After getting Mei to bed without waking anyone, Izuku threw on a pair of blue jeans that Rumi liked him in and a plain black t-shirt Nejire had bought him. It was a little small, but he suspected that was the point. Well, that and it didn't have any text on the front. He was pretty sure she was gently trying to get him to stop wearing those.
Currently, it was about 4:30 am and he was outside. Sitting on a comfy bench located on the front porch of the dorms, Izuku watched and waited for the sunrise. The way the horizon glowed with a faint orange meant it shouldn't be too much longer now. The crisp morning air was the perfect contrast to his steaming green tea and the cozy blanket draped over his legs. It's his new favorite routine since finding out that not needing sleep meant a lot of extra free time. It's relaxing in a way he finds hard to describe as he sips on his tea and returns to reading his book. Minutes flew by and he's on the last page of his book when the light of the sun makes him look up. The pink hue of the clouds in the distance is so soft it's almost pastel. The sun is just barely peeking over the horizon, so dull he can look directly at it l without pain.
The front door of the dorm creaks and Kyoka steps outside, a hand raised to shield her still sensitive eyes. Her face scrunches up from the sudden light but softens at the beauty of the sunrise, her lips slowly curling at the edges in the type of smile someone makes without even realizing it. She's dressed in a purple hoodie that matches her hair and black jeans so worn and faded that they could be described as gray instead. Under one arm, she was carrying a skateboard whose underside is so scraped from grinding that it's indistinguishable what brand it might have been. She turns to him, her subconscious smile never leaving her face.
"Hey, Green. I knew that rowing drum of a heart had to be yours."
A few seconds must pass, because one delicate eyebrow raises at his silence. It was then he realized that he's staring and that she'd stolen the spotlight from the literal sun. Trying and failing to stop staring, he just blurted out the first words that came to him.
"Rowing drum?" He asked as she sat on the bench next to him.
Her face went a literal scarlet as she tried to explain, her eyes never quite meeting his own.
"Ya I can hear everyone's heart and well…everyone marches to the beat of their own drum. They all have the same basic cadence, but there's subtleties that separates everyone. Rumi's is powerful, but there's an impending violence in it, like a war drum. Yours is powerful too, but also steady in a soothing way like the guiding beat of a rowing drum on a ship."
He didn't say anything right away, he waited. Her blush deepened, her jacks flailing a bit. Then, her violet eyes that caught the rays of the sunrise finally met his green eyes that subtly glowed with viridian lightning.
"That's beautiful, Violet." He finally said.
"V-Violet!?" She all but yelled, her blush going nuclear, jacks spasming.
He shrugged. "Violet, Green, I think it's a fitting nickname. Unless, you don't like it?"
She chewed on her bottom lip as she searched his face for something.
"That's fine, I guess."
He smiled as she began to relax, her face losing its rosy coloring. She shivered next to him so he held up part of his blanket in a silent offer. She scooched closer and under the blankets until their thighs were touching. He offered her his thermos of tea as well.
"So, can't sleep or just up early?" He asked as she gratefully took the thermos and sipped.
Finishing her sip of warm tea, she Let out a satisfied sigh that fogged in the chill morning air.
"Momo's been in the support labs with Mei for three days straight and I have a hard time sleeping without her now," she said, rolling her eyes. "So when I woke up at around 3 am I decided to go check on them. Get this, they were stumbling around with eyes half closed and using scary looking power tools so I pretty much dragged them both out of there. Momo had been making them caffeine pills, but it was having less and less of an effect. Wasn't easy to get Mei away from her babies though, thought she was about to bite me."
Izuku laughed nervously, he remembered a time that Mei had thrown a wrench at him for trying to get her to eat something 'mid breakthrough'. He dodged it of course, Danger Sense was a necessity when it came to interrupting Mei in a workshop.
"Then I'm surprised you're not with Momo," Izuku said.
Kyoka shrugged. "I'm up at this point and I don't want to wake her."
He forgot whatever he might have said when he noticed Kyoka's face had fallen and felt the way her emotions turned sour.
"What's on your mind?" He asked.
Kyoka jerked a little, caught off guard by the question. She didn't answer, not exactly.
"You've been in a polyamorous relationship for a while, right?"
"Ya, why?" He asked.
"Don't you ever get jealous? Aren't you ever worried you're second best? That the love isn't equal?" She asked, her shoulders hunching.
Izuku wasn't nearly as dense as he had once been and Kyoka wasn't as subtle as she no doubt wished. With Empathy, he was fairly certain she was worried about how close Mei and Momo had become lately. They were spending days together working in close proximity and sharing ideas that were worth more than gold to them.
Izuku sighed... "I've been jealous, yeah. In my personal experience, it's born of a lack of confidence or trust, sometimes both. Self confidence is something I've struggled with all my life. I found the very idea that people as special as Mei, Himiko, and Rumi loving me to be nothing short of impossible."
Kyoka's jaw clenched. "I felt the same way about Momo. She's so amazing she might as well be perfect, but she loves me. ME . It took me a while to really believe her."
Izuku nodded in understanding, knowing it wouldn't do any good to placate. "But that's the thing, by doubting them I wasn't trusting them when they told me they loved me for who I was. They loved ME , the same person I thought of as nothing short of useless. It was a hard thing to believe and it took more time than it should have to understand why they would love me despite being able to feel the truth of it with Empathy. Doesn't answer your questions though, does it? I sometimes would see them talking to other people at school and wonder if they wouldn't rather be with them, If they wouldn't be happier without me. It really ate me up inside until I realized that it came down to a simple question. Do I trust them, and am I willing to risk the pain if I'm wrong to trust them? The answer was simple; yes. I couldn't imagine my future without them, that kind of love is worth taking a leap of faith."
Kyoka was sniffling now, but he didn't draw attention to it, sensing she didn't want him to. "What-What about the love not being equal? You're not worried about being in second place in their hearts?"
Izuku smiled and waved his book. "To borrow a line from this book, 'Love isn't some scarce resource to battle over. Love can be infinite, as much as your heart can open.' I would go even further to say that love is a resource whose value lies not in hoarding it but in giving it away. I know that most people in my position would be saying that the love between us is equal, but as an Empath, I know that's not true. For me, love feels like a physical warmth, sometimes it's a small campfire, and sometimes it's like standing in the middle of a forest fire. There are times I see the way Himiko looks at Ochako and I know, I feel that their love for each other is greater than what they have for me, but then the next moment they're looking at me the same way. Love is never equal, but that doesn't mean you aren't loved unconditionally, Violet. When Momo looks at you, it feels like the room is about to burst into flames. You should talk to her about this."
Kyoka was dabbing at her eyes with the sleeves of her hoodie. She didn't say anything for long minutes as she calmed herself. Eventually, Kyoka leaned her head onto his bicep since she was only 4'10" and let out a long sigh.
"Thanks for the talk, Green."
He patted her thigh. "Anytime, Violet."
Time passed in comfortable silence as they watched the sunrise, its rays warming their faces.
"What book was that quote from anyway?" Kyoka asked, breaking the silence.
"Iron Widow, it's one of the earlier representations of a polyamorous relationship." He answered.
"So is it a romance? Momo's tried to get me to read a few, but it's not really my thing." She asked, her breath misting in the cool air.
Izuku chuckled, making her head bounce. "It's actually about Kaiju and giant Mecha."
She barked a short laugh. "I bet Mei would love it." She said and he could feel the warmth coming off her with those words
He only nodded as they fell into another lapse of comfortable silence for nearly an hour until Kyoka stood abruptly and got on her skateboard, a jack plugging into her phone as she began to bob her head to music only she could hear via bone induction.
"I'm going to go skate around one of the mock cities and pretend I'm the last person on Earth while I…think." She said, the clack clack, clack clack of the skateboard's wheels on the sidewalk loud in the quiet of the morning.
"You're allowed to do that?" Izuku whispered to himself, somewhat in awe of the idea.
Despite his volume, Kyoka replied over her shoulder, a smirk on her sunlit face.
"Gotten away with it so far.~"
Izuku headed back inside once he'd finished his book. This next part was his second favorite part of his new morning routine; making breakfast in bed for his girlfriends!
Just like the last two days, Nejire was there in the kitchen, sleepy eyed with an apron over her silk pajamas.
She was so sleepy that she hadn't noticed him. When he wrapped his arms around her midsection she yelped but melted back into him a mere moment later.
"G'morning," she greeted him sleepily, yawning at the end.
He squeezed her gently and kissed her on the cheek as he reciprocated the greeting. As he continued to smother Nejire in affection a dozen Blackwhip tendrils reached out and began gathering ingredients from cupboards and the fridge, cracking eggs, mixing pancake butter, starting toast, and much more.
By the time Nejire protested, stating that they needed to start breakfast, Blackwhip had done most of the grunt work, leaving them to finish it.
Nejire looked around a little wide eyed. "Did you do that on purpose? Or was it Blackwhip on its own?"
"I think it was Blackwhip," he answered with a shrug. "It's hard to tell sometimes. From what I can gather, it shares my senses, including Danger Sense and Empathy, it's like me having a secondary subconscious that acts independently of the other."
Nejire giggled as Blackwhip continued to do the work of six people. "Well, it sure makes cooking easier."
Izuku barked out a laugh. "No kidding."
After that, they moved to continue cooking the feast of a breakfast. With all the nightly 'exercise' combined with Cell Activation restoring muscles, blood, and other fluids, his girlfriends had been Ravenous in the mornings. Rumi, Himiko, and Tsu particularly.
Less than an hour later, he and Nejire(mostly Blackwhip) carried the steaming dishes upstairs. They made pancakes, hash browns, eggs, french toast, buttered and jammed toast, omurice, oatmeal with fruit on top, grapefruit halves, bagels, English muffins, waffles, coffee, tea, and orange juice. It might have been excessive, but he planned on giving the leftovers to anyone else who wanted them. Momo would probably be hungry once she woke up.
"I'll wait here while you make sure they're decent," Nejire stated when they got to his door.
"You sure? I know they won't mind you seeing them indecent," Izuku asked. She had done the same thing the last two days, but he hadn't asked why until now. He hoped she didn't think she was at all unwanted or separate somehow.
Nejire shook her head with a smile and a dangerous twinkle in her eye.
"Oh Izuku… if I'm going to have a cake then I'm going to eat it too ~"
Izuku swallowed roughly, his mouth as dry as the Sahara.
"Right!" He blurted and limped into the room, his pants suddenly too tight on the left leg for some reason.
They were NOT decent.
Himiko was currently playing the part of the white meat in a Tsu and Ochako sandwich with no crust. Rumi on the other hand was wearing Mei like a fanny pack, her limbs wrapped tightly around her midsection.
Not one was wearing a stitch of clothing, not even Mei despite him having dressed her earlier.
At this point, he was pretty sure he had lost circulation in his left leg.
Despite the impediment, he carried on with his task. Blackwhip set down the trays upon trays of food while he grabbed the five sets of folded pajamas he had set aside. He was glad he had cracked the window when he got up, it still smelled faintly of sex, but hardly. He was probably going to have to burn these sheets though.
Now done setting down the food, Blackwhip began to help him coax the girls into their pajamas. They were still groaning in disturbed sleep until Rumi's stomach grumbled loudly.
"That food I smell? I'm gonna be pissed if this is a dream."
"Breakfast is served!" Izuku said in answer while dodging grabby, sharp hands from Himiko.
"Ready, Nejire!" He called out as he stuffed Mei back into the clothes he had earlier.
Nejire floated in on the periwinkle spirals of her Quirk and plopped right in the middle of everyone.
"Hey, cuties! Good morning!" She greeted excitedly, arms wide and ready for whoever would embrace her first.
He nearly startled when Mei rose like the undead and planted her lips on Nejire's. It was something of a dogpile after that, him included.
A minute or several later, Himiko was purring hard enough while she ate that he could feel it through the bed. She seemed to REALLY like the syrup he had made her, it was three parts syrup and one part blood. He hadn't used his own, he had used some from the small, personal fridge in the kitchen where she kept her blood bags that UA provided as well as any personal donations.
He frowned as she spilled some on the sheets.
Yep, definitely getting new sheets.