The strangled little noise Paul makes is nothing like a laugh. He closes his eyes as Midoriya kneels next to him like he doesn't despise him, ever generous even to his villains, and lets his head roll forward to hang as Midoriya speaks.

"I'm not afraid you'll reject me." Paul produces his ritual knife with a flick of his wrist, a bead of frustration working into his voice. "You should. You both should."

The proper form of this would be to have Midoriya take the knife and inflict the wound, but Paul can see the fight that would come of it with the dull foresight of mundane understanding. Self-inflicted will have to do. He raises the razor sharp blade to the crook between thumb and index finger and rests it there, already biting lightly into yet-unbroken skin.

"I'm afraid you'll go somewhere I can't bring you back from," he says, staring forward at nothing, and then, irrelevantly, unbidden, "At least he wasn't sick."

Paul slits his palm down to the flexor tendons, bisecting the branching loop of the radial artery in a gush of oxygenated blood that spurts obscenely once before it subsides into a torrent that slicks down Paul's upraised forearm and drips heavily on the cone of incense, plumes of cinnamon and iron scented steam rising from the contact between the profane and the divine.

It's then Paul raises his hand, signing with slippery, reddened fingers: I love you.