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theonetheycallhannah · 4 years

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The Treatment of Captain Syverson-Chapter Five:Sensory Integration 1

Pairing: Captain “Sy” Syverson x OFC (Shane Benton)

Summary: A Friday full of teasing for Shane ends in a steak dinner with a blue-eyed beefcake. If you don’t finish this chapter hungry for one or the other, if not both, I haven’t done my job! Lol! (For inspo on Sy’s date outfit, think back to that one Men’s Health photoshoot Hen did and just imagine his hair shorter. That’s what I did. lol!)

Click me to catch up on the story and other stuff by Hannah!

Word Count: 4k (This date got away from me! Lol! And it’s only half over!)

Warnings: Mostly this is utter fluffy fluff, but I’m gonna put the following warnings on, anyway. Language, mature themes, alcohol consumption, borderline food worship (Shane may have a problem, I definitely do! Lol!) Also, pretty much every Sy fic I’ve read says that his given name is Logan, so...should his given name be used henceforth, that’s what I’m going with because it seems the most cannon and I like it and if it’s good enough for Wolverine...

Author’s Note: So, guys, this is crazy. First off, the reaction and love Sy and Shane’s story has been getting has taken me completely off guard and utterly made my day/week. (I’m serious. Every note makes my heart do a happy dance. A like, a reblog, a comment. It all means the world to me. Thank you for your feedback and for sharing this story.) Second, YOUR FEEDBACK MATTERS TO ME! Because initially, idk what I was thinking. I was going to skim over their first date and like…not write it…and I kept getting notes as I worked on further chapters to the tune of “can’t wait for this date!” and I thought…hmm…well, the date must be written! So, here it is, the first half-ish, of Shane and Sy’s first date. I hope it’s all you were expecting…or at least half of all you were expecting! Lol! More to come in part two of Sens Integ! (BTW, fun fact, these chapter titles are all named after treatments that therapists actually use on their patients sometimes! Lol!)

Disclaimer: Unfortunately for me, Henry is not mine, le sigh, and all mention of him, his characters, any characters from his films, or his precious doggy, Kal, are strictly for transformative and recreational use. I neither ask for, nor accept payment for the work I post on Tumblr or AO3. Unbeta’d because this is for fun and escapism.

Tags:

@onlyhenrys @cavillryarchive @summersong69 @titty-teetee @bloodyinspiredfuck @agniavateira @oddsnendsfanfics @omgkatinka@thisismysecretthirstblog

@misslaland @speakerforthedead0@tumblnewby @suavechops

Friday morning. She was up with the sun. And a bit before, really. Today was the day. Her first date with Sy. She’d taken extra care in the shower, less clumsy, thank God! She shaved her legs because she had chosen to wear a knee-length blue dress with a scoop neck and cap sleeves in wrinkle-proof Jersey knit since it would be in her tote bag all day. She was not shaving because she thought anything would happen tonight with Sy. She didn’t think she was ready.

That is, she was ready, but, only physically. Emotionally, mentally, she would need to prepare for him a bit longer before taking him as a lover. She hoped he was on the same page.

He had an appointment in the early afternoon. He greeted her with his warm “Hello, sunshine.” Following it up by telling her how pretty she looked today, causing blush to burn in her cheeks. She’d reciprocated, even though he was in his typical tee and shorts look. It was still true. They got on their usual bikes to warm up for about 15 minutes, and then took to the leg press to try to advance his strengthening.

“I’m really proud of your progress! You wouldn’t have been able to do this much weight two weeks ago!” She encouraged him.

“Yeah?”

“Absolutely. Now, we are going to do some drills next. Simple ones, but they aren’t going to be fun for you. I’ve chosen to do them on your last day of the week for a reason. You may be sore. Ice and whatever you take OTC if you must. Ibuprofen or acetaminophen. But try the ice first. It shouldn’t be too bad.”

“Okay.” He conceded, dejected.

“Stretching afterward.” She promised.

“Okay!” He pepped up. She knew he just loved an excuse to have her hands on him.

Later, as he lay on the mat, sweaty from the exertion of the drills, with her up there with him having to use her whole body to leverage the proper stretch out of his hip flexors, she felt the heavy weight of his gaze. She tried to look anywhere but those sapphire eyes below her. They were too vulnerable. She couldn’t handle that right now. Not here.

“Shane?” Dammit, he was gonna make her.

“Hmm?” She looked down at him, smile meeting smile.

“I just…” he couldn’t seem to get out the words. But she thought she understood what he was feeling.

“I know, Sy. I know.” She gently patted his outer thigh where she had been bracing her hand for the stretch, and let his leg back down, while dismounting the mat, as well.

“Well, that’s about the hour. Any questions before I let you go?”

“Are you as excited for tonight as I am?” He asked. She chuckled. She couldn’t imagine him being more excited than she was!

“Yes! Hehe! But I still kinda meant about therapy, Sy.”

“Oh, right. Are you excited to finish up with your therapy patients at therapy today so I can pick you up from the therapy clinic and take you on our date?”

“Just because you say therapy 20 times doesn’t make it about therapy.” She laughed.

“Okay, I do have a question for you, since I’m here.”

“Shoot.” She encouraged.

He stood and held her face, taking it into a kiss so devastatingly and painfully tender, she could not process what to do next. She was leaning toward fainting. But then tackling him onto the mat again seemed an attractive option. She settled for placing her hands on his waist, ready to control the situation as need arose. But after a brief moment of slight deepening, he broke away, still holding her face in his large strong hands.

“Ahem. That’s a good question. Why don’t I have you a reply later this evening?”

“Sounds good to me, sunshine.” He grinned widely, and waved a quiet goodby to her.

She walked to the doorway of the small room to watch him walk out…his gait still uneven from his injury but improving enough that she could tell he once took very…confident strides. She could almost picture it. She sighed, forgetting herself for a moment until Anita came up behind her walking her elderly patient with a gait belt and front wheeled walker.

"Is that a bit of drool on your chin, Shane?" she said quietly, but still startling the younger therapist from her reverie.

"Oh, uh, hey." she checked her chin, absentmindedly, late in getting the joke, and rolled her eyes. "Funny, Nita. Do you need anything?"

"Nope, Gladys and I are just headed to the gym for a few minutes on the NuStep to round out her treatment." Nita grinned at Shane.

"Who was that handsome young man that just left, Shane?" Gladys asked her, as women of her…demographic tended to do.

"He's just one of our patient's Miss Gladys. But I can't tell you his name. It's against the privacy policy." She explained.

"Oh, okay. Well, if I was a few years younger, I'd let ya give him MY name…and my telephone number." she smirked with pride in herself. All three ladies giggled.

"I'm pretty sure he's spoken for, Gladys." Anita broke the news to her randy patient, smirking at her coworker.

"Shame! Well, that's one lucky young lady!" Gladys hobbled on with the walker as Anita cued her not to let the device get too far ahead of her feet. Shane was beet red from the whole interaction. At least she wouldn't have to wear blush tonight.

Her day finally finished, notes done, and final communications sent, the most important (in her opinion, probably not her employer's) message of them all was next. The text to Sy that he could head toward the clinic to pick her up.

She touched up her eye makeup, applied another coat of mascara, and dabbed on some of her favorite lipstick in a deep red that complimented her skin tone. She also spritzed on a bit of her favorite Armani perfume before slipping on her dress and black ballet flats and sliding on a pair of simple hoop earrings. She'd had her hair pulled up all day in a clip, so it should be pleasantly wavy when she took it down…and with a bit of flipping, shaking out, and finger diffusing, it was.

She looked in the mirror. She was ready.

Was she ready? She examined herself in the full length mirror in the empty locker room at the clinic. The dress and the shoes suddenly seemed all wrong, both together and as individual pieces for the occasion. She looked great, it wasn't that…but…was it right for tonight? Should she cancel? Was she being ridiculous? Clearly she was, as she'd already sent the message telling Sy he could come get her. But the closer she got to being ready to go, the less ready she felt. Those butterflies were suddenly clawing at her esophagus, disrupting the bile in her stomach, and threatening to choke off her air supply. They were no longer pleasantly fluttering. She felt like she had a boot against her windpipe.

She was snapped out of the panic attack when she heard her phone go off. A message from Sy.

Your chariot, m'lady. Should I come in and get ya?

She grinned like a lunatic. How could she have considered calling tonight off?

Nay, m'lord, verily the gates be locked. I shall use the rear exit and meet thee around yonder forsooth.

Wow, you ran with that one. *laughing in tears emoji*

I have that tendency. Lol. *monocle wearing emoji*

She grabbed her bags, walked out the back door, and tossed the one that wasn't her purse into her vehicle, which was parked nearby and walked around to the front. He was standing on the sidewalk near that edge of the building.

The sun was just setting, and the light from it hit him so bewitchingly that it took away her breath. Not in the frightening way of the panic attack she'd just had, but in the nice way, like right before you surface from a deep dive and you know the sweet relief of oxygen is imminent. She assessed his ensemble with approval. Black books, sleek dark blue jeans, and a sapphire v-neck polo that even in the low light of near dusk made his blue eyes dance with vibrant intensity against his fading tan. His hair was starting to grow out ever so slightly, but it was still very close cropped. His beard, she could tell, had been finely groomed, combed, and styled. He looked…well, she'd never looked up the word "handsome" in the dictionary, but she imagined it would describe the image before her quite succinctly. And alternatively, Sy's image could be used as an illustration in the reference book, itself.

The best part, though, was the look on his face when he saw her.

She felt like he'd never properly looked at her, perhaps. Maybe he wasn't expecting a dress, or loose hair, or red lips. Or maybe it was a combo of the whole Date Shane package he was seeing before him. As his eyes beheld her, he almost looked confused. As if she was a stand-in. Or maybe an alien. Some body-snatcher. Only he wasn't frightened. She was having a hard time working out his expression as she'd really never seen it before, and particularly, never aimed in her direction. He said one word.

"Wow." It was reverent. Not a whisper. But barely a decibel above.

Again, her cheeks required no artificial pigmentation.

"Hey. You look…you certainly scrub up good, mister." she giggled nervously, feeling immensely awkward at her inability to properly compliment the chiseled image of Adonis before her. His every muscle hugged to perfection by the fabric covering it. How did you even begin to tell such perfection how perfect it was?

"You…Shane, I don't remember the last time I saw anyone look so beautiful." he frowned, as if trying to recall, then giving up with a smile, and leaning in to kiss her cheek. He lingered a moment to hug her, hold her as the day faded, breathe her in. She did the same. He was freshly showered and wearing cologne, as he often did, but it rarely hit her so solidly as it did tonight. She loved this scent. Woody, but earthy, with notes of bergamot, a kind of musky scent similar to amber, but more masculine, and something spicy that she loved. The combination exploded like an olfactory fireworks display.

The shirt was an unthinkably soft cotton (blended she thought perhaps with kitten, she could not stop touching it.) and the warmth of him radiated into her as his chest rose and fell over the course of his numerous breaths as they stood there holding each other and enjoying this feast for the senses.

"You ready for supper?" he asked, a faint but distinct rumble from his abdomen indicating that he most certainly was.

"Yes." she smiled up at him as he took her hand in his and led her to his truck. A Ford F150, the same sapphire blue as his shirt and his eyes. She was sensing a pattern, here. It wasn't the newest vehicle, but he had taken immaculate care of it. She felt shame for her own treatment of her Explorer, Bessie, which often functioned as storage shed, trash can, and sometimes, hotel, when she felt like a road trip on a shoestring budget. He walked her to the passenger side, opened the door for her, and helped her in, as the truck sat a bit higher than what she was used to.

"So, I have us a table saved at this great steakhouse just down the road. And then, it's supposed to be a nice night, I thought we could take a walk by the lake?"

It sounded perfect to her. Quiet and simple.

"Amazing. As long as your knee is up for a walk?"

"I've got all weekend to rest before getting tortured again." he smirked at her as he pulled the truck out of the parking lot and on the main road toward the interstate. "B'sides, who better to have with me if I start hurtin' than my PT?"

The emphasis he placed on the possessive pronoun, claiming her as HIS PT sent a delighted shiver through her that she blamed on the AC, which he promptly turned down.

He had his Spotify shuffling Kings of Leon at a low volume as they conversed lightly and pleasantly. Since it was an earlier model, even well equipped as it was, it wasn't quite ready for auxiliary or Bluetooth sound, so he'd bought one of those radio receivers that tune into an unused frequency and connect to your phone or iPod. She'd retrofitted her 2003 Ford Explorer in a similar fashion.

They were both caught a bit off guard when "Sex on Fire" came on, and tried valiantly to keep talking. But it was hard to hear anything but those lyrics. Singing of exhibitionism and dangerous sex acts that were definitely moving violations…and simply the sex being on fire. She was thankful, for once, that this song that she'd always found catchy without paying much attention to the actual lyrics, was now fading into the night as they pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant.

She remembered to wait for him to get the door for her, even though it had been ages since she'd been on a date or had any kind of romance whatsoever. He helped her down from her perch, giving her a gentlemanly moment to adjust her skirt before taking her hand and leading her into the building.

He opened the door and led her in by that lumbar lordosis that made everyone tremble and swoon. She was no exception just because she knew that part of your back was not actually called "the small" and she got perturbed when she heard it referred to as such.

"Welcome to Mark's, how can we help you?" the host greeted warmly.

"Reservation for Syverson." Sy piped up. She was used to being the voice in these situations. She was thankful not to have to for once. It was a small thing, but it was still nice.

"Right this way, folks." he grabbed two large menus, a mid sized one, and a small one, and led them to a cozy but still spacious two-top in a quiet corner of the dining area. The warm light was low and ambient, and there were real kerosene lamps on the tables, which she loved. It had the rustic ambiance of a cabin with all the refinement of any four+ star restaurant she'd ever been to. Not that she'd been to many.

"Here you are, the table you requested, and your menus. Have a look at them, and Katie will be out soon to answer questions and take your orders."

As he walked away, Sy pulled her chair out for her, and aided her sitting. His gentility was so refreshing to her, because it was so sincere and kind, and in no way oppressive or domineering, as some men seemed to use such gestures. Wielding them like a club rather than a feather. She was just used to seeing a certain side of him, teasing and silly as he was in therapy that this side of Captain Syverson, or as she may end up calling him one day, Logan, his given first name, if it pleased him, had taken her off guard.

"Nice place." she approved, looking around at he exposed beams of the ceiling and the iron and copper chandeliers and light fixtures on the wall. She also noticed quite curiously a copy of American Gothic by Grant Wood on one wall and The Kiss by Gustav Klimt on another. Such different styles to be displayed in one room. She really liked it though.

"It's one of my favorites. I try to come in every couple weeks or so." The fact that he liked steak on the regular was definitely a point in his favor. She loved it but rarely went out for it on her own. Eating out alone wasn't so bad, but it was hard to enjoy a steak dinner by one's self.

"What's your favorite cut?"

"Oh, I've tried most of them, and you can't go wrong." He assured her.

They had a crazy selection. Ribeyes, filets, sirloins, prime rib, all seasoned, smoked, topped and wrapped in every way you could imagine…it was like staring at the Netflix menu of steak. And much like she tended to do with Netflix, she relied on a classic favorite. After all, who goes for an obscure choice their first time at a new steak house?

"I'm keeping it simple and going for their prime rib and a baked potato."

"Ah, that's a perfect choice. We're getting some of their lobster mac and cheese to start, though. Unless you're allergic or something?" he added the disclaimer when he saw her eyes widen.

"Not at all, that sounds…"she was thinking "sexual," but decided instead on "heavenly."

Soon, Katie, a peppy, slender young redhead in black jeans she'd been poured into and a white T-shirt she had outgrown some time ago, descended upon their table with gusto.

"Howdy, I'm Katie and I get to take care of you fine folks this evening. What drinks and appetizers can I start y'all off with?"

Sy looked at Shane to prompt her to start.

"Sweet tea?" she half stated, half inquired. Katie nodded and jotted.

"Sure thing! Sir?" she thought her eyes sparkled when she looked at Sy…she couldn't blame her. But…she thought she could take her if she tried anything. She was certain there was a very sharp knife in the black napkin set-up at her right hand.

"Same for me, Katie. And we are also gonna need an order of your lobster mac to start and a bottle of your house cab."

"Fantastic. I'll be right back with the teas and wine after I put in for the lobster mac for ya, and then I'll take your meal order." she smiled brightly. Sy looked at Shane, though, as he replied "Wonderful."

~~~~~~~

Her instincts about the lobster mac and cheese had been spot on. She couldn’t contain her yummy noises of enjoyment which amused Sy to no end. She couldn’t imagine the steak any better.

About that, she had been completely wrong. It was so succulent, tender, and flavorful, she debated on whether or not the provided au jus and horseradish were even needed. They were also too good to resist, though.

Her potato, twice baked to the perfect tenderness had a salt brined skin, and a garlicky butter that just sung with the sour cream and chives. She was in food heaven, and even if that meant she was dead, it was fine.

He’d ordered the same entrée as she had, but took his baked potato…a bit differently.

“You don’t like sour cream?” She asked, nonplussed.

“Nah, I mean, I can eat it, but…it feels weird in my mouth. I prefer the au jus and butter, instead. It’s much more tasty.” He said, waggling his eyebrows.

“I guess I’ll take your word for it.” She laughed.

“You’re welcome to try mine when I get it all doctored you how I like it!”

She did, right from his fork. And he was right about it being so flavorful, but she preferred the mild, creamier texture of her own side with the savory notes of her steak.

They ate and enjoyed each other’s company and conversation.

“Ya know, Sy, I totally had you pegged as a beer man, instead of a wine guy.” She said, as she brought her own glass of the deep red liquid to her mouth and nose, inhaling the bouquet before she took her sip.

“Normally, you’d be right. With a burger, pizza, sometimes tacos or what not, definitely. But I can’t do beer with steak. It’s gotta be wine. Red. And full-bodied.” He held her gaze as he drank from his own glass. Why did he have to look at her like that when he said those kinds of words? Her cheeks were warm from more than the booze.

For desert, they shared a decadent marbled brownie/blondie a la mode. He’d had the idea to slide his chair so he was sharing a corner of the table with her, rather than looking across it at her. Purely so they didn’t have to keep sliding the dessert…not so their knees would brush against one another now and then, or so they could feel the heat radiating from one another’s bodies…but actually, exactly for those reasons.

“Last bite is to you, Sy.” She set her fork down, full to bursting.

“Are you kiddin’? My mama’d tan my hide if she knew I took the last bite from my date.”

“You’re being gallant, actually! Rescuing me from a certain belly ache.” She patted her small but slightly rounded tummy. She did like her food, and was no gym rat, after all. He didn't seemed to mind. Yet.

“How 'bout we share the last bite?” He suggested.

“Technically that’s not physically possible. Becau…”

He interrupted what was going to be an intellectual explanation of why no matter how small you cut up a bite, the remaining bit was still technically one bite, and couldn’t be shared.

“No. Shh. I know you’re smart. You got nothin’ to prove here. I’m gonna cut what’s left in half until I get a bite you’re willing to take. Okay?” She nodded.

He only had to take the fork to it twice before she conceded, also letting him feed her, feigning paralysis from the food coma. She held the fork tightly between her lips, making him work to pull it from her mouth. She looked innocent, but she was an intentional little shit.

“You're so cute when you eat.”

“Said no one ever!” She held her hand over her face.

“You are, though. You enjoy the food. Experience it. It’s like you’re…getting a story from it, or something. Like it’s…almost like it’s entertaining you, I don’t know. It’s just…beautiful.” He leaned his elbow onto the table, supporting his head in his hand as he looked at her.

"Well, sometimes I think I like food a little TOO much for my own good." she lamented, reaching for the cabernet only to have it snatched by her date. He uncorked it and dispensed a generous pour for her, and topped off his own glass, killing the bottle.

"No such thing. Like I said about the wine, full bodied is the way to go. Nothin' wrong with a little cushion." he winked at her. She could not resist finishing a rhyme she'd always heard about the desirability of curvy girls…for the pushin,' and hoped the flush in her cheeks from the wine was enough to disguise the deepening color from the current blush she was feeling thinking of Sy…pushin' her cushions…but something tipped him off to her distraction.

"What's on yer mind, sunshine?"

"I'm wondering if you're prepared to carry me on this walk we're planning, actually." It was possible to think more than one thing, after all. "I don't know how I'll ever even walk again."

"Ah, give it fifteen minutes. Finish up your sweet tea, and by the time we're done with our walk, you'll want an ice cream cone."

"Ha, doubtful." But she was ashamed to admit, ice cream already didn't sound bad. Vanilla…maybe pistachio….no, coffee! In a waffle cone…with fudge drizzle…and almonds…maybe she had a problem.

"You ready to go?" he asked.

She nodded. He flagged down Katie and gave her cash, and what one might call a benevolent tip. They left the warm steakhouse, and entered the breezy late summer evening, the humid air seeming thick with promises.

Up Next: Chapter Six-Sensory Integration 2

#netflix sand castle #sand castle #captain syverson #captain syverson fanfic #captain syverson x ofc #henry cavill #henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill x ofc

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ccyans · 6 years

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Six scenes in the life of Todoroki Rei

Rei is nineteen years old the first time she meets Todoroki Enji.

The weekend prior her mother had called to inform Rei of the possible matchup. At nineteen Rei is studying for her degree in associates nursing in Tokyo. Marriage is, if not the last thing on her mind, then nothing more than a nebulous idea at the fringe of Rei’s priority list. Her mother got married when she was Rei’s age, she knows, but despite their tendency towards tradition, neither of Rei’s parents have ever attempted to push that particular rite onto their children.

The offer is a good one though. That’s why Rei’s mother called.

The Todoroki name is old money, well respected; Todoroki Enji is only one year older than Rei but already an up and coming acclaimed hero. He wants the arranged marriage because of Rei’s quirk, which is not terribly surprising, considering Rei can’t think of any other trait of hers which would have caught his attention. The Yukimura name was held with the same prestige as Todoroki once, but these days Rei’s family is content with their little holdings in agriculture and land ownership.

Rei dwaddles over it for two days and an endocrine unit test. In the end though, well, it’s a good offer. It’s not as if she’s going in to sign an actual contract either, just a first meeting, and truthfully, Rei hasn’t been on a date in months. “Besides,” Himari from ethics class informs her, helping tie the numerous, delicate layers of Rei’s best kimono. “There’ll be free food,”

This is how Rei ends up under the roof of some beautiful, expensive tea house on her next weekend off, dressed from neck to wrist in silk and trying not to think about any errors in her makeup. It is a clear summer day and the heat would be stifling had Rei not been regulating her internal body temperature. Sunlight slants through open rice paper doors. They lead to a meticulous garden: lush greenery, golden koi in a clear pond, the sound of birdsong and the gentle click of a bamboo fountain.

Rei lives in a sharehouse with three roommates and a dog. This is way beyond her price range despite her intimacy with tea ceremonies and all the proper manners considering. She sits very still on the tatami mats through a combination of habit and nerves, even though there’s no one but her and a tray of perfect, bite sized tea cakes. She hadn’t eaten breakfast this morning. She wonders how rude it would come off to Todoroki-san if she ate the tea cakes beforehand.

… Probably very.

Rei waits.

When he finally arrives, Todoroki Enji is five minutes early and smoking slightly.

Rice paper doors slide open with a quiet shhke . Shoes on the tatami. Todoroki Enji is a tall, broad man, a trait more noticeable in person than on tevevision, with wild red hair and a sharp straight nose and two lightning blue eyes. He’s handsome, certainly, without the fire from his quirk obscuring his face. And dressed expensively too, in a sharp western style suit that strains across his shoulders. His eyes are bright like festival lanterns.

“Yukimura.” his voice rumbles, clipped and short as he takes a seat. “My apologies. There was an…incident across town.”

Hero work.

“I understand,” says Rei, polite.

This close, she can feel the heat radiating off him.

He smells a little of smoke, a little of concrete dust. In the room his presence is like a gravitational sink, pulling smaller objects inwards, and it would be hard to look away even if she tries, which Rei does not. She feels very small next to him, suddenly. Here, in the beautiful, expensive tea room with its beautiful, expensive decorations, and Todoroki Enji, who is intensely handsome, objectively intimidating, and who, Rei realizes, in a derailment of previous thoughts, is also wearing a fireball print tie.

She blinks twice. Still fireballs.

That’s…

“Ah.” Todoroki-san follows the staring down. “My original got put through a window, so this was backup,” he admits.

…Unexpected.

Unbidden, Rei can feel her lips curve into a smile. Todoroki Enji wears fireball print ties; she thinks she’ll tell Himari that, when she gets back.

“I’m sorry Todoroki-san. It… just doesn’t particularly fit your image so.”

“My image.”

”… Yes.“

Outside, the bamboo fountain clinks gently against stone. He stares at her, expression unreadable. Rei fights the urge to look down.

There’s a stretching silence.

Sunlight. Cicidas. Rushing water. Riveting.

Rei counts to twelve, and then can’t take the awkwardness of it any longer, so in the end it’s her who hesitantly picks back up the thread of conversation. “Would you like me to pour?” she asks, gesturing at the pristine tea set.

“Please,” says Todoroki Enji-san..

Alright then.

The ritual of it settles Rei’s nerves, sends her into quiet concentration, more muscle memory than thought. The whisking of the matcha, the steady tilt of Rei’s wrist as she pours. Her brothers used to joke and call her Yuki-onna, when she served them in practice, with her white hair and white skin and unearthly grace. Rei’s kimono sleeves do not drag. Her posture is perfectly level. Her breath comes out in a stream of frost.

The bowl clicks, precise but gentle, on the cherry wood table. Rei gives a slight bow.

They drink the tea. They eat the little, perfect almond teacakes, and the beautifully wrapped Sakura-mochi, bitter mixing sweet. There is no attempt at conversation; there is ceremony in this. Only when dregs of tea remain in their mugs and the empty sweets tray has been tucked away does Todoroki Enji-san say, "You are very excellent.”

Her father taught Rei’s brothers to meditate. Her mother gave Rei tea and embroidery. “Thank you,” she says.

And then once again the conversation stalls.

“You are… studying?” Todoroki Enji-san tries, finally.

The abrupt landing of the ball in Rei’s court startles her. She collects herself, and then smiles. “Yes. In nursing. I’m hoping to get an Associate’s degree and gain some experience before going back to school to become a fully registered nurse.” She pauses, expectant. Todoroki Enji-san does not follow up in that line of questioning, though, so Rei detours. “Is your hero work going well?”

“Yes.”

“The… incident earlier. Was it resolved successfully?”

“Quite.”

More one-word answers.

Todoroki Enji, Rei realizes, another five shortly burned conversation attempts later, has about the tact of a brick and the brusqueness of a charging bull, and put together his social graces are semi-nonexistent. He is looking at her very intently across the table as if in hopes that Rei can sustain this entire conversation by herself, which Rei cannot. Rei is rapidly running out of topics to start on.

Rei asks him about his thoughts on the tea-cakes, gets another one-liner, and then kind of despairs. “The flowers are lovely,” she says desperately, glancing towards the garden. “Don’t you think?” Immediately afterwards she wants to snatch the words back, because if Todoroki-san can’t manage a paragraph on his actual job it is unlikely flowers will capture his interest in any way. Next she’ll be talking about the weather. Himari is definitely going to be laughing at her, once the situation has been conveyed, but before that Rei thinks she’ll get at least some condolences, considering.

He surprises her, though.

He clears his throat, awkwardly, and then asks. “Would you like to see them?”

Rei blinks twice.

“That. That would be lovely, thank you.”

He allows her to rise first. Rei is conscious to make it as graceful as possible, and then takes little pigeon toed steps towards the garden, which in three-inch geta shoes are about the only steps she can take. She and Todoroki-san sit side by side on the bench next to the koi pond. It’s hotter here, in the direct sunlight. Steam curls off of Rei’s neck, instant sublimation. She dips her hand into the cool green water of the pond, its surface reflecting bits of sun and sky but mainly just the water plants underneath, the jewel toned flicker of swimming koi. They dart up to Rei’s hand, curious. She should have saved a tea cake for them.

After a minute of quiet sitting, Todoroki-san says, “Which flowers.” and then pauses. And then continues: “Do you like.” He seems… struggling.

Or embarrassed.

Rei stares at him through a white fringe and says, “Oh. Um. The lillies – the pink ones.”

She’s still staring at him when he snaps the stem off a lily, one in full bloom, pink and white petals unfurled and smelling so very sweet, and tucks it carefully behind her ear.

Rei touches the flower with the tips of her fingers.

“Oh,” she says, very softly.

And he’s looking at her, still. The expression on his face: struggling, embarrassed. He looks if he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, so Rei says, “thank you,” and she’s smiling now, she knows it, an almost giddy curve of her lips. He really is handsome. He would be even more so if he were to smile. “That’s – thank you.”

She hadn’t expected that. She hadn’t expected that at all.

Todoroki Enji looks enormously, enormously uncomfortable, but he still rallies himself up and says, “It’s a good colour. On you.” And immediately goes red in the face.

Rei watches the blush spread, high on his cheeks and to his ears, in a kind of owl-eyed fascination. He sounds as if he’s never done this before, complimented a woman, this too handsome man who doesn’t smile and whose face is plastered on billiards across the country and is one of the strongest heroes in the country, and Rei can’t help it – she laughs.

Rei is nineteen and she’s had exactly one boyfriend before, for a few short months before moving to Tokyo for college. She’s pretty sure Todoroki Enji has had exactly no significant others, period. She thinks this is what she’ll be telling Himari when she gets back: that her date has all the grace of a charging bull in a china shop, no tact, no ability for small talk, but he wears fireball print ties and tucks flowers behind her ear and can blush as red as his hair, and that he’ll be terribly, terribly handsome if she can get him to smile.

She agrees to a second meeting.

The first time he hits her she’s twenty five and there’s alcohol on his breath.

There are half downed bottles of vintage sake on the kitchen table. A chair lies smashed on the kitchen tiles. Rei never sees the backhand coming until she’s on the floor and the lights are wheeling stars above her. One moment they’re arguing. She hasn’t seen him in a week; he’s been home five days in the past month , she is saying, “your daughter’s three Enji she doesn’t recognize your face, ” and he’s pacing the length of the kitchen snarling: “ Rei be quiet, ” entire body coiled tense like a jungle cat’s, so Rei draws herself up and says, “ Todoroki Enji, ” sharp as a slap –

and loses –

Time.

The next thing Rei knows she is blinking black spots out of her peripherals, feeling something metallic bloom at the back of her throat. The lights of the kitchen hallo above her, bright white spots that mix with the October sun streaming through the window.

She makes a small, confused noise.

“Mama,” says a voice. So small. Her baby boy’s voice.

He’s tugging at her shirt, her Dabi, and he sounds – frightened. Why does he sound frightened. Rei doesn’t know. She tries to leverage herself up. It doesn’t work: her head is swimming circles and the right side of her face throbs, sharp and suddenly nauseatingly painful. Rei hisses between her teeth.

“Mama,” says Dabi. His eyes are wide, wide, wide, his father’s lightning eyes gone big and stricken, his mouth open into a tiny o.

Rei gets herself to her knees and –

Enji is standing above her.

He’s frozen to the spot, hand raised, eyes as wide as Dabi’s are. The glass bottle in his hand has shattered to the floor, weeping clear sake across blue tile. He’s still still still, all the kinetic motion in him stuttered, and the moment Rei realizes what had happened she thinks, you should be.

She’s never realized how much bigger he was over her. She’s realizing it now.

She doesn’t think she’s ever been afraid of him, not like this.

“Out ,” she says, and her jaw aches and her head is pounding and the fury in her is a rising tide, drowning out the minute panic. She points to the door. “Out.”

He leaves.

Rei slumps back to the floor. Ow.

She pulls Dabi close, because he’s hovering, biting his lip – it’s bad habit he got from her – and then proceeds to ice over the entire right side of her face. The cold soothes it. Then she goes probing around the back of her head, trying to find bumps although hoping there isn’t any.

No luck.

“Sweetie,” sighs Rei, inspecting herself in the bathroom mirror. Dabi, the little one, is still glued to one pant leg. She glances down. “Sweetie, can you get mama her phone? And your sister. And maybe your father, but only if he’s already dunked himself sober and looks suitably ashamed.”

At the hospital they tell Rei her cheekbone has been fractured, the delicate arch. Hefty bruising. Swelling at the back of her head where she’d hit the floor. The nurses give her a IV of toradol that brings the pain down to a dull murmur, and then a man comes in, dressed in green scrubs and a white coat, who takes Rei’s face into his hands and presses two fingers to the corner of the purple bruising, and tells her, “Breathe in for me, Todoroki-san.” For a split second after Rei does pain sparks lightning down her jaw but then the cool takes over, and Rei breathes, in, and out, and when the man takes his hands away it’s as if the last few hours never passed at all.

The nurses give her water; they take away her unneeded IV. Twenty minutes later Enji comes in, the children at his heels.

“Mama!”

Dabi is through the doorway and at Rei’s bedside as quickly as he can manage with Fuyumi clutching at the helm of his shirt. There he hovers, awkwardly, looking desperate to climb onto the covers but unsure if he should. Rei makes the decision for him. She lifts him up, then Fuyumi, whose eyes are round as twin moons behind her chunky glasses, still in penguin print pajamas.

She curls into Rei’s lap, a hefty wait. The lisp in her voice trips her vowels.“Mama okay?” Rei strokes her hair.

“Just a little boo boo. The doctors did a good job – mama’s just fine.”

“Sure?” mutters Dabi.

“Very sure.”

He looks at her, a little frown on his little face. He looks towards the door.

Which, inevitably, leads Rei’s attention back towards Enji.

He hasn’t changed, Enji. Same shirt as earlier, rumpled, same jacket thrown over one arm. He’s at the door. He hasn’t crossed the threshold. He looks – tired, brows drawn, mouth creased.

He has pink lilies tucked underneath one arm.

“Enji,” she says.

Fuyumi wriggles herself deeper into the blanket.

He takes the visitor’s chair, hard white plastic scraping across the linoleum tile. The flowers in hands still have dew gathered at their tips, their edges gilded in white, deepening to magenta at their centers, malachite stems wrapped in tissue paper.

For a moment there is nothing but silence. The clock in the corner, ticking.

Rei waits. She can wait.

“It.” He pauses. His fingers crinkle the tissue paper.

“It won’t happen again,” he says. Hesitates. Barrels through. “That was not right of me. I. I apologize.” His mouth is one thin grim line. His knuckles are pale around the flowers. He hates apologizing, he does, he hates being wrong. It’s hard to get him to admit that he’s in the fault for anything with that stubborness in him, digging in ground like a planted mule. It has to be wrung out of him, usually, the apology. It’s being wrung out of him right now, the apology. But he’s saying it. And it’s him, wringing it out of himself, looking at the flowers crinkling in his hands, looking at Rei, mouth tight and white at the edges, as if he thinks she won’t accept it.

She feels tired all of a sudden, looking at him.

This is the third time he’s been denied the international conference in favour of All Might, despite being number two hero nationally for two years. It grates on him, she knows. He hates being second place near as much he hates apologizing. It makes him irate, snappish, makes him go for the alcohol. Sometimes it makes him forget his own strength. His hero work is all consuming, she knows, in the ways that matter.

He apologized. He brought her pink lily flowers.

He’s Todoroki Enji, who wears fire ball print ties and tucks lillies into Rei’s hair and has a laugh like thunder rumbling. Todoroki Enji, who blushes red as his hair and who is so, so handsome when he smiles, ever briefly.

“Alright,” says Rei. Quietly. It’s that kind of moment, him and her and this foreign white walled hospital room with the children pressed close to her side. She strokes Fuyumi’s hair, once, twice. “Alright, Enji, but no alcohol.”

She takes the flowers. They smell of sugar and syrup and cold spring mornings. The dew drips sweetly onto her palm.

Rei breathes in. It’s a one time thing.

It won’t happen again.

This is a slippery slope.

It gets better, at first. He is home more often and reels his anger in more consciously and spends time with the children, so that eventually Fuyumi stops shying behind Rei’s legs or her older brother’s back every time Enji is within sightline. He is not good with them in the same way he is not good with small talk and social cues; too brisque for it, too blunt, too unused to their habits and neediness and babblbng toddler talk. But he reads the newspaper to them, sometimes, and carts Dabi around on his shoulders, sometimes, and looks at Fuyumi like he’s not at all sure what to do with her but is baffledly enamoured all the same. His focus is like a laser beam, one direction only, and it gets better, yes, but in the long term of Todorki Enji, it seems, All Might is north and Endeavor nothing but a magnet straining in a compass.

It gets better until it doesn’t.

He misses Natsuo’s birth. He’s somewhere in the west end of Japan helping with a terrorist attack. He misses the week when Fuyumi is so ill with some sudden virus she can barely stomach water, when the hospital hooks her up to a dozen softly beeping machines while Rei waits and waits, a baby hooked to a sling in her chest, her hands in her face, breathing haggard, quiet breaths into her hands. They move from Tokyo to Musutafu, where Eastern Japan’s primary hero headquarters is located, and Rei hopes that that – this’ll help. This extra time. This closeness to his work.

It doesn’t help.

All Might wins the National Enforcer’s Peace Prize; he stands as number 1 hero for the fourth year in a row. These days his name is becoming a symbol, a rallying cry, the herald of a golden age after a century of turmoil and reform. It should be a good thing, this sudden peace, but with every progressive achievement All Might makes Enji grows progressively more irate, more distant, more focused on capture rates, trying to surpass him through sheer grim willpower, and he hates being second place, Rei knows, and he hates being lessar, Rei knows, but that is not an excuse .

“ You have a family, Enji,” she snaps, one early morning before the children are due for school, and his tone when he says, “ Rei, ” is nothing short of a thunder warning. She stares at his back as he leaves in costume. She stares.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

She grips her arms, tightly.

He sweeps into the house like hurricane weather, all tension and billowing winds that slam the windows, flutter the curtains, footsteps harsh across the tatami. The children hide from him, these days. The strain in him is palpable, and they can feel it, and Rei can feel it too. When he looks at the children its as if he’s looking through them, when he looks at Rei it’s as if he’s looking through her, beyond her, past the rice paper walls of the house and beyond the walls of the manor, towards some distant endpoint she cannot see.

It frightens her, a shiver like a premonition.

Rei pleads. Rei begs, “Enji, please , Enji, this isn’t like you.”

And sometimes on good days they will eat dinner together and he will pass the soup and return with little trinkets from the corners of Japan – an origami flower here and a cookbook there and a box of jelly sweets for the children – and in the after hours of those days, the good ones, when Rei is tucking the children in for sleep, in the comforting quietus of evening with moonlight slanting silver across white-red hair and flowered futons, it will feel as if the storm warning was nothing but that; a warning, a phase, now dissipating to memory.

On the bad days he snaps at every little thing: All Might, most prevalently, and current political events, but also the alterations to his costume, and the children, and the food, and the dishes, every little particular thing and Rei isn’t even in charge of the dishes, that’s the housekeeper’s job. On bad days no matter how much Rei holds herself so very still, tries to soothe, tries to reason, tries to get him to listen, he doesn’t. “Enji, please, ” she says, and he whirls on her to seethe, “ Shut up Rei, ” a hiss between his teeth.

She watches him go. The turn of his back, as he leaves, familiar now. The sound of the training room doors slamming shut; a gong clap.

Her nails leave crescents in the meat of her palm.

Breathe in, breathe out.

This is the slippery slope:

Some days are good days and he is Todoroki Enji who has a laugh like thunder, who wears fireball print ties and tucks flowers into Rei’s hair. Some days are good days and the storm is like a faded memory. On those days she can kiss the children good night and think to herself, it’ll be better, he’ll be better now. And Rei wants it to be, in retrospect. Rei wants terribly for the Todoroki Enji who slams training doors and stares through the children and snaps at every little particular thing, who she does not recognize, to become nothing but smoke and transparent ash to be swept away.

But some days are not good days. And then most days are not good days, a balance tipping. Through it Rei tucks the children to bed, and stares at Enji’s leaving back, and pleads, and begs, and then she is twenty seven years old and she doesn’t know how she gets there, she doesn’t – but one day she is twenty seven years old and putting herself bodily between her husband and her tiny son, saying, “Enji he is seven, this is unacceptable. ” But he doesn’t listen. He hasn’t listened to her in a long, long time.

His eyes are lightning, his voice a rumble. There were warnings; how did Rei not see this coming. “ This is not a negotiation ,” he says, lowly.

He’s bigger than her. He’s always been bigger than her.

The blow is so easy to catch sight of, this time.

She doesn’t budge, digs her heels in. It takes her across the shoulder and sends her sprawling, elbows cracking against the tatami, her back hitting the wall with an ugly smack. Her vision swims, briefly. “Mama!” cries Dabi, and then none of the pain matters, not at all, because Enji seizes her baby boy by the arm and wrenches him towards the training rooms.

The door slams shut.

She is twenty eight years old and dabbing bruise balm onto her eldest’s back. The purple spreads from his shoulder down, dark, ugly splotches against his pale skin. He is curled up in her lap like a pill bug, chin on his knees, arms wrapped around his shins. The balm smells sharply of thyme and something else herbally pungent.

It is a good balm. Expensive. Quirk-made, to help coax healing. Underneath Rei’s fingers the bruises fade, blood vessels mending and the blood itself being reabsorbed.

It must hurt. She’s being as gentle as she can but it must. He doesn’t make any noise though, her Dabi, just goes very still and very quiet. He didn’t used to. At the beginning of these sessions he used to bury his face into her shirt and cry silent, ugly tears into stomach while Rei held him so very close and bit her lip until it bled. She’d scream herself hoarse at Enji’s door, afterwards. He doesn’t cry anymore though.

She doesn’t scream anymore, either.

She takes out the burn cream next. The jar is half full. They will need another one soon. This one smells of rosemary and honey, glittering avocado green – it’s too sweet for what it represents. Dabi rubs it over the back of his hands and over his shins, on top of the slightly pink, raised patches of skin. Rei slathers it across his shoulders and the back of his neck where he can’t reach. Bandages next, to keep the salve intact. They’ll take it off in two hours and wash the salve off and the burns will be gone.

Tie them, tight but not too tight. The white on the pink on the mottled purple.

Breathe in. Rei’s hands do not shake.

It is a clear July morning. Outside the sky is clear as anything; the sun streams through Rei’s kitchen window in a tessellation of light that spreads geometric shapes onto tile. Natsuo and Fuyumi would be playing by the koi pond, Rei knows, supervised by the maid. There is the distant sound of birdsong. The pale rumble of traffic on the road. On her kitchen floor Rei sits with two emptying jars of salve and a worn first aid kit, a bottle of antiseptic. The air smells equally of thyme as it does rosemary, honey, and sharp disinfectant.

It’s cloying, the smell. Too much, too pungent. She’ll need to open the windows. Dabi screws back the lid of the burn salve and lobs it into the first aid pack. Rei puts away the bandages and scissors. She closes her eyes and hears the birdsong.

Rei breathes.

It is a clear July morning and –

The air smells of honey and rosemary and thyme and hospital and –

Her son is putting a fresh shirt over half-faded bruises and –

Rei wraps her arms around Dabi’s shoulders, puts her face into the junction of her neck. He smells of honey and rosemary and thyme and burning things, the ozone. Rei breathes through it. She has to. She breathes and breaths until it feels as if she can’t, until her lungs are vacuums and this is room is a vacuum and she is going to choke, on the honey and rosemary and thyme, she is going to choke on this feeling trying to crawl its way up her throat and peel her open like a ripe fruit.

Dabi says, “Mom?” He is eight years old and hasn’t called her mama in months.

Rei breathes. It comes out shuddering, it comes out frost, a plume.

Rei has to breathe. She has to.

“I’m so sorry,” her voice shivers. “I’m so, so sorry.”

His cheek catches against her lashes, the white parted. His elbow sticks into her ribs – he needs to eat more. He’s too bony for his age. His mouth is turned down, when he twists to face her, a tiny scowl. Enji’s expression placed over Rei’s sharply delicate bone structure. “T’s not your fault.”

But it is. But it is. But he wasn’t made for this. But none of them were made for this. There’s too much of Rei’s ice in him, in his skin and insides that code ice instead of fire. The first few weeks after he was born they had to keep him in the hospital for temperature regulation, to make sure his quirk didn’t burn him out from the inside.

“It’s not ,” he insists. “C’mon, we can call the dumb old man shitty names, like – “

Rei holds him very very tightly, cuts off the syllable with a squeeze, and says nothing at all.

She breathes.

It passes, eventually. She is calm again, emptied out, her insides still. She puts the first aid kit away. There are still house chores and other tasks to be done. From the garden pond: Fuyumi laughing, clear as a bell.

The children will want an afternoon snack. Rei checks the fridge.

“Anyway,” Dabi says, determinedly, “Shitty names. I’m thinking oven brain, cuz obviously something got cook – Mom, amitsu?”

“Did you learn “shitty” from the news channel?” Rei sighs

“…. no.”

He helps ladle out the jelly and the green tea ice-cream while Rei slices fruit. Peaches. Strawberries. She chills them, and then arranges them artfully in the bowls. Red bean paste. Syrup over top. It’s a mechanical act. She doesn’t think too much about it. She doesn’t think too much about anything. Her breathing evens.

She sends the maid inside to do the dishes and hands out the amitsu bowls to the children and they eat on the bench by the koi pond. Natsu is three, thusly still getting food everywhere, messily. Fuyumi eats only her jelly and picks at her ice-cream. It is clear and cool, the air lacking the muffled humidity of the past week, swept away from yesterday night’s thunderstorm. Water drips from bowed branches and onto wet grass. Wind whistles through the trees.

“Mama,” whispers Fuyumi. “When’s Father coming back?”

Rei’s spoon pauses mid-air.

Fuyumi has left her bowl on the bench. The silver spoon, clenched in her fingers. She is six years old and too observant for her age. Is it born or is it something trained, Rei wonders. She has all ice and no fire, and for that Rei is quietly relieved. Enji won’t want her – not like with Dabi. It is the same with Natsu, three years old and still oblivious to the tension in the house. Little ice flakes flutter from his little fingers.

It shouldn’t be a good thing, that Enji doesn’t want his children. It shouldn’t. But it means they’re safe, Rei’s youngest two. And then the baby –

Enji doesn’t even know yet, about the baby. Enji is at a conference in Osaka.

“Not until Monday, sweetheart,” says Rei.

She does not think about the baby.

The garden is stifling, all of a sudden. It feels laughable. Endless clear sky above and the rain still fresh and greenery all around in jeweled watercolour, and Rei, staring unseeingly at her melting ice cream and floating jelly cutes, needing to be out.

But to where.

They finish the amitsu. Rei cleans Natsu up, changes him. She prepares the vegetables for a curry, the mechanical motion of it returning her once again to equilibrium.

Onions. Carrots. Scallions.

Eventually, Rei finds herself staring into the fridge, trying to find potatoes that don’t exist.

It is a clear July morning and –

She closes the fridge. She presses her forehead to the cool metal.

Rei needs out. Rei needs out. But where would she even go. She doesn’t have any friends here, in Musutafu. She doesn’t. Rei has three children and she’s always been so busy and after the move there’d never been any time to get herself ingrained in the local community, or go out and make friends, and anyway Enji hadn’t liked Rei going out much anyway so she didn’t, she hadn’t, and now she doesn’t even know where the market is, the market, for potatoes .

She hasn’t called any of her Tokyo friends for years, time and distance severing that connection, and her family still doesn’t know about any of this because Rei hadn’t told them, had ignored all the warnings and said to hersel f it’ll be better, it’ll get better, like a mantra on repeat, but it hadn’t, and it was so shameful , and she would just pack her bags and leave with the children but she’d never gotten more than her associate’s degree, left gathering dust for a near decade now. Where would she get the money even, to take care of the children. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know how she got here but she can’t stay, not in this house where her oldest son comes out of the training room with burns on his arms and her tiny daughter tiptoes down tatami halls and this baby, this baby , what will happen to this baby, will Enji want –

She breathes in, a shuddering breath. The ice, shivering down her fingertips, films over the fridge wall.

It doesn’t matter, in the end.

He’s number two hero. He’s number two hero and he wants – the children – he wants Rei’s quirk, and she knew that, she knew that since she was nineteen years old and met him at the miai. But she didn’t marry him because he wanted her quirk. She married him because he was Todoroki Enji who wore fireball print ties and couldn’t hold a conversation on his life and tucked flowers behind her ear and held their children like they were something precious– but that Todoorki Enji isn’t here now, and Rei should have noticed the warnings. He’s number two hero and he won’t let them leave. She hates him, terribly. She hates herself, equally terribly. Because now it’s just Rei, trapped weeping in this tatami house with three children and a baby on the way and nowhere to run.

Rei cries until she hears the sound of the bath, draining, the distant patter of footsteps on the floor, incoming, and then she wipes the tears away in a trickle of ice tinkling, breathes until she feels still again, and goes to prepare the curry.

There are tasks to be done.

The baby comes one cold january morning. There are thus four children in the house and exactly zero sleep for Rei. The baby cries and cries and Rei rocks it and nurses it and hums it lullabies but unlike the first three times her nerves are completely shot and Shouto’s colic is utterly inconsolable. Shouto cries, and Rei cries with him, and Enji isn’t here at all which is – a good thing. Rei wakes up at three in the morning to the baby crying completely exhausted and terribly frazzled and without energy to do any emotional processing.

By six months his hair has come in – two tone. His eyes have lightened – two tone. One day Rei just looks at him, the red and the white, the grey and the lightning, and feels the potential of it knock the breath out of her.

Quirks don’t work like that, though. It can’t.

Enji can’t have another one of her sons.

It is June and she is thirty two years old when Shouto’s quirk manifests.

Spring has just given way to early summer showers. The storm outside batters the windows. It is four in the afternoon and Rei is making teriyaki for dinner, blinking back the ache in her jaw and the exhaustion migraine sitting at her temple, when Shouto skids into the kitchen in what should have been his nap time, blanket trailing.

There are tears in his eyes. Rei puts down her knife.

“Sweetheart?”

Lightning crackles, blue-lit, and even as Rei twitches Shouto barrels into her leg.

She scoops him up and puts them both in a chair. His fine hair brushes her cheek, little hands going around her neck to squeeze tightly. He was always so scared of storms.

“Did you have a nightmare, Shouto?”

“Mmm,” he murmurs.

“What was it about?”

His response is so mumbled Rei can barely hear it. She tucks him a little closer. “Hmm?”

“Dad,” he mutters. “ Fire .”

Rei closes her eyes.

She thinks all the children dream about Enji, one way or another. Rei does, certainly. The fire, and the lightning eyes. Back when in better days she used to dream about a meeting at a teahouse, the sun dappling Rei in light.

Nowadays, in the good dreams, Rei claws his eyes out.

“It’s okay,” she says. She rocks Shouto, and he grabs her tighter. “Its – “

The billowing thunder cuts her off, swallows her words. The lightning imprints white onto Rei’s shuttered eyelids. She opens them, again, when Shouto whimpers, and –

Feels herself go so, so cold.

The frost. Not Rei’s. The frost creeps up his right cheek, a tessellation. His left arm sparks a little row of flame.

He doesn’t even realize it, her Shouto. He doesn’t, and Rei stares, and knows the fear response must have been the trigger factor. What does the trigger matter, though. He has both quirks. He’s all that Enji ever wanted.

And there’s nothing she can do about it. He’ll take Shouto away, just like he did Rei’s eldest.

He’ll take Shouto away.

Oh no no no.

“Mama?” Shouto says, peeking up, then startling, looking down at himself, and Rei seizes him by the shoulders with the no echoing in her head. “Shouto. Shouto sweetheart,” she says, urgently, and Shouto’s eyes go wide and blinking. “Can you do mama a favour?” Rei can’t imagine how her expression right now, but it doesn’t matter, because Shouto nods, slowly, and Rei says, “Don’t tell Dad, okay? Don’t ever tell Dad.”

“Okay,” he whispers.

Her grip on him goes slack, fingers trembling. She buries her face into his hair.

Rei breathes.

Enji comes home later that night. They eat dinner, civilly. Rei had barely been able to finish the teriyaki with the revelation sitting heavy in her mind. He doesn’t like the sauce over top. The comment makes her twitch – more than she would usually. Enji doesn’t notice, which is good. Fuyumi does, though, Dabi too. They side eye her worriedly over the table.

It is a very quiet dinner. All family meals are.

Fuyumi, bless her, gives a retelling about her day at school. Natsu pipes up about winning a soccer game.

“Anything else?” says Enji. His gaze flickers to her.

Rei can look back, without the iminent breakdown. It’s getting harder, but she can. Sometimes she feels absolutely nothing at all for him – blank apathy to her core – sometimes the only thing that can encompass the entirety of her hatred is dissonant screaming.

This time there’s the dissonant screaming.

He knows.

He doesn’t. He can’t.

“No,” says Rei, evenly.

The dinner goes back to silence.

Enji finds out, eventually.

Four year olds are not very good at controlling their quirk, but Rei drags on the farce as long as she can. It helps that Enji pays so little attention to the children. Rei keeps Shouto out of sight as often as possible, watches him like a hawk when she can’t, and when Dabi and Fuyumi find out by virtue of proximity, they set up a rotating Russian roulette of Distracting Enji’s Attention. The secret is kept for months, but Enji finds out, eventually.

And Rei goes so very cold.

Enji shouts and Rei doesn’t say anything at all, just stares, blankly, at a wall. She walks out of that encounter with a fresh bruise on her arm that she doesn’t notice, goes into her room and pulls Shouto close. “Mama?” he whispers, tugs at her hair, eyes flared wide with worry, and Rei just breathes, and breathes. It feels like she is regurgitating all of herself with every exhale. Every bit of bone and blood and sinew. She doesn’t notice the tear tracks until they drip onto Shouto’s fine hair.

Enji takes him away, eventually. She thinks she screams. She doesn’t remember. When she blinks again the lamp is broken on the floor, the glass from the bulb scattered at Rei’s feet.

Rei loses time.

She sits in her room by the window. She remembers that. November rains sweet little snowflakes onto the dark bark of bared trees. The grey sky, the incoming snow. The brown leaf decaying.

Her Shouto. Crying. She soothes him. But Enji takes him away again and Enji keeps taking him away and Rei already lost one, her first born, her eldest son. She can’t lose another, she cannot but Enji keeps taking him a w a y

The days pass strangely.

She feels as if she is in a dream. It is November and the skies are grey and Fuyumi is saying: “Mom, please, you need to eat.” Her moon-wide eyes, her careful hands. A soup bowl is in Rei’s lap so Rei eats, and then it is December and the snow pats the window sills like powdered sugar and her Natsu is curled up in Rei’s arms so quietly, even though Natsu shouldn’t be quiet at all, and he asks her, “mom, Dabi says – mom you’re gonna be okay right?” so Rei hums his favourite lullaby. She watches as the skies clear to velvet stars and the snow crusts into ice and her children pass, and then one day, Dabi, entering the room, except the only thing Rei sees is the lightning in his eyes and the red of his hair and her next movement is just violent motion and – v

Fuyumi is saying: “Mom, MOM!” And she’s so afraid, why is she afraid – and of course it’s Enji it’s always Enji and –

She comes back to herself, eventually.

“Oh,” she says, one day, brushing Fuyumi’s hair, and then breaks down sobbing and then Fuyumi just looks at her, so still, until Rei moves to hug her close enough to crush ribs and gasp, “Sweetie, darling, Fuyumi-chan Fuyumi-chan ,” and then Fuyumi breaks down sobbing too and then Natsu, following. It’s such a mess. All of them forget about the salmon on the stove until it burns. The fire alarm and the acrid smoke sends Rei into breakdown all over again.

“I’m so sorry,” she gasps, into Fuyumi’s hair. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Rei breathes. She has to.

They clean up the salmon. Rei does the dishes while Fuyumi wipes Natsu’s nose. Afterwards they sit at the kitchen table and Rei, world refocused, puts her head into her hands.

“I’m going to. I’m going to try.” Rei says.

That was what the last few months weren’t. The last few months were Rei locking herself in and everything else out. She’s almost afraid of the look on Fuyumi’s face when she raises her head, but Rei’s daughter only goes very still, and says, “Okay. Okay,” in a tired, quaking voice.

They try.

All of them do. Rei and Fuyumi and Dabi and Natsu, and little Shouto, trying the hardest of all of them. The elder three of Rei’s children do their best to run interference in quiet, discreet, ways. They’re not allowed to spend time with Shouto, not anymore so Rei glues Shouto to her side as much as allowed. He cries as much as she cries, and Rei cries so frequently and so terribly hard, as if trying to make up for the past months in her trance where she felt nothing at all, as if she has lost all sway or reason over her emotions.

Rei soothes salves that smells of thyme over Shouto’s bruises and salves that smells of rosemary-honey over his burns. He’s four. He’s too young. She wants to scream this at Enji’s face. Rei could do that, once. These days everything louder than a whisper is locked in her throat.

She dreams of clawing Enji’s eyes out. She doesn’t sleep very much.

Rei tries.

It’s not enough.

One morning she is thirty-four years old and the scream from the training rooms is deafening. Rei registers first: scream, and then: Fuyumi , and she’s out of her room in half a second and a pounding heart. She passes by Enji just around a turn, the front door slamming shut behind him. He has a conference today, of course, she remembers. But if he’s gone why is Fuyumi –

And then Natsu starts screaming too.

Rei has her answer two steps into the training room that smells distinctly of burning and smoke, and he wasn’t made for this, her baby boy, her firstborn son, he has too much of Rei’s ice in him.

“Fuyumi.” She presses her hand to her temple. Breathes. “Fuyumi call the hospital.”

The salves aren’t going to do much.

In the ambulance the paramedic asks her exactly what happened. She stares at him mutely. What do you think happened. But before Rei can do or say anything at all Fuyumi takes over, “Oh, you know, nii-san’s quirk doesn’t really work well,” she tells the paramedic. “It’s the genetic mosaicism. Some of him isn’t entirely resistant to his fire quirk, but he’s been trying to train for U.A. entrance exams so…” and looks equal parts devastated but also abashed.

Which is true, on all parts, apart from where Dabi’s quirk “doesn’t work well” and the actual reason Rei’s eldest is stuck in an ambulance.

Rei puts her hands into her face.

They’ve all gotten so good at lying through their teeth. She wants to laugh, or maybe weep. It’s a trained obedience.

At the hospital they’re given a private room. Or, Dabi is. Rei plus the remaining children, all three, spill in.

The doctors tell her the burns are quite severe but treatable. He also has a broken wrist and a concussion, which was why he hadn’t woken up at all in the training room. The doctors tell her they have a doctor with a healing quirk that will come in immediately. They ask her about the wrist and the concussion, and once again Rei stares, and once again Fuyumi takes over and tells the doctor about the how the explosive force of her brother’s quirk probably knocked him into a wall, thus both wrist injury and concussion.

The medical staff can match it with Dabi’s records. It makes perfect sense.

The doctor with the healing quirk arrives four hours later, after Rei has soothed Shouto to a nap and Natsu has bounced his way around the room enough times to drive a person to dizziness and Rei is clutching at the bed sheets in white-knuckled anxiety. He makes a note on his medical chart. He asks her a few questions. His bedside manner is good but Rei is too distracted to pay it any attention. And then he puts his hands onto her son’s chest and the burns fade, and Rei breathes.

His face looks as if he is sleeping. The red hair, feathering over his brow. The cut of his cheeks are sharp as a ship’s prows. And when was the last time she hugged him. When was the last time she touched him.

Rei grips his hand tight.

He wakes up half an hour later, stirring groggily, and barely gets out half a discontented murmur before Fuyumi’s flinging herself onto him.

“You dimwit.” Her mouth’s scrunched wretchedly and she’s looking once again on the verge of tears, but this time they’re as furious as they are worried. “You – don’t provoke him. ” And then she’s burying her face into his shirt.

“Sis – “

“Nii-saaaan!” Natsu wails, and Dabi’s next word is shut off in favour of Natsu launching into his ribs.

Rei pulls him in by the bony shoulders and Shouto ends up squished between the four of them, and she cries, and Fuyumi cries, again, because that’s the only thing they seem to be doing lately, and her eldest says, “– mom?” all uncertain, and Rei cries harder.

How did Rei get here? How did Rei get here?

This hospital room with her eldest son under the sheets and her daughter so good at lying and Natsu wailing and, Shouto, poor sweet Shouto, and Rei, herself who flinches at every little thing and jumps at shadows, who chokes on the smells of thyme, and antiseptic. Rei, who cannot look her own son in the face without feeling heat skitter across her skin, the force of a blow across her cheekbone, who is so, so very terribly sad, to the point it freezes her. This Rei who holds her silences, and cries when the emotion in her chest threatens to choke her, who cannot fight back and is resigned to it, almost, to this fate.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, ” cries Rei, for not being braver, for not leaving when they should have, and her eldest looks at her with his red hair falling over his lightning eyes. He puts his head to her collarbone, featherlight, and she feels his shoulders heave with his shudder.

“It’s not your fault,” he says.

But it is.

If she had been braver. If they had left earlier. But she wasn’t. But they didn’t. And now they’re here, the five of them, her eldest in his white hospital gown, smelling like smoke and fire, the thyme and sharp hospital plastics, and oh, he wasn’t made for this. None of them were.

Rei breathes. She has to.

Eventually, Natsu tires himself out with the hysterics. He falls asleep right there, between Fuyumi and Dabi and the headboard. “Little icepop?” mutters Dabi, and Fuyumi grabs a pillow and whacks her brother on the head with it.

“You are such a jerk,” she tells him, and then beds down to Natsu’s left. Dabi makes a face; she wrinkles her nose at him.

A nurse enters briefly to tell Rei they’ll be keeping Dabi in observation a little longer. “Oh,” she says. The nurse makes a note. Rei watches her back, as she leaves, before Shouto’s wide yawn steals her attention. His lashes flutter, the dark and the pale. He curls up against Rei’s breast with a drowsy noise, and Rei hums him to sleep, and then tucks him next to Dabi’s side, where he drools all over his brother’s hospital gown.

“Mom?” murmurs Fuyumi, eyes shuttering too. Her moon-wide eyes behind her square glasses. Rei takes the glasses off, and folds them, and places them gently on the bedside table.

The sun that filters through the thin curtains dapples them in light. Rei just watches, breathes. It’s been so long since all four of them have been at her fingertips.

She brushes the hair from Dabi’s brow. She holds his hand, tight. “Shh,” she says to Natsu, when he stirs.

The hours tick by.

Eventually, Rei falls asleep in the hospital chair.

She does not dream.

AO3

#bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha fanfiction #todoroki rei #todoroki shouto #todoroki enji #todorki fuyumi #dabi #dabi is a todoroki theory #mentions of child abuse #domestic abuse

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justindavidcarl · 6 years

Text

You Must Do The Thing You Think You Cannot Do: A Ride Along Guide To Doing Hard Things That Will Change Your Life

"I can't do that. I'm not ready. That's not who I am."

Those were the first thoughts that entered my mind. Filled with fear of the unknown my mind tried to convince me to pass on the opportunity.

Without even giving it a chance, my mind said "No." Avoiding adversity & discomfort was its priority.

Fortunately, something in my heart was stirred. A sleeping giant began to awaken from the request.

The Back Story:

The Four Seasons Silicon Valley in Palo Alto reached out to me on Instagram. They were looking to partner with a local online influencer in the fitness/wellness space to spread awareness about the inaugural RBC Gran Fondo Silicon Valley event they were hosting.

A "Gran Fondo" means "Big Ride" in italian and this event would be composed of 1000+ cyclists covering approximately 75-miles & 7000 feet of elevation gain through the lush land of Northern California. The ride would start at the Four Seasons in Palo Alto and then go up & over the Santa Cruz mountains to the Ocean and back.

I was honored by the invitation, but my mind was screaming "You're not a cyclist! You don't even have a proper bike! And you've never done more than 10-15 miles on a bike and you have no training climbing a massive hill! Don't do this! You will look like a fool! You will fail! And what will people think when you do?!"

During my meeting with the hotel staff in charge of the event I wanted to say "No thanks, I'm not a cyclist" but fortunately I kept my mouth shut and told them I would think about it. I left the meeting doubting myself.

That evening I shared the opportunity with my partner. She quietly listened to me rant about how I wasn't a cyclist and how I should turn this opportunity down because it wasn't who I was and it would be too much effort for not enough reward. My limited mind was winning the battle…

Fortunately, my fiancé' is a visionary and pretty much always sees infinite possibility when I'm self-sequestering myself in a dark corner. After I had finished explaining to her how I couldn't do it she pointed out a few things I missed.

It's the Four Seasons--one of the most powerful brands worldwide with immaculate & stunning properties in many of the most amazing places across the globe. I'd be foolish not to work with them.

This was an amazing opportunity to grow my positive influence & create a positive impact upon a greater audience by partnering with such an awesome company.

My whole message is about empowering people to transform & self-actualize. Here was an opportunity for me to transform & openly share the process with others.

I wasn't fully convinced, but I did decide to sleep on it.

Something awoke while my mind slept that night. The next morning, first thing upon waking, I emailed the Four Seasons and committed to doing the cycling event.

It wasn’t until after officially committing to Opportunity that the real magic began to happen.

With only 5-days until the event, I didn't even have a bike. At least not one with actual gears that allow you to climb a mountain. I didn't have a helmet or shoes. I definitely didn't have the ever so crucial riding bib--this is the thing you wear to protect your crotch & tailbone from being injured from excessive riding on a hard ass bicycle seat for several hours.

I didn't know how to clip into pedals, change gears, or climb insane hills on a bike.

Yet, the mind is an amazing machine. When you give it clear direction, purpose, a goal & officially make a decision its gears begin to whir and figure it all out.

I started sharing with my work colleagues that I was going to do the event and soon enough I found out that one of my best friends at my company, Henry Edelson, was super interested in doing the event with me as a an avid cyclist. I reached out to the Four Seasons and asked if he could participate with me and they were more than happy to have him join me. Now I had a partner for the journey!

I kept talking about the event with the people in my life and soon discovered that our Head of Culinary at Oh My Green, Deryck, was also a longtime cyclist and one of his favorite things to do was get people into cycling. He also just happened to get back his loaner bike he lends out like a gateway-drug to get people hooked on the sport. He happily let me know I could borrow it and find out if I enjoyed the sport and that if I ended up liking it I could borrow it until I was ready to get my own. He also had extra shoes & helmet.

On Tuesday, 4 days from the event, Derrick & I linked up and miraculously the bike, shoes & helmet fit perfectly. For those who are unfamiliar with cycling like myself, having the bike fit your body size is absolutely integral to going long distances without ruining your body.

And for the record, the bike wasn't some beater. Nope! It was a few years old Bianchi, the oldest bike company in the world. It wasn't the absolute latest & greatest, but it was the top of the line when it was released. More than good enough for me.

Next up was figuring out my riding uniform. I reached out to the rest of Oh My Green executive team and asked if they would like to sponsor the uniform for me & my colleague so we could represent our company in the event. Our company mission is to "empower people to live healthy & blissful lives" and supporting a local mission-aligned event & two company team members living the mission in real life was right on par with the company's endeavors. Suddenly we were sponsored riders.

I found us super sleek Pedal Mafia riding uniforms at Cognition Cyclery in San Mateo, California through a recommendation of another colleague at another company who was a triathlete.

While I was working on the gear I would need for the cycling event I also reached out to Braden Torras of Alpine Northwest, a super talented videographer (among many other things) and Avni of Glass Locket Film, a delightfully gifted photographer, to see if they would be willing to cover the event with high fidelity photo & video. They were both thrilled at the opportunity to work with the Four Seasons in Silicon Valley. I'm still amazed they were both available on such short notice in addition to all of the gear lining up so magically, but like Ralph Waldo Emerson said,

"Once you make a decision, the Universe conspires to make it happen."

With only a few days left until the 75-mile ride I had everything I would need to fully participate. I even got in two short 6-8 miles rides on my new-to-me bike to learn how to clip in and change gears before the event.

On Friday night I checked my team into the Four Seasons Hotel in East Palo Alto, registered for the ride, signed a liability waiver, got my race number and had an epic team dinner around a fireplace on the patio of The Quattro Restaurant--the extremely elegant italian restaurant nestled in the corner of the hotel. Nothing like fueling up on a divine dinner with friends & family over the fireplace before a big journey. There was something tribal & mystical about the fireside dinner. A throwback to a time when we would gather next to the heat of the fire under the stars, shares stories & fuel up together for an upcoming journey.

The Ride of a Lifetime:

The morning of the event was magic in its own right. During the spring & summer months I tend to naturally wake up very early, usually 3-5am. I also tend to have incredibly high energy in the beginning of the day. So I was up early as usual, around 4am. My energy was flowing at an all-time high. I wasn't bouncing off walls. No, this energy was like a strong pulsating bass-line pumping throughout my being. Not frenetic, but instead a powerful rumble like thunder in the distance.

I had chosen to sleep in my own bed at home and meet my team at the hotel in the morning so that I could get the best sleep possible. I methodically gathered my gear and greeted the day with my fiance’.

First on the days agenda was a video/photo shoot at the gorgeous rooftop pool of the Four Seasons. The idea was to capture me preparing for this event as I would normally. And that we did!

My typical daily warm-up includes yoga & intentional movement. Avni captured pictures of me in various poses, while Braden caught me rising with the sun on a drone. It was superbly epic and a very powerful way to start the day.

Next up was changing into my actual riding uniform and lining up for the start of ride with my colleague Henry and capturing all of that on film & video. This is when things started to get real wild.

There were 1000 riders getting ready to go out for this Big Ride. We were being grouped together in waves and there were numerous countdowns as each group got released.

It was loud, crazy & I loved every minute of it! I could literally feel the anticipation of all the other riders washing over me adding to my own.

While waiting for our wave of riders to get released onto the course, Avni snapped shots & Braden filmed while I double checked I had everything for the ride and scarfed down some of Henry's food. Normally, I fast until noon or later but I figured I better have something in my stomach for the long journey ahead.

The starting gun went off and our group started the course. Henry & I rolled out with some celebratory hoots, hollers & goodbyes to our crew (and of course some expressions of love to ever supportive fiancé).

As we started out I checked in with myself. I felt good on the bike and mentally told myself "I can do this!" During the first 10 minutes of the ride Henry proceeded to share stories about David Goggins--a navy seal & ultra endurance athlete who has an insane story of how he got into endurance sports. I was both inspired & intimidated by these stories. Henry said Goggin’s story reminded me of him in how he didn't train for his first foray into endurance sports.

The first part of the cycling event went fairly well until we hit our first major intersection with cars and a stop light. We were on a hill in a group of about 60 riders and when the light turned green I panicked getting clipped in, my foot slipped, and I slammed my knee into the pedal. Mild bleeding & pain ensued. We were only 20 minutes into the hours long course. Not the best start, but at least I was still able to continue on.

One thing that really hit me right within those first 10-20 minutes of the ride was how friendly and awesome the community of riders were. RBC Gran Fondo definitely built a special culture with their cycling events. We all chatted as we road together getting to know one another. Funny enough, people could hardly believe this was my first cycling event saying that I "looked like professional cyclist." Nothing like a sweet bike & cycling outfit to help me fake it. Being in fairly good shape from my numerous weekly fitness activities didn't hurt either.

Next up was my first major hill climb--something which I had no practice or training with. Fortunately, I spent some of those first 30 minutes chatting through hill climbing strategy with Henry so at least conceptually I had an understanding of how to use the gears and my body together to climb hardcore inclines. It wasn't long until I had to put theory into practice on the infamous Kings Mountain.

Other riders had shared Henry's climbing philosophy saying things like "don't try to be a hero and blast up the mountain, just get into your lowest gear and put in steady & constant work."

Kings Mountain was a total beast. Miles of climbing through lush Redwood forests. It was epically beautiful with ever increasing stunning views as we continued the ascent.

Honestly, just looking up at the radical grades gave me shivers, but when I focused on just putting in the work for a few grueling miles I realized, "Holy fuck! I can do this! I can climb massive hills on a bike!"

My strategy to get up this beautiful mountain quickly evolved into just picking a rider or two in front of me and keeping pace with them. I didn't try to pass them up. I just followed along as best I could. I really had no idea how to pace myself so I figured it was better to model other riders who were surely more experienced than me.

When things got really hard, and they did, I would chant to myself, "I am strong. I am worthy." Over and over again I would say these empowering words and magically it seemed to draw forth inner strength I didn't know I had. Up the hill I climbed. And climbed.

Ultimately, I conquered Kings Mountain and made it to the first rest stop. And this is where I made my first major mistake.

Normally, I am a super healthy eater. Massive amounts of vegetables and lean proteins make up the majority of my food consumption. Very little processed junky food. However, at the first rest stop there were some not so healthy options (along with some good healthy options) that included M&M's, cookies, and other sweets chalk full of refined sugar and other manmade ingredients I can't even pronounce, much less have any understanding of what they are or where they came from. Most of the time I avoid stuff like this, but after spending a couple hours climbing a ridiculous hill I figured my body could use all the fuel it could get. "Heck, I still got a few more hours in the saddle and I'll be burning massive calories all day long. I can afford to eat some junk," I thought to myself. I proceeded to gobble down a few handfuls of M&M's and other sugary treats. Within minutes I was sky-high on one of the most addictive drugs ever known to mankind--refined sugar.

This first rest stop was also the beginning of my 2nd major mistake. They were handing out gel packs, the ones endurance athletes use to quickly get sodium and calories into their bodies during long grueling races. These ones also happened to contain a 20mg hit of caffeine. I grabbed about 5 of them and put them into my pocket to help me get through the rest of the ride.

During the climb of Kings Mountain Henry had went ahead at his own pace. As a regular cyclist my beginner pace was a bit slow for him, plus he wanted to see what he had so he pushed on ahead. He waited for me at first rest stop so we could start the next leg of the journey together.

After fueling up our bodies, using the restrooms and doing a little bit of stretching we hit the road again. This is where my 3rd major mistake began.

At least half of the next leg was downhill. Similar to climbing massive hills on bikes, I haven't ever gone down miles long stretches of downhill road on a bike.

Irregardless of my inexperience, I bombed down the hills on my bike with Henry. We took turns leading. It was goddamn exhilarating! And despite it being fairly scary as a beginner, my adrenaline was pumping so high that it wasn't too hard to overcome the fear and just hyper-focus on scanning the road ahead for upcoming turns and objects on the road that could end my ride (or my life).

There is something about having to be so focused on the task at hand that pushes you into a state of flow. One where time ceases to exist, your Spirit comes alive, and life just feels so grand. Flying down a road on a human-powered mechanical machine at speeds up to 50+ mph definitely did that for me.

I ended up surviving & thriving through my first major downhill traverse on the bike, but when it was time to climb the next hill I hit my first massive roadblock. Within 10-15 seconds of beginning the next hill climb both my quads completely cramped up and my knees locked out. In other words, both my legs were stuck completely straight and I couldn't even bend my knees.

Somehow I managed to get myself to the side of the road without crashing and I laid down. Without having to worry about not crashing my bike I put all my mental energy into attempting to bed my knees. I couldn't do it. My legs were stuck straight.

Somehow I didn't panic. Instead I told myself I would be patient and think this through & evaluate my options.

Within moments of analysis I realized why my legs had cramped up so bad. The entire 20-30 minute downhill ride I had ridden in a crouched position with my pedals parallel to one another and both my legs holding up my entire body weight. Essentially, I held a staggered squat for close to half an hour. Pumped full of adrenaline & overly focused on making it down the hill safely I had managed to do this, but now that the adrenaline had left me and it was time to get back to the slow & steady work of climbing a hill my legs were completely toast.

I later learned that when you are bombing down hills you have to keep your legs moving and take time sitting down on the seat to allow your legs to recover. Otherwise if you hold a sustained staggered squat you will ruin yourself for the next climb.

As I laid there on the side of the road weighing my options I crushed all the water I had on me. I figured at least part of the cramping was due to dehydration.

Other cyclists who passed me asked if I was okay and if I needed water. This concern & looking out for other cyclists is something that I soon learned is very common among the cycling community.

I explained to them that I had cramped up and was just taking a break waiting for my legs to un-cramp. They half-jokingly said that at least I looked really good lying down on the side ride--thank you again Oh My Green for the Pedal Mafia uniform! We all laughed as they proceeded on.

As I laid there on the side of the road I thought through things. I definitely wanted to continue the journey so the only thing I could do was to see if my legs would actually un-cramp so that I could actually physically continue on. I told myself I would be patient and focus my mind on encouraging my quads to release. Shortly after making this decision one of the first responders who roams around the cycling course was driving by, saw me, and stopped to see if I was okay. Pat was his name and he was part of the RBC Gran Fondo crew. I told him what had happened and he offered me a ride home or some water. I chose the water and told him I really wanted to continue on.

As we were chatting my legs finally let go. My ability to bend my knees returned! I wasn't done yet! I told Pat I was good to go and asked for an additional bottle of water to refill my own.

Then I got back on the saddle and started climbing again.

Gratefully, my legs stayed unstuck. I got back to putting in the diligent work of grinding the mountain out. My will against the hill. Eventually, I caught up to another rider and just used him to set my pace against until I reached the next rest stop. By this time I was just trying survive the journey, all thoughts of being a hero were gone.

At the next rest stop I continued to double down on my previous mistakes--junk food & caffeinated gels. Nonetheless, I was extremely happy with my progress. I had made it over the Santa Cruz Mountains’ punishing 7,000 feet of elevation gain and road down the other side at breakneck speeds and lived to tell the story. Again, this was done with almost no training so the fact that I made it the Ocean from Palo Alto on a bike was a massive personal win already. I truly was surprised that I actually made it this far, especially after almost having to tap out with my legs locking up.

After a brief respite which included scarfing down delicious cookies and using the restroom I was back on the horse and headed back to Kings Mountain for another test of my body & willpower.

The next leg of the journey took me through rolling hills out near the Ocean. It was magical cycling through the fields, a tunnel of trees & other serenely beautiful open landscapes. It was a long way to the next rest stop but the number of intense hills was minimal and it was more about cruising along at a good clip. After probably the most peaceful portion of my ride I made it to the next rest stop.

I crushed more food, healthy & junk, refilled my water bottles, grabbed some more caffeinated gel packs, used the restroom and got back on the road yet again.

It was shortly after the third rest stop while I was diligently working my way up yet another hill that I hit a new level in the Quest. As I was methodically pedaling away in the never-ending circular motion of cycling I felt decades long held emotions deep in the wells of my body break open & release. It was raw unprocessed emotions that I had failed to work through and instead stored in my body. As I cycled through these long-forgotten & mysterious emotions I felt waves of energy cascading out from my lower chakras to the edges of all points of my body--head, hands & feet. Tears burst from my eyes while I was wracked by deep sighs & sobs, yet at the same time I was experiencing massive euphoria.

It was transcendental. One of those rare peak life experiences that remain so vividly burned into your psyche forevermore.

I couldn't tell you how long it lasted, but whatever came up I cycled through it until it was done releasing. One of the deepest emotional, psychological & spiritual cleanses I’ve been through.

Without stopping, I continued to cycle onto & up Kings Mountain. Again.

Going up the other side of Kings Mountain seemed infinitely harder than the first trek up the Mountain. This is likely because I'd already been on my bike for 5+ hours and already climbed so much hill it was hard to even mentally conceptualize adding more the journey. I'd already come so far.

Nonetheless, I told myself I would continue for as long as possible while listening to my body. At the last rest stop the RBC Gran Fondo team had offered me a ride up the infamous Kings Mountain, but wanting to truly test my limits I passed.

I pedaled & pushed my way back up the mountain. Slowly. Methodically. Soaking in the magical Redwoods. Asking them for help. Digging deep into myself. Exploring new terrain internally & externally.

A little bit more. A little further. It was slow going. I was well past any physical exertion threshold I'd approached in this lifetime. Yet, I was still curious where the limit & boundary was. I felt I was finally nearing it. Nearing the place in which I would need to take on help, stop or injure myself.

I probably spent close to two hours trying to tackle the backside of Kings Mountain before I finally gave in. When I reached that point I could tell my knees were at risk of being seriously injured if I kept pushing. I had already been on my bike & pedaling for nearly 7.5 hours.

Instead of pushing myself to literal breakdown I decided it was time to take the help offered. I would indeed take a ride up the rest of the Kings Mountain to the last & final rest stop and then cruise down the other side of the mountain back to the Four Seasons in Palo Alto. Heck, I still wanted to finish the Big Ride even if that meant doing it with some assistance.

By this point my videographer, Braden, had become a first-responder. Interestingly enough, he had just taken a course a few weeks prior to do exactly that. Pure coincidence. Or maybe just more magic. I shot him a message and let him know I needed a ride up the mountain.

When he picked me up he informed me that there was another rider somewhere up the road that he had to get to so off we went. Quickly.

Racing up winding roads in a car turned out to be the piece of straw that broke the proverbial camel's back. Before we even got to the next rider I had to ask to pull over so I could throw up.

The previous mistakes of inhaling junk food & caffeinated gels combined with pushing my body far beyond any previous physical thresholds all mixed together into a very unstable vessel. My whole self was primed to ignite. A rollercoaster-like car ride pushed me over the edge.

Out it all came. Over the next 3-hours or so. I was throwing up so much & feeling so nauseous that there was no way that I could even ride down the other side of Kings Mountain and cruise on back to the Four Seasons. Instead I had to head back to the hotel in the car with several stops along the way.

On a much more spiritual side note, one of the stops included me throwing up right next to a Coyote carcass. Coyote is known as the trickster God and he's known for tricking people into healing, growth & transformation. He definitely played me like a puppet. Despite normally abhorring the process of purging by way of vomiting there was something cleansing about this time.

It was like I was releasing all that deeply buried emotional junk that was crystalized into my body that I had just recently broken up through seemingly endless cycling. Now that it was no longer lodged like an icecap deep within my body it was time to fully get rid of the waste. It had been processed and it was time to cleanse the system.

When I got back to the Four Seasons I was so grateful for a super plush bed. Riding for 7+ hours had taken its toll and laying down on a giant cushy mattress with my fiancé was pure heaven.

After a couple more visits to the bathroom & a couple hours of rest I was ready to eat. The hotel room service was to die for! It was also from the Quattro kitchen. So good in fact that I ordered it twice that night! After all the purging and wild amount of calories I burnt it was time for a serious refuel and the Four Seasons did me right!

I spent the evening refueling, resting & integrating the powerful journey with my fiancé. It was by far the most epic adventure I’d had in years. And definitely one of the most life-changing. Second only to my Vision Quest I did for my birthday in 2017.

Surprisingly, the next day I felt amazing! To the point of getting on a stationary bike on the rooftop pool of the hotel, doing yoga, then later doing a CrossFit style workout with Henry and even playing 1-2 hours of Spikeball. I felt strong & incredibly alive!

And even though I didn’t finish the Gran Fondo it ended up being even better. It was the start of my life as a Cyclist. Since the Big Ride I’ve ridden all over Bay Area, Tahoe, Monterey, Pebble Beach, Joshua Tree and the territory I cover & explore on bike continues to expand.

I would say still to this day as I am writing this memoir of the experience I am still processing & integrating the lessons and undergoing the unfoldment that was catalyzed by it. Such a powerful quest! One thing is for certain, Eleanor Roosevelt was really onto something when she said:

"You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

In addition to that enlightening quote that I finally really understand at a fundamental level, here are some key take-aways galvanized by my Big Ride:

How To Approach Hard Things That Will Change Your Life:

Look for the hidden jewels that can be mined from the challenge (hard thing). In just about any challenge (opportunity) there are numerous prizes to be won if you take the time to look and make the conscious effort to uncover them.

Ask empowering questions. Ask yourself the question "What is one thing I could do at this time in my life that would change my life for the better forever (whether I feel ready or not)?" Answering a powerful question like that will always move you forward in life.

Leverage the empowering people in your life. Share the challenge (opportunity) with a trusted other who will empower you to say "Yes!" even when your mind wants to say, "No." Then keep sharing with others who respond with excitement. They may just have exactly what you need to make it all come together.

Just say, "YES!" and figure out the details along the way. This means officially committing. Accept the invitation. Pay the admittance fee. Purchase the ticket. Apply for the job. Sign up for the class, competition, workshop, etc.

Things That Really Move The Needle Of Your Life Forward Tend To Be Hard & Challenging:

If they were easy everyone would do them all the time and we would all be humming along at a good clip all the time. It is the Quests we accept & take on, the ones filled with adversity & adventure, that challenge our entire being & remake us anew.

They will often come in disguise. Something you've never done before. Something you think you could never do. Something that scares the shit out of you.

They will push you outside of your comfort zone. Often times, way outside your comfort zone.

They will induce fear. This is a good thing. It means it will change your life whether you are ready or not.

You will likely fail the first time. Maybe the first several times. Again, if it were easy it probably wouldn’t catalyze much healing, growth & transformation.

Release yourself from the outcome. Choose the adventure. Go all in. Play full out. And allow the experience (whatever it is) to transform you.

Trust the unfolding of the journey AND take massive action at the same.

It's not always about finishing. Often times it's much more about beginning a new chapter in one's life.

My New Chapter:

It’s taken me nearly 3 months, an entire season, to process this Epic Journey and get it down on virtual paper (this blog). However, I definitely haven’t been idle.

Not too long after the Gran Fondo I realized that my next chapter of life included more outdoor physical quests. Never had I felt so alive, so focused, so excited and so god damn happy & grateful! Both leading up to the Gran Fondo, during it, and a lasting effervescent glow has stuck with me ever since. I wanted more of this!

So, I went searching for my next Quest. And I found it—The Super Bowl of obstacle course racing. 13-15 miles with 30-35 obstacles & 4000+ elevation gain in Squaw Valley, California where they held the 1960 Winter Olympics.

I signed up, spent 2.5 months preparing & training for it. And just last weekend I completed my very first Obstacle Course Race. It was yet another life-changing event. So much so that a day after the Race I signed up for my next one at the end of the month.

There is so much gold to mine from these epic outdoor quests and I may have to write a few more posts about it, but for now…

I just want to send out a massive shoutout filled with love & immense gratitude to The Four Seasons Palo Alto & RBC Gran Fondo for this gran opportunity in disguise!

Ya’ll literally changed the entire trajectory of my entire life and acted as a major catalyst & demarkation for a whole new me!

I look forward to seeing you next year and actually finishing the Big Ride you got me started on. And who knows, maybe I’ll even train for it! ;)

Related Micro-Blogs on Instagram:

Run Towards The Fear

Starting Before You're Ready

Alchemize Your Perception

An Interview covering the experience on Paula Pant's Afford Anything Podcast:

#149: Tell me about something that scared you -- from CampFI

#Cycling #Fitness #Transformation #Healing #Vision Quest #Endurance Sports

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