Days like this feel like a noose around Enji's neck.
Countless press appearances, more villains blatantly flaunting themselves through the streets as if to mock him, to throw their vile intentions in his face—the face of the Number One Hero. That title is easier to bear some days than others. The weight of it expected, almost familiar, but still suffocating at the best of times. And on top of it all, he has to deal with what he's done to his family and the knowledge that he will spend the rest of his life atoning for the years of abuse and neglect he laid upon them.
Today the weight of it all—of his responsibilities and his failures and everything expected of him—it's all too much.
It's late, somewhere in the darkest hours of the morning, and the second he arrives home Enji wastes no time in shedding his hero suit and locking himself in his bathroom. The lock itself is unnecessary. No one is foolish enough to disturb him during the daylight hours, much less in the middle of the night, but he locks it all the same. Some form of paranoia forcing him to lock this weakness away where no one else can see it.
The shower is spacious, much like everything else in the house, and he stands under the freezing cold spray, hands against the wall and his head held between his shoulders. There's no reason to have this constant battle with himself, not when it ends the same every time. Enji sucks in an unsteady breath as he realizes these moments, these cracks in his impenetrable armor, are becoming more and more frequent.
He barely remembers when it started, when this became his preferred form of release, but Enji does remember how it felt the first time. He can see the evidence of it, of the countless times since, as he stares at the ruined scar tissue on the inside of his thighs.
The water seems to grow colder as he stands there, the seconds ticking by so slowly it's as if time itself has stopped to witness Enji's shame. He flexes his fingers, stiff from the cold, and knows he's already given in.
There's a plastic case on one of the built-in shelves along the shower wall. It's filled with some of his shaving tools, a rich lather bar, some kind of cream to help protect the scar running down his face… and a straight razor.
It's old, older than him even, and it was once his grandfather's—at least that's what he was told growing up. There's no telling how true it really is given what he knows about his father. It's a stray thought, one that comes and goes in the blink of an eye. Inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
He shuts the water off and presses his back to the ice cold tile, sliding down the wall until he's sitting on the floor with the water dripping against his shoulder and that all too familiar feeling grabbing at his lungs. He spreads his legs after a breath, eyes caught on the criss-crossing scars reaching from the crease of his leg and pelvis to just before his knee, and the distinct shape of his own handprints leveled over them.
In the beginning there were only the fading translucent cuts, Enji remembers as he flips the blade open on the straight razor. The soft, thin lines from a boxcutter blade he kept safely hidden in his room were the first to mark his skin. It barely feels the same now, the skin so marred from years of this same, shameful routine. But somehow he still always ends up like this.
Enji doesn't hold his breath anymore, no longer fearing the stinging pain of the first cut, but welcoming it with a soft sigh as he drags the blade edge down his thigh. The skin splits and blood wells up before dripping onto the floor, and Enji has the razor poised to do it again before he's even allowed the first cut to fully wash over him.
It feels… It feels like taking that first, desperate breath after being submerged underwater for too long. It's heady and euphoric, and as he opens another line, another section of skin spilling red, he finds himself moaning into the empty bathroom. The shame should be able to eat this pleasure away, the way he hates himself for needing this for as long as he has, but it never does and Enji never fails to be fully erect by the fourth cut each and every time.
The pleasure of it tastes almost as bitter as the pain feels, but some part of Enji enjoys that too. Just like the sudden scent of blood, copper-laced and surrounding him like an iron cloud, makes his heart rate pick up. The thunderous beat in his chest feels like a betrayal, such a primal and biological display of just how much he enjoys this—of how much he needs this.
By the fifth cut Enji can see himself leaking onto the floor. The clear droplets gathering around the head of his cock before dropping to the ground, mixing with the blood as it swirls through the tile grout, mesmerizing, before spilling down the drain. He's trapped, held captive by it, until the bold crimson lines begin to thin out in the remaining water swirling around him.
The sixth and final cut makes him throb so hard his cock bounces in the air, slick and shiny as more pre leaks down the length of him. Enji watches it gather in the red patch of curls surrounding his cock, the image making him lightheaded… or maybe his swimming head is from the six even gashes in his leg.
The razor hits the floor with a ringing metallic sound while Enji takes in his work. These cuts are deeper than usual, the still pink scars from a month ago already smoothed out on his other leg. He's swimming in that copper smell when he finally drags his hand over the weeping lines, skin parting under his calloused fingers until the blood runs warm and sticky between them.
His hand begins to heat, Enji's head hitting the tiled wall with a muted thunk sound, and he's suddenly floored by the image of the very first time he ever used his quirk on himself. His father demanded perfection, demanded he learn to control his power so that he could one day take the mantle of the strongest. Enji trained endlessly, much like he forced Shouto to do when he was younger and now regrets with every fiber of his being, but in the beginning it wasn't enough.
His father claimed he was scared of his own flames and that was why he wasn't making progress as he should have been. He remembers being angry, so angry that he wrapped his hand around his own arm to sear his own handprint into his flesh. Didn't so much as flinch as his father watched with that same unimpressed expression.
Enji was taken to a healer shortly after, the burn disappearing overnight, and his father never spoke of it again…
But Enji couldn't stop thinking about it.
And as he further heats his hand now, the warmth quickly moving from uncomfortable to down right painful, that feeling surges forth again… even after all these years.
It's the smell that finally has his free hand wrapping around his cock. That sickening smell of burning blood, thicker than syrup, yet dreadfully bitter as it coats his lungs. It pulls forth every vivid memory Enji has of destroying himself like this until nothing exists outside the scent of his own burning flesh.
And it's that—that gut wrenching euphoria—that makes the first stroke of tight, calloused fingers feel like pure adrenaline through his veins.
The heat increases further, the smoke that rises from between his fingers tinted black, and Enji loses himself completely. There's hardly any resistance as his hand moves, up and down, down and up, thumb working over the slick head with ease from the ridiculous amount of pre that glints shiny against his skin.
He's moaning, a low sound that grows in volume, echoing through the bathroom until it finds its way back to Enji. The sound of it shouldn't make him throb, his voice lost in rapture and so drunk on his own pain he can't tell where it ends and where the lightning-like pleasure shooting through his cock begins. But it does, it always does, and he's left panting, teeth clenched tight as he increases his movements, all but bucking into his own hand while seeking that friction like a lifeline in a raging storm.
He's pathetic, disgusting, and some part of him knows he'll always be like this. He'll always be reduced to this, hiding his shame, bloody, broken, burned until there is nothing left of him.
He imagines what 'nothing' looks like. A laugh bubbles up, foreign to his own ears. He's been a hero long enough to know exactly what appearance it will take.
A funeral urn and a picture right next to his son's.
He doesn't let himself dwell on it, doesn't let that image take root in his mind, because Enji knows where it will go and there isn't enough skin on his body to burn away the shame of that memory.
Instead he focuses on his hands, on the flames beginning to burn white with his flare of emotion and the feeling of his length, aching and leaking down his hand. He'll have to stop soon, and he knows it. It forms a pit in his stomach; he's already missing it, already thinking of the next time.
Enji releases his quirk—the flames die out instantly—and pushes his fingers into the ruined flesh, reddened and charred around the edges of his perfect handprint. The pain is sharpest at the center of his palm print, the skin blistered red and ugly, and he digs into it with his thumb as a rough hand rapidly moves over his cock.
Enji can't remember a time when he was this desperate. When he was running head first into oblivion. But tonight feels different. Tonight he's fighting a war within himself, against himself, and Enji is unsure of which side is winning.
But the only way to find out lies within his own hands, and that's all Enji can grasp right now.
His hands move and his breath catches, lungs held prisoner by his own desire as Enji drowns in the rush of pleasure so intense, fear spikes behind it in a blaze far hotter than his own flames.
He topples over with his next strangled breath, choking on the unfiltered moan that echoes around him as he watches himself cum. It shoots across his rapidly heaving chest and drips down his pecs, leaving his nipples wet and shiny. The rest of it spills down his fist, still pumping in slow, tight strokes until there is absolutely nothing left.
For that singular moment—those handful of seconds that tick by so fast it's as if they never happened—Enji feels weightless.
There's no pain, no pleasure, no guilt or stress. There's nothing, as if he's been emptied, a shell of himself on the bathroom floor. And in those infinitely small seconds Enji is… happy.
The moment comes and goes, that feeling gone before he can savor its taste or commit it to memory. It's exactly how he ends up here time and time again, chasing a feeling he can barely remember or even describe without ridding the equation of himself entirely.
Enji sits on the shower floor until he loses feeling in his legs. The burn on his thigh begins to ache, and when he finally attempts to stand the charred skin around the edge of the burn begins to crack and bleed. It takes a few attempts to get his feet under him, even longer to turn the water back on and rinse the floor of his blood and cum.
The aftermath is always extensive. But it's part of the process, part of the routine.
Pulling the first aid kit from under the sink after he's clean to treat and bandage the new wound before tomorrow's patrol. Scrubbing the residual blood stains away so the house keepers don't see them, even if Enji could easily explain it away as getting injured on the job.
There was a time when he would take pills to help numb the pain from the burns, something to help him appear normal in the public eye or around his family, but now he's learned to take it and savor it. The public and his family are none the wiser after years of practice.
The bathroom is as spotless as it was before Enji arrived by the time he's done. He throws on a pair of loose fitting sleep pants and soundlessly makes his way to the kitchen. There are containers of food, each marked in Fuyumi's neat handwriting, stacked inside the fridge. Enji takes one out to reheat it.
All of this is routine, down to sitting alone at the kitchen island while quietly eating the food his daughter prepared for him. It's all familiar, the sweetness of the marinated beef, the stillness of the house, and the pain steadily radiating up his leg with every breath he takes.
Somehow, without him realizing it, Enji's found a kind comfort in this routine, in his old habits, toxic as they are, bleeding into the present he's struggling to repair. It's a lot easier to handle his guilt afterward. To look at himself and the awful things he's done without shying away from them or letting them consume him.
The clock on the wall says it's just after six in the morning. The first rays of sunlight will soon light up the sky in that pinkish glow that the children always seemed to love when they were younger, admiring the faint colors with that hopeful look that Enji's mind can barely conjure anymore. It's been so long.
The house begins to stir just as he crawls in bed, the sounds of the house staff coming in and Fuyumi's voice registering faintly as he dozes off. Natsuo and Shouto's voices filter in at some point too, and for a moment Enji can pretend the day is perfectly normal, his children are happy, and the pain he feels is a distant memory from the person he once was.
In this fantasy where he's not drowning in his own mistakes, Enji can almost remember what it was like to see his children smile at him.