Chapter Text
His eyes sparkle as he is faced with a limited-edition plushie. Izuku carefully takes it in his hand, almost afraid of desecrating it somehow. The All-Might suit it donned feels like silk, and it complemented the supple curvatures of Endeavor’s (plushie) figure.
He was obviously going to buy it. A couple of them, actually. Izuku bets that this could go for 5x more than it was worth now in a year or two.
“Midoriya!” Izuku snaps his head towards the voice. Iida huffs, sweat covers his face, it looks like he’s been running for a while now – and he clears his throat. “We are all going on a group ride!!! Hurry up and help gather everybody else at the checkpoint!”
“Wait Iida this is important!” He grabs the plushies and runs straight to the counter, ignoring Iida’s cries of “you’ve been in here for hours!” and frantically plopping them in front of the overworked cashier.
—0—
The dubious thing is thrusted into his palms, and Midoriya is beaming at him from behind it. Unaware that he is currently reliving that specific moment where he found a womanly sized All Might suit stuffed deep into his father’s closet. Shouto suppresses a full body shudder as he holds the thing in his hands.
“Thank you Midoriya,” he says – somehow more stiff than usual, “I will… Cherish this. It’s,” genuinely nightmare inducing, “Wonderful.”
“It’s no problem Todoroki!” Midoriya flashes him a thumbs up. “I realized that I might’ve– er, bought a bit too many of them,” (Does Midoriya have a crush on his father or is he just insane?) he laughs it off a little awkwardly.
Before he can ask, the dorms fill out with the noise of his classmates - and he quickly retreats back into his room.
—0—
In his opinion, Shouto did not feel exactly comfortable with the idea that his father, in any capacity, might as well double as a glorified beanie baby. They’re more valuable than him, that’s for certain. He scoffs as he looks over the plushie – it’s certainly high quality. A lone glint catches his eye, and he pauses.
Where did that come from? He hurriedly checks it over again, only to find–
It’s coming from the eyes.
He can physically feel his heart dropping to his feet, and he drops it as if he was burned. The government, Shouto wheezes. Or maybe it’s something else–? Picking up the plushie (facing away from him, of course), he slams it into his table face-first – hurriedly making a dagger with his ice and cutting the doll’s back. The fabric rips easily under his ice, exposing white cotton.
His clammy hand searches the insides of it, and he feels the back of his neck go cold as his fingers catch something hard. Shouto yanks the object out, enclosed tightly in his fist. It melts when he sets his quirk alight for a good few seconds. The smoke alarm sounds a little bit after it burns, and Shouto swears.
What was left of the camera sits in the palm of his hand. He fumbles with his phone, hurriedly snaps a photo of it, then proceeds to run outside.
—0—
Aizawa sighs, and pops a packet of (powdered) black coffee right into his mouth. “Do you want to explain why.”
Not really. “I had a nightmare.”
“When you were awake?”
“Yes.”
Surprisingly enough, his gaze softens a tiny bit – and Shouto thinks about how weird that specific expression looks in his teacher’s face. “Talk to me about it.”
He did not.
—0—
After a good thirty minutes of improvisation (and desperately trying not to mention the plushie) Shouto ends up in the gym, all by himself and the mangled thing. Half of the cotton is probably gone from its body.
He still has something to finish, after all. With a darkened face, he grips the plushie’s face with his left hand, and promptly sets it on fire yet again.
It’s rather fitting, he thinks - as he watches flames eat away at it until it turns into ash – a blackened scorch on pristine concrete floors. He should probably warn Midoriya about this at some point. As he turns to walk back to the dorms, the inside of his pocket briefly vibrates. Brows furrowed, he takes out his phone and unlocks it.
A new contact sits on the top of his message list.