Beautiful things can be dangerous. Paul is his mother's son, and so has known that the whole of his life. He has no doubt that whatever force animates these visions would have sent them tumbling into the abyss below if their answers were judged unworthy.

Dangerous things can be kind. He knows that from his mother, and almost everything and everyone else he's ever loved, including the young man at his side. A sense of peace settles over Paul where the light does not, invisible and yet still shining. He exhales softly in the silence, stirring the cool abyssal air, and he accepts the feeling for what it is.

He's sure if this is the place for the questions he has even with the sense of calm that follows their acceptance. He's poised to say as much before Midoriya asks his own question first, and his mouth quirks in a slightly rueful smile. It's a shy one, if a person knows what shyness looks like on his face.

"She doesn't give out causes," he says, shaking his head, "I've learned that much. She gives...experiences. I thought they were puzzles, once. Something to solve, and then I'd understand it all. What she wanted from me. What I was meant to be, and do."

He goes briefly quiet, dropping his gaze to their linked hands, then lifts it back to Midoriya's eyes.

"I'll never understand all the things I want to understand," he admits, light as the shifting colours around them, "But it's the trying that makes sense of the world. Not holding myself apart from it, or above, but being in it. We're all sea creatures. It's not up to me to change the currents. It's up to me to choose how I swim them."

"Or something like that." He smiles wider, more crookedly. "I don't think any of us have all the answers. Not even her. So my question to you is...do you think there's any answer from you I should have, before we go forward?"

Anyone who knows anything about Midoriya can imagine what would force him to share the Quirk he was gifted. What Paul knows of Midoriya's world and the sorts of threats that exist in it adds another dimension to the tapestry of understanding.

Paul nuzzles the side of Midoriya's head in passing when the shorter young man kisses his cheek, unable to pass up the opportunity for more solicitous contact. He'd wrap him up in a blanket and take him home on the spot if he could, and damn the door - but that would be even more disrespectful than not bowing at the threshold.

Which he does, as neatly and deeply as if greeting the ruler of a planet. He doesn't let go of Midoriya's hand to do it.

"We'll help you keep it safe," he promises, straightening his spine and stepping forward, "For all of you."

His past shards and present self, a concept Paul knows he'll be weighing for some time. He breathes in slowly, tasting the ancient dust of a sealed place.

"...do they talk to you often? Your predecessors?"

Between the pair of them, Paul is as confident as he'll ever be they won't be blindsided. Sometimes it reminds him of how it felt going anywhere with his mother, cutting through the dark of unknown possibilities like bats through the dark.

It's no surprise he's thinking about her when Midoriya talks about teachers. The pang of feeling he gets is a residue of the reminder out there, so far uncategorizable except that it's not jealousy or envy.

Homesickness. He thinks that might be it, when it ripples down his spine and makes him close his hand a little more tightly on Midoriya's than is tactically prudent. He loosens up again, of course, but still, it happened.

"Chemosynthesis?" He says, first, in answer to a question Midoriya wasn't really asking. There's no trace of it in the air that he can taste, but it's a theory worth floating. He pauses in front of a broken mural, seeming to inspect what's left of the once colourful tile there.

"How would I start, if I was to say hello?" He asks, cutting his gaze back to Midoriya. "They must...know some things about me already, don't they?"

Paul had been prepared to give audience to the whole set of luminous figures, and would have done it without complaint or fumble. He's still unmistakably relieved to have been granted this reprieve after that promise, tugging Midoriya in even while he's already moving forward.

"Thank you," he murmurs, to Midoriya and all his shadows, clinging back as hard as he's clung to. If he focuses, he can pick up on the tiny vibrations of Midoriya's heartbeat even through cloth, even in the inflection of his breathing.

The moment stretches out, the two of them entwined, and it's easy to believe they're together in privacy. Easy enough that Paul pulls back just far enough to look at Midoriya's face and bring his hands up to cradle it, looking at him with the soft wonder that's never far from the surface when it comes to his Hero.

"I've been wanting to do this for a while," he says, just before he ducks in to kiss him. It's a chastely passionate kiss, his mouth barely parted, all of him leaning into it like there's nothing else in the world he's meant to be doing but kissing Midoriya.

This isn't the time or place to indulge in what Paul has learned is apparently known as 'making out' in some Midoriya contemporary Earth cultures. It doesn't take more than basic sense to know that, and Paul surely has more than basic sense.

He does when Midoriya doesn't cling to him like this, anyway. The tiny gasp for air, like Paul's an ocean he's diving into, sets off sparklers in the neediest parts of his mind. He makes a little sound of his own against Midoriya's mouth as he presses back, slipping the tip of his tongue against the pliant seam of his lips.

They'll have to stop soon, and it's a different kind of have to than tucked into corners at parties or ducked behind a hedge out in the streets of the city. It is for Paul, at least - sometimes he worries Midoriya might really be able to combust from embarrassment if he put his mind to it. But soon isn't just yet.