Archive of Our Own ^beta

Shouto has seen a lot of strange things since he started working at the McDonald’s across from the college dorms. Customers who want to use year-old coupons, already used coupons, and coupons from a different chain of restaurants entirely; little children breaking down into hysterics when he informs their parents that they no longer split the toys up by “girls” and “boys” because apparently McDonald’s is progressive like that; and of course, enough tired, worn out college students to fill an entire university.

The boy standing in front of him, he decides, definitely belongs in the third category.

With curly, out-of-control hair in a shade of green he’s never seen in nature, a spattering of freckles that spans from tan cheek to tan cheek across the bridge of his nose, and eyes like gemstones with heavy, dark bags under them (no doubt from many a sleepless night stressing over paper after paper), his next customer is definitely one of the cuter college kids he’s seen around here. He’s sporting a stained, hole-filled Yuuei sweatshirt, which means he goes to Shouto’s university, and he’s got a pair of worn out sweatpants to match. He’s got a backpack strapped onto his back, with about a thousand pens and pencils sticking out of the pockets on the side, all in varying states of disaster. To put it kindly, he’s an absolute mess.

“Welcome to McDonald’s,” Shouto says, because he didn’t go through a month of customer service training for nothing. “How are you doing today?”

“F-Fine,” the boy says in a voice that just screams “help me”.

“What can I get for you today?” Shouto asks, unfazed. “Would you like to try something from our line of signature McCafe coffees?”

“Um, no,” the boy says with a choppy shake of his head. “Caffeine and I don’t mix well. Can I just get a large fries and a vanilla shake, please? For here?”

“One large fries and one shake,” Shouto parrots back. “Will that be all for you today?”

“Yes.” The boy’s mouth is pressed closed in a wavery line, like he’s trying to keep it together. He reaches up to slap a twenty dollar bill on the counter, then winces at the sound. Shouto sighs, sliding the bill across the surface and into the cash register before counting out the change. He goes from smallest to largest, pennies to nickels and dimes to ones, then at last to fives. He has to clear his throat three times before the boy looks up to take his money.

“I’ll bring it out to you when it’s ready,” Shouto says, even though he’s never done that for a customer before. It doesn’t really matter what he does at this time of night, when the restaurant is dead silent aside from the hiss and sizzle of the fryer.

He turns and grabs one of the thin plastic cups from the dwindling stack next to the ice cream machine and pumps a generous amount of the sticky sweet vanilla milkshake into it, then grabs the can whip cream out of the mini fridge and swirls a tiny mountain on top. It’s already starting to condensate by the time he puts it on the tray and goes to grab the fries. The only other employee on his shift failed to show up, which unfortunately leaves him alone with the strange, emotionally unstable kid who seems like he’s gonna break down in tears any minute.

He feels a little bad once that thought passes through his head, and makes sure to shovel an unreasonable amount of fries into the large size container before throwing it onto one of the paper-lined trays and walking over to the table the boy has chosen to occupy with about a million pages of notes and an ancient-looking laptop.

“Here you go,” Shouto says, still in bare-minimum-customer-service mode. “Sorry for the wait.”

“Thank you,” the tired boy says, looking even shakier and more unstable than he had when he’d ordered. Shouto almost asks if there’s something wrong, but he comes to his senses before the words escape his lips. He doesn’t need to know this stranger’s problems any more than he needs to put his own head in the deep fryer. College kids have problems--he knows this better than anybody. Whatever the issue is, it’s none of his business.

He returns to the counter and slumps down tiredly, resting his head on his palm and letting out a sigh. It’s boring here, especially when the restaurant is dead and empty and actually kind of lonely. He almost prefers the nights when hoards of frat boys will barge in through the doors and order three of everything on the menu and then some, and his whole night is spent bringing trays of disgustingly oily fried food to the counter in batches, like someone making a hundred cookies with one oven. Those nights are loud, and they’re hard work, but they go by faster than the ones he spends by himself in a restaurant that seems much too big for one person.

The clattering of fingers across a keyboard catches his attention, and he turns his head to watch the stranger get to work. He’s got his vanilla shake in one hand, and he’s typing surprisingly quickly with the other, despite only using two or three fingers to press the keys. He must be used to multitasking, Shouto thinks, almost amused.

He watches as the boy types, slowly draining his drink (can it be called a drink?) as he lazer focuses in on whatever paper he’s working on. His thick eyebrows are scrunched in concentration over his eyes, which are narrowed as he squints at the bright computer screen, which is casting very faint bluish light across his face.

All at once, the stranger lets out a strangled groan and sets his head down so that his forehead is resting against the surface of the keyboard, no doubt leaving a string of incomprehensible nonsense on his text document. He slumps against the computer dejectedly, setting his milkshake down carefully so it won’t tip over and spill. Shouto blinks, his hand lifting to hover just above the counter. He keeps himself from reaching out fully, but just barely, a question on the tip of his tongue.

They stay like that for less than a minute, but it feels like much longer to Shouto, who’s never been the best at social interaction even in the most normal of situations. He watches the stranger’s back as it rises and falls evenly--it’s so slow and steady that for a minute he wonders if he’d fallen asleep. At last, the boy turns his head and blinks slowly at him, as if he doesn’t even have the energy to be embarrassed being caught doing whatever it is exactly he’s doing in public. That doesn’t stop Shouto from feeling weird about watching him. He turns away and coughs to cover up his awkwardness.

“Sorry,” he says, uncomfortable, then turns back towards the boy. It feels weird to talk to him when they’re not looking at each other. “You just- Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” the boy says, lifting his head slowly. He seems a little bit calmer than he’d been coming in, and his eyes have gone soft and tired around the edges. “Sorry for being so weird in your restaurant. I’m not usually like this, I swear.”

“It’s- Don’t worry about it,” Shouto says with a shake of his head. He’s seen much worse than some wigged-out freshman with a stutter and a weird way of typing.

He’s expecting the boy to go back to his essay, or maybe lie his head on the table again, but instead he turns so that he’s sitting sideways in his chair, facing Shouto. “I-I’m Midoriya Izuku,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck with the hand he’d been using to hold his drink. “I know you didn’t ask, but it feels weird to be the only other one in here and not know your name, or have you know mine.”

He is more put-together than before, Shouto thinks observantly. “Todoroki Shouto,” he says, pointing to the little nametag on the front of his shirt.

“Nice to meet you, Todoroki-san,” Midoriya mumbles, and for the first time since he’d walked in, the corner of his lip quirks up into an almost-smile. Shouto nods, then stares down at the counter quietly. He’s fairly sure that this isn’t part of his customer service requirements.

“It’s… nice to meet you, too,” he says back at last.

Time seems to pass quickly, after that. Midoriya goes back to whatever paper he’s writing, occasionally resorting to typing with one hand while he sucks on his milkshake. At some point he sheds his Yuuei sweatshirt, revealing a set of surprisingly muscular arms as well as a rather stupid t-shirt that reads “t-shirt” in gray across the front. Shouto snorts, then pretends to cough into the crease of his elbow to keep up appearances. It doesn’t really matter, though. Midoriya is so focused on the words appearing on his computer screen that he’s pretty sure nothing short of the end of the world could cause him to look up.

Before Shouto knows it, the bell above the door is jingling softly, and then a familiar head of teal hair wrapped in an unsightly orange headband pops up from out of nowhere. Ah, so Fukukado has decided to show up, after all. That marks one less absence from the restaurant, although it’s a bit late to save him from the awkwardness of his short-lived interactions with Midoriya.

“Hey, kid!” Fukukado practically yells, shattering the content silence around the two boys. Out of the corner of his eye, Shouto sees Midoriya jump a few inches into the air, then look around sheepishly. He ever so politely averts his gaze.

“You’re late,” he tells his co-worker bluntly, not even feeling a bit sorry about it. Fukukado Emi is a full-grown adult, and an assistant manager at that. She should be able to keep track of the time, especially when she knows Jirou rarely ever shows up to work at all. The two of them can’t honestly expect him to pick up the slack without so much as a thank you, can they?

Apparently they can. Fukukado sighs, waving him off breezily. “Sorry, kid. I was busy talking to that hot teacher from Yuuei. I guess I just lost track of the time…”

“Again,” Shouto deadpans. Fukukado ignores him.

“Did you know that he’s married?” she says aloud, more to herself than anyone else in the room. “I sure didn’t. Ha! No wonder he kept turning me down every time I tried to take him out.”

She disappears into the bathroom to change, laughing to herself quietly, and leaving Shouto alone with the stressed college boy once again. He shakes his head in her general direction, then glances up at the clock on the wall. Blinking in surprise, he realizes that his shift has been over for ten minutes now--he hadn’t even realized how late it had gotten until Fukukado had walked in.

He sighs, rubs at his eyes a little tiredly, and goes to the back room to clock out. Ten minutes isn’t worth applying for overtime for, anyway, and he should go back to the dorms and get some sleep before class the next day. Or today, he supposes, with another glance at the clock.

Changing out of his work uniform and back into his clothes seems like a hassle, especially because he’ll just be going straight to bed as soon as he gets back to Yuuei, so he grabs for his bag and pulls his coat out, then zips it up with his regular clothes still inside. He slings the strap over his shoulder and walks around the counter towards the doors on autopilot, before he realizes that Midoriya is still here.

It’s very late, as he’s noted twice now. They have school the next day.

“Are you going to stay here all night?” he asks, half over his shoulder. Midoriya turns around slowly, as if he isn’t sure if he’s the one being spoken to despite being the only other person currently in the room. He’s finished his milkshake by now, and his little paper container is almost empty of fries as well. Clearly, he hasn’t read the “No Loitering” sign above the fountain soda machine, but at this time of night, there’s no one there who cares enough to tell him off.

“I’ve got work to do,” Midoriya says tiredly, gesturing with a slackened arm at his computer. Shouto nods, still hesitating to leave. It feels strange to leave the boy alone when he so clearly is having a rough night, but… They don’t know each other. Shouto has no idea what Midoriya’s deal is--it could be anxiety, or it could be nerves from committing some horrendous crime. He would be none the wiser if the latter was the case.

“Well…” he starts unsurely, shifting his weight ever so slightly back and forth. “I’m heading out. Good luck with your- work.”

“Thank you, Todoroki-kun,” Midoriya says, quiet. Shouto waits for him to turn back around before he pushes the door open and steps out into the night.

The air around him turns crisp, chilly, and only then does he remember to put on his jacket. He maneuvers his bag from side to side as he pushes his arms through the sleeves, then turns in the direction of his dorm. He’s on the west side of Yuuei, which is a bit further than the east dorms--he only knows this because he often drops by before work to pay a visit to Yaoyorozu.

The east dorms are fancier, and therefore a bit more expensive, but he can’t say if the cost is worth it or not. He’s perfectly fine with his own dorm; it has a mattress, space for a bedside table should he ever decide he wants one, and there’s a communal kitchen a floor down from his. It’s not as fancy as the house he’d been raised in, but something about its broken down charm really speaks to Shouto, like it’s calling him to a life of normalcy.

It’s a typical summer night, the kind with a few bugs flying around in the air, soft clouds drifting aimlessly overhead, and he feels himself relax into it as he stands on the deck of the McDonald’s, waiting for something he isn’t sure of to spur him into movement. He doesn’t glance back at the inside, because if anyone happens to be watching him he doesn’t want to give them the wrong idea. But the memory of Midoriya sitting alone at his computer seems to be stuck in his head, and he isn’t sure why.

Surely it’ll pass on soon enough, especially since the next week or so is so busy for him. He’s got homework, classes, assignments, readings, and work to deal with. By the time he gets back to the dorms, tired from the walk and the day of hard work, he’ll probably have almost forgotten about the whole strange interaction.

If it maybe happens to pop into his head once or twice over the next couple of days, though… Well, that’s only normal.

He’s working the counter again when Midoriya returns.

This time, a few things are different. Jirou is here, for one thing, although she’s clocking out early to go to some concert on the other side of the city. (Yaoyorozu is also going--he thinks the two of them are carpooling, but he’s unsure. Aside from some awkward flirting here and there, he’s never seen the two of them have a regular conversation, let alone a successful one.)

The other thing that’s different is… Well, is Midoriya himself. This time he’s wearing a green jacket and a rather stupid T-shirt over cuffed blue jeans, which is a decided step up from his previous worn-out sweatshirt and holy pants. His hair seems neater, in a wild kind of way--the curls are still as crazy as they’d been before, but they seem smoother somehow. He’s no longer curling in on himself, or biting at his nails or anything of the sort. In fact, he almost seems confident.

“Hi, Todoroki-kun!” he says in greeting, without a trace of the stutter from before.

“Midoriya,” Shouto replies, nodding once. “Another late night study session?”

“Not today,” Midoriya tells him, smiling. “I finished most of my big assignments. I’m just here ‘cause we ran out of food at the dorms.”

“I see,” Shouto says, tapping his order screen a few times to wake it up. “So, what can I get you this time?”

“Let’s see…” Midoriya scratches at his round, freckled cheek consideringly, studying the menu. “I guess I’ll go with a large fries and a salad.”

“The duality of man,” Shouto snorts.

“Ah, my roommate doesn’t really do junk food,” Midoriya explains quickly, with a cute little laugh. “We just haven’t gone grocery shopping in a while, ‘cause he’s always busy and I don’t have enough to pay for it on my own.”

Is that why you’re eating here instead of going out for real food? Shouto wonders, but doesn’t ask aloud. Dragging the food quality of the restaurant he works at probably won’t reflect well on the company, and even if he trusts Jirou, he doesn’t want her to give him a bad reputation amongst his co-workers. “Anything to drink?” he asks instead, almost on instinct.

“Um…” Midoriya reaches into his pocket, shuffles through a few one and five dollar bills quickly, then looks back up. “A vanilla milkshake, too.”

Shouto can’t help but smile at that. “Coming right up,” he says quietly, hitting the submit order button on his screen so Jirou can see it. He watches Midoriya take a seat in the same place as before as he smiles down at the sticky surface of the table, almost shyly. What a mess, he thinks, resting his chin on his palm and leaning against the counter. Not that he minds it, exactly. Midoriya may be a little bit strange, but he’s easy to talk to in a way that Shouto’s never experienced before.

“Hey!” Jirou barks, and then something that feels and sounds suspiciously like an empty twelve-ounce soda cup hits him in the back of the head. “Quit staring and come help me with this order!”

There are only two things to make, Shouto thinks with a huff, but he obligingly turns to grab one of the clear plastic cups and a dome lid to blend the milkshake in. Once the cup is full he grabs the Reddi-Whip and sprays a little bit on top, then snaps the lid in place and glances further into the kitchen.

Jirou has the fryer going, but she’s just putting the frozen cold fries into the oil now, which means there’ll be a little bit of a wait before Midoriya’s full order is ready. Shouto looks down at the milkshake in his hand, then back up at the only occupied table in the restaurant, feeling a strange and unplaceable desire to deliver it by hand. He hasn’t made it a habit since the last time Midoriya visited, and yet here he is, half-melted ice cream in hand, staring at the same table he sees every day like it’s suddenly presented a new challenge to him.

Fuck it, he thinks with a sigh, glancing back one last time to make sure Jirou isn’t watching before he neatly sidesteps around the counter and treads over to Midoriya’s table. He sets the milkshake down with a soft thud , the plastic popping back into place from where he’d unknowingly clutched it too tight.

“Special delivery,” he deadpans, trying not to smile. Since when does he smile at his own jokes? Has he really become one of those people?

He wonders what Midoriya thinks of those people. He can’t imagine the poor, anxiety-filled wreck of a student judging anyone too harshly for the amount they smile or laugh. Maybe Shouto’s just overly judgemental.

“Thanks.” Midoriya grins back, sliding the plastic cup over the table and leaving a small trail of water droplets in its wake. Shouto nods, then begins to turn and head back to his position, but a glance at the empty counter stops him in his tracks. To his surprise, he finds that standing behind a sticky register and waiting for the next customer to arrive sounds… less appealing than staying back and talking to the one customer who’s already here.

He turns back around, opens his mouth, and lets out the first thing that comes to mind.

“Why do you order the vanilla shakes?”

Midoriya pauses, the straw frozen between his lips. He pulls away and swallows slowly, then stares down at the cup questioningly.

“You know it’s basically just half-melted soft serve with extra sugar, right?” Shouto adds, taking a step closer to the table. “We call it ‘shake syrup’ here. Nobody really knows exactly what it’s made out of.”

“They taste good,” Midoriya says, then takes another long sip of his shake to emphasize his point. “And it’s easier to drink soft serve from a cup than have it melt all over your fingers, anyway. Less messy this way, too.”

Shouto briefly imagines licking melted ice cream off of his own hands as a child, and even more briefly imagines Midoriya’s hands covered in sweet, dripping soft-serve. That’s kind of gross, honestly. He banishes the thought from his mind.

“Well, I hope you enjoy your mystery syrup,” he says with a shrug, leaning his thigh against Midoriya’s table. His customer nods, taking a final drink from his milkshake before setting it down and folding his hands atop the table politely.

“I see you’re not alone this time.”

“For once,” Shouto agrees with a snort. “Jirou likes to skip work to go to rock concerts. She’s leaving in a few minutes.”

“Is somebody else coming to replace her?”

Shouto shakes his head with a sigh. “Fukukado usually comes in around the same time I do, and nobody else is scheduled to work until eleven or so,” he explains.

“Doesn’t it get lonely being here all alone?” Midoriya asks with a glance around the restaurant. It looks bigger now, Shouto thinks, when it’s not crowded with whining kids and their stressed, overworked parents, or high schoolers who think it’s funny to dump their full cups of soda into the trash bin. (McDonald’s corporate refuses to shell out the extra five or ten bucks to buy the good quality garbage bags, and the rolls they get instead tend to come with a few pre-holed bags, just for the fun of it. This is why Shouto can’t stand high schoolers.)

“It’s not so bad,” he replies, although he’s not really sure if that’s true or not. “Gives me room to think. And it beats the lunch rush.”

“But there’s no one to talk to,” Midoriya says insistently. “Won’t you be bored? And besides, what if a robber comes in and sees you’re the only one here, and decides to hold up the restaurant since you don’t have anyone to back you up? And then you’d get fired for losing all the money to a robber, all because you’re the only one left here.”

“We have a silent alarm built in specifically for that,” Shouto points out, amused. “And I’m pretty sure my union would keep me from getting fired, anyway.”

They’re interrupted by the sound of the service bell ringing at the front counter, three times in succession. Shouto turns to see Jirou slam down a paper bag with a few grease stains on it, the bottom bulging out in the shape of a plastic salad container--the kind that are just a little bit too wide to fit into the bottom of the take-out bags, and a little bit too flimsy to be put in sideways. Jirou makes eye contact with him as she hits the service bell one more time, then pulls her apron over her head and disappears into the back room to grab her bag.

“Looks like she’s heading out,” Shouto says, traipsing over to the counter to grab Midoriya’s food for him. “I’m sure your roommate is expecting you back, too.”

“Ah, well…” Midoriya accepts the grease-stained paper bag, but stays seated, setting it down on the table and reaching into his back pocket instead. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if I was a few minutes late…”

“You’re going to stay here?” Shouto asks, one eyebrow raised. “Why?” For the life of him, he can’t think of a single reason why Midoriya would want to stick around in an abandoned McDonald’s at five minutes to ten thirty at night. It’s a Friday, too. Why isn’t this kid at some frat party getting wasted, or spending some quality time with his friends from school?

“Because,” Midoriya says, and smiles so wide Shouto can barely tell it’s the same person as the stuttering mess from the week before. “If I don’t stay, who’s going to protect you from the robber?”

He says it so simply, with just a hint of teasing in his tone, and Shouto can’t help it--he smiles back. Midoriya really is something else, a total different type than the other customers who move throughout the space every day. Shouto can’t remember the last time a customer so much as smiled at him that genuinely, let alone took time out of their day to make conversation with him.

He shakes his head, half disapproving and half disbelieving, and pulls out a chair to sit down. If Midoriya really is insistent on staying with him until his shift is over, or even just until he has to get back to his dorm, Shouto isn’t going to complain. And he’s certainly not going to stand the whole time. Working the front counter has taught him to appreciate the times he’s able to sit down, no matter how brief they might be.

“Don’t let your fries get cold on my behalf,” he says jokingly, and Midoriya nods, lifting the cardstock container out of the bag and resting it upright, pulling a particularly long fry out and holding it up to Shouto.

“Sharing is caring,” he giggles, and Shouto can’t help but find it a little bit endearing. Despite being absolutely sick of the food here after almost half a year of employment, Shouto accepts the fry delicately and pops it between his lips.

“Thanks,” he says when he’s done chewing and swallowing, resting his chin on his hand. “So, care to tell me more about your anti-robber plan?”

If Shouto were to compare Midoriya to a bug, he would probably choose a time-traveling butterfly.

Because compared to the first time the two of them had spoken, Day Two Midoriya seems to have blossomed from an anxiety-ridden caterpillar into a flourishing, well-balanced butterfly. On all accounts, this should be a good thing; it creates less awkward, nervous energy in Shouto’s workplace, and obviously is a better state for Midoriya to be in in general. Shouto even finds himself admitting that he’d had fun the last time he’d seen Midoriya, when they’d stayed and talked for an extra half hour before Midoriya had had to leave.

Well, if Midoriya was a butterfly the second time they met, it seems that he’s transformed back into a caterpillar for the third.

He’s got his sweatpants on again, and a faded Hero Number One hoodie that looks like it’s been through the wash about a thousand times. The hood is up, which is one of the first things that tips Shouto off, the second and more prominent one being the face under the hood. Midoriya seems paler than he was before, and there are dark half-circles under his eyes. It might be the strained, low-budget lighting of the restaurant, but it looks as if he hasn’t gotten proper rest in two or three days.

“Welcome back,” Shouto says as his- his what? Return customer? Acquaintance? Friend? As Midoriya approaches the counter. “Did you run out of food again?”

“What?” Midoriya blinks at him a few times, as if the light from the ugly paper lamps is somehow hurting his eyes, then squeezes them shut and shakes his head. “No, I’m- uh, I’m studying. Again.”

Oh. Well, at the very least, Midoriya will always keep him guessing. Shouto really doesn’t know what to make of that, so instead he stares blankly at Midoriya’s face and says, “What can I get for you today?”

Jirou is gone again, and the restaurant seems even more silent than usual in the seconds it takes for Midoriya to process his words. Shouto doesn’t bother diverting his eyes from his customer--Midoriya seems both too amped up and too out of it to notice a little staring. What’s the harm, anyway? It’s not like Shouto is gonna fixate on him until he leaves the McDonald’s. Midoriya just happens to be the most interesting thing in the restaurant right now.

“Um,” he says at last, picking at the skin around his lip with his fingernails. “A- A large fries and a milkshake.”

“Vanilla?” Shouto asks when after a moment he doesn’t clarify.

“Yeah,” Midoriya says with a small, sharp nod, and holds his card out before Shouto can even finish inputting the order. He doesn’t try to make small talk this time, either, continuing to pick anxiously at his lip as Shouto swipes his card and swivels the pad around for Midoriya’s signature. He has to clear his throat with one awkward cough to get Midoriya’s attention back to the order.

“I’ll bring it out to you when it’s ready,” Shouto tells him, nodding to their usual table. Midoriya nods back, his lips moving in a quiet “thank you” before he shuffles over to sit down, pulling his enormous backpack onto his lap and digging out his clunky old computer.

There are some fries waiting to be served when he goes to check, but at this point in the night they’ve turned cold and mushy. The employees who work right before him always make too many, and he never has a chance to serve them all before his shift is over. Still, Shouto feels bad about serving his three-time customer a carton of wet fries, so he digs the bag out of the freezer and pours some frozen potatoes into the frier, turning the temperature up on the oil before he goes to make the milkshake.

Ice cream in the cup, shake syrup added, blend it all together. Shouto barely has to think about the process at this point in his employment, but he still takes the extra time to make sure the syrup is completely blended in before he sets it on the counter. In his experience, McDonald’s french fries take around three minutes to cook from frozen, less if he cheats and turns the oil a little bit hotter. He waits a minute before tapping the oil out of the fry basket and throwing it into an empty part of the warmer, then grabbing the salt and shaking more than a fair bit onto the newly cooked fries.

By the time he returns to the front of the store with a large fries on a clean tray (and a few extra on the side, only because he made too many) beads of water have started to form on the outside of the milkshake cup. Shouto scoops it up and balances it on the other side of the tray, loops around the counter and crosses the restaurant to Midoriya’s table. He’d refrained from looking Midoriya’s way while he was cooking--it had felt strangely invasive to watch him like that, even though Shouto’s sure he wouldn’t notice--but he doesn’t take his eyes off him now, even as he places the tray down on the table.

“Thanks,” Midoriya says quietly, dragging his eyes away from his screen and focusing them on Shouto instead. He has very green eyes, Shouto thinks but doesn’t say, because again, that feels like a rather personal thing to say to someone he’s only met three times.

Instead, he drags a chair away from one of the other tables and sits facing the wall, with Midoriya on his left. “School stressing you out again?”

“Yeah,” Midoriya sighs, slumping down against the back of his chair and reaching for his milkshake. He looks tired once again, and all Shouto can do to help is nudge his drink towards him with one hand. Midoriya nods thankfully, lifting the straw to his swollen, picked-at lips and sucking some of the melted ice cream through it.

“Should I leave you to do your studying?” Shouto asks as Midoriya continues to drain half of his shake in one go. (It’s kind of impressive. He’s not even breathing through his nose as he sucks.)

At last, Midoriya lets go of the straw with a pop and another sigh. “Please don’t,” he mumbles, shaking his head. A few green curls fall in front of his face and he doesn’t bother pushing them back in place, but Shouto almost does.

What’s that about?

“What- what are you working on, anyway?” he asks, striving for any form of conversation that might keep his customer distracted. Midoriya looks seconds away from a nervous breakdown, and he really doesn’t want it to come, for both of their sakes.

“Essay,” Midoriya explains quickly, and when Shouto risks a glance up at him, he’s staring down at his keyboard distressfully. “It’s due in class tomorrow.”

“Which class?” Shouto prompts, his mind encouraging him to keep him talking .

“Japanese lit,” Midoriya sighs dejectedly, sinking down further into his seat like a popsicle in the sun. “I hate it.”

“Japanese lit isn’t a required class,” Shouto says observantly, watching Midoriya reach out weakly to pick up a french fry. “Why are you taking it if you don’t enjoy it?”

“It’s for a scholarship,” Midoriya explains, then pauses to bite the fry in half. “I think it was my mom who helped me get it. And- and now I have to take a bunch of hard classes to be able to afford going to Yuuei, and I don’t know how I’m going to be able to pass all of my classes at this rate, and then I’ll have to drop out and go to a community college, and everyone will have worked so hard to get me into Yuuei for nothing, and-”

He cuts himself off with a gasp, having run out of air somewhere in the middle of his ramblings. Shouto scrambles for something to say, anything that will make his almost-friend feel a little bit better, because Midoriya looks seconds away from spiraling further once again, and he doesn’t really know how to handle that kind of stuff. He’s never had problems with money, and yet he’d still had good enough grades that he’d been able to snag a “rich person scholarship”, as Jirou puts it whenever she brings it up. His family is plenty rich, thanks to his father’s rather successful business, and he’d barely even needed to lift a finger to pay his tuition. He has no idea the kind of stress Midoriya must be under to keep his scholarship.

“It’s okay,” he says, leaning over to pat Midoriya on the shoulder awkwardly. “You haven’t failed yet, right? That means there’s still time.”

“But it’s so much ,” Midoriya mutters, rubbing a hand over his face. His cheeks are so squishy, Shouto realizes, and he has almost identical freckle patterns on either cheek, too. It’s pretty cute.

“That’s where prioritizing comes in,” he says, a bit more confidently. Midoriya gives him a strange look, muttering “huh?” under his breath, and Shouto opens his mouth to explain.

Working fast food hasn’t taught him many valuable life skills, but it has taught him to think about what’s more important and focus his attention on that. If there’s only one person on the register, but the fries are close to burning, he’s learned to prioritize the food knowing that it will only take thirty seconds to save. If the ice cream machine is broken (and it always is) but the customer is angry about it, he’s learned to hand out coupons first and call the repair people second. It takes more on-the-spot thinking than most people realize, and this is exactly what he needs to tell Midoriya.

“Prioritize the fries,” he says instead. Reasonably, Midoriya looks confused.

“I just mean,” Shouto continues quickly, “that the best way to handle a large stack of responsibilities is to choose what’s most important, and work from there. If you have a large assignment for an important class, like an essay or a presentation, it should take priority over a smaller assignment, even if it’s for an equally important class.”

“But, um, I still need to get it all done in time,” Midoriya argues, although he seems to be coming down from his almost-spiral. “I don’t want to fail any of my classes at all.”

“You won’t, if you think about the assignments in terms of how many points they’re worth,” Shouto explains, resting his hand parallel to the tray of food. “Think about it. If you fail a project worth twenty points because you were working on a project worth sixty, you’ll have better grades than if you try to work on both at the same time and don’t finish either.”

Midoriya stares at him blankly.

“Make sense?” Shouto asks, thinking back to his earlier sentences to make sure they aren’t complete gibberish.

“Yeah…”

To his surprise, Midoriya starts to nod--slowly, at first, and then picking up speed as he sits up straight once again. “You’re right,” he tells Shouto, sounding almost surprised. “You- Todoroki-san, you’re right!”

Back to Todoroki- san , huh? Shouto thinks with a shake of his head, smiling despite himself. “And don’t work too hard, Midoriya,” he says, because it only seems fair to use his name. “Remember, you’re still young. It’s good to take breaks and do something enjoyable every now and then.”

“Enjoyable…” Midoriya trails off once again, and ends up staring at Shouto’s face for so long that Shouto wonders if he’s fallen asleep with his eyes open. Then he blinks, and his eyebrows shoot up comically. “I’m not that young!” he protests, leaning forward over the table.

“How old are you?” Shouto asks, because he’s kind of been curious. Midoriya doesn’t look a certain age, but he could pass for a young, kind of beefy high schooler if he wanted to.

“Eighteen,” Midoriya says. “My birthday is July fifteenth.”

“You’re my senior, then,” Shouto says dryly. “I’m gonna start calling you Old Man Midoriya.”

“What? When’s your birthday?” Midoriya asks, eyes wide. “I was sure you were older than me.”

“I’m seventeen,” Shouto tells him with a smile. “My birthday is January eleventh.”

“So young!”

“I know. I’m practically a baby compared to you.”

“Hey!” Midoriya actually cracks a smile at that, and Shouto counts it as the biggest win of the night. “We’re only six months apart, right? That’s not such a big gap.”

“You’re right,” Shouto agrees, and then because he really can’t help it any longer, reaches out to push a few of Midoriya’s stray curls out of his face, letting the ugly restaurant lights hit Midoriya’s tan skin and dance off of his wide eyes.

It occurs to him, somewhere in the back of his mind, that this probably isn’t anywhere in the customer service handbook.

It also occurs to him that Midoriya is maybe, possibly, definitely leaning into his touch.

“Eat your fries,” Shouto tells him, pulling away as gently as he can. He doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore. This has turned into something other than an employee and customer relationship. Are they friends now? Because he helped Midoriya with his schoolwork? Should he ask, or just assume?

“Do you want any?” Midoriya asks, pushing the carton of fries to face Shouto. They seem to still be warm, since they’d only just come out of the hot oil a few minutes ago, but Shouto’s been a McDonald’s employee long enough that he’s no longer tempted by the food they serve there.

“I’m okay,” he says, rising to his feet, and then glances at Midoriya’s almost blank computer screen. “I’ll leave you alone now. You’ve probably got to get back to writing, right?”

“Oh,” Midoriya says, sounding almost disappointed. “Right.”

“Don’t work too hard, though,” Shouto tells him, then pats his shoulder in what he hopes is a comforting gesture. “I’ll… see you soon, okay?” he adds hesitantly.

When he looks up, Midoriya is smiling again.

“See you later, Todoroki-san,” he says, and the waver in his voice is almost completely gone now.

Shouto slips away to the back and mentally tallies his wins, two for the night.

Midoriya seems to have decidedly good days and decidedly bad days.

It’s strange, but Shouto can almost tell exactly what kind of day it’s going to be the second his new friend walks through the door. His clothes, his eyes, his body language, always seem to be dead giveaways to how the interaction is going to go.

On bad days, Midoriya will be bundled up like it’s the middle of winter, in his baggiest, oldest, most worn-looking clothes, usually with a hood pulled over his head. Shouto has seen the holy sweatshirt/sweatpants combo return once in the last week, along with a hoodie that has to be borrowed from someone twice his size, because it practically swallows him whole. (And Shouto hasn’t forgotten about how muscular Midoriya is, either. He’s pretty sure that memory is etched into his brain, and he only feels a little weird about it. Friends can admire each other’s arms without it being weird, right?)

His skin, Shouto notices, will usually be paler, like he hasn’t gone out in a few days and hasn’t been eating enough fruits and vegetables. (Honestly, considering the amount of times Midoriya shows up at the McDonald’s, Shouto isn’t sure he’s getting any fruits and vegetables at all. Maybe he should start including those Happy Meal apple packs in with Midoriya’s meals.) He’ll have dark half-circles under his eyes, and his hair will be unbrushed and wild from lack of care. It would be a pretty cute look, if it didn’t come with the nervous stuttering and mumbling and the quiet thunk ing of Midoriya’s head against the table when he reaches his breaking point.

When Midoriya is feeling better, he’ll dress a little nicer; button-up shirts over clean T-shirts and jeans that seem to be taken good care of, with only a few small holes here and there. He’ll be brighter, more talkative, more willing to make jokes… It makes Shouto happy when he comes in with a smile and a Hi, Todoroki-kun ! instead of slinking into the shop like a wounded animal.

That’s another thing that changes from day to day: Midoriya’s use of -san and -kun.

When he has a bad day, Shouto has noticed that he calls him Todoroki-san . Like they really are two strangers who just happen to know each other’s names, and haven’t bonded over poorly made milkshakes, over-salted french fries, and college homework at ten at night. It’s strange, because he’s never used any type of honorific for Midoriya, and the kid has to know that Shouto isn’t treating him like he would any other customer. Still, he keeps himself formal on his bad days, and Shouto doesn’t correct him, partly because he doesn’t feel the need to, and partly because he doesn’t know how.

On good days, Midoriya calls him Todoroki-kun , and Shouto tries his best not to smile when he bounds into the restaurant with clean clothes and freshly washed hair and goes, “Hi, Todoroki-kun!” like Shouto is his favorite person in the world. Shouto can’t imagine anyone putting that kind of energy out there for everyone, but if he could, the first person he’d think of doing that would be Midoriya. (It also probably means he’s prone to being hurt by less enthusiastic people, so Shouto makes sure to check his dry jokes before he says them, because god forbid he dampen his customer-friend’s spirits.) (It also also means there’s no way in hell he’s single, because how could somebody so sunny and bright and- and him not have someone who loves him?)

Anyway.

Shouto obviously prefers the good days to the bad, because he wants Midoriya to feel better, and also because his own social ineptness isn’t as blatantly obvious when he’s talking to good-mood Midoriya. On good days, Midoriya talks more, smiles brighter. On bad days he shrinks in on himself, apologizes, and apologizes again when Shouto tells him it’s okay. He seems… worse. Off. Shouto doesn’t know how to explain it--he has to remind himself that even through all of their meetings, he barely knows the guy. And then he buries himself in his homework, and Shouto is left watching him from the distance between the counter and his normal table, the restaurant silent save for the music playing over the tinny speakers.

So the bad days are worse by far. But the worst days, he realizes with surprise one rainy, lonely evening, are the ones where Midoriya doesn’t show up at all.

It’s a good day, Shouto can tell, as soon as Midoriya walks in.

He can tell because of the smile on his face, and also maybe because there are three other people with him who all seem to be having a good time together. Surprisingly, Shouto is only now realizing that this is the first time Midoriya has come in with friends, despite having seen him so often in the past couple of months.

The girl on Midoriya’s left is cute, short and round with pink cheeks and round eyes and shoulder-length brown hair that curls inwards at the bottom. Her arm is linked with another girl’s--this one has hair a shade darker than Midoriya’s, a wide mouth and deep black eyes, and she’s somehow even shorter than the first girl. To Midoriya’s right, a tall, rather square boy with rectangular glasses and a short, neat haircut is making a chopping motion slicing the air in front of him into countless pieces.

“Welcome to McDonald’s,” Shouto says, because he may be able to get away with more-than-friendly customer service with Midoriya, but he’s never met the other three before, and he doesn’t want to step out of McDonald’s mandated passive-polite character just yet.

“Ah, Todoroki-kun!” Midoriya exclaims, clearly not on the same page as he breaks away from his group and bounds up to the counter. “How’s work?”

“Fine,” Shouto says, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Boring.”

“Are you all alone again?” Midoriya asks curiously, leaning to the side to peer into the exposed kitchen and squinting like a cat woken up from a long nap.

“No,” Shouto says with a shake of his head. “Jirou is here today.”

“Good!” Midoriya chirps as the rest of his friends join him at the counter. “I feel bad whenever you’re working alone.”

“I don’t mind it,” Shouto tells him gently. Work is slow, but being alone doesn’t make it go any slower. Usually it just allows for Shouto to catch up on homework while there aren’t any customers, or zone out until he hears the bell above the door ring. (He’s starting to develop a pavlovian reaction to the sound--Yaoyorozu’s text alert is set to sound like bells, and it takes him a moment to remember where he is every time it goes off.)

“Deku-kun,” the girl on Midoriya’s left says, her eyes lighting up as she speaks. “Is this the guy you were talking about earlier?”

Despite the question being aimed at Midoriya, Shouto is still surprised when he opens his mouth to speak. He’d figured that Deku was the square one with the glasses. He has a distinct feeling that Midoriya said his first name was something different--maybe it’s a nickname?

“Uraraka-san!” Midoriya exclaims, waving his hands around wildly. “I wasn’t- I mean, it wasn’t like that!”

“Midoriya-kun,” the glasses guy says, setting a boxy hand on Midoriya’s shoulder and effectively steadying him. “Why don’t you introduce us to this friend of yours?”

“R-Right!” Midoriya agrees hastily, dropping his hands to his sides. “Everyone, this is Todoroki-kun! He works here.”

“Clearly,” Shouto says, dry.

“My name is Iida Tenya!” says Iida Tenya, apparently.

“I’m Uraraka Ochako!” the brown-haired girl chimes in, resting her crossed arms across the counter. “It’s nice to meet you, Todoroki-kun!”

“Call me Tsuyu,” the short girl adds, raising a finger to her mouth. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

“Maybe at Yuuei?” Midoriya suggests. “Todoroki-kun’s a freshman there, too.”

“I think he’s in our English class, Tsuyu-chan,” Uraraka says, bumping her shoulder against Asui’s. “I remember that blank stare too well!”

Shouto can’t help but snort. It’s definitely not the first time he’s heard that .

“Do you know what you want to eat?” he asks, gesturing vaguely to the menu above head. Iida steps forward first, hands dropping to his sides stiffly.

“I would like a salad and a cup for water, please,” he says, and Shouto thinks, Ah, he must be the salad roommate . (Because what other college-age kid goes to McDonald’s and orders a salad and nothing else?)

“I’ll have a burger and a strawberry shake!” Uraraka adds, letting go of Asui’s arm and linking onto Iida instead. “Thank you!”

“Can I have the fruit and yogurt parfait?” Asui croaks, sticking a finger to her lips.

“Sure,” Shouto says. They should have a couple left over from breakfast, and at this point in the night, he usually forgoes the strict mealtime rules anyway. He turns to Midoriya, one eyebrow raised meaningfully. “Large fries and a milkshake?”

“You know me so well,” Midoriya says with a grin, eyes sparkling as he leans against the counter. Shouto smiles back, and only barely notices Uraraka elbowing Asui in the side subtly.

“You can take a seat,” he says, jerking his head towards the table Midoriya usually occupies as he finishes adding in the order. “I’ll bring your food out to you when it’s done.”

Uraraka giggles behind her hand, and Iida leans down to say something about “impeccable service for a fast food chain of its stature” to Midoriya, just loud enough for Shouto to catch. Midoriya swats at his friend with a “Shh!” and ducks his head as he shuffles towards the table. Shouto smiles to himself and goes to start the fries.

“Jirou-san,” he says in the general direction of the back of the kitchen. “Will you start up a burger?”

“What, we actually have customers?” Jirou replies, popping up beside him.

“Didn’t you hear the door?”

“I thought it was your boyfriend coming to visit again.”

“He’s-” Shouto starts, but one look at Jirou proves to him that there’s no point in arguing. She’s barely even listening to him anyway, half plugged into her phone through those garish electric purple earbuds she’s always wearing even though she’s not supposed to. Besides, what difference would it make? Over the past few months of working with Jirou, he’s learned that she thinks what she thinks, and nothing much can change that.

“Just start the burger,” he says instead, turning back to the fries and turning the heat up on the oil. Once he’s plunged the frozen potatoes under the surface, he turns to the shake machine and fills two cups with soft serve, shoots strawberry shake syrup into one and plain sugar syrup into the other, and blends them for a full minute each to give the fries time to cook. Midoriya likes his fries extra salty, he’s pretty sure, so he makes sure to shake extra seasoning onto them as he works.

He sets the fries down on a tray with the two plastic cups, then turns to the mini fridge and grabs a salad bowl out from the middle, where the best salads are usually hiding. He almost lets the fridge close, but sticks his hand in to snatch one of the fruit parfaits as well, not even bothered when the door taps against his arm.

Salad, parfait, milkshakes, fries. Jirou is working on the burger, so all that’s left is to grab the cup for water. He swings around to the front of the counter and heads to the soda machine, noting sourly that somebody had left ice on the floor, which has now half-melted into a puddle of water.

McDonald’s customers really are something else.

He loads the tall paper cup with ice and holds it under the water spout until it’s almost full, then pops a lid on and grabs one of the paper-wrapped straws to deposit onto the tray. A glance into the kitchen tells him that Jirou is just finishing wrapping the burger in its signature grease paper, so he leans against the customer’s side of the counter and waits for her to drop it off.

“This isn’t a real restaurant,” Jirou reminds him, smacking the underside of his visor as she sets the burger next to the fries. “They can come pick up their food themselves.”

“There’s nothing else to do,” Shouto argues, maybe a little bit defensive, but Jirou just sighs and rolls her eyes at him as she retreats to the back room. Probably to doze off with her earbuds in until her alarm goes off, or maybe to grab her jacket and punch out early once again. He would tell her to stay if he hadn’t been absolutely right--there really isn’t anything else for them to do. Their shift ends in half an hour, and Fukukado is supposed to be in by then, since she’s working a double tonight. If any new customers come in, Shouto is more than sure he’d be able to handle it.

He disregards the thought as he grabs the tray with both hands and turns towards Midoriya’s table, careful not to spill the water cup as he moves towards them. Midoriya locks eyes with him a few steps away, and Shouto has the sudden urge to avert his gaze, stare down at the food instead of into Midoriya’s impossibly bright irises. He resists both options and ends up watching Iida make a chopping motion with his hand instead.

“Thank you!” Uraraka exclaims as he sets the tray down in the middle of the table, immediately reaching for her drink. “I’ve been wanting a strawberry milkshake all week .”

“I told you I’d buy you one this morning,” Midoriya reminds her, but she waves him off with a grin, straw between her teeth.

“This is better,” she says once she’s taken a few gulps. “Now we get to meet the famous Todoroki-kun!”

“Famous?” Shouto repeats, turning a questioning glance towards Midoriya. Has he been a topic of conversation lately? What would Midoriya even say? The kid who works at the McDonald’s watched me cry my way through another Japanese History paper two nights ago! I think he’s getting desensitized to it!

“Ah, um,” Midoriya mumbles, ducking his head and crossing an arm over the back of his neck. His ears are a little red where they poke out from his mess of hair. “I might have mentioned you a few times.”

“A few ?” Uraraka snorts. “Try every other day for the past-”

“ Uraraka-san !”

Midoriya’s whole face is beet red now, and Shouto briefly considers offering to turn the temperature in the restaurant down, or bringing out one of the big industrial fans from the back room. Uraraka is laughing almost maniacally now, and Asui has a hand in front of her mouth, hiding a smile. Even Iida seems amused by Midoriya’s embarrassment.

“Well, he does eat here a lot,” Shouto says, deciding that maybe he should take Midoriya’s side in his time of need. “I did memorize his order.”

And the way he likes his fries, and also the way he says my name on any given day and the way his cheeks round out when he smiles.

“You two are pretty cute,” Asui says, reaching over Uraraka to grab her parfait. Midoriya groans, dropping his head onto the table with a thump. Shouto is suddenly glad he’d decided to clean that table earlier in the day, for no reason at all other than he thought it looked a little dirty.

“Have pity on Midoriya-kun,” Iida admonishes the girls, fighting a smile. “We’ve teased him enough for the day.”

There’s one short moment where none of them speak, just sit there staring at Shouto like it’s opening night and his line is next. He hesitates, leaning his weight on his back food as he thinks about retreating to the kitchen, because Midoriya has his friends here, and he doesn’t need Shouto to keep him company anymore.

He means to leave. He does , he’s already shifting to turn away and head back to the counter, like the good, handbook-following employee that he is, but then Midoriya raises his head an inch and peeks up at him through his curls, and Shouto freezes on the spot.

“Sit with us?” Midoriya asks quietly, his words mumbled into the sleeve of his shirt. Shouto throws his mental handbook over the counter, because he really can’t say no to that.

He grabs one of the chairs from the bolted-down table behind him and sits at the edge of the table facing the wall, with Midoriya to his right and Uraraka to his left. Midoriya raises his head further and reaches out to offer him a particularly long, thin french fry. (McDonald’s quality control really needs to get their shit together, but that’s a problem for corporate.)

“So, Todoroki-kun,” Uraraka says, then pauses to take a sip from her milkshake, her cheeks puffing like a hamster’s as she drinks. “What’s it like working here? Do you have to deal with crazy customers all the time?”

“Define crazy ,” Shouto says dryly. “We see a lot of… interesting people here.”

“Tell us about them!”

Shouto thinks for a second, accepting a second french fry from Midoriya as he does. “There was a man who insisted he was the manager and refused to let anyone order until he’d checked his employees’ credentials,” he says, glancing over at the counter. “He tried to fire me, so I pretended to go home and called security from outside.”

“Were you the only one working again?” Midoriya asks, eyes wide.

“Fukukado was working with me,” Shouto replies. “She thought the whole thing was hilarious. At least it kept the customers calm, hearing her laughing at him.”

“I’m glad your quick thinking kept you safe,” Iida chimes in, and he even sounds relieved.

“It was fine,” Shouto says with a shrug. “We’ve had more dangerous situations handled quicker. Plus, if I actually get hurt, I can sue the corporation and actually make some money for once.”

Midoriya snorts, and his cheeks round out once again, eyes squishing upwards as he smiles. It’s a little bit infectious. Shouto can’t help but smile back, watching as his friend covers his mouth with his sleeve and looks up at him with laughter in his eyes. He really does look cute when he smiles, especially when he tries to hide it behind his drink or his hand or cover it with a bite of french fry. Shouto has been graced enough to see all three over the past few weeks, and he can’t decide which one he likes best.

“Why don’t you work at the Endeavor corporation?” Uraraka asks, snapping Shouto out of his trance in an instant. He blinks, turning his gaze from Midoriya to Uraraka, wondering if he’d heard right.

“You’re related to Todoroki Enji-san, right?” she continues, tapping her fingers on the side of her milkshake cup. “The famous businessman? You could work for him instead, couldn’t you?”

Shouto doesn’t mean to, really he doesn’t, but he flinches. Midoriya’s face changes, his lips popping off of his straw with a little smacking sound, and he opens his mouth a little, like he’s going to say something, but Iida beats him to it.

“I was wondering the same thing, Todoroki-san,” he says, setting his fork down on the flipped plastic lid of his salad bowl. “My father told me that Todoroki Enji’s son was attending Yuuei in the same year as me. I could only assume that he was referring to you.”

“Is it true, Todoroki-chan?” Asui croaks, one finger pressed to her lip inquisitively.

“Guys!” Midoriya hisses, glancing between the three of them nervously. “Todoroki-kun’s at work! He doesn’t have to answer all our personal questions.”

I’d answer it easily if we were alone, Shouto thinks, then shakes his head quickly. These are Midoriya’s friends. They make him happy. The least he can do is try to answer their question.

“Technically, I’m his son,” he says, watching Midoriya relax slightly out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t consider him family, though.”

“Is he paying for your tuition, too?” Asui asks. This time, even Iida seems to regret her words for her, but Shouto shrugs them off like they’re nothing. He’s had this conversation before, usually in more hostile situations, with less friendly people. Besides, he can tell that Midoriya wants to know, too, despite being too polite to ask himself.

“For now, he is,” he explains, then gestures loosely to his uniform, keeping his eyes trained on Midoriya rather than the others. “But I’ve been working as much as I can so that I can pay for it myself next year, and maybe move in with a roommate as well. I don’t want him to have anything to hold over me, or anything to take away if he decides I’m not worth it anymore.”

“And you’d rather work at a McDonald’s than at his company?” Asui half-asks, half-states. Shouto nods, mouth pressed into a flat line.

“My father’s company may pay well,” he says, “and I’m sure they have to deal with far less than we do here. But on principal, I’d rather work at a job I got for myself, where I’m as independent from him as I can be, than work under his thumb for the rest of my life.”

It’s stupid, he knows--he always has. He’s letting his pride get in the way of the comfortable future he could have so easily, putting himself at risk by going against his father’s wishes. But no matter how stressful, boring, and underpaid his current job is, he’d still felt so relieved when he’d first gotten it. That feeling hasn’t gone away over time, either--no matter how much he hates slow, lonely nights at the restaurant, he’d still take them gladly over the perfect work day at his father’s office.

Plus, he meets people like Midoriya here. He’s pretty sure that people like Midoriya would never set foot inside the Endeavor corporation, yet here he is at the local McDonald’s at ten forty-two at night, offering Shouto french fries he should be sick of but can somehow still stomach. And even though he sounds overly prideful and frankly rather stubborn, Asui, Uraraka, and Iida don’t seem to judge him in the slightest.

“You’re so independent, Todoroki-kun!” Uraraka exclaims, smiling at him. “I want to be more like that, so I can help my parents out as soon as I can. They worked so hard to give me a happy childhood, I want to repay them by getting a good job and letting them retire as soon as they can!”

“My family has been working on and off with the Endeavor corporation since I was a child,” Iida says, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I have to say, your father never left a very good impression on any of us, Todoroki-san. He was rather brash.”

Shouto cracks a smile, and Iida smiles back at him, warm like Midoriya when he grins at something Shouto says on a particularly good day. No wonder they’re all friends , Shouto thinks, as Uraraka laughs behind her hand again and Asui gives her a fond look. Midoriya really does know how to pick the best people.

“When do you get off work, Todoroki-chan?” Asui asks, then dips her spoon into her yogurt parfait. “Do you have to stay very late?”

“Only until a little after eleven,” Shouto tells them with a shrug. It’s not terribly late, all things considered. (And it goes by much quicker when Midoriya decides to pay a visit, but surely that’s just because Shouto gets pretty bored when he’s left to his own devices.)

Midoriya brightens up, and as if he’s read his mind (or maybe just his expression) says, “We can stay with you until then!”

“It’s way past Iida’s bedtime, but I’m sure he doesn’t mind,” Uraraka adds, nodding rapidly as she unwraps her burger.

“Normally I wouldn’t condone staying up late the night before we have classes, but I can make an exception since we haven’t finished our dinner yet.”

A lopsided smile tugs at Shouto’s lips, and he settles further into the chair, content to sit and stay for once because even the model employee needs to break the rules sometimes, and if he’s going to get in trouble for anything, it might as well be for something worthwhile.

Midoriya hands him another french fry as his friends chat and laugh and ask questions, and Shouto thinks it tastes even better coming from him.

There is a rise in the number of good days Midoriya has in a row.

Shouto has been subconsciously counting over the past week and a half since he came in with his friends, and so far the tally is three days interrupted. On the first, Midoriya leans against the counter and chats with him as he blends his milkshake and shakes salt over warm french fries in the kitchen. (Jirou isn’t there to poke fun at him for his strange relationship with his only repeat customer, and he has the music down low, so he can hear Midoriya over the soft sound of the fryer.) On the second, he asks Shouto about his siblings, the other famous Todorokis, and Shouto learns a little bit about Midoriya’s family, too. The most recent visit ended with Shouto actually walking Midoriya to the restaurant door, and for a second they’d just stood there together, and he hadn’t wanted to move, but his shift had been over, and Midoriya had class the next day.

Anyway, Shouto has been enjoying the good day streak maybe a little too much, because Midoriya has been getting more and more comfortable with him with every visit, and for some reason that makes him happier than he thought it would. It might be true that he’s getting a little too used to Midoriya’s good mood, because when he slinks through the door on the fourth day in a thick hoodie and old jeans with dark bags under his eyes and unkempt hair falling in front of his face, Shouto kind of forgets how to react.

“Welcome to McDonald’s,” he says on instinct, then bites the tip of his tongue behind his lips. “Here to get some work done?” he adds awkwardly, hoping that maybe Midoriya is too distracted to register his slip back into customer service.

“Yeah,” Midoriya mumbles, and reshoulders his backpack as if to prove his statement. His face is blotchy, Shouto realizes. This is maybe the worst he’s seen Midoriya since the first day he’d come in over a month and a half ago.

“Do you want the usual?”

“Yeah,” Midoriya says again, fumbling to grab his wallet out of his pocket. Shouto watches as he inserts his card with a shaky hand, his mouth pressed into an uneven line as he misses the slot twice. He thinks that maybe junk food is the last thing Midoriya needs right now, but it’s ten twenty-four at night, and crappy junk food is better than nothing at this point.

“You should sit,” he says as Midoriya finishes entering his pin. “Get a head start on your work. I’ll bring your food out when it’s ready.”

“Th-Thank you,” Midoriya says, blinking at Shouto rapidly a few times before turning and dragging himself over to their usual table. His backpack makes a dull thunk against the floor as he drops it and leans over to fish out his old, battered laptop, then begins typing away.

Shouto turns and begins the fries, and thinks.

Midoriya had been doing so well, the last few times they’d seen each other. He’d been hanging out with his friends, opening up about his family, and furthering the strange relationship they’d developed over the past few weeks. He wonders what kind of assignment could have set him back to his shy, stuttering, unconfident self in such a short amount of time. After all, his last visit had only happened two days ago, and now here they are, in two different areas of the same restaurant which all of a sudden feels oppressively silent.

When everything’s fried, salted, and blended, he takes it all out on a tray lined with paper advertisements, setting it down gently behind Midoriya’s laptop and holding the shake out to him expectantly. It takes Midoriya a couple of seconds to look up, and when he does, he just stares at the milkshake blankly until it’s set down in front of him.

“Thanks,” he says at last, slowly, as if he’s been working on his answer mentally while Shouto was waiting.

“Of course,” Shouto replies just as slowly, wondering if it will help. He’s kind of out of his depth here--he had an emotionally stunted childhood, and even all these years later, comforting people has never exactly been his strong suit.

“French fry,” he offers, so awkwardly that it sounds more like a statement than a question. Midoriya sniffs, and looks up at him through his mess of curls like he hadn’t quite heard him.

“You should eat,” Shouto says a bit more eloquently, nudging the tray of fries forward until it taps the back of Midoriya’s laptop. “You’ll feel better if you do.”

“Maybe,” Midoriya says, gaze fixed on his computer screen. His eyes are glassy, like he might start crying, or like he’s been staring at the same screen for far too long. Either way, Shouto doesn’t like it.

“Come on,” he urges, kneeling down at Midoriya’s side and reaching around to grab a few fries off the tray. “It’s late. If you’re planning on staying up to study, you’ve got to have some food.”

“I’m not hungry,” Midoriya mumbles, turning his gaze to the wall on his other side. He can’t even look me in the eyes , Shouto thinks, melancholy settling heavy in his stomach. Did something happen? Did I do something wrong?

“Have you eaten yet today?” he asks, determined to at least get this right. From what Natsuo has told him, anxiety only grows worse when someone hasn’t taken care of themselves, especially when it comes to eating, drinking, and sleeping. Midoriya looks like he’s done very little of all three--Shouto thinks he can see his hands shaking over the keyboard, and the computer light only serves to deepen the bags under his eyes.

“A few hours ago,” Midoriya says, half-guilty. “I just- I was trying to work on my assignment, and- and I was trying so hard, but all I could d-do was stare at the screen, and nothing was getting done, a-and I wasted so much time -”

As he speaks, his tone gets higher, and the words start coming faster and faster, until Shouto can barely keep up. He opens his mouth to speak, to try and help even though he doesn’t know the first thing about handling a situation like this, but Midoriya isn’t finished yet.

“It’s due at-at midnight, and I forgot about it, because I was working on a g-group project with a bunch of people w-who weren’t helping at all-”

“Hey,” Shouto says, setting a hand down on the table and leaning closer. He doesn’t know what to say.

“I can’t do it,” Midoriya stresses, his eyes shining with unshed tears, looking seconds away from spilling over. “I-I’ve been trying so hard to keep up, for my s-scholarship, a-and I was doing okay at first, but then- then everything started to pile up, and I tried to prioritize like you said, b-but I hate failing assignments, and it’s too hard, and I can’t do it !”

If he has something else to say, it’s cut off by a choked sob that tears at Shouto’s heart a little more than it should, and suddenly Midoriya is flat-out bawling in the middle of his restaurant, and he has absolutely no idea what to do. Panicking, he reaches out with one hand as if to pat Midoriya on the shoulder and ends up knocking his milkshake over instead. Luckily, it doesn’t spill onto the laptop, but a fair amount of it does drip onto Shouto’s black uniform pants.

Midoriya wails. That seems to have made it worse.

“It’s okay,” Shouto says, still in a minor panic. “It’s okay . It’s okay that you can’t do it. You shouldn’t have to put this much stress on yourself just to get an education.”

“I know ,” Midoriya cries, hiding his face behind his palms, his nose poking out between his hands. He looks so small yet again, fragile and tender and exposed more than he’s ever been before. He’s worse than he’s ever been before; he’s never cried like this, not since Shouto has known him. Once again, his heart begins to tear, and this time when he reaches out there’s nothing to knock over, nothing in his way.

He means to pat Midoriya on the shoulder, a friendly yet respectful gesture that usually works just about as well as an emotional band-aid, but Midoriya seems to take it as an invitation to dive headfirst into Shouto’s arms and bury his face in Shouto’s neck, and though he isn’t usually a hugger, he finds that he doesn’t mind so much this time. He barely realizes that his own arms have come up to settle around Midoriya’s back and shoulder blade, and that he’s started to rub small, comforting circles into his friend’s back as he cries.

“You’re okay,” he murmurs, almost too quiet to hear. “You’re alright. It’s okay.”

Midoriya keeps choking, making little hiccuping noises that sound so small, but so loud in the empty, empty room. Shouto shushes him as best he can, thankful for once that Jirou hadn’t shown up for work that afternoon. There’s no way he could explain this to her if she asked, and she’d probably come to her own conclusions anyway.

“You’re okay,” he says again, his lips brushing Midoriya’s ear. His heart skips in his chest, and his breath catches in his throat, and if it were anyone else, in any other situation than this, he would have pulled away at that. But he doesn’t, yet.

A few minutes pass, and Midoriya’s sobs turn into whimpers into the hollow of Shouto’s neck, then die out completely, until the only sound in the room is their uneven breaths evening out into the night. The song changes, and neither of them acknowledge it.

“You’re okay,” Shouto whispers one more time. Midoriya nods, his curls brushing against Shouto’s throat, feather light.

He pulls away and clears his throat, wishing he’d turned the air conditioning on earlier because it suddenly feels much, much too hot in the room. They sit down in their respective chairs quietly, neither of them saying a word or making eye contact. Shouto isn’t really sure what just happened, but it feels important, and he’s too unsure of himself to mess it up by asking.

Instead of looking at Midoriya’s face, or his hands or his chest or any part of him, he turns his attention to the laptop on the counter, reaching out to close the lid gently with a single motion.

“Wh…” Midoriya lifts his hand in protest--Shouto sees it out of the corner of his eye (he still isn’t looking at him)--but he lets it drop after just a second.

“This isn’t good for you,” Shouto says, addressing the puddle of half-melted ice cream. “You need to take a break.”

“But it’s due at midnight ,” Midoriya repeats, and when Shouto finally looks up at him, he’s staring mournfully at the closed computer screen, like he wants to go back to his work when they both know that that’s not the case at all.

“It doesn’t matter,” Shouto tells him firmly, picking a couple of brown paper napkins off of the tray he’d brought over and wiping at the puddle of ice cream. The cup, still overturned, is dripping melted milkshake onto the floor now--he’ll need to go to the back and grab the mop, probably, but he’s afraid of leaving Midoriya alone. What if he goes back to working on his project? What if he starts to cry again? What if he leaves?

“Todoroki-san,” Midoriya says, his voice close to steady now, “I know you mean well, but I can’t fail this class.”

“But you can fail this assignment,” Shouto replies. “What you really can’t do is destroy your health for the sake of a grade you probably don’t even need.”

“My scholarship-”

“You’ll be okay,” Shouto promises. “You can afford to fail one assignment. They won’t take anything away from you if you do. And if they do, you’ll find a way to pay for your tuition.”

“How?” Midoriya asks, half-hopeful.

“Well,” Shouto says, “you can always work at the Endeavor corporation. I’m sure I could hook you up with a nice assistant position somewhere with the higher-ups.”

“Sounds fun…”

“Oh, it is,” Shouto tells him. “You can take them their morning coffees before classes. They’ll ask you for the morning newspaper, and you’ll get to run three blocks to grab it from the closest news kiosk. And none of them will ever remember your name, so they’ll just call you Freckles for the rest of the year, and you won’t correct them because you need the job more than you need to hear your own name.”

He’s surprised when Midoriya snorts, quiet, his eyes lighting up the littlest bit. “You think that would work for me?” he asks just as quietly.

“Oh, it would. And you’d look very nice in a shirt and tie.”

“Thanks,” Midoriya says, almost shyly. “For what it’s worth, you look nice in your McDonald’s uniform. It goes well with your hair.”

“First time somebody’s told me that, believe it or not,” Shouto jokes. Midoriya cracks a smile, and his heart skips a beat once again.

The two of them sit there for a few seconds, neither of them daring to speak. Midoriya seems calmer, a little bit happier, and that at the very least makes Shouto’s night better. He’s never been very good at comforting people, and yet here his friend is, post-breakdown, smiling at his jokes and complimenting his uniform and his hair… It’s nice, knowing that he helped a little bit.

“Let me get you another milkshake,” he says, standing and gesturing over his shoulder to the kitchen. “Don’t go anywhere, okay? I’ll be right back.”

“Sure,” Midoriya agrees, and even after Shouto has turned around and retreated to the kitchen, he can feel Midoriya’s eyes on the back of his neck, and he can picture his smile perfectly in his head.

And if that happens to make him smile, too, it’s none of anyone’s business. Midoriya’s happiness is just contagious, is all. There’s nothing more to it than that.

“You again?”

Midoriya smiles hugely, not at all ashamed as he bounds through the door and heads straight for the counter, leaning against it towards Shouto with his arms braced forward as he grins. “Me again,” he says happily, eyes shining, caught between the yellowing light of the restaurant and the fluorescents of the kitchen. “How are you, Todoroki-kun?”

Better now that you’re here, Shouto thinks, barely restraining himself from making a face at the thought. Has he become one of those people now? Is he going to start quoting shitty three-dollar Hallmark greeting cards next?

“I’m good,” he answers, still honest, just not as much so. “Glad to see you’re feeling better.”

“Thanks for taking care of me last time,” Midoriya says, his cheeks a little pink, maybe from the cold night air or maybe from embarrassment. “I’m sorry you have to deal with me when I’m like that.”

“I don’t mind,” Shouto answers instantly, and Midoriya’s face gets a little bit redder. “You want the usual?”

“I think so,” Midoriya says, leaning his weight on one arm as his other hand reaches down to fish out his wallet.

“Do you ever think you’ll change it up?”

“Maybe someday.” There’s a pause, while Shouto punches in Midoriya’s order almost on muscle memory alone, and Midoriya swipes his card and taps in his pin. “I could switch out the milkshake, maybe. I think I like french fries too much to change to burgers or chicken.”

“What about the fish?” Shouto jokes.

“I’m not so sure I trust the fish,” Midoriya replies, grinning again. “Maybe you could give me some recommendations, though. I’m sure you know the menu pretty well by now.”

“Too well,” Shouto agrees, smiling back a little bit, because he really can’t help himself anymore. Midoriya is infectious when he’s like this. “It’s a shame McDonald’s doesn’t serve soba, though. I would use my employee discount every day of the week.”

“You like soba?” Midoriya asks.

“You’d have to be crazy not to,” Shouto replies.

He pumps soft serve into a cup, and Midoriya stands at the counter and hums along to the tune of a song Shouto doesn’t recognize playing over the sound system. Once the shake is all blended, he grabs the whipped cream from the mini fridge and sprays maybe a little more than usual onto the top, because he messes it up the first time and has to add another swirl to make it look good again. Nobody will notice, and if they do, they won’t mind.

He returns to the front counter and slides the drink to Midoriya, who’s still standing there humming, and reluctantly retreats to the kitchen to finish the fries. He kind of wishes Midoriya came in on a more regular schedule (or just came in every day, maybe) so he could have the fries ready for him around the right time every day. In the end, Midoriya is usually his last customer of the night, and it’s not worth it to risk making a whole batch of french fries if he’s not sure he’ll actually sell them.

Still, he’s considered it before, and he considers it again now.

The oil sizzles as he lowers the frozen potatoes into the fryer, turns the heat up a notch or two extra, and waits, tapping his fingers against his leg impatiently as he does. He’s a little tired today--it’s the end of his work week, and he’s still got a pretty substantial pile of homework waiting for him back at the dorms, but he’s okay. Maybe a little bit spacier than usual, but okay.

Salt on the fries, then into the container they go, and Shouto returns to set them on a tray and grabs a few napkins along the way. He’s learned that Midoriya never uses the little ketchup packets from the restaurant, but he puts a few on as well just in case he changes his mind.

“Sit with me?” Midoriya asks, accepting the tray with one hand, and holding the milkshake in his other.

“I suppose I could,” Shouto replies, but he’s already looping around the counter. He follows Midoriya to the table he’d once again cleaned down earlier, and takes a seat across from him gladly. Midoriya taps the end of his straw against the table and breaks the paper at the top, then pulls the rest off with his teeth and sticks it into the shake.

“So winter break is almost here,” Shouto says as he takes a long pull from his drink. “That’s good.”

“Yeah!” Midoriya agrees. “I’ll get to spend some time with my mom for the holidays. She’s taking a few days off work, so I’m gonna go visit her while she’s free.”

“Does she live far away?” Shouto asks, blinking. He’d never thought about it before.

“Not at all,” Midoriya says. “I can take the train right back to her neighborhood, and it only takes me about half an hour. I should go to visit her more often, but I get kind of distracted with school…”

“I’ve noticed,” Shouto says, not unkindly. “It’s nice that you’ll be able to visit her soon. I’m going to visit my family over the break for a few days too, but I’m not exactly looking forward to it.”

“Won’t you get to see Natsuo and Fuyumi, though?” Midoriya points out, perching his head on his hands, elbows propped up on the table. “I’m sure they miss you a lot. It will be nice to see them, at least.”

He’s right, but Shouto doesn’t want to admit it. He shakes his head slightly, pressing the palm of his hand sideways against his face to cover his mouth, and uses his other hand to nudge the tray of fries towards Midoriya. They should have cooled enough from the hot oil to not burn, but it hasn’t been long enough for them to grow cold, either.

Midoriya grabs a long, thin fry, almost perfect compared to the odd shapes of the others, and ignores the packets of ketchup in favor of lifting it directly to his mouth and taking a bite. “Todoroki-kun,” he says, then pauses to swallow, “what about your mother?”

“What about her?” Shouto says, his brain snapping back to focus. He hasn’t told Midoriya about his mother yet--then again, if he knew who Todoroki Enji was before, he might have read the reports about his mother’s hospitalization from a few years ago. He would have been around Shouto’s age when the incident had actually happened, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t watched countless reporters try to slip more information from his father over the years. There’s no telling how much he knows now.

“Well, are you going to visit her during the break, too?” Midoriya continues, and Shouto thinks, So he does know . “I’m sure she’d be happy to see you, wouldn’t she?”

“She might be,” Shouto says, but he really doesn’t know. He hasn’t visited his mother in a few months, too tied down with school and his job to make the time to visit. What if she’s angry with him for waiting so long? What if she’s gotten worse?

He remembers vaguely that the last time he’d paid her a visit had been during the first week of his new job. He hadn’t known how to work the fryer, or the right way to assemble the fry containers. He hadn’t known Midoriya . It’s strange to think that his mother knows nothing of his strange friendship with Midoriya, a customer and fellow student turned into someone Shouto actually finds himself caring about.

Truth be told, Natsuo and Fuyumi don’t know about Midoriya, either. It’s not like he’s trying to hide it, exactly; he just doesn’t know how to bring it up, what to say. What’s he supposed to tell them? That he’d befriended a stressed college student who eats fast food too many times in a week for it to be healthy? That he’d helped that student through several stress-induced breakdowns, comforted him as he’d cried in an empty restaurant with nobody else around, met his friends and learned about his family… All without ever leaving the McDonald’s in the first place? They don’t even have each other’s phone numbers , let alone their addresses or class schedules.

So what’s he supposed to say when he brings it up? That they’re friends, sure, but is that all there is to it? Shouto has never been the most emotionally intelligent person, but even he can tell from the way Midoriya looks at him that he’s special to him. And Shouto knows that Midoriya is special to him, too. He doesn’t treat just anybody like this, wouldn’t break the rules he’d worked so hard to follow for just anyone. It’s different, with Midoriya. They don’t have to pretend, or follow any sort of handbook.

He just has to be himself. He’s still learning how to do that.

A hand appears in front of his face, outstretched, snapping him out of his semi-trance. The skin covering it is rough and scarred, and Shouto notices for the first time that the raised tissue leaves marks all the way up Midoriya’s arm, until it disappears under the sleeve of his shirt. For the amount of damage on the offered hand has suffered, the gesture is surprisingly gentle and soft.

Shouto looks up questioningly, his eyes meeting Midoriya’s, and he tilts his head to the side as if to ask “What?” without ever having to open his mouth.

“Dance with me,” Midoriya says, wiggling his fingers in front of Shouto’s face invitingly. Shouto blinks, surprised. Did he really hear that right? The boy who was practically a stranger less than two months ago wants to dance with him , a grease-covered, sleep-deprived cashier, in the middle of a deserted McDonald’s, to the sound of whatever song is playing over the shitty speakers in the corners of the restaurant? It’s ridiculous, and he almost laughs out loud just thinking about it.

But instead, he finds himself nodding, accepting Midoriya’s hand with a soft “Okay,” and letting himself be pulled ungracefully past the table and into the middle of the floor. There’s a little space between the tables and the counter, which is where they end up standing, right between the fluorescents and the dim yellow ceiling lamps once again. For the first time, Shouto’s kind of glad that he’s the only employee on duty. He doesn’t think Jirou or Fukukado would ever let him get away with something like this, even though they’re the ones always slacking off or skipping work all together.

Midoriya grabs his hand and guides it to his waist, resting it above his hip, and Shouto brings his other hand down to do the same. His friend stretches both arms up to rest on Shouto’s shoulders and he begins to sway back and forth to the music. Neither of them speaks for a long time, content to just sway together as they inch closer and closer, until their bodies are barely an inch apart. Shouto can feel warm breath against his neck, and it sends a blush into his cheeks, which he tries and fails to fight.

“You smell like french fries,” Midoriya murmurs, almost too quiet for Shouto to hear, then looks mildly alarmed. “I didn’t mean to say that,” he says, shaking his head quickly and frowning down at Shouto’s nametag. “I mean, you do, but it’s not a bad thing!”

“It’s fine,” Shouto says with a huff of laughter. “It’s all in the job description. Besides, you like french fries, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” Midoriya replies, as if it weren’t already obvious. “Who in the world doesn’t like french fries?”

They sway for a minute or so more, and the song changes to one Shouto doesn’t recognize. Midoriya seems to know it, though--he’s back to humming by the time Shouto finds the courage to slide closer, pressing his chest against Midoriya’s. A few locks of wild green hair tickles his neck, but he doesn’t move away, and eventually Midoriya moves to rest his head against Shouto’s shoulder.

“Did you ever go to a school dance, Todoroki-kun?” he asks quietly, his breath ghosting against Shouto’s neck once again.

“No,” Shouto says simply.

“Me neither. I imagine it was probably a lot like this, though.”

“You think?” Shouto turns his head slightly to take in the restaurant; chairs haphazardly scooted under the tables, a small puddle of soda under the fountain machine, a tray of barely touched french fries and a half-drained milkshake on the other side of the room.

“Yeah,” Midoriya says, soft and firm. “But I think I like this better.”

It’s eight minutes to eleven when the bell above the door jingles softly.

This, of all things, shouldn’t be surprising. It’s often close to the end of his shift when college students come stumbling in from their late-night parties, looking for something to cure a case of the munchies or soak up the beer they’d had a bit too much of. (They usually leave the restaurant a complete mess, too, and Shouto ends up having to clean up after them if he can’t escape before whatever cup of soda or bag of fries inevitably gets spilled.)

Because he’s almost positive that whoever has just come in is drunk or high or both, it takes him a second to look up from his book. (He’s not usually one to read on the job, but he has five chapters due tomorrow, and he’s a little bit behind. Besides, it’s not like there’s anyone else there to chastise him for it.) But when he isn’t met with the sound of shouting or giggling or anything else that suggests inebriation, he forces himself to pay attention and glances up from his page.

Oh. It’s Midoriya.

This he hadn’t actually been expecting at all. Midoriya always seems to come in a good half an hour before his shift is over, just to make sure he doesn’t have to stay late in case his coworkers miss their shifts. If he isn’t there by ten forty, Shouto usually gives up on waiting for him and pulls out something to distract himself.

Not that the late visit is unwelcome, at all. Shouto would rather have Midoriya come in ten minutes till he clocks out than not come in at all, which is kind of embarrassing to admit, but he knows it’s the truth. He slips an old receipt into the pages of his book and lets it close on its own, straightening up and brushing the wrinkles out of his work shirt. “Hey,” he says, awkward, and Midoriya breaks out into a smile, but it’s different than his usual grin.

“Hey,” he repeats, and his voice sounds different, too. Almost off, but not like it is when he’s having a bad day. (Not like it is when he’s having a good day, either. For the first time, Shouto doesn’t know which it is, and that kind of sets him on edge.)

He flounders for words for a couple of seconds, ends up defaulting back to “Large fries and a milkshake?” and is halfway to waking the register up to punch in the order when he realizes Midoriya is shaking his head.

“Not today,” he says, scratching at the side of his face seemingly nervously. “I actually, um… I came in to talk to you.”

“You… what?” Shouto blinks at him in confusion, wondering if he’s misheard. Surely Midoriya didn’t wander all the way across campus at an hour till midnight just to talk . “Are you sure? I can get you a pretty good discount if you buy two medium fries instead of one large.”

Midoriya giggles, although it definitely sounds nervous this time. “I’m sure,” he says, laying his folded arms down horizontal on the counter. “I really do just want to talk.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah.” Midoriya scrunches up his face, shaking his head so his curls rearrange. “Well. I guess? I just- I really wanted to see you.”

Shouto feels his face start to heat up, a blush flourishing across his cheeks and up to his ears. What have I become? he thinks to himself, resisting the urge to press his hands to his face.

“Here I am,” he says, as calmly as he can manage.

“Here you are,” Midoriya repeats with another nervous laugh. “You, um, your shift ends soon, right?”

“Yeah,” Shouto says, casting a glance at the clock on the far wall. “Five minutes till I’m off.”

“Ah, good…” Midoriya shuffles in place, leaning further over the counter and staring down at an old stain on the fake wood. (Shouto isn’t actually sure where that particular stain had come from, but it hadn’t been there the day he’d been hired. It must have been day crew’s mistake, then.) “Are you free after?”

“Am I free?”

“I mean, do you have plans for the rest of the night?” Midoriya clarifies. “Homework or anything?”

Shouto looks down at his book, the old paper receipt staring back at him, reminding him that he’s still a couple of chapters behind. He opens his mouth and glances back up at Midoriya, then closes it again.

“Not really,” is what he settles on in the end. It’s not a lie, not really--going back to the dorms and reading hardly counts as plans .

“Then… Would you want to go somewhere?” Midoriya looks up at him again, green eyes wide and searching. “With me, I mean?”

Shouto blinks again, surprised. He certainly hadn’t been expecting that when he’d clocked in earlier in the afternoon. A few screaming children and harried parents, sure. Old men yelling at him to hurry up with their orders, definitely. A proposition from Midoriya at close to eleven at night? He doesn’t even know what to say.

“Where did you want to go?” he ends up saying, because shouting yes right away seems a little bit intense, and he’s still not sure if Midoriya is completely stable, but the last thing he wants to do is scare him away.

“I don’t know,” Midoriya admits, shuffling in place again. “Anywhere? It doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s with you.”

Shit, Shouto thinks, feeling his face go traitorously red once again. He’s so cute. Does he really mean that?

“I was just thinking,” Midoriya continues, eyes flickering between Shouto’s face and the counter between them. “We only ever see each other here, when you’re at work and I’m stopping by to say hello… Don’t get me wrong, i-it’s nice to do things the way we do! I like our little routine, it’s just… I don’t want to just be your customer.”

“You’re not,” Shouto protests immediately, shaking his head once. “We’re friends, Midoriya. We’ve been friends for a while, haven’t we?”

Is he wrong? Has he misread the situation once again? He can’t have--everything they do together is something that one friend would do with another. The special routines they have for each other, the long conversations about nothing, the memorizing of each other’s orders, the comforting, the food sharing, the dancing… Midoriya wouldn’t do any of that stuff with him if they weren’t friends, right?

“Of course we have,” Midoriya tells him, and Shouto lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “But…”

But?

“I don’t, um, I don’t mean to assume anything,” Midoriya mumbles, tapping his fingers against the counter a couple of times, his nails landing with soft clicks against the shined surface. “We’re not… Friends isn’t all we are, right?”

Oh.

Um.

Shouto feels his heart stutter for a second inside his chest, eyes widening the tiniest bit as he takes in Midoriya’s words. Friends isn’t all we are. Does he mean… Are they really something more? As socially dense as he comes across to most people, he’d thought he was at least good enough at reading people to tell how they feel about him.

“By that, do you mean…” he starts, slowly, giving Midoriya plenty of time to jump in and correct him, because being wrong about this would probably be the most painful and embarrassing mistake of his life. “That we’re… more than friends?”

“Todoroki-kun,” Midoriya says, then bites the tip of his tongue between his teeth. “ Shouto- kun,” he corrects himself, and Shouto feels a shiver travel down his spine at the mention of his own first name. (His face is on fire by now, he’s sure of it.) “Haven’t you ever thought about us? Really thought? I mean, you had to notice that I didn’t even come to McDonald’s regularly before I met you.”

That… is actually true. Shouto had already worked at McDonald’s for a few months by the time Midoriya started coming in--the school year had been in full gear for about the same amount of time, too--and yet he’s sure they’d never seen each other before that first day when he’d felt an odd need to reach out to him. (And thank god that he had.) After that, Midoriya had started showing up more and more, always when Shouto was working, and yet he’d never thought much of it. Maybe it hadn’t been so much of a happy coincidence.

(Not that it doesn’t make Shouto happy. Midoriya’s visits are pretty much the only thing he has to look forward to when he arrives at work, not counting clocking out and going home hours later.)

“Shouto-kun,” Midoriya continues, “I don’t even like burgers. I like katsudon.”

“But you do like french fries, right?”

“I do,” Midoriya says. “But the french fries weren’t the reason I kept coming in.”

The milkshakes, then ? Shouto wants to add, but something stops him from saying it out loud. There’s a time and a place for dry humor, and as far as he can tell, this isn’t that.

“The food here is okay,” Midoriya says, glancing past Shouto and into the empty kitchen pointedly. “But I like you more.”

His face is flushed a deep red at the cheeks and ears, and his eyes are wide and earnest even as they dart around the restaurant, refusing to meet Shouto’s gaze. His fingers twist together on the countertop like he’s not quite sure what to do with them, and Shouto suddenly feels a distinct urge to place his hand over Midoriya’s and twist their fingers together instead.

For once, he lets himself give into his urges.

Midoriya’s skin is worn and scarred and calloused against his, and there are two little band-aid patches on his left hand, one on his knuckle and one in the divot between his thumb and index finger. Shouto keeps his focus on those two patches as he slips his hand between Midoriya’s like a sandwich, and says in the steadiest voice he can manage, “You’re crazy if you really like me better than the fries.”

“Shouto-”

“ But, ” Shouto continues, and then forces himself to lift his gaze to meet Midoriya’s shy stare. “If we’re being honest, I like the days I get to see you even more than the days I have off.”

“Y-You do?” Midoriya repeats, eyes wide as dinner plates. “Really? You’re not just saying that?”

“Honestly, Midoriya,” Shouto says, “if it weren’t for you, I probably would have quit a month ago.”

Midoriya lets go of Shouto’s hand then, and he would complain, but the way Midoriya is hiding his face behind his crossed arms is too cute to be mad at. He looks the same way he does when he’s too stressed about college work, only Shouto can see his eyes crinkling at the corners in that way that only happens when he’s smiling uncontrollably wide. He can’t help but smile too, just a little bit, but on the inside he feels like he’s glowing.

“So,” he says, trying to fight down the almost-grin and failing miserably. “Did you still want to go somewhere after this? My shift ends in a couple of minutes, and then I’m free for the rest of the night.”

“Ah, um.” Midoriya unwraps his arms from his face and smiles up at him, glowing just as brightly as Shouto feels he is. “There’s a twenty-four hour soba shop across campus, if you’re hungry… Last time I was here you said you liked it, and I’m sure you’re sick of eating McDonald’s food with me all the time…”

“You remembered,” Shouto murmurs, half to Midoriya and half to himself. “I’d like to go with you very much,” he adds a bit louder. At the same time, the two of them glance up towards the clock on the wall, just as the minute hand hits eleven.

“Look at that,” Midoriya laughs. “Perfect timing.”

“I’ll go grab my things,” Shouto tells him, gesturing to the back room vaguely. “Be back in a minute.”

“I’ll be here!”

There’s a passageway from the back room to the hallway with the bathrooms hidden from the customer’s view, that only the employees know about. Normally, Shouto doesn’t use it--he always changes when he’s back at the dorms, simply because they’re cleaner and more comfortable to be shirtless in. But apparently he’s got a date after work today--can he call it that? He’s going to call it that--and going to a nice soba shop in a striped McDonald’s uniform shirt and an ugly visor doesn’t exactly sound appealing to him. So he grabs his backpack, thankful that his shirt from earlier in the day isn’t too dirty to wear again, and heads off towards the passageway to the bathrooms.

He means to change quickly, in and out without any stalling or fuss, because if he waits for even a minute he’s afraid he’ll get nervous and mess things up. Stripping himself of his work uniform, he leaves it in a crumpled pile on the floor and swears he’ll wash it when he gets back to the dorms. He pulls out his old black turtleneck and is just finishing pulling the top of it over his head when he catches sight of himself in the mirror, and- oh.

He really is smiling.

Shouto doesn’t smile a lot--not really. He lets the sides of his mouth curl up sometimes when he finds something particularly amusing, but he never full-on smiles . But now that he’s thinking about it, he has been grinning more and more recently, when Midoriya makes a stupid funny comment or jokes around in that cute way that he does when they’re alone. Even when all he’s doing is smiling at Shouto, he tends to smile right back.

Midoriya does that to him.

Shouto steps closer, reaching up to touch one side of his face as he does. His cheeks almost hurt from how much his mouth is stretched into them, now that he’s noticing it, and his eyes are lit up like little christmas lights are hanging inside of them.

He likes it. He likes what Midoriya’s been doing to him.

He’s probably waiting for me, Shouto realizes suddenly, tearing his gaze away from the strange (but far from unwelcome) expression on his face and grabbing his uniform off the ground, stuffing it unceremoniously into his backpack and closing the zipper as he makes his way out into the restaurant.

Midoriya lights up when he sees him, extending a hand as Shouto swings his backpack over his shoulder. Their palms fit against each other perfectly, like two puzzle pieces, or the yin and the yang. Shouto thinks of this as Midoriya takes the lead, reaching out with his free hand and pushing the doors to the restaurant open for both of them.

The night air is cool against his skin, but Midoriya’s hand is warm in his, and Shouto finds that he doesn’t mind the cold as much like this. Midoriya turns to look back at him, whispering “Come on, Shouto-kun!” into the wind, and Shouto follows him out into the rest of the world with the same stupid smile on his face, because he really can’t help it.

He casts a glance back at the McDonald’s and mouths a silent thank you to whatever god, or demon, or fast-food deity had led him to be so lucky as to meet the perfect, the amazing, the one and only Midoriya Izuku.