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Chapter 56

Izuku... well he hadn't let me take a breath without him since the incident at the mall.

There were more smothering kisses than I'd ever received before.

More marks of his teeth-ridden kisses across my body than I thought humanly possible.

I hadn't spent a second without him touching me in some way since our run-in with Shigaraki.

Had I not known better- I'd say Izuku was trying to mark me. Mark what was his.

I think he was trying to convince himself that the more possession he had over me- the less likely Shigaraki's words could possibly come true. Every night... every night was restless. As soon as he had managed to snake his arms and legs around me as tightly as he could -enough to let him fall asleep- he would wake up screaming. They were fits of sobs, he was rubbing the tears from his eyes so often that he'd begun to have welts on the soft, tender skin below his lower lashes.

Every time he woke up, he'd beg me to tell him over and over that he was awake and that I wasn't a ghost. Still- I hadn't a clue what he was dreaming of but I had to assume it had something to do with my death. This was the third shirt in the past week that he had soaked in tears from the night before. He was growing exhausted -too much time being rocked to sleep in my arms as he cried and swore that he'd never let anything touch me- to catch enough sleep to stay awake.

I was getting far beyond worried. The way he watched me closely even when walking to the kitchen for a drink- the way his eyes painfully strained on me every single time I twitched in my sleep.

He was beginning to push himself harder- spending every waking moment doing some sort of workout. Pushing himself until he fell onto the ground shaking and soaked in sweat. I begged him to stop- begged him to see that I was fine and that I wasn't going anywhere.

I tried to help him. I offered every spare second to him. We worked on training- allowing him to push me until I was throwing up in the backyard. I thought if he saw me getting stronger with him then he would let off on himself. But he never did.

Finally, as I got Izuku to lighten up one afternoon and commence a contest on who could walk on their hands the longest- he was laughing. His mom jumped around us, timing the two of us as we shoved at each other and tried to send the other tumbling to the ground.

Inko was... well she was curious. She knew Izuku and I had become official because Izuku could seemingly never keep his mouth shut for anything. She wasn't against the way Izuku had begun hovering over me since the mall because, in her own way, she was hovering over me as well. She was checking on me constantly, her eyes constantly lingering and mouth full of words of concern.

She no longer insisted we sleep apart from each other on the nights we spent together. It seemed like the more time Izuku and I spent hovering over each other- the more relaxed she seemed. I think she was confident that we could protect each other, confident that we would do anything in our power to keep the other breathing.

Most nights I hadn't slept. Instead- cooing sweet nothings into Izuku's ear as I tried to rub his back and run my fingertips along his scalp. I was grabbing at anything to force him to get some rest. I could hear Inko pacing by his bedroom door at night and I could only assume she was aware of the way he was beginning to lose sleep. I think she was waiting for him to come to her- that or she knew this was something between the two of us that he could never explain to her.

At one point- he had gotten so low and exhausted that I could physically feel the pit of despair in my own chest. There was only one other time in my life that Izuku's emotions had become so overwhelming that I could feel them myself and that was during his fight with Todoroki.