Work Text:
In the spring, clovers crop up all over Yuuei.
In the spring, when the weather is just off the cusp of cold but not yet warm and sticky, students lie around campus during the little downtime they have, soaking up the light sun and the gentle, rolling breezes. Just as the clouds move lazily across the sky, everybody moves slowly, entranced by the golden sun and the sudden warmth. It's mesmerizing, really.
Midoriya plucks a clover from a patch of them on the ground, rolls it between his thumb and forefinger, and sets it on Shouto’s thigh wordlessly.
“Your study skills are impeccable,” Shouto comments offhandedly. He eyes the growing pile of clover on his exposed thigh dubiously, and then flickers his gaze up to Midoriya, who plucks the leaves off of a weed, discarding it off to the side.
“Yeah,” Midoriya agrees even though their textbooks sit in their backpacks, unopened and off to the side. “Yeah, it is.”
Shouto lets out a breathy puff of laughter; it’s quiet, picked up by the wind, and floats up and above them until it disappears and they fall back into silence.
The pile of green and white on Shouto's thigh grows. Midoriya’s fingers are green with chlorophyll, especially in the ridges of his fingerprints. Shouto squints at him, lies back with his hands behind his head.
“It tickles a little.”
“If you jerked your knee, all my hard work would be gone,” Midoriya says as if he’s relaying very important information. Careful, he places another clover amongst the rest.
Shouto’s eyes flutter half-shut; the sunlight is pleasant and hugs him, warms his forearms and his legs, and clouds form and disappear in the sky above them, floating off to nowhere. If he cranes his neck left, he can see the moon. It’s only three in the afternoon.
The afternoon is absurdly pleasant. They’re supposed to be studying, but their current workload isn’t very extreme, and so Shouto doesn’t push it. After all, his schedule is so intertwined with Midoriya’s that they’ll certainly make time to study elsewhere, as they always do.
Midoriya speaks evenly, quietly, as they lie together atop a fleece blanket; he recounts the events of the past day, however mundane they may be, and continues to cover Shouto’s alabaster skin, untouched by the sun.
Midoriya tells him, “Uraraka and Tsuyu are exclusive now,” and then tacks on, “you didn’t hear it from me, though!” Keeping secrets is... Not a strong suit of Midoriya's.
Shouto raises an eyebrow. He can’t say that he’s shocked—he’s observed the way Uraraka eyes Tsuyu on more than one occasion, and their dynamic has, for some time, seemed to be intrinsically romantic; it was never his place to judge or ask, but the assumption was always in the back of his mind.
He tells Midoriya this without a second thought, letting his eyes remain gently closed. The sun warms him evenly, but he knows that if he opens his eyes, it will glare and cause his vision to spot.
Shouto rolls onto his stomach without thinking, props himself up on his elbows, and opens his eyes. He blinks. When Midoriya’s eyes meet his own, his brows are furrowed in frustration.
“The flowers , Todoroki-kun,” he sighs, shaking his head.
Shouto mumbles a half-there apology, eyes trailing over Midoriya’s figure. Cotton is stretched across his shoulders and broad chest, toned and lean from all the hours put into work (and the newfound trips to the gym), sun bounces off of him, off of his freckles. Haphazard curls fall on his forehead, slightly limp in the heat.
He’s beautiful. This is nothing extraordinary, but Shouto finds himself unable to shake that thought. Midoriya is beautiful , and if Shouto were to reach his hand out, he could rest it splayed across Midoriya’s thigh. Would his skin be warmed by the sun? Would it warm Shouto, too? Is it as soft as it looks to be?
Shouto clears his throat when he feels a careful hand at the shell of his ear, flicking his head to the right.
“More flowers,” Midoriya tells him apologetically, carefully tucking one of the clovers behind Shouto’s right ear.
There will surely be specks of pollen and petals left behind when the flowers wilt—Shouto doesn’t plan on moving them until that is the case—but even so, he can’t bring himself to mind, even though he should, maybe.
Dorm rooms are not large and generally not neat. Iida’s dorm room is not large but it is neat. Meticulous, even Glasses line the shelves beside his bed and his comforter spans the twin bed, smooth as it had been ironed dutifully in the morning after Iida woke, rubbing sleep from his eyes and yawning.
He didn’t iron it (or, Shouto is fairly certain he didn’t, anyway).
Iida’s dorm room is full but not very lively; Shouto’s laptop is perched atop a pile of textbooks because the desk isn’t high enough, and across from Shouto, Midoriya sits with a large glass bowl of buttered popcorn between his legs, eyes glazed over and shoulders heavy with exhaustion.
Midoriya is probably only half-watching the movie because he sits sideways on the bed as opposed to facing the screen, and he’s attempting—poorly, but he is —to catch kernels of popcorn in his mouth. Time and time again, he fails to. Time and time again, he tries again.
Shouto isn’t watching the movie even though he faces it. Instead, he observes Midoriya, careful and quiet.
Midoriya has a chipped front tooth. This is new information to Shouto. It isn’t a large chip; Midoriya might not even be aware of its presence, and so Shouto doesn’t ask him. Perhaps he gained it in childhood, tripping as he learned to ride a bike or play on the playground with other children. Perhaps it’s from an accident later in life. Midoriya has never mentioned it before.
Midoriya’s curls move as he flops his head backward, successfully catching a piece of popcorn in his mouth. Victorious, he sets the bowl on the floor beside them and twists so that his attention is focused on the film.
He’s thin, and the bumps of his spine are slightly visible above the low neckline of his t-shirt, and Shouto loves him so much and so completely that he can’t tear his eyes away from that, or from the freckles that are speckled along the back of his neck.
When Shouto does tear his gaze away, though, it’s because Iida gives him a gentle nudge, forcing him back into reality.
“Sorry,” he rushes.
Perplexed, Iida shakes his head. “What did you think?” he asks. His gaze flickers slightly forward, and then back to Iida. Two pairs of eyes bore into him, expectant.
“I didn’t quite catch that,” Shouto admits, shrugging. It’s a good enough excuse—at least for Midoriya, who turns his attention back to the laptop.
“You’ve been spacing out this whole time,” says Iida, under his breath and over-concerned. “I know that finals are coming up, and you might be overworking yourself, but Todoroki-kun, it is imperative that you allow yourself time to relax.”
“Yeah,” Shouto breathes.
Midoriya runs a hand through his curls, waits a moment, and releases it. They spring back into place like he’d never touched them, and Shouto feels his heart catch in his throat.
Each of Shouto’s friends’ dorm rooms have a particular charm about them: Midoriya’s is familiar, almost like a home to Shouto. Iida’s is where Shouto finds himself when he’s overwhelmed and needing somewhere to unwind, but not exactly looking for the comfort that Midoriya provides him.
Yaoyorozu’s, though, is where he often finds himself looking for advice; he holds her opinion at a great value—even if he doesn’t yield her advice, she’s almost always right in the end.
Yaoyorozu is doing a face mask when Shouto decides to pay her a visit, and she opens the door looking slightly surprised, but invites him in nonetheless. It’s not especially late—only seven-thirty last time that Shouto checked, but she wears pajama shorts and a hoodie that Shouto is almost certain belongs to Jirou. He doesn’t mention it.
“Big plans?” he asks when he settles directly opposite from where Yaoyorozu sits on her bed, because he is not nearly brave enough to ask her for advice right away.
“I live a wonderfully exciting life,” she agrees, dipping her pointer and middle finger into the pot of face mask. Her eyes flicker up to his, and Shouto observes the remnants of eyeliner worn down by a long day’s work. Yaoyorozu smooths the mask over her nose until it’s an even layer.
“I know you do.” Shouto rubs careful circles into the palm of his hand, vision downcast; it’s easier this way, when he can’t see Yaoyorozu’s expression. He shuffles against the comforter, uncertainty tugging at him like a child to its mother. His shoulders weigh heavy.
He sighs, “I wanted to ask you a question,” in one rushed, uneven breath. When he inhales, it hitches in his throat.
Yaoyorozu nods, an open book. Blue clay coats her fingertips.
“You’re in a relationship,” he states, plain. If Yaoyorozu perks up slightly, nobody mentions it. “How did—you know.”
Across the bed, she screws the lid back onto the pot, and then tentatively removes it, holding it out to Shouto.
His skin isn’t bad, but he dips his fingers in anyway—it's colder than expected.
“How did you know ,” he reiterates. “Who confessed?” Shouto silences himself here, but his mind sets world record for questions asked per minute. (Weren’t you scared? Are you still scared? How did the confession go? How can you put yourself out there, isn’t it a risk? How do you know when it’s worth taking that risk? How, how, how?)
Yaoyorozu flushes underneath her mask. Shouto knows this because the tips of her ears glow pink, warm.
“I was the one who confessed,” Yaoyorozu tells him. She reasons, “not because I was totally confident—I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous, you know—but because I knew that it was then or never, and because I knew, still know, that I love her.”
“And you just knew?” Shouto supplies, curious. “Just like that?” The face mask cools his left side, flush mirroring Yaoyorozu’s.
“I just knew,” she agrees, quiet, almost wistful, She presses the palms of her hands together. She and Jioru keep their relationship under wraps; Midoriya doesn’t even know. It's a secret Shouto has kept for five months, and will continue to keep until Yaoyorozu tells him not to.
She’s not nervous, and Jirou isn’t either. She told Shouto this two weeks after they started dating. They’re not anxious about being together publically, but they choose to enjoy their time as a couple alone, just the two of them. Most have no idea.
“How did you know that it was more than friendship—or a little crush?”
“I got my first B on a paper,” Yaoyorozu chuckles with a shake of her head. A stray hair, escaped from her ponytail, moves along with her head. “I got the B because I kept getting distracted by her; I could hardly pay attention in class.”
Shouto’s mind flickers back to all the times he’s admired Midoriya silently, like in Iida’s dorm room four days ago. When he swallows, his adam’s apple bobs, too.
“Pardon me if I’m being intrusive, but do you have feelings for him? For Midoriya?” asks Yaoyorozu. She reaches forward for the container that sits in Shouto’s left hand. When she yawns, a crack in the mask forms at the corner of her lip.
“I have feelings,” Shouto decides. “But, I can’t really decipher what those feelings are.”
Yaoyorozu, always comforting and understanding, cocks her head forward. Shouto’s hands wring together in his lap, and his heartbeat throbs in his fingertips.
“I wouldn’t rush anything,” she advises. “You should be comfortable—that is, if you decide you want to confess. However, I have a hard time imagining that he doesn’t return your feelings.”
Shouto’s head swims. His body drowns, and his legs thrash helplessly. He chokes and sputters, utterly useless. He’s seventeen years old, a wound ball of emotions. He’s going to unravel one of these days, pent up conversations and stolen glances. He’s going to come apart one day, tell the truth and be something other than cowardly.
For the time being, Shouto is remarkably un-brave, and so he remains sitting in Yaoyorozu’s bed, quiet but still on edge. He sits stiffly, as if somebody has pinched the back of his t-shirt and is holding him up by the cottony fabric. Shouto slouches. His shirt will rip.
He stays until their masks have long dried and need to be picked off rather than peeled, and when Yaoyorozu has removed her contacts and braided her hair, slippers abandoned for socks.
“Are we still going to eat outside tomorrow?” he confirms before he leaves. He basks in the calm of Yaoyorozu’s room, and blinks.
“Absolutely,” she assures. “Now, be sure to get some rest, Todoroki.”
In the gap between the walk from Yaoyorozu’s dorm room to his own, Shouto checks on the cell phone that had sat heavy, forgotten, in his pocket all night. He has one missed call and three texts from Midoriya. Coincidentally, he walks just by his maybe-crush-definitely-best-friend’s room, pausing. The carpet yields under his heel, and Shouto wraps a clammy hand around the door knob, twisting.
It doesn’t give any, and Shouto treks on to his own dorm room.
In class the next morning, Midoriya sits next to Uraraka instead of Shouto, which is... Certainly unusual, but not unheard of. Shouto doesn’t push the subject, though, and if he has just a little more difficulty paying attention to Aizawa, nobody mentions it.
At lunch, though, Midoriya is still slightly off. Shouto slips in between Midoriya and Yaoyorozu with his lunch tray, as always, but Midoriya says a lackluster “Hello,” and scoots slightly to the left, further from Shouto.
“Did I do something?” Shouto wants to ask but stops himself; Midoriya was extremely friendly to Uraraka in class, and he’d chatted to Iida in the hallway, so he’s probably not having a bad day. Shouto must have done something. Of course he must have done something, but he can’t imagine what.
His mind flickers, then, to Midoriya’s missed calls and texts the night before, and his heart sinks.
“Sorry I didn’t come to your dorm yesterday,” he says, keeping his gaze trained downwards. For high school, Yuuei has fairly decent food, but Shouto can’t think of anything he wants to do less than eat. “Yaoyorozu and I lost track of the time.”
Midoriya shrugs. “You didn’t have to come over,” he says, poking at the bowl of noodles with his chopstick. “I just thought—maybe you’d want to.”
Shouto offers, “I could after class this afternoon.”
To his right, Yaoyorozu speaks to somebody across the table. Shouto’s head swims. Midoriya doesn’t answer him.
Instead, Midoriya stands with his tray and his full bowl of noodles and makes a beeline for the trash cans, feet dragging. Perhaps it’s slightly self-centered for Shouto to imagine that his best friend’s (crush's?) mood is his fault—there are any number of reasons he might be feeling downcast—but any other reasonable explanation escapes him.
When Shouto looks up, Midoriya is free of his tray but sits beside Iida at a table across the cafeteria, and he’s even more confused. Judging by the open textbooks in front of Iida and the open textbooks in front of Kirishima, he’s being tutored. Midoriya isn’t generally one to interrupt, and Iida is always one to take education seriously, but his body is turned towards Midoriya instead.
Shouto’s heart bangs against his ribcage, barely held back by bone. His organs are displaced. His stomach has sunk. His heart has risen up into his throat.
“Thanks for talking to me last night, by the way,” he says, unsure if Yaoyorozu hears him until she gives him a slight nod. Unlike Shouto, she eats about half of her food before departing alongside Jirou. When they’re gone, Shouto is really, really and truly alone.
He isn’t certain what he’s done to make Midoriya upset, and just when Shouto has made up his mind to go try and speak to him, he’s gone , and Iida is pouring over a textbook once more.
Helpless, Shouto sinks into the seatback.
Shouto wouldn’t call the next day an improvement, but he wouldn’t call it any worse, either.
“Do you think he’s acting...off?”
Iida’s spiral notebook sits open in front of him as he scrawls notes across the page—even so, Shouto knows he’s paying attention. His forefinger comes up to press his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
Carefully, he says, “I can see why you would think he’s acting off, Todoroki-kun, but I don’t think you understand exactly why.”
Across the courtyard, a group of birds gather, pecking at fragments of food on cobblestone path. Clouds linger in the light sky above them, and win sings. Shouto blinks in the sunlight.
He doesn’t—He doesn’t understand why ?
“In any case, it would be in your best interest to speak to Midoriya directly. Repressing your emotions is rarely healthy, and communication is key in any relationship!”
Relationship. Shouto sputters. Dubious, Iida’s eyes flicker up to meet his own.
“It was just sudden. That's all,” Shouto tells him. Absently, dully, he picks at a scratch on his forearm. “So, I wasn’t sure if I did something.” He doesn’t dare mention noticing the way Midoriya chose to sit with Iida after lunch, or the way he’d sat with Shouto in the library the next morning, but with his headphones in. He’d only said—Shouto had counted, paranoid—six words before getting up and leaving, entirely unlike himself.
“I’m certain you will be yourself surprised at what you find when you are honest, Todoroki-kun,” says Iida, who is both calming and frustratingly unclear all at once.
Shouto is mostly unable to pinpoint whether he feels relieved or terrified, but when he opens his mouth to speak, Iida’s eyes are trained back on his notes, and his brow is furrowed in concentration, so Shouto doesn’t push the issue.
In the grass beside them, Shouto’s backpack sits untouched; he certainly has homework he could do, either on his own or with Iida’s help, but he finds himself grabbing the strap and pushing to his feet, not entirely of his own accord.
Shouto walks on his own, yes, but his feet guide him where he needs to go, and all the while his head swarms. He walks past the birds and past his classmates. Uraraka and Tsuyu are sharing a milkshake with two striped straws. As he walks for a few more moments, Bakugou tears across the path in front of him, nearly knocking him over, and Kirishima follows shortly thereafter.
Shouto pays them no mind. His pulse is rapid as he approaches the dorms.
Shouto is—well, he’s not confident exactly, but as he raises his knuckles to rap at Midoriya’s door, he can’t dream of turning back. Midoriya is decidedly not terrifying; he’s Shouto’s very best friend, but Shouto still feels anxiety become him.
“Todoroki-kun?”
“Could I come in?” Shouto asks, rushed. Midoriya is swallowed by a large sweatshirt—actually, it’s Shouto’s sweatshirt. Once more, his heart catches in his throat, and he thinks that if he were to run and run and run, he might never stop until he reaches America, breathless and alone.
“Sure, yes,” Midoriya agrees. “Sorry it’s on the messy side. Uh—I wasn’t exactly expecting company, so,” he chuckles, stepping aside.
Familiarity washes over Shouto as he steps through the doorway, shoulders hunching forward. Midoriya gazes at him, curious, and cocks his head.
He asks, “did you need something?”
At once, Shouto tenses again; it’s not unusual for him to show up at Midoriya’s room in the evening, or vice versa. An explanation has never been required of him, nor would he require an explanation from Midoriya. Sweat beads on his forehead. Is this how we are, now , he wants to ask but doesn’t.
“Uh,” he says, mouth hanging open. “Yes. Did you take notes today?” He toes at the floor with his sneaker, eyes the ink stain courtesy of his own pen on one of their late night study sessions. He’d tried once or twice, unable to get the stain out. It will be there until—and if—the carpets are replaced. It’s an oddly comforting thought. Little traces of Shouto are weaved throughout Midoriya’s dorm room, and tiny fragments of Midoriya are left behind in Shouto's.
They are best friends. Shouto shouldn’t feel so nervous.
“Of course.” Leafing through his backpack, Midoriya lets his head hang. And, all at once, guilt overcomes Shouto for a wrongdoing he isn’t even aware of.
“...Midoriya?”
His friend hums. Papers crinkle. The air conditioner hums, pleasant and consistent. Above them, the ceiling creaks.
“Are you,” he tries, clearing his throat. “Are things okay?” He stops himself from continuing, are we okay , and swallows a lump down his throat. His hands find the pocket in the front of his sweatshirt, intertwining together. His palms are clammy with sweat.
“Yes,” Midoriya says, and he rakes a hand through green curls—a telltale sign of the lie. “It isn’t a big deal,” he revises, probably because he knows that Shouto is fully aware he isn’t being truthful. And then, before Shouto can utter a word of reply, Midoriya thrusts the notes into his hands with an unconvincing smile.
“Did you need anything else?” he asks. He won’t meet Shouto’s eye; Shouto just resists apologizing.
“I—suppose not,” he says, because he can’t think of another excuse and because he isn’t about to confront his emotions. Shouto has, objectively, many strengths, but emotional control often escapes him, especially when Midoriya is in question.
“I’m going to have an early night,” says Midoriya, stretching his arms above his head. Shouto can’t tear his eyes away from the thin strip of pale abdomen exposed.
When Midoriya lowers his hands, Shouto shakes his head, slightly disgruntled.
“Right,” he says with a small nod. “I’ll see you tomorrow in class, then. Good night, Midoriya.”
Shouto’s heart remains content in his throat.
Shouto does, after all that, see Midoriya the next day. He’s slightly more relaxed and even slides into the seat beside Shouto for their morning class.
“Wanna get popsicles for lunch?” he asksin a hushed tone, and Shouto mumbles back a quick affirmation.
And, as such, they venture into town in the space where they would normally have lunch; there’s a tiny convenience store with minimal stock to sell, but there’s a freezer-burnt cooler of ice cream and popsicles galore, ¥ 107 scrawled on a sign up above. And, since Shouto doesn’t have more than a few coins in his pocket, they buy two mango popsicles.
It’s getting warmer by the day, and heat and sweat begin to kiss the back of Shouto’s neck as they wander—aimlessly, he thinks, but Midoriya mainly guides him—along the sidewalk. The popsicle drips into the crevices of his fingers as Shouto fruitlessly attempts to stop it from doing exactly that.
Seeing as it’s a weekday and most are at work or school, Shouto and Midoriya find themselves walking past a park that, while cheerful-looking, is devoid of any human inhabitants.
“Here?” Midoriya asks. In the clearing stands a large oak tree, broad-leaved and providing shade. Sweat and mango popsicle drip, and Shouto nods, eager for the shelter of the tree.
“I got paired with Yaoyorozu-san on the group project,” says Midoriya, leaning against the bark of the tree. He looks like the picture of relaxation, curls rustled in the breeze, freckled cheeks kissed by sunlight. He glows. “She seemed—disappointed. She probably wished she got you, instead,” he adds with a slight chuckle. His own popsicle drips onto the grass and onto his thighs, but he pays it no mind.
“I don’t know that that’s the case,” Shouto says, shrugging. What is it about the heat that makes him so lethargic? In the warmth, his eyes flutter shut, and he rests his chin in his hand. The effort of keeping his head up is all too massive.
“Why wouldn’t she? I know you and she are—” Shouto’s eyes flick open, and Midoriya’s arms gesture vaguely, free hand spread out in front of him. When he waves the popsicle hand, juice flies to the right. “You two are, you know, you like each other ,” he says, as if it’s the world’s biggest and best kept secret.
Shouto blanches. “No,” he quickly says, shaking his head. “That’s not—of course, Yaoyorozu-san is a friend of mine, but there are no romantic feelings there.”
Lethargy escapes Shouto all at once, like oil and water. It’s—well, he can’t be certain if he’s just wishing that Midoriya returns his feelings, but it’s entirely plausible that Midoriya was downcast due to the idea of Shouto and Yaoyorozu becoming official.
Shouto doesn’t have the heart to tell Midoriya that Yaoyorozu is, in fact, both already in a relationship and a lesbian, and he certainly doesn’t have the guts to tell Midoriya of his feelings, of the swimming in his head and the swarming in his stomach.
“You’re not dating Yaoyorozu-san,” Midoriya deadpans, his lips around the melting popsicle.
“Certainly not.” In any case, Midoriya would always be the first to know if Shouto was in a relationship; preferably, he’d be the second half of the relationship. Shouto doesn’t say so.
“I thought—” Midoriya tries, and then shakes his head, flush creeping across his cheeks and neck, covering the lightest of his freckles. “Todoroki-kun,” he says, voice small, “I need to be...honest.”
Against his will, the left side of Shouto’s body heats, and he places all his concentration in to making sure it doesn’t ignite—it seems to be dangerously close, though.
“Okay,” he breathes, and he sets the half-eaten popsicle down in the grass beside them. His mouth is devoid of any moisture.
“I know you think I was upset with you,” says Midoriya, fiddling with his hands in his lap. “And I suppose I wasn’t exactly being fair, but I was—” Midoriya clears his throat, and takes hold of a dandelion from the grass, carefully plucking the petals off, one by one. “I suppose I was jealous,” he admits, and Shouto’s heart leaps, leaps and flies straight out of his chest and onto another plane entirely.
Midoriya is right there . Shouto very nearly reaches out to rest a hand on his knee, if nothing but an encouragement to continue on.
“I like you, Todoroki-kun. I like you,” he stresses. “And I know that you may not feel the same, and I get that, obviously. But, I needed to be truthful about this.” He says so all in one exhale, and Shouto’s eyes flutter shut. Midoriya shudders on an inhale, silencing himself.
The park is alive; the birds chirp and a fountain bubbles to their right. Wind whispers, hugs their shoulders, and the leaves rustle above them. Shouto can’t focus on anything besides his heartbeat in his ears.
“I feel the same,” Shouto blurts, eyes widening. When his head snaps up, Midoriya is looking at him with a shocked expression of his own. Mirroring Midoriya’s red face, Shouto’s cheeks continue to heat up, pink and flushed. “I—you know. The same,” he reiterates, stammered. Beside him, the popsicle is a yellow puddle that ants flock to.
Shouto sucks in a deep breath, eyes flickering from Midoriya to the popsicle stick and up to the sun. Children and their parents have begun to flood the park, no doubt signaling the end of the school day, but neither Shouto nor Midoriya pay them any mind.
In Shouto’s universe, in his line of vision, it is only Midoriya. It has only ever been Midoriya, pushing Shouto to be a better version of himself. It has only ever been Midoriya who Shouto looks to time and time again. It has only been Midoriya who he has loved, really truly loved, and it has only been Midoriya who loved him back, unconditional. It was, and always will be him.
Finally, slowly, Shouto reaches out for one of Midoriya’s scarred hands, which slots perfectly in with his own. He rubs gentle, loving circles into his knuckles, into the back of his hands, into his palms. Shouto’s hands shake, and Midoriya steadies them.
“I’m—really relieved,” he tells Midoriya on an unsteady exhale. Of course, Shouto is absolutely enthralled with Midoriya; of course , he loves being Midoriya’s best friend. But, even more than that, he loves this.
“I’m so glad to hear that,” Midoriya breathes, quiet. Gently guiding, he pulls Shouto’s hand up towards his lips, soft and sticky from the popsicle, and presses a chaste kiss to each of his fingertips. Electricity seems to spark its way with each contact of lips to skin—if Shouto didn’t know any better, he might think it to be Midoriya’s quirk, because of how vivid the sensation is.
“I’m so, so glad,” Midoriya reiterates, wind carrying his voice high and into the trees.
Shouto feels more at place in Midoriya’s tiny bed than he does anywhere else. Their legs are entangled and Midoriya’s right hand rests at Shouto’s exposed hipbone. He’s so close. He’s so close . If Shouto were to lean ever so slightly forward, if Shouto were to just bridge the gap between them, they’d share their first kiss. Ever. He can’t think of anywhere he’d rather do it.
Still, it feels inappropriate for Shouto to just kiss Midoriya without his permission—even if he knows almost for a fact that it would be accepted, wanted.
“Midoriya,” he breathes. “Hi, hey.”
His boyfriend—he’s still not over that title, wants to scream it from the mountaintops—flickers his line of vision up to Shouto’s, blinking slowly.
“Hey, happy?”
“Extremely,” Shouto assures. His hand finds its way to Midoriya’s curls, which taper at the nape of his neck. They are impossibly soft; seriously, seriously , they use the same shampoo and conditioner, and Midoriya’s hair is infinitely softer than his own. “I just—” he begins, unsure. “Could I. Do you want to,” he tries, voice breaking slightly on the last syllable. He finishes, “kiss,” drags it out from one syllable to two, tasting the way the word rolls around his tongue.
Midoriya’s face scrunches up like he’s feeling mischievous, but then, ever so slowly, he turns, his head tilted opposite of Shouto’s. He gives the smallest of nods.
Once more, as he had in the park, Shouto has to physically fight the urge to combust. The warmth of the pillows and blankets is not helpful, but he would be foolish to think that the heat he feels is not due to Midoriya.
Slowly, impossibly, Shouto leans in until their lips slot together, pulling away after a quick and chaste peck. Their first. Their first .
“Another?” Midoriya asks, near silent. Shouto could never ever, not in one million, or two or three million years, dream of denying him this.
Rather than answer, though, Shouto initiates a second languid kiss, more experimental than anything. Midoriya’s hand travels up and up, bunching the fabric of Shouto’s t-shirt in his fist, and Shouto lets out a ragged breath.
Outside of the dorm, the world spins on and on. Nobody—with the exception of Shouto and Midoriya—is aware of the quiet moment. Nobody is aware of the way Shouto allows his tongue to cautiously breach Midoriya’s lips. They are impossibly soft. The moment is impossibly soft.
Shouto, completely and absolutely, finds himself at a loss for words—a miniscule problem, really, because he can’t possibly foresee this kiss ending anytime soon.
Shouto hopes it will never end.