Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

With the Sports Festival concluded, Izuku finds himself kindling an unlikely friendship with Todoroki. It’s not like he didn’t notice him intensely glaring at the back of his head the first day that they got back to school, it was more like he didn’t know what to do with it. Was he mad at him? Should Izuku go apologize to him? Now that he thinks about it, it was extremely out of place and meddlesome for him to insert himself into the Todoroki family drama. Maybe all Todoroki wants to do is to forget, but Izuku brought it up and now he’s mad.

But he also saw that during Todoroki’s match with Kacchan, he had let out his flames one more time, and it was because Izuku had screamed from the sidelines for him to do his best. Maybe. Those two things happened right after each other, so if he can trust correlation to be causation, his match with Todoroki in the quarter-finals probably is the reason he was able to burst into flames one last time…

Izuku suspects he may be overthinking this.

And he might have been, but he never did get to ask and he didn’t need to. Todoroki walked right up to him when class ended that day, and they went to the train station together. Before he knew it, Todoroki had wedged himself into Izuku's friend group. The trio became a quartet, and they eat lunch together, hang out during passing periods together, and leave school together.

Because he spends so much time with him now, he realizes that Todoroki is not so much aloof as he is painfully shy. While it may be a part of his upbringing to be reserved and quiet, it also is part of his personality to be introverted. It seems that until recently the way Todoroki coped with his social ineptitude was to withdraw: trapping himself in his own thoughts, occupying himself on his phone, or running away to places with no people. Now, however, he deals with it head-on, with a gentleness completely unlike Endeavor. Meaning, with a gentleness that he inherited from his mother.

He still doesn’t talk unless he needs to. He spends most of the time simply sitting on the sidelines, quiet, watching the other three talk over each other. But he is always there, always a presence Izuku can count on, and he has never imagined that Todoroki would ever pay attention to him like this: Never imagined that big-fish Todoroki, who is in the same league with Kacchan power-wise, would want anything to do with him. The thought scares him, especially when he thinks about how much he likes it. He likes Todoroki so much, it hurts.  

While his new friend doesn’t have a wide range of different facial expressions, Izuku commits himself to learning them all by the end of that week: Todoroki tugs at the bottom of his button-up shirt when he’s thinking. His eyes light up just a little when he receives cold soba from Lunch Rush. His default mode when standing up is to put his hands in his pockets, which feigns indifference, but that’s usually not the case. He glances at his phone when he feels bored, but recently he hasn’t been doing that. He maintains eye-contact during conversations, and looks at his feet when he doesn’t know how to respond, which is most of the time. When that happens, just ask him about his mother. He smiles when he talks about his mother, who he has been visiting recently.

And lastly, the most interesting thing about Todoroki Shouto is the way he never turns away from personal topics. For someone who went through so much when he was young, Izuku would expect him to clam up whenever he’s asked about his childhood or his family, but he doesn’t. In fact, he would ask the same questions right back. Do you also hate your father? What’s your mother like? Did you know that the last time I broke my arm was when my father threw me down a staircase in order to train my reaction time?  It either means Todoroki has no sense of personal boundaries, or he trusts Izuku more than he deserves to be trusted. It might be a little bit of both. The thought takes his breath away.

That said, Todoroki has never had a friend before, and Izuku, for one, understands how that feels. He thinks of the way he always wants to talk about anything and everything with Uraraka and Iida, and the way Todoroki makes a beeline for him during every break they have even when they have absolutely nothing to talk about. The two of them, despite having such different lives, seem to at least have this much in common: they are both clingy friends, just on two opposite sides of a spectrum.  

---

When Shouto visits his mother in the hospital for the first time, he is holding three pictures in his hands; the ones in the picture frames that he smashed to pieces less than a year ago. When he took them out of the dresser, having been buried for months underneath his clothes, he was not surprised to see that they were all of him and his mother: His mother, holding an infant Shouto in blankets and sitting on the couch, her hair shorter than he remembers. His mother, wearing a red kimono during a summer festival a few years after that, holding hands with a bucket hat-wearing, toddler version of himself, whose cheeks ballooned as if he swallowed candy apples whole. The last one is of his mother asleep on her side underneath the kotatsu one winter, spooning with a kid Shouto in her arms, his face tucked under her chin and buried under her hair. He is bigger here, older than the Shoutos in the other two photos, and there are bandaids and Salonpas on his arms, probably more on his legs underneath the blankets. He sleeps with a knit on his eyebrows, and there are bags under his mother’s eyes.

Shouto wonders if it was Fuyumi who took the photo, or if it was Natsuo. Both of them who were too young at the time to know that what their father did was domestic and child abuse, so they probably thought that their mother and brother looked really cute asleep under the kotatsu, and wanted to keep a snapshot of the moment.

He purses his lips. He shouldn’t have brought the photos.

His mother likes them, though, even the last one. She holds them in between her hands, smoothing down the edges with her thumb as Shouto tells her about his siblings, about the UA, and about Midoriya. There are more weary lines on his mother’s face now, like she had aged in the past ten years that he had not seen her, but he has too. Aged, that is.

Sitting in front of her on a stool with their knees nearly touching, Shouto finds himself wanting to bend his head lower so that he doesn’t tower over his mother the way he does now. It’s a strange sensation, after thinking of his mother as big and strong when he was younger, to seeing her exact frailness and petiteness now. He wishes he was a little smaller, his face a little cuter, and his voice a little lighter. He tugs at the bottom of his shirt and panics during every awkward silence they have, but his mother smiles through the whole thing. Her eyes are big and glossy, clearer than Shouto has ever seen them, and when she reaches out a small hand to touch his hair, he leans into it.

Her touch is key that unlocks every single box within him, and he’s still recovering from the shock of feeling so much when his mother starts bawling, her chest heaving up and down. Shouto wipes off his own hidden tears and prepares to comfort her until he realizes that she is smiling. She puts down the photos by her desk and takes both of his hands into her own, and Shouto remembers for the first time in a long while that his mom has nice hands. They are soft and smooth, no longer rough with blisters the way they used to be when she had to deal with housework. They still run a few degrees cooler than his own, just as he remembers. In between every hitch of her breath, she tells him I miss you, I love you, I’m proud of you. 

And every one of those words tickle his heart like a feather, but he also regrets. There is a deep patch of guilt inside of his stomach that he doesn’t know what to do with. Before receiving her forgiveness, he doesn’t deserve those kind words.

He wants forgiveness for hating himself, for forgetting her, for letting anger cloud his entire being until he hurt everyone around him. He wants forgiveness for existing, for being the reason that his father had forced her into a Quirk Marriage in an attempt to create a tool for surpassing All Might. He wants forgiveness for wanting to be a Hero, not because of Endeavor but because of All Might, because of wanting to protect people like her and people like himself from people like Endeavor, but he already knows that to tear himself away from the path his father went down will be difficult. To detract himself from his upbringing, his last name, his own blood, will be hard.

And his mother looks stunned when he tells her all this, tears still streaming down her cheeks but her body sitting a little straighter as if she has forgotten she was sobbing just moments ago. Shouto swallows the knot in his throat. He understands why his mother may be confused. She was not there throughout most of his trials and tribulations in life, and she could not have controlled most of the things that he is asking forgiveness for even if she wanted to. Still, he wants forgiveness from someone, from anyone, but mostly from his mother. His mom is his moral compass, the light in his life, and Shouto has sinned so much.

Carefully, he extracts his hands from between his mother’s, lacing them together in his lap. He stares at his shoes. His sneakers are white and blue, the same ones he wears to school. Teardrops fall on them, and this time he doesn’t bother to hide it.

“Shouto,” his mother whispers after a long moment, and it’s the softest thing he’s ever heard. She reaches to take his hands again, and pulls his long arms around her body, closing her own around his shoulders. She is so small, so skinny, her scapulas thin and protruding like wings on her back. Shouto buries his face in her chest as he holds her tighter, wiping his tears on her yellow cardigan, breathing in the flowers and the warmth, his hands bunched up on the back of her shirt. Her words sound like a vibration, and he is listening to her heart, etching each beat into his very core. “You don’t have to ask for forgiveness, but if you want it, I have forgiven you long ago, and I will forgive you today. You are so strong, trying so hard to be the best that you can be, and Mom is so happy that you are happy now. That you are surrounded by people at school who love you, and who you love.”  

Later, as Shouto exits the hospital with a promise that he would be back next week, he entertains the idea of people at school who love him, and who he loves. He doubts there is anyone at school who loves him. He has only talked to Midoriya a few times since the Sports Festival, fleeting moments by the lunch table and while walking home. Even if they were better friends, he knows that Midoriya only did what he did out of a sense of righteousness; he is a hero, and heroes save people. It just happened to be Shouto who needed saving.

Still, he entertains the idea of people at school who love him and who he loves, and he thinks about Midoriya, thinks about UA, thinks about the next time that he’ll get to have a conversation with him and hear him laugh.

---

For his work study, Izuku chooses Gran Torino. A part of him is nervous about it. He only had one nomination, and it’s from someone that All Might knows well (and is deeply afraid of, apparently). He wishes that he at least had one or two more nominations to choose from, but it can’t be helped. He did not come close to winning the Sports Festival, and he spent the time that he did have by either breaking his bones or relying on his Quirkless athletic ability.

Izuku’s debut as a Hero was a lousy one. While he is glad that the Sports Festival brought him a new friend, he does feel a familiar unease of inadequacy lingers over him, and it makes eating a little harder.

“Midoriya,” he raises his head from his katsudon to see Todoroki staring at him across the lunch table, chopsticks tangled in brown soba noodles but his eyes fixed on Izuku’s, “What are you thinking?”

Todoroki asks him that a lot. Anytime Izuku makes an exaggerated expression, he asks, what are you thinking? It doesn’t matter if the expression is happy or sad, he never asks what’s wrong or are you okay.  Maybe eventually he will learn this vocabulary, but today he is grateful that he hasn’t.

“I’m thinking about the internships.” Izuku says, and it is true.

This answer seems to satisfy Todoroki, because he bends down again and dunks another bundle of noodles into his soba sauce and brings it to his lips. Izuku watches him eat, because he knows that when he’s done with that mouthful of noodles, he’ll speak again.

He does. “My father scouted me for his agency,” he says, and this time it’s Izuku turn to spoon katsudon into his mouth. After a few days eating lunch together, they have perfected this dance, the pacing at which Todoroki is comfortable talking more and Izuku is comfortable talking less.

“Are you going to go to his agency, then?” Izuku asks, and Todoroki stares at him for a little bit, like he’s thinking. Distracted, Izuku thinks that his two-toned hair, which wavers easily in the cafeteria air conditioning, may be soft to the touch.   Then he then glances down at his noodles, tapping his chopsticks against the edge of the wooden board his soba came in. Then he stops.

“Maybe. I haven’t decided.” He’s still staring at his noodles, and Izuku knows that really he’s staring past the noodles, past the cafeteria table that the noodles are sitting on, past his lap that’s underneath the table, at his shoes.  

 Izuku knows that he shouldn’t ask about Todoroki’s mother right now, so he eats another spoonful of katsudon and says, with his mouth still a little full, “Well, you don’t have to go to his agency if you don’t want to. If it’s hard for you, or if you won’t learn as much as you think you can, then don’t go. The internships are about practical experience, and if the experience won’t be practical for you, it makes no sense for you to be there. You have so many agencies to choose from, and your father’s is simply one of them. You have options .”

The unspoken words between them are, if you think your emotions would get in the way of your learning, like it has been doing for the past ten years, then don’t go. Todoroki looks up, and he meets Izuku’s eyes again. The immense concentration in his expression makes Izuku want to stop talking and look away, but he tries his best not to.

Still, his face stays warm. “If-if you want to go, though, I think you should go. He is the No. 2 Hero after all, and has proven himself time and time again to be very good at his job. So if you think that’s useful, then go... I guess? I mean, It’s up to you. You can make the best decision for yourself, I trust you. I mean! You know yourself best, right? Uh, yep.”

Izuku puts his face in his hands. Uraraka, sitting beside him, seems to notice the conversation for the first time and turns to give him a small series of pats on his back. He’s grateful for her comfort, but he doesn’t particularly want anyone to touch him right now because he wants to go die in a hole instead. He looks up when he hears Todoroki slurping his noodles again. Izuku, and now Uraraka too, stare at him for a long time before he stops eating and puts down his chopsticks.

“Okay,” is the highly anticipated answer, as his hooded eyes scan Izuku’s face again. Forget about the hole, Izuku is completely sure that he is on fire now, and actively dying from it.

“Okay?” says Uraraka, and now it’s Iida’s turn to glance up for the first time.

“I trust you, Midoriya,” Todoroki says simply, and Izuku’s anxiety dissipates. “I think I’ll go to my father’s agency.”

And this comes as a shock to everyone at the table, but not to him. Yes, Izuku may have said too much, or crossed a few boundaries during his tiny speech, but Todoroki seems to be completely fine with it. He suspects that his friend likes it when someone puts his thoughts into words for him, and Izuku is nothing if not observant. While he still hesitates to completely accept his obsessive fanboy nature despite its usefulness, his overall propensity for observation is something that he is proud of. It’s the only impressive thing from his Hero training that doesn’t manifest from One For All, and one of his very few unchanging personality traits that carried on from his Quirkless past.

So he says, “Okay,” and the conversation ends.

He smiles a little when Todoroki leaves lunch early to turn his decision in before class starts again.

---

Shouto does not know Iida Tenya well, but Midoriya does, and he can tell that Midoriya is worried. However, he can also tell that there’s something stopping Midoriya from pushing Iida to talk to him. Ever since the end of the Sports Festival, he has only prodded Iida to talk twice, once during lunch when Shouto first joined them and once at the train station when they’re heading off to their internships. Both times, he got rebuffed.

On the day they leave for the internships, the train station is not too busy. It is after morning rush hour but before lunchtime, so the air is still cool. Bright fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling give all of his friends’ a whitish glow. For example, Midoriya’s freckles look more visible today, and Shouto is able to pick out Uraraka’s individual eyelashes. Iida, well. Iida just looks pale. Shouto doesn’t think this has anything to do with fluorescent lights.

“Iida-kun, you know you can talk to me if you want to. We’re friends, right?” Midoriya says, and there’s an edge of worry in his voice, but not so much that it’s easily noticeable. He says friends like he’s not sure of it, like he’s waiting for Iida to deny it, but he doesn’t.

Instead, Iida plasters on a smile that does not quite reach his eyes. “Of course, Midoriya-kun.”  

Then, to Shouto’s surprise, the green boy seems to shrink on the spot and takes a small step backwards. Midoriya, whose heroism drives him to save anyone and everyone even at his own risk, backtracks from a friend in need and he has never seen him do that before. It hurts to see Midoriya make that face, and he recalls that he has seen that expression before on Yaoyorozu. Shouto wonders if he can fix this, if he can walk up to Iida and say all the things Midoriya hesitates to say, or something entirely from himself. Iida, I think I’ve seen your eyes somewhere before in my own mirror.  How can I help? But he doesn’t walk up to him. Instead, he watches Iida go, and he watches Midoriya watch Iida go.

As Shouto boards his own train and stares out the window, he wonders if he made the right decision. It’s not his place to say anything if Midoriya doesn’t. After all, Midoriya knows Iida much better, and he always has a plan.

Or, he doesn’t, and there’s actually a side to Midoriya that Shouto doesn’t know; the thought makes him uncomfortable but it’s most likely true. The more he spends time with him the more he realizes that to Midoriya, he is just one of his friends, while to Shouto, Midoriya is his hero. There’s a gap in between them that Shouto doesn’t know how to close; he has never saved Midoriya’s life, or pushed him to reunite with a missing parent. Despite how often and how willing Shouto is to tell him all about himself, willing to scrape out everything for him including the very bottom of the disgusting barrel, the fact remains that they haven’t been friends for long. Just because he has been watching Midoriya since school started, hoping for him to come talk to him, doesn’t mean Midoriya has also been wanting this same closeness.  

Shouto has never had a friend before and he doesn’t know how any of this works. Why is Midoriya so hesitant in their friendship? What is Shouto doing wrong? He wonders if he has to yell at the top of his lungs, I’ll do anything for you, I’ll go anywhere you go, I’ll follow any plan you make, just to get across his message. Or, if he has to shake the other’s shoulders profusely until he faints. His stomach knots itself into ribbons as he spends the rest of the train ride worried about his friendship with Midoriya, as well as whatever is going on with Iida.

Shouto’s father is waiting for him by the station when he arrives, wearing a black t-shirt and athletic tights, his arms crossed and his face stern. Shouto can see the wisps of orange fire on his face from all the way across the platform. Tightening his fist around the handle of his briefcase, his chest hardens with a familiar wave of disgust, but he pushes it down and reminds himself, I’m here because he’s the No. 2 Hero, and that’s all there is to it. Focus on learning.

The car ride to the agency is still silent, though, and he sits alone in the backseat with his briefcase beside him while his father sits in the front with the driver. His father glances at the rearview mirror at him every few minutes, his gaze prickly but bouncing off of Shouto’s skin. Has he always done this, or is this a new development? Does Shouto notice it today because he is more paranoid than usual? Maybe it’s because he hasn’t been in a car with his father since school started.

“You seem happier than usual,” his father says through the rearview mirror, and Shouto meets his eyes as indifferently as possible. Happy? How? He’s worried about his friends and he doesn’t want to be in this car. For a wild moment, he wonders what would happen if he opens the car door and throws himself out of it.

“None of your business,” he responds instead and glances out the window again, watching buildings pass by. His father turns away with a snort. A snort.  Shouto realizes a little too late that usually he would not have said anything in response.  

They arrive at the agency, and his father barks out some orders. He changes into his Hero costume while making Shouto do the same, and then ushers them out on a car ride to Hosu City along with some sidekicks. They’re going there on a business trip, and won’t stop until they catch the Hero Killer. There’s already a condo ready for them there. His father's big hands are pushing Shouto on the back as they shuffle toward the car, and he swats his arms away entirely on instinct, trained to be sensitive to everything going on around him whenever his father is present.

A few days later, this same instinct comes back when he’s patrolling through Hosu City with his father and a few others, watching the nighttime sky adorn itself with urban lights as the city comes alive. It’s beautiful, as all cities are at night, until they hear screaming and crashing from afar. They’re running now, and have been running for a while, except Shouto screeches to a stop when he fishes his phone out of his pocket after hearing just one buzz.  

“Shouto!” his father yells from ahead of him, but Shouto’s wide eyes are focused on only one thing: A text to Class 1-A from Midoriya, a location in Hosu City, a secluded alley far away from the rest of the chaos. A memory from this morning arises, his father drinking coffee and watching the news, yelling from the other side of the condo about the patterns of the Hero Killer’s serial murders while he sits in the kitchen and sleepily munches on Seven-Eleven melon bread.

Shouto turns around and sprints.  

He’s aware that he’s speaking, that he's speaking fast, word-vomit pouring from his mouth as he attempts to relay as much information as possible to his father while his mind is repeating Midoriya, Midoriya, Midoriya. He’s sure that he has never looked so frantic in front of his father in his life, and maybe it’s because of that his father falls silent. Shouto doesn’t need to turn back to see if his father understands, or if he will do as he asks and send Pro Heroes to Midoriya’s location on Ekou Street as fast as possible, because they are occupying the same wavelength, speaking the same language. They are no longer father and son, the creator and the created, but partners of the same agency, and partners always help each other to the utmost.

Despite the nastiness of it, years of training with his father has made seamless transitions between the two of them possible. They both know that when the world is in danger, family drama needs to be cast aside so that they can work together as equals. It’s times like this that Shouto is grateful for his father, grateful for the No. 2 Hero Endeavor, grateful for the name Todoroki.  

---

When Todoroki swoops in with a beam of fire at Ekou Street, Izuku’s first shameless thought is that he looks good in dark blue. His second thought is of course he looks good in dark blue, he looks good in anything. He’s Todoroki. He blames these thoughts on the adrenaline and absolute-quaking-fear that kicked into high gear after his rescue mission started and quickly went downhill, at least until Todoroki arrived.

Sure, he’s seen Todoroki plenty of times in his athletic uniform, but there’s something about his new Hero suit that brings out the sharpness within him. His new costume is fit for a Hero with honed-instincts and strong versatility, a Hero who dual-wields fire and ice to perfection. It’s not plain yet over-the-top the way his old outfit was, but it’s practical, to the point, and honest to a fault.

Much like Todoroki himself. 

 Izuku has never seen him using flames this comfortably in battle, and he gives himself a moment to revel in the fact that Todoroki is using his flames because of him. Either that, or it’s because they're battling the Hero Killer so he needs to pull out all the stops? Either way, he’s so glad that Todoroki is here, because the Hero Killer is strong and fast and Izuku is, well, not.

At least, not that strong and fast by himself. With his friends, Izuku thinks he can do anything. With Todoroki, he thinks he can do even better.  

“Todoroki-kun,” Izuku says when he falls back and lands beside him in a crouch, breathing heavily. Todoroki spares him only a glance before switching arms to shoot a new beam of fire, but Izuku can tell he’s listening. “I have a plan.”

And Todoroki, who is stronger than anyone, who enjoys working by himself more than anything, doesn’t even hesitate when he says, “Okay,” placing his life in Izuku’s hands. The vastness of unwavering trust that Todoroki has in him is dizzying.

It fills him with so much courage that the Full Cowl of One For All’s power buzzes a little louder, more ready for a fight than he has ever been. He stands up, green electricity snapping all around, and now he’s shoulder to shoulder with Todoroki. They have a mission: protect the two people behind them together, and stay alive.

---

Midoriya’s plan is for Shouto to support him from behind, and for the first time in his life he curses his power. He wishes that he can do more close-range stuff, so Midoriya doesn’t have to risk himself over and over again in order to draw the Hero Killer away from him and the two people behind him.

Lying facedown on the ground of this dark, filthy alley, Iida is crying. All Shouto wants to do is yell at him to get up, so he does. Get up, because when a villain named Hero Killer: Stain is about to slice each of their heads off, it would be nice to have a third person to battle with them. Get up, because Iida’s not the only one who has dealt with self-destructive anger and the following irrational guilt. Get up, because the only way to resolve this self-destructive anger and irrational guilt is to seek forgiveness.

And the only way to find forgiveness in this situation is to get up and fight.

In a mishap moment, the Hero Killer flies so close to him that all Shouto can see is the tip of a shining blade about to slice through his shoulder and the dirt on the bandana around Hero Killer’s menacing eyes. He smells like acid and sewer and he licks his lips like a salamander.  

The story of Shouto’s life unravels like a movie. This time it’s different, different from when his fire is activated during the Sports Festival. This time it’s all about the life that he had, the life that he’s yet to have, and all the memories in between: His mother, crying. Fuyumi, smiling. His father, frowning. Midoriya, laughing.

"TODOROKI-KUN!” Midoriya yells from afar, screaming into the ground and tearing his voice apart. The sound is agonizing to hear, bouncing off all the walls of the alley, but Midoriya can’t do anything this time, not when he’s crouched on the ground, immobilized once again.

Then Iida decks the Hero Killer in the face with a Recipro Burst, and another. For a split second, Shouto wonders if this is his redemption, being saved after saving someone else. He watches Iida stand up straight and tall in front of him, arms bleeding but still determined to fight, and he wonders if Midoriya felt like this when Shouto had burst into flame that day: like all the pain and suffering he’s ever been through is worth it, and that he can do anything. 

---

 When it is decided that Endeavor would be the one to take credit for the Hero Killer: Stain’s defeat, Izuku spares a nervous look at Todoroki to make sure he doesn’t lose it, but he keeps a blank face. Sitting on the edge of his hospital bed with his hands folded on his lap, he stares at his feet. Dressed in all white, he looks like some kind of pensive angel.

Izuku has been sneaking looks at Todoroki ever since they left Ekou Street together, him on Native’s back and Todoroki dragging the Hero Killer behind him by rope. He’s so amazed by everything around him, by the reality that is the present. He’s amazed that with Full Cowl he’s able to fight alongside Todoroki, and that they actually work extremely well together, able to anticipate each other’s every move and complement them wherever needed. He’s amazed that they’re still alive, that the Hero Killer let them live, so that they can go back to school and keep being dumb children. Most of all, he’s amazed by the fact that Todoroki now feels like a three-dimensional, living and breathing human being, instead of the big-fish Todoroki that Izuku has always been slightly afraid to touch.

Last night, Todoroki almost died. That fact alone makes Izuku want to rush up to him, push him into the headboard of his hospital bed, and run his hands all over his neck, arms, face, and hair, just to make sure that he’s actually okay. Yet during their entire battle, Todoroki had shouted Izuku’s name, sometimes stripped to the bone with panic, and other times flooded with relief. Each time Izuku comes a little too close to a blade, each time he tumbles to the ground and feels like he can’t get back up, he hears a “MIDORIYA!”, and he does. He gets up. Unless he’s paralyzed by Stain, he gets up and keeps fighting.

Staring at Iida across from him, sitting up in a bed with both his arms bandaged up but still alive and well, Izuku comes to the conclusion that not many things are real anymore. This morning, he had to stare at his own face in the mirror for an indeterminable amount of time, tracing his eyes languidly over every freckle, every wrinkle, and every tuft of green just to make sure that he is indeed Midoriya Izuku.

Now, however, he is fine. Now that there are signs of the aftermath churning out, such as news reports and police visits, life feels like it’s in motion again. Casting another glance behind him at Todoroki, Izuku imagines that he probably feels bad for yelling at the Police Chief and calling him a dog (a mutt, specifically). Izuku smiles to himself. For someone who looks so calm all the time, Todoroki sure has a surprising temper. Then again, he has known that since the Sports Festival, when he was the one to rile Todoroki up during their tournament match.

During their time sharing a room at Hosu City General Hospital, Iida makes it known to his two friends that he feels bad. Very bad. I’m-an-incompetent-Hero-and-don’t-deserve-to-be-class-rep bad. Izuku tries his best to comfort him but even he doesn’t have all the words. He can imagine why Iida would feel bad: law-abiding, class president Iida, wasting his week of Hero internships just to go on a murderous spree in Hosu City in revenge for his brother, the first hero he has ever known. Then, also dragging two of his friends into it when they refused to let him die at the hands of an actual serial killer.

The true extent of his pain or the exact magnitude of his guilt, however, is a mystery to Izuku. One day he might understand: being a Pro Hero is a high-risk job, so eventually he will know plenty of people who die or almost die at the hands of villains, and he will feel the tunnel vision of grief and frustration at a world that he can’t control. But now, he can’t, and surprisingly enough it is Todoroki who speaks up every time Iida looks like he’s about to word-vomit again.

“It feels really awful now, but you have your whole life to consider what it means to be a good hero.” Todoroki had said, when they were all awake and in pain during their first night at the hospital, lying on the beds and staring at the ceiling, the street lamp outside casting a yellowish glow in the room. “You don’t have to make it up to us, and your brother whose name you squandered, until then.”

Izuku thinks that the words are a little harsh, but if Iida disliked it he didn’t show it. Instead, he nods against his pillow, scraping his hair against the fabric, and makes an uh-huh sound like he understands. After that, every time he apologizes Izuku or Todoroki would say something. By the time Iida leaves the hospital, he seems to have cheered up a little, although still just as serious. Serious in the same way Todoroki sometimes is, quietly and from far away.

They are watching Iida leave the hospital from the window of their room when Todoroki says, almost to himself, “Iida will have a lot to think about.” He is holding onto the side of the curtain as he stands, eyes fixed on the blue head walking through the courtyard, all the way until he slides into a car and leaves.

Izuku sits on his bed behind him, watching the way his fingers curl around the curtain between his fingers, and just nods.

---

A day before Iida is discharged to go home, Shouto writes a letter for his mother. He’s not going to send it because he will see his mother next Sunday, but being in the hospital is boring and he wants to pass the time. He spends the majority of his day talking with Iida and Midoriya, who are both capable of loudness when they want to be, but he gets exhausted from socializing much quicker than either of them. Sometimes he takes a walk around the lobby, other times he takes a nap. But by now he has already done both of these things, so he picks up a pen and a scrap of paper from the nice receptionist outside and starts a letter to his mom, making sure to draw the curtain between him and Midoriya’s bed closed so that he has privacy. Still, he hears laughter and discord around him, and he has to stare at the blank paper for a while before he’s able to start writing.

The contents of the letter go something like this:

Hi Mom, I’m at Hosu City now with my friends Iida and Midoriya. Remember Midoriya? The one from the Sports Festival that I told you about. Iida is one of his best friends, so I spend a lot of time with him as well. We’ve probably met Iida’s family at some point, but I don’t really remember. He is from a pretty famous Hero family as well, from Tokyo. His brother’s Hero name is Ingenium. Yaoyorozu, my other friend who sits next to me in class, is also from a famous Hero family but I don’t know if any of her siblings are Heroes. I’m not sure if she even has siblings.  

Anyways, we’re in the hospital after a battle with a villain called Hero Killer: Stain, but we’re all okay. I have the least injuries of all of us, so I will be out of the hospital soon. Iida is leaving before all of us, though, because his family is summoning him back home. So I’ll soon be here with just Midoriya. Midoriya has injured one leg and one arm each. He should be able to walk soon, though, so everything’s okay.  

I’ve been thinking a lot about you and Midoriya lately, I think you’ll like him. He’s really kind and smiles a lot. Is it weird to want to bring him to visit you? I think you guys will get along great-

And that’s where the letter stops. For some reason, Shouto can’t bring himself to write anything past that. His face is burning, Iida and Midoriya’s conversation stifling in his socially-exhausted ears. Despite the closed curtain, his big fear is that Midoriya will see what he is writing and feel awkward about it. He probably will go along with whatever Shouto asks of him because he’s nice like that, but why would he want to visit Shouto’s mother with him? He has no obligation to do so at all, and even Shouto himself has only seen her twice since the Sports Festival. What if his mother doesn’t want him to bring anyone else? This thought makes his heart plunge. Is he even allowed to bring non-family to visit his mother?

Shouto abandons the letter by folding it up into a tiny, palm-sized square, and picks up his phone to check the visitor’s guidelines for his mother’s hospital.  

There’s a gap in the corner of the curtain near the foot of his bed, and from it, he can see Midoriya’s hands. Just his hands, a little scarred and deformed, wavering widely. Shouto will never be able to get complete privacy as long as he stays in this hospital room. It’s a curtain, after all, not a door. Still, he doesn’t want to get up from his bed, walk past both his friends, and tell them that he’s leaving to find somewhere secluded so that he can find out whether he can bring Midoriya to meet his mom. He can very well not tell them where he’s going, or make up a lie, but he knows that he will take one look at Midoriya’s face and give in.

So, pushing down the churning in his stomach, Shouto makes a point to lean a little sideways in his bed, facing his phone away from Midoriya’s enthusiastic hand-gesturing as he tells Iida all about his notes on the Ninja Hero: Edgeshot. Then, carefully, he types the name of his mother’s hospital into the Google search bar.

---

The night before Todoroki is discharged from the hospital, which is one day after Iida went home, Izuku receives a message from Kacchan.  At this point, it’s days past their battle with the Hero Killer. He sees it all over the newspapers in the lobby and the social media on his phone. Izuku has received plenty of text messages from his classmates inquiring about their well-being, and even had a nerve-wracking but pleasant phone call with Uraraka. Thus, he isn’t surprised about receiving a message. He nearly fell out of his hospital bed because it’s Kacchan, and because until now he was completely sure that Kacchan had blocked his number since their flip-phone days.

The message reads:

“heard from kirishima that some villain rocked your shit.”

He heard this from Kirishima? Izuku takes a moment to pull up Class 1-A’s group chat on his phone and sees under his icon that he actually muted the chat. He wonders why he hasn’t noticed this, and realizes that he hasn’t really been thinking about Kacchan lately, at least not outside of his Hero-training. Still, he frowns at the mute button, and mentally scolds Kacchan for feeling tempted to use it. Firstly, chance encounters with villains can happen much more frequently than one thinks, so it’s important to keep the chat alive in order to call for backup when needed. Izuku is pretty sure he would not be alive if it weren’t for Todoroki’s swift arrival at Ekou Street. Secondly, muting the chat is just disrespectful, it’s their class chat! They socialize on it, send memes on it, ask about homework on it. It’s such a Kacchan thing to not want to deal with any of that. Kirishima is a blessing from God for willing to put up with his eccentricities and keep him updated on class news. They’ve really hit it off ever since the Sports Festival.  

At this thought, Izuku smiles sadly. It would be nice if Kacchan trusts him the same way he trusts Kirishima, but it’s too late now. It’s not like he cares too much about it anymore, but he does feel the familiar ache of what could have been. For a long time, it was the only thing that Izuku really wanted aside from a Quirk: Kacchan’s trust. Kacchan’s acknowledgment. Kacchan’s attention.

But it seems that something has changed, like an unintentional paradigm shift. He feels calmer than usual today. So, he doesn’t panic when he is typing up a response. He doesn’t even read it a third time or fourth time before hitting “send.”

“Thanks for your concern, Kacchan. I’m doing fine. Todoroki-kun and Iida-kun are both okay too.”

 Izuku puts his phone by the nightstand between him and Todoroki’s bed, right by the glowing lamp. The overhead lights are off and it’s nearly time for them to sleep, but Todoroki is reading a magazine he found in the lobby and Izuku doesn’t want to ask him to turn off the lamp, nor does he want to draw the curtain close between them. Todoroki, with his head bent over the magazine and his long legs crossed, looks beautiful in the lamplight: Not in a girly way, but in a sophisticated kind of way, his white and red hair falling in his eyes and his posture straight. His fingers hold the pages at the very edge as if they’re delicate, flipping them slowly. He always sits like he works in a bank, and holds a teacup like he went to tea ceremonies as a kid, which he probably did. Izuku wants to touch the back of his neck, between where his hair trails off and where the hospital gown begins, just to feel his skin under his hand.  

His phone pings again, and Izuku’s heart leaps to his throat as his last thought dissipates. He scrambles for his phone on the nightstand. Kacchan, apparently, is a quick texter. For a moment he wishes he wasn’t, but then he takes one look at the text message and bursts into laughter.

“WHO’S CONCERNED!!?!??? i’ll kill you. ”

He reaches an arm across the nightstand, over the lamp, and slaps the drawn-back curtain between himself and Todoroki. It makes a fwup, fwup noise, and a curious head tilts toward him like an owl, magazine left forgotten. Izuku holds out his phone. “Look at what Kacchan just sent me.”

Todoroki leans an arm on the nightstand between them as he drifts closer, and Izuku edges the phone toward him. A moment passes. Then, with a frown deeper than he has ever seen on him, Todoroki says, “I don’t know why you let him talk to you like that.”  

While Izuku is surprised by the expression on Todoroki’s usually blank face, the confusion and frustration of it, he is not phased by this statement at all. A lot of people have asked him that question, especially in the first few days of school after their battle trial when he is the only person to be rushed to Recovery Girl after Hero-training and missed a whole afternoon of class. So, he gives the typical response, which is a lie but not entirely, “Kacchan talks to everyone like this.”

But Todoroki is not any typical classmate, so he frowns even deeper. “Not everyone,” he says, and his voice is so quiet it sounds like a mumble.

Izuku’s heart hurts. He looks away, drawing himself away from the nightstand between them, away from Todoroki’s piercing, searching eyes. He reaches an arm past the other boy’s shoulder in an attempt to pull the curtain closed between them, but Todoroki is faster. Without looking away from Izuku, he whips a hand up and catches the arm as if on reflex, fingers circling around his wrist. Eyes meet, and their faces are so close now, Izuku can feel the warmth of both of their breaths.

“It’s a long story,” he protests, and his voice is quieter than he wants it to be.

“So is mine,” Todoroki whispers back, and the desperation of it shoots through Izuku’s entire body. “And I told you everything. I don’t think there’s a thing you don’t know about me.”

Izuku feels his own eyes go wide. This is not a fluke, their friendship is not a fluke. All this time, Todoroki sits at his lunch table, drifts to his desk during passing periods, walks with him home to the train station, never hesitating to answer every question he throws at him no matter how personal, because he cares. Now, with the edges of his vision filled with Todoroki’s hair, Todoroki’s eyes, Todoroki’s breath, Izuku remembers belatedly he has told nobody in class about his past with Kacchan, always avoiding the topic whenever it comes up.

Why? Because it sucked. His life before UA sucked. His life before One For All, before All Might, before Todoroki, sucked. He wants to run from the past, has always wanted to run from the past, and while the past chases after him in the form of a loser complex, he still runs. Izuku’s story deserves to be buried in the dust that he will leave behind when he defeats one hundred, one thousand villains. He hates his story: It’s long, it’s awful, but… so is mine, Todoroki had said, and he’d told Izuku everything anyway.

If Todoroki can tell Izuku about his abusive childhood and the psychological damage it inflicted on him, Izuku can tell him about some stupid bullying. Well, not stupid bullying. His own trauma may feel small compared to Todoroki’s, but it doesn’t mean any less. Todoroki will understand. Todoroki wants to know. Todoroki cares.  

Perhaps sensing Izuku’s change in demeanor, Todoroki lets go of his wrist, the one that reached behind him to pull the curtains closed. Izuku draws that hand back into his own, touching the skin of his wrist, colder now that Todoroki’s hand is no longer on it. Then, he watches as Todoroki pulls back from him, slides off his bed, and climbs onto Izuku’s instead, crossing his legs in a sitting position where Izuku’s feet are. As if conscious that the taller boy has a body for the first time, Izuku draws his legs in as well, mimicking his stance, and Todoroki scoots a little closer. Their knees almost touch.

Heart jumping out of his throat, Izuku doesn’t know where to put his hands, so he laces them together in his lap. He’s still looking at his hands when Todoroki’s soft voice pipes up again.

“I don’t want to force you to tell me anything you don’t want,” he says cautiously, and this is the Todoroki that Izuku is familiar with, the one that’s sheepish and socially-awkward and glancing at his feet because he doesn’t know where else to put his eyes. “But, we have time. I’ll wait as long as you want me too. I owe you this much at least. ”

And Izuku wants to deny this. No, you don’t owe me anything, in fact, I owe you everything, so I will tell you anything you want, but he knows that this is not what Todoroki wants to hear. What he wants is realness and vulnerability, a response to all the things that he had broken down his own walls to tell Izuku, only Izuku, even though Izuku’s own antsy brain didn’t grasp the significance of his words until now. So, for the first time in his life, Izuku pushes down the self-doubt and anxiety that is bubbling up his chest, the relentless I’m sorry please don’t worry you’re too good for me why do you want to listen to me anyway, and tells Todoroki everything, as close to the truth as possible.  

---

The first thing that Midoriya does before starting to talk is to put his phone on silent. Apparently Bakugou is angry that he never responded to the I’ll kill you text, and is now spamming more death threats. The phone buzzes on the nightstand like an attention-seeking child, much like the blond on the other line. Midoriya shows all the text messages to Shouto, unable to stop laughing the entire time, and he supposes there’s something that’s a little amusing about it. An image of Bakugou angrily throwing his phone across the room, yelling DIE at the top of his lungs, comes to mind.

“TEXT ME BACK, NERD. how dare you leave my message hanging. MOTHER FUCKER. I’ll KILL YOU. ”

And that’s the last of the messages they see before Midoriya powers off his phone and throws it back on the nightstand.

The room around them dissipates as he tells Shouto about growing up Quirkless. “My Quirk manifested late,” he says, playing with the threads at the edge of his hospital gown, a nervous habit that Shouto also has, “And since I grew up with Kacchan, whose Quirk is amazing, I kind of became a target.” A target for Bakugou and the rest of the neighborhood children, all the way until high school. He talks about burn marks on his skin, scraped elbows and knees, and failed attempts at pretending he wasn’t black and blue underneath his school uniform because he was always unable to lie to his mother.

A lot of this strikes a chord in Shouto, familiar as a bell chime. Even though he was homeschooled all the way until UA and never had any bullying classmates, he understands burn scars and bruises. During all this familiar territory, he keeps a steady gaze on Midoriya, even if the latter is looking away. But this is where the story diverges.

Midoriya tells Shouto about feeling worthless, about being told and feeling like he will never accomplish anything great. He talks about the sinking trap of inferiority, wanting to shrink until he takes up nothing but empty space, wanting to fade into the background or disappear into nothingness. At this, Shouto breaks his gaze. He reaches for the edge of his own hospital gown, and starts tugging out the threads one by one, copying Midoriya’s movements. Shouto has been special all his life, designed to be flawless. No one has ever told him that he’s a failure, or that he’s a waste of space. In fact, he grew up crushed under the weight of expectations, always being pushed to do better even when he’s already the best. To constantly be called worthless, defenseless, and a waste of oxygen must be… awful. Shouto can’t even imagine it.

 His fingers feel so cold, but his palms are sweating. Nobody’s supposed to hate Midoriya. He’s too good.  Why? Who would do this?

“It’s not Kacchan’s fault,” Midoriya laughs humorlessly, and Shouto doesn’t respond. He can’t respond, he doesn’t know how. “If you get to know him, you’ll know that Kacchan doesn’t really mean anything he says. He started saying those things because he liked being the boss of the neighborhood kids, and as years went by it stuck and became more like a habit instead of an insult, like a pattern that we can’t break through. But because of this, Kacchan is as much of a victim as I am.”

Shouto wants to disagree. He doesn’t really understand this logic. He hates his father because of the things he did and the things he said. It doesn’t matter if he intended to hurt Shouto or not, the point is that he did. Bakugou hurt Midoriya, and it doesn’t matter if he meant to, because he did. So, why? Why is Midoriya forgiving him this easily?

“Um, I guess, think about it this way,” Midoriya says shyly, as if sensing Shouto’s confusion. He looks embarrassed explaining it, too, the darkening of his pink cheeks visible even without the overhead fluorescent lights, “Kacchan is only one of the many people that say bad things about me. It’s also the teachers, the other classmates, and sometimes even people I bump into on the street when I’m not paying attention. Um. Either way, it doesn’t matter if it’s Kacchan saying the bad things or if someone else says the bad things. What matters is that those words eventually found their way into my brain and I say those bad things to myself more than everyone else combined. Does that make any sense? I think those things to myself when I get a test question wrong, for example. I tell myself, ‘Izuku, why are you so stupid? This is why Kacchan hates you,’ or I think to myself, ‘this is why nobody thinks you can be a hero,’ stuff like that. So it has nothing to do with Kacchan really, but mostly to do with, well, myself.”

“But it started because of Bakugou, right?” Shouto asks, almost cutting Midoriya off. No, it doesn’t make sense. He still doesn’t get it. Nobody is supposed to dislike Midoriya. “the bad things that you say about yourself don’t just start nowhere.”

And at this, Midoriya seems to pause. He puts a hand to his chin and cocks his head to the side, the way he does when he is thinking about Quirks. Shouto half expects him to start rambling, but he doesn’t. Instead, he looks down again, and his shoulder sag. Not sadly, per se. More like in resignation.

“It may have started because of Kacchan, or it may have started because of someone else. I don’t really know, and I don’t really think it matters.” he shrugs, and goes back to pulling threads out the edges of his hospital gown.

Shouto lets out a huff. “Of course it matters.” It matters to me.  

Midoriya shakes his head. Shouto wants someone to blame, and it looks like he’s not going to get his way today. They stay like this for a long time. Midoriya, looking small, and Shouto, wanting to set something on fire. Green eyes far away, Midoriya is considering the next thing to say. He has his thinking face on, a zone that can’t be interrupted, so despite his frustration Shouto lets him think. The sky outside is completely dark now, Hosu City coming alive at night again, brighter than ever now that the Hero Killer is gone. But in this hospital room, where only the two of them exist right across from each other, the one light that Shouto sees is the lamp by Midoriya’s side, lighting half of him ablaze.  

“I think I use Kacchan as an excuse to hate myself.”

Shouto looks at Midoriya now, at the side of his face that’s bright, at the yellow lamplight dancing around in his serious,  roundish eyes, hooded in the dark. “I’m not confident, so I blame it on someone else for being better than me. I give myself an excuse not to try my best, because I think someone will succeed before me.”

But you always try your best. You always succeed. Midoriya looks up at him now, just for a split second, before looking away again. Shouto catches something in those eyes, but he’s not sure what it is.

“Because I’m a basketcase and hopeless loser, I feel like I don’t deserve to become friends with people better than me. When I’m self-conscious, I find it hard to talk to people who are better than me or stronger than me, because I don’t think they’ll want to waste their time or their breath on me .”

 Shouto opens his mouth to say something, but he doesn’t know how to say what he wants to say. A small part of him admires Midoriya for being able to spell out his feelings so clearly, because Shouto does not have even a fraction of the same emotional intelligence or vocabulary for this.

Midoriya breathes in hard, his voice low. “I… I didn’t think you would ever want to talk to me either.”

This hurts Shouto in all the wrong places.

“Because you’re strong. And smart. And talented. You’ll become one of the best Heroes in our generation and I’m just,” he takes another deep breath and then sighs, looking even smaller, “I’m just Izuku. ”

Shouto has no words. Surely Midoriya doesn’t actually believe these things about himself. He is the most heroic person Shouto has ever known. He has one of the strongest Quirks that he has ever seen. Everyone loves Midoriya, everyone loves his dedication, his altruism, and his intelligence. Even Shouto’s own father has told him once that his friend possesses incredible power, both Quirk-wise and personality-wise.

Everyone loves Midoriya except for Midoriya himself, apparently.  

How is he so calm when he’s talking about this?

“Do you really,” hate yourself this much, Shouto wants to ask but stops himself, “How do you,” live like this? Then he starts again, “Is there,” anything I can say to make you feel better? Because if only you can see the way you changed my life for good, the way you made me a much better person than the reservoir of anger I was, you might believe me when I say that you are, you are- 

But before he can say anything, Midoriya lifts up his arms, and he stretches them up, up, up, and lets them down with a satisfying sigh. Shouto blinks, like he missed something, a moment of transition that broke the tension in the air while he was lost in thought.

“I’m sorry, Todoroki-kun,” says Midoriya, meeting his eyes with just a hint of a smile, looking a little wistful, “A lot of that must have been difficult to hear or weird to think about. It’s all things that I’m working on, though.” Then he winks and holds up a thumbs up,  and Shouto thinks of All Might, of saving the world with a smile. His heart skips a beat. Even now, Midoriya is trying to save him, save him from the embarrassment and dread of having nothing to say. “I know now that a lot of the bad things I say to myself are irrational, so it’s easier to squash down feelings that tear me down now. It’s easier too, with people like you, All Might, Uraraka-san, Iida-kun, and everyone at UA inspiring me to do better.”

This, of course, is a breath of fresh air for Shouto, but the fact remains that he has to say something. Midoriya is strong, much stronger than he ever knew. Midoriya is a better human being than anyone. Midoriya is, Midoriya is-

“Midoriya, you’re amazing.” Shouto finally breathes out, and he’s smiling, laughing to himself, bending his head lower because he’s not entirely sure how his laughing face looks and he’s worried that it looks weird. The air around them is warm, and his heart settles from anxiety but speeds up for another reason. He feels like Yaoyorozu, proud of someone else’s accomplishment, proud of someone else for pulling through such a difficult life and still ending up a good person. “I wish I were more like you. I wish everyone were more like you. You’re my hero, Midoriya.”  

And Midoriya's green eyes go wide for the second time tonight, transfixed on Shouto’s words again. He doesn’t think that his own words are any impressive, but they’re honest, and he supposes that Midoriya is not used to this kind of honesty: genuine, straight-forward, and from-the-heart praise, the kind that he struggles to tell himself. He keeps his gaze on the face in front of him, at Midoriya’s big eyes and open lips, wanting to savor it forever.

Then Midoriya looks down at his lap, where his fingers are twisted in the bottom of his hospital gown, and tears begin to tumble onto the back of his hands, his shoulders heaving with uncontrollable sobs.  Shouto’s heart is in his throat now. Midoriya’s teardrops are bigger than any tears he’s seen, and they look like gemstones.

For a moment he just cries, and then he sniffles and lifts his arms to wipe at his face. Before he can, however, Shouto closes a hand around his wrist again and pulls him into his arms, the way his mother did when he cried in front of her the first time they reunited.

Also in a hospital, facing each other and sitting with their knees touching.

Shouto’s just glad that he can return the favor.  

---

Izuku is an ugly crier and he can’t help it. His mother, though beautiful, is an ugly crier. His grandmother, who he has never met, was an ugly crier. To his knowledge, his father was an ugly crier too. It’s in his genes; Izuku can’t run from the ugly crier-ness.

Todoroki doesn’t seem to care, though. There’s probably snot on the front of his hospital gown but all he does is hold Izuku tight and let him bury his face in his chest anyway. He’s sitting like a toddler in Todoroki’s lap, right in the middle of his crossed legs, fists clenching at his shirt. With his face buried in messy green curls, Todoroki's arms are around Izuku’s back, cradling him like a child. He smells like hospital soap and antiseptic solution and body heat. He is entirely solid, entirely three-dimensional, and entirely made of life. Izuku sinks into it, into the feeling of Todoroki all around him, and the closer he presses his body to him, Todoroki holds him tighter.   

It’s kind of strange, but it’s also kind of nice. Izuku has never been this close physically or emotionally to someone his age before, and he wonders from where Todoroki learned this kind of tenderness. He doesn’t miss the way Todoroki’s heart is beating a mile a minute, the loudness of it in sync with Izuku’s tears, and the way his hands tremble just a little bit around his back, like he’s not used to holding someone, not used to physical contact in general.

Izuku wonders if it’s his mom who taught him how to do this, and he’s glad that Todoroki at least found one more chance during his teenage years to behave like a child and have a mother there to comfort him. He also wonders if this means he may not know how to do normal teenager things, like comfort someone by rubbing circles into their backs, or watching sad movies together while eating an entire pint of ice cream. Then again, Izuku doesn’t know how to do these things either. He’s only read about them in manga or seen them in movies.  

Eventually, as he feels his sobs subside, he also feels a familiar panic kick in, oh no I just cried so hard in front of Todoroki I wonder what he thinks of me now it must not be great I screwed up again, but he squashes this feeling as much as he can. Todoroki’s arms are still tight around him, his face is still in Izuku’s hair, and even as Izuku is lifting his head and drawing himself back, the arms around him seems hesitant to let go. It occurs to him that the normally stoic boy might have needed this, or at least wanted this, the same way he has. Eventually, Izuku has to reach a hand to his back and peel Todoroki off of him, one finger at a time. His fingers are a little longer than Izuku’s own, and it makes him want to lace their fingers together but he doesn’t. Not right now. Right now he’s a little too mortified for any of that.

“Todoroki-kun,” Izuku whispers as he extracts himself from Todoroki’s net of limbs, his voice hoarse and his eyes still stinging. Todoroki leans backwards from him now, his face turned away and quickly hidden by a bandaged arm, but he can only lean so far away when Izuku is still sitting on his legs. This time, with a spark of amusement, Izuku is the one to catch him by the wrist, and he reaches his other hand up to touch the side of Todoroki’s face. The tip of his fingers brushes his ear and the strands of his soft white hair. Then, Todoroki finally turns his two-toned eyes to face him.

“Todoroki-kun, did you cry?”

At this, he turns away again, but the movement is small enough that Izuku’s hand remains on his cheek. Letting go of Todoroki’s wrist, Izuku reaches that hand to cup the other side of his face, turning him so they face each other again, his thumb brushes over the bottom edge of his rough scar. Todoroki doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t turn away. Instead, he responds honestly, “Just a little.”

Izuku stifles a laugh. Todoroki’s face is warm under his touch, especially his cheekbones. “I cry all the time. You didn’t have to cry with me.”

Todoroki shrugs in response, still embarrassed. But he does ask, a little awkwardly, “Why did you cry?”

And the answer is an easy one. “Because you care about me,” Izuku whispers, the words filling the warm air between the two of them, the closeness between their faces.

Because you care about me enough to talk to me. Because you care about me enough to spend time with me. Because you care about me enough to tell me about your life. Because you care about me enough to ask me about mine. Because you held me while I cried. Because you told me I’m amazing. Because you told me I’m your hero. Because you came for me when no one did. Because you are everything I thought I couldn’t have, but you’re here with me now. You defy the laws of everything I’ve ever known, and you’re rewriting the rules of what I deserve and don’t deserve.

You’re my revolution.  

At the simple yet loaded answer, Todoroki closes his eyes and leans into his touch. Izuku’s breath stops as he leans even closer and lifts his own hands to his face, closing his long fingers over the Izuku’s hands. His palms are calloused and rough, the hands of a well-trained Hero, and trembling just a little. Then he says, in a nonchalance total contrasting the nervousness of his hands, close enough for Izuku to feel the words on his lips. “Midoriya, I care for you so much.”

And these are the words that take the last bit of reason out of him as well as the last bit of neuroticism. He’s exhausted, he’s dehydrated, and his feelings are overflowing. So, when Todoroki finishes his sentence, Izuku leans in to close the small gap between them and kisses him right on his open lips, before he even has a chance to open his eyes.  

--- 

Midoriya’s lips are soft, malleable, and they only taste like one thing: tears. Shouto cracks one of his eyes open to make sure that he isn’t crying, and closes it again to concentrate on the feeling of flying, of dreaming, and of desperation.

Shouto has never kissed anyone before, and he doesn’t know if Midoriya has either, but he likes the feeling of Midoriya’s hands on his face, brushing on the ragged edges of his scar and the tips of his hair. Eventually those hands move to the back of Shouto’s neck, fingers slide down to grip his shoulders underneath the collar of the hospital gown, touching the hot skin there, and he likes the feeling of his own hands on Midoriya’s body, running his thumbs on his collarbones and tangling his fingers in the curls of the smaller boy’s soft hair. 

He likes that Midoriya pulls back from Shouto’s lips occasionally to breathe once, twice, before coming back in for more. He likes the way that Midoriya looks at him, like he can’t get enough of him, like he would follow him anywhere, and Shouto wonders if he is making the same faces right back because he’s feeling all the same emotions. He wonders if he, the less vocabularily-gifted of the two, can get all his feelings across just by making faces and kissing Midoriya on his neck, on his jaw, on the corner of his eyes.  

Running entirely on instinct, Shouto slides a hand under Midoriya’s shirt, feeling the hikes and groves of his ab muscles and his hip bones, and Midoriya audibly gasps. The spell breaks, and for a second Shouto freezes until Midoriya places a hand on his shoulder and nods at him. Keep going. He makes sure to watch his changing expressions after that, as he continues kissing him, touching him, and eventually letting go of him when he feels a tap on the shoulder again, both of them breathing heavily after a long stretch of no air, so that they can talk.

They’re sitting in front of each other again, knees touching, lips swollen, clothes rumpled, but they're holding hands. Occasionally, Midoriya would pick up their joined hands in between them and place a kiss on Shouto’s fingertips. Occasionally, Shouto would pick up their joined hands and hold Midoriya’s on his cheek.

“Was that okay?” Midoriya asks in a small voice, when Shouto lifts their hands to his cheek again. Of course it was okay; he had let Midoriya kiss him breathless, and breathlessly kissed him right back. But watching Midoriya's eyebrows knit together, his mouth drawn into a flat frown, Shouto knows that he needs to hear the truth straight from his lips or else he won’t believe it.

So Shouto says, “I liked it.”  

“Then what do we do now? Obviously, normal friends don’t kiss like we just did. Not even best friends do that.” Midoriya says, and all the words come out at once like a flood. It’s such a Midoriya thing to want to analyze everything right now, fix the illogical problems right now. But Shouto has always followed his instincts, and his instincts aren’t often wrong, so he brings Midoriya’s hands back to his lips and kisses his fingers, one by one.

“I think,” he says, trying to find the right words, a little embarrassed about trying to find the right words, and Midoriya’s eyes are piercing and heavy and entirely spherical, like he’s expecting to be shot down. Shouto tries his best to hold his gaze. Not today, Midoriya, not in the foreseeable future. “I think that I have always felt more than just friendship for you.”  

And Shouto’s bad at detecting his own feelings, but he’s pretty sure that this is true. At some point, his persistent want for talking to Midoriya had turned into a persistent need to spend time with him. That transformed into the emotional rollercoaster that he has gone through since then and is still going through now, the thoughts of I will follow you anywhere and Midoriya looks cute when he laughs popping up at the least expected places. It’s weird. Feelings are so weird. But he doesn’t want to give it up.

Midoriya lips are still in a thin line, but his eyes are bright and full of hope, “I think it’s the same for me too.”

And this thought floods Shouto with so much relief and gladness, he leans forward and kisses Midoriya again. This time, they kiss slowly, languidly, drawing back to breathe after every time their lips meet, sometimes bumping their noses into each other and then laughing about it. Their hands are still interlaced between them and their knees are still touching, sharing the same heartbeat. They kiss over and over again until it’s dark even in the hallways of the hospital but the lamplight remains steady, as even the city outside starts to fall asleep.

Then, sharing their breaths with their foreheads pressed together, lying sideways in Midoriya’s bed on top of the covers, Shouto sinks himself into the warmth of their bodies. Tanging their limbs together, he is careful to avoid the bandages that are still around Midoriya’s legs, around both of their arms. He nudges the green boy as he feels him about to drift off to sleep, his breathing becoming slower and steadier each minute he spends in between Shouto’s arms.

“Hmm?” Midoriya stirs, opening his emerald eyes just a little bit.

Shouto almost can’t ask, but he pushes the words out anyway. “Next Sunday, do you want to go visit my mother with me?”

Then Midoriya smiles, and presses another chaste kiss to Shouto’s lips. The thrill of it is still new and it tingles, as does the fluttering in Shouto’s heart.

“Of course I do.”  

---

For the entire bus ride to Musutafu City Plaza, Izuku presses a hand against his chest in an attempt to stop his heart from flying out his mouth. His head is swimming with an anxiety that has persisted since Todoroki was discharged from Hosu City General Hospital, because that was the last time that they’d seen each other face to face until now, almost a week later on the promised Sunday.

Sure, text messages have happened throughout the week, but Todoroki is a curt texter and Izuku, well. Izuku has a hard time replying to curt text messages, but he does try his best.  

When his bus finally rumbles to a stop by the street, he sees from the windows that Todoroki is already there at the bus stop waiting for him, wearing an unbuttoned blue collared shirt and a white tee underneath. His black jeans look more grey-ish and they are ripped at the knees, like he put them in the washer a little too many times. The sling bag over his shoulder has a broken zipper where one of the side pockets are. His hands are in his jeans pockets and his face is turned away. It seems like he made an attempt to style his hair today, because his bangs look swept aside in a side-part kind of way, red covering a little more white than usual. It’s subtle but it’s there, and Izuku smiles at the thought of Todoroki staring blankly at the mirror and then at the hair gel in his hands. Maybe his sister helped him with it.

These little details that Izuku sees on him relieve the pressure in his chest, somewhat. Todoroki is not a perfect human being, therefore Izuku doesn’t have to try so hard either. In the rational part of his mind, he’s always known this: It was the very human, very flawed sadness present in Todoroki that drove Izuku to push him during the Sports Festival. What got in the way of an easy friendship afterwards was his own self-doubt: He’d built an ordinary teenage boy up into a larger-than-life statue in order to justify keeping him at a distance. Adding on the romantic feelings he didn’t know were in play, his image of Todoroki became an unrealistic one. Truthfully, he is as much of a train wreck as Izuku is, just in completely different ways.  

Because of these obsessions, he had completely overlooked Todoroki’s romantic feelings toward him as a result. For someone so observant, Izuku sure can be dense.  

He now knows that Todoroki is the kind of person who will say nothing when Izuku walks up with him at the bus stop, hands still twitching as he takes them out of his pockets, and then have the audacity to look bashful when he leans down to kiss him in public without warning. Izuku almost slams his head into the sign pole behind him when Todoroki pulls away and, shoving his hands into his pockets again, promptly begins to stare at his feet.  

“What-what was that for?” Izuku sputters out, heat climbing even to the tip of his ears. They’re lucky that there’s nobody around and that they’re shielded by the three-way wall of the bus stop. If anyone stares at them, Izuku may just die right here.

“I missed you,” Todoroki tells the ground. He’s wearing the white and blue sneakers that he often wears to school.

“That doesn’t mean you can kiss me in public!” Izuku is hissing now. 

“Why not?”

Izuku puts his face in his hands. 

From in between his fingers, he can see color high on Todoroki’s cheekbones, hidden by the frame of his white and red hair. It’s the only indication that he even is embarrassed about this, as the rest of his face remains consistently indifferent. However, he does meet his eyes from under his red and white bangs, and Izuku resigns to explain himself. The poor guy probably doesn’t know that kissing in public is weird.

“Let alone two guys kissing in public, ” he says, and his voice trails off into a whisper. He feels flustered himself, just saying it out loud.

But Todoroki says, “I know.”

“You know?”

“I know. And I’m not embarrassed about that,” he continues, but his voice is lower now, and that’s how Izuku knows that he’s registered the discomfort in the air. He takes a step closer too, his blue and white sneakers nearly touching the tip of the red ones. It takes all of Izuku’s determination to not take a step back or a step forward to close a gap.

“Then what are you embarrassed about?” Because he is. Todoroki is very embarrassed. Izuku can tell, even if no one around them probably can.

“Just,” Todoroki says, and stops. Back to looking at his feet now, apparently. “Kissing in general, I guess. It’s.” Another long pause. “It feels like a lot at once.”  

Ah.

Somewhere between the make-out session in the hospital room and then waking up in the same bed that following morning, arms and legs still tangled up together, Izuku has forgotten that Todoroki is not used to physical affection the way he is. Thinking back to the way he held onto Izuku while he cried in the hospital room, like someone will die if he lets go, he guesses that Todoroki is probably a bit touch-starved but he most definitely does not know it.  

Izuku can handle a lot of emotions at once; he’s used to crying when he feels too much and turning those emotions into motivation, but Todoroki is not like that. Much like his Quirk, Todoroki is an ice or fire, all-or-nothing, zero or a hundred kind of guy. He either feels nothing, or he’s feeling everything at once, and his default response is always to hide the latter option. Based on all the data at hand, the logical solution is to, of course, move their relationship slowly. It’s a necessary sacrifice.  

“We don’t have to kiss,” Izuku says, even though his heart sinks heavily when he thinks about it. “Not if it makes you uncomfortable.”

But, “It doesn’t!” Todoroki’s voice rises seemingly by accident, and Izuku has to take a step back now because Todoroki has taken another step forward. Both his hands are holding onto the strap of his sling bag now, folded over his heart. He’s standing over Izuku like a shadow, probably unaware of the full intimidation of his serious face, the one with the wild eyes and pressed-thin mouth. There’s a spark in his expression that Izuku doesn’t see often, and color still high on his cheeks. “I just don’t know how else to,” he looks away before opening his mouth again, and Izuku wants to help him with his words, but he knows that Todoroki is trying his best so he stays silent.  “I don’t know how else to tell you I miss you.”

At this, Izuku laughs out loud. Todoroki really is a train wreck. “You just did. Twice, actually.”

“What?”

“I missed you too,” Izuku says, and he smiles, the encouraging one that he knows that takes up half his face. Todoroki seems to get the message, that everything is okay, and tension leaves his shoulders.

Then, he asks, really quietly, “Can I still kiss you anyways?”  

Izuku’s face catches on fire. Please do, he almost says, but instead he turns around and marches toward the train station behind the bus stop. “Not in public, Todoroki-kun.”

They still have a hospital to go to, a mother to visit. His arms and legs are frozen with nerves, moving like they’re made of mortared bricks. He wonders if this is how Iida feels at a dance party, like some kind of robotic disaster.  Then he hears footsteps, and Todoroki is now falling into step beside him, his long strides easily keeping pace.

“Okay,” he says, and he doesn’t sound particularly upset or elated, just that he’s willing to go along with Izuku’s plans, once again.

Now they’re ordering the tickets, and a moment later they’re standing on the platform to the subway. It’s crowded today, despite it not being rush hour. People are taking advantage of their Sundays and going to the movies, shopping at the mall, or making their way to a picnic at an urban park. Hushed chatter fills the space around them, everyone tending to their own devices and their own friends, so Izuku stands a little closer to Todoroki, pressing their arms together, elbows touching. Briefly, Todoroki pauses in the middle of his sentence to look at him, but continues on without much falter. They’re talking about his mother; it’s one of his favorite topics to talk about, one that can get him talking for a long time without stopping. Izuku doesn't mind listening. Todoroki always looks a little softer, a little younger, and a little happier when talking about his mother.  

They hear the familiar whistle of a train coming by, and the wind runs through Izuku’s hair like a feather as the vehicle slows to a stop in front of them. The door opens and people of all shapes and sizes flood out, carrying briefcases and shopping bags and leather backpacks.

As they file into the train along with the rest of the crowd on their side, Izuku takes a moment to bump his arm against Todoroki again, and then laces their fingers together after their other hands are holding onto a pole for safety. The subway door closes with a long beep, and the train is moving now, leaving the underground for the city above. Todoroki has stopped talking, his shoulders tense and his eyes a little wide, but he holds Izuku’s hand a little tighter, brushing his thumb over Izuku’s over and over again.

Izuku’s chest hurts so much with the amount of feelings that flutter around his body. What did I do to deserve you?  He sneaks a glance at the boy beside him, at the shyness and bravery in his expression, you are so beautiful. Todoroki catches the stare, then looks away with a tiny smile. You make me so, so happy.

And he deserves happiness. He and Todoroki both. He thinks back to the hospital room, to his hands cupping Todoroki’s face, to the way he laughs and the way he closes his eyes and leans into Izuku’s touch. You’re my hero, Midoriya. I care for you so much. If only his Quirkless past-self can see him now.

Izuku has spent so much time thinking, obsessing, and crying over the past, but holding Todoroki’s hand now, he can only focus on the present. Todoroki rolled his sleeves up to his elbows today, and his arm still hasn’t completely healed from the Hosu injury yet, still covered in white bandages just like Izuku himself, even after an entire week. Todoroki’s entire left side is pressed up against him and Izuku can see a smile still dancing on his lips. For a moment he thinks about the future. He thinks about his notebooks, Hero Analysis for the Future No. 1 to all the way to No. 16, and the way he has always had hope for becoming a Hero, always believed that his future will be better than his present.

Even before the two of them ever talked to each other, Todoroki occupied many, many pages of Izuku's notebook. Even back then, when Todoroki was still aloof and Izuku was still alone, he already knew that Todoroki was going to be a part of his future as an inspiration, and he still will have that. Except now, he also has him as a person, a partner, a second-half: the two of them written together like music and lyrics, drawn together by their heartstrings, undeniably good together.  

The train has emerged from the ground now, and outside the window, buildings and trees and clouds zoom by. Midoriya Izuku squeezes Todoroki Shouto’s hand. Thank you. There is no need for words.

Todoroki Shouto squeezes back. He’s always been bad at words anyways.