What I Couldn't Tell You

Chapter 1 - Introduction

DEKU'S POV

The room's hot and the bed is cramped. My head lies at the foot of the bed and hers at the head. Uraraka and I are sharing a twin bed in a small room where only a twin bed fits. Kacchan and Iida sleep in the slightly bigger room adjacent from ours.

Iida is lying on the bed, flat on his stomach watching the latest news report on his phone. He brought along his 3-year-old son who's lying next to him soundly asleep. They both took the main bed next to the wall and brought in a separate air mattress for Kacchan. The air conditioning was working on full blast, but it didn't save us from the heat wave. We are all hot, we are all sweating, and Kacchan is lying on his stomach with his shirt off back muscles on full display trying to prolong his sleep in the busy house they placed us in.

It's almost time to get up and I don't think I can lie here much longer. Uraraka kicks me each time she tries to get comfortable. She's my best friend but if she kicks me one more time, I'm gonna lose it. We are all Pro heroes on a mission now. Our agencies called us together to patrol a city who had been having rioting instances the past few weeks. It's been under control lately and we don't expect the situation to get worse. We're allowed to return home tomorrow if things remain good.

Kacchan hasn't spoken a word to me unless we were out on patrol. I sometimes notice his gaze on me. I feel it for long minutes but do not call attention to it. I feel like he wants to say something to me, but I don't want to push anything because I know he just broke up with Kirishima. They were dating for two years.

I wish I could do something or be there for him in some way, but I don't trust myself. I've loved him for years. I respectfully backed off when he got together with Kirishima after our graduation from U.A., but if I try and talk to him now, I might just blurt out everything I've been keeping in for years. Instead, I just stand by his side and watch over him silently.

I head into Iida's and Kacchan's room and wake up Iida's son. He loves being here. He loves the attention of the older female staff members working in the cabin and, even though he's so young, he waits for us to get back and share with him our hero stories. We've all pitched in helping Iida take care of him, even Kacchan helps out sometimes. Iida's wife had a long convention that she had left for before they told us we were supposed to patrol here. He had no choice to bring him and thankfully the work is easy.

I take his son into another room and change him into new clothing. His sweat had soaked through parts of his pajamas. I pulled the new shirt over his head struggling to get his arms in. "You have to be gentler when pulling his arms through". I turn and see Kacchan, finally awake, standing behind me watching me struggle to change the boy. "I don't change kids very often. Not at all, actually. So, I'm not very good at this." I replied back to him. "Still a useless Deku, after all. Let me do it."

I moved aside and let Kacchan help me. He was surprisingly gentle and picked the kid up when he finished changing him. "What?" he asked. "Nothing. I'm just surprised that you're this gentle with kids. You used to not be." I rubbed the back of my neck uncomfortably. Would you be this gentle with our kids? I quickly shook the thought out of my head and we walked into the kitchen to eat breakfast. "Kacchan, do you actually like kids now?" I asked grabbing a plate of food.

He didn't look at me as he placed a plate of food in front of the kid, sitting with a plate of his own. He looked uncomfortable with the question and I could tell that he was debating his words. After a long silent moment, he confessed "Kirishima and I were thinking of adopting a brat before we broke up. We had been taking care of a little girl the week before that. She was an orphan we saved on a mission, but we gave her to a nice couple who had taken to her."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. He was getting ready to adopt a kid with Kirishima. They were that serious. What happened? Why did they break up? I dared to ask, "Kacchan, did you not want kids anymore?" He ate silently, as did I as I awaited his reply wondering if he would give me one. Maybe I should not have asked. When he finished eating, he cleared his plate and said near a whisper, words that shamelessly sparked hope in me. "I didn't want kids with Kirishima" and then he just left the kitchen.

Geez, that sounds like a can of worms that I don't know if I want to open. Maybe it's just shameless hope for me to wonder if, just maybe, Kacchan would want kids with me. That would be a dream come true. A life that's too valuable, too precious to actually consider having. I looked at the kid, he ate his plate of food with gusto happily shoving pieces of bacon in his mouth. I do wonder what it would be like...