o5 . bone house mingle!

[necrolord]

Who: necrolord and CR!
What: Several teens move into the horrible necromancy mansion, and sometimes they bring their friends.
When: Early March.
Where: Bone House in Gaze.

Content Warnings: Skeletons, discussions of death and grief, violence where marked, vomit where marked. Note all the usual warnings of this character.

Comments

[wannasmash]

Midoriya thinks of the way Paul treats him and others--not when he's just being nice, but when he's scared and sad. He saw that slip--two--with the Unsnakely. Midoriya saw him in the forest blaming himself. He saw his eyes, just today, in the doorway of this house. Midoriya believes there's no way Paul isn't feeling defeated or apprehensive of another vision.

Midoriya's fingers curl on the countertop. All his edges subtly tremble. He is unable to play along with Paul's lie, nor hide that fact. He can't give Paul that comfort as easily as letting him make tea or hugging him. He's not that skilled. He can't even tell if it's a lie in whole or in part. He knows Paul can see him sitting here trapped in lie-truths.

He remembers that time Paul didn't let him get away with lying about being fine. Midoriya always repays that sort of kindness, even if he's floundering out of his depth.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. Just know that you can," he says, giving Paul the soft, low finality in his voice as an out.

[terriblepurpose]

Of course Paul doesn't get away with it. If that was the kind of person Midoriya was, they wouldn't be friends in the first place. Paul smiles crookedly, a caught out, half-repentant twist under shaded eyes.

"I know," Paul affirms, as easy as that. "I will. I am. Sometimes I feel like all I do is talk about it. Just not today."

He sips deeply from his tea, which has cooled enough to be tolerable. He remembers the first time they had tea, cradled in the curved arc of an altered memory. Midoriya had kept the door closed, then; Paul hopes he'll let it stay closed again.

"Please," he adds, more quietly, and whether that please is attached to the words that came before it, or the ones that follow after, is unclear, "What's the second favor?"

[wannasmash]

The past can't be erased, but the future can be better--yes, even for those who can see it. Midoriya will do his best to protect Paul's. He gathers the pieces of himself that had shaken loose.

"The second..." he repeats, to ground himself. This one was meant, today, to be delivered as casually as Paul's lie wanted to be. Midoriya can see this won't be the case now. He's without certain pieces of his armor. He dearly hopes Paul won't connect the first favor with what lies beneath the second. He cradles his tea but doesn't drink.

"I've been thinking I want to be more careful about my work. I don't have the support I do back in my world. I have to protect my friends from anyone who might come after them. So, if you can, please don't tell people about our friendship. Those who already know are fine, and those you trust. Just be careful who else you talk to."

He can't see the future, but he can guess. He can gently hold the severed strings of connection he would have had through Paul and everyone else he is asking this favor of. People he will never meet, except maybe as simply a Hero one knows of. And in return, Midoriya will have to speak only casually about those he cares deeply for. This may not even be a permanent measure, but for someone who grew up with no friends and who treasures the ones he has now, it's a kind of torture.

[terriblepurpose]

Midoriya was as likely to get away with deceiving Paul about the nature of this favor as Paul was about convincing Midoriya he was all right with his noxious blue eyes and overly efficient hospitality. Paul straightens up on his stool, the a certain quality of anticipatory tension flowing into his spine and radiating outward.

But he doesn't say anything right away. He looks at Midoriya, whose shattered self is only now coalescing after the last time his friends (Paul among them) were in danger, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Midoriya, who arrived on their doorstep in disguise, who shepherded Paul out of sight as soon as he was able and asked Paul not to look to his future for catastrophe.

He's seen what his friend can do, the immense crackling power that seems barely contained in his body. If there's someone in Trench Midoriya doesn't think he can protect the people he cares about from, someone so dangerous that he doesn't even want Paul to know what the threat is, skimming at its edges in hypotheticals -

It might even be nothing. A measure of security Midoriya hadn't thought of before what happened, and the terrible memories of death and ruin it brought up for him. Paul assumes the worst as a matter of practical caution, but that doesn't mean it's true.

"I don't make a habit of associating people with me unless they do it first. A similar principle. But I'll be more careful with you going forward." Paul flashes a quick, hard-edged smile, one fighter to another down in the gladiatorial pits out of sight of the crowd. "I'll tell the rest of the house the same. If anyone asks after you, what would you like me to say?"

He wants to know. It doesn't mean that he has to, not yet.

[wannasmash]

Next to him, he can feel Paul coiling the muscles in his back in the space between words and nearly regrets ever speaking of this. Midoriya strives, as ever, to put his friends at ease, but he also recognizes the ready posture of someone twined with him in the bloody chaos of battle. They are the relentlessness of an iron hammer and the efficiency of a black-sheathed knife. He remembers Paul affixing wing pins to his collar as he spoke about a test where failure meant death. He doesn't ask why Paul isn't so free with the knowledge of his associations. He doesn't need to.

He presses his lips together in a not-quite-smile when he looks at him again. "Not sure. It's been generations since vigilantes were legalized as Heroes, and records are spotty. It was a chaotic time. I don't really know how they did things." He swallows, thinking of the past wielders of One For All all dying young, with the exception of his mentor, and how even that information was hard to come by. Sipping some tea helps the dryness in his mouth.

"Things you think people would already know, I guess. There's photos of me in costume at camp..." Camp Leviathan, worst field trip ever. "Consistency is important for a public image. I guess that's true for protecting a private one. And it's easier to use just a little truth than making up huge lies."

Whatever his misgivings about lying to a close friend, Midoriya mutters this easily, almost to himself. He learned this from his mentor, who was always in the public eye. All Might kept the secret of One For All so that its origin--and method of transfer--wouldn't throw a powder keg into society.

"If you need to recommend a Hero to someone who needs help, you can. I won't let this get in the way of that."

[terriblepurpose]

Midoriya outlines his plan and the reasoning behind it, and some of the gathered tension subsides in Paul once more. He expected no less than careful thoughtfulness, but he wasn't sure how much experience Midoriya has had with keeping secrets.

(And why does his relief that the answer seems to be 'a meaningful amount' come tinged with with regret? Maybe it's because lying doesn't seem to rest easy on his friend's shoulders, even with the excuse of necessity - but then, why does Paul see that as anything but a weakness Midoriya hasn't overcome? He'll think about it later.)

"I know you wouldn't let anything get in the way of that," he says, because he knows how important Midoriya's chosen path is to him, and it hardly ever hurts anything to validate someone's passion. It also hardly ever hurts to let someone know what you admire about them, your tone shaded with respect that's only faintly wistful. It's admirable; it's the greatest threat to Midoriya's safety, and these are the competing facts that Paul must reconcile for himself.

"Consider the favor granted. Your secrets are my own." Paul touches his lips with two fingers, then drops his hand to curl over his heart before it returns to cradling his cup.

"...and if there's anything else you think I might be able to help you with in this situation, or any other," Paul says, quietly, to his tea, "I hope you know I wouldn't let anything get in the way of that."

[wannasmash]

There's a very potent vulnerability in being honest and holding out one's shivering heart to another. He watches Paul's gesture (sign?) and commits it to memory.

He knows the difference between being told they will fight together, as when joining or being born into something, and choosing it for themselves. It's part of what scares him, so soon after the battle, that people Midoriya cares about agree to fight by his side so readily. Paul might relate. A small but more genuine smile trembles into existence.

"Thank you, Paul-kun. I know. I've known for a while," he says more softly than one should when talking shop.

He knew it when they clasped hands by the firelight after Paul's vision. He felt it when Paul rushed to him as they defeated that Unsnakely. He traces this inkling back to when he told Paul, the first time, that he was kind, and Paul looked like Midoriya had struck him.

It's this that Midoriya admires most in Paul, a stubborn firelight in a dark storm. He looks at his friend who stares at his tea. He can feel the soft press, so similar to his own, of Paul wanting to help more. There are things Midoriya will not tell even his closest friends. There are things he has told no one.

"I'm hoping these precautions won't really end up being needed."

[terriblepurpose]

Paul should be glad that Midoriya doesn't question him. He is, for the most part. There's further relief in being understood, in having his commitment recognized.

But it's like his friend says. He hopes these precautions won't be necessary, but as he glances up from the unintelligible swirl of tea leaves at the bottom of his half-empty cup he cannot help but feel they will be. He smiles back, crooked and mild, with too much knowing held between them.

If it's not whatever Midoriya fears now, it will be something else. The world outside this house churns on, a blood-soaked engine winding down towards devastation and taking them all with it regardless of what they might want, or the promises they make to each other.

"So do I," he says, with the palest trace of wryness, "But that's what precautions are for. Thank you for trusting me to be one of them. May you never have to ask."

(He wonders if this is what Gurney and Duncan and Thufir felt like, sometimes. He wonders how much he ever understood of the way his teachers would talk to each other, or the vows they made to him, or how fragile they understood them to be in ways that he did not.)