Chapter Text
The ball flies through the air, a clean shot, but hits the rim of the hoop in the last moment. Fingers tap against the screen once, twice, and the movement rewinds back to when the #2 player is still holding the ball in his hands, unable to move past the two opponents screening him. He finds an opening just as he’s on the brink of being given a penalty for keeping the ball too long, dribbles past opposing #4 and passes to his teammate, who executes that spectacular failure of a three-pointer. Maybe it was lack of skill on the part of his teammate, who clearly didn’t take the angle he was shooting from in consideration, but this could have also been influenced by the poor timing and coordination of the entire manoeuvre—the guy had clearly not been prepared for a pass, probably judging that #2 would pass to their centre—also open—who would have brought them a safer point. That would have been the logical choice, but #2 was on the brink of losing the ball and it may have affected his ability to focus, so when he was able to move past the obstacle his sole focus was trying to keep the ball moving and—
Someone clinks their glass and Izuku raises his head just in time to make eye-contact with the man standing next to him at the refreshments table. He gives him a nervous smile that isn’t returned; what he gets in exchange is a dirty look before the stranger walks away, his half-full wine glass abandoned on the table. Izuku slumps in his seat, sighing.
To be completely fair, it’s his fault. He doesn’t know exactly what constitutes as proper conduct for a fancy-dress, important people party, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out it’s not sitting alone in a corner watching basketball clips on your phone, and definitely not running commentary on them under your breath, which he was most likely doing. That given, he can’t really blame the guy for not wanting to be around some crazy kid talking to himself.
Izuku is just not good in this kind of environment. He barely gets on with people his own age, so mingling with not only functioning but successful adults is far from becoming a reality. Scanning the crowd, he catches a glimpse of his mother who, though a little out of her depth, tries her best to carry a conversation with a couple of ladies sporting brightly coloured boas. It makes him guilty for not even trying when the only reason he’s even here in the first place is because she didn’t want to leave him all alone on New Year’s Eve.
By some strange twist of fate, his mother had ended up dating and (as of recently) getting engaged to basketball legend and Izuku’s hero since childhood, Yagi Toshinori. It had taken a lot of time for him to get used to it, or at least stop metaphorically and literally tripping over himself at the man’s feet every time he spoke, but their relationship had morphed into something a little more comfortable. With his body thin and worn by sickness, his basketball years behind him, but still maintaining a dazzling smile and a warm-hearted nature to boot, Yagi Toshinori has managed to earn even more of Izuku’s respect as a father figure than the star player nicknamed ‘All Might’ had earned as his idol.
But retirement doesn’t excuse Toshinori from attending stuffy events thrown by his former associates and various members of the One Percent, including this overhyped New Year’s gala that he’d wanted to avoid so badly he’d made Izuku look enthusiastic in comparison. He barely got to see him since they got here and the one time he’d caught his eye he looked downright apologetic; that should have been Izuku’s move, considering he’s the one making him look bad by being an anti-social weirdo in a room filled with his influential acquaintances.
“Izuku.”
He sets the phone back into his pocket when he takes notice of his mum making her way over to where he’s seated, clad in a beautiful satin dress, hair pinned up in a complex bun on top of her head and a concerned frown on her face. His guilt level shoots up from around a sixty five to a solid one hundred.
“Hey, mum. Nice party, isn’t it?” he notices her eyeing the glass on the table. “It’s not mine, don’t worry, someone just left it there—they’re uh, probably going to come back after it” and he can’t help a bout of nervous laughter and the sudden urge he gets to move the glass as far away from him as possible. He doesn’t, because the only way he could become a worse party guest is by breaking a glass worth all the salaries he’ll win in a lifetime.
“You can’t fool me, Izuku,” she sighs. Izuku’s eyes go wide, and the urge to shove the glass away becomes stronger. “You’re clearly not having fun… you’ve been sitting here by yourself the whole night.”
Oh. “Oh, no I’ve been—I’ve talked to people, I swear. It’s just that most of them probably don’t feel like they have much to discuss with a kid.”
“Right? I really didn’t think there wouldn’t be anyone around your age,” she moves the glass herself, in one delicate motion, and when she looks at him again there’s a hopeful twinkle in her eyes. “But then I heard this executive talking to Toshinori mention there’s another party on the fifth floor, all teenagers. I think the exact words he used were ‘a wild rave’.”
Izuku tries to swallow around the knot that’s forming in his throat and mirror his smile as she asks “Doesn’t that sound exciting?” For the umpteenth time in his life, he wishes he hadn’t said anything at all.
“Erm, I guess it does but—“ he looks around, feigning excitement “this is pretty cool, too. I get to be with you and Mr. Yagi on New Year’s, and maybe I could get some autographs—“
“You can just come find us at midnight, we’ll still be in the same building,” the smile transitions back into that unintentionally guilt-inducing frown. “It’s just that I’m the one who dragged you along for this without thinking it through, and now you’re having a terrible time and lying about it just to make me feel better. You should go have fun, Izuku.”
He doesn’t have the heart to tell her that the only way he could imagine himself having fun would be back at home with a bowl full of popcorn and binge-watching TV, or reading a book, or just doing anything in a place that’s somewhere far away from this building and the strangers in it. Over the years, his mum has gone through several instances of being upset for his sake, like his father walking out on them, or all the visits to the doctor’s, or the times he’d come home all bruised up and unconvincingly insisting he tripped and fell. The more he can prevent from happening, the better.
“The fifth floor, right?” he forces a smile when she acknowledges with a nod, feeling the irony of doing exactly what he just got scolded for. “Then I’ll be back here at midnight to wish you a happy new year.”
She then proceeds to wrap him in a hug, a little too tight for comfort considering Izuku’s already struggling to breathe in his new tux. But he hugs her back in spite of this, in spite of the people watching, letting his eyebrows crease only once his face is well hidden into the crook of her neck.
“Have fun, Izuku.”
“You too, mum,” he says to her as they break apart.
He waves goodbye to Toshinori when he spots him on his way out, gets a grin and a thumbs up in return, then he’s out the door and it’s just him and the usher that bids him a customary ‘Have a nice evening sir’ before going back to acting like he doesn’t exist. Taking his phone out, he resolves to walk around the resort and look for a quiet place where he can spend his time until he has to go back for the countdown.
The 20% on his battery makes him do a quick inventory check and yeah, he definitely forgot to bring his charger the one time he needs it.
Somewhere in the same building, though no longer behind a screen, the ball gets in the hoop with a swish and noisily smacks against the floor, eliciting a chorus of approving murmurs. Shouto stands hunched over, panting, with sweat dripping down his exposed arms and gathering between his brows.
“That’s pretty impressive for his age. You’re doing a great job with him, Todoroki,” one of the suited men comments to his father, the others following with similarly-worded statements that blend together and go in one of Shouto’s ears and out the other.
“There’s still room for improvement,” his father remarks with fake, customary modesty that nobody in the room is buying. “But if things go according to plan, he’ll get scouted before he’s out of high school and the next thing you know, he’ll be rising through the ranks so quickly he’ll put today’s best players to shame.”
Shouto picks up the ball, feeling the weight of it in his hands as he fantasises about throwing it at his father’s smug face while somehow making it look like an accident. Except if there’s one non-basketball-related lesson he remembers getting from the man, it’s that nothing is worth attempting unless the pay-off is more significant than the risk. The satisfaction of momentarily shutting up his father and embarrassing him in front of his associates won’t outclass whatever punishment he’ll dish out in retaliation—so he dribbles the ball in preparation for his twelfth consecutive free throw. Successful free throw, that is.
“Excuse me,” a new voice, meek and feminine, cuts into the conversation. Shouto stops dribbling, holds onto the ball with one hand as he turns towards the door.
His sister, Fuyumi, is holding up the train of her red dress as she makes her way over to where the men had gathered. As usual, Todoroki Enji looks at her with as much affection in his eyes as he would at a cockroach scuttling about his shoes.
“Sorry to interrupt, but your presence is requested back at the gala. The CEO of Best Jeanist wants to speak to you about an endorsement,” their father lifts a hand like he’s about to dismiss her, “and Yagi Toshinori has just arrived.”
He stills, and Fuyumi looks like she’s debating whether to continue or not. She doesn’t get to, because the crowd of carbon copy businessmen crowding around his father oohs and ahhs over the prospect of getting to chit-chat with the ever-elusive ‘All-Might’—the internationally acclaimed former basketball star best known for holding the number one rank in their country for a good few years and the face of the best-selling brand of toothpaste to this day. Coincidentally, Shouto’s favourite basketball player since he was a child.
Coincidentally, Todoroki Enji’s biggest rival and the sole reason why he’s making his son practice his throws in the gym on New Year’s Eve, and showing him off to the big names in the league in sweaty equipment instead of a tux that matches his own.
His face twists into something ugly that just about passes for a smile, for the sake of his company. “Then I guess it would be rude of us not to go out and greet the legend,” he just about spits the last word before he turns to Shouto and tells him to keep going until he breaks his previous record.
If Shouto acknowledges his words, he doesn’t show it. The ball is sent flying into the net for the twelfth time and is picked up before Shouto can get to it and attempt a thirteenth.
“I think you’ve had enough,” says Fuyumi, looking at him with tired and pitying eyes that always manage to give him both a sense of security and the urge to curl up and hide in a dark corner at the same time. “He’s not going to come back anytime soon to check up on you.”
Shouto shrugs, grabbing a towel slung nearby to dry off. “It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.”
“Then I’ve got something—there’s a New Year’s party on the fifth floor, all people your age, no dress code, no basketball maniacs breathing down your neck,” she sighs at the lack of reaction, mouth downturned and eyebrows furrowed. “Or at least go back to the hotel and get some rest, if you don’t feel up to it. I’m not leaving until I make sure you’re not wasting away in this gym for the rest of the evening.”
And, to complete the I Am The Adult And I’m Sending You To Bed look, she crosses her arms. It doesn’t really help, because everything about Fuyumi is so soft and gentle that no one in their right mind could view her as intimidating but… Shouto looks at the ball in her hands and it’s like the ache in his muscles gets worse, a reminder that maybe he’s done with basketball for the day if he doesn’t want to be out of commission by the time school starts again.
“Okay, I’ll go back to my room,” he says, walking over to where his hoodie lies abandoned since the beginning of his session. He’s all warmed up from the exercise, so putting it back on is not really a comfortable experience, but it’s a necessary evil.
He cocks an eyebrow at his sister, still standing there holding the ball. “You don’t have to wait for me, you know. I’m done training for the day.”
“I know, but it’s not like I’m in a hurry to go,” she responds, and there’s that look on her face like she may as well have said “I’m your older sister so I know you’re full of shit and don’t know how to take care of yourself” which is—
Fair, to a point, because any other day Shouto would’ve gone against her word and kept on going until he was satisfied. But tonight, he’s not feeling it. Maybe because his dad and several like-minded assholes intruded on his practice time to watch him like he was a specimen in the zoo and, ironically, talk about him like he wasn’t even in the room. It could be the fact that the new year is just a few hours away but, not really; the Todoroki family doesn’t really get holiday excitement, and Shouto’s no exception.
Soon enough, he reaches his hotel room—an unassuming door with a little gold-plated 135 on it—and takes out his access card. He’s not sure why but, just when he’s about to swipe it, he hesitates. His hand remains hovering in mid-air, his eyes fixated on the 5 at the end of his room number like it’s about to answer a question he hasn’t asked.
The party turns out to be as… wild, as advertised. At least that’s what Izuku, whose experience is limited to chaperoned birthday parties from when he was very young, thinks of this noisy, colourful display. There’s music playing, though he can’t hear much of it over the bass that is loud enough to reverberate through his body and convince him of the fact that a lot of money must have been invested in sound-proofing this place. Ironically, he finds himself hanging around the refreshments table—but it’s a whole other experience because instead of wine, there are several bowls of different coloured punch and the standard red party cups. He accidentally bumps into someone wearing a cowboy hat and is about to say sorry when one of those cups gets shoved in his face.
“Cheers, mate!” yells the guy he just bumped into and, once Izuku grabs the offered cup, holds up his own to knock them together.
He takes off the next moment and Izuku sets the cup on the table with zero intention of drinking it—he may not go to parties, but he’s watched enough movies to know how this kind of situation might go down, thanks. But even so, the little gesture makes him feel at least a little less out of place than he’d been at the gala.
He ends up talking to a few more people, or they talk to him and he stutters out a reply while he tries to pretend he knows how to act at a party. A girl stops him to comment on how daring it was for him to come here with such a classic costume (“You’re like going for the Bond vibe, right?”) and that now she totally wishes she would’ve also gone for something ironic now, which draws Izuku’s attention to the fact that everyone around him is wearing some kind of whacky get-up and also that there’s some kind of stain on the sleeve of his dress shirt. He cringes down at it, but the damage is done and if he’d kept the jacket on he would have risked overheating, and he really should stop mumbling before people hear him—
Which they could now, because the music has faded to a lull in the background as a guy steps on stage, clearly not a teenager but wearing a ridiculous costume and a pair of shutter shades. He holds up a microphone and the moment he tries to speak, there’s a shrill of feedback and a collective groan from the party-goers.
“Yikes—well, that killed the mood,” says the guy, once they’ve all settled down. “It’s almost 2017 guys, you excited?” there’s a chorus of yeahs that makes him shake his head. “That doesn’t sound like excitement to me. C’mon, can’t you do any better than this?”
Yeah, they all scream in unison and this time, Izuku joins in almost on instinct. That seems to please the announcer as he continues to work the hype of the crowd until “And now it’s time to select two lucky people for our random karaoke break! Drum roll, pleaaaase!”
People around him start a continuous oh that’s so perfect it sounds rehearsed, and some start to stomp their feet on the ground as the light dims. A spotlight scans through the crowd, illuminating bits and pieces of the room until it rests on Izuku—he cringes away from the light—and it… stops there.
It takes him a couple seconds of silence, confused blinking and people staring at him for the feeling of dread to start climbing its way up its throat.
“Uh—n-no I—“
“The stage is yours, young man! Come on up!” the announcer turns to face someone else in the crowd “You too, now, don’t be shy!”
Izuku wants to protest but that feeling of dread gets lodged in his throat, preventing his vocal chords from functioning as hands reach out and push him through the crowd, past smiling faces and strange costumes, all the way to the stage. He stumbles his entrance, but nobody seems to care because they’re all too busy shouting encouragements and whistling, all of that inexplicably not loud enough to drown out the sound of his own frantic heartbeat.
“Ohh, that’s a good one—you know this song?” the announcer asks—he’s staring at him, the announcer is asking him. Izuku moves his wide, wide eyes to the screen projected next to them and once his brain identifies the name of a trending pop song, his head moves of its own accord. “Fantastic! Floor’s yours, then.”
A microphone is unceremoniously showed into his hands, so quickly that Izuku’s clammy hands almost let it fall, and with a final whoop, the announcer leaves the stage.
“Haha—wait, wait, I’m not really—I don’t…” Izuku tries in vain, feeling the immediate need to throw up all the fancy hors d’oeuvres he’d eaten.
It’s just him and the other person now—another guy, from the looks of it, though there’s not much he can make of him considering he’s facing the screen instead and his hood is pulled up so that it obscures his hair and face for the most part. When he does turn around, Izuku wishes he hadn’t. There’s a pair of mismatched eyes—one brown? one blue? both striking—boring into his, belonging to the collection of fine features that make up his face. There’s something strange about the skin around his left eye, a scar or just discolouration (Izuku can’t tell with the dim lighting) but it doesn’t do much to take away from the overall effect.
The music starts and Izuku resigns himself to the fact he’s going to embarrass himself in front of an attractive stranger—not a great way to kick off the new year, but maybe it beats that time when he was eight and a friend of his almost set his hair on fire. Not an accident.
All the cheering has gone silent, buried underneath the instrumental that builds its way up to the first verse. Standing there, feeling like he’s waiting for his own death, Izuku considers not doing anything. The other guy doesn’t seem like he’s about to sing anytime soon and maybe, if they miss their cue, they’ll get booed off the stage right away and then he can just flee the scene and go back to ignoring famous rich people at the gala. He looks at the screen, where text has slowly started to appear.
You’re gonna make an ass out of yourself, anyway, his brain cares to inform him so Izuku opens his mouth and sings.
It’s shaky to begin with and his voice cracks somewhere in the middle of “Last night, I had a dream…” and there’s the added pressure of countless pairs of eyes boring holes into him from every side. He closes his eyes and continues, the words familiar on his tongue without the need of a prompter. It’s the exact same song his mother had played in the car when they drove here, murmuring the lyrics under her breath not unlike how Izuku does with anything on his mind, testing them out, committing them to memory.
His verse ends. Slowly, he opens his eyes to the wide-eyed look his no longer inexpressive karaoke partner is giving him and well, now you’ve done it. He feels his face heat up, his entire body seizing up with regret because clearly he’d missed another social cue and he should have kept his mouth shut instead of embarrassing the both of them. If he’s not the weird mumbling kid alone in the corner, he’s the weird kid wearing half a tux and belting out the lyrics to mainstream pop.
Todoroki Shouto is staring at the boy in front of him thinking that is not the voice he was expecting to hear out of someone scrawny and shaking so bad he may as well have been a Chihuahua in a suit. He doesn’t have time to mull it over as the next verse begins; he just hopes he hasn’t gone so out of practice to completely ruin this.
He doesn’t. There’s a hum of hushed voices coming from the audience, happy and eager, when the chorus begins “If I could sleep the whole year long—“ and it’s almost effortless from there, the way their voices fit together and the way everything seems to fall in place.
Something churns inside of Izuku’s stomach but this time it’s not the hors d’oeuvres, but something more like the butterflies his mother would describe when princes and princesses fell in love in his bed time stories. Something weightless and happy, bubbling inside of him and threatening to come out with every note he sings. In spite of the lighting, he can make out a small smile on the stranger’s face and it makes him think that maybe it’s not just him.
It’s over too quickly, so quickly that Izuku feels like his heart is now beating fast not because of anxiety, but because it’s rushing to catch up with the feeling and hold onto it for as long as it can before it manages to slip away. There’s an explosion of applause and cheers as the song comes to an end. The corners of his mouth are tugged up into a wide smile, as if by an invisible force.
“Well, I’ll be damned—looks like we hit the jackpot tonight,” says the announcer, after a moment in which he awkwardly clears his throat. “Give our rising stars another round of applause!”
That they do. The applause is almost deafening now, complete with enthusiastic calls for an “Encore! Encore!” that get his knees shaking. Literally, Izuku feels like his legs are about to give out on him anytime soon and while this time around it’s not accompanied by a bad feeling, he definitely doesn’t feel like he’s up for another song. In all honesty, he’s so wound up that if he opens his mouth right now there’s a chance nothing but gibberish would come out.
Someone taps him on the shoulder and—oh, the stranger is leaning down a little so he can hear him more clearly.
“I don’t really want to sing again, so I think I’ll go,” he gives Izuku an once-over, frowning. “Wanna get out of here?”
Izuku’s never heard a better idea in his whole life. He says “Yes, please” or something along those lines comes out anyway, because the next thing he knows, the guy is pulling him away from the stage and his lungs seem to be in working order again.
On the balcony, the air is cool and the bite of it against Shouto’s cheeks is the perfect distraction from the rush of adrenaline pumping in his veins, one of the reminders that what had just happened wasn’t a figment of his imagination. The other reminder is standing next to him and, he sneaks a peek at him, no longer looks like he’s on the verge of a panic attack, which is fortunate.
Shouto doesn’t really know what to make of him. At first, he was convinced the kid would just up and walk off the stage, what with him stuttering his protests—then, it turns out he’s some diamond in the rough and he starts singing like he’s auditioning for one of those talent shows Fuyumi loves watching—then he almost passes out on stage, probably would have if Shouto hadn’t dragged him out of there. Now, staring out in the space with the wind ruffling his hair, he looks almost peaceful. Until he takes note of the fact that his hands, gripping the railing, are shaking.
There was something in a hand-out at school that talked about dealing with panicking people, one bullet-point with ‘engaging them in conversation’ that had stuck out to him because he saw it and found himself thinking that if anyone panics around him, they’re pretty much screwed. He clears his throat.
“You have a great voice. Do you just sing for fun, or…?” he trails off when the guy whirls around to face him, out of a sudden, eyes wide like Shouto had just asked him to hand over his wallet. He doesn’t know if the flier was wrong or it’s just his abysmal social skills, but this was a clearly bad idea.
He’s about to backtrack when the other seems to relax and, somewhat sheepishly says “I used to be on the school choir when I was younger, but that’s about it,” he rubs the back of his head. “Never sang by myself in front of a crowd like that, though. I—uh, learned the hard way that solos and I don’t go hand in hand.”
There seems to be a story behind that but they’re strangers standing on a balcony after ditching the world’s weirdest party, so he knows better than to pry.
“How about you? You were really good out there, all calm and whatnot, so I guess it’s not your first time.”
Shouto doesn’t answer right away, because his mind is busy supplying images of his mother from back when they were both younger and happier and she’d teach him the lyrics to the songs she’d grown up loving, to the ones she’d learned while her dreams of becoming a singer had not yet been taken away from her.
“I don’t really sing, in front of people or otherwise,” he shrugs, leaning forward against the railing. “Tonight was… different.”
“Yeah, different’s a good way of putting it,” the boy laughs, copying his movement. Above them, the sky is clear and spangled with stars, and so, so quiet compared to the chaos inside. “Maybe it’s a sign that everything will be different this year… I really hope it will.”
The shift in tone catches Shouto’s attention enough to make him look at him, but he’s got no real excuse for letting his gaze linger until he notices that he’s got green eyes and freckles on his cheeks, which he hadn’t picked up on back at the party. It’s that kind of thing that’s obvious but also subtle enough that he feels a little weird for remarking on it.
“Yeah…” he replies, for lack of a better thing to say. Like always.
Then he hears him mutter something about being rude which—well, it’s not like he didn’t know, but it still makes him feel pretty bad until he realises the guy wasn’t talking about him. A hand is extended his way, alongside a hesitant smile.
“Sorry, should’ve done this sooner. I’m Midoriya Izuku.”
He shakes his hand, “Todoroki Shouto” and watches as Izuku’s eyes grow twice their size and his mouth falls open.
He’s anticipated this, since it goes hand-in-hand with being the son of a well-known former professional basketball player and he knows that, while he may not hold his father in high regard, the same can’t be said for most of the people he meets. So, he patiently waits for the onslaught of questions and begins to devise a way to get out of them.
Meanwhile, Izuku is struck with the sudden realisation that, yeah, now that he got a good look at him and can see his signature two-toned hair peek out from under his hood, it is him. He doesn’t follow high school games as religiously as he does the pro leagues, but he’s seen recordings from a couple of the better ones. This includes one in which Todoroki Shouto, already associated with basketball by his surname, scores three hoops in a row against a reputable team with the help of some ridiculous ankle-breakers that he made look effortless. To sum up, it was all kinds of awesome and it left enough of an impression on him to keep his name tucked somewhere in the back of his mind. Now, Izuku just needs a way to bring this up without coming off as extremely creepy.
He’s got nothing. They’re both just standing there, still shaking hands, and it’s quickly becoming awkward.
Just then, the announcer’s voice is carried over from inside “Alright people, it’s officially five minutes to midnight and that means four more minutes until the countdown! You better get your resolutions ready—or maybe get your sweethearts ready for a New Year’s kiss?” along with the cacophony of the party-goers’ responses muddled together.
“I should go find my mum,” he says, abruptly. He also lets go of Shouto’s hand, hoping it would make things less weird. “I said I’ll be back to wish her happy new year.”
“Oh—yeah… I should probably find my family, too,” he mumbles. By which he means his sister, but he’s got better chances of talking to just her if he goes back to the hotel room and waits there, so there’s no point in rushing.
Despite being the one who is rushing, Izuku doesn’t get very far. He takes something out of his pocket—his phone—and holds it towards him. “We could exchange phone numbers, if you want.” When there’s no immediate response, as Shouto is busy being shocked into silence, he goes red. “Or not—sorry, that was weird. We don’t have to—“
“Sure,” he interrupts, feeling around for his own phone.
He’s done putting himself down as ‘Todoroki Shouto’ when he notices Izuku’s holding the phone away from his face with a smile before resuming his typing. When they give each other’s phones back, he must notice the inquisitive look because he says “I took a picture of me to go with it, hope you don’t mind.”
And indeed, there’s a picture of him all freckled and smiling, next to ‘Midoriya Izuku’. “Actually, you know, I think that turned out pretty bad so you could just delete—“
Nothing gets deleted. Instead, he reaches for Izuku’s phone and takes a picture of himself, still with his hood up and from an angle that doesn’t really do him justice, but it should do. There’s something unfair about making someone like Izuku even more uncomfortable because of his own social ineptitude, and Shouto doesn’t want to do that if he can help it.
“Here you go,” he hands the phone back to its owner and, unwittingly, goes back to looking at the smiling face on the screen of his own. On a phone that doesn’t even have pictures of him, Izuku’s selfie is an odd sight, but not an unwelcome one.
“You know, I didn’t come here expecting to have fun,” he finds himself saying as he finally closes the tab. “But singing with you turned out to be the most fun I’ve had in a while. Do you think—“
“Sorry, mate, but unless you were talking to the plants, I think you just got ditched.”
Startled, Shouto looks at Izuku—well, the place Izuku was previously standing in, which is empty. Behind him, a guy wearing a far too large hat is giving him a sympathetic look, the kind that Shouto sort of dreads receiving whenever someone catches sight of his clumsy social skills. The one other kind of look he receives during those times is one of exasperated contempt, which is exactly what the cat-girl hanging off of his arm is delivering. In a display of those aforementioned social skills, Shouto keeps his face perfectly blank and stands there saying nothing.
“Okay… uh,” Hat Guy says after a moment of silence. “We kinda came out here to make-out when the countdown starts so… yeah. D’you… mind…?” he makes some non-descript hand gestures.
Right. “I was just leaving,” he assures him, hastily. He’s had enough awkward to last him for the whole year, that’s for sure.
“Cool. Happy New Year, mate.”
“You too,” Shouto mumbles, pulling on the drawstrings of his hood as he walks away from the scene. He’s like 99% sure that cowboys are supposed to call people ‘partner’, not ‘mate’, but that’s neither here nor there.
Later, after he’s back in his hotel room and holding a glass of champagne courtesy of his sister, he receives a “Happy New Year!” text from Midoriya Izuku.
There’s a special place in hell for people who stubbornly refuse to take care of themselves, and Aizawa Shouta thinks his husband is on his way there. It’s the fifth time he’s refused to drink or eat anything since he was brought home, because he’s too busy babbling about some party he was hired to play DJ for before hitting the clubs with a couple of their friends. He just wishes he would drink his stupid water so he doesn’t suffer from a killer hangover the next day and Shouta doesn’t suffer from his whining about it. Is that really too much to ask?
“I thiiiink I really amped up the mood at tha’ party, y’know. The kids had a helluva time,” he pumps his fist in the air, nearly punching Shouta in the face. “Tha’ was me! I did that!”
He debates whether he could get away with knocking him unconscious since, judging by the state he’s in, he’s probably not going to remember much the next day anyway. Except he married this hot mess of a person because he actually cares about him, so that idea gets thrown out of the window immediately.
“Hizashi, just get undressed and—“
“Oooh, I knew you had it in you!” Shouta has to restrain his hands before he makes a grab for his shirt.
“Jesus, no. I meant change into pyjamas and go to sleep.”
Hizashi’s face falls into a pout so fast it would be comical if his patience wasn’t reaching its limit trying to get this overgrown child to sleep at five in the morning. He sighs, taking a seat next to where he’s sprawled on the couch and reaches over to run a hand through his blond hair. In response, his husband lifts himself up just enough so his head now rests in Shouta’s lap, yet still makes no move to get up and do anything else.
“Would it kill you to listen to me at least once in a while?”
“Would it kill ya to be more romantic once in a while?” he shoots back, slurring his words together near the end. “’s such a beautiful night, love’s in the air and my husband here—my husband’s tellin’ me to get in my jammies ‘n go sleep.”
He has to fight hard against the urge to roll his eyes. “It’s 5 AM—also, it’s New Year’s, not Valentine’s.”
“New Year’s is romantic—reaally romantic,” but he is no longer looking at Shouta; he’s staring at the ceiling with a faraway look on his face. “You shoulda been there.”
Initially, he assumes he’s talking about the ‘good old fashioned bar-hopping’ that he would have been dragged to if he hadn’t been busy, but there’s nothing even remotely romantic about a group of thirty-something year olds thinking they can still hold their liquor like they could at twenty, only to gruesomely discover they can’t. So, he probably means the party.
“Let me guess… you forced two kids to sing together again?” he asks, wryly, thinking back to last year when he’d tagged along for the job.
“Don’ you give me tha—that judgy look, don’ give me that,” Hizashi waves a finger in front of his face. “This is how many great love stories begin—perfect meet cute.”
“You need to stop doing this stuff, it’s creepy,” he pokes him on the forehead, lightly, for emphasis. And it’s got to be borderline illegal one way or another, he mentally adds.
Hizashi scrunches up his face. “You needa lighten up. Nothin’ more beautiful than young love, Shouta—nothing! My job,” he points to himself several times, “is to cully—cultivate it, needa make sure it has room to grow an’ to flourish—“
“You’re thirty and your job is to teach music at a high school,” he retorts, flatly. Then adds “Stop fucking around” even though it comes off less admonitory and a lot more fond than intended.
“So mean… why am I even married to you? Hmm?” but he doesn’t even make an effort to suppress the smile on his face when he looks up at him with enough love in his eyes for the whole planet.
It’s moments like this that make him realise why he’s even here, sitting on the couch at 5 AM and trying to take care of his drunk, uncooperative and extremely clingy husband. Aizawa Shouta had never thought he would become one of those fools in love and on a normal day, he’d still like to believe he isn’t, but… Despite how frustrating it is to deal with him when he’s this drunk, having Hizashi look at him like he’s his entire world even though he’s so far out of it that he’s barely coherent is admittedly touching.
Of course he picks that exact moment to puke all over him.