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]

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.)