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Midoriya cries. Constantly.
Todoroki isn’t really sure what to do with that.
x
It’s not the crying itself, he doesn’t think. He knows in concept, in practice, that people cry. He’s seen them do it on television, in movies. He’s seen Fuyumi cry, completely silent when she thinks no one can see her standing alone and unmoving in the kitchen, as though the entire world is falling down around her.
He remembers that he used to cry, too, as a kid. He’s not sure when he stopped.
But Midoriya sobs. At any hint of praise, at any emotion that sparks up from between his ribs, at every near defeat in training. His eyes water when Recovery Girl looks at him the wrong way, and it makes Todoroki avert his gaze, like he’s seeing something he’s not supposed to, like he’s seeing a part of his classmate that’s supposed to be hidden.
Midoriya cries selflessly, without any sense of self-preservation, and it makes his teeth grit and his nerves flare and the curl of his fists tighten. There should be no way, no reason, for a kid with that much loose power beneath his skin, snapping kinetic and whiplike between his bones, a kid that shattered himself during their match at the sports festival without blinking, to cry like that.
For a while, after the Hero Killer, Todoroki sits with his legs slung out over the lip of his hospital bed and wonders if it means there’s something wrong with him, that he just can’t cry. But he notices Midoriya isn’t either, sitting and watching the ceiling tiles with his arm in a sling and his forehead wrapped in gauze, and the tension lifts from his shoulders a little. At least he isn’t crying, either.
x
When Todoroki was a kid, back when his mother was still living with them, he used to cry after every training session with his father.
He remembers how wretched it sounded, even in his own ears, the bubbling hurt and the frustration and the anger - a five year old’s anger, directionless and vast - and how awful it felt, every time, to feel tears dripping from his chin.
He’d forgotten about it. He’d forgotten so much until Midoriya pulled that directionless, vast anger back into brutal focus, screamed at him without a tear in sight. Todoroki thinks, later, in the waiting room, that maybe that’s what did it - even in that hopeless situation, with every bone in his hands crushed from the whiplash of his own quirk, he hadn’t cried.
When he used to cry at home, sitting on the futon in his old room while his mother knelt in front of him, he felt like the world was ending. Like there was nothing but the brutal training and the awful silence afterward and the constant, nagging voice in the back of his mind that had started to sound like Endeavor’s, to say things like you’re not good enough.
He remembers his mother used to put her hand in his hair, lightly, and push it away from his eyes. She’d sit and talk to him with her fingers running through his hair, for hours, to drown out that little voice, to shore up a little of his sobbing, putting up dams behind his eyes.
He’s not sure why he forgot that.
x
Todoroki has no idea why he does it.
He’s not thinking. He hasn’t been thinking since Dabi called him by name, sinking into the thick, viscous black of the warp gate, the marble held between his fingers the same shade as his eyes. He hasn’t been thinking since the forest fires were extinguished, their unnatural blue burned into the backs of his eyes, since Aizawa pulled their class together and did a head-count, his hands shaking so slightly against his sides.
Midoriya was injured the worst out of all of them, and although that’s not a surprise to anyone, it still hurts. Yaoyorozu came away with a concussion and some serious blood loss, and his classmates affected by the gas all had some respiratory damage, but Midoriya -
His arms are in slings, and his head is bandages heavily. He looks pale, and small, and not at all like the person Todoroki knew first as the kid in the bunny ears costume bounding over to catch up with the rest of his classmates, who threw a pitch that broke the sound barrier and smiled at Aizawa through gritted teeth as though he’d never known the concept of pain.
It scares Todoroki, all at once, to see him like this, as his eyes start to water and he looks away from them all, pointing his eyes at the ceiling like he could erase the events of the camp if he just tried hard enough.
“I couldn’t save him,” Midoriya says quietly, the words broken down with his tears and his hurt and his directionless, vast anger, and Todoroki puts his hand in his hair.
He doesn’t know why he does it, other than the fact that he can remember it, the cool touch of his mother’s fingers against his forehead, the back of his neck. Other than the fact that Midoriya is always crying, and Todoroki can’t remember the last time he himself cried.
For a moment, everyone is quiet. Even Kirishima looks away from him, like he’s seeing something he isn’t supposed to. Todoroki just grits his teeth.
Midoriya’s eyes close, and he makes a small, helpless sound in between the tears, and Todoroki runs his fingers through his hair once before pulling away.
“We can still get him back,” Kirishima says, gentle even through his urgency, and Todoroki blinks as he realizes his right hand is still curled into a fist by his side.
He’d used his left.
x
After that, Todoroki finds himself doing it on reflex.
When he and Yaoryorozu find the others in Kamino ward, all of them looking a little vacant and far away, Todoroki is the first to notice that Midoriya is crying. He’s silent, curled in on himself as though if he tries hard enough he can make himself disappear, but his shoulders are shaking and there are tears collecting at the corner of his jaw, his chin, sliding down his neck.
Kirishima turns away and says something under his breath to Bakugou, who’s looking hard at the ground, and Yaoyorozu fixes her eyes on the nearest television as she pulls out her phone - it’s the rescue training finely ground into her muscle memory, the ability to focus on the closest problem and fix it, but Todoroki can see the way her eyes shine and the stiff upward tilt of her jaw.
Midoriya cries like he doesn’t want anyone to notice. He can talk through his tears just fine, like falling apart on the inside isn’t enough to stop his mile-a-minute, but whenever he cries, truly and awfully, he does it without a sound.
Todoroki remembers Fuyumi, how sometimes he’d catch her out of the corner of his eye blinking away frustrated tears, how she’d stand, perfectly still and alone in the center of the kitchen when their father wasn’t home, and just sob. Horrible, wracking, neat little sobs that made no noise at all. Todoroki wonders how Midoriya learned to do that. He wonders if Bakugou, the firecracker sparks that race up his wrists and make Midoriya flinch every time without fail, has anything to do with that.
He puts his hand in Midoriya’s hair.
For a single, frozen moment, Todoroki thinks he’s made it worse. Midoriya buckles, pulling further in on himself until his arms are wrapped all the way across his ribs and his chin is touching his collarbone (that’s a defensive position, Todoroki thinks - he’d know it on anyone, he’s worn it himself so many times). Neither of them move away, and after a second, Midoriya takes a deep, shuddering breath, and barrels into Todoroki.
To his credit, he doesn’t stumble. Todoroki’s used to having much heavier things than Midoriya knock into him full-force.
Midoriya wraps his arms around his torso, buries his face into his shoulder, and cries. Hard, angry, grieving sobs, and Todoroki barely thinks about it before he threads his fingers back into his hair, at the crown of his skull, and lets him shatter.
x
Once they move into the dorms, Midoriya gets a care package from his mother.
Aizawa drops it into his arms in the common room, and from the way he stumbles a little as he catches it, it must be heavy.
Todoroki looks up from his book as Midoriya sets it down on the table, as Kirishima offers to cut open the tape along the sides with his quirk for him, as Midoriya pries the cardboard away and his eyes immediately fill with tears.
There’s that age-old dread again, and it coats the back of Todoroki’s mouth. He cries so helplessly, like a little kid, like there’s nothing in the world to be afraid of with tears running down his cheeks. It makes Todoroki shift uncomfortably; weeks ago, months ago, he would’ve told him to stop it, stop being so vulnerable in front of everyone, to keep it bottled up within himself and let no one else see it because he’ll come at you again -
Todoroki blinks and stands up. Kirishima and Uraraka both see him approach, can’t quite make out the set of his expression, but all at once something like recognition sparks in Kirishima’s eyes, and he looks away.
Midoriya sniffles when he feels Todoroki’s fingers in his hair, and he looks up at him with a watery little smile and says “I’m okay, really,” as if he’s the one who needs reassurance.
Something cold grips Todoroki’s chest, right behind his sternum, and he drops his hand.
“Sorry,” Midoriya says as he wipes at his eyes with the sleeves of his All Might sweatshirt, more like a reflex than an actual apology, and Todoroki wonders just how many times he’s cried, how many times he’s been told to stop. He shakes his head and goes back to his book.
He’s kind of resigned himself to the fact that he’ll never be able to figure out Midoriya.
x
Midoriya gets tickets to a hero convention. Midoriya loses his balance during sparring on a throw he’d made a thousand times and gets knocked flat on his ass. Midoriya gives himself a papercut in the common room while he’s doing his homework on the couch. Midoriya burns himself on the electric kettle in the kitchen. Kaminari makes a truly horrific pun during lunch that makes Iida choke on his food and Midoriya laughs so hard he can’t breathe.
And every time, without fail, Todoroki puts his hand in his hair. Even if it’s just for a second, a reflex that he quickly checks, as he realizes that none of these things mean Midoriya needs comfort.
Midoriya sometimes smiles at him through his big, cry-dry eyes, and Todoroki remembers how his mother used to say Shouto with her voice so soft and even when he cried, and he doesn’t understand how he could ever forget something like that. It feels like every waking moment, Todoroki’s fingers twitch and curl in phantom gestures of comfort, even when there’s no one else in the room, even when he goes home for break, even when he’s staring down the barrel into his father’s rage-cold eyes.
“Y’know, you don’t have to do that,” Midoriya mumbles during training one day when he lands a little too hard out of a backflip and his eyes prick with tears, as Todoroki finds himself reaching out without a thought, and it’s enough to make him freeze.
Midoriya catches his eyes and visibly backtracks.
“Not - not that you can’t! I mean, I don’t mind. It’s just… I’m okay, Todoroki.”
Todoroki tilts his head at him, and forces himself to curl his fingers the rest of the way until they bite into his palm. He drops his hand.
“I know,” he replies instead. He watches as Midoriya gets back onto his feet, dusting off his costume and wincing a little as his knees flex. Todoroki is taller than his classmate, but Midoriya is built more solidly, like he’s impossible to knock over. For the first time, Todoroki notices that. It had been so easy to overlook, in that alley in Hosu when Stain’s figure had dominated all three of them, and in Kamino when both All Might and All for One had drained the oxygen out of the air with the crushing pressure of their presence.
It’s hard to see him, sometimes, as the boy with the lightning sparks crackling over his skin, power too big for his bones. The boy who had broken himself down at the sports festival just to keep Todoroki at bay.
“All Might does that, sometimes,” Midoriya says quietly after a second, and Todoroki’s teeth snap together over whatever half-hearted apology he was about to offer. He isn’t sorry, and he never has been.
“It’s nice,” he says, a little wondering, and when he looks at Todoroki he smiles.
Oh.
x
There’s not a single thing in his life that Todoroki’s father hasn’t singed with his flames.
As a child, he’d been viscerally aware of it. At any moment, anything in his life could be consumed by fire. His older brother, his mother, his relationships with Natsuo and Fuyumi, the entirety of his childhood - it had all burnt like so much kindling.
He’d thought, for only a moment, that the same wouldn’t be true of UA. That had been brutally, cleanly corrected at the sports festival.
No matter how hard Endeavor comes at him during their training sessions, no matter how heavy the weight of his disappointment, those flames never consume him. And that’s the point, at the end of the day - there is nothing in Todoroki’s life that Endeavor can’t take away, except for himself. For a while, he’d thought that made him strong.
Todoroki walks into the common room on a Thursday that’s as bright as it is cloudless, and that thought shatters.
The HNA news station is turned up at the far side of the room, the ticker tape almost too fast for him to read, the chaos oddly tinny and quiet filtered through the silence of his classmates. Midoriya is the first to stand when he sees him walk in, but they both freeze where they are. Todoroki’s afraid to look at him, to find out what he’ll see there. How far his father’s flames have stretched.
The problem is, Endeavor’s never lost. His father has set his sights so far beyond him, beyond anyone else, that the possibility of failure has never factored into it. His legacy is too vast, too all-encompassing, too suffocating to be anything but an unconditional victory.
There’s a moment, and then another, that Todoroki thinks that might come to an end right here.
“Come on,” Todoroki says, almost under his breath, without meaning to say anything at all. His father’s quirk is a solar flare on the television as he grapples with the noumu. The newscaster’s words layered over top mean nothing to him, more garbled static for his mind to filter out.
All at once, he remembers the way his mother used to cry. She cried hopelessly, like the joy had been sucked out of the world, crouched over him to protect from whatever his father could throw his way next, clutching her phone in the kitchen as the tea kettle screamed. She cried the way Midoriya had after All Might’s last fight in Kamino, like the world was coming apart.
“ I’m watching, you bastard,” Todoroki says, and it might be a shout, the way it shreds through his throat, “I’m watching, so come on.”
Hawks flits in and out of the camera’s focus, moving too quickly for the eye to parse, but his father is a black hole of burning light, and when he stands, his flames are guttered. There’s not a single trace of fire on him.
Todoroki doesn’t realize he’s stopped breathing until he exhales, and then everything comes rushing out, and he crouches as tears collect in the corners of his eyes.
(There had been a part of him, in that moment watching his father stand with a fist upraised, that was disappointed.)
He barely reacts when he feels a hand in his hair, and then Midoriya kneels down in front of him and runs his fingers, once, down to the base of his skull, and Todoroki cries.
He can’t remember how long it’s been - he remembers the feeling from when he was a kid, the way he’d shouted and pleaded and made broken, awful little noises, but as he feels his breathing stutter in his throat and his vision pitch, he doesn’t make a sound.
Midoriya doesn’t say anything. It might have been hours, it might have been days. His hand stays in his hair.
Aizawa herds the others out of the room, directing them back to their dorms with a tired voice that holds no space for argument, and he pauses in the door frame only for a moment before he disappears as well.
Midoriya wraps his other arm around his back, the pressure gentle, and Todoroki realizes that the hand in his hair is the one he’d broken over and over again at the sports festival. The one that’s now scarred over with damage Todoroki had caused. He lets himself be pulled forward until their knees touch and his forehead rests against his shoulder. This is the way his mother used to comfort him, he remembers, when he cried. This is the way she’d hold him when she would say Shouto in that gentle voice he’ll never be able to get out of his head again.
“It’s okay,” Midoriya tells him after a while, and Todoroki’s entire body locks up. He keeps running his fingers through his hair.
“Hey, it’s okay. I owe you one, anyway,” he continues, and Todoroki clenches his jaw and pulls away. Midoriya’s smiling at him, and his eyes are shiny with his own tears.
Todoroki glances down at his hands, the way they’re folded one on top of the other in his lap, the way his fingers are curled just slightly inward as if they’re already two steps ahead of him, and he puts one hand, gently, on top of Midoriya’s messy curls.
“Don’t cry,” he says quietly. Midoriya gives him a watery laugh.
“Okay,” he replies, “okay, I won’t.”
Neither of them move.
x