deercountry | [open] Oh the weather outside is weather

Entry tags:

[open] Oh the weather outside is weather

Who: Izuku "DEKU DON'T" Midoriya and YOU. Featuring a Warmblood who will, per this month's effects, influence you to be your best self... whatever that may mean.
What: Catchall log with: a snowball fight, fishing Paul out of a collapsed basement, giving mushrooms to Illarion, event things. Event plotting comment.
When: January
Where: A park. Abandoned basement. The Red.

Content Warnings: fantasy violence against a snake-shaped rock monster, panic attack, teens in danger. Mention of: being kidnapped, child abuse and/or neglect. More TBD in comments below.

Open prompts:
Snowball Fight!
Wallflower Time (Snake Den at The Red) (Event)
Taking Note (Snake Den at The Red) (Event)

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Paul isn't precisely relieved to get that look of horror, but it is good to know that Midoriya understands. People in this city often have a shockingly loose grasp on risk assessment.

"On two," Paul says, with a sharp nod, bracing himself to leap out of a tree to distract a massive underground fire wyrm made of stone and death, "Zero, one, two -"

Sophia begins to pound the earth, her oversized paw thumping steadily as Paul lands on light feet and falls forward into a sprint, making his way in the opposite direction of the drifting smoke. The ground shakes furiously under his feet, and he feels as much as hears the beast surge from the earth in pursuit of him.

He thinks of Midoriya's teeth-baring edge, and even as he runs, he wonders what Midoriya would have actually done in his memory, if Paul had tried to see it through. He's as glad he never had to find out as he is that he's going to find out what Midoriya will do here.

The Unsnakely hurtles towards Sophia first, momentarily unaware of the lighter, second pair of feet. As planned, it puts Paul in a position to both surprise and distract it.

Midoriya jumps into the air, cracking the tree branch and not caring; just another vibration down the trunk to confuse the monster. He puts his arms in front of him. He plans to aim two decisive blasts at one spot with both hands.

Its head rears up into the air while its fiery tail swipes towards Paul, and Midoriya is unwilling to chance that again. He's faced with a split-second choice between attacking to defeat it for good, risking Paul, and defending Paul at the risk of the snake overwhelming them. But he learned not too long ago that the strongest heroes believe in both winning fights and saving people. Why not both? He wants both with a ferocious intensity he didn't have a year ago.

He moves his arms apart. He points one down at the tail, fingers poised to flick. The other he throws to the side and a little behind, guided with wordless, telepathic instructions from his Omen towards a target he can't see.

The blowback from two air blasts at once in different directions jangles his shoulder joints and jerks him midair. It doesn't hurt enough to incapacitate Midoriya, but it forces him to be cognizant of where his improvisation meets the limits of his body. He clamps his teeth on a Damn it!, not sure if the snake can hear as well as feel vibrations.

Matching his aim to his Omen's is still imperfect. Part of the tail is destroyed for good. The damaged head, however, can still lurch clumsily. The snake opens its mouth.

It can spit fire. Of course it can.

There is a shiver in Paul's blood, a pressing awareness, that spins him on his heels to witness Midoriya's arcing leap, the spread of his hands, and it's like watching a thanergy ward bloom, a pillar of fire roar: this is a thing of wonder, a marvel, a honor to witness and to know.

But the beast is not quite yet done, its head rising, and this time, Paul's eyes flood entirely with a lunar glow, a silvery, pale light that looks past the moment, through it, and he sees -

"No!"

Sophia hits the Unsnakely just under its unhinging jaw with an audible crack, her once-small legs propelling her nearly black bear-sized body with furious concussive force that skews the flame wide, and Paul climbs to the top of a nearby wall in three quick hops over other obstacles, his fierce joy turned to protective rage. From his perch, he stares at the beast with eyes that flicker and throb with seething light, heedless of the revelation of them as long as the threat exists. Sophia whirls where she landed and prepares herself to leap again, her ears pinned back to her skull and (much less adorable, at this size) teeth bared.

Midoriya's Omen clamors in his head just after Paul shouts, but Midoriya isn't fast enough to dodge. In the wake of Sophia's blow, pieces of the snake's jaw shatter in a rain of sparks. The worst of the fire misses. Before he can be targeted again, Midoriya kicks in midair, sending a similar but less strong shockwave to batter the snake. The backlash propels him out of the way to the ground. He doesn't have the time to yell New Hampshire Smash!

He lands in a haphazard, bruising roll to snuff out flames, and his mask is knocked askew. He smells singed, extra-curly hair. Belatedly the exposed skin of his face and neck warn him how close he came to that heat.

Paul is standing on a wall, eyes glowing. That and his premature shout shake something loose in Midoriya's memory, but he has no time to catch on to exactly why Paul looks like he's about to summon the wrath of the heavens. A word comes to him from his native language that means amazing, but it carries with it a meaning from the other side of the coin: terrifying. Midoriya's pretty sure it's not aimed at him though.

He's crouched and ready to dodge a fiery gob of heat and light... that doesn't come. The snake's mouth is too damaged. His eyes widen, and he bares his teeth in steely triumph as the Unsnakely lunges drunkenly. He aims and flicks both fingers again.

THOOM. The recoil jerks his arms up, but he remains planted like a canon. The twin blows that buffet and thresh the Unsnakely sever it. Rocks scatter, and the fire dissipates. It's a win.

Paul comes down from the wall before the final blow quite hits, racing across the shattered, burning landscape, and he all but collides with Midoriya only moments later with outstretched hands closing around his shoulders. The glow of his eyes begins to dim as soon as contact is made.

"Are you all right?" Paul's voice is sharply urgent, pitched low and dark with the trailing edges of both fear and fury. His fingers are digging in too hard, clutching, and somehow, the tremor of the earth is still vibrating down his arms.

It's the smell of smoke, and flames casting shadows on ruined buildings, and the barely perceived slivers of that unhappened future. There's a thing moving in his chest that shouldn't be, or things that should be moving but aren't. All he's certain of is that the sensation is wrong, clawing, and his breathing is shakier than it should be, even after that run.

He visually assesses the passing of the threat in a sweeping glance at what's left of the inert, smoldering rocks, then turns his eyes to his rescuee-turned-ally--

"Augh--Paul-kun--I'm fine--"

Paul clutches him like a rag doll. It hurts on top of the rough landing that will surely turn into colorful bruises tomorrow, but Midoriya still feels adrenaline more than pain. Paul sounds like... him. He sounds like Midoriya, guttural and struggling as he roars to life after being hurt in a fight. But there's nothing fierce in the shaking of Paul's arms.

He waves the thinning smoke away from the both of them, not wanting Paul to suffer from it. It's weird, like the Unsnakely, and he doesn't like that. It doesn't matter that Paul ran so quickly here. He hovers his hands under Paul's arms near his sides in case he needs support, but doesn't grab him in case that might hurt. That's part of his training too, as is passing a scrutinizing gaze over all of Paul to take in his condition.

"It's all right. Paul-kun. It's over. Listen to me. Look at my face."

He tries to secure those waning moon-filled eyes with his own. He speaks clearly and firmly, meticulously ending his sentences like prayer beads being counted. Since having marks taken off his Provisional License exam for not immediately going to calm a mock victim, he's had more practice in Trench, for better or worse.

As Midoriya speaks in soothing, deliberate cadence, Paul's hands loosen, and then the rest of his body like a too-long held breath being released. There's no danger of him slumping over, and yet something about him suggests being unbalanced all the same. He listens to Midoriya. He looks at his face. The last flickers of light fade from his eyes, leaving behind blown out pupils set in green irises.

"I thought -" he begins, and stops himself, because he didn't think. He reacted. The squirming discomfort in his chest is slightly eased, but he still is unsettled, restless, (terrified).

"...you're all right," he says, quietly, and then he does collapse forward, or he pulls Midoriya in close, one of the two, because he suddenly is certain that the only thing that will calm whatever is happening inside of him is pressing Midoriya against it so that it will know he's really still there.

Midoriya adds dilated pupils to a running list of symptoms. Midoriya fell into the same camaraderie with Paul as he did with others in the Hero Course. He admires his strength and capability, among other things. They teamed up, interlocking their skills to defeat a common enemy. He can't immediately know the cause here, but he knows even a fully-fledged Pro Hero can panic. It would be stupid to forget what he was taught: that one instant can turn an ally into someone in need of saving.

His body tenses in a strong weave from his shoulders to his feet, prepared to support Paul's full weight if he has to. He takes Paul's cue--important, as he can't just assume what Paul needs. He wraps his arms around him, inviting him without a trace of his usual shyness. His heart is still pumping from the fight, fierce and strong. It lies against Paul should he need to feel the life in him.

"Yes. I'm all right. Everything is all right. Take a big breath through your nose. Let it out slowly through your mouth. Keep doing that."

Since he was a little kid, Midoriya thought saving people was the coolest thing a person could do. He has since learned that this, here, is also part of saving people. With the same fervor he has when shielding someone from danger, he doesn't think. He just does.

So he doesn't think about how Paul looked like he was moving without thought, driven by an instinct to save him.

I know that, Paul could say, when Midoriya instructs him how to breathe through the temporary agitation, because of course he knows that. Learning how to breathe properly is a thing he's been doing since before he even knew what he was being trained to do, when his mother would lie down with him on her chest and a hand on his small back and synchronize their bio-rhythms.

But he wasn't doing it, and he only starts when Midoriya reminds him, so what does he know? He stops trying to puzzle it out, focuses on the instructions, and gradually, slowly, the warm pressure of the other boy's living self sinks into the space being emptied with each steadying exhale.

"I'm sorry," Paul says, after a while, somewhere around the top of Midoriya's head, and then he begins to disentangle them, "You came all this way out here, and I -"

He has nothing. He had thought he might have figured out the end of that sentence by the time he got to it, but it's as much of a blank as his understanding of - whatever it was that just happened there. He looks at his friend, less wretched but still drawn and pale, and manages a little smile as a stopgap.

A little resentment is normal, even expected. It won't stop Midoriya from walking Paul through the steps of remembering he is a person and not just a bundle of fevered instinct. He feels the breath of Paul's apology on his singed hair. At the first sign of Paul moving, he opens his arms and slips free. He keeps one hand on Paul's elbow should he need it.

The battle high begins to leave him, an unintentional side effect of acting so calm. He notices his fingers aching, though not as much as his bruises. He overdid it slightly with Air Force and might have to ice them later.

He smiles back in reflex, ultimately unable to keep his feelings at bay. The fighter, the defender, gives way to the friend. Soft warmth seeps into his voice at the expense of steadiness, for better or worse.

"You don't have to apologize. Do you want to move? Sit down?"

What does he want? It's a reasonable question. If Paul were to make a list of what he wants now, he might start with being able to taste anything but ash in his mouth (ash over sand) and a glass of water, which does at least give him a direction to start in.

"Can we still go try to find some yakiniku?" Paul asks, as he lowers his head and runs his sleeve over his face, wiping away some of the soot and smoke only to leave more dust from his sleeve behind instead. His pronunciation is careful, followed by a glance up at Midoriya to check it against his response to it.

"It's good to eat something, after a fight," he adds, and it's like the words spill out just to occupy the space between them, "It helps calm the body, reaffirms the threat has passed."

As if he's talking about someone else, his own responses held at a distance despite being so obvious and present. (He's vulnerable, like this; he needs it to stop.)

He flashes a tired grin. Paul's accent is endearing.

"We definitely will," he promises. "But we may have to sit outside." He rubs his dry, crinkly hair. What establishment would allow the two of them to enter, covered in dirt and looking like they just escaped the fiery gates of hell?

He lets his grin drop into a searching look, as if his eyes are trying to find and remove a stray speck of dirt from Paul's face. (Futile.)

"Have you felt like this before?" he asks gently but without showing worry. Of course he's concerned, but not in the sense that he doesn't know what to do. Paul is already thinking about food. That's good.

He adds another question, "They look normal now, but your eyes did something earlier. Magic?" That's the part he doesn't know, and he tries to keep his voice casual.

"Oh." Paul somehow sounds surprised, reaching up to touch underneath one of his eyes. "That. Yes."

He's not being clear about whether he means felt like this before or magic, in part because he means both, then because he doesn't want to mean both, or to admit to either.

"I don't think that my Paleblood always agrees with me," he says, dropping his hand and his gaze at the same time to make this concession, "Physically. When I'm under pressure, sometimes it...reacts. Like a chemical experiment, in a way, one those ones that projects light. It's getting more manageable. It's only an adjustment period, I'm sure. I'm all right. I'll be all right."

It's something of a feeble attempt to direct attention away from himself. Midoriya pays attention to things, and Paul imagines he'll be able to connect Paleblood to the haste and urgency of Paul's response, but he doesn't want to talk about this. Not yet. (Preferably never, says some jealous, selfish part of him, the one that doesn't want Midoriya to look at him like he did when Paul half-joked about atomics.)

"Sitting outside is good for conditioning. Someone told me that once. I'm not sure it's true, but it can't hurt."

He stares at him, mouth parting slightly to say something. There is a lot of truth in Midoriya's face, and only a fraction of it will leave his lips. Now he's the one lowering his eyes. He ducks his head. He works one glove off, wincing, and holds up his scarred hand as he raises his eyes to Paul again.

"Look." His middle finger is red and swollen, like he just shut it in a drawer. "I still need to work on Air Force. And forget about using Blackwhip to its fullest either--too dangerous. The first time I used it... I was so scared, even when someone held me. In my world, we call it panic or panic attack. Kind of like the fight or flight response. I'm not really good at explaining, but I can try to when we find something to eat."

He falls into place beside Paul, facing in the direction of commercial streets and potential yakiniku. He invites him to walk with him with a turning of his shoulders and a small smile up at him.

"I don't know about magic, but I know about Quirks. They're physical abilities. Mine doesn't agree with me either. You will be all right." He wants to turn Paul's deflection (that's what it is, he can tell, he does it too) into reality. "I use mental visualizations to imagine releasing only as much power as I can handle. I can help you come up with some."

They'll be cheesy and kind of lame. It's nostalgic. He used to do that with his mentor back home.

It's getting easier to accept revelations of vulnerabilities from people like this without a thrum of what Paul thinks of as panic too quickly to stop himself, the word's proximity to his feelings brought too close to ignore. He hadn't thought of himself as a person weighed down by taboos, but there he is, reminding himself that Midoriya is doing this freely, that Paul doesn't need to step in to shield him - and from who would he be shielding him from, anyway?

Paul falls into step with Midoriya, hovering a half-step to his right and behind him anyway, close enough to see his face and yet guard his back at the same time. His expression is still drawn, but there's an unwitting edge to it again, a vigilance that borders on the side of excess.

"You're good at explaining," he tells Midoriya, because he's still deflecting, still reflexive. He breathes in sharply through his nose, abruptly irritated at himself.

"I should be able to do that already. Control myself. Figure it out, like you are, with your visualizations. I know - I knew how to do that. But since I came here, sometimes it's as if -" Paul's tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, and he looks up and away at the sky "- I come away from myself. Pull apart. That never happened to me before."

He keeps having to glance at Paul hovering in his periphery. At first he thinks Paul is just tired. He expects him to be, after all that. Midoriya slows for a few steps, but Paul stays roughly around his 4 o' clock. He feels it in the tamping of the ground under their feet: Their positions are reversed. Midoriya once followed Paul down a hallway of memory and pain, maintaining a certain protective distance at all times.

Wordlessly he jabs his thumb at the sky without looking up himself. He knows what's there. Paul might see Midorya's Omen gaining altitude and starting to circle with a calm vigilance. An Omen can meet and exceed a human's sense of danger. He and his Omen have a silent agreement that Midoriya should be able to hold his own by himself, but he is, after all, still in training. It just wouldn't do to have a Beast come hurtling out of the woods to take out the two ragged humans.

His brows knit in concern. Paul is gifted like so many of his classmates who had years to adjust to their Quirks. Midoriya never knew what that felt like. He had to work very hard to use his Quirk like others do. Having that ease ripped away...

"Something you trusted and worked hard on suddenly isn't working like you thought it would," he says softly. "I understand."

Blackwhip had manifested like a monster, throwing him around the training ground like a doll. He steps deliberately to Paul's side, breaking the invisible guard bubble. With his Omen in the sky, he feels Paul, tense and drained, shouldn't need to guard his back.

Midoriya disarms Paul like it's nothing, and Paul doesn't even think that Midoriya sees it like that. He wouldn't imagine this as pulling unseen weapons from Paul's reach and setting them aside. But he will see the fall of Paul's shoulders when he shifts their position, a trace of the bewildered relenting that he displayed in that memory when Midoriya persuaded him to turn away from that closed door.

Paul's still not sure how to feel about it staying closed. Sometimes that makes him feel like a coward. Sometimes it makes him feel nothing. Sometimes, like this moment does, it feels like a mercy.

"How do you do that?" Paul asks, drifting closer, as if Midoriya is a gravitational point. "Always know what to say when it's important. I'm the other way around."

He believes that Midoriya understands, a resonance not unlike the inverse of the Unsnakely's earth-shuddering pass. He feels himself drawing back together, piece by piece, his own harmonics restored.

"Thank you for coming for me."

He wants to put Paul at ease. Midoriya waits patiently for if Paul ever wants to talk about shadows behind closed doors. He's familiar with having friends with darknesses they're reluctant to bring up. A lot of those things aren't exactly conversation starters.

"Just saying stuff I learned," he says, briefly contemplating the ground. He looks up and gives Paul a small smile. (He has to tilt his head up at his tall friend.) "There have been a lot of times I didn't know what to say. Anyway, what I do is more important."

Not everyone responds well to people just saying things. The words are a promise, and his actions are the fulfillment of that promise. Of course he came for Paul. He was able to do something, so he did.

As Midoriya is learning, Paul is only reserved about touch until he's not. His hand finds its way to Midoriya's shoulder and squeezes as he smiles slightly back, letting quiet relief and ruefulness show in his eyes.

"You're right, about actions." It's softly spoken, but there's a ribbon of certainty underneath it. "They show you who a person really is."

It might be too far, today - too influenced by the trailing edges of that unsettled feeling - to add that's how I know you're good. The sentiment bleeds through anyway, Paul's hand lingering a moment longer before he drops it and continues alongside someone who is both good, and his friend, and maybe this hasn't been such a bad day after all, if he can do that.

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[open] Oh the weather outside is weather

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