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?"
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.
"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.
A sunrise enjoyed in the company of another. A cave filled with impossible lights. A languid, shared bath. This. Fleeting things made more precious by their impermanent nature and unpredictable imperfections. They demand examination. He keeps his eyes on Paul as long as he can. It took him a long time to internalize that he is allowed to look and drink him in, that he doesn't have to steal shy glances at what is given freely.
His face contorts ungracefully, but this too is an intimacy; he can shut his eyes in safety and warmth and cede that sense to Paul, who continues to work him mercilessly. Midoriya's breathing is harsh, truncated, and punctuated by short moans. He moves with Paul and coaxes the last of pleasure from him. He will always be impressed by how Paul can manage to do anything in the throes of the sudden zenith and stomach-dropping fall. Speaking of which--
The ache in his lower stomach gives way to an implosion with only a few quickened gasps to herald it. Unlike Paul, he makes no effort to muffle his cry, which echoes on the walls. The cultivated coil in his muscles tenses and releases his hips for the last time. One of his legs continues to shudder, then goes limp with the rest of his body.
He presses his cheek to the ground. The stone is warm like a living thing and brings the scattered atoms of his spirit back to earth. He does not notice the two pink crescents marked on his scarred shoulder. His clean hand, now unclenched from Paul's thigh, reaches up and cradles Paul's hair with all the solidity of a noodle, or perhaps a worm. There is no thought in his head except of the cool sweat wicking off his skin and the one breathing against him.
More out of instinct than conscious thought, he rolls on his back to get more air and to pillow Paul's head. Midoriya is a mess: half muddy, hair matted on one side, flushed and panting, slick and smelling of sweat, sex, and silt.
Someone, Paul thinks for one exploded half-second in the midst of being wrung out of the last iota of shivering joy, really ought to do something about outlawing Midoriya's hands. (And then Paul, of course, would be an accomplice for life.)
In the ebb, they lie together like shipwreck survivors tangled up on the shore. They're about as much of a disaster as if they were streaked with flotsam and seashore muck. There's nowhere reasonable to dry off his hand, so Paul simply drapes it over Midoriya's waist to dangle in mid-air. The situation below his waist and on his stomach is simply irredeemable. The less said of his hair, the better.
He couldn't care less about any of that. With Midoriya's lax fingers splayed over his hair, Paul floats in a state of perfect and complete happiness, a lotus flower in a warm pool. He nestles his cheek on Midoriya's broad shoulder just above the swell of his heaving chest with a tiny murmur of contentment.
"Mm," he manages, very sensibly, followed by a muzzy ripple of laughter that's nothing but fond. "Good that...we're having that bath."
Sometimes he idly wonders if liking the smell of Midoriya's sweat so much borders on something unseemly, but it's an easy thought to dismiss. There's nothing wrong with enjoying every part of the person you love. Licking a stripe across the damp of his bare skin is, however, still the behaviour of an impossible pest, and he knows it.
"Gross, Paul-kun," he mumbles without any heat or shying away, fully aware of the contrast between one clean lick on his shoulder and the entire wet bedraggled rest of them. Midoriya's messy hand lies still somewhere between them, slick and useless.
He strokes his clean fingers over Paul's ear. He very nearly brings his hand back to push Paul's face away in the sassy way Kaworu sometimes does when he's been teased or licked. Midoriya settles for giving him a look instead. His eyes follow his impossibly long lashes and--like Paul himself--the strong yet delicately-formed bridge of his nose. His mouth is always artfully shaped and too ready to slip nimbly from one expression to the next. He will never tire of looking at him.
"I love you too," he says with his throat suddenly tight, and he shuts his stinging eyes and buries his mouth against Paul's forehead. He kisses the silt and hair stuck to it. The swings of mood and emotion come less frequently than when he was younger, but they still catch him by surprise sometimes. (He shouldn't be surprised; he just got done being very vulnerable with him.) The corners of his smile tremble, but always upward.
Paul can manage to clasp Midoriya closer with an arm he can only use up to the wrist. His other hand, only lightly streaked with silt, worms up between them so he can curve it over the nape of Midoriya's neck as if securing him in place. He strokes his thumb over a tense tendon and bites the inside of his own swollen lip.
"I know. I missed you too," he tells him, with quiet understanding. There's no need to explain any further, not this time. Paul knows. He feels the echo of their separation in his own heart, even though he wasn't there for any of it.
(But he was, in a way. The man contained the boy he once was, and now the boy contains the man he will not be. He swims with foreign and familiar memory, his other self hidden behind a thick curtain of blessed emotive inertia. Still. It lingers.)
"That's probably why I got a little carried away by myself." He breathes in deeply, a little shiver bouncing back up his spine, and kisses the fullness of Midoriya's cheek. "Not that I'm sorry for that. I am for - other things, but...today is a good day. It's happy. So let's be happy, because we're both here, and you're not getting rid of me again for a long time, all right?"
"Yeah," he agrees tremulously. "I got carried away too. I'm really happy. I'm so blessed."
His chest feels like it's swelling to burst. Though his voice trembles and a few tears leak out of his eyes, that's the end of it. He is happy, happy enough to be moved to tears, and he prefers to pass through the emotion and all its turbulence rather than tamp it down.
He circles his thumb over the start of Paul's jaw and the delicate skin below his ear. He could stay here forever, face half buried in Paul's muddy hair, but he chooses not to listen to the languidness of afterglow.
"Let's go home. I have..." he sighs, short and practical but still gentle, "one handkerchief, if I remembered to bring it, and wipes in my first aid kit."
He chooses a cleansing shower, inviting Kaworu to soak with them in a subsequent bath, and birthday dinner--and other activities he strongly suspects will happen with enthusiasm.
Everything Midoriya feels shines out of him like sunlight. Even down here in the warm throbbing heart of the world, Paul can tilt his face into that radiance and soak it in like any other tender green thing. He shifts to kiss the dew at the corner of Midoriya's eyes and thinks about that word, blessed, as he levers up to sitting. He never appreciated how deeply he could understand its definition when he was younger. He supposes that's part of getting older.
"Let's just use my shirt, and I'll button my coat up to the neck," Paul suggests, hunting around for said shirt and offering it to Midoriya first, like a gentleman. He's definitely feeling especially sentimental in the pleasant buzz of post-coital hormones, because even that little pragmatic, unlovely detail seems luminous and sacred.
"I'll do laundry tomorrow." He trails his fingers lightly over the span of Midoriya's arm, the slats of his ribs, and anything else he can skim within the reach of his hand without getting in the way. "No need to use up your first aid kit."
Paul remembers almost everything. He'll make a special place for this memory, the soft blue mingled shadow and glow of it.
He stares up again at the speckled lights in the ceiling. He could analyze what makes this feel magical down to their surroundings and the inner workings of their bodies, but he doesn't. Sometimes he does remember not to spoil the moment.
"I'll do it," he murmurs sluggishly. "I was an accomplice. Don't think about the laundry you'll have to do."
How gallant of Paul to offer his shirt. Midoriya wants to return the gallantry in turn. Despite his pragmatism, he's reluctant to move. It's easy for his eyes to slide over to Paul with a soft smile. He just spent his desire, so Paul's touch doesn't stoke that specific dark heat, but it is the comfort of closeness they share, two bodies as one. He sighs happily just to feel his chest rise and fall under Paul's hand.
"You'll look like you've been pranked by Kaworu-kun. Have you ever noticed that our shirts tend to disappear at the same time he looks like he's up to something?" Of course Paul has noticed, and probably before Midoriya ever saw a pattern. It's not really a question. When he's done, he conscientiously folds Paul's shirt and hands it to him.
It isn't until he's on his feet finishing fastening his pants that it occurs to him that getting dressed by himself is different than getting dressed with a beloved when that beloved likes to look at him--as Paul's fingers told him just moments ago. Midoriya has never taken to being conscious of angles and lighting, and he's pretty sure he doesn't have a good side, but his luminous eyes dart shyly to Paul as he deliberately slows his movements. He takes his sweet time gathering his sweater.
Paul accepts the stained shirt with a still slightly dizzy smile, attending to his own sticky situation without taking his eyes away from the newest gift he's being offered. As far as Paul is concerned, Midoriya doesn't have a bad side.
"I should learn how to sculpt," he says, admiring the shifting landscape of Midoriya's arms, "Someone should preserve all of that for future generations, so they can weep in lamentation at not living at the same time as such a specimen. And they won't even know that you also did laundry."
He gets up carefully, resisting the languid drag of his limbs. He'll be getting carried all the way home. He can manage to get himself on his own feet and track down his own coat, although he doesn't mind reciprocating Midoriya's thoughtfulness in being sure to bend over in a particular way when he retrieves the rest of his discarded belongings.
"...you know, if we wanted to get him back for all the shirt theft, we could convince him I was asking him to do our laundry." Paul glances over his shoulder, a sly smile teasing the corner of his mouth. "Do you think he'd agree to do it, or would he threaten to throw out all our clothes?"
As usual, Midoriya's overactive imagination gets the better of him: If Paul sculpted him in his lifetime, what would it be like to have people looking at "all of that"? But it's "laundry" that ultimately makes him splutter and turn bright red. Belatedly he chucks his sweater at Paul's head.
"He'd throw out all my clothes because they're 'boring'..." he supposes. Isn't that just Midoriya's lot in life?
And now he has to retrieve his sweater from this damnably handsome person who knows how to bend over. He can't stop staring at the shift of light muscle and the graceful lines his arms make... even if his hair is in unmentionable shape.
Adding insult to injury, Paul snags the sweater effortlessly out of the air before it can fully entangle his head, although the loose sleeves still wrap around his face and lightly muffle his laugh. He unfolds to standing even more deliberately than he stooped in the first place, his own clothes draped over one arm and Midoriya's sweater held to his chest.
"He'd say that was why." Paul tilts his head, looking thoughtfully at Midoriya's arms. "I think we both know why he really wants to get rid of all of our clothes...and right now, I have to admit, I'm very tempted to follow his example and keep this sweater. You'd have to hold me extra close to keep yourself warm, but..."
As if he could actually keep Midoriya from reclaiming it - or would actually make him go without, for reasons practical and personal. Still. It is a thought.
Now Paul's just being incorrigible, and showing off his reflexes to boot. The state of his hair doesn't stop Paul from looking so smug (or so sly). Midoriya wastes no time putting his arms around him and tugging him close, but he doesn't grab the sweater.
"I'd hold you tight anyway. Give me my sweater or I'll freeze," he mumbles into Paul's shoulder, as if his face isn't still recovering from flushing.
If he tried to reclaim it the hard way, the sweater might not survive such roughhousing. His old dress shirt nearly saw its final days when he fought Bakugou in God's bathroom.
Midoriya's hair is an absolute mess. Paul sticks his face in it and huffs anyway, his laughter a low roll in his chest as he drapes the sweater in question around Midoriya's shoulders.
"We can't have you freezing," he agrees, then tongues some stray intrusive hair out of his mouth. "You're getting better at negotiating. Using yourself as collateral - very clever."
More absolute nonsense. Paul is still giddy with the events of the day, and a parallel passes unnoticed: he doesn't think he's been this carefree since those illusory days under that untrustworthy roof. The difference is that this roof, this peace, they built together, brick by brick.
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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.
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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.
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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.
nsfw
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.
nsfw
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 -"
Re: nsfw
"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.
nsfw
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.
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"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.
nsfw
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.
Re: nsfw
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.
nsfw
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.
Re: nsfw
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.
nsfw
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.
Re: nsfw
His face contorts ungracefully, but this too is an intimacy; he can shut his eyes in safety and warmth and cede that sense to Paul, who continues to work him mercilessly. Midoriya's breathing is harsh, truncated, and punctuated by short moans. He moves with Paul and coaxes the last of pleasure from him. He will always be impressed by how Paul can manage to do anything in the throes of the sudden zenith and stomach-dropping fall. Speaking of which--
The ache in his lower stomach gives way to an implosion with only a few quickened gasps to herald it. Unlike Paul, he makes no effort to muffle his cry, which echoes on the walls. The cultivated coil in his muscles tenses and releases his hips for the last time. One of his legs continues to shudder, then goes limp with the rest of his body.
He presses his cheek to the ground. The stone is warm like a living thing and brings the scattered atoms of his spirit back to earth. He does not notice the two pink crescents marked on his scarred shoulder. His clean hand, now unclenched from Paul's thigh, reaches up and cradles Paul's hair with all the solidity of a noodle, or perhaps a worm. There is no thought in his head except of the cool sweat wicking off his skin and the one breathing against him.
More out of instinct than conscious thought, he rolls on his back to get more air and to pillow Paul's head. Midoriya is a mess: half muddy, hair matted on one side, flushed and panting, slick and smelling of sweat, sex, and silt.
nsfw but less so
In the ebb, they lie together like shipwreck survivors tangled up on the shore. They're about as much of a disaster as if they were streaked with flotsam and seashore muck. There's nowhere reasonable to dry off his hand, so Paul simply drapes it over Midoriya's waist to dangle in mid-air. The situation below his waist and on his stomach is simply irredeemable. The less said of his hair, the better.
He couldn't care less about any of that. With Midoriya's lax fingers splayed over his hair, Paul floats in a state of perfect and complete happiness, a lotus flower in a warm pool. He nestles his cheek on Midoriya's broad shoulder just above the swell of his heaving chest with a tiny murmur of contentment.
"Mm," he manages, very sensibly, followed by a muzzy ripple of laughter that's nothing but fond. "Good that...we're having that bath."
Sometimes he idly wonders if liking the smell of Midoriya's sweat so much borders on something unseemly, but it's an easy thought to dismiss. There's nothing wrong with enjoying every part of the person you love. Licking a stripe across the damp of his bare skin is, however, still the behaviour of an impossible pest, and he knows it.
"Love you," he says, sweetly.
Re: nsfw but less so
He strokes his clean fingers over Paul's ear. He very nearly brings his hand back to push Paul's face away in the sassy way Kaworu sometimes does when he's been teased or licked. Midoriya settles for giving him a look instead. His eyes follow his impossibly long lashes and--like Paul himself--the strong yet delicately-formed bridge of his nose. His mouth is always artfully shaped and too ready to slip nimbly from one expression to the next. He will never tire of looking at him.
"I love you too," he says with his throat suddenly tight, and he shuts his stinging eyes and buries his mouth against Paul's forehead. He kisses the silt and hair stuck to it. The swings of mood and emotion come less frequently than when he was younger, but they still catch him by surprise sometimes. (He shouldn't be surprised; he just got done being very vulnerable with him.) The corners of his smile tremble, but always upward.
"I missed you," he tries to explain.
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"I know. I missed you too," he tells him, with quiet understanding. There's no need to explain any further, not this time. Paul knows. He feels the echo of their separation in his own heart, even though he wasn't there for any of it.
(But he was, in a way. The man contained the boy he once was, and now the boy contains the man he will not be. He swims with foreign and familiar memory, his other self hidden behind a thick curtain of blessed emotive inertia. Still. It lingers.)
"That's probably why I got a little carried away by myself." He breathes in deeply, a little shiver bouncing back up his spine, and kisses the fullness of Midoriya's cheek. "Not that I'm sorry for that. I am for - other things, but...today is a good day. It's happy. So let's be happy, because we're both here, and you're not getting rid of me again for a long time, all right?"
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His chest feels like it's swelling to burst. Though his voice trembles and a few tears leak out of his eyes, that's the end of it. He is happy, happy enough to be moved to tears, and he prefers to pass through the emotion and all its turbulence rather than tamp it down.
He circles his thumb over the start of Paul's jaw and the delicate skin below his ear. He could stay here forever, face half buried in Paul's muddy hair, but he chooses not to listen to the languidness of afterglow.
"Let's go home. I have..." he sighs, short and practical but still gentle, "one handkerchief, if I remembered to bring it, and wipes in my first aid kit."
He chooses a cleansing shower, inviting Kaworu to soak with them in a subsequent bath, and birthday dinner--and other activities he strongly suspects will happen with enthusiasm.
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"Let's just use my shirt, and I'll button my coat up to the neck," Paul suggests, hunting around for said shirt and offering it to Midoriya first, like a gentleman. He's definitely feeling especially sentimental in the pleasant buzz of post-coital hormones, because even that little pragmatic, unlovely detail seems luminous and sacred.
"I'll do laundry tomorrow." He trails his fingers lightly over the span of Midoriya's arm, the slats of his ribs, and anything else he can skim within the reach of his hand without getting in the way. "No need to use up your first aid kit."
Paul remembers almost everything. He'll make a special place for this memory, the soft blue mingled shadow and glow of it.
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"I'll do it," he murmurs sluggishly. "I was an accomplice. Don't think about the laundry you'll have to do."
How gallant of Paul to offer his shirt. Midoriya wants to return the gallantry in turn. Despite his pragmatism, he's reluctant to move. It's easy for his eyes to slide over to Paul with a soft smile. He just spent his desire, so Paul's touch doesn't stoke that specific dark heat, but it is the comfort of closeness they share, two bodies as one. He sighs happily just to feel his chest rise and fall under Paul's hand.
"You'll look like you've been pranked by Kaworu-kun. Have you ever noticed that our shirts tend to disappear at the same time he looks like he's up to something?" Of course Paul has noticed, and probably before Midoriya ever saw a pattern. It's not really a question. When he's done, he conscientiously folds Paul's shirt and hands it to him.
It isn't until he's on his feet finishing fastening his pants that it occurs to him that getting dressed by himself is different than getting dressed with a beloved when that beloved likes to look at him--as Paul's fingers told him just moments ago. Midoriya has never taken to being conscious of angles and lighting, and he's pretty sure he doesn't have a good side, but his luminous eyes dart shyly to Paul as he deliberately slows his movements. He takes his sweet time gathering his sweater.
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"I should learn how to sculpt," he says, admiring the shifting landscape of Midoriya's arms, "Someone should preserve all of that for future generations, so they can weep in lamentation at not living at the same time as such a specimen. And they won't even know that you also did laundry."
He gets up carefully, resisting the languid drag of his limbs. He'll be getting carried all the way home. He can manage to get himself on his own feet and track down his own coat, although he doesn't mind reciprocating Midoriya's thoughtfulness in being sure to bend over in a particular way when he retrieves the rest of his discarded belongings.
"...you know, if we wanted to get him back for all the shirt theft, we could convince him I was asking him to do our laundry." Paul glances over his shoulder, a sly smile teasing the corner of his mouth. "Do you think he'd agree to do it, or would he threaten to throw out all our clothes?"
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"He'd throw out all my clothes because they're 'boring'..." he supposes. Isn't that just Midoriya's lot in life?
And now he has to retrieve his sweater from this damnably handsome person who knows how to bend over. He can't stop staring at the shift of light muscle and the graceful lines his arms make... even if his hair is in unmentionable shape.
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"He'd say that was why." Paul tilts his head, looking thoughtfully at Midoriya's arms. "I think we both know why he really wants to get rid of all of our clothes...and right now, I have to admit, I'm very tempted to follow his example and keep this sweater. You'd have to hold me extra close to keep yourself warm, but..."
As if he could actually keep Midoriya from reclaiming it - or would actually make him go without, for reasons practical and personal. Still. It is a thought.
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"I'd hold you tight anyway. Give me my sweater or I'll freeze," he mumbles into Paul's shoulder, as if his face isn't still recovering from flushing.
If he tried to reclaim it the hard way, the sweater might not survive such roughhousing. His old dress shirt nearly saw its final days when he fought Bakugou in God's bathroom.
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"We can't have you freezing," he agrees, then tongues some stray intrusive hair out of his mouth. "You're getting better at negotiating. Using yourself as collateral - very clever."
More absolute nonsense. Paul is still giddy with the events of the day, and a parallel passes unnoticed: he doesn't think he's been this carefree since those illusory days under that untrustworthy roof. The difference is that this roof, this peace, they built together, brick by brick.
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