Work Text:
Shinsou can’t wait to be home.
It’s been a long week, the type of week that’s never ending yet passing by in the blink of an eye. Despite the exhaustion, it’s been a good week. His thesis advisor is happy with his last round of revisions— which means less work for Shinsou for the next draft; he racked up enough loyalty points to get a free meal at the sandwich shop he stops at for dinner; and the weekend forecast is overcast and chilly, the perfect excuse to do nothing.
The only bad thing about this week is the fact that the elevator in his apartment building is out. He’s had to walk up and down eight flights of stairs every day. (And then had to do that multiple times one day because he wasn’t going to make the food delivery person walk all of those stairs.) He’s panting every single time he makes it to his door.
Today’s no exception, and Shinsou wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his sleeve. He walks to his door and on habit, glances at the door across from his. Shinsou does this every time— has done this every time since he first said hello to his across-the-hall-neighbor and realized exactly what love at first sight meant.
Okay, so, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Shinsou didn’t talk to Midoriya Izuku until a month after they first met, and it was another few months until Shinsou considered them friends. And then another handful of months later until Shinsou realized that the reason he gets so nervous around Midoriya and always anticipates their next meet up was because Shinsou has a big fat crush.
(When he told Denki— his first year roommate and his longstanding best friend— about this realization, Denki had laughed so hard that the water he was drinking came out of his nose. “No shit you have a crush. Everyone and their mom finds Midoriya attractive. It’s, like, in the muscles or something. Whatcha gonna do about it?”)
Shinsou didn’t do anything until two weeks ago. And it really wasn’t even his doing. The two of them were in the elevator together and the entire ride up Shinsou was psyching himself up to ask Midoriya out on a date or something.
Midoriya beat him to it, face flushed and stammering in embarrassment. Shinsou said yes so fast that he tripped over his words and ended up with a word salad of nonsense. The date itself was a simple movie and dinner and ended with Midoriya pressing Shinsou up against the wall of his bedroom and kissing the living daylights out of him.
(Muscles, yeah.)
Second date is still to be determined, only because midterms and thesis deadlines both snuck up on them. So, yeah, Shinsou looks at Midoriya’s front door out of habit now. Looks at Midoriya’s door, takes his keys out, opens his own door, looks at Midoriya’s front door again and holy shit, is it on fire?
Midoriya’s door is on fire.
Hellfire is surrounding Midoriya’s door. Hellfire isn’t common, considering, well, it’s from hell, but Shinsou has the unfortunate ability of befriending people who like to do incredibly dangerous things like mess with spells and runes and charms that have no business being messed with.
The door opens and Midoriya stands in the doorway, covered head to toe in black flames. His hands are covered in bright red paint and there are streaks of the same paint in his hair. His eyes are dark, his pupils so dilated that when Shinsou looks at him, he feels like he can’t tear his gaze away.
But then something to the right of Midoriya shifts and Shinsou’s jaw drops eight floors. It probably hits someone in the lobby and causes a concussion that Shinsou will not be held liable for.
Because there’s a glowing, wispy ball of eyes next to Midoriya. Eyes that aren’t from this world. It stares and Shinsou knows deep down within himself that he is being seen. Seen in a cruel, heavenly way.
“I need help,” Midoriya says but his voice isn’t his own. It sounds like a million voices at once, speaking directly into Shinsou’s brain. It’s a hollow sound that echoes and echoes and echoes until it becomes something that is not even a sound anymore.
Shinsou automatically takes a step back.
Midoriya shakes his head and swats at the thing next to him. It shies away from his touch, fading out of view for a second before flashing bright and hot and then disappearing into nothingness. The flames stay, black, cold, and all-consuming.
They don’t seem to spread, so that’s good.
“I summoned a god,” Midoriya says and then he opens his mouth and vomits greasy black sludge all over the floors that were just cleaned yesterday. The super of the building only cleans the floors once a month.
This is not how Shinsou thought his weekend was going to go.
“Explain. Everything. Now,” Shinsou says, sitting Midoriya down in the living room. Shinsou would much rather not do this in his own living space— he hasn’t cleaned all week and it shows and it’s frankly more embarrassing than he is willing to admit at the current moment— but Midoriya’s apartment is covered in flames and paint and black, otherworldly vomit that Shinsou doesn’t want to touch at the moment.
Unwashed dishes and dirty clothes are much more preferable.
“Sorry,” Midoriya says instead of explaining. His head lolls to the side and Shinsou should be worried about the listlessness of Midoriya’s body. Should be worried by how Midoriya is letting himself be thrown with no sense of control or urgency. But Shinsou has also seen that same exact black sludge leak out of every orifice of Denki’s face one too many times to be too worried. It’s from magical overexertion, the human body’s alarm before something dramatic and horrific happens.
Sure, it’s still absolutely horrible and frankly terrifying, but for someone with no magical affinity at all, Midoriya sure does have a knack for making trouble everywhere he goes. The first time Shinsou had actually met Midoriya was a week after Shinsou had moved in and Midoriya had knocked on his door, black sludge leaking out of his mouth, asking if Shinsou had any sugar.
Shinsou did not, in fact, have any sugar.
They didn’t meet again for another month and Shinsou had shrugged off the encounter as something odd, but not worth putting much thought behind. The world around them is seeped in magic: the subway system is charmed to be super accurate and efficient, Shinsou’s energy drinks are made with liquid luck, this apartment building has a protection spell around it, as does most public places.
Wait, this apartment building has a protection spell on it.
“How did you manage to break the protection spell?” Shinsou asks, not-so-gently putting Midoriya on the couch. He’s practically a doll with how lifeless his body is, and how little resistance he gives to Shinsou’s movements. If it wasn’t for his wide eyes and the rise and fall of his chest, Shinsou would think that Midoriya was dead.
Which is not a good thought at all.
“S’pretty easy,” Midoriya mumbles, his words slurring together. He takes in a shuddering breath, moans, and coughs up more black sludge. “Just did a ritual and then did this.” Midoriya gestures to himself. His movements take up more energy than he has, and he lays back down on the couch with not a word more.
“This is not an explanation,” Shinsou says. He starts thinking about what he needs to do to make sure Midoriya survives the night. His first thought is to rush Midoriya to the hospital, but then immediately pushes the idea away when he remembers the transparent cloud of watchful eyes that is still in the hallway. Shinsou’s back crawls with a sudden chill, but when he turns around all he sees is the closed door behind him.
Shinsou just knows that whatever that is— Midoriya had called it a god— it is watching him. Them. The two of them.
There is no way they’re going to a hospital. Not with a god-thing that looks malicious as fuck. So Plan B.
“Midoriya, I’m going to need you to let me know what ritual you did. So I can reverse it before you get any worse.”
Midoriya opens his eyes and tries to smile, but his entire mouth is covered in the slimy black gunk and the expression just looks like there’s a gaping hole of nothing in the middle of his face. Shinsou grimly smiles back.
“That will probably work,” Midoriya says and he sounds better than he did before. More life in his voice, less coughing out magical poison. He explains his process and even though Shinsou listens, he can’t really believe that someone would be this idiotic in their rune-making process.
“It was an experiment,” Midoriya defends when he’s done explaining and Shinsou is rummaging around in his stuff for the proper materials. He knows that his roll of duct tape is around in this mess. Somewhere.
“An experiment,” Shinsou repeats and ah, there it is, hidden beneath yesterday’s stained shirt. “Rule number one of working with runes is to not mess them up. Rule number two is to never combine them. Jesus, Midoriya, did you want to die?”
Midoriya coughs, wet and probably full of more blackness. “Just four essays due this week. Didn’t expect an energy drain.”
“Well at least that’s more understandable.”
“I’m surprised you’re agreeing.”
“I’m not,” Shinsou says. “I’m being sarcastic right now.” He pushes his rug out of the center of the room and kneels down. He has no idea what a combination of alert, luck, and perseverance runes is supposed to look like, but Shinsou figures that Midoriya also has no idea what it would look like either, considering he messed it up so badly to summon a god-thing that’s sucking the life force out of him.
Shinsou gets to work and prays to any gods that are listening (Well, besides the one that’s outside the door and is most certainly listening) that this works.
Shinsou hot wires the first car he sees.
It’s a skill that he doesn’t like to share since people start to look at him weirdly when he explains that he actually does know how to do some vaguely illegal stuff. But Midoriya isn’t one to judge and even if he were, Shinsou is more than certain that he won’t care.
Not now, at least.
Midoriya is pale in the passenger seat, gripping the blanket that Shinsou had given him tight enough that his knuckles are white. He’s shivering, and Shinsou puts on the heat as high as it can go.
The ritual did nothing but make the god-like-thing rush inside and throw Shinsou off the floor. It pinned him to the wall for a good five seconds before vanishing out of sight. It didn’t hurt, won’t leave any bruises, but Shinsou does not want to try that again.
It felt like a warning. It felt like if Shinsou did something like that again, he’d pay a much bigger price.
So they’re in the stolen car now, Shinsou weaving through traffic like a hormonal, adrenaline-seeking teenager that believes they’re invincible. Shinsou knows vaguely where he is going, but is relying on Midoriya’s directions.
“What if this doesn’t work?” Shinsou asks, taking a sharp left turn and zipping by three cars who are going the speed-limit. “This fountain thing is a myth, you know that right?”
“It’s not a myth,” Midoriya says. All of the fans in the car are pointing towards him, flushing him with heat, but he’s still shaking so hard that if Shinsou is quiet enough, he can hear Midoriya’s teeth clattering together. “It’s a real place that can purify things. Trust me.”
“I do trust you. This is just fucking crazy.”
The god-thing is in the backseat, translucent enough that it’s not obstructing the rearview mirror, but solid enough that Shinsou grows more and more uncomfortable with every passing second. It’s starting to glow, and some of the eyes are bloodshot, hungry for power.
Midoriya takes a shaky breath as he gives Shinsou more directions.
Shinsou’s heard the rumor about the cure-all fountain a few times since moving to Musutafu for university. It’s in the middle of a forest and is supposed to be the place you go when you royally screw up whatever type of magic thing that you were doing and are totally out of options. Shinsou thought it was a load of bullshit, a bastardized folklore that college students passed around as an ultimate fix to any problem that you could come up with. There’s probably another half to the rumor that Shinsou is neglecting to remember— but it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t exist.
But Midoriya insists that it is real and that it will work, and Shinsou doesn’t have any other plan to get the god-thingamabob off of Midoriya. So off they go.
Twenty minutes of erratic driving later, Shinsou parks the car in front of an abandoned hiking path. The path is still visible, but it’s starting to be overtaken by the nature around it. He cuts the ignition and helps Midoriya out of the car. “Are you sure this is the place? Super sure?”
Midoriya nods. “Been here a few times. This is it.”
“What do you mean you’ve been here a few times?”
“This is like my fifth time here.”
Shinsou almost drops Midoriya out of pure spite. “You’re the most reckless person I know. What if I hadn’t gotten back to the apartment then? What if I was an hour later? You’re going to get yourself killed.” Shinsou doesn’t mean to berate Midoriya, the words just come spilling out all on their own. Shinsou cares about Midoriya. Wants to touch his dick and ensure his safety and well-being kind of cares.
Apparently more than Midoriya cares about his own well-being.
“Still alive, though,” Midoriya replies and then Shinsou actually drops him.
The god-like-thing (because no matter what Midoriya has said, there is just no way that he actually managed to summon a god, even a minor one. There is just no way— right? Yes, of course. There’s no way. Nope. No. Can’t be possible!) appears the second that Midoriya hits the floor. It’s glowing with hellfire, the cold flames licking at Shinsou’s face.
If Shinsou had to guess, he would say that the god-thingy is angry. But it’s also just a cloud without facial features, so all Shinsou has to go off are the endless amount of glaring eyes and the hellfire and the cold tension in the air that grows so suddenly that it feels like the pressure around them is increasing, bringing Shinsou down to his knees and then right down on the ground next to Midoriya.
“You made it mad,” Midoriya says.
No shit, Shinsou wants to say but he can’t get a word out, the pressure is too much. It’s pushing his face into the ground and Shinsou can taste iron in his mouth. He feels wetness dripping out of his nose and he can’t see the blood running across his face, but he knows it’s there.
There is no killing intent, but the god-thingy holds both Shinsou and Midoriya there for what seems like a lifetime but is probably only a good handful of minutes. It’s an overwhelming pressure, borderline painful, but mostly just plain annoying. Shinsou knows that when he gets up, his shirt is going to be stained with dirt and blood and he does not have time (nor energy) to go to the laundromat this weekend.
The pressure vanishes suddenly and Shinsou shakily gets to his feet and then helps Midoriya up as well. He breathes in deeply, the sudden free oxygen hurting his lungs. And his nose. Because it’s still freely dripping blood all over the place.
“Fuck,” Shinsou says and he doesn’t have anything other than his shirt to stop the blood, so it’s his shirt that he uses. The bleeding doesn’t stop, but it’s dealt with for the moment. “Please tell me that this fountain thing is close.”
It’s not, just Shinsou’s luck.
The two of them hobble their way through the forest, Shinsou’s arm wrapped around Midoriya’s waist for support. It’s nearing dusk and Shinsou really, really hopes that this will finish up before night truly hits. They look bad now and Shinsou knows that they would look worse in the middle of the night. It’s as if they’re coming out from the middle of a horror movie: Shinsou with blood covering the entire front of his shirt and the bottom half of his face and Midoriya pale and clammy like something evil is sucking the life force out of him.
Shinsou thinks that it would be a particularly shitty horror movie.
“What happens when this fountain thing doesn’t work,” Shinsou asks after Midoriya says It’s right here! for the fifth time. Either they’re lost, or this fountain thing doesn’t actually exist. He’s not sure which one is worse since they’re both pretty horrible.
“It’s going to work,” Midoriya grits out. He stumbles on himself and Shinsou tightens his grasp. The last thing they need is for the god-eye-not-a-god-thing to come back and deem them in need of more divine punishment.
“It’s going to work, I swear. It has to be around here somewhere.”
Shinsou keeps walking because he doesn’t know what else to do. Midoriya leads him down a path that doesn’t look like a real path at all. And then between one step and the next, Shinsou feels something change. It’s in the air, in the ground around them, it’s everywhere, this change. There is a tingly sensation throughout his body, making his head fuzzy and warm and content.
Midoriya slaps him across the face.
The pain is a shock and the warm, pleasant feeling Shinsou was experiencing vanishes. Pain settles back in: the ache in his arms from carrying Midoriya, the pulsing sensation of his bruised face trying to heal. Even his lungs twinge with agony when he takes a breath.
“What the fuck was that?” Shinsou’s anger is normally a quiet thing, bubbling and bubbling at the surface but never bursting in a volatile way. But for some reason he is overcome with such a vicious anger that he feels like screaming, yelling, like charging at Midoriya and fighting him because how dare he have the audacity to slap Shinsou, after everything that he—
Midoriya slaps him across the face again.
“We’ve spent too much time in the forest,” Midoriya explains. He has a bit of color back in his face, making it look like he’s a few feet away from dying unlike before where he looked like he was already in his grave. “It’s trying to trick you. Us, really. Into staying. Calm down.”
Shinsou calms down. He can feel the anger start to come back, but it doesn’t make any sense. It has no source— it’s just the forest playing tricks on him. And then when he actually thinks This anger is not mine, he’s rapidly filled with contentment again.
He sighs. Why are they even walking so much? They deserve a break, a respite. They can start up again on whatever they were doing after they’ve sat down and maybe taken a nap.
“Shinsou,” Midoriya bites.
The contentment is gone as soon as it comes. Shinsou shakes his head and grits his teeth. He needs to concentrate. The goal here is to get Midoriya to this real-not-real fountain, get the god-not-god thing off of him and then go back home and try not to get arrested for stealing a car.
Simple, really.
They find the fountain thirty seconds later. It’s hidden by a ring of trees whose spiked leaves are as tall and broad as Shinsou. It takes Shinsou pushing with all of his strength to get the leaves to move, and even then the spikes catch on his clothes and hold onto him. He ends up with ripped clothing and scratches up and down his arms, but most importantly he ends up inside.
The only thing, though, is that the fountain has dried up.
“Tell me this works without water,” Shinsou says. “Please, tell me that we didn’t come all this way for this fountain to not actually work.”
Midoriya groans, reaches into his pocket for something, and then stabs his hand with that something. A rush of blood pours out of his hand. In an instant, the god-thingy is back, coming with it the same intense pressure. Only this time it doesn’t crush both of them to the ground. Doesn’t apply so much force that it breaks Shinsou’s nose.
No, nothing like that.
It takes all of the oxygen out of the air instead.
Shinsou’s lungs begin to burn. He drowned once when he was a kid who thought surfboarding was the coolest thing in the world. A wave had crushed right on top of him and Shinsou was too overcome with panic to think clearly. He tried to swim upwards, but the current was brutal and didn’t let him figure out which way was up and which way was down.
It’s the same thing this time. The same panic, the same burn. The same dizziness in his head. The brain can last three minutes without oxygen before real, dangerous brain damage starts to occur. Shinsou doesn’t know how long it’s been but he knows that he can’t hold his breath for three minutes. Knows that when he opens his mouth he’s going to suffocate.
Shinsou drops to his knees. The god hovers over him. There is no hellfire this time, just the haze of the god and its million or so angry eyes staring and staring and staring. All Shinsou can do is stare back.
The god and its many eyes do not blink.
Shinsou’s vision spots black.
He feels light and heavy at the same time. Schrodinger’s measurement of weight, if you will. But then eventually the heaviness wears out and Shinsou lungs scream for air that it has no way of receiving.
And then Midoriya throws himself into the fountain— which miraculously is now filled with gleaming, crystal clear water.
The air rapidly becomes breathable. Shinsou takes a deep breath of oxygenated air, his lungs sending stabbing shots of pain through his chest with each movement.
The god shierks, the noise not actually a noise but going through every fiber of Shinsou’s body all the same. It’s a piercing sensation, dangerous and so full of hurt that Shinsou can do nothing but curl himself into a ball and wait for it to be over.
The god screams and yells and Shinsou holds himself tight on the ground. If the fountain actually works (Shinsou has absolutely no idea what Midoriya did to get the water there, but he can assume from the way he easily cut his hand open that 1) It was not good and 2) Something he had surely done before.), then that means that the god is being pushed back, pulled away.
It means that the god is leaving.
And apparently the god is putting up a hell of a fight.
Shinsou doesn’t see any of it. His eyes are screwed shut and his hands are covering his ears, but he feels it. He feels the scream echoing in his head. He feels the pressure in the air start to increase and his nose can’t take it any longer and bursts into bleeding again. He can feel the air start to become thin, his bloody nose doing nothing to help him breathe.
Shinsou doesn’t know how long it lasts, only that when he opens his eyes again it’s fully dark out.
When Shinsou looks up (and the blood drips, drips, drips down the back of his throat), the cover of trees block any stars from being seen. It should be so dark that Shinsou can’t see anything.
Oh, and the fountain is glowing.
Midoriya sits in the middle of the fountain, the wet parts of him glowing as if he’s standing under a black light. His hair is so bright that Shinsou can’t look at Midoriya directly. He looks at the ground instead.
“What the fuck just happened,” Shinsou asks. His nose is freely bleeding and all of his muscles ache. It feels like he’s just ran a marathon and then was run over by a truck ten times over. He doesn’t even bother to try and stop the bleeding.
“The god’s dead,” Midoriya replies. He gets out of the water, dripping glowing white drops of magic fountain water with every movement. His clothes shine— Midoriya is a walking flashlight. “I didn’t kill it, but I think it’s dead. The fountain worked.”
Shinsou stares at Midoriya’s shoes, his hair and face still too bright to look at. Shinsou is pretty sure that even Midoriya’s freckles are luminescent.
Midoriya shakes his head and Shinsou watches in awe as glowing drops of water fly out of his hair. Shinsou feels water splatter on him and wouldn’t be surprised if he was now glowing as well. His nose continues to bleed and Shinsou swallows and tastes iron.
“How—” Shinsou asks, but he doesn’t know what exactly to ask. There are so many questions floating in the air. Shinsou’s been well acquainted with the witchy and the occult for well over a decade now, but he has never, not once, even heard of someone summoning a god and then killing it.
Midoriya stands a little ways away, still dripping wet. The fountain putters out behind him, giving a last few feeble squirts of illuminated, very magic, probably very dangerous water.
“Fuck!” Midoriya yells and he turns around, rushes back to the fountain, and gets on his knees. “Shinsou, you have to help me here.”
Shinsou moves, not even knowing what Midoriya is trying to ask of him. He kneels down next to Midoriya and doesn’t think, just does. Midoriya shoves glass bottles into his hands (Where the fuck did those come from and when did Midoriya even have the time to pack those), and the two of them spend the next two minutes frantically bottling up the illuminated, very magical, probably very dangerous water.
The water also has the added side effect of making Shinsou feel better. Even with just his hands getting wet, Shinsou can feel the heaviness of his shoulders begin to lighten. His nose stops bleeding and his lungs don’t ache when he breathes.
“This really is a magic fountain,” Shinsou says as he caps the last bottle. The water sparkles in the glass, moving with its own life. The light in the fountain is gone, but they managed to bottle up enough water that Shinsou can see a few feet in front of him. It helps that both his hands and the entirety of Midoriya are still glowing.
“Super magic fountain,” Midoriya replies with a nod. “It hasn’t failed me yet and I’ve really put it to the test.” He holds up a bottle and shakes it. “These will last me for a while.”
“I don’t even want to ask why you would need bottles of enchanted water from a fountain that I thought was nothing more than a myth an hour ago.”
“That’s fair.”
“So why do you need it?”
Midoriya laughs, high pitched and airy. It takes Shinsou a second to realize that the sound is coming out of Midoriya’s mouth, that it’s what Midoriya sounds like when there isn’t the pressing fear of a god looming over his shoulder. The past indeterminant amount of time has been so much to deal with— from the hellfire, to the god, to the god making two jabs of attempted murder, to the fact that this cure-all fountain exists— that Shinsou hasn’t had a chance to take it all in.
So Shinsou takes it all in now, and then gets two solid thoughts in before he shuts his brain down again and decides that he will begin to unpack all of this when he’s home, preferably in a hot bath with some incense going and music loud enough to block all of his neighbors from hearing him cry it out.
His therapist is going to have a field day unpacking all of this. Maybe Shinsou should bring some of those white chocolate truffles she likes to soften the blow.
“So,” Midoriya says, nervousness creeping back in his throat and choking his words. For all of his crazy magical stunts, and for all of his batshit insane actions, Midoriya is still the most nervous person that Shinsou knows. “This doesn’t count as our second date, does it?”
Shinsou laughs, hard and loud. And then when he gets going, he can’t stop. It’s not even that funny of a question, but it’s been a long night and laughing is a catharsis of sorts. Shinsou laughs and laughs and laughs and when it gets too much to stand, he curls in on himself and laughs some more.
Midoriya laughs as well until they’re both laying on the ground, stomachs aching with every movement. Midoriya’s glow has dimmed, still bright enough to act as a human flashlight but not so bright that Shinsou’s eyes hurt when he looks at him.
Midoriya’s chest heaves as he sits up and catches his breath. Shinsou climbs to his feet and extends his hand out to Midoriya and helps him up. Neither of them let go of their hands and so they stand there for a minute, breathing hard, and holding hands.
They’ve done a lot more than hold hands before, but maybe it’s because it’s been a hell (a heaven? it was a god that Midoriya had to deal with, but not a god from any sort of monothestic religion that Shinsou knows of) of a night, the sudden intimacy is overwhelming.
“This can’t be our second date,” Midoriya says, a smile at the edges of his lips. “This is a shitty second date.”
Shinsou nods and squeezes Midoriya’s hands. “Would you believe me if I said I’ve been on shittier dates?”
“Absolutely.”
They stare at each other and Shinsou wants to kiss Midoriya. They’re both an ugly mess of sweat and blood and magical water, but Shinsou really, really wants to kiss Midoriya. And so he leans in to do just that.
And of course, because this night can’t get any worse, Midoriya slaps a hand over Shinsou’s mouth and narrows his eyes.
Shinsou’s immediately on edge. It takes a second but then he hears it, a loud, hollow sound. Like footsteps of something very large and very dangerous.
Shinsou suddenly remembers the entire legend of the magical fountain. It’s a magical fountain that will cure just about everything, hidden in the middle of a wooded area and guarded by a bloodthirsty, poisonous yokai.
“If we make it back to the car, we’ll be fine. It never goes beyond the forest line,” Midoriya whispers. “We run on three, okay?”
Shinsou nods, a quick and rigid movement.
Midoriya bites his bottom lip and lets his hand fall off of Shinsou’s mouth. He counts to three and then they run for their lives.
They end up having their second date at a museum. It’s a great time, Midoriya full of information on all the paintings and sculptures and even the building it was housed in, until Midoriya somehow activates a curse on one of the paintings and starts to burn cold.
Hellfire.
No one has time to panic before Midoriya reaches in his pocket, takes out a bottle of magic water that Shinsou didn’t even know he had, and pours it on his head. The fire goes out immediately and the curse, a dark tendril growing out of the painting, slinks back to wherever it came from.
Shinsou has to squint his eyes to see the glow haloing Midoriya.
“This is going to be a regular occurrence, isn’t it?” Shinsou asks. The museum around them moves like normal, everyone minding their business as it’s clear that there is no pressing danger. If Shinsou has learned anything in his years of life, it’s that people only care when there’s drama.
“I have been told that I have a propensity to attract trouble,” Midoriya says.
“Trouble,” Shinsou repeats. Shinsou can think of a laundry list of things that are worse than trouble. He reaches out and takes Midoriya’s hand. “So, what were you saying about this painting? Something about the oils?”
“Oh!” Midoriya jumps back into his explanation. Shinsou doesn’t really follow along, Midoriya using technical art terms that go over Shinsou’s head, but he lights up as he explains and Shinsou is so enamored that it’s ridiculous.
There’s no more trouble for the rest of the night, but Shinsou thinks that he wouldn’t mind it if there was.
(As long as the trouble is nothing as dire as summoning a god, of course.)
Midoriya gets cursed by another god three years later. By now, Shinsou knows the ins and outs of dealing with the chaotic side of the supernatural. The god only has time to tornado through the office of their shared apartment before Shinsou stabs it with a cursed sword.
“I told you not to do this again,” Shinsou says, heaving with exertion. Gods aren’t easy to stab and Shinsou doesn’t hit the gym as often as he should.
Midoriya shrugs. His eyes are leaking black gunk. Shinsou knows that it’s only a second before the same magic black gunk comes out of his mouth. “Whoops.”
“You owe me pizza for this entire week. The nice kind.”
Midoriya beams and then his smile becomes pitch black with the gunk. He begins to cough, deep, wheezing sounds, and drops to his knees.
They keep their supply of magical water in the kitchen, but Shinsou doesn’t have to look in the cabinet to know that Midoriya used the last of the supply two weeks ago.
At least this time they have their own car.