Paul hates being a disappointment. It's a thing that lies uneasy on him, that happens too often these days, the tangle of unspoken rules and expectations from all these different worlds somehow always seeming to conspire against him. Midoriya looks down at him like that, and it's acid lashed across a fraying line.

He takes the offered hand, running fingers up to Midoriya's wrist, and in a flicker of movement like a spark crossing a gap he arcs up, his other hand slipping into Midoriya's messy hair and fisting there, just short of pain, foreheads pressed tackily together.

"I was fair," he says, with a ribbon of heat woven through, "You won't be so lucky next time."

And he kisses him in a scrape of teeth and a smear of iron, laved over with the tip of his tongue, a sea-snake strike of a kiss.

"If you win," he tells him, against the corner of his mouth, "We'll have a real fight."