Everything about their return journey to the bedroom is ridiculous. It's the kind of silliness that Paul was too old for when he was eight, and is distinctly too old for at more than twice that age, which may be exactly why he drinks it down as avidly as golden liquor.

He finally voices the laughter he'd been containing when they fall onto the bed behind closed doors, an uncharacteristically unpolished sound out of a boy trained to vocal instrumentation. It's as ungainly as his limbs sometimes still are, as they are now, necessitating some squirming(always worms with you) manuevers to situate himself around the boys stacked against him like timber. Someone's legs end up stranded between his while he stretches his arm out as far over and around both of them as it will go.

Then Kaworu asks outright, and he stops laughing. Not because he's upset, even if it occurs to him that he could be, but - the opposite, his eyes brightly intent over his momentarily stilled tongue as he gauges Midoriya's reaction with nearly as much anticipation as Kaworu.

"I don't mind," he says, after a hush that feels longer than it was, and if he's violating some unspoken norm for either of them, that's how it is. He needs to say it for the sake of his own, for whatever they're worth in this uncharted territory.