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- 1
Shouto is seven when he falls in love for the first time.
His name is Midoriya Izuku, and he’s new to their school. Warm-skinned, curly-haired, and dimpled, with freckles dusted across his cheeks like powdered sugar, he is easily the cutest boy Shouto has ever laid eyes on. Yaoyorozu says love at first sight doesn’t exist or make any sense, but even though she’s the smartest in their class and therefore right about most things, Shouto knows for certain that she’s wrong about this one.
“You should go talk to him, then. Unless you’re too chicken,” Yaoyorozu suggests during recess, primly lifting her skirt as they hop over a stretch of mud.
There on the bench Midoriya sits, deep in conversation with the aspiring astronaut girl—Uraraka Ochako. He’s waving his hands around like a magician Shouto once saw on television—all loud gestures and bold lines, every movement conveying purpose, intent. He even has the gaze of one, too; his eyes, they’re as bright as twin stars and just as enthralling, in the sense that if you look too long you’ll eventually be sucked into their orbit, spellbound.
“I know. And I will,” Shouto says, scuffing his shoes against the sand. A dusty plume dislodges from the ground. Yaoyorozu frowns at him.
“Now you’ve done it,” she sighs. “Your best pair, ruined.” After a while, she tugs him under the shade of a wide, wide maple tree no kid their age ever dares climb, and tries to force him into brushing up on his arithmetic skills.
Instead Shouto watches Midoriya from afar. Watches the sunlight catch on the green of his hair. Watches it splay across his face, freckles rendered aglow.
This mooning goes over a week with no move made on Shouto’s part when the teacher assigns Midoriya to Shouto’s table group. The two other kids Shouto sits with quickly become dull and lifeless to the tidal wave that is Midoriya.
He is overwhelming, to say the least. In a good way. In a supremely awesome way, Shouto decides when Midoriya gives him a large grin over his book of fairytales.
“It’s nice to meet you, Todoroki!” Midoriya exclaims, scooting closer to him.
Shouto says, “Hi.” Or maybe he mumbles it out instead. He should stop doing that; Yaoyorozu says no one’s ever going to like a grouch, and that’s pretty terrifying. He wants Midoriya to like him. Needs it to be the case.
But instead of faltering Midoriya’s smile grows, crinkling the corners of his eyes. Lighting up his face at the seams. “Hey, so, do you want to be my friend?” he asks, syllables lifting with buoyancy.
Obviously, the answer is a big yes, and hopefully, hopefully , it’s uttered with a lot more enthusiasm than intended, but it’s hard to tell because Midoriya responds to even the smallest of things with the same amount of verve as he would very important matters. He’s amazing like that, and Shouto doesn’t waste any time telling Yaoyorozu at lunch later on.
She concedes, “Well, I suppose you’re really in love with him, then,” and sneaks a glance at the other table. Peals of laughter sound from across the room. Something funny must have happened; Midoriya is doubling over from what Uraraka has just said.
Shouto stares at Yaoyorozu. Says, “Of course I am,” in his most matter-of-fact voice.
One year passes by, and at this point Shouto has come to know Midoriya and his interests fairly well. Those red hi-tops that he wears all the time, for example, Shouto knows from careful observation are his favourite shoes in the entire world. And it’s easy to tell whenever he has katsudon for lunch because he’ll be the first to get out his lunchbox.
“So you have been talking to him more,” Yaoyorozu says, pleased.
“Yes. I asked him if I could borrow his pencil not once but five times. And in the same week, too,” Shouto says, because he kind of has to make a point.
“Wait, what? That’s it? Huh.” Yaoyorozu raises her eyebrows, smile fading. “Sure sounds like a real step forward.”
“So?” Shouto flicks off the eraser shavings on his desk, and fixes her with an annoyed look. “I mean, he talks a lot, but who cares, I’d much rather listen to him.” He pauses, then breathes out, “Did you know that there was this one time when he told me that my bag was really cool?” A breeze flaps in through the open windows, stirring the curtains. Sighing with him, too.
“Great,” is the reply he gets, but it doesn’t matter because he is going to prove her wrong one of these days.
- 2
And prove her wrong he does over the next few months; slowly, surely, in the way waves break out over a sea, Shouto gets closer and closer to Midoriya Izuku. The signs of their growing bond are there in every word, every smile, every glance exchanged between them. Surely Midoriya feels it, too, because, yes, Shouto has started to reach out in any way that he can.
“You’re pretty advanced at reading,” Shouto comments in a hushed voice as they’re reading a book about a cat, a witch, and flying cacti.
There are many things Shouto adores about Midoriya—if he wrote a list about it, he’s pretty sure it would be longer than the Earth is wide—and this one right here just so happens to be one of his favourites: his blush.
When other people blush, their faces get all weird and splotchy, like a splash of gouache paint, but when Midoriya does it, he does it slow, much in the way a sunrise creeps out over the horizon; first, the tips of his ears go red, followed by his cheeks, high colour subtly blossoming into life.
It’s beautiful, really.
“Thanks,” Midoriya whispers back, giving Shouto that lovely dimpled smile, and it’s possible that Shouto’s heart stops beating for a moment. Or two.
“Can you—can you please read this word to me?” Shouto asks, feigning confusion, and Midoriya sidles close to him, happy to oblige.
This close Shouto can feel warmth radiating off of him, and when their hands brush Shouto falls in love with Midoriya Izuku for the second time.
- 3
Third grade comes along in a whirl of new faces, new lessons, new teachers. This year Midoriya doesn’t share the same class as he does, but Shouto tries not to feel too disappointed; there’s always lunchtime, recess, and after school. Still plenty of opportunities to hang out.
Except not really; fourth grade introduces annihilation in the form of Bakugou Katsuki, a sharp-eyed, sharp-cornered boy with fire for a voice and steel for fists. It’s easy to tell when he has entered a room, because a hushed, quavering tenseness will slip in, combustible at the edges, and Midoriya will turn rigid, white-knuckled, silent.
Everything he is usually not.
“Useless Deku,” Bakugou might bark out during a game of tag. “It’d sure suck to be as slow as you.” Then Midoriya will murmur, in a small, subdued voice, “That’s mean, Kacchan,” and Bakugou will laugh at him or, worse, push him.
Needless to say, Midoriya leaving school with bandaids and bruises becomes a frequent occurrence.
“Kacchan has always been like that,” Midoriya tells Shouto in a miserable voice one Friday as the bell rings to mark the end of the day. “I just wish he wouldn’t pick on me so much.”
Shouto looks Midoriya right in the eye. Takes Midoriya’s scarred, trembling hands into his. “I’ll kill him,” Shouto promises solemnly, because Midoriya doesn’t deserve this.
Lovely, lovely Midoriya, who talks too much and cries easily and turns inconsolable at any onscreen animal deaths.
Midoriya sputters, aghast. “But—but what if he kills you first?”
“He won’t,” Shouto says, though he’s not a hundred percent sure. Boys like Bakugou were born with violence in their veins, after all. “I’m not going to let him hurt you again.”
“Well, I won’t let you fight him. You can’t die!” His voice lowers to a whisper. “I can’t lose you!”
A pleasant warmth fills Shouto end-to-end, and he decides right there and then that losing isn’t an option. “When we grow up someday, I’m going to marry you, Midoriya,” he says very seriously, as serious as a nine-year-old can be. “So if there’s one person who won’t be walking out the door, it isn’t going to be me.”
With that Shouto takes off, leaving a stunned Midoriya in the dust.
As expected, Bakugou is by the swing-sets in the yard, flanked by his cronies, terrorizing a knobby-kneed second-grader. The king of the playground no longer once Shouto’s through with him, Shouto thinks.
“Hey, Bakugou,” Shouto calls out.
The raucous jeers halt. Bakugou turns around, every inch fire and crushed glass. “Eh? What do you want?” he snaps, releasing the second-grader. The kid bolts, running for the hills. Then, with his eyes narrowed, Bakugou says, “Hold on a minute, you’re dumb Deku’s stupid boyfriend.”
“Guy must have a death wish,” his friend cackles.The others crow in assent.
“The next time you want to fight him, you’ll have to go through me first,” Shouto warns, holding Bakugou’s gaze coolly.
Bakugou steps forward, out of the shade. The sun sets alight the blonde of his hair.
Just like the flame of a matchstick, the fight only lasts for a second, or maybe two. One moment they’re tussling on the ground, and the next a teacher is prying them apart, Midoriya crying in the background.
But Shouto hardly feels it, hardly feels the blow dealt to his chest. I got one in, he thinks a little proudly. On Bakugou’s jaw, no less.
Once back inside the building, the teacher scolds Bakugou and Shouto. No recess for a week is their punishment. A tradeoff worth the blood dripping down Shouto’s nose, Shouto thinks. And the scolding he’ll get from his father later on. What’s a second’s worth of pain compared to the tight embrace Midoriya gives him afterwards, really?
(And just like that they become best friends, not just friends, and, with Midoriya’s head tucked into the crook of Shouto’s shoulder, Shouto falls in love for the third time.)
“Did you know that Neptune has fourteen moons?” Izuku whispers, breaths escaping in puffs of white.
Izuku has a treehouse in his backyard, and right now they’re having a sleepover there. It’s an old thing, made of groaning planks whorled with age and shot through with twisting vines. Shouto normally wouldn’t have been able to stay, but his father is currently on a plane to Beijing and will be gone for two weeks, so his sister eagerly approved of the arrangement.
The moonlight filtering through the gaps creates odd shapes of the makeshift furniture: trees, penguins, castle turrets. Shouto says, “No.” Frankly, he doesn’t care, but he just wants to hear Izuku speak.
Izuku shifts his head, and the lighting makes his freckles glow like fireflies. “Okay. Um, how about the fact that there’s more than one sun in the universe?”
Now that Shouto knows. I’m looking at one right now, Shouto nearly says but doesn’t. Upon further reevaluation he decides that it’s probably not the best comparison because no one likes looking at the sun, anyway, in fear of getting blinded. So there. “Mhm,” he says absently.
Then Izuku’s mom calls them back into the house for cookies and milk, and the warmth that floods Shouto’s body might as well be molten sunlight, with the way all seems soft-hued and golden—the colour of youth. Comfort. Hope.
- 4
The first day of junior high brings blue, blue skies, fresh spirits, crisp new clothes, pristine textbooks, and a seemingly auspicious beginning. But it also brings changes, some as subtle as losing your baby fat around the jaw, others gradual like shooting up five inches.
Which is to be expected, naturally; people always become different once they hit seventh grade. It’s when the childish wonder and innocence starts chipping away, after all, like cracks forming on a sidewalk. Like paint flaking off of a wall. It’s when you trade a soft-skinned and vulnerable version of yourself for someone tougher. More jaded. Battle-worn, somehow.
And right there always lies some grim epoch of your life, and Shouto can fully attest to this fact because it’s when Midoriya Izuku falls in love for the first time.
(And gets his heart broken not once or twice, but three times.)
The first heartbreaker is a girl named Rina. All curves and coy smiles and bouncing curls, one look from her could render a room rose-pink and dreamed-out. Render poor, unfortunate souls loose-lipped and far-gone.
(Shouto will never forget how Izuku’s shoulders curled inwards in shame when she crumpled his note in front of a derisive crowd.)
Hideo is the second one, and it had been painful to watch him mass-message their entire grade Izuku’s puppy-eyed reaction towards his “confession.”
The third one is Miki and by far the worst; she and Izuku went out for at least two weeks before Shouto found out that she was stringing along four other boys. Izuku cried into Shouto’s shoulder on an empty stairway that day, and didn’t smile for at least a week afterwards.
Each and every time, without fail, Shouto is always there to pick up the pieces and glue them back together, in whatever ungainly way he can. Maybe it works, or maybe it doesn’t, because the process always feels like putting back together with gloveless hands the jagged fragments of a blown-glass sculpture.
It does hurt, to be honest. And what makes the pain even worse is the realization that Shouto has fallen in love with the same boy for the fourth time, the realization that there is absolutely no goddamn force in this world that can ever break or slow down his fall, Yaoyorozu’s calculations notwithstanding.
In retrospect, junior high is a calm, cloudless fracture in time compared to the storm-grey turbulence that is high school. Ninth grade bleeds into tenth grade in a dizzying blur, and that’s when Shouto’s life enters its next phase, metamorphosis halfway complete.
From here on out, the waters are murky and brackish, frothing at the shoreline like some wild-mouthed beast.
His father, for instance, is just one of the many factors stirring up Shouto’s life . Not a day goes by without the man discussing the future prospects of his company. The importance of continuing their lineage. How he will mold Shouto into a crown jewel, the best of the best, whatever that goddamn means.
With the added homework, after-school activities, and tutoring sessions, Shouto doesn’t have time for a lot of things. Like dealing with half-formed urges that have him breaking out in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, thinking of tan, sweat-slick skin. Woodland-green eyes. Rough, calloused hands. Dimpled smiles.
As a consequence, he and Izuku sort of drift apart. They’ll always be friends, though, Shouto knows as much, but lately he’s felt like there’s been some sort of seismic shift that’s changed the very foundations of their relationship. Torn apart the framework, like slicing loose a ligament.
High school Izuku is different from middle school Izuku. He is quieter, more pensive, less unsure of himself, and a lot less reliant on waterworks for catharsis. It’s the boxing, Shouto thinks, Izuku’s newfound outlet, where he can lose himself among the groans of the punching bags, the crunch of leather, the salty tang of energy.
In the looks department, he’s changed by a fair amount, too. Less round and more sturdy, all broad lines and muscles. The childish sparkle remains, though. A little dimmed by age but still there.
When Shouto was young, he always thought of what it would be like to kiss his best friend. But, now, he’s thinking of something a lot deeper than that.
- 5
Girls start paying Shouto a lot more attention, for some reason. It’s not uncommon to find a note stashed in the bowels of his locker, or a number scrawled on his books. But really, he can’t begin to understand why.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Izuku teases him during a warm-up in gym class.
“What is?” It’s hard to look away from the sweat lines running down Izuku’s arms. Neck. Face. Even harder to pry his gaze from is the toned shape of Izuku’s biceps—and the lightly corded vein lines that come along with it.
Izuku tilts his head. Blanks out for a moment, before returning with an answer: “It’s your face.”
The chatter of the other students fades away into white noise. Shouto raises an eyebrow. Go on .
Izuku draws himself up to his full height. Looks at Shouto with an unfathomable emotion swirling in his gaze. “I don’t know if you know this,” he says, freckles deep brown and glowing, “but you’re beautiful, Shouto. So, so beautiful.”
It’s true what happens in movies, Shouto finds out. The way things crawl into a halt, blurring out sounds and backgrounds and more sounds. Because right here, right now, the sunlight has the world suspended in honey. In amber.
Shouto looks away. Looks down at his sneakers. Izuku always says nice things like this about everyone he’s friendly with, he reminds himself firmly. Shouto won’t allow his long-suffering feelings to make a big deal out of the compliment.
But, just like that, Shouto falls hopelessly in love with Izuku all over again.
(It’s getting ridiculous. Honestly.)
“Yo, Midoriya,” Kaminari calls out one lazy afternoon in class. “You coming to my party tonight?”
“Hm? Yeah, sure,” Shouto hears Izuku say a little distractedly.
Kirishima turns around and props his elbows on Izuku’s desk. “Hey, what’s up with you?” he says. “Uraraka, come over here, does he look a little spaced out to you or is it just me?”
Uraraka agrees, “It’s not just you.”
“Seriously, are you thinking of a special someone or what?” Kaminari jokes, ruffling Izuku’s hair.
Shouto freezes. Feels the single earphone plugged inside his ear go limp.
Izuku sighs. “If I tell the truth, will you leave me alone?”
Cheers and clapping ensue in response.
“I am,” Izuku says without any ounce, any trace of levity. “I have been for a long time.”
Everything turns a little greyer and smudged out after that revelation. Shouto doesn’t hesitate to stuff his ears with music, volume cranked up to a level bordering on deafening.
Shouto has his first kiss at Kaminari’s party in the dimness of a stuffy closet, back pressed against a dusty stack of yellowing books, a sonorous bass pounding in his chest—the result of a single, stupid round of Seven Minutes in Heaven.
It’s not so much a kiss as it is an awkward bumping of mouths.
If Shouto really, really focuses, he can pretend that he’s kissing a certain someone with stubbornness for days and an endless supply of laughter to boot. Someone with a slightly crooked half-smile and constellations traced onto his flesh. Someone who can transform all the liquid in Shouto’s body into ever-igniting gasoline—hot, honey-heavy, and steady.
But the scent, the feel, the shape—they’re not right. Instead they’re about twenty shades of wrong, starting from the smoothness of the mystery boy’s skin, and going right down to his cloying bergamot-and-cedar cologne.
It’s a poor distraction, but it beats out chasing pavements by a mile.
“Shouto, wanna come over later?” Izuku asks, jogging to catch up with him.
Shouto shakes his head. “Can’t. Yaoyorozu says I need to touch up on titrations.” Liar.
Izuku’s expression wavers. “Oh. I’ll ... um, see you, then.”
Shouto nods. Tugs on his bangs.
Things only get busier and busier, and Shouto discovers just how easy it is to make up excuses. He packs his schedule with tests, assignments, activities, leaving no crevice, no crack unfilled. There are always things to do, a shitty father to put up with, and biological necessities to manage.
So a fallout happens, but Shouto does not acknowledge it until it becomes bitter residue in his mind, the melted wax of a candle left unattended.
Occasionally they’ll pass each other in the hallways and exchange small greetings. Part of Shouto screams at him to initiate reconciliation, to fix whatever has broken between them. Nothing is unfixable if you put your mind to it. But instead Shouto leaves the line drawn out, fraying throughout and untouched.
The images of his smiles burned onto Shouto’s eyelids stretch it out even further.
It’s always a bad sign when a warm memory now leaves you cold.
+6
Sad to say, this goes on for the next few years of high school. Until the very last day, with tearful goodbyes and bawling mothers and proud fathers and excited siblings milling in the background.
Shouto has never been one for sentimentality, but an odd sense of loss settles into his pores once the final verses of the farewell song dwindle into a low, quavering melody.
For a moment he thinks of the place he’d carved out for himself among his peers, the camaraderie established by proximity and fostered by necessity. He thinks of Yaoyorozu and her neverending repertoire of scientific facts, her ocean-deep well of intelligence (It would do him well to thank her for sticking with him throughout the years). Then of Iida, Kirishima, Jirou, Uraraka, Kaminari, and the rest of his classmates. Even of Bakugou, strangely enough.
But most of all, he thinks of the boy who had blazed into his life that one spring day all those years ago. The boy who had snatched away Shouto’s entire heart and left nothing behind. The boy who is always, always, always there in Shouto’s dreams. The boy Shouto has loved for so, so long.
Shouto will sure miss all of them. Especially him. Because in about a week’s time a plane will carry Shouto into a foreign city where a brand new life at a posh university awaits, as per his father’s ungracious demands. Where everything, from the cobblestone streets to ivory basilicas, reeks of unfamiliarity, where he will be forced to relearn a new rhythm, a new dance—an utterly draining task.
Then there’s a tug on his sleeve, two fingers pinched at the cuff. “Hey.” A pair of warm green eyes and a disarming smile greets him.
A mild case of vertigo sets in. “Hi,” Shouto gets out, chest constricting.
Izuku cocks his head towards the doors, eyebrows lifting. “Have a minute?” Does he even need to ask? Shouto follows him outside, where the sky is dark and the moon in full bloom.
“Remember the wishing game we used to play as kids, Shouto?” Izuku asks as they settle down on the grass, far away from the music and the energy and the people.
Shouto says, with no small amount of fondness, “I may be old, but I’m not that old.”
Izuku grins and in that instant the chasm between them fully seals, like high school never happened and their feelings never got in the way of what they had. And suddenly Shouto fully remembers how Izuku has always made him feel complete, like he’s every beautiful thing in the world captured by a single lithe stroke, in the form of a boy with snow-pale skin and odd mismatching eyes.
The stars wink down at them as the wishing game commences. A breeze sweeps by, bending the grass like ripples in a field of wheat and swallowing their whispers, their breaths. They might as well be children again, lost in a kingdom of their own creation with thoughts and ideas too big for their souls.
“Do you think I could have all the moons in the sky?” Izuku says.
Shouto’s lips twitch. “You’ve always been unrealistic.”
“How about all the seas on Earth?”
“Seriously?”
“Okay, jeez. What about the mountains, or the rivers?”
“Let’s go with one thing.”
There’s a pause and a sigh. “The sun?”
Shouto watches Izuku, something flashing in Izuku’s eyes. Serenity. Joy. And beneath that … “Good luck with getting burnt to a crisp,” he says.
Izuku shifts closer to him. Suddenly Shouto can barely hear the rustling, the whispering of the wind. Then: “Can I have you?"
Love, the answer makes itself known in the shine of Izuku’s eyes, the softness of his smile. Shouto nearly stops breathing, nearly breaks down. Instead he leans in and kisses Izuku—the boy of his dreams. The boy he’s wanted right from the very start.
“You’ve always had me,” Shouto whispers into his mouth, burning with starlight.
Izuku’s hands are warm against his wrists. They pull apart for a moment, and Izuku says, hoarsely, “I’m an absolute idiot, I can’t believe I didn’t realize it sooner.”
“Actually, you’re eleven years too late,” Shouto says. “Didn’t I promise you that I’d marry you one day?”
Izuku laughs, and Shouto kisses him again, bearing him down on the grass. Shouto’s heart is a supernova in the making, expanding with every fiery trace of Izuku’s fingers along Shouto’s chest, back, spine. Seconds, minutes, hours pass them by, and Shouto is sorry. Sorry that it can’t last the way it would have had they only had more time.
Later, when they’re lying down, fingers interlaced, limbs tangled, Shouto says to Izuku, “You know I’m leaving, right?”
Izuku tilts his head, nose grazing Shouto’s neck. “I know.”
Stars spin high over their heads, but just like the passage of time they stop for no one.
“I don’t care, though," Izuku continues, sleepily, “because I’d wait five, ten, fifteen years for you, and then more.” His lips chase Shouto’s jaw. “I really, really would.”
“Is that a promise I hear?”
“Don’t you know it.”
They link pinkies, and, under the glow of a full moon, Todoroki Shouto falls in love with Midoriya Izuku for the sixth time.