After Shouta had sufficiently marked Izuku's neck, they had retreated to the couch. Shouta to sprawl into Izuku's space and watch some mindless TV while he relaxed, and Izuku had pulled out a notebook and started working on an analysis.

"That for Hideo or a private client?" Shouta asked curiously.

Izuku smiled at him. "A private client. He's been having some issues with one particular villain, and Hideo recommended me to him to get some new ideas." His smile widened a little at Shouta's surprised look. "I'm pretty sure he's playing the long game to try and make sure that, even if I'm able to get my freelance analysis business off the ground, I'm still willing to help him out. Or even work with him part time during the busy season."

Shouta let out a small hum of acknowledgement. That made sense. Just like with every job, there was a busy season and a slower one. Winter tended to be slower-no one, including villains, wanted to be out in the cold longer than they had to. Summer was the busiest, with the high temperatures sparking tempers far easier than normal. "We'll have to get you an office," Shouta murmured to himself.

"What was that?"

"Just talking to myself," Shouta deflected calmly. "I know Tensei was interested in speaking with you more on analysis, have you had a chance to talk with him again?"

Izuku eyed him for a moment, not sure if he believed that, but letting it go after a moment and smiling brightly. "I've been texting him a little bit!" He chirped happily. "His analysts are being pretty possessive over their work, which I get , but also they've gotta give the man a break. He's obviously not trying to steal their jobs, just trying to learn more about the options he might have now."

"True," Shouta murmured, remembering the crushing fear that had overtaken him when he'd heard about what had happened with Stain. "He's still struggling with his place in the Agency. He's been doing mostly paperwork, but he feels useless."

Izuku looked considering for a moment. "I think I'm going to invite him to lunch or something soon, so we can see what other options he might have that he's maybe not thinking about. Analysis is great, but I think he has a lot of other strengths that he might be overlooking for something that more directly helps Heroes."

Shouta couldn't help the small smile playing at his lips. "I love you," he said simply. "Thank you for being so willing to help him."

Izuku ducked his head, his face flushed. "My landlord asked that I head over to my apartment tomorrow to make sure someone's there while they're repairing the door," he said, very obviously changing the subject. He wasn't sure why Shouta kept thanking him for helping his friends, but he needed the man to stop it.

"Shouldn't he be there if supervision is necessary?" Shouta asked, accepting the subject change and scowling at the thought of Izuku being alone with strangers for possible hours with no one else around.

Shrugging faintly, Izuku replied, "I mean, maybe? But he's letting me break my lease without penalizing me for it if I do this, so I'm not going to complain over a few hours of my day wasted."

Shouta's scowl deepened, but he nodded his understanding. The penalties for breaking a lease could be stiff, especially in the areas Izuku had been living in. A few hours to avoid said penalties was a trade he could understand. "Would you mind if I came along?" The benefit to not working for any Agency was that, when things like this came up, he could absolutely move his patrol to a different time without having to answer to anyone.

"I was actually going to ask if you wouldn't mind," Izuku admitted with a small smile. "We're obviously on the same wavelength tonight!"

"If we were on the same wavelength, we'd be in bed right now," Shouta muttered to himself.

"You keep mumbling tonight, I can't hear a word you're saying sometimes," Izuku told him with a small frown.

"Sorry," Shouta apologized. "I'm more tired than I thought, to keep talking to myself like this." Or maybe more desperate than he'd thought, given that he was normally very good at keeping those particular thoughts in his head.

Izuku let out a small noise of acknowledgement. He'd thought he'd heard the word 'bed', but maybe Shouta was just tired and wanted to go to bed. Izuku was actually pretty tired too, now that he thought about it. "It's fine, I know I ramble and mumble a lot, I've just never heard you really do it before."

Shouta tipped his head to the side. "I don't think I've ever really heard you mumble or ramble," he said thoughtfully.

Izuku fought back a wince. He and Hitoshi had already had that conversation, and he was just as sure as Toshi had been that Shouta would not be pleased that Izuku had bit back his rambling comments quite often during their walks. "People find it creepy a lot of the time," he began slowly. "So I tend to try to avoid doing it as often as I used to." It wasn't a lie, he did try to avoid doing it around most people. If he'd put in a particular effort to avoid doing it around Shouta in the beginning, to avoid running him off? That was his business, now that he'd decided to stop putting the extra effort into it. The man had said he loved him, he obviously wasn't going to be put off by a little mumbling.

Shouta narrowed his eyes, but finally accepted that. "I hope you'll feel comfortable enough here to allow yourself to do so, if you'd like." He smiled faintly. "I think I'd like to hear it."

Izuku offered a smile and nod in acknowledgement, biting his tongue sharply to clear his head. How was it fair for Shouta to be that damn attractive? The man was physically attractive, absolutely, but he was also sweet to Izuku, protective while admitting Izuku had the ability to protect himself, kind enough to offer his own space as a refuge for him...Izuku sort of wanted to

pull his hair out. Or just give up the ghost and pull the man to bed, since they'd both already admitted that they were in love.

But instead he took a breath and rolled his shoulders to release the faint tension there. "You said you were tired, did you want to go to bed?"

" God yes ," Shouta muttered, Izuku squinting faintly at the look of almost desperation that crossed his face for a split second before the man coughed and sat up a little straighter. "Yeah, I think we're both tired. You keep dropping your pencil."

Izuku snorted, because sure enough the pencil slipped through his fingers for the third time that night. "Yeah, having emotional talks drains me a lot sometimes." And the talk with Hizashi couldn't be labeled as anything but emotional.

Shouta sighed and nodded. "It does the same thing to me. And Hizashi...our talk was necessary, but it was more emotion than I wanted to deal with for the entire year."

Reaching out to lace their fingers together gently, Izuku smiled at him. "I was horrified to hear about what he'd gone through," he murmured, "But I felt so awful because I was relieved at the same time. I'd thought that he had something against me personally to have reacted as poorly as he did, so knowing that it was him projecting his own trauma..."

Shouta squeezed his hand gently. "There's no shame in admitting that you were relieved to know that he didn't dislike you personally. I get it." He'd been relieved about the same thing. Oh, he'd been offended, at first, that Hizashi had thought he'd try to take advantage of Izuku, but he was a teacher and he'd been an Underground Pro for a long time. He knew it happened, even though the thought of it made him physically ill. But having his friend admit his reaction wasn't due to their relationship, or any particular dislike of Izuku, had been a stark relief.

"I'm glad, because I felt like the worst person in the world." They stayed silent for a long moment, and Izuku turned to face him. He was finding himself curious about Shouta's past relationships now, so now was the time to ask. "I've gotten a lot of warnings from different people about you," Izuku said softly. "I'd like to know why that is."

Shouta paused. "Hitoshi didn't tell you?" He asked, surprised by that. He'd assumed his protege would have immediately informed his friend of the entire situation he'd managed to pry out of Nem when he'd gotten her drunk. Shouta had never been so proud as the day Nem had admitted to him that Hitoshi had gotten her drunk enough to talk about a situation that still had her livid to this day.

"I asked him not to," Izuku admitted with a small shrug. "It felt like I was invading your privacy. I figured if I got curious enough about it I'd ask."

"And now you're curious about it." "And now I'm asking," Izuku agreed.

Well, shit. Shouta grimaced faintly. He didn't necessarily want to talk about this, but he really couldn't put it off any longer. Izuku had a right to know why people were going to be weird about their relationship, and probably continue to warn him off. "I was young," he warned, "And this story isn't going to put me in the best light."

Izuku nodded slightly. "I think everyone does stupid stuff when they're young," he said quietly.

"It wasn't just after UA, but a few years after I'd graduated. I'd started building up my reputation as an Underground Hero, and by that point I was pretty well known in the Underground. Ms. Joke

had just made her debut, and she was...very clear that she was interested."

Izuku tipped his head to the side, arching an eyebrow. "She's still pretty obviously interested," he pointed out.

"Yes, but like I said I was young and stupid. So I agreed to date her, despite the fact that we didn't really have any common interests at all, and our personalities were polar opposites."

Izuku winced faintly. "You were lonely."

"I was lonely," Shouta agreed with a sigh. "Hizashi, Nemuri and Tensei were all busy trying to claw their ways into good positions, and I've never been the best at making new friends." It had been a desperate, last ditch attempt at avoiding being alone for long stretches. He'd learned to enjoy it now, but back then the loneliness had felt like it was debilitating.

Izuku squeezed his hand gently. "I get it, new friends are hard. So the relationship didn't turn out well?" He asked, curious to know how this related to all of the warnings of Shouta's possessiveness that he just hadn't really seen over the course of their own relationship yet.

"No," Shouta said with a mirthless chuckle. "Not at all. So, very different personalities, as I said. And Emi liked to go out often. Even when I was younger I didn't care to be going out all of the time, especially to the clubs that she favored. She enjoyed them, but the noise always got to be too much for me after a short period of time."

Izuku made a sympathetic face. He was much the same. Too much noise for too long gave him migraines, so clubs had always been a no go for him. "I can get that," he said after a long moment of silence. "What other things did the two of you do?"

"Other things?" Shouta gave him a curious look. "We didn't, really. She found the things I suggested to be horrifically boring, and while she liked Nem, Zashi and Tensei well enough I really couldn't stand a lot of her friends." He grimaced at the memory of loud shrieks of laughter and belligerently obnoxious comments. "So I'd stay home, and she'd go out to her clubs and we'd have sex occasionally, when she felt like it."

Izuku was starting to get a bad feeling about this. "That...doesn't sound healthy," he said slowly.

"It wasn't," Shouta admitted. "And I'd see pictures of her dancing with people in ways I found... inappropriate for someone in a relationship. She said I was being controlling and possessive, and some of our fights were very public." He winced. "I don't believe she ever cheated on me, but we didn't keep our fights-or what they were about-private."

"Ah," Izuku grimaced faintly. "And people love to stick their noses where they don't belong."

"Yes they do," Shouta agreed drily. "The one incident everyone remembers, and the reason people keep warning you, is one that occurred towards the end of our relationship. It was an old friend of hers that she allowed a lot of liberties. He smacked her ass, and I snapped. It had been a long night of arguing over her going to clubs and dancing like she did, and her spreading the fact that I was being controlling and possessive because of who she was dancing with and how she was dancing.

I hadn't had nearly enough sleep, and I wasn't used to it like I am now. I wasn't in a good headspace at all."

Izuku was startled when he realized that Shouta was watching his face and trying to justify an incident Izuku didn't even have all of the facts for yet. "Ok," he said gently. "I get that you weren't in a good headspace. Arguing all night, especially over something that obviously made

you that uncomfortable probably had your temper up."

"It did." Shouta sighed. "I grabbed him by the neck, shoved him into the wall, and told him that the next time he smacked my girlfriend's ass I'd break his hand. It was the beginning of the end for Emi and I. She said that she couldn't deal with someone who was so possessive they couldn't even deal with a joke from a friend. I said I couldn't deal with someone who lacked the basic respect to ask their friend to keep their hands off of them while they're in a relationship. The incident got exaggerated, whether by her or by her friend, and now it's a known fact that I'm a jealous, possessive bastard."

"I-," Izuku let out a strangled noise. "I'm furious on your behalf," he finally managed. "You might have overreacted, I won't say that you didn't , but also, what did she expect? I just..." He threw one hand up in exasperation, the other still in Shouta's possession. "You can't just dismiss your partner's concerns when you're in a relationship. If you're doing something and they're uncomfortable, you have to at least hear them out."

Shouta watched him with dark eyes, the grip on his hand tightening slightly. "I don't want to give you the wrong impression," he said after a moment. "I'm possessive. I don't like people flirting with you, I don't appreciate people trying to take you from me. You're mine, and I want people to know and acknowledge that."

Izuku flushed, but then frowned at him. "Yeah, but you also don't care if I'm spending time with my friend," he pointed out. "You'd be the first one to boot me out of here to go spend time with Toshi, and you've never cared that he and I can be physically affectionate. Because we don't cross the boundary. Yeah, you were concerned when you thought we might be sleeping together, but even then it was a bit of jealousy but not..." he waved his hand to try and encompass the story he'd just been told. "It wasn't anything like that."

"It wasn't," Shouta agreed. "Because you're right. You and Hitoshi don't cross the same line that Emi did. Even when I considered that you might have slept together you didn't cross that line."

Izuku huffed. "So all of these warnings were because what was originally a small issue of you not caring for going clubbing with her snowballed into her just...not caring about the boundaries you wanted to set about what you were comfortable with her doing while at said clubs, and then her crossing a final line with letting a 'friend' smack her ass and you letting your frustration snowball until that final straw broke your composure?" Izuku took a breath after getting all of that out.

"Pretty much," Shouta said after taking a moment to parse out what Izuku had said.

"And now she's still holding the torch, years later?"

"Correct."

Izuku scowled, making Shouta arch an eyebrow. "She's going to need to back off," Izuku decided flatly. "I'm not above punching a Hero in the face if she flirts with you while I'm around."

Shouta didn't bother to hide his smile. It looked like he wasn't the only one who could be a little possessive.