#rikiya: my brother is plotting against me!! i need a strong quirk; i need social capital; i need my dad on my side!!

[shih-coulda-had-it]

that dfohiko verse AU with toshinori and rikiya as test tube twins

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WC: ~1000. Fun detail that I didn't actually incorporate in the snippet but I feel compelled to tell you anyway: All for One named Rikiya ("power" + "to be"; riki + ya), and Sorahiko named Toshinori ("genius" + "law"; toshi + nori). This absolutely positively does not give the twins issues about which parent loves them more (big lie).

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(age seven)

“Who’s older?” Rikiya demanded, because he was canny enough to know that there was something to be held over his brother’s head if he could secure the status. 

“What does that matter?” their dad asked, levelly.

Toshinori had other concerns. Dinner, mostly, because their dad had cooked. He usually did when their father was out on business. “I told you they don’t know,” he told Rikiya, digging into his omurice with barely restrained glee. “We got dropped off by a big white bird, so they can’t tell.”

“That’s not what happened,” Rikiya said. “Garaki-hakase said--”

Their dad’s head tilted. “Said what?”

It was not like the doctor had told Rikiya to keep what he had said secret. And, anyway, Rikiya was pretty confident that everyone had to follow what his dad told them to. If not his dad, then definitely his father.

“He said that you and otou-sama ‘knew us from the beginning,’ and that he ‘was there to scream our lungs out for the first time,’” he recited. “But even Garaki-hakase wouldn’t tell me who was older! All he said was that you’d know.”

Their dad made a noise in the back of his throat, like a scoff. 

“I guess I could call you Riki-nii,” said Toshinori dubiously. “But Toshi-nii sounds just as good!”

Rikiya looked first at Toshinori’s guileless face, then at the spoon clutched tight in his hand. Before he could throw the spoon, their dad reached over and curled his fingers over Rikiya’s fist. Firm enough to prevent further movement, but not enough to hurt. It was warm.

“What does it matter?” their dad asked again.

“I wanna be older than Toshinori.”

“Because?”

He frowned down into his bowl. Saying what he really wanted out loud would alert Toshinori to what he was missing, and the last thing Rikiya could win at was a competition with his brother to get what he wanted. Toshinori always got what he asked for; Rikiya needed to take it.

“Because I want a younger brother,” he said.

“Can we have a younger brother?!” Toshinori interjected, and at his words, their dad twitched back. Rikiya’s hand felt cold without the restraint.

“No.”

Stated so plainly, flatly, forcefully--it was clear that their dad wasn’t even up to entertaining the idea of a third child, which Rikiya was fine with. But Toshinori didn’t get the message, because he only made an idle humming noise and then said, like it was a cunning loophole, “What about a younger sister?”

“No,” their dad repeated. “The two of you are enough. For us and for yourselves. You don’t need another sibling.”

“Okay,” said Rikiya, “but otou-sama talks about his younger brother all the time.”

“That’s his own deal.”

“Do we have to fight for it? Like, whoever wins is the older one?” It was surprising to hear the question not come out of his mouth, but his brother’s. That was a concern. Toshinori was getting the gist of what was going unspoken. Well, Rikiya thought blackly, it was only a matter of time.

“If I catch either of you starting a fight about who’s older,” their dad intoned, “I’ll end it. The two of you are twins. You’re equals.”

There wasn’t really anything to say back to that. Rikiya sulked into his dinner, and so did Toshinori, but it was definitely for different reasons.

(age eleven)

Toshinori knew Rikiya was glaring at the wall, picturing Toshinori’s neck, and he refused to quail. He got dared, so of course he would follow through. It was just… It was just a little daunting, to have the question put to him, to put to their dad, who wasn’t exactly the greatest at emoting soft feelings.

Still. Toshinori got dared, and so he would dare.

“Tou-san,” he says carefully. He is sprawled on his belly in bed, covers drawn up to his shoulders, sleeping cap wrestled over the ruffled mess of his hair. Half of Toshinori’s face is squished into his pillow, but even half is good enough to peer anxiously up to their dad’s face.

“Yeah?”

“You wanted the both of us, right?”

A strange expression crosses the usually grim countenance. Neither Toshinori nor Rikiya got the eyes of their parents. Toshinori sometimes wishes he looked a little more like Rikiya, who had the curve of their dad’s nose. Their father liked to tease Rikiya by tracing its bend and delighting in its prominent trait, and Rikiya pretended to hate the attention, but Rikiya once told Toshinori that it was definitely preferable to, you know, not having any defined features of their parents.

Probably the worst thing Rikiya’s ever called Toshinori was ‘donor-child’, but considering Toshinori came out of that fight on top, teeth bared and knuckles bruised, Toshinori’s inclined to leave the incident behind them. His father had been weirdly pleased, hauling him off his brother.

“You’re my child,” his father had said, before picking up Rikiya too. “And you are too, Riki. The things we pass on aren’t purely about appearances or meta abilities.”

Backlit by the hallway light, dressed down in casual clothes--their dad wasn’t a househusband the way their father teased him, but Toshinori noticed him wearing the trappings of normalcy for once, and some part of him had thought vulnerability. 

“... Yeah,” their dad says, gruffly. “The both of you.”

Toshinori quails first. He lets his eyes slide away, burning in shame, and clears his throat to say a quiet goodnight. Their dad inclines his head, the dusty gray of his hair catching yellow glares, and then he leaves, closing the door shut behind him. They wait in the dark for a long, long minute.

And, quietly, Rikiya says, “He hesitated.”

“He still said it,” says Toshinori, staring at that closed door. Something had gone through their dad’s face, and Rikiya had definitely had his back to them, so it’s up to Toshinori to decipher it. He doesn’t think it was a bad expression. Their dad loves quietly, that’s all. Toshinori shouldn’t have pushed the matter so clumsily into the open.

“He had to. He probably thinks we’ll run to otou-sama and get him in trouble.”

“Stop talking about the worst case scenario like it’s gonna happen,” Toshinori mutters, and he digs his nails into the pillow.

“It’s because you won’t that I have to,” Rikiya sniffs, and there’s a creak of the bedsprings. He’s curling tighter in his blankets, Toshinori would bet anything, because he’s doing the same thing.