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“i’m not mad,” he says, for what is probably the twentieth time, and grits his teeth so hard they gnash. “i’m not.”
“touya – “
“are you seeing smoke in the sky? is shit on fire? then i’m not mad.” he hates the way he bites the words out, hates the edge in his voice, hates the way it makes fuyumi sigh on the other end of the line like he’s the one being difficult and unreasonable about this. he can almost see her shrinking in on herself, shrinking from him.
he curls his hand in a fist, and tries to quell the embers sweltering at the bottom of his ribcage. he’s supposed to be on cool-down. he’s supposed to not use his quirk for at least another week. there’s an itch beneath his skin.
the todoroki temper is just another shitty thing that he inherited from his father which threatens to cripple him if he doesn’t keep it in check.
“please don’t be mad at nee-chan,” says natsuo. oh great. they’re teaming up on him. i’m not the one you should be harassing, asshole, he wants to say, and he doesn’t, because he’s trying to be a grown adult about this, he’s trying to be reasonable and fix things.
“i’m not – “ he has to put the phone down on the counter. the kitchen is a mess, again.
he has to take a deep breath to steady himself. he’s glad tenko is out of the flat.
“i’m indifferent,” he says finally.
this time it’s natsuo who sighs, and the sigh echoes through the empty places in touya’s chest rattles with it, almost mirroring his brother’s exasperated breath.
“it’s just one lunch,” natsuo says. ah, they’ve gotten to bargaining.
“and that’s great,” touya says and runs a hand down his face, thumbing at the steel that traces a line along his cheeks, holding him together. “for you guys. but i’m busy that day.”
no, they hadn’t even specified what day. but he’d be busy. he’d make sure to be busy.
“touya-nii- “ natsuo tries, but the voice hasn’t worked on touya in years, and it’s not about to magically start working now.
it’s not his fault, touya repeats to himself. they’re not obliged to understand, or care about, his reactions, or his trauma. it’s not their job. he knows this, rationally. they had all been kids, and it had all been shitty, and so what if he was old enough to remember a time where it wasn’t. he knows now, with the knowledge that comes only when you die, as a child, at the feet of your caregivers, and are subsequently reborn as an adult, that he had been placing too much on natsuo.
it hadn’t been natsuo’s job to support him, or to be his rock the way touya was trying to lean on him, much like it hadn’t been touya’s job to take them all with him when he’d finally gotten out. they had been kids.
“can’t you at least try? for the family?” fuyumi sounds so pleading and so, so optimistic.
he can’t hold the way his siblings choose to deal with their trauma against him. he shouldn’t.
he wants to tell her it won’t be a good look for the family if the number one hero gets incinerated alive by his own son, because that is the only outcome of him being in the same room as his father, and when he does that, he might as well just go and kill himself after, so no, really, it will not be good for anyone. or maybe it will. maybe with him and endeavor gone, the family will finally be able to move on and get better.
“what the fuck do you want me to say? huh?” he snaps. natsuo makes an affronted noise, like cursing in front of fuyumi is somehow more of an infraction than them calling him to harass him about going to lunch with their father.
the truth is, he is angry. he’s been angry for years. anger is what had kept him alive, anger had been all he had when he’d had nothing else but his skin. anger was like his fire – warm, yes, dangerous, and completely out of his control, but it had kept him safe, it still did, and it sure as hell had done more for him than his siblings –
that’s not right. it hadn’t been their job. not their job to care, not their job to fix things, not their job to be there for him or protect him, when they were also just trying to survive. it wasn’t their fault. it had been hell for them too.
that’s what he has to keep repeating to himself. it hadn’t been his job to save them, and it hadn’t been their job to save him. it went both ways, always. he knows this. he knows this.
“i just wish you’d try,” says fuyumi, and her voice is so soft, such an affectation of their mother, that for a moment it goes right to his chest, and staggers him back physically, hard enough to that he backs himself into the sink overfilled with dishes he and tenko were both too mentally ill to clean.
if there was one person whose job it had been to try, it had been mom and she sure as hell hadn’t done shit for him. he’d been too sharp, even then, too angry, too much like the monster from all their nightmares, a perfect reflection of dad, and sometimes he wonders, if he hadn’t left on the day he did, if she’d have done the job of burning him herself, the same way she’d burned shouto.
“oh,” he says, “fuck you.”
he’ll feel bad about this later. he’s sure he will. he almost never curses at his siblings, not with this much venom, not ever. he’ll feel so bad, and so rotten, when the call is over, and he has had time to process it. he’ll go and grovel in apologies, and ring flowers to their weekly lunch, but not right now, god, not right the fuck now.
“why do i have to try, huh?” he snarls. it comes out distorted and ugly out of his distorted and ugly mouth. “what if i don’t want to try, what if i’m tired, what the fuck then? you gonna drop me, because i don’t want to play happy family with the man who ruined our lives?”
“touya – “ natsuo says. the background noise is gone, which means they’ve taken him off speaker. as always, fuyumi the shrinking violet, letting natsuo handle their unstable brother’s tantrums –
- no, it’s not their job to handle him.
“fuck you, man,” touya says, exhales it quietly, almost softly. he hates fighting with his siblings. it’s not fair. there’s a bone-deep exhaustion that settles along his shoulders, and into the ridges of his spine, an ache beneath his skin, and into the marrow of his bones that had never really gone away after the fire.
“why do you always have to make things so goddamn difficult?” natsup snaps. “we’re all trying here, okay? even the old man’s fucking trying, we’re all moving on!”
so why aren’t you? natsuo is kind enough not to vocalize it. but it hangs in the silence between them anyway.
i can’t, touya wants to say.
“i am,” is what he says instead. “i just wish you’d accept i’m moving on in a different direction from you. from all of you.”
it’s not his siblings’ job to care about his trauma, or have to babysit his issues. they all grew up in the same hell, they’re all reacting to it differently, and if they want to forgive dad, or move on, or repair shit, he can’t stand in their way, he shouldn’t.
but then, shouldn’t they also get out of his way, when he tries to get better? there’s no path forward for him that would ever lead back to the todoroki home, and he doesn’t understand why that’s so hard to get. no one had stopped him from leaving the first time. no one had gone in his way, no one had followed, so –
natsuo goes quiet on the other end, so , so quiet that touya can make out the sound of fuyumi softly hiccupping, which makes him feel like the biggest piece of shit on the planet. he wants to end the call, get his pills from the bathroom cabinet, and curl in bed with a beer, and wait for tenko to come home. that’s what he wants. he wants to not be fucked up, and ugly, and he wants a quirk that’s compatible with his body, and he wants his siblings to leave him alone, because they sure as hell had no problem leaving him when they were kids –
- no, it wasn’t their job. it wasn’t their job. and it still isn’t. he has to remind himself that, every time resentment rears its ugly head in his chest. it had never been his siblings’ job to protect him, or take care of him, or put up with him, and it sure isn’t now that they’re all – barring shouto – adults.
“you didn’t have to be such a dick to fuyumi,” natsuo says at last.
“yeah well, you didn’t need to ambush me with an over-the-phone intervention, when all i wanted to ask was if you want to grab a beer downtown, but here we both are.” touya snarls with so much venom in his voice it surprises even him.
he’s perfectly aware of how much resentment he’s harboring towards his siblings, and how unfair it is to hold on to it, but sometimes the force with which is rattles through him feels like an uncontrollable force of its own.
“come to the lunch,” natsuo says, and he’s mad too, because they both take a bit too much after dad for it to be comfortable for anyone, “or don’t. i don’t give a shit what you do.”
“oh, i know you don’t,” says touya hotly, and cringes at himself. it wasn’t natsuo’s job to be his therapist, it hadn’t been natsuo’s job to stop him, it hadn’t been –
“wow,” says natsuo. “you’re such a fucking piece of work, touya.”
he sounds as tired as he does after his exam sessions. he sounds like touya is a particularly gruelling exam, that he doesn’t have the energy to care about anymore.
“i always wondered why you’d shack up with a villain – “
“tenko’s not a villain,” touya says automatically.
“but i guess it makes sense that he’s the only one who’d put up with your bullshit, because i don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the rest of us are kind of tired of tip-toeing around your fuckign dramatics. we’re not kids anymore, grow up.”
“oh, tell me how you really feel.” touya hadn’t been angling for a fight. he was on cool-down, he had the week off work, and he just wanted to grab a beer with his brother before picking up his boyfriend from work, but at this stage, he’d be in no condition to drive. best not to get behind the wheel when you’re blind with fury, and all that.
that being said, he’s always ready to brawl – courtesy of how he grew up – and –
- can’t blame everything on his childhood. he can’t blame everything on dad. he can’t – he shouldn’t – because some of it is just his own ugly fucking personality. and natsuo’s right – it’s not his job, or fuyumi’s job – to put up with it.
“i am grown up, actually,” he bites out. “wanna know how grown-up i am? i moved out, i have my own place, and i own my shit, and unlike you? i don’t fetishize my own anger.”
natsuo splutters on the other end of the line.
“i don’t fetishize – “
“yeah. yeah, you do. cause you wanna know something? you’re angry too! you’re angrier than i am, half the time, and you hate him like i hate him, but only when it’s convenient for you. you like to feel like you’re a better person – better than him, sure, but the bar’s on the fucking ground for that, better than shouto, better than me for sticking around – guess what, shithead? no one’s going to give you a medal of honor for doing the baseline minimum to be a functional human being.”
he can almost picture the wide-eyed shock on natsuo’s face. they rarely, if ever, get real with each other anymore. touya had learned his lesson, after all. his honesty, his anger, his trauma was not his siblings’ job, was not natsuo’s job. not their responsibility to deal with. there was too much of it, the ugliness inside him, and most days he was just grateful they could deal with the ugliness on his outside and everything unpleasant that it stood for.
since touya had come back – and it had been a decent number of years ago, they could smoke up, and play video games, and talk about school, and work, and girlfirends, and boyfriends, and it was fine. they were fine. touya just knew not to get real anymore, because –
maybe you should talk to fuyumi about this.
well. is natsuo wanted to get real – well. he was asking for it.
“you like being angry,” touya says, “you don’t know how to be without it. and now, you’re trying to stop being angry at him, which is fine – i told you i don’t care about that. you can forgive him, you can mend bridges, or whatever it is you think you’re doing – i’m not mad at you for trying to move on. but you don’t get to turn your anger on me just because i’m the next best thing. try being mad at mom for a change, or hell, i don’t know, try being mad at yourself for having literal fucking years to do something, or say something, or anything – “
he stops, because he needs to take a breath. he really, seriously, has to stop smoking so much if just yelling at his brother over the phone is getting him this winded.
“you left,” natsuo says, and he sounds - sounds wrecked, in that heartbroken, devastated way that touya recognizes from when he came back, the horror, replaced with surprised, replaced with relief. and yeah, sure, he’d faked his death. it had been traumatic for his siblings – and on some level, he can also accept – for their parents. but –
“yeah,” says touya, “i left. and you’re mad at me about it – that’s fine. you can be mad. but you don’t get to make me the bad guy for it.”
it’s one of the moments he wishes he could cry. his shoulders just shake noiselessly, and he ends the call from his end.
he runs a hand down his face again, his fingers catching on the medical steel. he feels the irrational urge to rip his lower jaw out.
he moves his fingers over the screen almost on autopilot.
giran picks up on the third ring.
“you got some shit that needs burning?”