Chapter Text
"Hizashi."
"Yeah?" Hizashi looks up from his crossword puzzle to see Shouta nervously shifting his weight and refusing to look at him. He knows Shouta likes him in his reading glasses, but he's not been this nervous when looking at Hizashi in years. Not since high school.
"Your heat is coming up next month, right?"
Well, that's not what Hizashi was expecting. "Yeah, babe, you know my schedule hasn't changed in years. It’s...five weeks away now? Yeah, five. What's got you asking?"
"The last one was really bad, 'Zashi. I...don't like seeing you hurting like that."
"Aww, Shou-babe, it wasn't that bad, I swear—" Hizashi says, trying to laugh it off.
"No, 'Zashi." Shouta's always been a serious man, but Hizashi's never heard him like this. Never this...pained, this serious. Not even when they worked a trafficking case together. "It—it was bad, Hizashi. You passed out from the pain. Twice. You were hallucinating. I had to use cold compresses through most of it to keep your temperature down so you didn't get brain damage."
"Oh." Hizashi hadn't actually known that. Sure, it had sucked, but he'd never been the type to remember what happened during his heats.
After a long, long moment, Shouta finally speaks again. "So I was thinking that maybe we need an alpha."
"Shouta, baby, no, I don't need an—"
"Hizashi, please. " There's tears in his mate's eyes, something that’s rare due to Shouta's quirk-induced dry eye. "We can just find someone to heat-share with, it doesn't have to be a permanent thing, but I don't want to watch you go through that again. They've been getting worse as we've been getting older, and I don't want to lose you to something as stupid as widow's fever before we're thirty."
"I...all right, Shou. Fuck. I just—it feels wrong, y'know? After 'Boro and all. He was...."
"Yeah, 'Zashi," Shouta says softly. "I know. He was our alpha, even if I hadn’t bonded with him yet, but it's been eight years since he died and you’ve been getting sicker every year. I might not be able to keep your fever low enough next time. I can't lose you, too."
"Okay," Hizashi says, reaching up to grab Shouta's hands. "Let's find me an alpha. How do we even do that these days, anyways? Tinder?"
Shouta snorts. "Nah. Tinder is full of knotheads and unicorn hunters. I saw an ad for an app specifically for omegas seeking heat-share partners, with vetted alphas only. It works like Tinder, but the people on there aren't going to be shitty." (He’s blushing, he knows it. The heat in his cheeks can’t be anything else.)
"Oh! That sounds—that sounds ideal, actually." (Hizashi sounds surprised. Shouta was, too, when he actually looked into the app.)
"Yeah. It's why I asked, honestly. Kinda felt like a solution just got dropped in my lap. It's paid, though, so I haven't made an account or anything yet."
"Let's check it out, Shou-babe. What's it called?" Hizashi scoots over to make room for Shouta to drop down on the couch beside him.
"Seeking Alpha." Shouta pulls the app up on his phone.
"Bit on the nose there, eh?"
Shouta shrugs. "It works."
They create a profile pair together. It's got an interesting feature where you can register as a mated pair and it creates two accounts—one for each partner—that essentially work as a single profile. It’s weird, but it allows for both partners to message the alpha without confusion as to who's talking. Hizashi spends way too long (in Shouta's opinion, at least—Hizashi thinks it was just enough time) trying to pick the perfect photo of the two of them, and they bicker affectionately over what to include in the written profile, but soon enough, they're swiping through alpha after alpha. Well, it's mostly Hizashi swiping after he commandeered Shouta's phone.
"Ew, no, look at his hands," Hizashi says about one of them. Shouta looks at his own hands. "Yours are fine, love. His are not. Ugh. I don't even want to touch his picture. Swipe left for me, baby?"
Under the influence of Hizashi’s powerful puppy-dog eyes, Shouta dutifully swipes left and gets rewarded with a kiss.
The next profile is a female alpha who seems to hold weirdly traditional values. Shouta swipes left on her almost immediately. "No."
"Eh? I didn't even get a chance to look—"
"She likes Ayn Rand."
Hizashi gags. "Fair enough."
They swipe through a dozen more before Hizashi hands the phone back to Shouta. "They're all starting to look the same to me, babe. And it's dinner time anyways. What do you want to eat?"
"Noodles."
"I can do noodles. Stir fry good?" Hizashi stands, stretches, and bends down to smack an obnoxiously loud kiss (a smooch, really) on top of Shouta's head. "You wanna keep swiping through?"
"Eh. I think I've got an idea of what you like but honestly, it would be better for you to get the app on your phone since you're the one sharing your heat with them."
"That's fair. Could you do that for me while I cook?"
"Sure." Shouta reaches over to grab Hizashi's phone from where he left it on the arm of the couch. He unlocks it and installs the app. Hizashi is humming along to some pop song as he chops vegetables and boils a pot of water for the noodles. (How did he get so lucky, to have such a perfect mate?)
(How did they get so un lucky, to lose their third?)
———
Two weeks later, Hizashi's heat is looming ever closer and they still haven't matched with an alpha. Or at least, not an alpha they actually get on well with. Shouta is getting worried—the fever Hizashi had during his last heat was bad enough that they nearly needed to go to the hospital, and Shouta is fully expecting he'll have to call an ambulance this time if they can't find an alpha.
Sure, they've got alpha friends, but neither of them is especially attracted to women, knocking Nemuri out of the running, and Tensei is too far away. (Plus, Shouta kissed Tensei once on a dare from Nemuri and he'd much rather not do that again, thanks. It was like kissing his brother. Ew.)
And because neither Nemuri nor Tensei is a viable option, that means they’re staring down at an ever-worsening widow’s fever until they either find someone to join them or Hizashi dies. Between the two, Shouta knows which option he prefers.
Widow's fever is the result of a mating bond between an alpha and omega couple being broken by the alpha's death. There's a similar condition for alphas, but much less severe. Because it can only happen with a reciprocated bond and rut is only triggered by swapping fluids with an omega in heat, it's not nearly as much of a concern.
For omegas, though, heats when mated to an alpha are far more intense than otherwise. The science behind it is complex, but suffice it to say that there’s hormonal bullshit that happens when an alpha and an omega mate that doesn’t happen between alpha/alpha and omega/omega pairs. Shouta’s vaguely aware of the hormone interactions that happen in the bloodstream during an alpha/omega mating, but biology class was nearly a decade ago, now. He doesn’t remember the specifics.
What’s important is that an omega mated to an alpha requires alpha hormones, either via semen or injection, at regular intervals in order to prevent the biochemical reaction that causes heat from going overboard. Because Hizashi and Oboro only shared one heat as a mated pair, he shouldn’t have developed widow’s fever—his body should have been able to recover afterwards, but it never did. Probably some kind of genetic oddity, but it was a lot easier to just treat the fever than it was to find out exactly why it was happening.
Shouta hates that he's almost glad that Oboro never bit him. They were planning to do it during Shouta's next heat...and then Oboro died.
He's been torn about it for years. On the one hand, if he was also suffering widow's fever, he and Hizashi likely would both be dead by now: their heats synced up when they started living together. But since Shouta never had a mating bite, he's been able to care for Hizashi as his mate’s widow's fever worsens with each successive heat. If he'd also been feverish...
He doesn't want to think about it.
———
Shouta is in the middle of a meeting when the text comes in.
loudmouth: Babe, check the app.
As soon as he's alone, he opens the app. He's greeted by a cheery you've matched! notification, and the icon for the matches section is highlighted. He feels apprehensive as he taps the heart and waits for the profiles to load in.
There's only one, which is something he realizes he's mildly offended by. Sure, Shouta might not really understand the whole idea of sexual attraction, but he knows for a goddamn fact that Hizashi is plus-ultra hot. Then again, they deliberately only chose pictures of Hizashi as a civilian to lower the number of people who'd swipe right only so they could bang a hero.
At least the one profile looks cute, from the tiny little picture that's shown in the list. He taps it to get a better look.
And—holy freckles, Batman. The photo is of a young man with impossibly fluffy green hair, a face covered in freckles, and a blinding smile that rivals Hizashi's. Shouta swipes through the pictures and reads through the profile, and the more he sees, the more certain he is that this alpha— Midoriya Izuku, according to the profile—is the right one for them.
The inbox icon is also glowing, with a little red bubble indicating new messages. Shouta taps it, curious to see what the alpha says.
They'd set their paired profile up to focus on Hizashi, but one of the first things the alpha asked is whether or not the dark-haired man in the pictures is an underground hero.
Hizashi, ever the lovable idiot, asked why, and that sent Midoriya on a three-page ramble about how he's a huge hero nerd and he especially loves Underground heroes and well, the dark-haired man looks like a management student that he saw win the UA sports festival a while back, and there was a news item in a very local paper (local to Shouta's small home village) a week later talking about how the winner was transferring into the hero course and they were from the little village and therefore the pride of the village and—
Somehow, this alpha knows that Shouta is a hero. Somehow, this alpha knows which hero Shouta is. And then, at the end of the ramble, before Midoriya apologizes profusely, he says something about how he didn't mean to ignore that Hizashi was Present Mic, it's just that he really loves Unders and if Shouta really is the Underground Hero Eraserhead, he's got so many quirk theories and questions he'd like to ask.
Shouta is....floored. Astonished? Mildly unnerved, terrified, panicked? (Pick your poison, he's all of them at once.)
There's a few more pages of back and forth between Midoriya and Hizashi, and checking the time stamps, it's all happened since Hizashi’s text from forty-five minutes ago.
The conversation seems to have stalled, since the last message was fifteen minutes earlier, so he feels comfortable sending a reply to the long ramble.
This is Shouta. For my safety, please keep your suspicions to yourself, he starts, and this information too, but I can confirm you are correct. Are you free this evening to meet for coffee?
Shouta knows Hizashi's schedule—he'll be free until about eight PM, then he's off to the radio station to do a bit of paperwork and prep before he takes over the broadcast at ten. There's more than enough time for them to meet up with Midoriya and for Hizashi to still get to work on time.
His phone pings almost immediately with a response. Yeah! Oh my gosh, I'm going to be meeting Eraserhead, this is unreal!!! Where do you want to meet?
Well, there's a cute little cat cafe not too far from where Shouta is now, at one of the many Limelight agencies in the city, and he tells Midoriya as much. I'll pay for three hours. See you there?
Sure! I can't wait!!
Midoriya seems overly excitable. He should get on with Hizashi like a house on fire, but Hizashi won't want anything to do with Midoriya if he can't get along with Shouta. It's kind of nice knowing that his mate has his back like that. Hizashi has gone off at multiple alphas for being assholes to or about Shouta. Shouta loves watching it. They always have the best sex afterwards.
(Shouta might be asexual as all hell, but that does not preclude them having fantastic sex. He likes sex with Hizashi. Actually, he loves sex with Hizashi, and they have it on a relatively frequent basis, too. He just doesn't look at his mate and think 'wow, he's hot, I want to jump his bones.' That's not how he works.)
Shouta makes his way down to the cat cafe and reserves a table for three hours. The staff know to let Hizashi through if Shouta is there already, but today he's got a new person for them. "If someone named Midoriya comes in, send them to my table, please. He's got freckles and green hair."
"Can do!" the barista chirps. Literally—she's got a bird mutation quirk. Shouta wonders why she's at a cat cafe, but it's really not his concern. He goes in and sits down in his usual spot, back to the wall, and almost immediately has two cats climb on him.
Mochi and Wagashi are a bonded pair of littermates with exceptionally sweet personalities, hence their names. (Well, Wagashi is sweet to Shouta and occasionally Hizashi, at least.) If Shouta and Hizashi lived in an apartment that allowed pets, he'd adopt them in a heartbeat. Sadly, they do not, and so Mochi and Wagashi live at the cafe, where Shouta visits them as frequently as he can justify. Their profiles have been taken down from the 'adoptable cats' section for years, now—Shouta has an agreement with the staff that as soon as he can have cats, Mochi and Wagashi will be his.
He sends a message to Midoriya telling him to tell the cafe staff his name and they'll send him on back, then settles in with his coffee to wait.
Midoriya comes in about ten minutes later. Somehow, his hair seems fluffier in real life compared to the photos on his profile. He's broad, but surprisingly short. Shouta can almost relate, but in the opposite direction—at an even six feet, he's unusually tall for an omega. (So is Hizashi, for that matter. There's only an inch between them.)
Shouta watches Midoriya interact with the cafe staff and dutifully waves a hand when she points him out. The sunshine smile he gets before the alpha turns back to thank the barista is painfully sweet. It makes his teeth ache.
Midoriya winds his way over to Shouta, occasionally bending down to scratch a cat on the head or stroke along its back. (Already, Shouta approves. Any man that dotes on cats is a good man, as far as he's concerned.)
"Um, Aizawa-san?"
Shouta nods and gestures to one of the empty chairs. "Have a seat. This is Mochi, and this is Wagashi." He indicates each cat as he introduces them. Mochi jumps onto the table and meows a greeting, but Wagashi, eternally stoic and uncaring, just eyes Midoriya, deems him not a threat, then kneads his claws into Shouta's knees and falls asleep.
"Oh, hello there," Midoriya says softly, reaching out a hand. Mochi takes one sniff and bunts her head against Midoriya's hand. He gasps. "Ah! So cute!"
Hizashi swaggers in as Midoriya is getting to know Mochi. He saunters over and pops a kiss on the top of Shouta's head before flopping down in the third chair. "Hey Shou-babe. And...Midoriya, yeah?"
"Oh, um, you can both call me Izuku. I prefer it to my family name." Izuku looks mildly uncomfortable, despite Mochi having settled quite comfortably on his lap and purring loudly.
"Izuku, then," Hizashi says easily. He grins. "If we're using given names, then I'm Hizashi and he's Shouta."
"Mochi likes having her ears scratched," Shouta says. "She likes you. That's good."
Izuku's smile returns, somewhat shakier than before but still genuine. He scratches Mochi around her ears. She purrs louder and starts kneading. "Well, that's good to hear. I'm glad—ow!—I'm glad I meet her standards." He gently pries Mochi's claws out of his knees.
"Shouta practically raised these two from kittenhood," Hizashi says conspiratorially. "The staff won't let anyone else adopt them out. Wagashi can have a bit of an attitude, and they're a bonded pair so they can't be separated. As soon as we can afford a place that lets us have cats, they're coming home with us."
"Oh, wow. How old are they?"
"Four. Shouta comes here pretty regularly for them. He might not look it, but he's a huge softy, especially when it comes to cats."
"Am not," Shouta grumbles.
"Are too, baby. Anyways, we aren't just here to pet cats!"
"Speak for yourself," Shouta mutters. Izuku laughs.
"Well, I understand that I'll mostly be here for Hizashi?"
"Yeah," Hizashi says, almost sadly. "Honestly, we wish we didn't need this, but Shouta’s informed me that it's kind of necessary now unless I want to spend my next heat in the hospital."
Midoriya looks sad. "Do—I know it might be really personal, but do you mind telling me why?"
"We had a third in high school," Shouta starts. He closes his eyes, focusing on Wagashi's silky fur beneath his fingertips. "You know we're both heroes. Oboro never made it that far. He died during our second year work-studies. We were already heat-sharing by then. He mated Hizashi mostly by accident during one of his heats and we'd been together for a while by then so we figured we'd roll with it and he'd mate me too when I next went into heat. My heat started three days after his funeral."
"Oh," Izuku breathes. "That's....that's horrible. I'm so sorry. For bringing it up and also sorry that it happened. We—we can move on to something different, if you want?"
Shouta nods. "Oboro isn't necessarily a sore subject for us anymore, but talking about him is still hard."
"How about we play the question game?" Hizashi suggests. "Go around asking questions and sharing answers to get to know each other."
"That sounds good," Izuku says. He sounds relieved. Shouta can honestly relate.
"I can start. Your profile said you were an analyst?"
"I mean, yes and no? I've been doing it for years, and I've been trying to get a job in the field for hero, villain, and quirk analysis but I guess nobody's hiring? I've applied to every agency in the city and nobody's given me a call back. So I've been doing a lot of odd jobs around my neighborhood, mostly."
"That's bullshit," Shouta says, furrowing his brow. "Agencies are always hiring analysts. Even without a degree. If you submit a portfolio and it's got good information, they'll take it and train you up. You seem smart enough and the ramble you sent us was good. If the rest of your analysis is as good as that, they should be chomping at the bit to hire you."
"Oh," Izuku says faintly. "Well, then."
"Did you send in an expression of interest to UA?" Hizashi asks.
"No, I didn't know you could do that."
"You can. And you should. The analysis teacher is going on maternity leave soon, and Nezu won't want the hero students to go without."
"Oh!" Izuku brightens. "I'll do that, then. Thank you!" He pulls out a reporter's scratch pad from his back pocket and scribbles a note to himself in it. "But.... Don't you need a teaching degree?"
Hizashi shrugs. "If Nezu likes you, he'll make it happen. Getting certified to teach isn't too difficult. It took him a few years to wear us down, but I’m getting mine in a few months and Shouta’s getting his next year."
"And," Shouta adds, correctly assuming that Izuku's faced heavy discrimination, "Nezu doesn't discriminate. Against anyone."
Izuku blinks and bites his lip. He visibly steels himself to ask: "Even if they're quirkless?"
"Oh," Hizashi breathes, having his own lightbulb moment. Shouta had guessed there was some form of discrimination going on early on, and Izuku clearly didn't have a mutation quirk, so it must've been that he has a mental quirk or—as it turns out—no quirk at all.
"All that matters to him is that you can do the job he pays you for."
"A-and—you don't care?"
"A quirk is just a tool. Hizashi's can be more trouble than it's worth."
"Yeah, I actually have a quirk dampener that I have to wear when we're having sex, otherwise I might blow out the windows. And the neighbor's eardrums." Hizashi winces. "But the point is, we don't really care whether or not you have a quirk. What we care about is your personality and how well we get along."
The conversation flows back and forth, from work to cats to TV shows to heroes and quirks to where they should go for their next date. Shouta barely notices the time passing, only realizing they're nearly at their time limit when one of the staff comes over to inform them they've only got ten minutes left.
He hadn't been expecting to like Izuku nearly as much as he does. He'd expected an alpha he would tolerate for the duration of Hizashi's heat until they decided they wanted something else. Izuku is so much more than tolerable. He's adorable, expressive, kind, and intelligent. (All things that Hizashi is and Oboro was. Maybe he's got a type after all.)
They part ways, having made a new group chat, and for the first time in years, they're actually looking forward to Hizashi's heat.
———
The three weeks leading up to Hizashi's heat are full of texts back and forth with Izuku, cat photos from Shouta, and terrible puns from Hizashi. They meet up every few days to get comfortable with each other, both in public and at the omegas' shared home, and it's not until a few days before Hizashi's heat is expected to start that they actually start talking about sex.
"So," Hizashi starts one lazy afternoon as they're lounging in their apartment with the credits to an old All Might movie playing in the background. "I kind of want to get the negotiation out of the way before my heat starts, if that's all right? Do it while I'm still lucid, y'know? We don’t really scene much while we’re in heat but there’s definitely undertones of our usual dynamic that leak through."
"That makes sense," Izuku says, almost cautiously.
"I guess what you need to know is that when I'm aware enough for it, I get really subby. Desperate to please, needing to make my partner happy, that kind of thing. Shouta's the exact opposite: he needs to be in control or he gets too in his head to do anything."
"It's the trauma," Shouta says, deadpan. Hizashi snorts, more than used to Shouta's dark humor by now. "No, seriously. I panic when I try to submit."
"O-oh. I've never done anything like that before." Izuku blushes. "I've been curious about it, though. I like the idea of submitting, I think."
Shouta's eyes darken. " Do you now? You like thinking about an omega shoving you down and riding your cock? Maybe getting tied up so you can't do anything about it?"
Izuku bites his lip, his cheeks flushed red. "I—yeah," he whispers.
"What do you imagine, Zu?" Hizashi asks, leaning forward. "Tell us."
"I—I've been thinking about Shouta making me fuck you, and how good your, um, your cunt would feel around my knot, but I can't cum because Shouta hasn't given me permission yet—"
"Ooh. Yes," Hizashi says. "Shou-babe, you're taking notes, right?"
Shouta snorts. "Getting ideas, sunshine."
"Oh, we should go over what kind of dirty talk you like, Izuku, Shouta is a master of dirty talk."
Izuku hums. "Actually, I don't know what I'd like. I know what I think I might like, but I'm pretty inexperienced, honestly, at least when it comes to anything like that."
"We can try some stuff out and see how you feel about it," Shouta says. "Are you familiar with the stoplight system?"
"Not really, but it sounds pretty obvious. Red is stop, green is go, right?"
"Pretty much. Say 'red' if you need a scene to stop immediately, for any reason at all. 'Yellow' is for when something's not quite right, and it's a pause for adjustment. 'Green' means keep going. I generally have a decent idea with Zashi how he's going in a scene, but I don't know you like I know him, so I need you to communicate when things aren't vibing for you. If I can't trust you to say 'red' when you're past your limits, whatever those limits may be, I won't scene with you."
"Oh, that makes sense," Izuku murmurs. He starts mumbling off on a tangent about how important communication is during sex, and frankly, Shouta's just glad that Izuku seems to get it.
"'Zu," Hizashi says softly, breaking the younger man's stream-of-consciousness word vomit.
"Eh? Oh, sorry." He's learning that Hizashi and Shouta don't mind his mumbling, and they're more liable to get grumpy at him for over-apologizing than they are for his mumbles. They only stop him when it's detrimental to the continuing conversation.
"All good. I'm glad to hear that you understand how important communication is," Shouta says, the corner of his mouth quirking up in a tiny smile. "Right. So. Dirty talk. There's a few main categories that most dirty talk falls into: praise, degradation, and humiliation. I think they're pretty self-explanatory, but the line between degradation and humiliation can get pretty blurry."
"How so?"
"Well, humiliation is all about embarrassing you, so different people find different things humiliating. Something like 'is my baby boy going to behave for Daddy?' might be humiliating if you're not into infantilization, but if you like that kind of dynamic, it might not be. Hell, even if you're into it, the tone of voice can change a phrase from sweet to humiliating. If I was going to degrade you, I might call you slut, whore, or a fucktoy. If I wanted to humiliate you, I'd say things that make you ashamed of who you are. But humiliation is a hard limit for me. I don't do it."
Izuku nods. "Fair enough."
"Is there anything you can think of that you definitely don't want before we start testing things out?"
"Um, being called useless. Or worthless."
"All right. I don't usually use those words, so those are easy to avoid. Anything else?"
Hizashi pipes up. "If you need examples, one of my hard limits is Shou telling me to shut up. I don't mind being gagged if we've discussed it beforehand, or him telling me to stay quiet, but 'shut up' specifically is a hard no. And that even holds outside of scenes, too."
"I can't think of anything else right now," Izuku eventually says after a short pause.
"Okay. I'll say a phrase. You can tell me if you like it, if you hate it, if it's a maybe...just your general reaction to it. I'll start with an easy one: pretty boy."
Izuku blushes. "I like that one."
Shouta goes through his mental rolodex of praise and insults, alternating between the two. Some are more involved—silly alpha doesn't know how to use his cock—and others are short and sweet— good boy.
Izuku seems to flourish under the praise, and has mixed reactions to the degradation. There's a few words that got put on their hard no list immediately, starting with 'worthless.' Other words Izuku had thought were hard nos were deemed okay only in very specific circumstances, like 'useless' (useless cock) and 'stupid' (fucked stupid). Much like Hizashi, Izuku doesn't like being degraded without a little bit of kindness or affection to soothe the sting—calling him 'a slut' got a wince, but ' my slut' got a blush and a quick nod.
('My pretty little whore' got the cutest fucking squeak Shouta's ever heard and Izuku burying his face in his hands as he nodded furiously. Shouta can definitely work with that.)
They continue discussing limits and kinks as the sun sets and Hizashi hauls himself to his feet to cook dinner. Izuku helps him with the prep while Shouta settles himself at the high counter and watches contentedly. He never could have predicted this: the alpha they needed for one specific purpose slotting into their daily lives so neatly. Oboro would have loved him, Shouta thinks. Izuku has the same bubbly, outgoing personality, though his cheer and optimism are hidden behind a thick shell of apprehension and anxiety that they’re slowly dissolving when they’re at home together.
He watches the two dance around each other in the kitchen like they'd been doing it for decades. It's impressive how well they coordinate despite it only being Izuku's second time in their kitchen.
It's while he's watching his mate laugh with the young alpha that it hits him: he wants this. Not just Hizashi, but Izuku, too. He wants to sit at the counter in the decades to come and watch his mates laugh as they chop vegetables for dinner. He wants their apartment (and their nest, oh how he wants a nest for three) to smell like all three of them, his own inky redwood-jasmine scent, Izuku's lavender-oakmoss-fern and Hizashi's clary sage and citrus. He wants Izuku to tell him the nest he built is perfect (even though they all know the nests Hizashi builds are a million times better) and Hizashi to surreptitiously rearrange the pillows and blankets until it really is perfect.
He wants—
He wants twin bite marks on his neck.
He hasn't had that kind of daydream in eight years. Not since he turned around to see Hizashi telling him that Oboro hadn't made it out.
Shouta glances over to the little altar they have set up for their missing third. Their other soulmate. Would you be okay if we moved on, 'Boro? he thinks. I never thought I'd feel like this again.
Maybe it's just his imagination, maybe it's some supernatural event, but he swears he hears Oboro telling him to just go for it already, Shouchan!! and the brush of a cloud-kiss on his forehead. I think he's perfect for you two.