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Mineta knew that things didn’t last forever. Heroes became worn out, people grew old, and everything was fleeting. His body was still strong even as old wounds hurt for years after they healed, even was a few grey hairs snuck into the purple peach fuzz on his head. He needed reading glasses now, and while he thought it suited him his wife always snickered when he wore them.
He bustled about the kitchen as the moon shone in through the window. It was obscenely early but he couldn’t sleep, driven awake by nightmares and worry. He worried much more these days, always thinking about some thing or the other. He was so incapable of doing anything as the world around him changed irreversibly.
He sipped his bitter coffee, squinting at his laptop screen. Things had been busy at the agency and he was busier than usual, but it gave him something to focus on.
“Hmmm… Whatchu doin up?” He was started as a sleepy voice spoke in his ear. Mina yawned, resting her head on his shoulder with a whine.
“What are you doing up? Sit.” He vacated his chair and sat her down, fingers brushing against the swell of her pregnant belly as he did. He couldn’t help touching it every chance he could, still amazed by the idea she was growing his child. She was amazing.
“Woke up, you weren’t there. Baby missed you, kicked me in the spleen.” She mumbled, combing at her messy curls with her fingers and somehow making it worse.
He schooled his features and bit back a laugh, knowing that wouldn’t go over well. He’d learned the hard way that a pregnant Mina couldn’t handle teasing at all, and usually would either burst into tears or become enraged very easily at it.
“Does the baby want some hot cocoa?”
Mina nodded sagely. “Yes we do.”
“I’ll make some then.” He leaned up to kiss her cheek before turning to bustle around the kitchen. He wasn’t completely ashamed of using a step stool, the counters had been made lower than normal for him but not so low they inconvenienced Mina, so he had a stool.
He made her extra sweet cocoa, adding a pink pink heart-shaped marshmallows on top.
He brought it over to his wife, who was sleepily reading through the emails on his computer. She turned to give him a sleepy smile and reached out to steal his glasses off his head and put them on.
“My old man.” She teased as he placed the cocoa in front of her. She wrapped her slim fingers around the cup and closed her eyes to bask in the warmth.
He took a step back to just look at her for a while. The white tank top she wore was stretched to accommodate her pregnant belly. She’d hated going out to buy maternity clothes but the girls had all gone with her and found a cute new wardrobe to make her more comfortable. She cried when she couldn’t fit into her favorite pair of jeans anymore and used a ponytail band through the bottom hole so she could still wear them.
She looked angelic even with her eye bags and bed head. Pregnancy hadn’t been easy on her but she was being too strong through it all. He tried to support her however he could, feeling a little lost as he became closer to being a dad.
“You’re staring.” Mina said through a yawn as she rubbed her eyes. She stretched out her arms toward him and made a grabbing motion. “C’mere.”
He let her grab him but resisted as she tried to pull him into her lap.
“Babe, I don’t want to hurt the baby! I’m not as small as I used to be!” He was still small but not like he had been when they first. She could still pick him up easily but he worried. He had a reason to worry now.
“The baby will be fine, get your ass up here.” She pulled him up into her lap easily. He didn’t fit like he used to, not with her pregnant belly taking up most of the space. He didn’t mind, he’d had Mina all to himself for years, he could share her with their baby.
He rested a hand on her stomach, just feeling. He remembered the first appointment vividly when he’d first seen his baby’s heartbeat on the monitor. A tiny little thing that he couldn’t wait to meet. Mina had practically plastered the ultrasound photos all over the walls of the agency. Her fans were so excited about the baby, even if a lot of them still thought she could do better in her choice of father.
He was going to be a dad soon, a lifeline commitment to a tiny human that relied on them so everything. It was overwhelming as much as it was exciting.
Minoru’s dad was an okay guy. He wasn’t perfect and was emotionally repressed as all hell, but they’d leaned on each other when his mom divorced and remarried. He was excited to be a grandpa even if he didn’t express it well. He hadn’t told his mother yet.
Mina’s parents were excited as well, lending any help they could and visiting often to fuss over the house. They hadn’t liked him at all when they’d started dating, knowing enough of his early Highschool years to form an opinion of him, but he’d mostly won them over. He’d got her dad’s blessing before marrying her.
He felt a kick under his hand, his precious baby. Mina was far along by now, eight months along and in her words ‘ready to pop’. Their baby was almost ready to meet them, which was beautiful and amazing and terrifying all at once.
“Does the baby like the cocoa?” He asked, voice quiet in the still morning. He stared at her because he could, because he never got tired of looking.
She had no makeup on, her curls contained in a light blue silk bonnet that slighting tented where her horns were. They had grown as she did, and were several inches tall and made her look like a mystical fae. She loved her horns, and he loved them too.
He’d nearly broken an interns nose for making a hunting season comment about her once. Mina had been flattered at his defence of her, but still chided him that she could defend herself.
‘Of course you can.’ He’d told her, pressing fingers against her flat stomach where at that point only he knew life grew. ‘You’re badass and don’t need my help at all, but I’m your husband, let me be useful sometimes.’
She had rolled her eyes and kissed his head, telling him his presence was useful enough.
“The baby approves of the cocoa.” Mina said as she took another sip. “And so do I. My only complaint is that I desperately miss peppermint.”
Mina loved peppermint cocoa, but she’d stopped drinking it during her pregnancy because it was bad for milk supply. She’d also developed a sudden peach allergy, and had started writing a list of grievances for the baby to see when they were finally born. It wasn’t stuff like her stretch marks or morning sickness, but all silly stuff like ‘You made me allergic to peach jelly’ and ‘I split my favorite pair of shorts’ and the very memorable ‘you made me pee my pants in the grocery store when I bent down’. He was pretty sure it was another way she was keeping her mind busy to keep from living in constant worry for the fast approaching future.
“Peppermint will wait for you.” He said. He thought about saying again that they could formula feed, but he didn’t need to reiterate when she’d already made up her mind to try to breastfeed. They still needed to get lab work done to make sure it was viable with her toxic bodily fluids, but her doctor was pretty confident that, with her baby already growing in her body, the baby wouldn’t be hurt by anything her body produced for it.
Mins nodded, rubbing her half lidded eyes and sighing. He didn’t comment on the mist in them, he knew she hated how much their baby made her tear up. Instead he leaning up to kiss her cheek, just to get that beautiful smile back on her face.
“What’s keeping you busy?” She asked as she clicked on another email, eyes scanning across it. He didn’t mind. Not only was it her agency too, but he just had nothing in his life he didn’t mind her seeing.
It was a strange thought for a kid who had lived in incognito tabs and hidden photo folders, but he simply had nothing to hide. She knew him as well as he knew her.
In the very early days, back when they were still in high school and she was giving him a chance, back when it was all growing pains and anxiety about being perfect, there had been some strain, but slowly over time it stopped being a problem, simply because he hadn’t needed his vices anymore.
Mina was perfect. She was beautiful and crazy and his, and he just hadn’t needed the pornography that had ruled his life for so long. She was more beautiful than random actresses and pin up girls, and she was real in a way they never had been. Why did he need any of that when he had her?
These days he didn’t really have anything she couldn’t see. She knew his phone password, not because she’d asked, but because he’d needed her to use it once and had never changed the password because he didn’t care if she looked. She didn’t, nothing beyond occasionally browsing through his photos. She didn’t look for incriminating material or things to meddle with, but instead she liked to see the photos he took.
‘I like to see how you view the world’ She’d said, her cheeks still a slightly darker pink as she swiped past a photo of her. It was one she hadn’t known he’d taken, where she was looking out the window with a book held in her hand, the sunlight painting her pink skin and the sky reflected in the dark pools of her eyes.
He had only wished in that moment that he had his phone to take a picture of that moment, to have it forever.
He looked back at the laptop, at countless emails and papers scattered across the counter.
“I had to review payroll because Emily had an issue with it, and there’s an event at the community center that they asked us to attend next week, I told them we’d play it by ear since you’re so far along. There’s also expense reports from the training room expansion I need to file, but I wanted to go through them all first.”
“All stuff that could have waited until sunrise.” She said softly, not accusing, but aware. She knew as well as he did that he just couldn’t sleep, and keeping himself busy had always been his remedy for overthinking.
“Maybe.” He said instead, because he didn’t need to say anything that she couldn’t read on his face.
Her smile was beautiful even with the bags under her eyes.
“What if the baby and I asked you to cuddle us because we can’t sleep either.”
It was a trap and he knew it, a way to get him back to bed, but he didn’t care. She had learned long ago that asking him to something for himself was difficult, but asking him to do something that related to her or the baby? It worked every time.
“Alright baby, just let me email that draft to the community center and I’ll be in.”
He slid off her lap, taking a step back so she could stand. It wasn’t as effortless or graceful as it had been before her belly became round, but god as it sexy. Not because of the pregnancy itself, he had never had a particular interest in pregnant bodies, but because it was her, because that was his baby she was growing, because he was looking at his entire future standing in his kitchen.
“Stop staring.” She chided him, trying to stride out of the kitchen and ending up doing more of a waddle.
“Never going to happen!” He yelled at her retreating form, turning back to his laptop and seeing his own smile reflected back at him.
Minoru had never believed in forever growing up.
People aged, cars rusted, and hairs turned grey and wrinkles graced skin, but he was starting to realize that forever wasn’t quite what he’d thought it would be.
His hair was greying, and Mina’s body was changing, but that was just a part of the future. He wasn’t a kid anymore. Hell, he would be thirty in a few years, but it wasn’t such a scary thought as it once had been.
He closed the laptop screen and sighed, staring ahead into the living room, where a baby swing was assembled next to the couch and the box of a jumper was leaned against the wall, where baby clothes were folded on the coffee table as Mina sorted them into totes by month and season, where a stack of parenting books was haphazardly leaning on the tv stand, where his world was changing.
Down the hall was the nursery, where Mina had based the theme on space, because she was the alien queen even if her hero name was still Pinky. They didn’t have a guest room anymore, but that was fine.
He found himself stopping in that doorway on his way to the bedroom. He found himself stopping there a lot.
The ceiling was covered in tiny stars and hand painted galaxies done by his own hand. He had wanted to be an artist once, before being a hero had consumed his thoughts, but he hadn’t lost his touch with time. He’d offered that they should get a professional to paint the nursery, but Mina had insisted he do it.
The crib was already assembled, light blue with pink sheets.
Early in the pregnancy Mina had instigated she could wait to know the gender. He’d smiled and supported her, even as he knew she had never waited patiently for anything in her life.
At four months they’d had a gender reveal when she’d finally cracked, bursting into tears that ‘of course I’ll love any answer but I just want to know!’
They’d rented out an event center and closed it to the press, inviting class 1-A in its entirety along with Mina’s family and friends, and Minoru’s dad. They saw their old class often, it was hard not to, but it had been a while since they all got together. Not a single person missed it, bringing their spouses and kids, all dressing in blue and pink depending on what their assumptions were.
They did old wives tale tests and the two sides competed in silly games, and Mina had been absolutely gorgeous in her blue and pink gown, looking like a goddess in the flesh. She had insisted on wearing both colors, so if their baby looked back at the photos they would know she was happy with any result. He had followed her example and wore a blue button up and a pink blazer, and a tie that had little pacifiers all over it, a gift from Denki.
They had treated it as a baby shower as well, opening gifts and enjoying the milestone surrounded by their family. It was an amazing moment, and the only stranger present had been the event photographer that was paid very well to capture every moment. Jirou had offered to be the photographer since she had a side business as a photographer, but they had agreed that they wanted her to fully enjoy it as a guest, so she’d picked another photographer from her company to do the honor.
They sat on their chairs on the small stage in the event center, sipping glittery mocktails and watching Shoji actively destroy Shinsou in binky pong.
“Do you think Jirou had told Denki she’s pregnant yet?” Mina asked casually, making Mineta choke on his drink.
He wiped edible glitter from his face, looking to where Jirou was slow dancing with Denki to a song that definitely wasn’t a slow dance song. Her hair was longer and tied back, and her black leather jacket and ripped jeans hid her form.
“Definitely not, he would have told me.” Denki couldn’t keep a secret at all. There was a reason they had Jirou and Momo be the ones to set up the reveal itself and shut out their husbands, because lord knows neither of them were good with secrets.
“She told me a few weeks ago, promising she wouldn’t try to take away from my day, as if I cared in the slightest. We cried for hours.”
Minoru had to blink back a few tears of his own, thinking about how his best friend was going to be a dad too, and how their kids could grow up together.
Some of the class had kids already. Shoji, Tsu, Tokoyami had two foster kids that were seven and thirteen and fighting over a cupcake. Hagakure’s daughter was almost two and currently blinking in and out of sight as she got chased about by Ojiro, her little tail wagging. Momo’s twin sons were handing off either of Todoroki’s legs, their white and red hair making them look like perfect splits of their dad.
It was amazing how they all had lives and families now, that they’d all survived what they did and how come out stronger for it.
When it had finally been time to cut the cake, made by Sato of course, Mina’s hands were shaking. He stood beside her, one hand on her belly and the other over hers where it held the cake knife, and they cut it together.
She let out a loud sob when the pink slice was pulled out, nearly dropping it as he took it from her, barely having the chance to set it down before he was pulled into her arms.
She didn’t care that she was ruining her makeup, and he didn’t care that he was crying too. She was beautiful with pink confetti in her hair and tears running down her face, and she looked just like forever was supposed to.
That had been four months ago, and now the nursery closet had many tiny dresses and onesies. They had decided to have plenty of neutral outfits too, and they even had a tiny gothic dress curtesy of Tokoyami, but many were bright pinks, blues, and purples.
The rug under his feet looked like the moon, the centerpiece of the floor. He hadn’t even realized he’d stepped into the room.
Stuffed animals were piled in one corner, and a tiny shelf was filled with baby books and toys. The room was practically overflowing with stuff, and boxes were stacked in one corner where they hadn’t had the chance to sort through them yet, but it was mostly ready to go.
Because they were less than a full month away from her due date.
He took a deep, steadying breath through the tide of anxiety.
Everything was about to change forever, but it had been changing for a long time, hadn’t it? They really were growing up.
“You get distracted?” A voice asked quietly from the doorway.
He turned to see Mina, still in her bonnet and tank top, giving him her beautiful smile that was the same as it had been in Highschool, as it had been at their wedding, as it would be forever.
“Hard not to be.” He answered back, fingers tracing the raised edge of the changing table.
“Come to bed, Minoru.” She held out her hand for him, and he didn’t hesitate for a second as he reached out to take it.
“I love you.” He said, trying to put every ounce of his feelings into the word.
Mina smiled in the dim light of their bedroom as she pulled him down into it, pulling him against her and pressing her nose against his hair.
“I love you too, now get some sleep. Baby’s orders.”
“If she insists, then I guess I’ll have to.” He raised his head to capture her lips in a soft kiss.
They were growing older by the day, and the two of them were going to be three soon, but he wasn’t scared.
Okay, he was scared shitless, but not of the future itself.
This was his forever, and finally he knew that forever could exist, only because Mina did. She was his forever, and she always would be.