deercountry | i know that the sun is here with me

Paul leans into the kiss with half-closed eyes, gentled by closeness. He's glad that Midoriya is here for this memory, already softened by Paleblood runes painted on the shivering air and blown into shimmering dust over the fire.

"It's okay." He sets the stick down again and picks up Midoriya's hand instead, intertwining their gloved fingers and squeezing lightly in reassurance. "I want you to be here."

With his free hand, he signs their all clear signal in assurance that no threat is lurking out of view in the memory, slipping naturally between the two forms of communication. It has something to do with nostalgia, and something else and more important to do with the security that being near Midoriya evokes.

"I want you to meet him."

He knows he'd detect a threat if there were any, but Paul knowing there is none too is also reassuring. Midoriya needs to be reassured right now. His hand twitches almost imperceptibly in his, but Paul perceives so much. Midoriya becomes nervous at the proposition. He tilts his face close.

"Do I need to--Is there--Do you think he'll like me?"

His muttering is almost conspiratorial, like theorizing with other students about the contents of a final exam. He didn't get the chance to prepare or even introduce himself properly before Lady Jessica swept him along, believing he should exist in her orbit.

Paul should have seen that question coming, of all questions. It shouldn't leave him blinking in the dark like a flash of bright light, leaning in to touch their forehead together.

"Of course he'll like you." He brings his hand up to cup the Hero's jaw, stroking his cheek with his thumb. "I love you. How could he not like you?"

There's no doubt in his mind or in his heart. He can't imagine a universe where his father wouldn't cherish the things that Paul cherishes, if only because Paul does. If he would bend his head to share in Paul's wonder at a whorled seashell or a weathered bit of driftwood, he will share in his wonder at the more miraculous discoveries that are Midoriya and Kaworu.

(And his father is as Paul remembers him, exactly.)

"Besides. You're amazing. You're brave, and you're good, and you're thoughtful, and you're kind to me. What is there about you not to like?"

Paul draws him close, obscuring most of his vision but for him and the certainty on his face. Midoriya leans into the touch of his glove: cold with the air, warm in the tenderness of his fingers and the flush coaxed not entirely by the weather. He's having his penchant for earnest admiring compliments turned on him. Paul thinks the world of him, but Midoriya is used to making less-than-stellar first impressions.

He laces their fingers tighter. When he loops his arm around Paul's waist, he thinks back to when they sat in front of the ocean and spoke of missing their people back home. He's about to meet one.

"I've never met a Duke before."

It wouldn't be the first time he was intimidated by meeting someone's father or mentor--someone whose age and experience outclass his own, someone curious about what their mutual connection sees in him.

"Winter Mournings are supposed to present challenges. What happened here?" His arm curls closer uncertainly.

There's something bruised around Paul's eyes above the amused slant of his smile, his thumb touching the edge of Midoriya's mouth before he drops his hand to Midoriya's knee and leans back, allowing a decorous handspan of distance between them.

"That's not true," he says, lightly, tilting his head to move a stray curl away from his eyes, and to shift the shadows that lie across his face, "You've met me."

It's not a slight. He knows it's not, and doesn't take it as one. The title is a hollow one in Trench, his holdings minor and his House barely numbered further than the fingers of one hand. He doesn't call himself a Duke, didn't tell anyone that he was one for months. He's never insisted on being treated as the rank merits.

He'd rather not be one, because there can only be one Duke Atreides, and in his heart that will always be -

"I know you'll do well. You did with my mother." He glides back to the matter at hand, and the question that follows it, like a pond skimmer skating the water's surface. "This was after I turned fifteen. We'd had a celebration, and I said something I shouldn't have at it. My father brought me here to talk, but you don't have to worry about that. It isn't important."

He presses his lips together and flicks his eyes down in apology, but such is their familiarity that he only feels the need to look away for a second, if at all. Paul doesn't introduce himself as Duke, something that has always stood out to Midoriya. Midoriya has met rangers, commanders, karate senseis, and even a magical girl senshi who have all been upfront about their titles.

"The difference is I didn't know at the time. And by the time I did, we were already friends."

To think of Paul as a Duke is to bring up his father's death, a thing Paul doesn't talk about. Midoriya had decided unconsciously not to press the wound. Paul might be minding his manners, but a surge of bittersweet emotion urges Midoriya forward to press his lips gently on his.

Paul kisses him back just as gently, hand tightening on Midoriya's knee with redirected emotion. He's nervous, even though there's no reason to be. He is in perfect control of this memory, and may wind it back or smooth it over in any way he sees fit if anything were to go awry - which it won't, because it's his father and it's Midoriya, two people who have never disappointed him.

"We're not at court," he says, softly, once he's pulled back. "Out here, it doesn't matter so much. He's my father first."

In the woods, a twig snaps, the first herald of the sound of a man making a point of being audible before he appears. Paul tenses against Midoriya's side, his throat bobbing in a swallow, and he looks towards the place where his father will emerge.

"Are you ready?" He asks Midoriya, shifting his position to face forward, pulling his hand back but staying tucked against Midoriya. He does a tolerable job of keeping the faint quaver out of his voice.

He tries to focus on how his lips feel a little warmer than before instead of how cold and stiff his fingers feel inside their gloves from the nervousness. He'd be less nervous if Paul didn't speak so well of his father.

Someone approaches without stealth, and Midoriya knows it will be him. He leaves off touching Paul as if suddenly nipped by static, but they are still sitting against each other as if the ample log didn't have enough space. Midoriya doesn't have it in him to appear casual despite Paul's reassurances.

Midoriya can only take Duke Leto Atreides in for a moment--head of thick dark hair like Paul's, a beard full enough to hide things in--before he's on his feet bowing at the waist, hands glued to his sides.

"I-I-It's nice to meet you!" he stammers.

The Duke Leto Atreides, ruler of Caladan, esteemed member of the Landsraad, stops short at the edge of the clearing. He blinks at the light and the presence of a green-haired stranger dressed in rugged preparation for who knows what, who until moments ago was remarkably close to his cautious son, and has now flung himself into a bow that nearly has him at a right angle.

"Well," Leto says, mildly, in a voice warm as the smoke from the fire, as he adjusts the satchel strap over his arm, "It looks as though we're having a different kind of conversation than the one I planned on. It's nice to meet you too...?"

He lets his voice trail off into an up-curled implicit question like Paul does, sitting down on a log nearly perpendicular to theirs and unsnapping the fastening of his leather camp bag.

"Midoriya Izuku, sir," Paul answers, quietly, "Family name the first."

"Midoriya Izuku," Leto repeats, with a nod, "You can go ahead and sit."

In the full firelight, Leto has one or two fewer grey hairs thread through his beard than Paul remembers from the last time he saw him. He's nearly the same, otherwise, a patrician minted after his ancestors in nearly ever respect but the tell-tale laugh lines that mark his face. He isn't smiling now, but there is a suggestion of it not being far from him as he unpacks their fish and the means to cook them.

Paul can't stop looking at him.

"Are you hungry? There's enough for three of us, even account for my son and his growth spurt."

He was so flustered he forgot to give his name first thing! But it's too late to apologize for that, so he sits obediently right back where he was--then scoots awkwardly down the log to leave space for even Paul's gangly elbows. He sits up straight, limbs tucked in neatly without taking up space, hands clasped with fingers linked in his lap. His body calls upon familiar forms in times of crisis: His mom sits that way sometimes. Midoriya adopts her mannerisms in general, but especially when he's nervous.

A dozen emotions flicker across Midoriya's expressive face nearly all at the same time, lightning-fast enough to make an entertaining game for a Bene Gesserit. He's proud of Paul for growing like a weed. He's very fond of making sure Paul and Kaworu eat enough. He wryly wonders if similar efforts two years ago only worked in making Paul grow towards the sky, stretching him upward like the stickiest mochi. He cannot hide the soft concern in his eyes as he looks at Paul who is unable to tear his gaze away from his father.

"Th-Thank you Mister Duke Atreides-sama, sir." Various forms of address clamor to be used and tumble out all at once without an ounce of volume control. "But really I couldn't, please don't trouble yourselves. I'm sorry for intruding, by the time I got here I didn't know... I couldn't just leave Paul-kun--I mean, your son--the young master--"

He doesn't say it, but he does think it: Oh crap! And more insidiously scratching away at his self-worth: Paul could have had a good conversation with his dad without me making things weird...

"It's no trouble," Leto says, and the smile not far from him is threatening to appear at the corner of his mouth as he speaks, "And 'my lord' or 'sir' will do. No need to stand on ceremony. You're my son's guest, after all."

The hand-sized silver fish are cleaned, but otherwise whole. Leto pulls off his gloves with his teeth so he can run them through from mouth to tail on thin, strong wire, two fish to a skewer, and he flips one of these around and leans over to offer the other end of it to Midoriya. The signet ring on his finger gleams finely in the dancing light.

"You'll want to turn them as they cook. Paul will demonstrate. Isn't that right, Paul?" The stress Leto puts on his son's name is a mastercraft of fatherly implication: lightly interrogating and teasing at once, overlaid with fondness. It breaks Paul out of his mesmerized state, a pale flush of colour that can't be entirely explained by the cold brushing across his nose and cheekbones.

"I will," he affirms, faintly flustered, "And it's not an imposition, Izuku-kun. My father always brings more food than we need."

"You never know when an unexpected stranger will turn up on an uninhabited island." Leto does smile, at last, warm and gentle as the vanished sunlight. "Old Caladanin saying. Very wise."

Of course Leto has the ring. It's his. Midoriya even expected this, his mind on it since Paul destroyed it just two months ago. Midoriya stares at it on the hand offering him food, which has the unintended effect of making him look like he's never seen fish on skewers before.

That saying is very specific, and Midoriya isn't sure whether it's a saying, a joke, or a question as to why he's on this island with his son. All he can respond with is, "Yes sir, thank you very much," before he meekly smiles back, takes his share, and works his gauntlets off with his teeth. The scars on his right hand catch the firelight.

He glances up at the light fading through the trees, his nervousness making him hyper-aware of his surroundings and a little less inclined to eye contact. He says the first thing that comes to his mind.

"Since no one lives here, did you come here to look at the stars?" The weather. He's talking about the weather.

It's for the best all around that Midoriya can't make eye contact, because the funny look that crosses over Leto's already mildly perplexed expression might have sent Midoriya careening clearly over the edge of nervousness into the total void of embarrassment. Paul barely withstands it himself, ducking his head to focus on demonstrating the correct turning speed and height of these fish over the fire.

"I suppose Paul didn't mention the why when you made your arrangements." Leto measures out the words with a touch more care than before, and Paul has no idea where to put the split halves of feeling that cleave off inside of his chest.

It's excruciating to be introducing his boyfriend to his father like this, under the circumstances he's tried to leave shrouded. It's excruciating to be introducing his boyfriend to a father that only exists as this all too vivid memorial, whose funny look is a thing Paul hasn't seen in a year, will never see again.

"Dad," he says, helplessly.

"No," Leto says, holding his palm face out, "I'm sure you had your reasons."

"It's not like you're making it sound," he insists, and he was going out of his way not to do this, but he can't stand the faint edge of disappointment in his father's voice now like he couldn't stand it then, "This is a coincidence. I'd wanted you to meet him before."

"I'm a bit surprised I haven't already," Leto says, dryly, but they're back on firmer ground as he sits back and returns his attention to Midoriya, "I try to know the faces of the men this close to my family, but I can't place yours. How did the two of you meet, then?"

It is the job of fathers to lightly torture their sons. Paul is concentrating very hard on showing the correct fish cooking technique, and Midoriya should be thankful and commend him for it. Instead, he is silent as he scoots just close enough to follow and mimic him.

Midoriya should have acted like he was meant to be here all along, like he and Paul pulled a harmless little prank on Duke Leto Atreides, or that Midoriya was meant to be a pleasant surprise for him. These are his thoughts as he is directly questioned. The effect from last month has worn off, but he still can't lie. He could never, not to the memory of Paul's father here. It'd be like lying to the picture of his own mother.

"I was helping him, though I didn't expect to." He remembers the intense look Paul had in his eyes, so set he was on reliving the memory of the needle and the box. "Paul-kun... hurt his hand a little, and I had some stuff on me. I met Lady Jessica very briefly too. I'm..."

With wide eyes fixed on Leto's face, he's about to say he's no one, not anyone who matters anyway, but that's not true. He's the ninth wielder of One For All. He's All Might's successor. He's his mother's son. He's friends with his UA crew, who have become like family. He's rivals with Bakugou (and also his friend). He's beloved of Paul and Kaworu, and it takes everything in him not to simply grab Paul's hand and interlock their fingers as if someone were trying to pry them apart.

"He wasn't in danger or anything, I just... He seemed like he needed help, more than what he asked of me, and... that is what I do," he finishes awkwardly.

Duke Leto has a talent of listening that Midoriya will able to recognize, having seen it so many times from a slighter, more delicate face. It's as if the rest of the world has taken a step back, leaving Midoriya illuminated singularly in a pool of light not unlike that being cast by the fire next to them.

Unlike his son's version of it, Leto's full attention is tempered by the understanding that not everyone appreciates being so attentively focused on. His gaze flits from him to Paul and back again lightly whenever it approaches the boundary of being too much all at once, something so natural it can only be the result of careful thought and practice. There is never a trace of judgment or disapproval in it, even when he raises his eyebrows slightly at the mention of his Lady.

"That's a noble calling," the Duke says, picking up a stick from the forest fire and leaning forward to stir the embers in the fire, sending up a rising shower of sparks, "My son tends to underestimate the amount of help he needs. Independent streak. No idea where he gets it from."

Next to Midoriya, there's a sound he might not expect: the muted sound of someone biting back a laugh. Paul coughs into his fist, his throat and eyes stung by the smoke (only the smoke), and spins his fish on their spit.

"What was that?" Leto asks, and there's a rhythm here, a back and forth, in the shape of how they speak to each other.

"Nothing," Paul says, and despite himself, despite everything, his voice lilts upward, because it's easy, so easy, to find his way back to it, "We must have left Halleck behind on the docks by mistake."

"Another fine example of an independent spirit," Leto says, satisfied, a light twinkle to his eyes despite the faux gravity of his brows briefly coming together, "But we're getting away from ourselves. I have another question. How did you know he needed more help than he asked for?"

Leto's gaze observes but does double duty at creating ease, much like Midoriya's version of politeness designed out of goodwill to show deference but not require it out of anyone but himself. It includes Paul, and Midoriya looks to him as well when it's appropriate. It could just be the smoke in Paul's eyes, but Midoriya can't help his compulsive need to watch for it, even if this is something that has made Paul squirm in the past. Midoriya's attention is averted.

He opens his mouth, perhaps to tease Paul about how it's mean to leave someone behind. Lulled into a sense of security, Midoriya forestalls himself and goes rigid again when he's questioned.

"I..."

He could recite the signs of distress he's learned by rote and experience. An aspiring Pro Hero has to learn when it's time to intervene and when it's better to wait and see. He had a great many thoughts as he calibrated himself to Paul's memory and Paul himself and the incomplete explanation he gave him before leaving the facsimile of his bedroom. Midoriya has always been the sum of his learned experiences and more, his analytical mind unable to quit--except when it does.

It's often translated as help or save depending on context, but it's the same word in Japanese. Midoriya is similarly imprecise and non-discriminating. There were any number of reasons he has overstepped his bounds and the roles asked of him many times--admiring the dream of saving others, being told he can't do anything, being (or feeling) responsible for another--but in the moment,

"I didn't really think about it."

The lure and the spear are a paired move in Leto's diplomatic arsenal that Paul should have anticipated being deployed. It shouldn't be possible for him to be caught off-guard by his own memory, his own father, but there he is, nearly as still as Midoriya is at the casually lobbed, unerringly aimed question.

Leto takes in Midoriya's answer without releasing him from his gaze, the dark smoke of his eyes shifted towards opacity. Paul shifts closer to Midoriya on the log, his hand set on the rough bark between them, close enough to almost touch.

"You felt it," Leto says, at last, in the instant before Paul flicks his bloodletting needle back into his hand to avert whatever catastrophe he has unwittingly wrought, and his father's smile is like spring sunlight breaking through the winter storms. "I see."

Paul exhales in a rush. Leto spins his fish above the fire, finally freeing Midoriya from the weight of his judgment, and looks thoughtful with only the slightest bit of exaggeration to the expression.

"Your mother will be pleased. You should still let me tell her first. You know how she can be."

"Dad." A pale flush touches Paul's face, across his cheekbones and all the way to the tips of his ears. "I haven't even -"

"Am I wrong?" Leto's eyebrows shoot upward. "Do you think you're the first person to ever have been young, Paul? If you do, remind me to dismiss some of your tutors when we get back."

"No, but -"

"Do you want me to disapprove?"

"No -" That one more emphatic.

"Then let's not torment this poor boy any further." Leto looks at Midoriya and shakes his head, all other expressiveness abandoned in favour of sincere sympathy. "I trust my son's judgment. If there's a test to pass, you've passed it. That's all I need to know."

He knows what adults mean when they say being young, and Midoriya's face blots bright as a ripe strawberry, eclipsing the fainter peach clinging to Paul's cheeks. Midoriya realizes his scarred fingers have encircled Paul's in highly embarrassed solidarity only when Leto relents. When he lets the breath in his lungs rush out, he actually hangs his head in relief and releases the coil of his body to curve limply.

"My mentor is an 'entertainer' too..." he sighs. Entertainer is in English. All Might uses it to reference waiting to reveal exciting things in a conversation, sometimes to the detriment of Midoriya's poor nerves. "Except instead of a story, it's something I really needed to know..."

Do you trust me? Paul asked him on a beach by a campfire much more forlorn than this one, and that was the only time Midoriya felt like Paul put him to the test on purpose.

Midoriya's eyes finally travel upward from the ground, and they catch a small glint of light. He stares at Leto's hands cooking his fish and at the House Atreides signet ring that isn't real. This small piece of insubstantial memory will dissolve into nothing as the physical one did when it was destroyed by Paul's fire.

Not having witnessed it, the Atreides's role in colony and dominion is more distant and abstract to Midoriya than the concept of family memory. It's important. It's my father's. At the moment, Paul's words are the only things Midoriya thinks of when he looks at it reflecting the firelight.

"I... haven't seen him for a while, so I forgot to look out for that..." A bittersweet sort of wistfulness and self-consciousness steal into his voice.

Leto also has a talent for obliviousness when required. He notices nothing of Midoriya's flush or his hand entwining with Paul's (to be squeezed firmly back), his attention firmly on his nearly finished fish.

Paul, for his part, sees all of it. He only doesn't slump with Midoriya because he wants to be steady enough to bear him up, leaning into him in unwavering support. If his father knows, there's no reason to conceal anything. There's no reason to be unsettled.

He doesn't know if this reaction could have been real. There never had been anyone like Midoriya or Kaworu for Paul to meet, to know as he knows them, to want to bring forward to his father's attention. Paul had always indifferently assumed that one day, the introductions would go the other way around: his father and mother would present him with the girl or woman he'd marry, and that would be that. They would have chosen well for him, and he would have been satisfied with their choice.

But that wasn't how his father and mother came to be together. This memory of his father is a memory that loved his mother to the point of foolishness. Paul would have trusted Leto to have understood, if he'd ever imagined anything like this, and so - he does.

That isn't why it aches. He knows it isn't. But if he pretends himself stuck on a philosophical contemplation, it's easier to bear.

"My father can be a very unserious man," Paul says, the presence of his heart in his throat a familiar one, "It's one of the darkest secrets of House Atreides."

"Ha!" Leto scoffs, softly. "Don't believe a word of it. I take my 'entertaining' very seriously." He flashes a smile brighter than his ring, with a light tinge of sympathy still playing at the corners of his eyes. "Forgive me. It's a father's right to embarrass his son, and Paul here gives me so few opportunities to do so. I have to take the chances I get."

A plain statement, but one full of fond pride. Paul ducks his head, feeling his cheek burn once more.

His shoulder brushes against Paul's even as he rights himself back to being ramrod straight. He wants to be seen as upstanding and reliable. Around Pro Heroes and other adults in authority, he wants to prove himself. Sometimes the more nervous he is, the braver he tries to act. All Might told him this is the reason he smiles too.

His head is buzzing too much to think about memories and choices and reality. If Paul is sad or strained, Midoriya puts it down to simply missing his father. It's how he'd feel if he saw All Might here. Since coming to know Paul, he feels the edges of where Paul talks--or doesn't talk--about his father.

"Paul-kun doesn't leave many openings. He has a good teacher." The wry slant of his lips suggests how many times Paul has "tormented" Midoriya. The tightness in his hand comes from a different place very similar to the tightness in Paul's throat.

Midoriya remembers the untimely flushes, unschooled absences of words, and little slips Paul has made in the privacy of Midoriya's bewilderingly earnest sphere. It's easy to forget that under other circumstances, Paul is a near-master at socialization. And back when his father was alive, he would have spent the last years of growing up not tormented with thoughts of lonely grief with his heart beats in his throat instead of his chest.

Midoriya returns his eyes to his fish lest he overcook them. "So, each time he does is a precious memory."

The fish smells amazing, and Midoriya judges his own to be done. He feels out for a good pause, declares, "Itadakimasu," and tries a bite from the underside of the tender kama.

i know that the sun is here with me | december catch-all

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his face when all might came over to his house

father figure fail reel

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