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It’s late, well past midnight, when Enji finally gets Tobio, Fuyumi’s three-year-old, settled. It’s a beautiful night, and they are at an onsen with a private spring for the family, so he decides to indulge in an evening dip.
He’s right at the door when he hears Shouto through the shoji. “I’m not!” It’s a sharp retort, surprisingly loud in the calm, quiet night, and Enji stops, listening. Their relationship is better, but this is the first time since Hiyori was born—nearly ten years ago—Shouto has allowed his kids to spend the night with their grandparents, and he only allowed it because they’re all so close.
“Hey,” Touya’s voice comes, surprisingly soothing, just audible through the shoji. Enji wishes he were surprised that it’s Touya, but he’s not. The brothers have been inseparable since Shouto agreed to accept Touya’s probation.
“Look, I’m just going to go get them. I tried to be okay with this, and I’m just… I’m not,” Shouto says, his voice tight.
Enji thought at some point, Touya would move out, but then Shouto ended up pregnant somehow, and Touya ended up helping to raise Hiyori, and, well, he never left. Shouto’s kids pretty much treat him like their father. It doesn’t help that Touya acts like it.
There’s the sound of soft splashes, and Touya says, still soft, “Hey, look at me. We are just down the hall here. We’re in screaming distance. Nothing is going to happen.”
“I never thought you’d be calming me down about this,” Shouto says, and there’s something in his voice that Enji isn’t sure he’s heard before.
More water splashes, and he hears Touya chuckle. “You know if either of them harmed a hair on any of our kids’ heads, I’d burn them till there aren’t even bones left.”
Enji frowns, not liking the possessive way that Touya is talking about the kids. It makes him uncomfortable that the kids treat him like a father, but Shouto’s made it clear that if Enji wants to stay in their lives, he doesn’t get a vote.
A gasp makes its way through the door, followed by Touya’s soft laughter. “We haven’t had time together in weeks, and look at how good you still take me.” Enji can feel himself go cold. He can’t possibly mean—
Before he can throw the door open and charge out, he hears Shouto laugh in reply. It’s happy and unreserved, though not loud enough to carry too far. “Admit it.” He’s interrupted by a throaty moan that can only be one thing. “You just wanted me to yourself for a night.”
“Fuck, you feel so good,” Touya says, and Enji has never heard his voice like that. Not rasping and deep, colored with desire. “So fucking gorgeous, even after four kids.” Shouto makes a little sound, but it’s quickly swallowed by the lapping and soft splashes of water and the slap of wet skin on wet skin. “You suck me in like you want me to knock you up again.”
Shouto moans, and a father should never know what their child sounds like in this moment, in this time, but Enji’s feet are rooted to the spot, his brain trying to find any explanation that isn’t the obvious one.
Anything other than the one that says that Touya and Shouto are lovers, that they are the parents of their children. That the reason Shouto doesn’t date isn’t because of his kids, but because he already has a partner. That Touya doesn’t leave because he isn’t going to leave his kids.
He’s also—apparently—not going to leave Shouto.
“Want me to put another baby in you, peppermint?” Shouto keens. “I know you do. I saw how you were eyeing Fuyumi’s big belly. You miss it, don’t you? Want another one? I bet I can do it.”
There’s no verbal reply to that, and as if his body is moving on its own, he inches the door open. Not much, but enough.
Enough to see Shouto’s naked back, to see his sons kissing passionately, to be very, very certain that kissing is not all they’re doing. Shouto clings to Touya’s shoulders, his hair spilling down over a shoulder, clinging to his skin in the damp heat. Touya has a hand buried in it, something about the touch is oddly tender for how filthy his words had been, while the other braces against the stone floor.
Shouto breaks the kiss, burying his face in Touya’s neck, muffling the sounds of need he’s making. With the door cracked, Enji can hear him, though.
“Yes, please… another… Another baby…”
“Gonna fill you up with twins this time. Want to see how big they make you, you pretty slut. How horny do you think you’d be? Hm?” His hips start moving faster, the splashes getting louder, the slap of skin getting clearer. “You’ll be begging for it every night, just like with—!”
Whatever he was going to say is lost in Shouto’s cry—which starts loud before he shoves his wrist into his mouth to muffle it. A few more thrusts, and Touya throws his head back as he comes.
Enji feels sick to his stomach. He closes the door as quietly as he can, hoping they’re lost in their own pleasure, puts his robe back on, and goes back to his room.
In the moonlight, he stares at his grandchildren, tracing their features. Spontaneous, quirk-induced pregnancy is how they had always explained Shouto’s pregnancies. It had explained well enough why Shouto’s children seemed to bear nothing but Todoroki features. It was such a perfect way to cover up their true parentage. Who would suspect Touya of being the father?
With the blinders rolled back, Enji thinks back on the past ten years—more even. He wonders when, exactly, it started, and how? Did Touya push it onto Shouto? On one hand, it’s hard to imagine that Shouto would remain under his thrall for so long, but on the other…
… Obeying a Todoroki is what Enji had trained Shouto to do.
He’s not entirely sure how, but Enji is very certain of one thing: this is his doing. This is his punishment. It’s karmic, in a way. His two most powerful and promising children, the one who he had nearly destroyed with his ambition, and the perfect one he had nearly driven entirely away, joining, coming together? Creating a loving, healthy family that Enji had deprived them of. A family he had watched grow with equal parts pride and envy as Shouto had only cautiously included him.
I didn’t completely ruin him, he had told himself as he had watched Shouto become a loving, doting parent. It had even been nice to see Touya so dedicated to the children, to watch him seem to find peace and purpose.
In retrospect, he should have known the first time he saw Hiyori’s blue fire.
He doesn’t know how long silent tears of shame roll down his face, watching his precious, perfect grandchildren sleeping. When the tears seem to run out, he gets to his feet and leaves the room to go to the onsen’s communal bathroom and wash his face.
Touya is leaning against the hall wall, white head bowed, arms crossed, looking lazy, but from beneath the shadows of his bangs, Enji sees his own brilliant blue eye looking out at him.
“I was wondering if I was going to have to wait till morning,” Touya says, and it sounds so much like Dabi did, all those years ago, that a chill goes through Enji.
“What are you going to do about it?” Enji asks him, his own voice rough.
Straightening, Touya faces him. “I suppose that depends on you, doesn’t it?” He holds his hands out to his side, a silent threat. His suppressors were only removed a few months ago, but Enji has no doubt that Touya is as dangerous as ever. And Enji is…
Enji is not what he once was. He doesn’t like his chances against his son’s blue flame these days.
“I’m not going to do anything,” he admits. It’s hard to say the words. They try to stick in his throat. To sit back and not take action has never been his way, but he’s spent hours thinking about this, and he knows the truth, though it sits like a lead weight in his stomach. There is no action he can take that will not cause more harm than good.
His response visibly surprises Touya. “Not going to have me arrested again?”
“If I tried, what would Shouto do?” Enji asks, feeling defeated.
“Cut you off from contact.”
Enji nods, expecting no less. “Is he—”
“He’s asleep,” Touya says firmly, then grins. It’s a cruel grin, the kind of grin someone wears as they twist the knife. “Took a couple more rounds to exhaust him enough though.”
Bile fills the back of Enji’s mouth, but he swallows it back. “Is that why you did it?” he asks, wanting to get angry, but feeling only empty. “To get back at me?”
He doesn't like the way Touya stands, the look in his eye, the manic grin. They’re all things of Dabi, and Enji thought Dabi long buried. “You just assume I came onto him. Your masterpiece couldn’t have come onto his big brother. Or a villain.” He made a mock thoughtful expression. “Which is worse to you, actually?”
It’s bait, and Enji doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to ask, but he can’t not. “Did he…?”
“No,” Touya says quickly. “But you know what convinced him to say yes?” Enji doesn’t, and he doesn’t want to ask because Touya looks far too pleased as he leans close. “He said yes because I said imagine the look on the old man’s face if he knew.”
As Touya leans back, Enji asks, “Was it worth it?”
Touya raises a curious eyebrow. “Was what worth it?”
“Ruining him to get to me?”
Snorting, Touya says, “Do you really think he’s ruined? And if he is, do you really think I’m the one who ruined him?”
He thinks about Shouto, who consistently trades positions as the Number Two and Number Three hero with Dynamight, who has more friends than Enji can name, has four beautiful, healthy, happy children, who laughs and smiles and is happy in a way that Enji doesn’t think he, himself, ever learned how to be.
But he’d also decided to make a family with his older brother.
“Natsuo and Fuyumi know,” he says, and it’s not really a question.
Touya rolls his eyes. “Everyone knows, old man. Shouto’s a pretty shitty liar. If you’d fucking opened your eyes any time in the last twelve years, you’d have fucking known.”
“Even Rei?” Enji asks, feeling like the rug’s just been pulled out from under him.
Folding his arms, Touya says, “She’s never talked to me about it, but after Rekka was born, she asked me to take care of Shouto.”
She knows, then. Rei has always seen more clearly than Enji has. He thinks of all the awkward conversations he’s started, trying to suggest that Shouto should consider dating, the way Touya would laugh and everyone else would be conspicuously silent.
No wonder Touya laughed. In retrospect, it’s so clear, Enji can only admit that his own refusal to see it was the only reason he didn’t.
“It’s not normal, not natural,” Enji tells him.
“Neither is abusing your children, but it didn’t stop you, did it?”
Enji would have preferred to be punched. He knows that he can never make up for what he did, and Shouto’s reluctance—until recently, outright refusal—to allow either him or Rei to be alone with his children speaks loudly of continued damage he has done.
“Would you leave if I asked you to?” Enji asks, has to ask.
The door behind Enji opens, and Megumu, Shouto’s youngest, only three, wanders out, rubbing at sleepy silver eyes, hair a mess of mostly white. “Dada?” he asks.
Touya kneels down to his level, and Megumu runs over to him, more tripping into his arms than leaping at him. “Hey, Ghost. You should be sleeping,” he says in a tender tone that Enji still finds almost jarring compared to how Touya still talks to him.
Megumu snuggles in his arms. “Want Mama an’ Dada,” he says plaintively.
Standing with him easily, Touya says, “I thought you were going to hang out with Grandma and Grandpa tonight?”
Burying his head in Touya's chest, Megumu shakes his head. Whatever he says is muffled, but the soft look that paints itself across Touya’s face is one of genuine love, devotion. It’s a look that Enji doesn’t know if he ever had while handling his children. It’s all the answer he needs: Touya isn’t leaving, wouldn’t leave no matter what Enji offered him.
“All right, buddy. Let’s go see Mama.” He turns away from Enji, without even bothering to say good night, and Enji can’t quite let it go at that.
“Should I expect more grandchildren in a few more months?” he asks.
Touya glances over his shoulder and smirks. “Nah. Shouto might be nostalgic for it, but he wished for four kids. We don’t think he can get pregnant again.” He runs a hand over Megumu’s hair, soothing the flyaways. “This one’s our last baby.”
He doesn’t say anything else before he turns and goes back to his room. Megumu’s eyes pop up over his shoulder, still sleepy, but he rests his head against Touya’s neck, and Touya strokes a hand over his hair.
For a long time, Enji stands in the hall, Touya’s words echoing in his head. He wished for four.
Four children. Four Todoroki children. Enji isn’t so blind that he doesn’t see what Shouto has done: he’s created the family of his dreams.
And he created it with his brother.
Enji was wrong about being cried out.