. It's a mellow dry humor that stops short of calling Paul an actual worm because the implication is enough.

Midoriya might be able to imagine a shutter going off behind the captivating widening of Paul's pupils at every new sleeping reptile and intricate mycelia network, not to mention the furtive fluttering of tiny gauze winged things against the dark, so fleeting Paul can't yet decide if they're spores, seeds, or organisms in and of themselves.

Definitely less than half teasing about the promise he just extracted, in retrospect, but they do eventually get to the vent.

"Ha, ha." Paul rolls his eyes at Midoriya's mild implication, the words deadpan but said through a genuine smile. He crouches next to Midoriya, his weight balanced in his toes as he leans over the pungent smelling vent. He breathes in shallowly, then deeply, tasting nothing fouler than buried mineral vapour. In the damp silt around the vent, something squirms, and Paul watches in rapt amazement as a pale amphibious quadruped with a slender body barely bigger than his thumb appears on the surface and shoots out a vividly pink tongue to sponge dirt from its face.

"The vent...I think it might just relieve pressure." Paul leans to one side to touch his fingertips to stone, assessing the quality of the heat radiating off of it. "There might be a larger cavity below. Steam geysers? Or something else, buried down there..."

Old magic, ancient alchemy, an enormous slumbering Beast, a fantastical engine of a fallen empire - or 'only' some geological marvel, which Paul would still count among all the other wondrous possible causes.

"You're right. I do want to crawl into it, a little," he admits, sheepishly.

He holds his breath as he brings his face close to peer at a particular cluster of tiny caps with blue glowing stalks. The little airborne things Midoriya mistakes for some sort of miniature whitefly occasionally get caught in his hair. He digs in his pocket and attempts to snap a picture of the tiny wriggling thing (salamander?) in the silt with his Omni. It will never capture it the way Paul's eyes can, but the advantage of a photo is in sharing and discussing it. Still, he's always preferred using his eyes themselves. He misses things when he's stuck aiming behind a lens.

"It definitely smells like a hot spring."

He hooks a thumb into a loop on Paul's jacket in a routine sort of way even as he aims his Omni at something else.

"I'll follow you wherever, but you're not going in there."

Well, if Midoriya is going to provide an anchor anyway...

Paul rocks even further forward, boots creasing over his toes, and peers directly into the indistinct, steamy darkness roiling beneath the vent. His Omen, until now peacefully tucked under his collar, pokes her head out to knock the top of her little head against his jaw. He reaches up to soothe her absently, settling back a degree or so.

"Maybe if we come back on another trip, with equipment?" He offers up a future compromise hopefully. "You know - you're lucky I'm not saying that you have to let me, because it's my birthday. I'm being very reasonable."

He is not being very reasonable, and the slanted grin he wears knows it. He gives Midoriya a beat or two to look aghast, or start to protest, or even prepare to shove Paul into the hole himself for being irritating before he amends -

"Or I could stay out of mysterious holes and give you one less thing to worry about, I suppose."

His fingers quickly close over the loop. He tenses as he modifies his crouch and his knees thud to the wet ground. He gives Paul an incredulous look because--yes, wait for it--there's that grinning smirk.

"I thought you cared about the little creatures and didn't want me to have to Smash you out of there."

If Paul's sense of self-preservation only extends so far, perhaps he should consider its effect on lives other than his own. Midoriya gives a vicious tug, and the easiest place for Paul to fall is not forward, but backward into Midoriya's arms.

Oh, no. Not exactly what Paul least wanted to have happen.

He leans into the direction of the fall with a little laugh that echoes off the walls, back out of the crevice, and at once nestles himself into Midoriya's embrace. Given the height difference between them, this looks something like a cat tucking itself into a box one size too small, and like a cat, Paul is perfectly content in this enclosure.

"You wouldn't Smash them," he states, confidently, "You'd figure something else out...but it's better not to take the risk."

His head lolls on Midoriya's shoulder. He looks up at him backlit by the thousand dim lights above, his cocky grin gentling to contentment, and nuzzles Midoriya's jaw.

"Besides, you'd never let me get that far." He nudges Midoriya's jaw up with the bridge of his nose, then delves into the soft crook of his neck. "You know almost all of my tricks."

What a terrible fate. Midoriya wraps his arms around Paul's middle as he curls his feet under himself and settles more comfortably. Paul's curls tickle his cheek, which warms and acquires a rosy pink glow under his freckles. He's well-versed in angling his chin to better tuck someone under it. A soft sound escapes him as Paul's breath and the subtle vibration of his voice caress his neck.

"Like the one where you annoy me until I hold you tight; you've been taking lessons from Kaworu-kun."

And other tricks as well, like the way Paul melds into him while affecting sly insouciance. Midoriya's eyes follow what he can see (past Paul's hair) of his face, then down the lines of his jacket to the long legs angled gracefully like a cave bug. Paul is lovely; Paul is entirely and unfairly too tall. Risking letting his prisoner escape, Midoriya loosens one arm. He reaches a hand up to cup Paul's jaw and cradle him close. His fingers brush idly along Paul's earlobe.

"Which tricks do I not know?" he's half afraid to ask. Paul likes to tease him.

Paul relaxes further into Midoriya with a soft sound of his own at the brush of fingertips over his sensitive pierced lobes. His lips stay slightly parted, their inner shine barely illuminated by the light bouncing off every other surface. His pupils are wide in the gloom, hungry for every scrap they can capture of the world around them.

"Only a fool discards an opponent's strategy for its origin," he says, the gravity of the proverb undercut by the breathiness of his tone, "And only a greater fool reveals their own for nothing."

He slides his hand up over Midoriya's chest, the curve of his shoulder leading up to his neck, into the dense forest of his hair. He curls his fingers just enough to let Midoriya feel his nails, a lazy cat's paw pressure. He wonders if the pale, irregular blush rising up his throat is visible in the shifting glow.

"And I'm still working on them," he admits, his little laugh more held in his chest than allowed to escape his mouth. "I should have been more careful about how quickly I used the others up."

The more restrained Paul's laugh, the more Midoriya feels its reverberation through his sweater. Something implodes pleasantly in his own chest. It is good to feel Paul so alive, even subtly so while at rest with lazy caresses and the cavern's wonders to distract them from distraction.

"Couldn't hurt to ask. I know about making notes and stealing moves." And he knows that Paul knows this about him. He too doesn't care from where he adapts his strategies.

His chin angled upward, it's easier to keep his eyes lifted to rest on the twinkling luminescence above them. It's even easier to slowly slide his lids half-closed with a contented hum at the sensation on his scalp. It makes him think of a gentle shampooing while showering off the silt and a subsequent relaxing soak. Their bathroom tile makes their murmurs echo, and the steam makes their lips soft. The tub large enough to fit three was one of the deciding factors in selecting the new apartment last year.

His eyes sweep downward again and spy what he thinks might be color rising up Paul's skin to submerge him. Midoriya saw what he thought might have been Sophia earlier, and he's glad she seems to have disappeared in the manner of Omens. The dim blue-green light limns Paul's face in a way that completes the suffusion of heat in his own and reminds him of how he tastes.

"If I give you a big kiss... will you leave with me in time for a bath before dinner?" he asks in a breathless near-whisper.

Sophia is nothing if not discreet. She knows when to tuck herself away into the hearts of shadows. It's one of the ways she and her Sleeper are in sync.

Another is the way that Paul shivers like a much smaller creature sometimes, when things are just right, a ripple of sensation that thrums through his skin and pools in his tightening belly. He arches up restlessly, one step ahead of himself, well on the path to a flush that pours up into his face and down across his chest.

(He likes to see the fleeting white marks of fingerprints in it, the contrast between all of their hands. It's not a very complicated liking. Even he, to his still occasional surprise, is capable of being tugged along by the uncomplicated, playful whims of his hormones.)

"That sounds like an acceptable compromise," he says, just as breathy, because he is also still always going to be himself. It's just that he can also be this: rising up to chase after that promised kiss, happy and eager and wanted.

He gasps a little when Paul moves against him, as if it were possible to be any closer. He's near enough to see the delicate spindly shadows cast by Paul's lashes in the bioluminescent gloam. He presses and anchors his thin hips between his thighs. His scarred hand burrows deep in his curls, but he doesn't need to guide Paul to him.

He brushes his lips over Paul's, a fleeting almost shy movement before he takes his mouth completely. He hums as he teases into his mouth with his tongue. Sweat and humid air stick his curls to his brow. He slides his hand under Paul's shirt and runs the texture of his palm over his stomach and up his chest. He finds his skin feverishly warm.

His thoughts think they know what comes next. He can just see Kaworu's devilish grin as he orders him to take off his shirt. He can just hear Paul's hot-breathed murmur in his ear about being quick, quick enough to christen a stolen moment in a borrowed space.

Midoriya's lips part, and he very nearly laughs as his mouth misaligns and their noses jostle together. It's a light, bubbling emotion that can take him by surprise during exciting moments. He can hardly believe he's been so lucky to have met Paul and Kaworu.

There must be something of conditioning to it, Paul thinks. It isn't an unwelcome concept. Everything Paul feels about this aspect of his life was cultured between his loves like delicate orchids, like the tender shoots of new grass. If he's imprinted on them specifically, how can that be so bad a thing?

This thought springs up in the wake of an approach to their kiss that could only be Midoriya's, shy flirtation giving way to assertive control giving way to the effervescent hum of near-laughter. Paul's shallow, breathy moan breaks midway into an answering shiver of joy in his breath. His fingers knead into Midoriya's hair and against the tender scalp underneath his green curls.

Sometimes, he thinks it's a good thing Midoriya is either too honourable or too generous to take advantage of how easily he leaves Paul undone. Other times, it's a welcome budding friction where desire rocks against the unrealized want. Right now, he bucks up between Midoriya's thighs into the drag of Midoriya's palm over his skin, and he lets most of his thoughts be shucked away into pleasant static.

"I love you," he says, fervently, on the cusp of indecently, and then he catches Midoriya's lips with his for at least one more lingering kiss in this warm, dark treasure of a place.

Midoriya's fingers are carefully mapping Paul's lithe topography when Paul moves. Midoriya responds to a familiar call and answer. He follows the sinuous curve of Paul like a river flooding and rising dangerously and cleaves to him.

One of Midoriya's trademarks is how easily he flushes bright pink, and the rest of him is no exception. He becomes a radiating heat element pulsing like a star. He is unable to prevent or conceal the tell of pleasure between his legs. He moans with surprise into Paul's mouth. It's his turn to bury his face into Paul's neck in breathlessness.

"I love you too... And I made a mistake. I thought I could only kiss you once."

He can desire very much to kiss him multiple times. He circles around to clutch Paul to his chest, and he doesn't care how much damp silt gets on his sweater as he tips to his side in a jumble of limbs. He hooks his leg around Paul's hips in a parody of a grapple.

There is a bath promised, somewhere, as little as Paul is currently thinking about the future. They'll be able to rinse out the traces of silky mud catching the tips of Paul's hair and slicking down his clothes on one side. For all of Paul's fastidiousness as a rule, he's never been hesitant about getting dirty when it's worth it.

This is worth it. Paul hums and gasps under Midoriya's mouth, returning the so-called grapple in kind. His hips being captured by Midoriya's leg gives him no choice but to rock them forward and up as he seeks leverage with a hand twisting into the front of Midoriya's sweater, another hand finding the fine flare of Midoriya's own hips and hooking his fingers into his waistband to secure him.

The ground is hot underneath them. He wonders vaguely what the salamanders make of this, an absurd lilting thought that dissolves into wordless, thoughtless enthusiasm when he gets the angle of his hips just right and all but whines against Midoriya's teeth.

"Fuck -" Paul tugs on Midoriya to anchor him against another pulse of rolling friction. "It's okay - I forgive you -"

The salamanders scuttling closer to the bases of goop-shaped stalagmites are very upset about the giants tussling on their quiet expanse of land. They are glad of having had the foresight to move a respectable distance from these clumsy oafs.

"Thank you--" Midoriya garbles absurdly against the corner of Paul's mouth, as if there is anything to be forgiven. Coherent thought is beyond him, and the only distraction from distraction are the ethereal twinkling lights further up the cave wall. If Paul has to allow himself to be carried away, Midoriya is already lost to the hormones running roughshod inside his body.

He has Paul trapped, but the onslaught of a few new sensations below his waist illicit vulnerable shivers. His high moan echoes off the walls with more spirit than he expected. His volume and pitch fluctuate wildly when he forgets himself, and he frequently does, as someone who doesn't think of himself as much as he should.

He curves his hand over Paul's buttocks and leaves his own hips no room but to follow each rise and fall of the stormy tide. His other hand curls under Paul's head and fists in his muddy hair. He sucks a bite on Paul's lip and covers it with the slick softness of his tongue. All this is still not enough, desire and its frustration dancing opposite each other like winds churning around an eye suspended between them.

"Paul-kun," he breathes, and the pair of syllables might as well be another wordless stuttering moan.

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Birthday Gift

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