MHA: Lust Quirk

The train smelled like vinyl seats and someone's bento.

Musutafu-bound, late afternoon, half-full. I had a window seat and the sun was coming through at the angle that hit my eyes no matter which way I turned my head. My hands were on my knees. The gauze was cleaner now, fresh wraps from the hospital discharge that morning. The cuts underneath had closed to tight pink lines overnight. The doctor had written "remarkable regenerative response" on the discharge form and underlined it twice and I'd signed the form with bandaged fingers and walked out before anyone asked follow-up questions.

The bruise on my temple had faded from purple to green. The cut across my ribs was a pink thread under my shirt. The swelling in my nose was down. I looked like a guy who'd been in a bar fight three days ago, not a guy who'd caught a katana between his palms forty-eight hours ago.

The city came into view through the window. Musutafu. The buildings were the same height they'd been when I left. The station platform had the same cracked tile near the south exit. A woman with a dog-faced Quirk was feeding pigeons on the bench where someone always fed pigeons. I'd been gone a week and fought a serial killer and the city hadn't noticed.

The train stopped. I grabbed my bag. My knuckles stiffened around the strap where the healing skin pulled. The afternoon crowd moved around me on the platform and I went with it, through the turnstile, up the stairs, left on the main street. The convenience store. The post office with the flag that always hung crooked. The low wall where the cat used to sit.

My apartment building. Third floor. The hallway smelled like someone else's curry, same as always. A different someone. The same curry.

I got the key in the lock and opened the door.

Mina was sitting on my bed.

Her bag was on the floor by the desk. Her shoes were at the door, pink high-tops with the laces tucked in. She was wearing a hoodie I hadn't seen before and shorts and she was sitting cross-legged on my bed with her phone in her hands and her thumbs frozen mid-text.

She looked up.

Two seconds. Her mouth opened. Her eyes went wide, the gold irises expanding against the black sclera, and her shoulders dropped and her breath came out in a rush. For one second she was just glad I was standing in the doorway.

Then she saw the bandages.

Her mouth closed. Her jaw set. Her eyes went hard and bright.

"You fought the Hero Killer."

She was off the bed. The phone hit the mattress. She crossed the apartment in three steps and she was in front of me and her hands were on my shirt, gripping the fabric at my chest, and her face was tilted up and her horns were close enough that one almost caught my chin.

"You FOUGHT the HERO KILLER?"

"Mina-"

"The news says Endeavor but the forums are saying students were involved and I KNOW it was you because you went to Hosu and the Hero Killer was in Hosu and you're standing here with your hands wrapped up like a MUMMY-"

"I'm fine."

"Are you INSANE?"

She was shaking. Her grip on my shirt was tight enough that the fabric pulled across my shoulders and her knuckles were pink against the dark cotton.

"You could have died," she said. Quieter. The volume dropped but the shaking didn't. "You could have died and I was in a different prefecture doing drills with an agency that makes me wear a reflective vest."

"I didn't die."

"THAT'S NOT THE POINT."

I reached down and took her hands off my shirt. Gently. One at a time. Her fingers resisted and then let go and I held her hands between us and her palms were wet.

Wet with acid.

The liquid was thin, barely visible, seeping from her pores in an uncontrolled layer. Weak, low pH, but it was there. It tingled against my skin. A faint chemical sting.

I didn't let go.

She looked down at my hands around hers. At my bandaged fingers holding her acid-slick palms.

The jaw went first. Then her mouth. Her eyes squeezed shut and her shoulders caved forward and she pressed her forehead into my chest and the sound she made was ugly and raw and nothing like the three-second crumple from the training ground.

I put my arms around her. Her horns dug into my collarbone. Her hands were fisted in my shirt again and the acid was soaking through the fabric and the chemical smell was sharp under the strawberry shampoo. She was crying against my chest, hard, her ribs hitching under my hands with each breath, and the tears were hot through my shirt.

I walked us backward to the bed. Sat down. She folded onto the mattress next to me without lifting her face from my chest. Gerald stared down from the ceiling. The fridge hummed. The afternoon light was coming through the blinds in the same stripes it always did, cutting across the desk and the rice cooker and her pink high-tops by the door.

She cried for a long time. I held her and didn't say anything because she wasn't done and she'd let me know when she was. The acid on her palms faded as her breathing slowed. The chemical sting died to nothing. The shaking went from her whole body to just her hands to just her fingers.

She pulled back. Her face was wet and puffy and her gold eyes were swollen and she wiped her nose with the sleeve of the hoodie.

"Let me see," she said.

She took my left hand. Turned it over. Her fingers traced the edge of the gauze without pressing the wound underneath. She found the spot where the tape met skin and ran her thumb along the border.

"Does it hurt?"

"Not really."

Her eyebrows flattened and her mouth pulled sideways.

She took my right hand. Traced the gauze. Found the edges. Her fingers were still damp but the acid was gone, reabsorbed, and her skin was just warm and pink and slightly rough at the fingertips from years of Quirk use.

"These are from a sword," she said.

"Katana."

"You caught a katana."

"Between my hands. Yeah."

She stared at me. Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. "You caught a KATANA with your BARE HANDS?"

"I was out of better options."

"Ryo." She said my name like a word she was biting in half. "What the hell."

"I'm here. I'm okay."

She put my hands down on my knees. Then she grabbed the hem of my shirt. I let her pull it up. The cut across my ribs was a pink line, thin, healed to a scar that would probably fade in another week. Her fingers found it. She traced the line from the left side of my ribcage toward my sternum, four inches of closed wound, and her touch was light enough that the skin barely registered pressure.

Her hand was warm on my ribs. Her thumb stopped at the end of the scar and rested there. She was looking at the place where a sword had been close enough to open me up.

Gerald watched. The fridge hummed. Her thumb on my ribs, resting on the last centimeter of the scar.

"Don't do that again," she whispered.

"Can't promise that."

She closed her eyes. Her hand stayed on my ribs. Her thumb pressed, light.

"I know."

She leaned into me. Her head found my shoulder and her horn pressed against my neck and she put her hand flat on my chest over the shirt she'd been crying into. The fabric was damp from her tears and the acid residue and her palm settled there and her fingers spread.

I put my arm around her. She fit against my side, compact and warm, the strawberry shampoo smell mixed with acid chemistry mixed with sweat from a long train ride. The bite mark she'd left on my shoulder before the internship had healed to a faint crescent.

She wasn't shaking anymore. Her breathing was even. Her eyes were closed and her weight was against me.

I leaned back against the wall. She came with me. The mattress creaked. Gerald was above us, bird-shaped and unchanging. The afternoon light shifted across the floor.

"I came straight here," she said. Her voice was muffled by my shirt. "Didn't go home. Got off the train and came here."

"I know."

"My bag's got three days of dirty clothes in it." She pressed her face harder into my shoulder. "I smell terrible."

"You smell like strawberry shampoo and industrial chemicals."

"Shut up." A small sound against my chest. Half laugh, half leftover sob. "I was so scared."

I tightened my arm around her. She breathed. Outside, a car went by. The pigeons on the building next door were doing whatever pigeons did at this hour. The curry smell from the hallway was getting stronger, which meant someone was cooking dinner and the walls were as thin as they'd always been.

"I tried calling Mirko's agency," she said. "Nobody picked up. Because she doesn't have staff. She just has a phone number that goes to voicemail. Who does that? Who runs a hero agency with no staff?"

"She works alone."

"She's insane."

"Little bit."

Mina's fingers curled in my shirt. Her horn shifted against my neck.

"The forums are saying three students fought him," she said. "You, Todoroki, and Iida. They're saying Todoroki used fire for the first time. They're saying you caught the sword."

"The official story says Endeavor."

"Nobody believes the official story." She pulled back enough to look at me. Her eyes were still red and puffy and her nose was running. "You're going to be famous. When the real story gets out. People are going to know."

"People are going to know Endeavor beat the Hero Killer."

"People are going to know YOU beat the Hero Killer." She poked my chest. Gently, because she poked hard by default and she was compensating. "And then every girl in U.A. is going to look at you differently and I'm going to have to fight them off with acid."

"You could just melt their shoes."

"Don't give me ideas." She laid her head back on my shoulder. Her hand was still on my chest. Her fingers still spread.

The light through the blinds was turning orange. The curry smell was stronger. The fridge's hum shifted pitch and rattled once and settled.

She was quiet for a while. Her breathing was slow and steady and her weight was warm against my side. I thought she was falling asleep.

"Hey," she said.

"Yeah."

"I like you." She said it into my shirt. "Like, a lot. In case the crying didn't make that obvious."

"The crying was a hint."

She pinched the fabric of my shirt between her fingers. Twisted it. Let go. "I'm not good at this part. The serious part. I'm good at the making-people-laugh part and the showing-up-with-snacks part but the part where I say how I actually feel makes me want to dissolve into the floor."

"You're doing fine."

"I'm doing terrible. I'm covered in snot."

I looked at Gerald. Gerald looked back. The light shifted again and the bird stain's shadow moved an inch on the wall.

"I like you too," I said. "In case the letting-you-cry-on-my-only-clean-shirt part didn't make that obvious."

She made a sound that was equal parts laugh and groan and pressed her face into my shoulder and her horn scratched my neck and the acid smell flared briefly on her palms before fading again.

"Shut up," she said. "Let me have this."

I let her have it. She fell asleep before I did. Her hand went slack on my chest and her breathing deepened and her horn tilted against my jaw.

I didn't move. Gerald was above us. The fridge hummed. Mina breathed. The curry smell from the hallway had peaked and was fading and the orange light through the blinds was turning gray.

I closed my eyes.