"If you're all good to sit tight and chit-chat with pipsqueak, I'll need to clean up a bit at mine. Wasn't expecting quests."
Wasn't expecting a pro hero to stay over at the drop of a hat because Akira is weak when it comes to puppy-eyed, Vanilla-Valorie pretty boys.
Ryo is to blame for that fucking complex.
Akira sighs to himself. Now he's got to chuck out body parts and dunk them in the council bin with the naive hope nobody will go sniffing or endowed with a Scent Quirk. Though his neighbourhood wasn't known for its pristine characters, Akira at least figures they'd be more interested in looting than scuffling through dirty bins. At least .
H a h.
Damn, he'd have to make a 'trip' to the suicide canyon outside of Tokyo later this weekend. He tries to keep his appearances around that area to a bare minimum. Or else some nosy good-doing granny McPhee would put two and two together.
To be fair, there aren't many long-legged, wild looking handsome men vacationing out to rural areas these days. If ever. He isn't surprised if people have noticed him.
Tensei excuses himself for a moment to the little earpiece and bows 90 degrees.
"Thank you again, Fudo-kun."
Kun , huh? Akira twitches at niceties and tries not to run out of the laundry-mat.
.
He has around half an hour to transform his cannibalistic apartment into something as polite and harmless as Akira could reasonably pull off.
That means splurging ten bucks on a vanilla scented candle and assortment of fruits. Replacing bed sheets and clutching two garbage bags brimming with human remains down the stairwell.
As his wallet cries, he smells Tensei before spotting him. Soapy clean sheets and coppery tang of engine oil - and subdues himself to not run off or wildly toss his bags of bodyparts into some random direction.
"Fudo-kun, do you need help with that?" Tensei asks, as though he weren't hands full of his own laundry. Akira steps around the large man.
"No need, I'll be up in a second. Make yourself at home. Just got to drop this stuff in the bin."
"You've kept that much trash in your apartment? What are you getting rid of, a body?" Tensei chuckles and follows him down, oblivious Akira nearly falling. "Are you sure you don't need help - the rubbish looks heavy."
Akira stops to turn. Despite Tensei standing two steps above, Akira holds his glower eye-level. Gulping, Tensei's hands twitch around his basket. "Go upstairs. I've got this."
"Uh," seeing he may have overstepped, Tensei bites his lower lip. Shoulders straightening. "Okay, if you insist. I'll just - be in your apartment."
"Go do that," Akira whirls and twirls down the rest of the stairwell to rounds the back of the apartment complex.
The council bin for the apartment was located at the back and looked to be absurdly full. Akira grumbles, plugs his breath and digs into the crate. Shoving aside and burying his bags.
.
Akira returns to the impossible sight of Tensei making tea.
Just to be sure, he asks, "What are you doing?"
"Oh!" head whipping, Tensei blinks. Hands pausing in wringing themselves like his cousin. "You're really quiet, oh, um. I'm making tea. For you - us."
"...Strange," Akira mutters. Kicking off his sandals and lollying over to the shower. "The hot water only lasts five minutes, so get in while you can."
For a second Tensei looks absent in thought, then his grip goes so slack and he's in danger of dropping Akira's only two mugs. "With you ?"
"Too much?" Akira cocks a hip against the bathroom's door. Popping it open. Tensei peers around to see a shower stall that could hardly make the width of his shoulders.
"I'll be alright for tonight, Fudo-kun. Thank you."
Akira shrugs, says, "Hop in if you change your mind," and grins to himself at Tensei's spluttering.
He's in and out in a flash, comfortably fresh from any lingering scents of the dead. Towel secured around his lithe waist, Akira returns to discover Tensei snooping about. Kneeling on the floor in blue satin pyjamas and opening and closing empty cupboards.
"Eeeeerm?"
Tensei slams the cupboard shut and whirls. Flushed at getting caught - then whirls back around. Ears flaming pink.
"Sorry! Where do you keep your spare futon?"
"Don't have one," Akira shrugged and made it over to the 'bed'. Dropped down and, for Tensei's virgin values, decides to keep the towel on. At least until he cleared out of the stricken look and wafty panic wrapping around him like a blanky.
"That-why?" Tensei turns back to him. Confusion overcoming his sensitivities at seeing Akira only in a towel. One that barely passed for 'decent'.
"I couldn't afford that one. Shouta loaned it to me when he realised I was roughing it on the floor."
Tensei frowns. Scent dwindling down to wry understanding. It tickles. "Thank you for letting me stay over. I'll take the floor."
One look at Tensei's rolled up sleeves making room for his engine exhausts and to the hard floor is all it takes for Akira to suck up whatever deliciously sinful ideas he had fermented up in his grimy brain.
"Get over here, idiot," Akira rolls off the futon, lies back with an arm under his head and pats his warm spot. Not hearing any movement, Akira angles up to glower - reigning in his demonic spirit at being ignored - and glowers at the big guy. "Don't make me repeat myself. I understand it's rude to brush off the host."
"Right!" Akira crawls over - a sight Akira has to bite his lip for, and settles himself stomach down on the futon.
This was not fair.
Peering over his arms, Tensei blinks at him. "Thanks."
"Don't tell Aizawa, he'd think I like you."
Tensei lets out a laugh so light, Akira couldn't describe it any better than being 'pretty'. "You, um, you can sleep naked if you…I don't want to make you uncomfortable."
Akira just sighs and covers his face with an arm, trying to suppress his giggles. "There's so many things wrong with that sentence that I'm not even going to begin to unpack."
"Fudo-kun!" Tensei's eye twitches, "I am being polite."
"Go to sleep, puppy."
"Pu-puppy?" Tensei flounders and, after sounding like a squeaky toy getting pummeled, turns his head the other way and grumbles a tensely polite, "Goodnight…you can steal some of the blanket if you get cold."
Ah shit, he's cute.
.
The last thing Akira expects, or needs, when he goes to work is to be assigned a new duty.
"Delivery boy," carefully, just to be sure, he reads the sharpied scrawl aloud. Eyes the yellow helmet, then the bike his elderly manager was petting. Grin sharp.
Then he realises this may be his new job.
"I'm a barista," he says.
"And the customers adore you," she appeals. Close to wincing. "But let's be real, Akira-san, you're the worst barista amongst the staff."
"Bullshit," he spits. At her gobsmacked sniff and re-assessing look, he tones down the bloodthirst in a deep breath. "I'm spectacular."
"You're unqualified."
"You can't get rid of me that easily! Sales have gone up since I've been behind the counter."
"Can't say the same for quality," she tuts.
Akira chokes.
Giving the bike one last pat she points to the helmet in his hands and says;
"However you are the most athletic out of the lot so, we're going to use that to our advantage and include delivery services. I'm sure you can handle biking around the neighbourhood. Those thighs if yours could crush steel," before he could oppose that blatant sexual harrassment, she clicks her fingers. "You won't have to change uniform - can't fix perfection. Just wear the helmet and make sure to take it off when handing over the goods. Your handsome mug is our best advertisement. Speaking of, could you pose for the company later this week? I want to put cardboard cutouts at the entrance to entice young men and women."
It takes all of Akira's self-restraint to not squish the heavy duty helmet in his hands like putty.
Through deeper breaths, he reminds himself this was a well paying job and the manager puts up with him.
A fucking modern-day mystery.
"I'll…" he bites the edge of his tongue and swallows blood, "make sure to find the time and get back to you."
His manager claps and has him downloading a new app that tells him where to deliver.
.
Akira stares up at the building of Iida Corporation and chuckles. He had hoped to avoid Tensei's mentally unstable family outside of work.
"I should have known," he mutters to himself, takes off the helmet, carries a cart of coffee and pastries, and strolls into the lobby. From there he's directed up several floors, hands out several pamphlets to smiling employees, and delivers 'the goods'.
"Share and Enjoy," he winks. The cute IT guy blushes.
Another floor for another delivery.
Then another.
Two floors along he finishes on the manufacturing basement level and gets blocked by security.
He hefts up the insulated case and pamphlet.
"Delivery," he says.
"We can take it from here," says a lady in what Akira smelt to be a kevlar layered suit. She smells of her security partner's perfume. He doesn't wink. "Have a nice day."
"Uh huh. Share and Enjoy."
Akira gets to the elevator and swears upon it, opening to a man covered by flames. The man is large. Taller than Akira and wider than Tensei. Sporting a hero suit that was utterly unbothered by flames flickering around.
"Holy shit," Akira croaks out in stupor and a whole lot of dread. This was the guy who had set him on fire when he tripped into this reality. That being a trash can. "Ah." Now he was angry.
By the flaming arch of his eyebrow and curling upper lip, the man doesn't recognise him.
Akira isn't sure whether he should be relieved or increasingly angered.
"Ignore the help, Shoto," the man strolls by and Akira's anger melts, too appalled by a tiny, non-flaming replica trailing behind. Hair half red and white, the kid has a nasty scar draping down an eye and cheek and amuses Akira by blatantly ignoring his father and bowing to him.
He smelt of sadness, ash and pain.
"Have a nice day," the child monotones.
"Uh huh," Akira jerks into his own bow and watches the kid. Inner demon growling the closer he got to that lumbering fire.
"Can I play with the youngest Iida, father?"
"You can spar."
"Oh."
Akira decides, not his kid, not his problem, and struts into the elevator. Soothing himself knowing he might, when the occasion arises, eat that barbecuing man one day were they to ever 'scuffle' as had happened upon first meeting.
.
"Now a delivery boy I see," Aizawa says after a peculiar look to Akira's parked bike outside the 7/11.
"Share and Enjoy," Akira snaps his chopsticks apart and stirs his ramen. As Aizawa glances at his buzzing mobile, he garnishes some chopped liver kept stored in a cooler under the bathroom sink atop the noodles.
"Dammit," Aizawa curses. "I've got to run. Some garbage men discovered bodyparts as they were unloading their truck at a dump site this morning. Police Chief wants me to run some info through my underground contacts to help the…case…." Aizawa eyes him, "Are you ok?"
Akira had been staring because he had a terrible idea where those bodyparts came from.
Himself!
"Gody details give me the heebie jeebies," is all he could think to say.
Aizawa snorts. "You and me both. Hope I didn't ruin your dinner."
"Not at all. Go, um," catch me red-handed? "Do some hero…shit."
"How sweet of you. Thought I could rest now I'm an assistant teacher," Aizawa mulls to himself and waves goodbye.
Alone, Akira watches his chopped liver cook in steaming chemical broth, appetite suddenly waned.
No way Aizawa could track a garbage bag amongst thousands back to him. The truck had been at a dump site meaning he wasn't the only suspect. Meaning Akira was safe.
Again he stares at his human liver.
"Fuck."
On his way home Akira buys bleach and spends the evening scrubbing every nook and cranny in his apartment.
.
12 hours of eating the bare minimum leaves Akira frustrated, starving and harried near collapse. He phones his manager, fakes a family death and scurries after the closest train station.
He's on the platform, eyebags dragging his eyelids and fantasizing about the bodies of suicidal individuals when he's tapped on the shoulder and he bares his teeth at the person.
He sobers at Tensei's shocked look - and the little human accompanying him holding an ice-cream cone. Akira does the mental math of time, phone conversations and general knowledge.
"You kidnapped your brother."
"Hey!" a tiny voice shouted. Chocolate ice cream dripping on the corners of his mouth. "My brother is a pinnacle of pure intentions do not swindle his na - "
"That - I did not - " Tensei's hand that tapped him flutters in the air before landing on his brother's head with a sigh. Immediately silencing the child's vocal denial. "Kinda. Yeah."
"You're really sticking it to your family," despite the lethargy and starvation for human flesh, Tensei's in particular right now - God his neck looks lovely - he mustered a canal grin. "Good on you, big guy."
"I'm returning him right away," Tensei assures and pats his brother's head at the sign of tiny denials. "That's what I'm doing right now. What are you doing here, Fudo-kun?"
Akira rolls his shoulders under the scrutiny, "A…family member passed away in the country-side. Going to the funeral."
Tensei's hand drops from atop his silent brother's head. Waves of concern, sadness and pity makes him choke.
"I'm so sorry to hear! Would - would you like me to come with you? For support?" Tensei steps forwards and Akira, scared he'd get touchy with those delicious hands of his, backs off. Tensei pauses and holds himself still. Face tensing all sorts of ways. Behind him, the tiny brother stares between them. Completely out of his depth.
Akira puts his mind far from the tender flesh of Tensei, sweltering all kinds of sweet smells, and shakes his head. "Thanks for the offer, but," he focuses on the old man nearby, smelling of tarred lungs. "I didn't know them well. I'll be back by tomorrow. No need to worry. Um. Thanks."
"If you're sure."
Thanking Satan below, Akira watches his train arrive at the platform and rushes towards the opening doors. He shouts over his shoulder, "Look after your brother, yeah?"
As the doors close, he rubs his face and mentally pounds himself into oblivion at rejecting Tensei's broad shouldered sweater vest.
That sad look on his face will scar him for the rest of his miserable, immortally damned life.
.