Work Text:
01: Sero Hanta likes to see the world like the manga he reads; all brush-pen strokes and crosshatched shading and weighty sound effects.
02: Growing up, his neighborhood friends wear baseball caps and graphic tees plastered with All Might insignia, rooms adorned in posters of a dozen different pro heroes—so many idols to choose from in their superhuman society.
03: He bypasses looking up to real people entirely (always the wild card, Hanta is) and instead finds his heroes in the volumes stacked within too-small shelves in the corners of his room.
04: Elementary school Hanta thinks everyone must be the star of their own show, a protagonist in their own right, but after years of being overshadowed (plain, unremarkable, average, everyone says), middle school Hanta thinks that can’t be right.
05: Perhaps some people only exist to be scribbled extras behind shining main characters.
06: Perhaps Hanta is one of them.
07: Yuuei High is full of people with what Hanta dubs protagonist potential, and that goes quadruple in Class 1-A.
09: Ashido stands out immediately (pink skin and black sclera—she’s hard to miss), as do Kirishima and Kaminari (courtesy of their vivid, vivid hair); even coarse, arrogant Bakugou fits the bill well enough.
10: Todoroki Shouto doesn’t assert his presence or make himself known like Bakugou or Iida do — Hanta doesn’t even notice him until he devastates everyone in the quirk apprehension test—but of all Hanta’s classmates, he’s easily the most protagonist-worthy.
11: Todoroki is soft intensity and finespun strength, oddly symmetrical despite his white-red hair, his gray-blue eyes, that scar.
12: During the Sports Festival, it's no surprise the three in the spotlight are Todoroki, Bakugou, and Midoriya (raging hurricanes, all three of them; oncoming storms, oh-so-full of that elusive protagonist potential).
13: Maybe if Hanta had some protagonist potential of his own, there’d be a chance of him defeating Todoroki.
14: (But he doesn’t, and there isn’t.)
15: There is a moment, impossible and infinitesimal, where Todoroki is a meter from the boundary and it seems like Hanta might win.
16: Hanta sees Todoroki’s mouth move but doesn’t hear the words (though he does catch his glare— steel-turqoise; knifelike and frigid as his ice crystals).
17: The frost gnawing at his skin is bitter as the loss.
18: He startles more than the others as Todoroki chills the whole stadium in his battles against Midoriya and Bakugou (cold—he rubs his hands up and down his arms as he shivers—freezing).
19: In true protagonist fashion, Todoroki is involved with every disaster—Stain, training camp, Kamino Ward—and Hanta isn’t sure how he feels being his neighbor when Yuuei turns boarding school.
20: Being cooped up in Heights Alliance means Class 1-A learns a lot about each other, and Todoroki is no exception.
21: Hanta keeps a mental list—subconsciously at first, before deciding he may as well commit to his interest in the enigma that is Todoroki Shouto.
22: It goes a little like this: Todoroki has cold soba so frequently you’d think he’d get tired of it (but he doesn’t), Todoroki gets more sleep via afternoon cat naps than actual slumber (sometimes Hanta hears him pacing his room until two, three, four in the morning), Todoroki leaves to visit his mother every Saturday morning before the sun rises (and is always back before lunchtime).
23: “Wait, you’re reading this?” Hanta holds up the pristine paperback manga volume as Todoroki re-enters the common room with a steaming cup of tea.
24: Todoroki halts as though Hanta caught him doing something he wasn’t supposed to, then shrugs. “No, I finished it already.”
25: “Really? Well, don’t spoil anything.” Hanta grins. “Hey, would it be cool if I borrowed it? I’m trying to keep up with the series but I didn’t know where to get the latest volumes.”
26: Todoroki eyes Hanta for a moment before giving him the slightest nod.
27: Hanta learns a lot about Todoroki after that encounter—they like the same manga, for one thing, and for another, maybe Todoroki isn’t so much standoffish and aloof as he is just awkward.
28: After that, things fall into a routine of sorts; Hanta gives Todoroki recommendations, Todoroki lends him the newest volumes, and they talk manga and hero news in between homework and studying and training.
29: “Sero,” Todoroki begins unprompted one chilly afternoon, contemplating the flaxen sunbeams diffusing through the leaves of the white pine they’re sitting at the base of, “I’m sorry for overdoing it at the Sports Festival.”
30: It catches Hanta unawares, and he huffs out a laugh and swats at Todoroki’s arm. “Hey, don’t sweat it! It was a competition, after all. And anyway, I probably wouldn’t have won even if you didn’t go that hard.”
31: A moment of quiet — soundless save for cheeping wood pigeons and the rustle of dry leaves—then Todoroki faces Hanta, and his ash-teal gaze, often so sharp and shrewd, has a certain mellowness Hanta has grown fond of. “You’re underestimating yourself. It wasn’t as hopeless as you thought it was. That first attack, it was— good. It caught me off guard.”
32: “Wow, did it really?” Hanta gives him a lazy smile. “Well, nice to know I did something interesting enough. Still. I don’t think I ever had much of a chance. I mean, you’re... fuck, you're Todoroki Shouto.”
33: “Yes, well,” Todoroki says, the corners of his lips slightly upturned, “you’re Sero Hanta.”
34: Hanta tacks item after item to his ever-increasing list of Todoroki Shouto facts: Todoroki has practically the same taste as him in not only manga but also room decor and tea, Todoroki buys manga volumes even when they’re available online, Todoroki prefers sprawling out on Hanta’s hammock to sitting on the common room couch, and Todoroki, for all the times he tells Hanta otherwise in between apologies of how boring he must be, is a wonderful friend.
35: Later, Hanta learns more important things, too, like that Todoroki spent years flinching at sudden movements and getting nauseuous at the sight of fire (he remembers his expression at the sports festival, contorted and furious, and that flaming figure in the stands).
36: “I didn’t realize you guys were such good friends,” Kaminari tells him one day after Todoroki pokes his head into Hanta’s room to retrieve a sweater he forgot. “It’s kinda unexpected! But like, it also really works?”
37: Hanta and Todoroki are no poetic duo—they’re no birds of a feather nor polar opposites; they don’t clash like Todoroki and Bakugou do nor are they connected like Todoroki and Midoriya seem to be.
38: (But Kaminari’s right; it works.)
39: They’re lounging on opposite sides of Todoroki’s room when Hanta adds another item to his Todoroki Shouto Fact List: Todoroki is (objectively) kind of the prettiest boy in class.
40: If not a protagonist, he would make a good love interest—he’s got the looks down, anyway, and that reserved tenderness veiled beneath his cool exterior, and fuck, Hanta thinks, where is all this coming from?
41: He’s mulling it over, sipping from a carton of ginseng green tea as he and Todoroki enter the common room for breakfast, when Todoroki—graceful, coordinated Todoroki—trips on nothing and plummets to the floor.
42: Hanta snatches a fistful of his shirt and puts a hand on his arm, tugging him back to his feet, and—oh, they’re so close (fuck, fuck, fuck).
43: Ashido lets out a low whistle from her spot on the couch beside a grinning Kirishima, and Hanta releases Todoroki with a sheepish chuckle.
44: He’s definitely not thinking about how stereotypically manga romance this is, and definitely not thinking about the way Todoroki’s hand is on the back of his neck as he determinedly avoids Hanta’s eye, and definitely not thinking about how shit, he’s cute when he’s flustered.
45: Crushes, Hanta thinks, are terrible, terrible things, and contrary to every fucking manga ever, don’t consist of nearly as much dreamy staring at the object of your affections as they do groaning into your pillow at 4:28 a.m. thinking oh my god, I’m so fucked, I’m going to die for the sixteenth time that hour.
46: To the Bakusquad’s amusement, it’s not Hanta who confesses but Todoroki, red-faced but otherwise expressionless as usual with an offhand, heart attack-inducing, “I like you, by the way.”
47: It is certainly not the rose-pink, tender confession you’d find in a manga, and any remaining chances of it becoming so evaporate as Hanta says “Wh—uh, I… like you too, bro?” to which Todoroki shakes his head and responds, “No. I mean. Gay.”
48: Hanta wonders how the hell he managed to not internally combust as he recounts the story to a cackling Ashido.
49: Dating Todoroki doesn’t feel like a manga romance—there are no cherry-blossom confessions or premature declarations of undying love, no school-wide rumors (though Class 1-A certainly has its fun) or first kisses silhouetted against the sunset.
50: But as Hanta wraps an arm around a dozing Todoroki swaddled in one of his oversized orange hoodies (extra oversized on Todoroki), he thinks that quite honestly, it’s far better.