Chapter 4: The Morning After
The Milan suite smelled of money and lemons. Not the acidic scent of cleaning products, but the subtle, essential oil kind, pumped through hidden vents to convince the ultra-wealthy that their opulence was also pure. Dawn spilled across the floor-to-ceiling windows, painting the Venetian canal below in strips of liquid gold and deep, cool shadow. The room was vast, a landscape of cream marble, distressed leather, and raw silk. On a low steel table, a vase held a single, absurdly large orchid that looked like it was made of wax.
Shouta was submerged in the kind of deep, paralytic sleep that only came after a fight. Every cell felt pulverized and hungover. The silk sheets were a tangled wreck around his waist, his torso a museum of bruises in spectacular colors—aubergine, sulfur yellow, a violent magenta along his ribs. One arm was flung over his eyes, blocking the light.
The weight landed on him suddenly, a compact, warm pressure settling directly on his hips.
Small hands slapped down on his bare chest, right over the worst of the bruising.
He jerked, a pained grunt tearing from his throat before he was fully conscious.
“Daddy! Daddy, wake up!”
Izuku’s voice was a stage whisper, thick with suppressed glee. He was straddling Shouta’s hips, knees digging into the mattress on either side. He was already dressed in a pair of tiny, cream-colored shorts and an oversized black sweater that slipped off one smooth shoulder. His platinum hair was a chaotic cascade down his back, catching the morning light.
Shouta dragged his arm away from his face, squinting up. The morning was a dagger in his brain. “Christ, Izuku. Get off.”
“No, listen! Guess what that medic just sent you!” Izuku was vibrating, his eyes wide and shining with scandalous delight. In one hand, he clutched Shouta’s unlocked phone, the screen glowing.
“I don’t care. It’s six in the fucking morning.”
“It’s seven! And you do care. Look!” Izuku shoved the phone toward Shouta’s face, his small fingers holding it steady.
Shouta groaned, the sound rumbling from his chest. He wrapped one heavy arm around Izuku’s slender waist, more to stop him from bouncing than to hug him, and leveraged himself up into a sitting position against the mountain of pillows. The movement sent fire through his side. He sucked a sharp breath through his teeth.
He took the phone, his vision blurring for a second before it cleared.
The screen showed a picture. It was a selfie, taken in what looked like a bathroom mirror. The medic—Anya—was wearing a white tank top, pushed down. Her breasts were exposed, full and pale in the harsh fluorescent light. Her face was partly turned, her expression a calculated mix of shyness and invitation. The caption below read: Thinking of your hands. Hope the stitches are holding. x
Shouta stared at it. His sleep-slack face showed nothing. He blinked slowly.
“Jesus,” he muttered, his voice gravelly with sleep.
Izuku exploded into giggles, collapsing forward against Shouta’s chest, careful to avoid the bruises this time. “She sent you her tits! Before breakfast! That’s so… aggressive.” He gasped for air between laughs. “And the caption! ‘Thinking of your hands.’ Does she think you’re a surgeon? You punch people for a living!”
Shouta dropped the phone onto the rumpled sheets beside him. He rubbed his good eye with the heel of his palm. “She’s eager.”
“She’s a slut. A professional, medical slut.” Izuku tilted his head back, grinning up at him. His breath smelled of mint toothpaste. “Are you gonna text her back?”
“No.”
“Why not? They’re nice tits. For an older lady.”
“She’s twenty-eight, Izuku.”
“Ancient.” Izuku wriggled in his lap, getting comfortable. “So what, you’re just not gonna reply? That’s rude.”
Shouta’s hand, which had been resting on Izuku’s back, slid up to cup the nape of his neck. His thumb stroked the delicate hair there. “Rude is sending a picture of your cunt to a man who needed eleven stitches. This is just boring.”
Izuku’s giggles subsided into a soft, considering hum. He leaned into the touch on his neck, his eyes half-lidded. “You’re not even a little bit horny? Seeing that first thing?”
Shouta looked at him. At the genuinely curious, utterly amoral blue eyes. The boy had the same relationship to sexuality as he did to the gold-leaf ceiling—it was just another shiny thing in his world, a decoration. “I’m in pain. I’m tired. I’m hungry. My dick is currently the least demanding part of this equation.”
“Poor Daddy,” Izuku cooed, not sounding sorry at all. He pressed a soft, chaste kiss to the unbruised part of Shouta’s cheek. “I ordered breakfast. Pancakes with gold leaf. And a steak for you. Bloody. Like your face.”
“Charming.”
“It is!” Izuku finally climbed off him, springing up from the bed with effortless grace. He padded barefoot across the chilly marble floor toward the window, his sweater swallowing him whole. “The sun is all wrong here. It’s too yellow. It makes my hair look cheap.”
Shouta watched him. The way the light outlined his slight frame through the thin sweater. The way he tilted his head, critiquing the atmosphere like a tiny, spoiled emperor. The medicinal, desperate hunger from the phone felt a million miles away. It was lint. He picked up the device, thumbed to the message, and blocked the number. The action took two seconds. He felt nothing.
“Come shower,” he said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. The floor was cold under his feet.
“I already showered. You snored. It was like a truck dying.”
“Then come keep me company. I don’t like the shower head.”
Izuku spun around, a smile playing on his lips. “You just want me to look at you naked.”
“I want you to tell me which soap doesn’t smell like a French whore. And hand me towels. Your job is towels.”
“My job is design and cuddling. Towels is extra.” But he was already skipping back across the room, following Shouta into the vast, steam-clouded bathroom.
The bathroom was bigger than their first apartment. The shower was a glass cube in the center, with rainforest heads coming from the ceiling. Shouta stood under the punishingly hot spray, letting it beat against the tight muscles of his back and shoulders. The steam filled the room, fogging the mirrors.
Izuku sat on the closed lid of the toilet, knees drawn up to his chin, scrolling through his own phone. He’d pulled his hair up into a messy bun, exposing the slender line of his neck. “Ooh, the new Gucci collection is online. There’s a coat with foxes on the lining. Foxes! Can I get it?”
“You got a coat yesterday.”
“That was Milan. This is online. It’s different.”
“It’s not.”
“It is! It’s digital retail therapy. It’s for my mental health.” He looked up, his eyes scanning Shouta’s body through the foggy glass. The water sluiced over the dark tattoos, the valleys of muscle, the brutal landscape of fresh bruises. “Your side looks worse today. It’s all green. Like old cheese.”
“Thank you for that image.”
“You’re welcome. Does it hurt to pee?”
“What?”
“Internal bleeding. Yamada said to watch for blood in your urine. So, does it hurt to pee?”
Shouta turned his face into the spray. “No, Izuku. It doesn’t hurt to pee.”
“Good. Because that would be sad.” He went back to his phone. “Okay, I’m buying the coat. And the matching gloves. And maybe the fox-ear headband. For irony.”
Shouta didn’t answer. He was methodically working shampoo into his scalp, avoiding the sutures. The hot water was loosening the cement in his joints. He watched Izuku through the glass, a small, blurry figure in a world of soft edges. The boy’s existence was so simple. Want, acquire, admire, discard. There was no calculus to it, no consequence. Shouta had built this bubble for him, polished it to a high shine, and now he lived inside it too. Sometimes it felt like the only real room in the world.
Breakfast arrived on a rolling cart of polished silver. They ate on the terrace overlooking the canal, the morning noise of boat engines and distant shouts floating up to them. Izuku devoured his gold-leaf pancakes with a child’s single-minded pleasure, getting syrup on his chin. Shouta cut into the bloody steak, the metallic taste of the meat somehow aligning with the iron ache in his face.
“So what’s today?” Izuku asked around a mouthful. “A photoshoot? Physical therapy? A secret rendezvous with Titty-McMedic?”
“Gym. At ten. Yamada’s meeting me there.”
Izuku made a face. “The gym here is boring. All the machines are silver. And the men who go there smell like cologne, not sweat. It’s pathetic.”
“You don’t have to come.”
“But I want to. I need to sketch you. For the new trunks. The ones for the… who are you fighting next?”
“Haven’t decided.”
“Well, the trunks will be for whoever it is. They’ll have a phoenix on the left leg, I think. Rising from ashes. Or maybe a serpent. Something that means ‘I will destroy you’ but, like, fashionably.” He stabbed another piece of pancake. “Can we burn the lion today?”
“No.”
“You promised on the plane.”
“I said ‘we’ll see.’ Seeing has been done. The answer is no. We’re not pyromaniacs.”
“We could be. It’s a skill set.” He sighed, dramatic and world-weary. “Fine. Gym. But afterwards, we’re shopping. I need fabric. And you need that black cashmere coat. It’s non-negotiable.”
Shouta sipped his black coffee. The sun was warming the marble terrace. A pigeon landed on the railing, cooed stupidly, and flew off. “Okay.”
The hotel gym was, as Izuku predicted, sterile and smug. It was all mirrored walls, ambient electronica, and equipment that looked like modern art. A few lean, deeply tanned men in matching athleisure wear lifted negligible weights while staring at their own reflections.
Shouta ignored them. He stood in a corner near the heavy bags, dressed in simple gray sweats and a tank top. The sutures above his eye pulled when he moved his head. Yamada, his trainer, a compact, balding man with the energy of a startled hornet, was circling him.
“Rotation is still shit. You’re favoring the left side. It’s making you look stiff. Old.”
“I am stiff. And old,” Shouta said, staring at the bag as if it had insulted him.
“You’re thirty-two, not dead. Stop being a princess. Now