A State of Decay

Chapter 36

It was Thursday when Izuku finally unblocked Tomura from his thoughts. Tomura felt the bond come to like and instantly wormed his way into his head. 

"You've been ignoring me," Tomura accuses. 

"Not on purpose! I've just been busy." While he knows that's true, he can also hear a slight waver in Izuku's tone through the bond, as well as the emotions underlying the statement. 

"I know, little hero," Tomura says. "I saw you in a news article, by the way, Mr. War Hero." 

Earlier that day, he noted that there had been some news coverage regarding Izuku's return to the limelight. While he was proud of his boyfriend, there were some other parts of the article that he didn't like. Specifically, the parts that brought up the war. Incidentally, Tomura was the guy on the other side of it, and he knew what the general public thought about him. Izuku and even his friends who knew about them were special cases. He always knew that dating Izuku wasn't something that people were going to take lightly. They were going to have to be more careful from now on; while Tomura wasn't ashamed to be dating him, he doesn't know what Izuku's stances on the whole thing are. He probably at least doesn't want this tainting his hero stuff, especially now, since he's just getting back into it for real. 

"It's only because I'd disappeared for so long," Izuku sighs. "The media will take any new story and run with it. I wouldn't read those articles, anyway. Besides- none of them know about how you are now. And all the press stuff is baloney! Like it's not even real." 

So, Izuku had read them. The people who wrote the articles definitely didn't like Tomura, not that he'd expected anything different. The fact that he and the rest of the LOV had gone through extensive reform hadn't been very public knowledge. It was obvious how people would take that. The only reason they'd been allowed to do such a thing, was because of Izuku. He knows that without the sway of the country's war hero, they never would have stood a chance.

"Can I come over?" Izuku suddenly asks. "I miss you. And I wanna talk about work." 

The flat undertones of Izuku's request don't go unnoticed. Tomura can tell something's up. 

"Of course." 

Not even half an hour later, Tomura is letting him inside and leading him to his bedroom. Izuku is already flopped face down on his bed before Tomura even closes the door behind them. 

"So, what's the matter? I can tell something's not right with you." 

Izuku sighs and flips over. The mattress dips as Tomura sits down beside him, and Izuku immediately climbs into his lap and begins to pepper his jaw with kisses. 

"It's fine," Izuku mumbles between kisses. "Just wanted to see you. It's been too long." 

"It's been four days," Tomura states as if he hadn't also been going crazy during their time apart. "We survived." 

"So you didn't miss me?" Izuku pouts, jutting out his lower lip. Tomura leans forward, takes that stupid, pouty lip between his teeth, and yanks on it, and Izuku makes one of his signature squeaky sounds in response. 

"Of course I missed you," Tomura tells him. He runs a hand through the hero's unruly hair and takes a second to appreciate the pretty pink tint of Izuku's freckled cheeks. "I miss you any time we're apart. I want you here all the time." 

Izuku smiles softly and relaxes into Tomura's arms, resting his head against his chest. 

"You gotta tell me what else is bothering you," Tomura orders softly. 

Izuku lets out a long sigh. "It's hero work. It's a lot. And I don't just mean the saving people part. You wanna know something crazy? I mean, I've always known the Safety Commission controlled a lot of what heroes do, but this is a lot. Way more than I thought. And the other heroes? They all act like it's no big deal. Like it's normal! But they didn't tell us any of this in school!"

Tomura frowns and pulls away from Izuku to look him in the eyes. "Slow down. What do you mean?"

"It's the press coverage. It's the interviews and all of that stuff. It's all fake. It's all staged. Every bit of it. I went to a TV station to do a talk show interview about my return, and the entire thing was scripted, and I didn't get to say anything I wanted to say. It sounded like I was reading answers about hero work directly from a textbook!" 

"Honestly should've suspected." Tomura bites the inside of his cheek. "Heroes are practically worshipped like celebrities these days. People clamber after you like touching the edges of your hero costumes will heal the sick and feed the hungry. They watch those interviews and follow you all on social media like weird, parasocial vampires. Why the hell do you think I hated heroes so much?" 

"But not every hero is like that!" Izuku frowns. 

"I know that dummy; I'm dating a hero, aren't I?" he punches Izuku's shoulder playfully, causing Izuku to smile a little bit. He takes the small grin as a win. 

"It's not even that! But all the footage from rescues and stuff that gets put on the internet—there's filming crews and everything! It's like they expect the big villains to be where they are when they are, and all that. Like those are scripted, too." 

"What do you mean?" 

"Well, yesterday, Kacchan and I fought some villain with a telescopic limb quirk. He was stupid powerful and there was already a lot of collateral damage before we got there. When we arrived, there were already camera crews there filming the villain--and I mean camera crews from my agency! I thought that at least Hawk's agency would be a little different given everything that he went through during the war, but it's not. It's all the same."

"That's strange. It's like they expected him to start wrecking shit before he did?"

"Yeah! Like it was planned. I didn't like it." Izuku folds his arms over his chest and stares off past Tomura at the wall. "And when I asked Kacchan about it, he hardly responded. He told me that I just have to deal with it and do a good job. To do what I could. I could tell the question frustrated him, but I couldn't get much more out of him than that. He's been doing this longer than I have, so I thought he'd have answers. But he didn't."

A small silence passes between them as Tomura thinks everything over, and his brow furrows as he lets his mind run. Yeah, he always thought things were bad before, but this is different. As far as the filming of incidents went, this was new. There had to be some reason for it, but Tomura didn't know what to think. Having been on the other side of things, he would have recalled if some civilians were constantly following him around in camera vans or some crap while he was out and about. 

"You have to ask more questions. Get to the bottom of whatever this is. You've got me curious now, too." He then adds, "And I'm here to help you if you ever need it. I know I'm not a hero or whatever, but I need you to know that I support you, no matter what it is you're doing."

"I know," Izuku sighs. "I just thought it would be different, you know? Better than what I was doing before. But it's almost worse." 

"I honestly don't know what else to tell you," Tomura says. He really doesn't. He's just as confused about this as he is. Of course, it had always been prevalent that a lot of heroes just did it for the money, and press coverage wasn't always honest. But there seemed to be more layers to this than there was before. 

At a loss for words, Tomura decides the next best thing he can do is at least distract Izuku from everything. So, he kisses the brat stupid. 

He pulls Izuku further into his lap, grabs the sides of his face, and begins to kiss him. They start slow and firm, but as their kisses always tend to, they turn to something more heated and passionate. He runs his hands through Izuku's hair and up his spine underneath his shirt. His skin is warm and his body is perfectly pliant beneath his greedy fingers as he traces over the hero's perfect body. Their tongues meet when Tomura parts his lips for Izuku, slowly brushing against one another, swirling around in slow and messy ministrations. 

Soon, after Tomura pulls back, Izuku is smiling and blushing, and he knows he's done something right. His mind is still on everything else, but he seems to have at least gotten Izuku to stop thinking about everything so intently—at least for the time being.