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11 years old
Shouto thinks he should have a crush on her. All of his classmates have crushes or are even dating someone, but he’s all alone, with barely a friend to call his own - and no, his siblings don’t count.
Momo is pretty, he thinks. Her hair reaches down to her waist but she always wears it up in a practical ponytail. Momo is smart, he knows. She always has the right answers in class when no one else does, throwing her hand up quickly to be called on. Momo is kind, he knows. No one else would be his friend because he looked strange, what with the big burn across his left eye. But she didn’t care about that, and she approached him first when picking partners for a group project.
“Wanna work together?” she had asked, a broad smile on her face, and something about her made him trust her.
They find that they live near each other, so they walk home from the bus stop together, her house before his. She walks with her backpack in front of her, hitting against her knees, and she talks enough to keep them both entertained. They wave goodbye at each other when she gets to her front door. She defends him from anyone who makes fun of how he looks, or how he acts, and then she gives him a reassuring hug afterwards.
So he should have a crush on her. Right?
The counselor at school that he goes to, only because his mom makes him, says that sometimes the best way to deal with his emotions is to write them all out on paper. “Even if no one but you gets to see it, it’ll help you get your feelings out!” she had said, before sneaking him candy that he hoards in his room from Natsuo.
So he sits down and writes how he feels, because it’s easier to do than to confess to her on the walk home from school.
Momo,
I’m really glad that we’re friends. I think I have a crush on you. You’re very pretty and nice and friendly but you don’t have to like me back.
-Shouto
He never tells her, of course. It’s for the best; she ends up telling him and only him after they started sixth grade that she doesn’t like boys.
That’s okay. He felt like he was forcing himself to like her, anyways.
13 years old
He’s the first boy Shouto thinks is cute.
Kirishima plays baseball. He’s good at it, and he plays during lunch at the same field where Shouto and Momo and her new friend, Jirou, eat lunch together. There’s two other people he plays with; a blonde boy and another boy with black hair. He doesn’t really pay attention to either of them, though.
“You listening to me, Shouto?” Momo asks him one day, and it breaks him out of his daze, staring at Kirishima while he’s up to bat. He blinks.
“Yeah,” he lies, flushed. Momo gives him a knowing look but keeps explaining how to find the cosine of a triangle.
Kirishima is in his gym class, too. It’s hard to not notice him. He’s just dyed his hair red, and he fixes it so it stands upright, making it hard to sit behind him in class and hard to ignore him, even if you tried. His personality is infectious; always energetic, friendly, outgoing and confident, and he seems to be friends with everyone. He’s free with his smiles and even directs a few at Shouto during class, who feels his heart pound in his chest whenever he does.
There’s one day when Momo and Jirou are away because of a tournament for the math club they’re both in, and he sits alone at lunch, hoping no one notices him. But, of course -
“Hey, you’re Todoroki, right?”
Shouto looks up from his book, blinking. Oh. Kirishima is standing next to him on the bleachers, his backpack slung over one shoulder, a smile on his face. The smile is too wide, he thinks, at least because it’s one that’s for him. “Uh, yeah.”
Kirishima sits next to him then, not with a lot of grace, plopping his backpack between them. “I’m Kirishima. But you probably already know that, right?”
“Yeah.” Why is he talking to me? Shouto tries not to think about how, up close, his eyes are really, very nice. “Um, where are your friends…?”
“Oh, Kaminari and Sero - the blonde and the black-haired guys? - got lunch detention after messing around in class. I noticed you were eating alone, and I would be too, so I figured we might as well eat together!” He gives him a smile again, his eyes closing with how wide it is. “You’re pretty shy, huh?”
“Um,” Shouto says, very intelligently. He doesn’t really have many people coming up to him to start a random conversation out of nowhere, not since Momo did two years before, and especially not someone as popular as him. “I guess so.”
“That’s okay,” Kirishima says, and he pops open his bento box from his backpack. Using his chopsticks, he holds up a piece of his lunch. “Do you like salmon?”
It turns out that Kaminari and Sero get into more trouble than they know what to do with, and Momo and Jirou end up becoming tutors during lunchtime, so they end up eating lunch together most days, growing closer. When it gets warm, they sit under the bleachers to shield themselves from the sun and, coincidentally, no one can see them.
Really, he doesn’t think he has a crush on him until one day in September.
They sit underneath the bleachers again for lunch, and Kirishima starts with, “Is it okay if I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“How did you get...that?”
Kirishima points underneath his own left eye, and Shouto blinks. After he doesn’t answer for a moment, Kirishima frantically says, “You don’t have to answer it or anything! I know it’s probably personal. Here, I’ll tell you how I got this.” He points above his right eye, at a scar there that is just noticeable enough that Shouto himself wondered how he got it. “When I was a kid, I was playing baseball with some friends, and the ball ended up hitting me in the face when I tried catching it, and scratched me. That’s how I got this scar. It’s pretty cool,” he says with a smile. “Yours is a lot cooler, though.”
Shouto blinks, again. “Thanks?” he says, wondering if he would say the same thing if he knew how he got it. It’s not very easy to say that he got it while trying to defend his mom from his dad, who he hasn’t spoken to in as many years as he’s had the burn. But, Kirishima thought almost everything was cool.
The bell rings and they have five minutes to get to class, but Kirishima still stops him as they get up to go. When Shouto turns to face him, he feels someone plant an incredibly quick peck on his cheek - he had heard rumors from Jirou, but did he just -
“Well, see you later!” Kirishima says quickly, waving and running off the other way. Shouto feels like his face is burning. He watches him run off, and he touches his cheek as he does. He skips class that day, and then gets in trouble with his mother for it.
Later that week, while holed up in his room, he writes a letter.
Kirishima,
I don’t know why you kissed me, or why you ran off like that, but if it was because you were embarrassed, you shouldn’t be. I think I like you, too. Like, like like. You’ve always been really nice to me when you didn’t have to be, and even if I can’t keep up with you sometimes I like spending time with you at lunch. I also think you’re very cute and that your hair suits you.
-Shouto
After that, Momo and Jirou decide to eat inside as it gets hotter outside, and he and Kirishima never really talk again.
14 years old
There’s absolutely no reason why Shouto should even stand Bakugou. He’s brash, rude, and standoffish. But as soon as he arrives at camp for the first time, people gravitate towards him - everyone wants to be his friend.
There’s absolutely no reason, either, why Shouto should be developing a crush on him. And yet.
Bakugou is just about good at everything at camp. Archery, rock climbing, swimming, hiking, even things like arts and crafts. People want to be his friend because he exudes a confident energy, even with how loud and arrogant personality.
The only other kid who was even almost at his skill level was Shouto. But that wasn’t really on purpose. He didn’t even want to be here, but he figured if he was stuck here, he may as well try to win.
But they never talked to each other outside of camp activities. Bakugou had a whole table of friends at lunch to sit with, and Shouto keeps to himself, ignoring the sidelong glances from him. People assume that he’s scared of him - they are, too. Really, Bakugou doesn’t scare him at all.
Everyone wants to be his friend. Shouto might want to be a little bit more.
They only ever talk, really talk, once. After he hits Shouto in the face with a volleyball.
The camp counselor makes Bakugou take him to the nurse as punishment, and they walk in uncomfortable silence to the office, not even sparing each other a glance. But it’s Bakugou that speaks first, hands stuffed in his pockets.
“You’re the only one here who’s even almost on my level,” he says, like it hurts him to admit it. “So why’d you go and get hit in the face?”
“You’re the one who did it,” Shouto points out. His voice is nasally as he tries to slow the bleeding with a strip of cloth the counselor had given him in a frantic hurry. “Maybe you’re just bad at it.”
Up close, Shouto can really get a good look at him; his blonde hair that’s somehow perpetually poofy, his red eyes that remind Shouto of someone else...and while these features are pretty, they can also turn ugly just as quickly. His lip curls and there’s a certain anger in his eyes that doesn’t frighten him as he yells, “If you had been paying attention —!”
Shouto tunes him out. When they get to the nurse’s office, he pouts while Shouto gets a bandage over his nose and Bakugou gets scolded.
Shouto finds time alone in his bed to write something. Brief, but something.
Bakugou,
My broken nose isn’t really your fault. I got distracted by you. You may be annoying, but you’re cute.
-Shouto
When camp is over, he never sees Bakugou again. It’s probably for the best.
15 years old
Midoriya Izuku is too cute for his own good, Shouto thinks.
He hates parties. Really hates parties. They’re too loud, full of people he doesn’t really know, and he would rather be at home, or really doing anything else. He sticks to Momo’s side the whole time, which is probably annoying for Jirou, now that the two of them are dating. But what else is he supposed to do?
Shouto sits in a circle with the two of them and three other people he hardly knows. Momo introduces them. Iida Tenya, the class president; Uraraka Ochako, a cheerleader; and Midoriya Izuku, a baseball player. He knows Iida because everyone knows the class president, but the other two are foreign to him. There’s a bottle in the middle of the circle and Shouto is trying to figure out how to get out of this game.
“Have you kissed anyone before?” Uraraka asks from beside him, and it jolts him out of his thoughts.
“Um,” he says, thinking. A kiss on the cheek didn’t really count, did it? “No, not really.”
“Really? Well,” she gives him a mischievous smile that he really doesn’t like. “Maybe you will tonight!”
“Maybe,” he replies, and she turns to talk to Iida, about something he doesn’t hear.
“Okay, let’s do it!” Jirou exclaims, and she purposefully sits across from Momo. “You go first, Midoriya.”
“Oh! Um, okay,” he says, and it draws Shouto’s attention across the room to him. He has impossibly curly green hair, and under the low light, it looks almost black, with eyes to match. He’s plain-looking, really. But he seems very anxious, flighty, and nervous, and something about it is very cute and very endearing and Shouto has to look away from him. Midoriya gives a nervous laugh. “Here goes nothing!”
Shouto hears the bottle spin around on the ground amidst the talking of very loud freshmen, and he rolls his eyes and looks away. This is stupid.
“Shouto!” he hears Momo exclaim, and he looks back over. Then down.
Oh.
They can respin it, right? Unless… He looks up and across from him, and sees Midoriya there, surprised at the result, jumping into action a bit as he looks up at him, eyes wide. “If you don’t want to, we don’t -“
“No, rules are rules!” Jirou says, and she has the same smile on her face that Uraraka had earlier in the night. Not good. “You have to kiss. He doesn’t care that you’re a boy.”
“Let him speak for himself,” Momo says, but she glances warily at Shouto. He shrugs and sits up on his haunches to get closer. He’s glad for the low light, because if he has a blush, he’s sure no one can see. Hopefully.
Midoriya looks from Uraraka, panicked, to Shouto, and up close he’s cuter than from far away, if that’s even possible. His face is covered in freckles, mostly across the bridge of his nose but interspersed across his cheeks, his forehead, everywhere. Shouto doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone cuter. Ever.
But he maintains his composure. “Just do it quickly,” he says, nonchalantly, and Midoriya nods. Shouto closes his eyes.
It’s not a kiss to write home about. It’s really just a lingering peck on the lips, Midoriya’s lips are chapped, they’re both nervous and want to get it over with with all of these people watching.
When they move away as quickly as they came together, Shouto hears cheering - probably from Jirou and Uraraka - and it reduces Midoriya to a bumbling, embarrassed mess, slinking back down to sit on the floor, covering his face.
It’s not perfect, but it’s his first kiss, so he thinks about it. More than he wants to. A lot. It’s a lot harder to ignore than the others, because he can’t just avoid him at school.
So he remembers what his elementary school counselor taught him, and writes a letter.
Midoriya,
I know you were really embarrassed when we had to kiss at the party, and I was too, but I didn’t mind it all that much. I think you’re cute, actually. I know that sounds weird, because we don’t really know each other, but I do. I wouldn’t mind doing that again. I mean, long as there’s no one else watching.
-Shouto
A month later, Midoriya and Uraraka start to go out, which actually works out for everyone. Shouto doesn’t have to worry about his crush on him, because there’s no point in doing so.
But he’s the one boy Shouto can’t get over.