Chapter Text
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
Izuku stared at Katsuki blankly. He needed a moment to replay the words in his head. In the silence, Katsuki faltered.
Shock gave way to an amused, incredulous disbelief, and then a smirk slowly tilted his lips.
“Do you think I’m a virgin?” Izuku stepped forward, leaning, concentrating, and caught the way Katsuki’s eyes darted away.
“Oh,” he snickered, “by the mortals below… You DO!” He chuckled, smiling more broadly and wondering how the blonde had possibly held that belief.
Katsuki stepped back, grimacing, but Izuku followed, refusing to let the gap between them grow. For the first time in their lives, the roles were reversed, and he was going to relish every moment.
“Did you assume you’d have the pleasure of deflowering me?” He narrowed his eyes, voice dropping, “Defiling me?”
The sour look on the blonde’s face was all the answer he needed. “You did.” He scoffed, anger seeping into the edges of his amusement.
“The walls around my mother’s house are tall, not insurmountable. Are you curious? About where in Olympus I’ve bared my body? Or who’s had the pleasure of my attention?” He was smiling so broadly his cheeks ached, but he couldn’t contain it if his life depended on it. “Do you think I wandered the mortal realm for months entirely celibate?”
He stepped close, crowding the blonde the way the other always liked to push into his personal space, and ran his fingers up Katsuki’s chest. “I bet I could teach you a thing or two….”
Cheeks pink, the blonde smacked his hand away and stepped back, and Izuku laughed, shaking his head.
How? How did his mother convince people of this?
“I am the unfurling of flowers in Spring, the spilling of pollen as nature fornicates shamelessly!” He cackled. “I am literally,” he sputtered out, “the birds and the bees! And you thought,” he sucked in a breath, “That I haven’t taken lovers!?”
He held his stomach, howling with laughter now. He didn’t care how loud he was. He didn’t care who might hear and ask questions. He laughed, tears in his eyes, while the blonde fumed.
It took Izuku several minutes to recover.
“Oh, Katsuki….” he wiped his eyes, huffed, and struggled to regain control. “That is the best laugh I’ve had in a long time. Thank you.”
“Fuck you.” The blonde grumbled, and then winced at the smirk it earned.
“That is what we’re discussing, yes. But you aren’t on my dance card.” He brushed imaginary dirt off his clothes and stepped away.
He couldn't wait to tell Pan about this.
But first…
“Where are you going?” Katsuki stepped forward, embarrassed and annoyed, and everything he had wanted to achieve remained out of reach.
“To make sure Shota isn’t holding on to the same silly idea,” Izuku threw a smirk over his shoulder. “And if he is – I plan to fully disabuse him of that notion.”
❀
Shota was in the garden. In the courtyard deep in the underworld palace — a space that should, by all logic, be dead. Instead, it breathed. Softly. Pale asphodels grew in a tidy row along the far wall, their stems luminous as bone, and beside them, a parade of pastel gladiolus.
The flowers were almost offensively cheerful against the dark stone. The air a subtle blend of sweet, spicy, and almost herbal fragrances.
Shota sat on the bench, considering the blooms with an expression Izuku had learned to read as baffled but unwilling to admit it.
He looked up when Izuku entered, but his gaze returned to the flowers.
"You're back early."
"Katsuki and I had a shorter conversation than anticipated," Izuku replied, dropping his travel bag before stepping up onto the bench and folding into a seated position. Tipping into Shota’s space. "He had some incorrect assumptions that I had so much fun correcting.”
A pause. Izuku took a moment to enjoy the view, then closed his eyes to breathe deeply.
"About?"
Izuku tilted his head and studied the line of Shota's profile — the tiredness permanently carved into it, the careful blankness he maintained like armor so old he'd forgotten it was there. A man who managed the weight of every ending.
"He believed," Izuku said with careful neutrality, "that I was untouched."
The silence stretched long enough to be interesting.
"Ah," said Shota.
Just that. Ah. Like a door that hadn't quite closed.
Izuku watched him.
Catching the micro expressions Shota couldn’t hide took careful attention, and Izuku was studious in learning what they meant. So he caught the way Shota's jaw tightened by a fraction, the slight shift in his breathing, the very determined way he continued looking at the flowers rather than at Izuku. All the tells of a man who had, it turned out, been operating under a similar misapprehension and was now performing an extremely rapid internal renegotiation.
He'd suspected. He hadn't been sure until now.
"I disabused him of the notion," Izuku continued pleasantly. "I thought I should extend the same courtesy to you."
"That is —" Shota stopped. Tried again. "Unnecessary."
"You thought the same thing." It wasn't a question.
The slight tension across Shota's shoulders answered before he did. "Your private life is not —"
"Not your concern…." Izuku smiled fondly, "You are simply making sure I don’t wander into avoidable disasters."
Shota said nothing.
"Shota." Izuku turned himself, so he was seated facing Shota.
"Hmm?"
"Look at me."
He did, finally — slow, reluctant — with the expression of a man who had ruled the underworld for an age and was not accustomed to being made to feel chastened. Izuku met his gaze and held it, and did not let him look away.
“How old am I?”
He watched, amused, as Shota’s brows pinched together, caught off guard and openly confused by the question. Age was largely irrelevant, and there was no point in counting the years. But he found a frame of reference.
“Older than Athens.”
“So, as Spring, I've spent centuries surrounded by things blooming –opening and spilling over into each other. I have watched mortals fall in love and apart and together again, and wept at both. I am, very literally," he allowed himself a small echo of the laugh he'd given Katsuki, softer now, gentle, "the birds and the bees."
"I'm aware of what you are." Shota turned away, gaze drifting over the flowers. Above, the garden would, in fact, be full of bees wallowing in pollen.
"Then you know," Izuku said, leaning to make eye contact. “That purity was never part of my nature. It might have become my mother's hope. Her attempt at shaping me, but it was never part of who I am."
The garden breathed around them. Solemn and private. Here, there would be no interruption.
Shota looked at the flowers. Then, as though the decision cost him something, back at Izuku.
"She'll use it," he said. "When this goes to Olympus. She'll use anything she can."
Izuku blinked. And then he understood — because of course that was where Shota's mind went. Not to himself, not to this careful thing had been quietly growing between them. Much like the garden they sat in. Instead, to the argument. To what Demeter might weaponize in front of Zeus's court.
He felt something loosen in his chest. Something warm and a little rueful.
"I know," he said. "I'm not worried about it."
"You should be."
"I should be worried about many things. I've found that worrying doesn't generally help." He looked sideways. "And having witnessed some of my very impulsive decisions, I think you’d recognize that worrying is not my particular skill."
Something moved in Shota's expression that he didn't quite succeed in stopping. Not quite a smile — he didn't really do those — but the shadow of one, or the intention of one. Which, from him, felt like the same thing.
“Hence, I worry.”
Izuku smirked, resting against Shōta's shoulder, green eyes alight with mischief.
"Are you saying you're an avoidable disaster I've wandered into?”
The smile lit his eyes, even if it didn’t tug at his lips, and Shōta’s gaze darted away. "You are," he said, after a moment, "profoundly strange."
"I know," said Izuku, and he was smiling broadly, tilting his face up toward the faint luminescence that passed for sky down here. "Isn't it lucky that me and mine can bloom in strange places?"
He gestured at the flowers.
Shota looked at them for a long moment.
"...They shouldn't be doing that," he said, which was the closest he ever came to expressing wonder.
"No," Izuku agreed happily. "They shouldn't." His smile was softer at his next thought. “But I invited them to.”
He rolled to his feet and stepped in front of Shota, blocking the view of the garden and forcing the taller man to look up at him. He lifted his hands, leaving time for Shota to move away, and gently cupped the other man’s face.
Dark eyes closed.
Shota leaned into the touch. He had never been held so tenderly. He was greeted at birth by his father’s savagery, torment ending in war, and the politicking that followed with their triumph. The mortal world still reflected their turmoil and division.
He opened his eyes, committing the freckled face to memory once again. The soft, open expression. The kindness that came naturally. The little smile lingering on his lips.
Despite the pain she’d caused, he understood Demeter’s desire to protect him. She’d gone about it all wrong, but he understood. A soul like this was to be cherished. But only by listening to the laments of the dead had he learned how.
The delicate brush of a thumb against his cheek refocused his attention. He was being studied just as closely. He wondered what the younger god saw.
He was brought out of his thoughts by the press of warm lips against his own. The kiss was chaste but sent a flood of warmth through him. He could feel Izuku’s breath against his face. The barest brush of his nose against his own before the younger god brought their lips together for another kiss.
This one lasted longer. Traced the shape of his mouth before he drew back again.
Without meaning to, he lifted his hands. Shota stopped himself from grabbing, but he traced paths up the back of Izuku’s knees with his fingertips. He forced himself to stop when fabric brushed against the back of his hand.
The huff of air against his face felt frustrated. He started to pull back. To look up. But Izuku slid his hands forward, holding him in place as he delivered another kiss.
Vaguely, he knew Izuku had taken one hand away. The why escaped him until the hem he’d just barely touched became a spool of fabric falling to rest along his arm. Spilling onto the ground.
He pulled back, barely registering the little clink of metal on stone beside him.
Shota's breath caught. He kept his hands frozen where they were, still half-lifted, fingertips hovering where the fabric had been. He didn't dare move them forward, didn't dare lower them. Didn't trust himself.
The air between them felt different now. Charged. The garden around them seems to hold its breath too.
"Shota." Izuku's voice was soft. Patient. "Look at me."
He did. Slowly. Letting his gaze travel up the length of Izuku's body — tanned skin catching the underworld's faint light, the scatter of freckles across his shoulders, the line of his collarbone, the steady rise and fall of his chest. He reached Izuku's face and found him watching, waiting, with an expression so open it made something ache behind Shota's ribs.
"What are you doing?" Shota whispered. He knew what it looked like, but he refused to risk another assumption.
"Inviting." Izuku's hands slid from his face, trailing down his neck, his shoulders, coming to rest on his chest. Right over the place where his heart beat slow and heavy and wrong for a god who was supposed to be dead inside.
The word dragged Shota's attention back to the flowers around them.
Izuku sank to his knees.
The movement was unhurried. Deliberate. He settled on the cool stone between Shota's legs, looking up at him through those green eyes, and the garden seemed to lean in around them. A mosaic of color at the edges of his awareness.
Shota's hands found Izuku's shoulders without him deciding to move them. His thumbs traced the curve where neck met collarbone, and the skin under his touch was warm. Living. Nothing like the cold he ruled over.
"Izuku—"
"Stay with me." Izuku's voice dropped, intimate and sure. "Right here. Don't go somewhere else in your head."
Shota realized he'd been doing exactly that. He blinked, focused, and found Izuku's hands working at the fastenings of his chiton. The dark fabric loosened. Fell open.
"May I?" Izuku asked, fingers resting at the edges of the cloth.
Shota nodded. He couldn't have spoken if he'd tried.
Izuku pushed the fabric aside, baring Shota's chest to the cool air and to the weight of that green gaze. He heard the sharp sound of Izuku's intake of breath, felt the warmth of his palms as they pressed flat against his stomach. His chest. Spreading. Learning.
"You're beautiful," Izuku murmured, and the words hit like a physical blow.
Shota opened his mouth to deflect. To dismiss. But Izuku's hands slid higher, over his ribs, thumbs brushing the hollow of his throat, and whatever he'd meant to say dissolved.
Izuku leaned in and pressed his mouth to the center of Shota's chest.
It was barely a kiss. Just the press of warm lips over the place where his heart struggled to beat properly. But Shota's hands tightened on his shoulders, and his head fell back, and he heard himself make a sound he didn't recognize.
"Tell me what you want," Izuku said against his skin, his lips trailing lower. "Tell me, and I'll give it to you."
"Anything," Shota heard himself say, and the word came out rough. Broken. "Anything you'll give me."
Izuku looked up at him from where he knelt, and the expression on his face was tender and fierce and full of something that looked like it hurt. He pressed another kiss to Shota's chest. Another. Trailing down the center of him, mapping the lines of muscle and the ridges of scars — old ones, from battles fought before Izuku was born.
"Who gave you these?" His fingers traced a long, pale line across Shota's ribs.
"My father."
Izuku's jaw tightened. He pressed his lips to that scar, soft and reverent, and Shota closed his eyes against the sting of it. No one had ever kissed his wounds before. No one had ever treated them as anything other than evidence of survival.
"He was not kind."
"I know." Izuku's hands smoothed down his sides, settling at his waist. "I've heard the stories. The children he swallowed. The war you fought to end him."
"I didn't fight to end him."
Izuku looked up again, searching Shota's face. "Then why did you fight?" Why did you take the underworld? went unsaid.
Shota didn't answer. He couldn't. The answer was too large, too tangled, too full of things he'd never said aloud.
Izuku didn't push. He simply leaned forward and pressed another kiss to Shota's skin, this time over his heart again.
"Later," he said. "When you're ready."
He shifted, rising up on his knees, and his hands found the ties at Shota's waist. He worked them loose with patient fingers, pushing the fabric aside until Shota was bare before him, open and vulnerable in a way he hadn't been in centuries. The air was cool. The stone was hard beneath him. But Izuku's hands were warm where they settled on his thighs, and his gaze was reverent as it traveled over him.
"Look at you," Izuku whispered. "All of this, hidden away in the dark."
"Not hidden." Shota's voice came out rough. "Waiting."
The word hung between them. Izuku's breath caught. He leaned in, pressing his mouth to Shota's hip, then lower, following the line of his body with a tenderness that made Shota's hands clench at his sides.
"Tell me," Izuku said again, his lips brushing the sensitive skin of Shota's inner thigh, "what you want."
"You." The word came out before Shota could stop it. Raw. Honest. "I want you."
Izuku made a sound — soft, pleased — and pressed his face against Shota's thigh for a moment, breathing. When he looked up, his eyes were bright.
"Then you have me," he said. "All of me. Whatever you need."
He took Shota in his hand, and Shota's hips jerked at the first touch. Izuku's grip was gentle, exploratory, learning the weight and heat of him, and his thumb traced a slow, deliberate path along the length.
"Like this?" Izuku murmured, and lowered his head.
The first touch of his mouth made Shota gasp. His hand flew to Izuku's hair, fingers threading through the green curls, not pulling, just holding. Izuku's tongue traced him from base to tip, slow and savoring, and when he took him into his mouth, Shota forgot how to breathe.
The garden had gone still. Even the faint subterranean breeze had stopped, as though the underworld itself was holding it's breath. Shota's head fell back, his eyes squeezed shut, and he let himself feel it — the wet heat, the careful rhythm, the way Izuku's hands cradled his hips as though he was something precious.
"Izuku," he breathed, and the name came out like a prayer.
Izuku hummed in response, the vibration sending a shudder through Shota's entire body. He lifted his head just enough to speak, his lips brushing the tip. "I've wanted this. Wanted you. Since the night of the storm."
Shota's eyes flew open, surprised, and at a loss for words.
"You were kind and patient. You didn't treat me like glass." Izuku's hand stroked him as he spoke, slow and steady. "You fought with me, and trusted me to fight."
It was barely true. He'd hovered. Desperate to keep the younger man safe. But Izuku's perspective wasn't wrong.
"You didn't waste words telling me you cared." Izuku pressed a kiss to the inside of his thigh. "You showed me. Each time we met."
He took Shota back into his mouth, deeper this time, and Shota's thoughts scattered. His hips rocked forward of their own accord, and Izuku took it, adjusted, opened his throat, and let Shota feel the warmth of him from the inside.
It didn't take long. Shota had been alone for an age, had touched himself in the dark and called it enough, and this — this was nothing like that. This was being seen. Being wanted. Being held in someone's mouth like he was something worth tasting.
He came with a sound that was half-groan, half-whimper, his fingers tightening in Izuku's hair, and Izuku stayed with him through it, swallowing, gentling him through the aftershocks with soft passes of his tongue.
When he finally pulled back, his lips were red and his chin was wet and his eyes were full of a tenderness that made Shota's chest ache.
"There," Izuku said softly, rising up to press a kiss to Shota's mouth. He tasted himself on those lips. "That's what you get for thinking I was innocent."
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･