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It started with Fuyumi. It shouldn’t have surprised him, really, considering all of the yet to be unpacked baggage that lay between Touya and his sister and the innate charm of his stupid kind-of-boyfriend.
“Are you giving me a shovel talk?”
“Maybe.”
They were seperated by plexiglass in the shitty visitor’s room of the prison Touya was currently inhabiting. Fuyumi sat in front of him with an unimpressed expression, posture straight and the receiver held loosely in her hand. Low sound of conversation came from the other inmates as the afternoon light streamed from the small windows. He shifted in his seat and tried again.
“You’re giving me a shovel talk. My own sister.” Her expression remained the same. “You’re supposed to be on my side, you know.”
She barked a laugh. Rude. “Why is that?”
“Because you’re my sister.“
“And? He’s kind of my best friend,” she said. Oh. “Plus he never terrorized Japan and kidnapped Shoto’s classmate,” she added with a raised eyebow, “so deal with it.”
Touya ignored the jab. He was used to his record being casually brought up by now. There were more pressing issues. “Since when are you best friends?”
“Since we started co-parenting your adopted sister,” Fuyumi deadpanned.
Touya sighed. “I know, OK? I fucked up and now all of you are trying to clean up the mess. I know.”
He did pull the rug from under a lot of people. Hell, the ramifications of this “mess” was shaking the foundations of the whole hero society, which was kind of the point of it all. But with Hawks- with Keigo -god, it felt weird calling him that-, it was different. Touya personally dragged him into the middle of this bullshit. Dabi’s bullshit. He knew. And he was trying his best, goddamit. About Keigo and about everything. He looked to Fuyumi, ready for a fight, but instead found her with a pensive expression.
“You are also trying to clean it up,” she said after a brief silence. An olive branch. Huh.
“Yeah,” he said, tired, “I am.”
“I know.”
“Doesn’t feel like enough,” he admitted.
“Well, it’s a big mess,” she said slowly. “And it’s not completely yours either. You’re doing your best.”
“Thank you,” he conceded. Fuyumi gave a little smile. Small victories. “I am also trying to be less of a dick in general.”
“Uh huh.”
“And I want it on record that Keigo can be a dick too.” Even more so now that he had free will and everything. It was one of his more endaring qualities if you asked him.
Fuyumi laughed. “I know.”
Touya laughed too. It was kind of weird that his family knew Keigo now, but not necessarily bad, he decided. Fuyumi got serious again. “I know it’s complicated, OK? And I love you. But I love Keigo too and he doesn’t really talk about it but it’s obvious he’s been getting the short end of the stick in your relationship, so you better wise up.”
Touya smiled as he looked at his sister’s determined face. As far as shovel talks went, it wasn’t a bad one, not that he had a point of comparison. I’m not as lonely as I was when we first met, Keigo had said. Good, he thought. After a moment ‘Yumi smiled back. He wasn’t as lonely either.
Natsuo has always been Touya’s unofficial favourite. Sure, Fuyumi probably understood him the most and Shoto was the baby, but he liked to think Natsuo and him got along the best. Or they used to, anyway. So sue him for feeling a little betrayed.
“C’mon. Not you too.”
“What? I like him. He’s a cool dude. And he’s really into you for some bizarre reason, so don’t mess it up, yeah?”
Touya ignored the “he’s really into you” bit for the time being, even if it made his chest do funny things. He rolled his eyes. “Bizarre reason? Really feeling the love, Natsu.” Traitors, the lot of them.
“No offense bro but have you seen the man?” said Natsuo with a coolly raised eyebrow. “He can definitely do better. He’s nice too. Like, actually nice.”
“I know,” he said through gritted teeth, “it’s very annoying.”
Natsuo laughed like he was being cute, which he wasn’t, OK? Birdbrain was the single most infatuating person he ever met. Touya being in love with him did not change that one bit. It didn’t. He mumbled something about ungrateful little brothers which made Natsuo laugh even more. “If it’s gonna make you feel better,” he said after his laughter ran its course, “I had a similar conversation with Fuyumi the other day.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Not even a little bit. She better keep Rumi. She’s the coolest.”
“So I keep hearing.”
“Well, she is. We play basketball every two weeks.”
“Umm, not to be insensitive or quirkist or whatever, but doesn’t she crush you with the whole I-can-jump-twice-my-height schtick?”
“Rude, I’m really good at basketball.”
“Are you now?”
“I am. I played in my high school team for two years.”
“Oh. Cool.” An uncomfortable silence followed. Touya wanted to kick himself because he really should’ve been used to it by now. Things change in ten years. Kids grow up. He wasn’t going to fix anything by tripping up everytime he was faced with the fact that his siblings went on without him. He was really grateful when Natsuo kept going after a moment like he didn’t just become all closed-off and moody. “Anyway, her team usually wins, but it’s a pretty even game.”
“You’re playing teams?”
“Yeah. Me, Rumi, Mirio and Keigo.” Touya raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise. Since when does birdie play basketball? “Hey, you don’t know Mirio, do you? He’s one of the guys that saved Eri-chan.” Natsuo kept up his good-natured chatter, telling unnecessary information about Mirio that Touya would forget in 5 minutes and talking about his own awesome performance last game, while Touya tried -and probably failed- to keep up his grumpy expression.
“You need to apologise to Keigo.”
Touya raised an eyebrow and did not deign the sentence with a response because no, he was not going to do this with his baby brother. Nope. No way. But Shoto was a stubborn one. He easily held the ex-villain’s gaze, not budging. Touya managed to resist for a good five minutes before he broke eye contact and rolled his eyes.
“What do you know? Did he say something?” A worse scenerio came to his mind. “Fuck, did Fuyumi put you up to this?”
“Nobody put me up to anything. He’s been lowkey moping. I don’t like it.” Touya’s shoulders did not slump at that, not at all. He bravely turned his gaze back to his brother. “Well, maybe he should apologise. You don’t even know what we fought about.” More staring. How is an 18 year old this good at staring people down? Must be the stupid hero training. He thought about saying something sarcastic and trying to change the subject, because frankly it was a little insulting how little faith his siblings had in him, but fuck, this time it really was his fault. And he was maybe feeling bad about it.
“Do I look like I wanna talk about this?” he said finally, irritated beyond measure.
“I don’t want you to talk to me,” insisted Shoto, “I want you to apologise.” Multicolored eyes kept looking at him with the look.
The deep sigh he eventually gave was pulled from the bottom of his soul. “I will,” he said glumly. “It’s something stupid, anyway.”
“Cool.” Shoto’s face immediately relaxed to his regular resting bitch face. Touya tried really hard not to scoff. “So what’s the deal? Are you basketball buddies too?” he asked sarcastically.
“I don’t like basketball. I just think he’s neat.” Touya snorted. Despite the simple wording, he got the impression that this was high praise in Shoto’s book. He knew he looked up to Hawks, as a hero and for everything he did after. Everything we did, his brain corrected. Really, who knew it would take a villain and a hero to topple the corrupt government and inspire people to make some changes, starting with putting his asshole sperm-donor behind bars. Anyway, Shoto respecting Hawks was not new. Shoto liking Keigo was a more recent development apparently.
“I think he’s neat too,” he said with a smile. Shoto seemed entertained by his response. Then Touya put on his mean face, not that he believed it would work. “Seriously though, get out of my love life. All of you. If mini-me comes here next and accuses me of being a shit boyfriend I may actually burn society to the ground.”
“That would be really funny,” said Shoto grinning. Little shit. “What’re you gonna do, anyway? Ban us from seeing him?”
“Maybe. You guys obviously need a chaperone.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” said Shoto with a infatuating smirk, “mom would be really sad if Keigo couldn’t make it to Sunday brunch.”
He put the receiver down and let his head fall to the table with a thunk.