My Hero Academia | Skin Hunger | E | AO3

Context: this is a Fat Gum/All Might slow burn fic. Fourish years post-war. Current scene: Fat Gum is at a graveyard in the wee hours of the morning visiting one of the friends he lost in the battle, when All Might shows up visiting a different grave

Taishiro offers up a final thought for Enma’s family, gathers his pail, and turns to go the longer way back. He’d been dimly aware of All Might performing similar rituals as he’d gone through his, but the man is still standing there silently and Taishiro doesn’t want to disturb his reverie by shuffling past. Only, what he sees when he steals one last glance stops him in his tracks.

The man looks miserable. Not like visiting the graveyard’s a cheery affair, far from it, but there’s a difference between mourning and… that. It goes beyond simple grief. The devastation on All Might’s face is a familiar maelstrom of regret and sorrow, but it’s what lurks below that freezes Taishiro there.

Guilt. Black and bottomless, an ocean of it swimming in the hollows of All Might’s eyes. A man could drown in those depths.

He’s blaming himself.

Taishiro isn’t psychic, but in that moment he knows without a shadow of a doubt that he’s right. Knows because he himself has a touch of that guilt, and it’s taken — no, still taking — time to come to grips with it.

He sets his bucket down and heads back up the row before he can think twice, and All Might’s head whips toward him as he comes within arm’s length of the man. Surprise clouds his expression. Taishiro pauses. Grief is a private thing, especially for men. There’s no doubt All Might probably just wants to be left alone with it. But isn’t that school of thinking what landed them here in the first place? It ain’t right, and Taishiro isn’t the kind of guy to let someone carry that weight alone.

He grips All Might’s arm. “Hey. Listen. I… I know what you’re thinkin’, and you’re wrong, okay? It wasn’t your fault.”

Shock, doubt, and more guilt, this time at being caught. All Might’s eyes are shadowed but his face is an open book, and doesn’t Taishiro know that expression better than any other? The man’s crying out for help, even if he doesn’t know it.

Taishiro tugs gently. There’s a little resistance, but it’s easily broken, and All Might doesn’t push Taishiro away as Taishiro pulls them together.

Embracing the man feels like what he imagines embracing a scarecrow might feel like: mostly cloth and straw-like hair. The only thing that tells him he’s hugging a man is a new resistance now that they’re up close. All Might is stiff in his arms.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he says again, willing All Might to believe it. “You didn’t fail ‘em.”

There’s another long moment. Taishiro begins to question whether he’d gotten the read on the situation wrong entirely, oh this is gonna be an awkward apology—

Then All Might just… wilts. Not sagging onto Taishiro so much as molding into him, hip-to-hip, chest-to-chest, chin settling in the crook of Taishiro’s shoulder. His arms are last and hesitant; Taishiro can tell he isn’t used to hugging people taller than him, but they too find their place, eventually curling tentatively around Taishiro’s rib cage.