terriblepurpose | Deer Country Contact

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.

In theory, Paul could stop himself short any time he wants. Such things aren't beyond his skill. It's his will to do so that's lacking, sapped and scattered by the sound of his name tumbling from Midoriya's mouth in the deluge of other noises, the want that's transmitted and echoed everywhere they touch.

He answers bite for bite as he flattens his hand over the swell of Midoriya's chest before he slides it in a smooth stroke to slip under his arm and over his shoulder, Paul unwilling to have even that much of a gap between their bodies. The tugging on his hair is electric, arcing all the way down to the cradle of his pelvis, and sometimes he truly wonders how he ever gets anything else done when this is an ever present possibility.

(Responsibility, duty, the clarity of even a teenager's fleeting refractory period, the necessity of hydration. Still, though. It's a tempting thought, in the throes of it all.)

He breaks from Midoriya's lips with a hitching gasp, eyes huge and dazzled, slick mouth tugging into a smile that straddles the line between sly and shy on a razor's edge.

"Let me touch you?" He asks, breathlessly, with a frankly unfair squirm. "Please? So - so you'll have a clear head, taking us home?"

It's only practical.

He hums with need, hungrily savoring the tartness of each bite and Paul's sinuous movement against him.

"You're already touching me--"

Oh. Oh. That's what he meant... Midoriya's eyes widen, and he flushes deep pink. (He'll never be able to refute the strawberry allegations.) Despite being on the receiving end of them so often, Midoriya never knows why it is so easy for Paul to fluster him with a few words.

"Yes. Either way, I would never take you up in the air if it was unsafe." He's not so untrained that he can't be reliable under pressure. He suspects this is just Paul's excuse, as good as any.

His sweater and shirt are already a lost cause, soaked through with mud on one side, so he wriggles out of them and pushes them away. His scarred skin doesn't chill on the heated silt and stone. He melds to Paul like water in a gentle surrender anticipating long fingers moving where they will.

"Do you want me to--touch you too?" he mumbles in a quick breathy patter of sentences running into each other. "I-If you want to--in return--It's okay if you don't 'cause it's muddy--I just thought you might like--at the same time--It's your birthday--" More excuses.

Edited (needs less rizz) 2023-06-27 10:04 (UTC)

"Oh, you don't want to get me dirty?" Paul teases, breathlessly, which is patently unfair of him. He'd feel guilty about it if Midoriya wasn't also, in his own way, being terribly unfair.

Before Midoriya, Paul hadn't known he liked scars or muscle. He hadn't given much thought to anything he might have liked in that way, because there had been no one who had his interest. Midoriya very much has his interest now, and he trails his fingers over a few of those scars before he sheds his own shirt in reciprocation. The contact of their bare skin makes him bite his own lip with an appreciative shudder. He's shockingly close to losing his train of thought.

"You're so thoughtful." Paul presses a kiss to the corner of Midoriya's mouth, half-aware he's babbling, fully aware he doesn't care that he's babbling. "So good to me."

This position isn't optimal for what he has in mind. They have more room when he rolls them onto their sides, unhooking one leg from Midoriya's hips and leaving the other hitched up possessively. He sucks in a shaky breath as he works their pants open and loose, shoved down just enough, and claims Midoriya's lips urgently as he exhales through his nose.

"I want you to," Paul says, at last, because clear communication is a cornerstone of a healthy relationship. Then he slicks his palm with a shameless swipe of his tongue, reaching down between them, and - there. He sighs happily, eyes half-lidding, and nips at Midoriya's lower lip.

He continues Paul's stream of nonsenses, "You're beautiful, but you're right--Your hair's already dirty--Mmmm--!" He shivers under Paul's fingers, and he can't say it's from any cold.

Midoriya's hands explore the efforts Paul has put into strengthening his form. He doesn't have Paul's trick of flicking through his memories like a book. Midoriya has to trace over his recollections of intricacies to keep them, and he loves Paul's shape because he loves him.

Midoriya always thought all people were beautiful, unless their inner ugliness showed on the outside, but there is a certain brand of confidence that so easily flusters him when close at hand. Is that not something worth admiring? His eyes, openly following the path of his own hands down Paul's graceful lines, say yes. He helps him fix their pants open like flowers, though it's no trouble with Paul's slim hips. He frees one hand to tug Paul's thigh more securely to him.

It's hard to be shy when he has to pay Paul back for teasing him so mercilessly, and it's hard to hold back a shuddery exhale as Paul touches him where he's so vulnerable. He doesn't try to prevent the almost involuntary rock of his hips against Paul's hand.

He responds to Paul's nip with a sure bite of his own, his quick breathing betraying his hunger. He struggles to bring his eyes back into focus. He presses the tips of his scarred fingers to Paul's bitten mouth. His throat bobs as he finds the ability to speak again.

"Lick them," he tells him in the direct way he knows Paul likes, voice low and held steady by a thread. Midoriya could just do it himself, but he's always liked watching Paul move.

If Paul was flushed before, he must go incandescent at that instruction.

He doesn't know how to explain why Midoriya has this effect on him when he asserts himself. It quiets all the background static of his overcrowded thoughts, draws him to taut, exquisitely focused attentiveness. The coiled want radiating down his centre grows tighter and even more urgent, but what he wants, more than he even wants Midoriya to touch him, is to do what he's told.

Or, well - he's always prone to overachievement. Paul slips his tongue under Midoriya's fingers, holding eye contact with blown out pupils, and then bobs his head forward to take his fingers entirely into his mouth. His cheeks hollow as he sucks, messy and audible, lips stretched greedily. There's earthy grit, the hot metallic sting of sweat, the clean whisper of healthy skin - it's enough to make him dizzily, blissfully thoughtless.

When he pulls back with a wet pop he's breathing hard, dazed looking, and he nestles closer to Midoriya with a needy little keen even while he works his hand between them.

He had expected him to only do as asked, so when Paul takes his fingers, he splays his thumb and pinky in surprise along his angular jaw. (His other hand briefly grips his thigh tighter.) His mesmerized eyes are unblinking, dark, and glinting. It puts him in mind of other things Paul takes into his mouth. He finds him warm and hot, tongue moving in silent ululations under other sounds. When Paul releases him, Midoriya wipes his thumb over some moistness on the corner of Paul's mouth.

His hand slides slickly between Paul's legs. He takes him slowly but firmly, trying to express how there is nothing else in this world but this building pleasure. His thoughts have flown like birds from his head, leaving just a pleasant tingling on the right of his scalp where his curls are flattened against silt and warm stone. Midoriya is covered in his swiftly-appearing sheen of sweat. Turquoise from the lights above curves over his freckles and flees down his arm and side.

He arches his back, and their chests are flush once again. Paul's skin is not a map crisscrossed with damage like his, but being this close and falling into a rhythm of mingling climbing breaths, it's hard to delineate beginnings and endings. He remembers Paul is separate from himself by how the will of Paul's hand works on him, how the flushed face of a beloved looks at him, and how his lips feel when he presses fleeting kisses to them between gasps.

He moans softly, and then he moans louder. It probably is breaking character when it comes to the sure, commanding presence that directed Paul to lick his hand, but Midoriya was never good at acting, only feeling.

Knowing that he can unravel Midoriya like this is a privilege Paul cherishes ravenously. He wants to swallow the sounds Midoriya makes like his fingers. He wants to make a slick, trembling mess out of him time and time again, to wear his fingerprints and suck marks as badges of honour. No one else takes care of Midoriya like this. No one outside of them knows how to make him feel like this. That's a gift all on its own.

This is as much love as anything they do together. Their hearts beat against each other's chests as their breath spirals and rises like a pair of birds on a thermal current. Paul can hardly tell where the stinging salt at the corners of his eyes comes from as he bites his lip and presses their foreheads together to watch every flicker of Midoriya's expression.

That is, until he can't anymore. It's all so much, the drag of scarred fingers over soft skin overwhelming, and his gasps start to hitch in an unmistakable staccato.

"Izu," he whimpers, ducking his head to hide his face against a broad shoulder, blindly rolling his hips in stuttering pulses- and that's all the warning there is before he bites down to muffle a whine and tumbles over a precipice. He arches carelessly after the feeling, writhing and twitching through it, but his busy hand continues on resolutely for Midoriya's sake.

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