Archive of Our Own ^beta

Izuku used to want to be a hero.

Life isn’t a fairytale, though, and it operates by its own rules; rules that were far removed from the world where heroic princes belong. He knows it’s impossible, has been told as much over and over again—and yet, though he knows he’ll never be the hero of his own fairytale, knowing has never stopped him from wishing to be one. It’s a little late to be yearning for happy endings when you’d graduated high school two years ago, but it isn’t a delusion so much as a constant reminder of what his life isn’t.

Izuku’s good at realizing patterns in things, in people, and most fairytales are no different. There’s a formula—a princess, a hero, a villain, a spell, a kiss to break the curse—and voila, happily ever after. Everything is set in stone before the story even begins, a solid once upon a time foundation and the setting somewhere far, far away where witches and dragons and fairies exist—and for the most part, it’s as escapist as any story can get, as impossible yet as desirable as most things are for him in real life.

He used to want a lot of things. In middle school, he’d wanted to know his future. In high school, he’d wanted to get into U.A. In U.A, he realized he didn’t know at all what he wanted, after all, because wanting something is not the same thing as being capable of having it.

Izuku is no prince, that’s the thing, and he knows with as much certainty that he’s never been cut out to be one; he doesn’t have the princely good looks, the gentlemanly charm, the well-mannered ease. He’s no prince trying to save the princess in the castle, no hero going on a quest to fulfill a decades-old prophecy. He’s never been particularly amazing at anything, has always just been the background character to Kacchan’s protagonist role. If anything, he’s the one wishing, the one who wants to attend the ball, the one who wants to see the world outside of the tower.

If anything, he feels like the sleeping princess, nowadays, only it’s neither a witch’s curse nor a poisoned apple that put him there.

It’s then its own sort of irony that, of all places, Izuku had ended up working at Disneyland.

His second home is the World Bazaar, a shopping area that, housed behind a large concrete and brick building, stands between the crowds and the more chaotic parts of the theme park. It is a neighborhood in and of itself, and working in its lone ice cream shop feels much like living in the outskirts of the city’s downtown area, close but a little removed from where most of the excitement happens. Being confined there, however, keeps him mostly protected from the adrenaline-fuelled whims of children and the inevitable havoc of long lines for rides. He never has to fight for hours, either, and his kind, elderly manager is sweetly understanding of the fact that he’s prone to spacing out during slower periods at the shop.

Compared to alternatives, then, working there is more than alright.

In retrospect, he’s thankful to have gotten the job three months ago, even if it had been amidst a semester of two night classes sandwiching an early morning one—but it’s hard to appreciate it, much less see work as anything but exhausting, when he’s slated for a Saturday morning shift with a sore throat left behind by a two-day long fever.

If this is a fairytale, there will be a fairy godmother waving a wand and wishing the cold away—or maybe there won’t be a cold at all, because he’s never heard of heroes having to skip anything because of sickness. But of course Izuku’s world doesn’t operate like that, and not being fully recovered doesn’t change the fact that working in a place like Tokyo Disneyland makes someone horribly replaceable. His bills won’t pay for themselves, and, all pros and cons considered, nothing outweighs the fact that skipping one day of work means missing out on money he could very well be earning and using.

Kendou and Monoma are already inside when he walks in, talking idly in their uniforms.

"Look at you." Izuku doesn’t know what he’d been expecting, but the lack of sympathy from Monoma shouldn’t have been surprising. "What happened to your face?"

Kendou stops in the middle of tying her ponytail to frown worriedly at him. "Are you alright, Midoriya? You like you’re about to pass out."

Bodily pain is not an unfamiliar concept to Izuku, and his tolerance for it, while nothing to be proud of, has proven itself convenient more times than he can count. The body always heals on the outside, even if it isn’t always perfect, even if the inside remains as it always was. Broken bones, bruises, paper cuts, unexplainable nosebleeds—he has a track record spanning the entirety of his clumsy childhood, and colds should be no different. Especially one that should have expelled itself through a 36-hour fever, because colds come and go as easily as money does.

The thought of money is a sobering reminder, and he offers Kendou a smile that he hopes looks more reassuring than exhausted. He opens his mouth to say, maybe, something along the lines of I’m fine, don’t worry, just recovering from a cold—

But all that comes out is a barely audible croaking.

There’s a long beat of silence, stifling and drawn out, where the three of them stare at each other, unsure what had produced the sound. Monoma recovers first, blinking rapidly as his brain catches up, and he doesn’t bother to rein any of his laughter in, his mouth opening wide and shameless and his giggling rising rapidly in volume.

Kendou takes a little longer, staring with her mouth open.

Izuku stares back at her with much the same look. He feels warm, and it’s alarming that he has no idea if it’s embarrassment or a possible return of his fever from a day and a half ago. He clamps his mouth shut, clears his throat, and tries again.

Nothing at all comes out this time.

Monoma’s laughter rises to a pitch, bordering on hysterical as he slaps the table. "Oh my god," he wheezes, doing a quick impression. "Oh my god, this is gold. Prince Eric—Prince—" He dissolves into incoherence, snide laugh filling the room where Izuku’s apparently non-existent voice had not. "Midoriya—switched roles—Ariel—"

Kendou slaps the back of his head.

Izuku closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

In lieu of a direct welcome sign to the resort, the first thing to greet visitors are the words Where Dreams Come True in bright happy cursive, the epitome of the magic of Disney and its promises of happily ever after to anyone who buys into their endless marketing schemes. Izuku and his roommates are themselves all guilty of falling for many different marketing schemes, guilty of buying half-price vacuum cleaners and mops that promised to do more than they actually did. Disney’s slogan feels like one of those scams now, promising him dreams and instead granting a nightmare he hadn’t even considered in any shape or form.

Kendou’s smile is nervous. "Are you sure you don’t want to go home, Midoriya?"

He does the wise thing and opens his mouth again, expecting better, only to be disappointed by the absolute nothing that comes out.

He’s positive Monoma’s laughter is loud enough to wake up guests in the hotels across the park.

Sighing, Izuku waves his hands in an attempt to convey yes, I’m sure.

He thinks it’s about time Disney found a new tag-line.

✶

There are voices in the back of his head, sounding suspiciously like Ochako and Tenya, telling him this is a bad idea.

The joke’s on them, probably, because he doesn’t need them in his subconscious to tell that the sign hanging from his neck—proclaiming Can’t speak, Ursula the Sea Witch stole my voice! But I’m happy to assist you! in Kendou’s large penmanship—is a terrible, terrible, terrible idea.

Monoma has been unable to stifle his laughter in the past half hour—hasn’t even tried to, sneaking looks at Izuku every ten seconds and erupting into yet another raucous set of mocking giggles each time he does. Kendou is ever the more sympathetic one, minimizing the laughter with a series of karate chops and combatting each of Izuku’s dejected sighs with a smile. They’ve managed to get by with communicating through animated charades, but he doesn’t know how well it will work out amidst the throng of people that inevitably visit Tokyo Disneyland every day.

He’s banned from the register, left to wordlessly scoop ice creams into cups and restock cones. He hopes distantly that his cold doesn’t choose to come back, because breaking basic sanitary rules probably won’t go down well with their manager, as tiny and sweet as she is.

The specific thought of Shuuzenji Chiyo being disappointed in him sobers him up enough to finally regret sticking around.

By the time he takes his break, having soldiered his way through the lunch-time hours with sheer willpower alone, he’s abandoned all hopes of regaining his voice in this shift. He finds his way outside the store and leans against the light blue brick of the storefront.

It’s nice out today, the sky sunny and blue through the glass roof of the World Bazaar, and he wonders what he’d ever done to deserve something like this a week after his birthday.

"Sir, are you okay?"

Izuku blinks, still staring up at the sky, the recognition taking a while to register as he slowly follows the voice to a little girl standing in front of him, light hair up in uneven pigtails and eyes squinting at his chest. He blinks again, and realizes she’s trying to read his sign.

It takes her a while, her eyebrows scrunching together, and her mouth falls open in a round oh when she finishes, frowning up at him thoughtfully. She’s tiny, unbelievably tiny, and she looks like she can’t be more than six years old, but she lifts her finger and points it at him with the authority of someone much, much older.

"I’ll find you a prince," she declares.

Izuku thinks she must have misheard her.

It’s rare for fairytales to involve a girl this young, a girl this small. Most of them start in the early teens, transitioning slowly into young maidenhood, and there isn’t a Disney pattern that could have prepared him for the way the little girl appraises him carefully, nodding.

"You’re kinda plain, Sir," she says, her politeness in direct contrast to what she’s saying. "But a true love’s kiss will still break the spell!"

The girl reminds him, he realizes, of Ochako—of Ochako’s tendency to be blunt, of the way she puffs up her cheeks when in deep thought, and of the way she remains unwavering once she’s set her mind onto something.

Unsure what else to do, he kneels in front of her.

She grins at him, a tooth missing in the lower front row. It’s adorable, and hesitantly, he smiles back. "I’ve only watched The Little Mermaid once, you know," she says, tone conspiratorial, tiny hands rising up to scratch her chin thoughtfully. It’s a very adult gesture, and this time, he smiles wider. Her expression scrunches up again, and the illusion shatters. "Three days, I think."

Izuku tilts his head, confused.

She throws her short arms out in a grand sweeping movement—the action doesn’t encompass much, but he doesn’t get to hear the statement that comes with it because she stops and blinks, eyes catching onto something to their right.

Todoroki Shouto stands in front of the neighboring shop, phone out and one hand in his jeans. He looks a little breathless, eyes wide and panicked, but his expression stills and clears when his gaze slips past Izuku to the little girl.

Izuku feels his heart climb to his aching throat.

"Atsuko," he says, and Izuku doesn’t think he’s ever heard Todoroki’s voice like that. "Don’t go running around like that."

The little girl—Atsuko—drops her arms, looking properly apologetic. "Sorry," she murmurs, hanging her head, but she doesn’t rush over to him. Instead, she moves her stare back to Izuku.

He looks back at her, swallowing.

Little Red Riding Hood, he realizes distantly. She’s the right age for Little Red Riding Hood.

Todoroki’s looking at him, too. He nods—a hello, brief and straightforward. "Midoriya."

Izuku jumps, involuntarily, opening his mouth and shutting it just as quickly. He hopes Todoroki doesn’t misunderstand his wordless nod of greeting, and he tries to compensate with a smile and a wave. He shouldn’t have bothered, because Todoroki’s eyes drop to the sign as he pockets his phone, eyes squinting slightly against the sunlight.

His cheeks warm again, but it’s definitely not a potential fever this time, because he knows, has known for months, and a semester of not having a class with Todoroki hasn’t done anything to change the fact that his heart still feels like it’s being squeezed every time they interact.

"Oh," Todoroki says, finally. He crouches, dangerously close, and it takes every last shred of willpower Izuku has left not to stand up and bolt back into the store. "Are you sick?"

Sighing internally, he nods.

Atsuko isn’t having any of it, though, raising her hand and waving it around like she’s in a classroom. "Uncle Shouto," she says, and her tone does nothing to return Izuku’s heart where it belongs. "Uncle Shouto, Ursula the Witch stole his voice."

He hadn’t known Todoroki had a niece.

"That, she has." He talks to Atsuko carefully, softly, only loud enough to be heard over the crowds from the line-up next door. It’s not overtly fond, nor pouring with affection, but it’s something close, something similar, and it reminds Izuku of late nights in libraries and borrowed textbooks.

He feels like someone had extracted his brain and replaced it entirely with cotton. At this point, he’s not sure if it’s Todoroki Shouto or the sore throat doing the damage.

"We have to do something," Atsuko says, her voice taking on a high-pitched lilt. Izuku thinks it must be a well-practiced act, but Todoroki’s face remains cool and collected, and he can’t tell if it’s working. "You have to give him his true love’s kiss."

Izuku chokes on absolutely nothing, coughing into his sleeve. He stands abruptly, shooting up to his feet so fast he makes himself dizzy, and he waves his hand in what he really needs to come across as a no, no, no, no way gesture. Before he can take a step, Atsuko grabs onto his knee—

And squeezes.

"No, no, no," she says, insistent, voice loud enough to garner looks. Izuku really, really shouldn’t have stayed at work.

"No, you have to get your voice back, Sir. Uncle Shouto will get it back for you."

"I—" Izuku tries to say, and it comes out a raspy sound sitting low in his throat. It’s a development from earlier, but Todoroki Shouto’s niece is grabbing onto his knee, and Todoroki Shouto himself is crouched down right there, and today is really not the day to be optimistic about anything. His head throbbing, he taps Atsuko’s head and points at his throat, mimicking a coughing motion and shaking his head.

Her eyes light up at the charades, but it crumples back into a thoughtful frown when she realizes what he’s trying to say. "You’re just sick?"

Relieved, he nods.

"That’s okay!" She says, and no, Izuku’s pressed to disagree, it’s really not okay. "We have three days!"

"Three days?" Todoroki’s voice is a nice, smooth tenor, and his face betrays no hints of confusion as Atsuko looks back at him.

"Yeah," she says, nodding enthusiastically and loosening her hold on Izuku’s leg. He wonders if it will be rude to tug it away, just slightly, but Atsuko’s grip tightens just as quickly, enthusiasm back in full force. "He has three days to receive the kiss of true love from you, Uncle Shouto."

This is a special kind of hell tailored for him, Izuku decides.

Atsuko’s completely uninterested in letting go of him, and Todoroki notices, following her hands up his leg to make eye contact. Something flickers there, briefly, but they both blink and it’s just as quickly out of Izuku’s grasp, the expression something he might as well have imagined.

"Atsuko." Todoroki straightens, dusting off his jeans. "Please let go of Midoriya."

"Not until you promise to give him his true love’s kiss," she says, stubbornly, and Izuku wonders if anything else in his life will ever match up to the amount of embarrassment he’d had to collect throughout this one day. "Promise."

"Atsuko," Todoroki says, again, and this time, he sounds a little lost, a little exasperated with himself. It makes Izuku want to smile, despite everything, but he bites his lip and wills the thought away. "I can’t just kiss him out of nowhere. That’s very disrespectful."

For the briefest of moments, Atsuko looks like she’s about to be persuaded, her grip loosening again. But it passes, and when she looks up at her uncle, it’s with newfound intensity. "Then wait for him to get better and take him out on a date!"

Izuku is very familiar with what ice creams look like as they melt, a slow action that starts from the top to the bottom and leaves nothing but a sticky mess—he envies that ease now, willing himself to channel his inner ice cream and—

"Okay."

He feels like an ice cream that’s been frozen in Todoroki’s hand.

Atsuko blinks up at him, equally surprised. "Okay?"

"I promise," Todoroki says, and it sounds like a battle-weary sigh. "I promise. Right, Midoriya?"

Izuku immediately shakes his head, vigorously, aggressively, waving his hands desperately. It’s okay, he mouths, even though it’s not and it will never be.

Kendou steps out of the store, then, smoothing out her skirt. She takes one look at the scene in front of her, and raises an eyebrow at Izuku. She doesn’t comment on it. "Your break finished a minute and a half ago."

"Let him go, Atsuko," Todoroki says, and he sounds drained, like someone that’s been out in the sun for too long on a hot summer day. They’re not in direct sun, and it’s relatively cool as far as summer days go, but Izuku can relate, he really, really can. The little girl finally lets him go, and he stumbles back slightly as she does, a little light-headed. "Midoriya?"

Izuku doesn’t think his life can get any worse than this, so he squeaks out a raspy, "Yes?"

Only half of the word manages to make it out, the rest tapering off into a croak, but Todoroki barely blinks. "Is your number still the same?"

Blankly, Izuku nods.

"I’ll message you." It’s stiff, and it’s awkward, but Todoroki nods, beckoning Atsuko back to his side. "I hope you feel better soon."

Thank you, he mouths slowly, waving back dumbly to Atsuko as they walk away, her hand in Todoroki’s. The sight does something to his chest, but that could very well be his collective embarrassment taking on a more concrete, physical form, and he pretends not to see Kendou’s smile as they walk back in.

He regains his voice ten minutes before his shift ends, dry and gravelly, and again, he curses the inefficiency of Disney’s slogan.

✶

Izuku’s the first one home, head throbbing and body heavy as he collapses against their sole living room couch. It’s well-loved, a makeshift study room during finals season when at least one of them is too lazy to drag themselves to their desk. The couch has seen Izuku in his worst days, sleep-deprived and muttering about the USA’s role in Latin America, has seen Tenya lost in thought and Ochako with burning eyes shut tight post-midterm cramming. It’s as much a part of their apartment as the three of them are, an inanimate member of their family, and it is its own kind of comfort to sprawl against it now, bones cracking as he stretches.

He dozes off for a bit, only waking up to the front door opening.

"Ah, Deku-kun! I’m home."

"Welcome back," he mutters, half of his face squished into a cushion that Ochako’s mother had sewn together and sent over within their first month in the apartment. "How was your day?"

"Good," Ochako chirps, bouncing on her feet. "Busy today—but fruitful?"

She’d landed a summer internship with her favorite physics professor, a man collectively nicknamed ‘Gunhead’ by U.A’s entire Science department, and has spent much of her July so far practically living in his office, assisting his graduates on gravity research. She insists he’s nicer than he sounds, and has continuously brought up Gunhead’s allegedly cute voice to somehow disprove Tenya’s Vin Diesel mental image, but Izuku knows that, added to her own part-time jobs, the stress is bound to pile up.

He looks up at her now, searching.

She plops down beside him with a soft oof, warm and smelling like cake, and peers right back at him. "How was yours?"

"I lost my voice at work." His voice still crackly and raspy at the edges. "It was so embarassing, I—"

"But—Oh no, you still sound so sick." Ochako makes a soft gasping noise, eyes wide with concern as they stare at each other. "Have you taken anything? Why didn’t you go home?"

"I—" He groans, lifting his head and pressing it back against the back of the couch. "You know."

Her gaze softens, and she reaches up to brush hair away from his face. "Yeah, I know," she says quietly. "But you’re allowed to take a sick day, Deku-kun. Your well-being comes first, yeah? It’s only one day."

One day, clearly, is enough time to watch your life fall apart into combustible ruin. Sighing and letting Ochako continue playing with his hair, he tells her about his day, skipping the parts about how, objectively, Todoroki Shouto is attractive in summer clothes, and that, subjectively, the way Todoroki Shouto looks at him still makes Izuku’s cheeks feel warm and his heartbeat a little irregular.

By the time he’s done, Ochako’s caught between amused giggling and disbelieving wide eyes, snuggled up against Izuku’s side like a child listening to a bedtime story. When he finishes, she laughs, wrapping an arm around his and squeezing. "When is this date happening?"

"It’s not— " His voice breaks off into a familiar rasp, and he clears his throat. "He can’t be serious."

"He promised to call," she points out, propping her feet up on the coffee table. "Would you promise that if you’re not serious?"

"He promised to message," he corrects, slowly. "In front of his niece. To get her off me."

"Yeah, but—" She clucks her tongue, frowning. "It would have been so easy to pretend—without going through the trouble of saying all that, you know?"

Izuku sighs. "He’s just—he can’t. He won’t."

"You never know." Ochako beams. It’s comforting, and he smiles back, a little bit, leaning against her.

The thing is that he does know. He’s spent a half a semester looking for signs, of swallowing back words and keeping his hands painfully to himself, and Izuku’s a persistent person when he wants to be, but he also knows when something just won’t happen. It’s the one thing he’s learned from Kacchan, the one thing he understands to be frustratingly true. Sometimes, things happen, and sometimes, they just really don’t.

He’s more than sure Todoroki Shouto falls into the second category.

Izuku washes up early, heading straight to his room. He shares the two-bedroom apartment’s bigger room with Tenya, who’d gone to spend summer with his older brother’s family. He’d left late last week to beat the weekend rush, and his absence now leaves Izuku with a bunk bed all to himself and a room that feels, suddenly, too big.

He pulls out his notebook from under his pillow, lets it sit open on his lap for a few minutes before he starts writing.

It’s a habit he’d started in middle school, a way not so much to unwind but to organize his day, to know when something happened and where. It had been a way to understand, too, maybe, because it’s always easier to rationalize something when it’s all in front of him, written out and described and in chronological order. There was a time when it’d been all about Kacchan, about not knowing what he’d done wrong, about not knowing how to deal with him. That had stopped, eventually, just like he’d stopped ever wishing anything will change between the two of them.

Hesitantly, he flips back to pages from earlier this school year, letting his finger run along the corner edges. There was a time, too, when the notes had been all about Todoroki Shouto.

He’s tired, drowsy from the medicine Ochako had given him, and the more he writes about his day, the more it’s starting to sound surreal.

Once upon a time s never amount to anything in real life, and it’s too much to think about in a sleepy haze, so he closes the notebook and shoves it back under his pillow.

He’ll be free of this embarrassment, briefly, in his sleep, and he willingly lets himself drift off.

Izuku only visits his mother on Wednesdays and Sundays.

He used to visit her every day, before or after class, swinging by and filling the space where his father didn’t. But then he got the job at Disneyland, and his mother had started being asleep more than she was ever awake during his visits, and he started showing up less, started succumbing to exhaustion on Saturdays.

She’s asleep today, and he hesitates at her doorway.

Swallowing around the lump still in his throat, he sits down and holds her hand.

Izuku doesn’t know how long he stays there, like that, but his mother is still asleep by the time he gets up to meet with her doctor. He’s hesitant in letting her hand go, hesitant because it makes him feel like a child, standing over her bed. He feels like he’s back to the first day of preschool, crying for his mother and looking over his shoulder as he walks away, just to make sure she’s still there, and that she’ll be there as soon as he makes it back at the end of the day.

He enters the doctor’s office with a heavy heart.

They’re moving his mother to another, more specialized unit. He registers the shorter visiting hours with some difficulty, and the introduction of a social worker and a financial representative with even more difficulty.

They’re preparing her for surgery.

The rest of it goes over his head, and he doesn’t know if it’s because the words are complicated, syllables blurring in his head, or if it’s because he’s still drowsy from the medicine he’d taken the night before. Maybe he just doesn’t want to listen, because when he looks at the doctor, terms like fluid management and spironolactone melting right at his feet, he suddenly feels like crying.

It must show on his face, because the doctor smiles, sympathetic. "She’ll be okay," he says.

Izuku nods. He doesn’t reply.

It’s hard to believe people, sometimes.

He stands in the hospital lobby, long after, staring down at the tiles as he dials his father’s number.

"Izuku?"

"Hi," he murmurs, realizing he hasn’t blinked. He does, rapidly, the tiles blurring in his vision. "I visited Mom today."

He doesn’t have to say it, because this is routine, an every-Sunday thing that no longer needs to be vocalized. But saying it like that makes it sound like he’s visiting her at home, like he’s swinging by after a class to check in on his parents, to call in updates like Tenya does with his brother, to have dinner at home like Ochako sometimes does.

The tiles are still blurry, and he registers the tears too late, running down one cheek and sticking to his chin.

"How is she?"

Izuku scrubs at his face immediately, ducking his head farther. Quietly, he relays the information he’d gotten from the doctor, word for word where he can, his voice tripping over arrhythmia and the new medicine prescribed. Even quieter, he repeats the price the doctor had named, number for number, and relays the contact info for the insurance company responsible for the surgery.

Post-operative care tastes bitter on his tongue.

"I see." His father sounds tired, and Izuku wonders if the reason he never visits is because it’s hard enough hearing about it. It’s easier to stand somewhere far and be able to do something about the situation, easier to not be the one to feel helpless in a doctor’s office and be able to do nothing but nod. Izuku can understand his father, in that regard. "I’ll take care of the hospital bills. Don’t worry about it."

"Okay," he murmurs, his voice barely audible even to himself. "Alright."

There’s a second of pause, contemplative from the other end, and his father says, "What about you, Izuku? Do you need anything? Is your job giving you enough for rent? For school?"

He always asks, even when Izuku knows his father is not in a position to simultaneously pay for hospital bills and tuition. That makes him feel like a child, too, because even though he’d left home, even though his home stands in the third floor of an apartment building a ride away from Tokyo Disneyland, his parents are still asking, worrying.

"I’m fine," he says, and he chokes on the words.  

"You sound sick."

Izuku sighs. "Yeah, I—" He feels better than he did the day before, the danger of getting a fever gone and replaced by a dry throat and a grating edge to his voice. "I had a fever a couple days ago. I’m alright now, I promise."

He doesn’t say he went to work yesterday. He doesn’t say anything else, letting his dad hesitate himself into saying goodbye and hanging up, doesn’t say anything and just stands there, phone in hand and arm lying limply by his side.

There’s something sitting low in his stomach, and he feels like he’s about to throw up.

"Midoriya?"

Izuku looks up, and his stomach lurches. "Todoroki-kun."

"Hello." Todoroki Shouto is everywhere, lately, because he’s here now, too, looking out of his element in a hoodie that declares U.A Health Sciences in large block letters. It’s a stark contrast to the Disney slogan, and there’s irony there that Izuku feels like he’s missing. "What are you doing here?"

It takes Izuku a while to process the question, his head still swimming with numbers and medical terms, and he looks away when he answers. "My mother. I’m visiting my mother."

"Oh." Todoroki’s so quiet, so still, and standing there, Izuku almost feels like he could blink and he’d be alone by the time he opens his eyes. "Is she alright?"

The question startles Izuku out of the remaining portion of his haze, and he blinks a few more times down at the tiles before turning back. "Yes," he says carefully, before he can think too much about it. He hopes his eyes aren’t bloodshot with the rest of his unshed tears. "I—she’s been here for a while."

"Oh," Todoroki says again. "I didn’t know."

Izuku manages a smile. There are a lot of things they don’t know about each other. A lot of things they’ve had no reason to find out about each other. "I didn’t know you had a niece, so I guess we’re even."

Todoroki’s staring really hard at him, but a corner of his lip twitches, briefly. "I suppose we are," he agrees, after a pause. "You have your voice back, I see."

Izuku nods slowly, before everything comes rushing back and he finds his cheeks increasingly warm. "I—I’m sorry—" He bites his own tongue, and has to try again, "I—I’m sorry about yesterday—"

"It’s alright." Todoroki looks at him, even more closely, mismatched eyes regarding him almost curiously. "I should be apologizing for Atsuko." Another pause follows, longer and stiffer. There’s a question he’s not asking, Izuku can feel it, but neither of them say anything.

The pause drags on.

It’s awkward, but the mutual discomfort is somewhat comforting. Izuku fiddles with the buttons down the front of his shirt and offers another smile, more genuine this time around. "And what are you doing here, Todoroki-kun?"

Todoroki doesn’t frown, but his eyebrows move in his face’s version of it, a quick wrinkle in his forehead that clears as quickly. "I’m doing a summer placement here," he says, and there’s a grumpiness to it. Izuku thought he’d gotten good at reading Todoroki’s body language last year, has learned its patterns and its translations, but then he’s faced with things like this, with the tone he used with Atsuko the day before, with the tone he’s using now. "I’m assisting my old man."

"Your father’s a doctor?"

"My father owns the hospital, you could say," Todoroki says, and it sounds final.

Izuku’s mouth refuses to work for three whole seconds. "Oh."

"If you’d excuse me—I need to go change for my shift."

It’s uncomfortably abrupt, but he finds himself nodding before Todoroki’s even done, mouth closing and falling open within the same millisecond. "Y-Yeah, of course."

He’s not really expecting a reply, and Todoroki only nods, excusing himself without so much as another word.

Atsuko’s demand sits undiscussed between their goodbyes.

Izuku wonders if he’d offended him.

Todoroki hadn’t said we, leaving it in the singular and cutting off association to himself and his family, and Izuku hadn’t thought to ask, even as his brain had processed it.

He’s learned not to ask, when hospitals are involved.

He wanders into the lobby washrooms before he leaves. The universe isn’t kind to people who don’t live in fairytales, and red-rimmed eyes stare back at him.

Briefly, Izuku wonders what Todoroki had thought, but he squashes that down quickly, swallowing.

He bends down to wash his face.

✶

Tenya calls while Izuku’s waiting for the 4:00 train.

They’re quick to burn through the pleasantries, and it takes Tenya approximately two minutes before buckling in and saying, voice lowered in a conspiratorial whisper, "You have a Disneyland date with Todoroki Shouto?"

Izuku has the distinct feeling that Ochako gave their third roommate vague details on purpose. Tenya is a very zealous person, with the tendency to take even the most mundane of situations seriously—including, it seems, his friends’ love lives.

However non-existent they may be.

"It’s a misunderstanding!" Izuku says, stepping back as a group of high schoolers move past him, chattering. "There isn’t a date."

Tenya moves on, apparently not having heard him. There’s a rustling on the other end. "Izuku-kun, is this a blind date? I didn’t know—I’m so sorry, I had no idea you were even looking, I’m an unobservant roommate, I should have known—"

"That’s not how blind dates work, I’m pretty sure," Izuku says, but he’s smiling. Tenya’s earnestness has a way of lifting his spirits, has a way of settling in his chest the way Ochako’s smiles do. It spells out home the way mugs of hot chocolate and baked cookies do for other people, and he feels himself relax now, staring out into the empty rails and checking for the train. It’s nowhere in sight. "And I wasn’t. I wasn’t looking. It’s a—It’s a long story? But—" He shrugs, hunches into himself, even when he knows Tenya can’t see. "There’s no date."

"Oh," Tenya says, and then, "I’m sorry."

Izuku blinks down at the ground, tracing the boundary lines of the station platform with the tip of one shoe. "What for?"

"That you don’t have a date with Todoroki Shouto." For a second, they’re both quiet, and then Tenya makes a horrified sound of realization on the other end. "I mean—no—I did not mean it like that, I promise you—I wasn’t thinking ahead—I should not have worded it like that—"

"It’s alright, Tenya-kun—"

"It is not alright, you mustn’t condone me saying such things," Tenya chides, sounding temporarily winded. He sobers up quickly, getting quiet for the briefest of pauses before saying, "I’m sorry. I know how you feel about Todoroki."

It’s Izuku’s turn to get quiet, his heart stuttering before falling back to its usual rhythm, insistent.

He’d shared two classes in total with Todoroki Shouto, one of which he’d dropped halfway into the semester after getting the Disneyland job. The first one, a multi-term Theory and Practice course that had been a prerequisite for Izuku’s program and a special elective for Todoroki’s, had paired them up for a once-every-two-weeks ongoing assignment.

Izuku ended that school year with a classmate’s phone number and a notebook full of detailed entries about study sessions, and started the next one with a delayed realization why his heart keeps failing him when he’s around Todoroki Shouto.

Tenya and Ochako never mentioned it, never pointed it out, and Izuku had never thought to bring it up, considering he hadn’t realized until he’d dropped the last possible class he could have with Todoroki in their entire university career. But he thinks it must have been obvious. If skipping into the apartment after three hours of library time and smiling all throughout dinner hadn’t been enough indication, then Izuku’s sure talking nonstop about Todoroki Shouto must have been.

At the end of the day, though, he hadn’t really known much about him, and there shouldn’t be any reason why his heart still acts the same way around someone he hasn’t talked to for an entire semester and a half.

He’s been silent for too long, because Tenya breathes in the way he does before he launches into a three-minute spiel, and Izuku beats him to it before he can get there. "I-I’m fine," he says. It’s not the first time he’s said it over the phone, today. "Really. It was just a mess at work yesterday, but it’s alright. Don’t worry about it."

Tenya hesitates. Perfect timing, too, because Izuku spots the train coming.

"My train’s here, Tenya-kun," he tells his roommate. "I—I’ll talk to you soon. Tell Tensei-san and his family I said hello."

"Tell our apartment I said hi," Tenya returns, courteously, and there’s another second of audible hesitation. "Take care of yourself."

Izuku nods at no one in particular. "You too," he says, and the announcement of the train’s arrival drowns out the click as he hangs up.

If someone had to be the fairy godmother in Izuku’s fairytale, it will be Dr. Yagi.

He’s easily dazzled by admirable people, even as a young boy, and he’s never been one to discriminate when it comes to ooh- ing and ahh- ing over what other people have been able to accomplish. Kacchan had been amazing, to Izuku, despite everything, because he’d never known Kacchan to have been unable to do anything. His Literature professor had been amazing, because he used words that sounded complicated enough to be scientific names of poisonous plants.

In first year, then, it was only natural that Dr. Yagi captured Izuku’s admiraton in all of its entirety.

He’d taken a Peace Studies course partly out of curiosity, and partly because he’d fallen asleep halfway through course selection and woken up the morning after to see half of the easy electives already full. He hadn’t been expecting anything from an Intro class, but Iida, his dorm building roommate at the time, had been brimming with nothing but praise for the professor teaching it.

He’d worked hard to get into U.A, only to find out that he had no idea what he wanted to do, because life isn’t very kind to people that follow their whims. His first year of university was a reality check—a reminder that wanting isn’t enough, that it is less than half of actually doing. But Dr. Yagi turned out to be 220 cm worth of optimism and American hero charm, and Izuku, who’d gone into university undeclared, finished that semester with one specific major in mind.

He’s taken four classes with Dr. Yagi in his two years—one of which was his only morning class in the first half of second year. It’d been rough with a new job and the lack of good news about his mother, but his Peace Studies classes had always been shining beacons, constants while his world fell apart bit by bit around him, and he’d been rewarded at the end of that school year with a place in Dr. Yagi’s office.

"Midoriya, my boy!"

He gets 1000 yen for every hour he works there, much less than how much Ochako makes at Gunhead’s, and it isn’t that he’s around specifically for promises of reference letters or for boosts on his resume—but Izuku has yet to show up not wanting to be there.

His smile is tired but genuine. "Sorry I’m a little late."

"Nonsense," Dr. Yagi looms over his own desk, grin blindingly white. "I shouldn’t be asking you to come in on a Sunday."

"It’s fine," Izuku says, and finds that he means it. "I didn’t have other plans."

"Did you visit the hospital today? How is your mother?"

Izuku stops and stands there awkwardly. "Fine," he finally bites out. "She was asleep earlier."

Dr. Yagi peers at him.

Izuku avoids eye contact, hand tightening around his bag’s shoulder strap. "What can I help with?"

"Oh, yes—would you mind helping me organize the paperwork from last term?" There’s a hearty laugh, booming loud in the small space. "This place is getting a little overcrowded with essays."

Izuku spares only a second to drop his bag on his usual chair, making a beeline for the tallest stack. "Maybe you should stop asking for hard copies next year?" He suggests. "Uploading online helps with checking plagiarism, too."

"It’s nice to have the copies in front of me." Dr. Yagi sits back down, his own stack of folders in front of him. "And I never have to worry about plagiarism in a class where opinion matters most, yes?"

"Yeah, but—" Izuku sits on his own seat, in front of a desk he’s sure Dr. Yagi had just dragged in from the nearest classroom. He shrugs, opening the first folder. "Opinions nowadays are—kind of—they’re not really exclusively someone’s, are they? Like, look at this—" He holds up the third essay from the file, squinting at the title. "I’m pretty sure he just regurgitated that one lecture about being a symbol of peace." He blinks, catching himself. "Not that I’m much better—"

Dr. Yagi laughs. "All you are guilty of is your own kind of idealism, my boy."

Izuku colors. "I—I can’t deny that."

"It’s not a bad thing." Dr. Yagi holds his hand out for the essay, plucking it out of Izuku’s grasp with two fingers. "You dream, you wish, you want. The world is a little lacking in people like you, these days."

"That’s not true," Izuku says, quietly. "There’s you. You’re always smiling."

"Smiling isn’t always a personal thing. Sometimes, we smile for others," Dr. Yagi says, solemn. "I smile because there are students I have to smile for. Imagine walking into class and seeing me morose and lethargic."

"I heard Dr. Aizawa is like that," Izuku says.

Dr. Yagi pretends not to have heard him. "I smile now because I’m at peace with what I do. Life is not perfect, but perfection should not be decided by other things, yes? I teach bright-eyed students, and sometimes, people like you walk into my classes—people like you who still believe in happy endings. And it’s worth it."

Izuku blinks at that, looking up. He stills. "Me?"

"It’s not easy to be optimistic, when you’re this young," Dr. Yagi says. "You have your whole life ahead of you, so it’s hard when things start getting in the way of your idea of happiness. Not everyone’s lucky enough to have a goal to work towards. A lot of us are left stuck in stasis." He’s quoting his own lecture, one about why wars begin and why wars are allowed to continue. Izuku’s proud to notice. "Very few things in life are permanent. Peace isn’t often one of them, but faith can be. You have that, my boy."

Izuku frowns. "Faith?"

"You have faith that things will work out, no?" Dr. Yagi holds up an essay on Tolstoy and gives it a cursory glance. "Maybe not consciously, but you haven’t given up yet, have you? You persist, and you hold on to the things that matter to you. Don’t try to deny it, my boy, I know you better than that."

"But I don’t—" Izuku traces the title page in front of him, a research paper on the Cataclysmic school of thought. "I’m not sure if I have that—faith." It rings embarrassingly true as soon as the words settle in the office atmosphere, and he flushes again. "I mean—"

"You do," Dr. Yagi says, just like that. "And that’s going to take you far. It can never hurt, to have a little faith. Faith can stop wars."

It’s a little dramatic—but he’s always been like that, and it makes Izuku smile.

They continue their work in mostly silence, the only sounds coming in through the open window, and Dr. Yagi’s occasional no, no, no. Time passes, like that, and Izuku doesn’t have to think about anything but research papers on Cicero and Hobbes, and doesn’t have to wonder about anything but which pile an essay goes to.

It’s hard to believe people, sometimes, but he’ll always believe in Dr. Yagi.

✶

It’s quiet and still in the apartment when Izuku gets home, and for a moment he wonders if Ochako had gone out to dinner with her upperclassmen—but he finds her sitting in their cramped balcony, facing the neighboring brick wall.

She does that, sometimes, contemplation written all over her shoulders. Tenya defaults to the kitchen, leaving Izuku with the couch and the TV, but the balcony has always been Ochako’s spot, the corner she turns to when she needs a moment and sharing an apartment with two other people is suddenly too much.

"I’m home," he says, tentatively.

She starts, turning back with a smile. "Hey, I bought pizza on my way home from work."

There’s an open box beside her, balanced between the two seats, and Izuku grabs a slice as he sits.

"Did something happen?"

He feels something in his stomach drop. "No," he says, and, unintentionally, it comes out a whisper. "Why?"

Ochako hums, but she doesn’t say anything, leaning back in her seat. She’s tired, he can tell. A rough shift at her part-time retail job, probably.

"Tenya-kun called," he says, to get rid of the silence, and fills her in. "He says hi."

When he finishes, Ochako hums again.

It’s an invitation, and it takes Izuku ten seconds before caving in. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course." She sounds so bright, so cheerful, and he knows enough to know it’s not always the truth, that sometimes she has to put energy into that smile, has to put energy into making it through a day. But it’s always there, and sometimes Izuku doesn’t understand how someone can work so hard and end the day still optimistic.

Sometimes, we smile for others, Dr. Yagi had said.

"What’s up?"

"How do you—" Izuku begins before he can think too much about it. He stutters to a stop when Ochako turns to look at him more seriously, and he takes a deep breath, tries again, "Do you ever feel like giving up?"

He doesn’t specify anything, but he doesn’t have to. She understands.

She always understands. "Of course I do."

"Then—"  Izuku puts down the half-eaten pizza. He tries not to think of his mother, of rushing home when she’d first been sent to the hospital, but there’s no ignoring the sort of feelings brought by memories like that. "When you feel like giving up, why don’t you? How do you—how do you make it through everyday knowing it’s going to be the same thing day in and day out?" He chews on his bottom lip, wiping his greasy hand on a pile of napkins. "How can you be okay with not being sure of a happy ending?"

Ochako blinks at him, and he swallows painfully, looking away.

She takes her time, picking up a pizza slice and finishing it before answering. "My parents."

Izuku looks at her.

"My parents," she repeats. "When I feel like giving up, I think of my parents. I think, ‘I’m doing this for them’—I think, hey, it’s hard, but it’s going to be worth it, because I’m going to make them happy. It’s not a guaranteed happy ending, Deku-kun, but it’s enough for me. It’s enough for me to have a chance at it, to know that I took control of my story, and that I’m doing it for them."

Izuku thinks of his mother again—of his mother looking small in that hospital bed, asleep, and he understands. He understands wanting to give back, to love as he had been loved, to love as he continues to be loved, and he leans back in his seat, too, looking up at the sky.

"There’s a really bright star right there," Ochako says, conversationally.

It’s a complete turn from what they’d been talking about, and Izuku closes his eyes, thankful. When he opens them again, the sky looms over him, a wide expanse condensed in the narrow strip between two apartment buildings. In the middle of it, right above Izuku, is a tiny twinkling star, brightness a little faded in the Tokyo night sky—but there. "I see it."

"My mom used to tell me that if I wanted a wish granted, I have to wish on the brightest star." It’s the middle of July, and the nights are more humid than they are cold, but Ochako rubs her bare arms. "I wonder."

"There are no other stars," Izuku says, confused.

She laughs. "It can’t hurt to wish though, can it, Mr. Disney?"

And he laughs too, craning his neck to look at it properly. He feels like that, sometimes, a tiny, barely visible star in an empty sky, but it’s there, twinkling and shining, and Ochako’s right, it can’t hurt.

This time, Izuku thinks of both of his parents, and he thinks of Todoroki Shouto, too, of Tenya and Ochako and the apartment he calls home. He thinks of bills and his mother cooking seafood stew for dinner. He thinks of school, of Disneyland, of magic and myths and heroes. He thinks of the part of himself that knows his life isn’t a fairytale, but wishes anyway, wishes and dreams and yearns for something to change, to work out, to feel right.

But you haven’t given up yet, have you?

He closes his eyes and lets himself wish for a happy ending.

✶

On Tuesday, Todoroki does message him.

He’s just finished a shift when he gets the text, the phone vibrating loudly as soon as he’d opened his locker.

"Would you like to get something to eat today?" it asks. Perfect spelling, capitalization and punctuation, and Izuku sighs.

The back room door opens, and he looks up to see Kendou, balancing boxes in her hands. That should be impossible, he thinks, because human extremities were not made to be able to grab and carry that much in one go. Izuku scrambles to his feet to help her, but she shakes her head, putting the boxes down in neat piles in one corner.

Izuku’s phone beeps with another message. This one says, "I understand this is all very last minute. I will take responsibility and pay for it."

He wants to groan.

"Is that your boyfriend?"

He looks up to meet Kendou’s eyes, her lips tugged up in a smirk and her eyes bright. He’d forgotten, forgotten that she’d seen the mess from last Saturday, and he sighs again. "N-No," he says, because it’s important to clarify. "It’s not—I—I don’t have one?"

Kendou’s eyes soften, and she smiles. "You look much better today."

"I feel better. Thank you." Izuku can’t help but smile back. Kendou puts him at ease—she’s straightforward, fair, but not without lack of thoughtfulness for others, and he appreciates having her around, ready to put her foot down in a place where havoc and crowds come part and parcel with the job. "And I-I’m sorry. About last time. It was very selfish. Of me."

Kendou shrugs, opening her own locker. "It was," she says, not unkindly. "But we all have our reasons. I’m glad you’re feeling better. Take care of yourself more, Ariel."

Izuku winces. Everyone seems to be telling him that lately, and he doesn’t understand, exactly. There’s not much to take care of, when you’re him. "I—Kendou-san?"

She hums, pulling her hair back, hairtie between her teeth.

Izuku doesn’t know why he’s asking her, of all people, asking her when Ochako and Tenya are there, always there, but the question is out before he can stop it, "If—say, there’s someone you used to like—and suddenly—suddenly, they’re kind of asking you out—not on a date-date or—or anything—I—what would you do?"

Kendou blinks, grabbing the hairtie from her mouth and winding it around her hair. It’s not her business, and Izuku should not be making it her business minutes before she starts her own shift, but deep down, he doesn’t think he can make it back to the apartment to talk to Ochako without doing something reckless and stupid. So he waits.

"Not a date-date?" she eventually repeats.

Izuku nods, tapping his phone against his thigh. "Right."

"What exactly is not a date-date?"

"Well, I—" He realizes, a little late, that his heart is beating fast again, slamming up and down in his ribcage. "There aren’t feelings involved, so. You know."

Kendou closes her locker and leans against it. "How do you know there aren’t feelings involved?"

Izuku blinks at her. He just knows, because idealistic he might be, but he won’t delude himself into believing someone like Todoroki Shouto likes him back. He’d missed the time window to consider something like that, and instead he’d been left at the end of an entire school year with nothing but feelings. Feelings that continue to hover, but feelings that stop him from considering anything more.

The thought fades, and the words don’t form, so he gives her a helpless shrug.

"Ursula got your voice again?" She laughs. "Listen, Midoriya—there are clearly feelings involved."

Izuku feels himself flush, and he’s convinced his cheeks must be steaming. "I—No—there aren’t—this is all hypothetical, of course, if you were in this situation—"

"Maybe, hypothetically, I’m not quite over this person I ‘used’ to like, then," Kendou says, tracing a set of air quotation marks to punctuate the faux airiness of her tone. "Maybe, hypothetically, this is a date-date."

"It’s not," Izuku says quickly.

"You didn’t deny the first part," his co-worker points out, flashing a quick light-hearted grin. "So what’s wrong with a date-date?"

"Because—Well, because—" Izuku knows the answer somewhere in his scattered brain, but he’s too flustered to articulate it, too flustered to do anything but wave his hands around, back to playing charades. "I’m not sure if I—if I want a date-date."

"Ah," Kendou says, nodding and dragging out the syllable. "That’s a different story, then. Does this person make me, hypothetically, uncomfortable?"

"Yes?" Izuku considers it, tilting his head, and retracts it quickly, "Wait, no. No, no, no. It’s just—it’s not that kind of uncomfortable."

The truth is that it’s not a question of wanting—he does, badly, because somehow his heart is back to how it felt showing up at the library early, giddy and nervous as he waited for Todoroki. It’s not that, it’s never been that, because Izuku is nothing if not a creature that wants.

He’s just not sure if he’s cut out for something as demanding as a date-date.

Kendou’s quiet for a long time, and Izuku wonders if she’s had enough. But then she tilts her head, too, peering at him.

"Have I liked anyone before this person?"

The question takes Izuku by surprise, and he frowns, caught off-guard.

Kendou smiles, lifting one shoulder in a shrug as if to say there you go. He doesn’t understand.

She excuses herself for her shift, and within twenty seconds, they’ve both said their goodbyes and she’s out the door, tugging at the white frills in her uniform.

No, he thinks, watching her leave. No, there hadn’t been anyone before Todoroki.

His life, in all the years that came before university, before Iida and Uraraka and his mother in the hospital, remains a blur now, a monotony of school, of childhood memories that he fails to understand. Only Kacchan remains clear, remains as visible as he always is, unforgettable and distinct.

Kacchan's far, far away now, long since moved to Osaka, but Izuku is hard-pressed to forget his sharp edges, the way his face scrunches up before he yells, the way he holds out his hands, palms up, before he moves. Izuku has never understood what he's done to deserve so much of Kacchan's ire, what he's done to deserve years of his aggression, but the fact of the matter is that it's there, and that if there's a villain in his perfect fairytale story, it will be Bakugou Katsuki.

But fairytale logic won’t work with something like that, and a true love's kiss won't be enough to get rid of the way Izuku still holds up his hands, sometimes, when people move too fast and too close. This isn't a fairytale, and at the end of the day, he's just a child in an adult body wishing for more things than the world could give him.

If he pretends, though, Todoroki Shouto must be the prince.

Princes in older Disney movies aren’t often of any significance—they might as well be nameless, faceless, insignificant if not for the irreplaceable role they play in the story itself. Whether it be the kiss that wakes Sleeping Beauty, whether it be as the love interest in Beauty and the Beast, at the end of the day, they pale in comparison to Aurora and Belle. Princes and princesses, to the younger Izuku, were the same way, insignificant until someone pointed them out, a nameless and faceless individual unless they’d stepped forward and made themselves known as part of his own story.

None of them did, because he went through high school not really paying attention to anything but his notebooks.

And yet Izuku has never been more aware of a person’s existence the way he is with Todoroki Shouto. Todoroki isn’t nameless nor faceless, and they’re not friends, really, but he’s seen Todoroki sleepy, he’s seen him tired, he’s seen him ready to work on a research paper, and it isn’t the kind of thing he can just forget.

Todoroki Shouto is a prince, in his own right—not because he’s better as a person, not because he has the face and the charm for it, but because he plays a role in Izuku’s story, because he’d stopped being insignificant a long time ago. It hurts, liking someone, but it’s an irreplaceable feeling that he doesn’t quite want to leave without exploring. Todoroki won’t give him the kiss that will wake him up from an apple-induced coma, but that’s never been the way things work in the real world.

He swallows and stares down at his phone. It vibrates, a reminder of the second unopened message, the notification flashing accusingly in his lock screen.

His phone beeps, and it’s a message from Ochako. "Hi, Deku-kun!" it reads, in between emojis, followed by an apology.

She won’t be home for dinner tonight, out with people from the office.

Izuku sighs—he’s a master at that, now, an art long since perfected after Saturday—and he lifts his phone up to reply.

He sends that message before he can backspace his way into regret.

Hi, Todoroki-kun! I just got off work, but I’m free around dinner-time?

✶

By the time he’s gone home to shower and change, Izuku’s a bundle of nerves.

He thinks his knees must be shaking as he waits outside of the restaurant, red shoes stark against the pavement, and he’s not breathing, he’s definitely not breathing. The hospital is right across the street, the emergency room drop-off side as busy as it always is, and he wonders, briefly, if he should check on his mother.

But visiting hours are over for her, at this point, so he waits for Todoroki, nerves prickly.

Todoroki had named the place, and Izuku had been expecting something else, something more Todoroki—only he’s not quite sure what that is, and their meeting point is a nice and welcoming storefront that boasts a humble sign and affordable prices for their dinner specials.

It’s cozy, but it’s not entirely comforting, and he doesn’t understand how people do this, how people get through first dates and relationship milestones, even though—even though this is not a date-date—

He takes a deep, audible breath, inhaling until he can’t inhale anymore.

He nods to himself. "You can do this, Izuku," he mutters.

"Do what?"

Izuku doesn’t know why he can never seem to tell when Todoroki has arrived—had never been able to tell. He used to sit in the library, scribbling, and then, Todoroki would be there, grabbing the chair across from him with a quiet hello. It’s not for lack of trying in Izuku’s part, but Todoroki has a habit of staying in the background until he’s needed to do otherwise, has always just been the quiet guy sitting in the back of the classroom and speaking only when he’s called on, or if it desperately counted for marks. It’s not that he’s dispassionate, maybe, because Todoroki is good at what he does; he’s smart and reliable, and Izuku couldn’t have asked for a better partner, but Todoroki has a way of avoiding notice, of avoiding the spotlight until he’s forced into it.

It must bleed into everyday life, because Izuku hadn’t noticed him cross the street at all.

He’s wearing a white button down today, the red in his hair standing out, and he looks so much like a doctor-in-the-making, albeit an awkward one standing in front of a brown storefront, that Izuku has to smile, nervousness taking the backseat. "H-Hi," he says. "Did you—did you just get off work?"

"Something like that." Todoroki’s eyes shift, briefly, to the hospital. "I apologize for the last minute notice."

"No, no, it’s okay." Izuku hopes his laughter doesn’t sound a little manic, because he can hear his nerves seeping into the pitch in his voice. "I—My roommate said she’d be going out for dinner, so really, you—ah—you just saved me from having to worry about dinner. For myself. By myself."

"I’m glad." There’s something in Todoroki’s eyes that looks a little bit like amusement, if Izuku squints, but he gestures to the restaurant. They stand there for a few seconds, before Izuku realizes he’s asking to go inside, and he squeaks, almost tripping on his way in.

The place is homey, completely unexpected, and the steam gathered around one side makes the place seem alive, electric in ways that Disneyland sometimes is on family holidays. There’s a quiet energy among the people inside, salary men coming in after a long day, a couple sharing a donburi, U.A students gathered around in a corner booth. Ochako’s one of them, somewhere else, and Izuku, for once, is glad that he’s not alone at home.

It isn’t that he’s lonely in the apartment, he thinks, and he tries not to be too grateful for the change of scenery as Todoroki walks both of them over to a window booth.

"Well, if it isn’t Todoroki." The man that calls out from behind the restaurant’s register has a kind voice. "It’s been a while. The usual for you?"

Todoroki nods. "Thank you, Ojiro."

The smile the man gives Izuku is even kinder. "And for your friend?"

Izuku searches his brain for his order, only to realize he doesn’t have a menu and kind of, honestly, has no idea what they serve here. Todoroki realizes, too, and asks, "Do you still like katsudon?"

Izuku, surprised into silence, nods as well.

Ojiro takes their orders behind a curtain, and Izuku can see the kitchen, steamy and busy. It’s soothing, somehow, and he finds his words again. "You—You know I like katsudon?"

Todoroki blinks, looking momentarily caught—caught at what, Izuku doesn’t know, because it’s not like he did anything wrong. He starts to reassure him, but Todoroki shrugs, grabbing a table napkin and arranging it absentmindedly on his side of the table. "I’ve never seen you order anything else."

The final unit for their Theory and Practice course required them to go out and people-watch, recording habits at diners and looking around curiously at parks. It was the only part of the class where Izuku genuinely felt he’d been a good partner to Todoroki, pointing out patterns in body language that the other didn’t notice, and fervently writing observations in his notebook that Todoroki would later organize into a more concrete report worth 35% of their final mark. They conducted observations for an entire week, and somehow, in between, they started grabbing food before heading out to their destination of the day. Sometimes after, too, and they fell into the habit of getting dinner together at 4PM, that one week.

It was the last week of class, and the end of it was probably what drove Izuku into finally realizing his heart didn’t jump around Todoroki for the fun of it.

But he hadn’t known Todoroki noticed what he ordered. He grabs a napkin and does the same for his side of the table, fidgeting. "Do you come here often?"

"Often enough that I have a ‘usual’, I suppose."

"Cold soba?" Izuku says, and it comes out a question. Todoroki’s answering nod is as equally surprised as his. "When we used to—to get dinner after doing work, we’d sit in places like this, to watch people even when we didn’t have to, anymore." Nervously, he laughs. "We came up with our own stories for them."

"We did." Todoroki blinks around the restaurant, as if searching. Someone comes with a teapot and two cups, and he doesn’t speak again past a murmured thank you until the person has left. "We’d take turns, filling in facts."

"It’s a little creepy," Izuku admits, but Todoroki’s mouth rearranges itself to an almost-smile, and he thinks he can take that as a victory. "But it was fun."

"It was." Todoroki hums, non-committal, pouring tea. "We never did it for ourselves. I always wondered why."

He gives the first cup to Izuku.

Izuku accepts it with shaky hands and a dry throat. "Never did what for ourselves?"

Todoroki hesitates, visibly, cradling his own cup. "Fill in facts," he says, and a loud whoop from the salary men almost drowns out his voice. "I didn’t know you worked at Disneyland."

Izuku blinks, unsure if he heard right. "I didn’t start until—until second year. You couldn’t have known."

"We had a class together in second year," Todoroki says. "I still didn’t know. About the job, nor your mother."

"I—" Izuku has no idea where the question is going, but Todoroki seems to have found a pace that he wants to follow in the conversation. He sighs, shrugs. "My mom got hospitalized halfway through second year. My—My dad takes cares of the hospital bills, but I didn’t—I didn’t want to be an extra load. So I got a job. Hence dropping the class."

There isn’t an immediate reply, but Todoroki regards Izuku in a way that makes him want to keep fidgeting in his seat. He feels like he’s being searched, but the food comes then, the pork cutlet steaming on the katsudon.

Todoroki separates his disposable chopsticks, the wood giving an audible crack in complaint. "My mother is admitted in that hospital as well."

Izuku hadn’t expected information to be volunteered, and he almost breaks his own chopsticks. He watches Todoroki start on his zaru soba, the dipping sauce relegated neatly to one corner. "Do you visit her?" He asks, tentative. It feels wrong to ask if she’s okay, feels even more wrong to ask Todoroki if he’ s okay, and it’s the one question that comes to mind.

It’s also the one question Todoroki seems to have been expecting least. He fiddles with the bamboo mat under his bowl before replying. "No, I do not."

It’s final, again, like the voice he’d used when talking about his father, and Izuku nods. "I visit my mother every Wednesday and Sunday," he says. He’s not sure why, but it’s something Ochako would have done, turn the conversation somewhere else, because for people like them, sometimes it’s easier to talk about themselves than force someone else to. "Sometimes, she’s asleep. Sometimes, I watch TV with her." It’s never enough, he doesn’t say. "But she’ll be out of there soon."

Todoroki chews around his noodles, pensive, and Izuku realizes the nervousness is gone. It’s still awkward, but he doesn’t feel like bolting out of the shop anymore. That’s always a good sign.

"What is she—" Todoroki pauses, runs over his words a second time. "Your mother, what is she—"

"What is she in the hospital for?" Izuku supplies, sipping tea. He considers scientific terms, considers terms like CHF, but though he knows Todoroki will understand, probably better than he does, all he says is, "Her heart’s not what it used to be."

Midoriya Inko had always been prone to stress, to worrying, and more often than not, it was about her son, who was childhood friends with the neighborhood trouble maker and was prone to coming home with scratches on his legs. That never changed, even as Izuku had gone on to high school, even as Izuku had graduated. At this point, however, worrying hasn’t done her heart any favors.

Izuku notes the sudden change in the atmosphere, and he startles, cutting himself off with a quick, soft laugh. "Sorry. You offered to pay for dinner and now I’m—I’m talking about hospitals."

"Not something I’m unused to, exactly," Todoroki says. It sounds like a joke, and Izuku laughs longer this time. There’s another mouth twitch. "My family’s main business is a health care zaibatsu. Medical supply equipment as well."

Izuku frowns. "Is that why you’re in medicine?"

Todoroki’s chopsticks still for the briefest of moments. "My father would like me to be a doctor."

The frown deepens. "Do you want to be one?"

This time, Todoroki frowns, too, the same area between his eyebrows scrunching up slightly. "I don’t mind it," he says, carefully. "It isn’t a bad field."

Izuku has to smile. "The pay isn’t bad, no."

"I’ve never considered otherwise, honestly." Todoroki rests his chopsticks against his bowl, reaching for his tea. "I don’t mind it," he says again. "I do mind my father."

"Oh," Izuku says.

"He wanted to meet with me today, after I did paperwork at the hospital." Todoroki finishes the cup and moves to refill it. "I told him I was busy."

"And then texted me," Izuku guesses. "For dinner. How sly."

"I have been meaning to message you," Todoroki says, and the honesty in his admission is somewhat flustering. "I refuse to be the one to break a promise to my sister’s daughter. I had a three-day time limit, if I recall correctly."

Oh.

"About that—" Izuku’s heart hurts, and he stalls. "You really don’t have to worry about doing that or anything."

"I promised," Todoroki says, simply, as if also to say, and we’re here now. "Unless, of course, you’d rather be somewhere else?"

Izuku blinks. "Are you.. Did you just tease me?"

Todoroki tilts his head at him as if to say no, he’s not. "I thought the katsudon from this place is rather good, but I understand if that’s not the case," he continues, picking up his chopsticks. "I trust you know places with much better katsudon, considering that’s all you ever seem to order."

Izuku can’t help it—he starts laughing, eyes tearing up as he laughs into his shoulder trying to cover his mouth in vain.

"You are," he says, in between chuckles. "You are teasing me, Todoroki-kun."

Todoroki’s looking at him, again, like he’s not sure what to make of him. It’s the look he gets when he’s not saying something, the same one he had in the hospital, but this time, he does speak, if only to say, "You finally laughed."

Izuku stops in the middle of wiping a tear away, still laughing out the last few giggles. "Me?"

"Yes." Todoroki’s almost done his cold soba. He’s not looking anywhere but down at it. "You seemed—preoccupied, in the times I’ve seen you lately."

"I—" Izuku lowers his hand, blinking away the last of his happy tears. "I’m sorry."

Todoroki looks up, and his eyebrows furrow in confusion. "Why are you apologizing?"

"It’s been a rough week," Izuku says. "I haven’t really been—I haven’t really been in tip-top shape? It’s just—Let me apologize, please. I’m really sorry I dragged you into that mess. In Disneyland. You were just trying to have a good day with your niece. At the hospital, too, when you bumped into me."

"I never said I minded," Todoroki points out, and it sounds different, the statement coming from him. "And I did offer to pay for dinner."

"You don’t have to," Izuku rushes in to say. "Really. I promise."

For a second, it looks like Todoroki’s going to physically wave him away with his chopsticks. But all he does is shift in his seat, gathering his soba in one side of his bowl. "You can pay next time, Midoriya."

It’s not until they’ve left the restaurant, goodbyes and thank you’s called over their shoulder to Ojiro, that Izuku fully registers what Todoroki said. It’s not until he’s watched Todoroki cross the street to the car he’d parked in the hospital lot that he realizes the implication of a next time.

He calls Ochako.

✶

Izuku had met Uraraka Ochako, technically, during the Yuuei entrance exams, saved from what would have been a head injury by her hand on his backpack. One moment he’d been stepping back to let Kacchan through, and the next she was there, one hand on the front pocket of his school bag and a friendly smile among a sea of nervous, downcast faces.

They don’t talk officially, however, until their shared Psychology class halfway through first year.

She’d mistakenly called him Midoriya Deku-kun, somehow remembered from their first encounter, and he’d half-heartedly corrected her. That had been it. She fell into his and Tenya’s routine within the first month, and it hadn’t been a hard decision to decide to split rent once they’ve all moved out of their dorms.

Strangely, though, Izuku can’t quite fathom a time when he hadn’t had her—when he hadn’t been friends with her and Tenya. He can’t quite recall how he’d been in high school, when it came to friends. He thinks of friends, and it’s Ochako and Tenya that come to mind, right before family flashes somewhere in the back of his head, a reminder that sometimes home can be found in people and he’d already settled.

University is different, in that sense. Being with Ochako and Tenya, having a home away from his childhood one, makes him feel like he’d been asleep the whole time before, had been wading through life not paying attention—not wanting, not doing—until they’d come around. Until Dr. Yagi came around. Until Todoroki Shouto came around.

His life before all of it fades in comparison—it’s still school, and he’s spent most of his life recording and writing things he can barely remember now, but it’s no longer the measured spaces he now encounters when he tries to look back too far. Life had suddenly become school, school, school, but that had been okay, because that meant Ochako, Tenya, Dr. Yagi, Todoroki. He’d felt awake, alive, thrumming with affection and fondness and admiration in all the ways they’d been available.

Then his mother had collapsed at home, and he’d been sent back to dormancy. It’s a modern Maleficent, bad luck, and though it might have been late to the party, it still came, and school, school, school became work, school, work, school, hospital, monotonous. Ochako and Tenya stuck around, and Izuku hung desperately to Dr. Yagi, but Todoroki had slipped through his fingers.

Until now.

"Deku-kun, please."

The sound of eggs frying on the pan is oddly relatable, Izuku thinks. He doesn’t raise his head from the dining table.

"Deku-kun?"

He blinks, peering up at her general direction. "Huh?"

His calls from the night before had gone straight to voicemail, and he’d managed to calm himself into a state of semi-rationality by the time he got home to an empty apartment, falling asleep right on the couch. He doesn’t quite remember why he’d been so frantic, before, but though most of that frenzied panic had faded by the time he’d woken up this morning to the smell of breakfast, there’s still enough anxiety left to make his stomach want to reject food.

Ochako frowns at him from over the stove now, transferring the eggs to a plate. "Are you going to tell me what happened?"

Izuku sighs and mumbles.

Ochako sits down across from him, murmuring a soft thanks for the food before making a face at him. "I didn’t, uh, catch that."

Izuku picks up his chopsticks listlessly. "I got dinner with Todoroki-kun last night." The look on Ochako’s face makes him automatically nervous. "What?"

"Dinner," she repeats.

"Dinner," he confirms. "Because you—because you went out last night."

"So you asked him if he wanted to get dinner?"

"No, I—" Izuku suddenly wonders if the previous night had even been real. He fights the urge to check his phone for the messages. "He messaged me. To ask."

Ochako looks like she feels the same way, eyes searching the joint dining room and living room for her own phone, if only to message Tenya. "Is that so?" she says, voice light. "How was that?"

"It was—" Izuku frowns. "It was okay?"

"Oh," she says, in the same tone, eyes fastening back to him. "Will there be a next time?"

And yeah, breakfast really isn’t agreeing with Izuku’s stomach today. He rests his chopsticks against the hashi-oki Tenya had insisted on getting. "He—" He shuts his eyes tight, and tries to find the confidence to say it. He doesn’t. "I think so," he says, quietly.

He can feel Ochako staring at him. Awkwardly, he lifts his eyes.

"Deku-kun," she says, eggs forgotten. It sounds like a curse, the way she says it. "Was it a date?"

"No!" It comes out a little louder than Izuku had been intending. "Not a date." At this point, it’s less of a mantra and more of a life motto, and just saying it tires him out. "But he said I could pay for next time?"

"It is." Ochako’s mouth is open in a round oh, and Izuku internally pats himself on the back for connecting the resemblance to Todoroki’s niece. "Are you dating now?"

If he’d had his chopsticks, he’s sure he would have dropped it. "It was one dinner," he says, wearily.

Ochako blinks at him. "You don’t sound happy."

Izuku considers that. "I—I don’t think I have space to be happy right now," he admits, finally picking up his chopsticks. "I just—I just don’t understand it. I just don’t understand what’s going on, honestly. If I did—if I did—"

"What don’t you understand?" Ochako says, and her voice is gentle now.

His mother’s heart condition, why his father still hasn’t come to visit, what Dr. Yagi meant last Sunday. Todoroki Shouto.

"Everything," Izuku says.

"Do you not—" Ochako sounds like she doesn’t know how to phrase the question. "Do you not like him anymore?"

It isn’t the same question, but it sounds, in a way, like the one Kendou had proposed yesterday.

Have I liked anyone before this person?

They want to confirm how he feels about Todoroki—but that shouldn’t be the question. Softly, he tells Ochako that, because if anyone can make sense of his long-winded ramblings, she’ll be one of them.

She smiles, and it looks a little sad. "What’s actually the matter, Deku-kun?"

Izuku manages to swallow the last of his rice. "I don’t understand why he’d want a next time."

Unflinchingly, unhesitatingly, Ochako grabs his hand from across the table. She squeezes, and it’s comforting, just like that. "You’re allowed to like someone, Deku-kun," she says, and it sounds like a reminder he’d heard before. "Other people are also allowed to like you."

When he doesn’t answer, she continues, "It’s scary, and I understand that. It’s scary because it opens too much of your world, but I can’t let you keep thinking you don’t deserve to be liked by the—by the person you like. It isn’t about that. Life isn't really about deserving anything—if—if it was, I'm sure a lot of us will be living entirely different lives."

Her gaze slips past him, and Izuku knows she's thinking about her kind, sweet parents. People who don't deserve to have to struggle, people who don't deserve to have to work so hard and so tirelessly. "And it's not about deserving anyone, either. That's – That's not something we get to decide for anyone else, Deku-kun. Sometimes, we get bad things we feel we don't deserve – and, other times, we get good things. Why question them? When good things come, we just – we just take them, because happiness isn't about being deserving or not. That’s kind of how life works. We take what we can get, and make do with what we have, right?"

She smiles, then, a little helpless. "Everyone deserves to be happy, don't you think?"

What she’s really asking, he thinks, is don’t you think you deserve to be happy?

And no, Izuku hasn’t really thought about it like that.

"I’ll clean up here," she says, abruptly letting go of his hand. "Go ahead. You’re going to the hospital today, right?"

It’s scary because it opens too much of your world, Ochako had said. It’s terrifying, he thinks, because his world is balanced on too brittle a foundation to open up, because anything can go wrong, any moment now, and he doesn’t think he’ll be ready to deal with the aftermath.

"Um—" he starts. She hums. "Thank you."

Izuku’s sure he must have had friendships, before, however shallow, however fleeting—but none of it, not a single one, could ever have held a candle to Uraraka Ochako, and the way she grins now, giving him a thumbs up.

✶

His mother’s awake today.

"Izuku!"

"Hi, Mom," Izuku says, smiling back. She turns down the volume on the small TV in her room, eyes wide and excited as he sits by her bed. Instinctively, he grabs her hand. "How are you?"

"Did you sleep?" His mother sits up straighter, expression shifting as she completely ignores his question. "You look so tired, Izuku."

He did sleep, a solid ten hours, but the weariness from his conversation with Ochako must show, because his mother’s face looks more worried than it should be.

It always does.

He tightens his grip on her hand. "I’m okay," he says, clearing his throat. "Just been busy these past few days."

"Is it work?" his mother asks. Concern sounds different in her voice—more patented, more familiar, and a little bit more painful. "Disneyland gets so busy in the summer months. Are you sure you’re alright?"

"Of course!" Izuku’s throat feels thick, and he has to clear his throat again. "It’s good to see you."

His mother looks like she’s near tears, but that’s always been the way she is—when she’s worried, yes, but even when she’s happy. Eyes bright, smile brighter. "It’s good to see you, too. I heard you came last Sunday. I missed you."

"I did." Izuku, somehow, musters up a smile.

"I worry about you, Izuku," his mother says, sounding wounded. "Do you have someone taking care of you?"

It’s not a hard question. "I have my roommates," he says, honestly.

His mother hums. "Tell Ochako-chan and Tenya-kun not to overwork themselves, either. You’re all too young to be worrying and working so much."

"I’ll tell them." Izuku manages a laugh. "How’s your day been so far?"

His mother launches into a spiel about a drama she’d just started, and Izuku keeps his hand tight around hers. He’s grateful—grateful because this way she doesn’t have to know he went to work sick, grateful because this way she doesn’t have to worry anymore. She’s spent far too long worrying about him, and he doesn’t want to keep doing that, doesn’t want to go home knowing that even as she sits there in a hospital gown, she worries about him.

Maybe the reason he stopped visiting every day wasn’t the job, after all, or the fact that she’s more often asleep—maybe it was the fact that, at some point, it became difficult to talk to her, his throat closing up after telling her about his day, his hands shaking, sometimes, when he looks at her and tries to look for the woman that sent him off to school everyday with never-ending concern.

It’s silly—silly because she’s fine, she’ll be okay, it’s only a matter of time—but it’s hard to look at someone who’s always tried to give you the world and not know how to give it to them.

He’s fine listening, because sometimes—sometimes that’s all he can do. He squeezes her hand, like Ochako had done for him.

When his mother finishes, she smiles at him, again, and squeezes back.

It’s not a guaranteed happy ending, Deku-kun, but it’s enough for me.

It’s enough for him, too, seeing his mother smile.

Izuku leaves half an hour after his mother falls asleep.

When he reaches the hospital lobby, Todoroki Shouto is there, a folder in hand.

He’s proud to note than he didn’t hesitate for longer than ten seconds before going to say hello. "Did you just get off work?" he asks, first thing, because it’s apparently tradition to do so now.

"Something like that," Todoroki replies, because that too, it seems, is routine. "Your mother?"

Izuku nods. "She’s awake today," he reports. It’s easier, now, to talk to Todoroki—easier than he’d ever found doing in first year. Something between them had fallen into place after two hours of talking over dinner, but within the whirlwind that the past few days have been, he hadn’t had the chance to sit down and figure out what it is. He looks at the folder. "Do you take notes about—your patients?"

"My patients?" Todoroki repeats, following his gaze. "Oh. Oh, no. It’s—" He pauses, never one to stutter, taking a second to gather his thoughts. "I don’t handle patients. I help with the boring paperwork. I haven’t been in school long enough to qualify for much more, but the experience is necessary."

"I quite like paperwork," Izuku admits, sheepish. "I help out with a prof, every now and then, if he needs me."

Todoroki blinks. "A professor from U.A?"

"Yeah—" Izuku breaks off, interrupted by a sound he belatedly realizes is coming from his own stomach. He flushes. His stomach had settled, finally, while he was talking to his mother, the knots gone and replaced by the hunger he hadn’t felt during breakfast. "I-I’m sorry—"

Todoroki looks as close as he can get to blatantly amused, one corner of his mouth visibly lifted. "Have you had lunch?" He asks, a rhetorical question.

Sighing, Izuku shakes his head. He stares down at the hospital tiles, a familiar sight at this point, and feels his stomach lurch. It’s probably not hunger, though, because his nervousness is audible when he asks, in a small voice, "Have you?"

Todoroki looks back at him much more easily. "No. Is it your turn to pay?"

Something in Izuku’s chest dislodges in what almost feels like relief, and he nods.

Todoroki sets the folder down on the wait desk. "Are you going to order katsudon again?" he asks, politely, turning back.

Izuku laughs, and he feels the sound somewhere in his chest, too, light and free.

✶

Dr. Yagi’s giving him a look.

Izuku closes the last folder of the file and looks up at him, feeling watched. "Am I—am I doing something wrong?"

"You’re positively glowing today, my boy," is all he gets, before he’s even done his own question. "Good news to share with me?"

"Good—good news?" Izuku’s brain scatters for a good three seconds. "I—No, sir?"

Dr. Yagi frowns—as close as he usually ever gets to frowning. In English, he asks, "No good news?"

Slowly, Izuku slips a dated research paper back to its folder for safekeeping.

Todoroki had been in the lobby the next Sunday, and the Wednesday after that, and by the end of end of July, Izuku had stopped questioning it. They’d gone back to the same place, and then again, and again, until Ojiro now greets him by name, too, and katsudon has officially become his usual. Work, hospital, work, hospital, work rearranged itself to fit Todoroki like school, school, school once had, and they don’t meet up for study sessions now, but it’s better—

It’s better because Todoroki never stops trying to fight a smile when Izuku orders katsudon, because Todoroki listens to Izuku drone on and on about people at Disneyland, because Izuku doesn’t feel bad, talking about his mother’s condition to someone that’s not his father. It’s better because Todoroki brings up Atsuko sometimes, and it’s awkward when they both remember it, but Izuku has stopped apologizing, and Todoroki has stopped using it as a reason to eat with him.

A year before, he’d only wanted another class with Todoroki Shouto. He’d dropped that, because that’s how life goes, unpredictable and never as smooth as you would like, but life also brought him back to Izuku’s life, in its own way.

Don’t you think, Ochako had asked, an unspoken question, as his mother also had, you deserve to be happy?

"Dr. Yagi," Izuku says, haltingly. "Do you think—do you think happiness—your own happiness—can depend on someone else?"

The professor doesn’t seem surprised by the question, but he leans back in his leather office chair, visibly thoughtful. "That’s a tricky question, my boy," he says, and it’s the way he sounds when he’s answering a particularly aggressive question from a student. "Happiness depends on a lot of things—but it’s always, in the end, about how you define it. Is happiness achieving a particular goal and being happy with that? Or is happiness achieving perfection? Is it acquiring something you wanted? Or is it being able to keep something you didn’t want to lose?"

Izuku, for each one, shakes his head.

"Then, is it an end goal? Even in a life full of so many choices?"

He blinks. "Are you saying happiness—is a choice?"

"I’m saying that happily ever after is subjective," Dr. Yagi says, and Izuku startles. "That’s what you’re wondering about, yes? Your happiness is never dependent on someone else. You might think so, but it is not. You’re not happy because of someone. It is something you choose, something you accept, something you welcome and embrace. It’s there, if you want it, but no person brings it to you until you have chosen it." He holds up an old essay in one hand. "The Dalai Lama once said happiness isn’t ready-made. I am inclined to agree with him, my boy."

Izuku doesn’t realize he’s been staring at the essay until Dr. Yagi puts it down.

"In your terms," he says, gently, "I suppose I would say that there are different kinds of happily ever after. Some things in life would not work out, and I’m afraid that’s how it goes. But happiness is not dependent on one thing and one thing alone. It has many forms, as most things do—love, for one. No form is superior to another. Happiness is happiness, love is love, is it not? Happily ever after, then, is happily ever after, whether it’s in a small cottage in the forest or a castle."

Izuku thinks of Todoroki—of having him in his life, and being able to relax, if only for a little while—and he’s happy, about that, try as he might not to admit that to himself or anyone. It doesn’t change the fact that his mother is in the hospital, or that work isn’t always easy, but it helps, the way Ochako’s presence does, the way Tenya’s single-minded intensity does even from across the country. It puts him at ease, the way Kendou does, the way Dr. Yagi does, both of them strong-willed and optimistic in ways only they can be.

They’re heroes of their own stories, all of them, and they make him feel, a little bit, like happily ever after isn’t so impossible.

✶

For the rest of July, all of Izuku’s notebook entries have something to do, if not entirely about, Todoroki Shouto.

People are predictable—his notebooks are a testament to that. There are patterns to their body language, little hand gestures and intonations in specific word choices. Kacchan’s hands twitch when anger takes over, Tenya presses down on his mouth and raises his chin when he’s happy, Uraraka puts her palms together when she’s excited. They’re their own stories, held within a body, and Izuku has known and watched them all enough to be able to read those stories, to take it apart and know foreshadowing when he sees it.

People are predictable, but Todoroki is not.

Todoroki has his habits, a way of inching his head a few degrees when he’s lost in thought, mind clearly somewhere else. His mouth stretches out from the very edges when it’s trying out a smile, beginning as a phantom smirk that eventually finds its way out towards something longer, more visible. He doesn’t hunch, his posture rim-rod straight in public, but his head does, ducking down not so much like Izuku’s own blatant, avoidant habit but more of a signal that he’s not quite open for something. It isn’t dismissive—Todoroki’s never really dismissive, he’s also beginning to learn—but it lets Izuku know where there are boundaries, and where there are not.

He can’t read Todoroki, exactly, but he doesn’t feel like he’s being shut out. He knows how it feels, to be rejected, to be pushed away, but it’s never like that with Todoroki. It’s a slow process, getting to know him, but Izuku has never been in a hurry for anything in a life that doesn’t currently promise much, and it’s frustrating, not being able to do enough, but it’s better than nothing.

By the time August rolls around, Izuku has found it in himself to look at his notebook entries from the year before.

They’re embarrassingly similar to a schoolgirl’s diary entries, crush and all, things like grabbed ice cream with Todoroki-kun today! and we ended up visiting a bookstore on the way home. It’s unthinkable how he’d never realized his feelings until it’d been too late, how he hadn’t noticed even when he’d gone home every day with a smile—a smile he’d never been able to fight away, even as he’d sat in bed writing, even as he’d turned off the light for Tenya. It’s such a ridiculous concept, liking someone—but somehow, he’s been living with it for a year.

He feels awake, and yet lost—like Snow White waking up and realizing she has to find her way out of the forest she’d lived in with the seven dwarves. It’s like he’s woken up and found all these feelings stacked up at the foot of his bed—feelings he hadn’t been dealing with personally, because Todoroki Shouto has always been out of the question—and now he has to unstack them one by one and sort them out like old essays in Dr. Yagi’s office.

At one point, Ochako comes home to find Izuku with his face smushed against the couch and drags him over to watch her heat up take-out from her late dinner with her officemates.

They’re standing quietly in the kitchen, leaning against each other sleepily at two in the morning. They’re both exhausted, the kind of bone-deep tiredness that settles in after a long, busy week. A long, busy month, as it is, for both of them, and the small patch of breathing room they have now feels precious, valuable.

Ochako’s slightly drunk from dinner, her movements heavy and her speech slightly slurred, and Izuku cards hand through her hair, as much comfort for him as he hopes it is for her. "Deku-kun?"

He hums against her hair, adjusting his back against the counter to support both their weights.

"Why do you like Todoroki?" His fingers still, and she does, too. "You don’t have to answer! You just never talk about it, that’s all."

"No, no—‘Why’?" Izuku repeats. He hasn’t really thought about it, even when he’d first realized it for it was. His notebook entries hadn’t been explicit—they’d shown signs, hints, symptoms, but no details. An odd thing, for him, the lack of analysis. Carefully, quietly, he says, "He makes me feel calm."

As soon as he says it, he realizes it’s not—entirely—the truth. Todoroki Shouto doesn’t make him feel the usual kind of calm—he makes Izuku’s heart hurt, makes his heart beat too fast and skip beats that it really should not be skipping. Todoroki makes him feel sensitive to everything, to the world, to his own thoughts and his own feelings. He makes him feel awake, after a life that’s been built on routine—routine that, in turn, had been built around not so much getting what he wants but only the idea of wanting. Todoroki makes Izuku want, but it’s a want that keeps on yearning, it’s a want that makes him feel raw and exposed and vulnerable, because happily ever after isn’t awarded to everyone, but it’s a want that makes him feel more alive than he has before.

Ochako asks why, and the thing is that he doesn’t know—maybe it’s the soft way he speaks, bent over Izuku’s notebook, or the way he stands, defiant to the world in ways Kacchan had only been insolent. Or maybe it was nothing in particular at all, because feelings have lives of their own, stories of their own, and liking someone is too complex a feeling to trace back to once upon a time.

His eyes catch on the microwave, and he goes back to stroking Ochako’s hair. "He makes me feel like that, actually."

She blinks at him. "Like the microwave?"

"Yeah." Izuku laughs, and she does, too. "When I first realized, it was—it was scary. But I wasn’t going to see him anymore, and I thought—I thought I was free." The microwave beeps, but neither of them move towards it. "Honestly? They make liking someone so—so nice in the movies—and it—it is? But it also feels like someone took your heart and threw it into the microwave."

Ochako grins. "Is your heart still in the microwave?"

Izuku thinks it says something that he doesn’t hesitate to say, "I don’t think I ever took it out."

He looks down at Ochako, and thinks of how easy it would be to love her, to go on dates with her and hold her hand and keep leaning against her like this—but the thought perishes, because how silly, how silly to think of it as a possibility when it is the truth. He loves her, and it’s not the same microwaveable way he feels about Todoroki, nor the same way he feels about Tenya and his parents, but it’s there, and he loves that, too. He loves loving, and he loves feeling loved.

He hasn’t really thought about that either, but, he thinks, his heart has always known.

✶

"Are you close to your mother?"

Izuku stops squinting at the coffee shop’s blackboard menu to look at Todoroki. "I am," he says, without hesitation. It’s never been debatable, in any capacity. He smiles crookedly. "My dad’s work hasn’t really—allowed?—him to be home much. I basically grew up with just my mom. So yeah. Always have been."

Todoroki takes this information quietly, contemplatively sipping his iced coffee. He doesn’t say anything, waiting for Izuku to order his own drink. He doesn’t speak until they’ve wandered back outside. "There’s a mint leaf in my coffee," he announces.

Izuku blinks at him. It’s such a mundane comment, unexpected somehow, and he smiles.

Todoroki sees it and frowns. "Did I say something funny?"

Izuku hurriedly shakes his head. "No, it’s just—the way you—the way you said that." Taking care not to trip on his own feet, he sneaks a glance at Todoroki, searching. He hadn’t noticed, earlier, but he looks different today— feels different, too, a subdued restlessness that hints at a bad mood. He’d never known Todoroki to lash out at anyone, had never know him to be severe in either way, and he’s not cold now, in retrospect, but it feels like he’s crumpling inwards. It’s not so much pulling up guards to hide behind, but more that Izuku knows what someone looks like when they’re hunching into themselves. "Are you alright, Todoroki-kun?"

The answer is clearly no, because Todoroki takes a while to refocus on him. "Yes," he says, the answer stilted.

"You—um—" Izuku stares steadfastly down at his own drink. "You can tell me. If you want."

Todoroki doesn’t say anything, taking his time, but he looks like he’s considering it, his steps losing their purposefulness. Eventually, he stops, and when Izuku notices they’re right in front of a bench, he asks, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, "Would you like to sit?"

They do sit, and it helps something, because Todoroki suddenly says, "I don’t have a very good relationship with my father."

For lack of anything better to say, Izuku admits, "Neither do I."

That seems to relax Todoroki, because his form sheds the stiffness. "My mother’s not well, either," he says. "She hasn’t been well since I was younger."

Izuku swallows. He can feel the ice in his drink melting, and he lets it, cool against his palm.

When Todoroki speaks again, he doesn’t move. He sits and listens, and listens and listens and listens, fighting the urge to close his eyes and flinch when he hears boiling water, fighting the urge to grab Todoroki’s hand when he reaches up, unconsciously, to touch his face. It’s a fragile story, told in an even more fragile voice, and when Todoroki’s hand returns to his lap, a signal that he’s done talking, Izuku feels like he’s lost his voice all over again.

Words and stories are fragile things, and real life is never kind to anything breakable.

"You don’t visit her," Izuku says, finally. It’s not a question.

Todoroki nods. "I don’t."

Izuku, still, doesn’t move.

"My shitty old man will know, if I do." Todoroki takes a sip of his coffee, the ice long since melted. Izuku startles at the term. "I’m not afraid of him. I don’t care what he’ll do. But my mother—"

"She doesn’t hate you," Izuku says, abruptly, surprising himself. He jerks, and he reaches up to cover his mouth, but the look Todoroki gives him stops him. "I—Your mother—She doesn’t—She doesn’t hate you."

"She hates what I remind her of," Todoroki says, and his voice remains the same, but Izuku thinks he’s never heard him sound like that, either. "The side that looks like him. She hates my father’s side. It’s what—"

"She hates your father," Izuku repeats, with more fervor than he’d thought himself capable. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, and somewhere in the back of his head, there’s panic forming, but Todoroki’s eyes remind him of shuttered blinds, and he refuses to stop until he’s back to the boy joking about katsudon and fighting back a smile. Instinctively, he reaches out, taking Todoroki’s hand, the way Ochako had done for him, the way he still does for his mother. It’s the one way he knows how to love without smothering, how to care without being too much. "But your father—isn’t you. And you’re not—you’re not your father. It’s not a side, Todoroki-kun—it’s just—it’s you—and she doesn’t—she can’t hate you. I—Do you hate you?"

Todoroki’s eyes are on him, and they’re so clear, Izuku finds himself unable to look away, as much as he wants to. "I don’t—"

"I don’t," Izuku says, sobering up into mid-coherence. "I think—I think you’re amazing, Todoroki-kun. And I-I think that about a lot of people, but I just thought—I just thought you should know. Even when I wanted to give up—in first year—because the sudden amount of work was—was too much—I always looked at you and thought—" He should really shut up, he thinks. He can’t just go and ruin a heartfelt moment and get away with it. "You’re amazing," he finishes, lamely.

There’s a reason, he also thinks, why he’d lost his voice that day.

The way Todoroki is looking at him right now, expression unreadable, is that reason.

Oh. Oh, oh, oh, Izuku.

"You’re beautiful," Izuku blurts out. And then, "Oh my god."

Todoroki’s face does something, and then he’s turning to hide his face in his shoulder.

"Todoroki-kun," Izuku says, panicked. "I didn’t mean it like that—"

"Oh? You didn’t?" Todoroki sounds like he’s smiling, and Izuku wants, more than anything, to see. "I see."

"Wait—no—" Izuku has never felt more helpless than he has around Todoroki, he thinks. If he had to compile a chart of all the times he hasn’t known what to do, at least three of the top five would probably involve situations like this. "Todoroki-kun."

Todoroki turns back, and his face is mostly calm now. He raises an eyebrow, and his eyes, for the briefest of seconds, fall to their joined hands.

"How do you do that, Midoriya?"

If it had been anyone but Izuku, this would be the moment—under summer sunlight, cooling iced coffee in their hands, sitting knee to knee on a bench—that he says, I like you. It feels perfect, to say that, but it also doesn’t feel right at all, because Izuku has things to worry about, and he likes someone who also has things to worry about. They favor each other, in that regard, but he doesn’t know if it’s enough of a reason to confess to someone after they’ve confessed something entirely different.

It doesn’t feel enough, either, to just say I like you.

Secrets are odd things, and he doesn’t want to keep it a secret anymore—probably never has, even before he’d realized it.

As it is, Izuku squeezes Todoroki’s hand, and lets go.

✶

"Are you seeing someone, Izuku?"

Izuku, his neck feeling robotic, turns to his mother.

"I don’t know," he says, honestly.

He hates that he feels like he’s cheating her, in saying that. He’d never lied to her, growing up, never had reason to, and his mouth feels dry now. He’s cheating himself, too, in a way.

Playfully, she asks, "Is it serious?"

Izuku feels his own hand twitch, in hers, and that—that feels a little bit like betrayal. "Mom," he says, his voice hoarse. "How do you know when you love someone?"

His mother stares at him, but he doesn’t take the question back. It’s hard, not understanding your feelings, not being able to tell what you want. It’s the only concrete thing about people—what they want, what they work towards, because it’s always someone’s inherent desires that tell the most about them. But Izuku doesn’t know what he wants, right now—he doesn’t know what he wants out of what he has with Todoroki, now, doesn’t understand what he wants. He doesn’t know how to make sense of his feelings—they never mattered before, in school, in life, but they do now. They matter more than anything, because his feelings are depending on so many of the people he holds dear.

"Izuku," his mother says, his hand sweaty in hers. "When did you grow up so much?"

He looks up at her. She gives him a teary smile, wobbly.

"When you were a baby," she says, as if the words have to be forced out of her. "They used to tell me that you look so much like me. You cry like me, they said." She’s right—they’re copies of each other, there, in their habits. Izuku swallows. "But your father—your father said you smiled like me. I used to be so happy, whenever I thought about that. My son, sharing my smile."

Izuku can’t look at her, but he also can’t look away, so he stares at their hands, joined.

"You don’t smile like me much anymore, Izuku," his mother continues, running her thumb across his palm. "Why is your smile so sad, Izuku? When did you start lying to your mother?"

When he tries to meet her eyes again, his vision is blurry, and he doesn’t realize anything until she reaches out, wiping the first few tears away. "I’ll be okay," she promises, and he believes her. He believes her, believes her like he believes Dr. Yagi. "I promise. So you don’t have to keep forcing a smile anymore."

"Mom—" he starts, but she shakes her head.

"When you love someone," she answers his question, abrupt. "You don’t have to force a smile for them. You don’t have to try and be strong all the time, because loving them—and being loved by them—will be enough." She moves her other hand parallel to the one that had wiped the tears away, both hands cupping his face. "I love you, Izuku. I’ll always worry about you. So it’s fine. Let people worry about you. Let people love you."

When she hugs him, he feels like a child, crying about wanting to be a hero. He cries now, too, and it feels final, crying into her shoulder.

✶

Tenya’s a pixelated face on the laptop screen, his face too close to the camera as he surveys the open suitcase on Ochako’s bed. Behind him, a meteorologist is talking on the TV, gesturing to cartoon rainclouds behind him.

"Toothbrush?"

"I’ll grab it tomorrow morning," Ochako says, saluting. "Other than that, we’re all good, captain!"

Izuku grew up an only kid; an empty apartment isn’t anything new to him, but he can’t help but feel a sense of impending loneliness as he sits on Ochako’s suitcase while she zips it up, humming to herself. She’s off for a one-week field trip with her fellow Gunhead assistants somewhere in Fukuoka. How they intend to do research on gravity in a city full of temples and beaches, though, he doesn’t know.

Before he’d hung up, Tenya asked, "Are you going to be fine by yourself, Izuku-kun?"

Ochako had looked at him, too, and Izuku hadn’t been able to do anything but shrug. "Yeah," he says. "It’s just one week."

"If you say so," Tenya said, slowly. "Don’t leave the door unlocked."

"Make sure to put water in the kettle before turning it on," Ochako had chirped, joining in.

Tenya nodded, solemn. "Instant noodles don’t count as dinner."

"I know," Izuku had said, but Ochako had cut in without missing a beat:

"Not a problem, since he’s been eating katsudon for dinner every day." She’d paused, for dramatic effect. "With Todoroki Shouto."

Tenya had made a sound, and Izuku had ended the video call, Ochako’s giggling the last thing caught on the mic.

"Honestly, though," she says, now, joining him on top of her suitcase. "A lot can happen in one week, Deku-kun. Don’t just stay home the whole time."

"I’m going to be working," Izuku says. "And visiting my mom." Which, he doesn’t say, also means getting katsudon with Todoroki. Instinctively, he adds, "No, I’m not sick of katsudon."

Ochako’s giggle sounds strangely relieved. "You used to come home from the hospital on Wednesdays and Sundays and not eat much at all," she says, suddenly.

Izuku frowns. "I did?"

"Yeah." She nods, tracing patterns on her raised knee. "Nor eat breakfast before you go. Tenya-kun used to try and make you bring bentos to your mom." He did. Izuku’s frown deepens. "We thought it was just—you know, you getting used to seeing your mom in the hospital. Tenya-kun understood, I think, because he’s had to see his brother in the hospital, before. But then it just became—a thing. It isn’t anymore, though. You always go out to eat now." As if caught by a different train of thought, Ochako blinks, staring down at her lap. "It’s like—you were going through the motions, and on Wednesdays and Sundays, you functioned on autopilot. Now you—you seem more aware—of everything? I wouldn’t say happier, because I don’t—I don’t actually know—but—"

"I’m awake," Izuku says, matching her soft tone.

"Yeah." Ochako blinks again. Slowly, a smile spreads across her face. "You are."

It’s not a joke, but it’s horribly cheesy, and they both laugh.

They both laugh—more than they should, chest begging for breath and stomach hurting, but they don’t stop, collapsing onto each other, wheezing.

And yeah, Izuku thinks. He isn’t Ariel needing her voice back—he feels a little more like someone that needed to be woken up, to be reminded that there’s an end to every curse, even if it’s not always a true love’s kiss.

✶

Izuku’s world stops revolving, for a long second, when Todoroki shows up at the ice cream shop on a Saturday afternoon.

Monoma sticks his head out from over the cash register, expression smug, but Kendou says something from the backroom. He spares Izuku a glance before grabbing a box of cones and stalking off to the back, momentarily leaving the line unattended.

"Can he do that?" Todoroki asks, looking genuinely perplexed.

Izuku’s world jerks back into motion. "Monoma.. is Monoma," he manages. "What—what are you—" He searches their immediate vicinity. "Atsuko?"

But the little girl is nowhere in sight. It’s just Todoroki, white shirt and jeans, perusing the shop’s ice cream choices.

"Todoroki-kun?"

"She wanted to see you, today," he says, eyes still on the board. "I offered to take her, but it’s raining tonight, and my sister had her stay home because she’s running the beginnings of a cold."

Izuku wonders about the likelihood of catching a cold in the heat of the summer, but he himself has fallen prey to that, and he can’t say anything. Slightly skittish, he stands beside Todoroki. "But?"

Todoroki turns his head slightly to look at him. "The tickets would have gone to waste."

"Right," Izuku says, trying not to look too much as Todoroki turns back to the board. He clears his throat. "Would you like a quick run-down of our flavors, sir?"

Todoroki doesn’t have to hold back smiles, nowadays. It’s nowhere near a grin, or a full-on smile, but it’s there, a little curve to his mouth. He still ducks his head, but Izuku always catches it anyway.

That’s probably because he’s looking, though. He’s always looking.

He lists off, voice a little shaky, their most popular flavors—vanilla to double chocolate to rum raisin. "We only offer almond crunch during the summer," he adds, lowering his voice. "So I suggest you get it while it’s still available."

"That sounds a little unfair," Todoroki says, playing along. "Do you have flavors available only in the winter?"

"Of course we do!" Izuku gives him his best smile. "Peach sherbet—exclusive, exquisite."

Todoroki blinks at him, mouth twitching confused and hesitant, and Izuku can’t help it, can’t help the part of him that reaches out to poke at Todoroki’s cheek, coaxing the smile farther, wider, brighter.

He has a really nice smile, Izuku thinks. It’s a private close-mouthed one, almost shy.

They stare at each other, until Izuku realizes his finger is pressing against Todoroki’s face and steps back, cheeks warmer than he’d ever felt them. "Sorry—I didn’t mean to—"

"Midoriya." Monoma’s come back, and he’s smiling down at the register, passive-aggressively punching in numbers. "If you and your boyfriend are going to flirt in the shop, please do it where you’re not blocking the line."

"I-I—" Izuku starts, but Todoroki brushes past him without commenting on it.

"I’m going to go line up."

"Wait—you don’t need to—" Izuku ends up following him. "I can just take your order."

"I can just take your order," mimics ƒMonoma. "No, you can’t. I’ll tell Shuuzenji-san."

"Playground tactics," Todoroki observes.

"He—uh—does that a lot. Both the mimicking and the telling on me. He’s—very good at copying people?"

Todoroki clicks his tongue. "Is that why he got hired? To do impressions?"

Izuku makes a sound like a dying animal, nudging him. "Todoroki- kun."

Todoroki ends up ordering a coffee float, face impassive as Monoma sings That will be three hundred ninety yen, Prince Charming, and thereby leaving Izuku to burn from his own face down as he takes the ice cream ordered for him.

He blinks down on it, completely missing how it got to his hand. "Is this—mine?"

"Yes," Todoroki says, taking a sip and nudging them both out of the path towards the register. They both ignore Monoma’s mocking Thank you for coming, may all your dreams come true as they step out into sunlight.

The ice cream is almond crunch, and when Izuku looks at him, Todoroki says, lowering his voice as well, "Someone suggested I get that while it’s still available."

Izuku’s cheeks, for some reason, heat up even more at that.

He has no idea if Todoroki has been to Disneyland often, but the way he leads both of them into one store and out, comfortably, makes Izuku thinks that he must have. He hadn’t realized how many gift shops Disneyland has within the World Bazaar alone—and it makes him feel a little happy, to be rediscovering the place through lenses that don’t belong exclusively to a work-oriented mind. There’s no rhyme or reason to their walk, as far as Izuku can tell, and Todoroki has yet to explain why he’d showed up without so much as a messaged warning—but he follows without asking, anyway.

It’s the kind of summer day where the humidity is something visible, a warning for tonight’s thunderstorm—but Izuku feels like he’s floating, dreamy and a little distant, but in a good way. Like sitting in a room where instead of walls he’s surrounded by sunshine on all sides. Sunshine and the smell of cotton candy, sunshine and the taste of ice cream, sunshine and Todoroki Shouto’s shoulder always close enough to bump against his.

Todoroki holds up a Mickey Mouse headband now, contemplative. "You’re always smiling, Midoriya."

Izuku blinks. "Is—that—Is that bad?"

Todoroki blinks back at him. "Oh," he says. "No, not at all. I quite—" He breaks off, clears his throat. Without making eye contact, he plops the headband on Izuku’s head. "It’s good. Smiling."

It’s hard not to smile at that, so Izuku lets himself do so. "Why don’t you wear one, too, Todoroki-kun?"

"Absolutely not," he protests, but his heart doesn’t sound at all like it’s in it. He doesn’t step back when Izuku tries to put one on him—and he looks—he looks nice, Izuku thinks, the black headband against his hair.

"Let’s buy them," he says, impulsively.

Todoroki’s face does the thing it does when he’s holding back a smile-laugh hybrid, and something about it fills Izuku’s chest with—with something—and the next thing he knows, he’s blurting out:

"Would you like to meet my mother?"

It’s quiet for all of three beats, both of them registering the question slowly. Izuku thinks he realizes the implication at the same time Todoroki does, his face melting into something soft and—

Happy, Izuku thinks.

"That would be nice," he says, and it’s a marvel how someone can sound like that.

When they get outside, it’s raining, the first signs of tonight’s supposed thunderstorm—they’re trapped under the World Bazaar’s roof, neither of them with an umbrella to protect them on their way to the subway station.

Izuku blinks up at the drops sliding down the glass roof. "Have you—have you ever run in the rain?"

He thinks he sees Todoroki turn towards him. "No. Have you?"

"I have." He’d been six, following Kacchan’s lead as they ran back home, jumping on puddles. His mother had fussed over him for a whole hour, still towelling his hair long after it had dried. "Do you want—"

"Yes."

There’s something child-like about the way Todoroki replies, a little bit uncertain, that makes Izuku turn to look at him. Hand slightly shaky, he reaches out. "Um, count of three?"

"Yes," Todoroki says again, and when he takes the outstretched hand, Izuku stuttering over two, it feels like something falling into place.

They run, and they get drenched, but when they get to the station, Todoroki’s smile is more pronounced, and that, too, feels like a step closer to happily ever after.

✶

It’s exactly 5:00 A.M when Izuku gets the call.

It’s 5:35 when he gets to the hospital, and 5:43 when he thinks to call his father—watching, knees shaking and body numb and mind scattered, as they roll his mother into the operating room. No one picks up, and he leaves a voice-mail, a voice-mail he can’t remember, slumping against the wall.

He doesn’t know what’s going on.

Complication is such a bizarre word—even more bizarre when applied to something as fragile and unpredictable as the human heart, and Izuku, who’d always functioned according to details, can’t wrap his head around it. They’d mentioned it, before, when he’d last met with the doctor, but everything is a blur, everything including the white tiles he’s sitting on, and he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what a heart pump does, exactly, he doesn’t know the difference something called an LVAD makes, he doesn’t know.

At 10:13, his father arrives.

At 10:13, he falls into his father’s arms.

At 10:13, Izuku cries. He cries, and he cries, and he cries, and he wonders how long it’s been, since he’d let himself cry.

By 11, he’s tired, more tired than he’s ever been, and he wants to see his mother, he wants to see Ochako, he wants to see Tenya. And he wants to see Todoroki.

His heart hurts, and, he thinks, he’ll gladly exchange it for his mother’s, if that will stop the hurting for both of them.

The surgery takes five hours and a bit, and when the doctor comes out to talk to his father, Izuku still isn’t able to register anything. There’s bottled water in his hand, and he thinks he must have drank from it, because it’s halfway done. The back of his neck feels damp, cold, and his chest aches, but slowly, he blinks, then again, and when he looks up, there’s another person standing beside his father.

When he blinks again, still slowly, there’s a hand on his arm, helping him to his feet.

When he blinks again, Todoroki Shouto is brushing hair off Izuku’s face.

He murmurs something, faint and crackly through Izuku’s ears.

Distantly, Izuku remembers it’s a Sunday.

Izuku’s father leans over to say something to him, but that, too, is faint and crackly.

It’s the last thing he remembers from that day.

✶

When he wakes up, it’s with his back on a familiar couch.

Head heavy, he tries to sit up, but Tenya, suddenly, is there, murmuring something like Izuku-kun, please, you can’t—

And then there’s water, again, and Izuku sees the note, taped to the side of the coffee table.

His eyes take it in—and yet he can’t read it, the letters swimming and blurring together.

But he knows Todoroki’s handwriting better than his own.

Izuku-kun, Tenya says again.

Izuku falls back asleep.

✶

He sleeps all through the rest of Sunday, apparently, and half of Monday.

On Monday evening, he goes to the hospital.

His mother’s in the ICU, connected to a ventilator, but no one says the word complication, and Izuku can, finally, breathe again.

✶

On Tuesday morning, his mother gets transferred out of the ICU.

On Tuesday morning, both Ochako and Tenya are in the kitchen when he gets home.

Ochako’s suitcase is abandoned in the entryway, right beside Tenya’s own bag.

As soon as he says she’ll be okay, the words tasting like something foreign, Ochako moves to hug him, and Tenya does, too.

They all stand there, their bodies finding ways to fit against each other, the three of them.

They stand there—Izuku thinks of Ochako’s devotion to her parents, Tenya’s love for his brother, and he thinks of his mother. He stands, between his friends, between his family, between two friends who understand, better than most people, what it means to be part of a family.

✶

On Wednesday, Izuku recharges his phone to call in sick to work, and instead sees messages from Todoroki.

Where are you? asks one from last Sunday, half an hour after their usual meeting time.

Midoriya, is everything alright? The next one asks.

And then nothing, until Monday.

I’m sorry I couldn’t stay with you, the first one says.

I went to talk to your father. Your mother is in the ICU. She will be alright. I promise.

I promise, he said. And it’s so like Todoroki somehow, and yet unlike him at all, to use a word like that—as if he’s personally responsible for Midoriya Inko’s heart surgery.

Izuku wants to see him.

The last one is from Tuesday night. I hope you’re doing alright, is all it says.

Izuku, at a whim, calls him.

Todoroki picks up at the third ring.

"Hi," Izuku says.

But there’s silence on the other end. Complete silence.

Then the dial tone.

Oh.

But a text comes, lightning quick. How are you?

Slightly confused, Izuku texts back.

Once he’s apparently sure it’s okay to ask, Todoroki says: Would you like to meet with me today?

Yes, Izuku texts back.

✶

Disneyland is too bright even on a normal day—too much, too chaotic, too overwhelming. It’s ten times all of it, that Wednesday, the sun too warm and everything too overwhelming.

But he sits under the shade, knees tucked into his chest, and waits.

When Todoroki comes, he sits beside Izuku without a word.

"Hi," Izuku says, tentatively. And then, "Thank you."

Todoroki still doesn’t say anything, so he continues, "Tenya—he told me you’d called him and Ochako. And that—you went back to stay with—with my father. At the hospital. Thank you."

Todoroki had told him, once, that hospitals weren’t something he’s unused to.

Izuku, somehow, grabs on to that memory now.

In his first class with Dr. Yagi, the professor had brought up his old mentor. He’d said, "My dissertation advisor was my favorite professor—and she used to tell me, when I was about to give up, that the ones who smile are the strongest of all."

That memory resurfaces clearly now, too. But Izuku can’t smile, right now, can’t muster up the energy to smile when Todoroki’s still not talking. He sits there, red hair different under the sunlight, and something in Izuku clicks.

Before he can listen to the hesitant voice of reason always in the back of his head, he looks away and says, "I think I love you, Todoroki-kun."

His phone beeps, and he ignores it. He hurries on, tugging at the grass underneath him. "It took me a while to realize I liked you, in first year. It took me a while to realize that I still like you, even though, up until recently, we haven’t—we haven’t talked past that one class all those months ago." Behind them, there are children chasing each other, one of them yelling You can’t catch me, I’m too fast for you!— that had been him and Kacchan, once, Izuku always chasing. At one point, they’d been Atsuko’s age—Atsuko without whom he would never have talked to Todoroki Shouto ever again.

"But I like you a lot. I like you so much," Izuku says, the grass giving way easily.

His phone beeps again, and this time, Todoroki reaches out to tap his knee, gesturing for him to check it.

Izuku frowns, confused, and pulls it out.

The first message says: I can’t speak.

Below that, it reads: Ursula the witch has stolen my voice.

Izuku blinks at the two messages, then up at Todoroki. Frowning, he tries to think—he thinks simultaneously of Todoroki not speaking at all, of running in the rain, and he tries to remember what Kendou had written, all those weeks ago.

"I can’t speak, Ursula the witch has stolen my voice," he recites, slowly. The children behind him shriek happily, running around in circles, and he thinks, again, of Atsuko.

Only a true love’s—

There’s blood rushing to his face, his heart pounding as Todoroki leans forward, stopping, briefly, as if to ask: Can I kiss you?

Izuku closes the gap, and when he kisses Todoroki, he thinks something, maybe, has come full circle.

Disneyland still boasts a Where Dreams Come True banner, and it's still obnoxious and ironic—but, for once, Izuku's inclined to agree.

✶

They stop, at the same time, at the lobby.

It’s their old unspoken meeting place, and Todoroki fiddles with his shirt, eyes on the elevator that will take him to the fourth floor.

Izuku, looking around, grabs his hand and squeezes it. Before he can pull away, though, Todoroki’s hand tightens around his.

He doesn’t try to let go.

Izuku visits his mother on Fridays, now.

And Todoroki, on this particular Friday, is also visiting his own mother. Finally, he says, "Alright."

"Alright," Izuku echoes, squeezing his hand. "My mom wishes you good luck, too."

That eases something in Todoroki, unknots something, because his hand relaxes in Izuku’s. "Alright," he says, again.

"I’ll watch you leave first," Izuku tells him, and he doesn’t know why he has knots in his stomach, too.

Todoroki nods and lets go—but he turns back, the briefest moment of hesitation before he presses a kiss to Izuku’s forehead. And then he’s gone, taking the stairs instead of the elevator.

Izuku waits for the warmth to leave his face before he goes up to see his mother.

She’s asleep when he gets there, but he’s content, as always, to just sit beside her and hold her hand.

She still needs monitoring, and he can’t stay as long as he used to, but his smile is genuine nowadays, and talking to her isn’t as hard when he can see recovery stamped on the edges of her smile.

When he laughs at something she says, it’s something he feels as concretely as his love for her.

✶

Izuku still wants. He wants to do well enough in school to, maybe, pursue studies under Dr. Yagi. He wants to keep holding Todoroki Shouto’s hand. He wants to be able to give Ochako a standing ovation, someday, after she presents at a physics convention.

He wants a lot of things, but being a hero is no longer one of them.

Happily ever after no longer thrums in his veins the way it used to, and when he sees bright stars, all he wishes for is for life to continue as it is. His mother’s heart will never be the same, but she’s strong, and faith, Dr. Yagi had taught him, is invaluable. The medical bills stack up, and there will never be a day when Disneyland isn’t busy, even as Izuku’s world wobbles in its orbit when Monoma throws out comments about the voice incident. Ochako still goes home tired, but sometimes the three of them fall asleep on the sofa together, watching crap comedy TV until everything else outside their apartment window feels insignificant. Todoroki’s relationship with his father is still something Izuku is trying to understand, but it takes a backseat to Todoroki’s relationship with his mother, which, bit by bit, is rebuilding itself.

Life isn’t perfect, and he’s nowhere close to the happily ever after he’d wished for, as a child, but happiness never comes in a ready-made, gift-wrapped package. Happiness comes slowly, through acceptance and positivity and determination—he owes it to Ochako to believe that, he thinks.

Besides, he’s already more than halfway there.

Izuku is surrounded by people he loves. It’s more than enough.

It’s a fairytale way of thinking, but that has always been something he can learn to live with.