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Todoroki Shouto doesn’t remember how or when or why he falls in love with Uraraka Ochako.
He doesn’t remember when he finally figures it out, can’t pinpoint the exact moment that the pieces just click into place and he realizes that the reason why he’s been unable to look at her for a while now is because he’s afraid he’ll give everything away. It’s as though one day, he’s speaking with her as casually and comfortably as he does with Midoriya, with Iida, with Yaoyorozu, and then the next he’s struck by the profound and unfortunate truth that he’s completely and irrevocably head over heels for her.
He can’t explain it and he’s tried, spending too many sleepless nights attempting to reason with himself. He doesn’t even know how to classify what it is that he feels for Uraraka, doesn’t know how to compartmentalize it like he does with everything else in his life.
A crush? He’s never had one before, but from what he’s gathered it’s supposed to be soft, sweet, gentle, more childish naïveté and laughter like silver bells, the sun melting over the horizon like butter on castella. Nothing that even comes close to the roiling waves in his stomach when she steps into his space, her airy giggles causing something sharp to twist in his chest.
Infatuation? Perhaps so, but that’s more hurried touches and breathless gasps, a secret lover coming in through a window during the dead of night and leaving before the moon gives way to dawn. It doesn’t accurately describe how sometimes, he’s hit with the inexplicable urge to brush the hair out of her face, doesn’t explain the sheer fondness that rushes over him when he catches her chewing on the end of her pencil as she works through a particularly complicated differential equation.
Whatever it may be, all he knows is that he has it bad. Hands shaking, heart pounding, mouth dry as a bone bad. When she so much as tosses a careless smile in his direction, a playful wink here or there, he feels something inside him seize up and shut down.
Not to mention the touching. Uraraka’s always been a rather physical person, high-fiving her sparring partners after a good match or patting a classmate on the back consolingly after an exceptionally hard test, but Shouto’s never really taken notice of just how tactile she is until now. Every time she nudges her knee against his, every time their fingers brush as they reach for the same thing, every time she pounces on him and hugs him tightly has him on edge, has him struggling to remember how to breathe. It’s like all his nerves are shot and it takes everything he has not to sink into her softness and never let go.
So all things considered, it doesn’t really come as a surprise to him when he feels the first ache in his lungs. To be fair, it begins more as a slight tickle in the back of his throat, abating after a few seconds with a particularly strong cough. He waves it off as an unusually persistent cold. It is flu season, after all...
...except that this is no mere cold, he comes to realize after another night spent over his sink, his knuckles white against the granite counter as he hacks and wheezes so hard that his face turns red. No matter how much he tries to remove the discomfort from his throat, it’s always there, always taunting him with its obstinacy.
After three maddening weeks of this phantom itch, Shouto succumbs to his desperation and shoves his fingers down his throat as far as they’ll go. He’s never been keen on inducing vomiting, but at this point, he’ll do anything to relieve the deep-seated burning in his chest. Bile rises, sears his mouth and spatters onto the white porcelain, and he does that again and again until he’s dry-heaving.
Nothing.
He slumps to the floor, shivering in spite of himself. He refuses to believe that it could be that, refuses to even entertain the notion. It’s just teenage hormones, further exacerbated by the fact that his classmates are starting to couple up with each other. Yaoyorozu and Awase, Ojiro and Hagakure—
—Shinsou and Uraraka.
That had come completely out of left field. Sure, Uraraka's always been popular with the students from both classes A and B due to how bubbly and outgoing and amiable she is—hell, even Monoma likes her, and he’s still just as incorrigible as he was their first year—but it had nevertheless been a surprise when she’d shyly announced halfway through their second year that she was dating Shinsou.
Shinsou-kun and I are together, she’d said hesitantly one day during lunch, a pretty flush working its way up to her ears when the boy in question gently took her hand and tugged her into his side.
The response from her friends had been swift.
Iida, ever the responsible one, had started firing off questions at Shinsou—How and when did you begin courting Uraraka? What are your intentions with her? Are you taking necessary precautions when you are intimate?—while the latter merely leveled him with a cool, detached look.
Midoriya had toppled out of his seat, his eyes wide and watering as he choked on a piece of tonkatsu.
Asui hadn’t said anything, only tapped a finger to her chin and smiled serenely, if a bit shrewdly.
After the initial shock wore off, however, Shouto hadn’t really thought anything of it, hadn’t done much more than shrug it off and continue eating. He hadn’t thought it was his place to comment, seeing as though he and Uraraka had only just begun converging from the fringes of mutuality, their nascent friendship still in its infancy.
The real breakthrough in their relationship had come a little later that year. They’d been paired together for their second term final examination, her anti-gravity and his dual quirk merging to form a deadly combination that had sent Midnight sky-high (and quite literally at that). Spending many a late night discussing possible strategies and training together had inevitably pushed the two closer, and suddenly, it was as though a wall had been pulled down between them. Uraraka was no longer as shy, as hesitant around him, and he in turn began to notice her more, started actively seeking her out instead of barely registering her presence.
When they had passed their exam with flying colors, she’d hugged him almost instinctively, her quirk still activated as she leaped right at him and engulfed him in a firm embrace. Shouto had frozen at the contact, his arms hanging limply by his sides as he stared uncomprehendingly down at her.
After a moment, she’d remembered herself and had immediately withdrawn. She had been so flustered at her slip that she’d forgotten to deactivate her quirk; had he not grabbed her wrist, she would’ve floated away. She’d stammered out half-intelligible apologies, all the while glowing bright, bright red.
“I don’t mind,” he’d said dryly, and to his own surprise, he’d found that he meant it. He hadn’t minded at all. Quite the opposite, in fact, when all he’d been able to do was wonder at how someone so headstrong could feel so small and soft against him.
Uraraka’s answering smile had caused his stomach to flip, but not unpleasantly. He’d ignored it.
In retrospect, he probably should have paid more attention to it. But he hadn’t, instead giving her a brisk nod and watching her flounce away to encourage the next team going up.
So maybe that was when the trouble had started, when the feelings he’d held toward her began diverging from their platonic roots into something decidedly less so. Not that it really matters to him now, not when his most pressing concern at the moment is how he’s going to hide this from his friends.
From her.
Shouto wipes his sweaty palms against his pants, his knees creaking as he pulls himself to his feet. He stares at himself in the mirror, grimaces at his haggard appearance: eyes bloodshot, cheeks sallow, a vein pulsing in his forehead. Quite frankly, he looks like hell and feels like he’s been through it, too. With a quiet sigh, he closes his eyes and rests his head against the cool glass.
More than anything, he just wants to sleep.
-
He’s walking across campus back to his dorm when, out of nowhere, the pain hits him like a sucker punch. Shouto doubles over, dropping his bag onto the grass as he hobbles to the nearest tree to steady himself. He coughs until his throat’s ragged, pounds his fist against his chest so hard he’s definitely going to leave a bruise.
It’s different this time. He can feel something crawling up his chest into his esophagus, tortuously slow in its trek. He keeps coughing until it’s in his mouth, dancing along his tongue. It feels feathery, silken, and with a final gasp, he manages to dislodge it completely.
A single pink petal, lightly, delicately speckled with blood and saliva, flutters to the ground.
Shouto stares at it. And he thinks of big brown eyes, apple-round cheeks, and the brightest smile he’s ever seen.
Damn it.
He looks around to make sure that no one’s seen him, then leans down and picks up the petal. Shoves it into his pocket, wipes the smear of blood onto his pants.
It doesn’t matter. He has absolutely no plans of letting her know.
He’ll never tell her because he sees the way she looks at Shinsou, sees the way her cheeks redden and her gaze darts away and her breathing stutters ever so imperceptibly when she’s with him. And he sees the way Shinsou reciprocates, sees the way his heavy-lidded eyes soften when he looks at her and the gentleness with which he wraps her in his arms, the curve of his lazy smile decidedly more genuine when it’s directed at her.
He'll never tell her because he knows that the pain of coughing up these blossoms is nothing compared to the agony of knowing that he’ll ruin their friendship, undo the careful bond of trust that’s taken so long to grow between them.
It’s a secret he’ll take with him to the grave.
Shouto laughs bitterly at the irony, a punched-out exhale that makes his chest hurt.
Then he shudders. It’s morbid, even for him.
He shakes his head to dispel the thought. Straightens, dusts off his hands. Whatever. He’s not going to dwell on it—it’s not like it’ll last for too much longer. After all, he’s never been one to believe in love, has never considered himself a romantic. Not since he’s seen firsthand how it doesn’t exist.
At least, that’s what he tells himself.
-
He’s an idiot.
Shouto repeats this in his head as he massages his neck, trying to breathe as normally as possible through the leaves and roots blocking his airways. He’s already coughed three times during class—rough, lung-shaking hacks that had caused everyone to eye him warily—and he’s shaking with the effort of restraining another wheeze. He’d finished off his water bottle fifteen minutes into third period, and there’s still half a block left until lunch.
His leg is bouncing uncontrollably. Shouto smacks his hand against his knee with a scowl, and in so doing, gets an odd look from Yaoyorozu. He ignores it in favor of glaring at the clock mounted on the wall above the blackboard. The second hand seems to be moving even slower than usual, mocking him with its unhurried pace.
He buries his head in his arms. Wills himself not to burst into flames out of sheer agitation.
Twenty-five minutes tick by, each minute longer than the last. When the bell finally rings, Shouto lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding and rises, his whole body tense.
Despite wanting to get out of the classroom as soon as possible, he finds himself dragging his feet, taking his time packing his books. He doesn’t want to go to lunch, doesn’t want to risk coughing again and possibly opening himself up to his friends’ interrogation. He’s just too tired for that.
There are footsteps approaching his desk. He looks down and suppresses a sigh. Red sneakers. Of course.
“Todoroki-kun,” Midoriya says tentatively, “are you alright?”
He nods, biting down hard on his tongue in a bid to distract himself from the burning in his throat. “Sore throat,” he manages to get out. “Think I caught the flu.”
He ignores the way the other boy’s eyes bore into him, seeking out what he’s trying to hide. Midoriya’s a lot more perceptive than he often lets on, and from the day they met, Shouto has made it a point not to allow himself to underestimate him. He schools his features into his default expression, impassive and immovable, and hopes that his friend will fall for it. Or that, at the very least, he’ll have the courtesy not to comment on it.
“Oh, okay. You should take it easy, then,” Midoriya says after a beat, a frustratingly intuitive look in his gaze.
Shouto grunts in affirmation. He shoves the rest of his books into his randoseru and follows his friend into the lunchroom, where Iida, Asui, and Uraraka are already waiting for them. She’s saved both of them a seat, one on either side of her, and she beckons them over with a cheerful wave.
“Took you guys long enough!” she chirps.
He hesitates for a second too long, can feel green eyes burning into his back when he opts for the seat to her left.
Midoriya settles into the space at her right and seamlessly joins the conversation she’s having with Iida, something about their plans after graduation. Shouto stares at the two of them. They’re laughing and teasing and poking at each other, and their body language is so easy, so familiar that he wonders why she’s with Shinsou when the obvious choice is right in front of her.
He feels strangely hollow at that thought. The obvious choice.
It’s not him, has never been him to begin with. He knows this—it’s not like it’s anything new—so why does it sting so much now?
Shouto stands suddenly, his chair scraping loudly against the linoleum floor and causing his friends’ eyes to shoot to him.
“I’m going to get some food,” he announces robotically. The words are thick and clumsy in his mouth, and he blanches inwardly at the look of confusion written all over Uraraka’s face.
He doesn’t wait for them to respond, just walks toward the line extending from the kitchen. He loiters on it for a couple minutes, then turns and exits through the cafeteria’s double doors once he’s certain their eyes are no longer on him.
Shouto can’t get away fast enough, just barely restrains himself from breaking out into a full-on sprint as soon as he’s out of the lunchroom. He slams open the door to the boys’ bathroom and storms into the nearest stall, petals falling from his mouth in a bloody cascade. He rasps into the toilet, curling his fingers into the cold seat to ground himself.
There are more petals now, floating in a small heap in the water. They’re just as lovely as the first. He can’t tear his eyes away from them, entranced by how unreal they look, and reaches out to touch one. He doesn’t even mind the fact that he’s getting his hands dirty—he’s too fixated on the way the petals rise with the ripples of water, how they slip through his fingertips and come to a rest against his knuckles.
With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Shouto wonders how much time he has left.
-
It’s been days since his last incident. Thankfully, he hasn’t had any more in the meantime, which has kept Midoriya off his radar. For the most part, that is. He’s not blind to the searching looks he sometimes gets whenever he’s especially quiet. He’s fine with that, though. He doesn’t need all his secrets out in the open.
Now, if he can just figure out a way to get over his irrational feelings for—
“Todoroki-kun?”
Speak of the devil.
Big brown eyes are going to be the death of him, he thinks as he swivels his head to see Uraraka standing by his desk. It’s just the two of them in the classroom, everyone else having filed out to enjoy the last few hours of daylight. He doesn’t know whether he should curse his luck or be grateful for it. She’s holding something out to him, hands cupped as though she’s making an offering. Her cheeks are pinker than usual and her smile is soft and sweet as several hard candies tumble onto the table.
“They’re peach-raspberry lozenges,” Uraraka says by way of explanation. “Deku-kun told me that your throat was bothering you, so I got you some cough drops. These are my favorite flavor and they work really well too. Please drink lots of tea and hot water and try to sweat out the cold!”
She ends her statement with an earnest fist pump in the air. It’s the most endearing thing he’s seen all day.
“Thank you, Uraraka,” Shouto responds awkwardly, not trusting himself to say anything else without embarrassing himself completely.
She beams anyway. It’s blinding. He can’t look away, caught in the fiery embrace of her gaze.
“Of course, Todoroki-kun!”
(Why can’t he look away?)
She turns to leave, and something surges in his chest—anguish, sorrow, longing. Without even thinking, he reaches out to grab her shoulder.
“Shouto,” he says helplessly, desperately. “Call me Shouto.”
(Pathetic disgrace, a tiny voice that sounds distinctly like Endeavor’s rings in his head. Idiot. Weak.)
Uraraka bobs her head slowly, her face lighting up and robbing him of his breath. And suddenly it’s worth it, worth having to swallow down an errant petal or two when he gets to see her eyes crinkle like that, her nose scrunching up adorably as she peers up at him.
“Okay, Shouto-kun,” she repeats shyly.
His heart clenches at the way his name rolls off her tongue. It’s as though she and she alone were meant to say it, soft and reverent like it holds precious value. The years he’s spent despising his name—the way it echoes against the walls of the family dojo, his father’s voice austere and brimming with fury—roll up and away in a single silver blur.
“Then it’s only fair that you call me Ochako, right?”
Cheeky, he thinks as he catches the knowing glint in her eyes. And then, infuriatingly: cheeks.
“Right.” He nods, in a daze. “Ochako.”
She breaks out into another grin. He doesn’t know how much more he can possibly take.
“Feel better, Shouto-kun,” and she's walking away, leaving him with the faint scent of strawberries and a lightness in his chest he hasn’t felt for a long time.
-
Shouto learns to deal with it, learns to expect the pain that shoots through him as the petals fester in his lungs, surge up his esophagus. He’s become quite adept at predicting when the attacks will hit, has mastered the art of quietly slipping away from his friends so that he can deal with the problem alone. He’s even taught himself to stave off the need to cough, to soothe the itch in the back of his throat as the seedlings creep up, up, up. He can usually go the entire day without wheezing, can fake his way through until he’s hunched over his sink at night, his eyes watering as he gags on those pretty pink flowers.
He tells himself that it’s endurance training, that he’s only forcing his body to keep up, to acclimate to this new development and overcome it. He tells himself that he has it under control, that if it were really that serious he wouldn’t be able to suppress it like he does now.
Shouto wants so badly to believe it.
And he almost does.
-
“Shou-kun!”
He lurches forward as Ura—Ochako launches herself at him, her body crashing into his and her momentum causing him to nearly lose his footing. He staggers under her weight and almost falls before righting himself. Her giggles ring in the crisp winter air, and she catches his left arm, hugs it tightly to her chest.
He tenses up. His heart, the traitorous little thing, begins hammering against his ribs so hard he prays she can’t hear it.
She’s out of breath, her nose and ears rosy and glowing due to the recent cold snap they’ve been having. Her eyes shine brightly up at him, and he’s transfixed, drinking her in, memorizing the curve of her pretty mouth and the quick swipe of her tongue as she wets her lips. She starts speaking, presumably talking about her day, but he hears none of it, her words rolling over him like waves.
Shouto can only focus on her touch, the press of her small body to his ridiculously intoxicating. She’s nestled into his left side for warmth, her hands moving animatedly as she rambles, and it feels so right that he almost caves right then and there into his urge to kiss her, Shinsou be damned.
Then, like clockwork, he feels the familiar burn begin to flicker low in his chest, tangled roots curling their way up and around his bronchial tubes. He’s long since become accustomed to the discomfort—except this time, it’s ten times more potent and he can’t ignore it, can’t shove it down like he’s done every day for the past three months.
The little leaves keep climbing, trailing spidery-thin offshoots in Shouto’s lungs that sear into him. He struggles to maintain his composure but it hurts like hell, sharp stabbing sensations starting to wrestle with his need to cough.
In his pain, everything recedes into the background. His world contracts, his vision going blurry as his oxygen is slowly squeezed out. Only one thing is keeping him grounded, keeping him from losing it altogether while also ironically exacerbating his torment:
Ochako.
Shouto wrenches his arm from her grip so roughly that she stumbles back, her mouth open with shock. He says nothing, just half-turns away from her and hopes she’ll leave him alone.
Except that this is Ochako he’s dealing with, and she’s nothing if not tenacious. She reaches out, snags his sleeve and tugs. “Shou—”
“Don’t,” he practically hisses. The petals are heavy in his mouth, and he nearly gags on the strong metallic taste that coats his tongue.
Hurt steals across her face and she straightens, withdraws her hand. “Ah, I’m sorry—”
“It’s okay,” he says a little too brusquely. “It’s fine.”
There’s a devastatingly wounded look in her eyes and he cannot, will not, absolutely refuses to meet her gaze because then he will break apart and confess and he just can’t do that. He can’t.
“Did I—did I do something to offend you, Shouto?” Ochako asks, choosing her words carefully.
And, damn it, her voice cracks on his name and a swell of guilt erupts in him, makes him want to gather her in his arms and press his lips to the column of her neck, whisper “I’m sorry” and “please don’t hate me” and “I love you.”
Shouto does none of those things. Instead, he pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales slowly, suppresses the self-loathing that threatens to consume him.
“Sorry,” he mumbles. “’M just tired. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. It’s nothing you did.”
Ochako studies him intently for a long second. He fights the urge to fidget, settles instead for counting the light, barely-there freckles dotting her cheeks. Then, she’s bounding forward and pulling him in for a hug, burying her face in his sweater.
“It’s okay,” she murmurs into his chest. “I understand. You’ve been looking so stressed lately, I get it.”
She rubs his back in calming circles. The gesture brings back a flood of memories: a fireplace flickering in the dead of winter; his mother’s smile before she lost herself, before the embers in her eyes died down to ashes; an older brother whose name rustles at the edges of his mind; a smooth, unmarred face looking back at him in the mirror.
There’s a sudden sting in his eyes, and Shouto bites his lip so hard he draws blood. Ochako’s so compassionate, so accepting of his faults, all the ugly, jagged patches of his soul that he cannot hide, and he doesn’t deserve it. Doesn’t deserve her forgiveness, her sympathy, her love. Doesn’t deserve her.
She leans back to look up at him, her expression settling into something serious and firm. Try as he might, though, he can’t help but admire how beautiful she is with the sunlight framing her face just so, those brown eyes impossibly wide and brilliant.
“If you ever need someone to talk to, I’m right here.” She smiles and it breaks his heart all over again, tears holes through the walls he’s tried to maintain for so long.
Shouto nods stupidly. Then, before he can lose his nerve, he bends down and brings her in for another hug, his hands trembling as he entangles his fingers in her soft, silky hair. He hears her let out a surprised “oh!” but he can’t stop now, not when this might be his only chance to hold her like this.
“Thank you,” he tells her, pouring all of his grief and yearning and love into those two words, hoping she’ll understand.
Ochako only hums, reaches up and strokes the back of his neck. For a moment, just one fleeting moment, he lets himself be selfish and pretends that she’s his, savors the steady thump of her heartbeat in time with his. He breathes in her fragrant shampoo and commits the slope of her back to his memory, his hand trailing over the knobs of her spine through her clothing. She squirms against him, huffs out a quiet laugh, and he swears he’s never heard anything quite so angelic.
It’s perfect. It’s everything he’s dreamed of, everything he could ever ask for.
Then she’s pulling away with a delighted “Hitoshi!” and the illusion disintegrates, just like that.
As he watches her fall into Shinsou’s arms, her fingers intertwining easily with his, Shouto tries to ignore the telltale tickle of more petals forcing their way up his throat and turns his gaze to the ground. He clenches his fists, grits his teeth.
Snow turns to sludge under his feet as he stalks off, flowers pulsing in his lungs.
-
It doesn’t get any better, but Shouto manages. He buries himself in his schoolwork, poring over textbooks in lieu of hanging out in the common area with everyone else. No one questions him—after all, second trimester finals are coming up, and as third-years, their academic success is equally important as their internships and physical abilities. He takes his lunch and dinner in his room, slipping out to the cafeteria only when he knows that he won’t be stopped. If he misses a meal here or there, well, it’s nothing he hasn’t experienced.
It’s fine. He gets by. He’s survived before on worse than this. The flowers retract for the time being, and most days he can breathe without too much difficulty.
He ignores his friends’ worried glances, the meaningful looks they shoot one another when they think he’s not watching. On more than one occasion, he sees them nudge each other and murmur, eyebrows furrowed, when he enters the classroom.
They all try talking to him. Iida comes close, marching up to his desk before homeroom with the same fiery determination he’d had when they’d confronted Stain in their first year.
“Todoroki-kun,” the class rep booms authoritatively, waving his arm in one of his signature hand gestures. “If it wouldn’t inconvenience you too much, I’d like to broach the subject of why you have been so reclusive lately.”
He shifts uncomfortably under Iida’s scrutiny. The latter has never been one to beat around the bush, which frankly makes it nigh impossible to come up with a response that’s both adequate enough to allay any suspicions and just the right amount of ambiguous that it won’t give him away.
Out of the corner of his eye, Shouto can see Midoriya and Ochako gathered by her desk, watching the exchange closely. Beginning to panic, he wracks his brain for a good excuse—for any at all—when Aizawa-sensei slides the classroom door shut, sending everyone else scampering to their seats before he calls them out. It’s with great reluctance that Iida returns to his own, and for the rest of their lessons that morning, Shouto pretends not to notice the pointed stares that are sent his way.
From that day on, he starts coming to class at the last minute, right before the bell rings.
Midoriya ambushes him in the kitchen as he’s digging through the cupboards for some late-night soba. He stands awkwardly by the fridge, pretending to rummage through it but stealing such laughably obvious glances at Shouto that, after five minutes of this, the latter finally loses his patience.
“Is there something you need?”
Midoriya clams up, turns to him with an embarrassed grin. “Ah, no! No, I was just, uh—”
He holds up a bottle of aloe vera juice that’s obnoxiously labeled Kaminari’s gamer fuel—DO NOT TOUCH and says weakly, “Just looking for a drink.”
Shouto just looks at him, unimpressed.
His friend sighs and drops the pretense. “Fine, okay. It’s just—you haven’t been yourself recently, you know? You’re never with us anymore, we barely see you outside of class, and it’s like, I don’t know, like you’re avoiding us on purpose.”
Slowly, he answers:
“And...?”
Midoriya throws up his hands, at a loss for words. “Look, I get that you value your privacy, but what’s going on? Did something happen?”
His voice softens.
“We all care about you. You shouldn’t have to bottle it up, whatever it is you’re going through.”
There's a split second where Shouto genuinely considers telling him everything: the flowers, the jealousy, the pining. He knows Midoriya won’t judge him, knows that he won’t tell anyone else, not Iida or Asui or, heaven forbid, Ochako.
He opens his mouth—then promptly closes it. Because what’s the point?
(Because if he’s being completely honest with himself, even just saying it out loud terrifies him, makes the whole situation much realer than he’s prepared to deal with.)
Instead, he does what he does best: deflects with a tight-lipped smile, gives a vague excuse involving schoolwork and lack of sleep. He ignores the look of alarm and disbelief that Midoriya shoots him and easily sidesteps him to get to the elevator, leaving his soba behind on the counter.
He’s not hungry anymore.
As the doors close, he sees the other boy still standing in the kitchen, his forgotten drink dangling forlornly in his hand.
Ochako herself corners him in the first floor corridor one day, a sheepish smile tugging at her lips as she asks him to tutor her in English.
Shouto bites the inside of his cheek at the thought of the two of them studying together at the library until nightfall, the dim lamplight casting silhouettes across the table, her thigh pressed flush to his, the irresistible scent of strawberries—
“What about Iida or Yaoyorozu?” he suggests stiffly.
Her face falls, and she pouts in a way that should be illegal. Death by cuteness, he’s calling it now.
“I could ask them, but I wanted to study with you! We haven’t hung out in so long—you’re always shut up in your room.”
Ochako clasps her hands together, her bottom lip pushed out playfully. “Please, Shou-kun,” she wheedles, “I’ll owe you!”
He falters, his resolve wavering. It would be so easy—
(—petals tumbling into his sink, stained darker and darker every night; panic shooting through him when he wakes up at four in the morning, clawing at his throat because he can’t breathe; excruciating pain accompanying the occasional bud or two, wrapped as tightly as those candies she’d given him so long ago—)
—and he shakes his head jerkily, puts space between the two of them.
“Sorry, Ochako,” he forces out, the words acrid in his mouth. “I just don’t have the time.”
He turns on his heel and flees back to his room, foregoes dinner in favor of memorizing conjugations and verb tenses until his head’s pounding and the letters on the page are starting to bleed together.
That night, he dreams that he’s drowning. As he slips further and further beneath the waves, her heartbroken face is all he can see.
-
It’s another routine training activity, a few warm-up matches before they begin their more rigorous exercises. Shouto’s paired up with Sero, who’s grown lankier and more agile and has turned into a far more formidable opponent than he was during their first sports festival.
He dodges the reel of tape that’s been shot at his shoulder and rolls to the side, slamming his right hand against the earth and producing a wall of ice that cracks the ground under Sero’s feet in half. The other boy jumps nimbly out of the way and slingshots himself through the air, his face split in his usual easygoing grin as he aims a kick at Shouto’s chest. It connects, sending him flying onto his back and wheezing, black dots spotting his vision.
“My bad!” Sero calls out with absolutely no remorse, laughter hemming his words.
Shouto doesn’t hear him.
His ears are ringing, the roar of blood rushing in his head swallowing up all other noise and reducing everything down to a dull thrum. Something is moving up his ribs, a weight that’s pressing into his heart and making it stutter. His eyes shoot open in panic and he bolts upright as he feels his throat close up around the object in question—a flower in half-bloom, beautiful and horrible and slowly killing him. He can’t breathe, can’t think, his thoughts a jumbled, hysterical mess.
Shouto swallows blindly and then does it again, again, again, until the flower finally stops moving, sinks reluctantly back into his chest. He’s on his knees now, retching and gasping for air as he digs his fingers into the dirt. Vaguely, he hears the sounds of sparring dying down in the background and he knows that everyone’s watching him, watching as he crumbles apart. He blinks back tears of humiliation, his ears growing hot at the unwanted attention.
Sero stands apprehensively off to the side, his arms still up in a half-hearted defensive stance. “Hey buddy, you good...?”
“Todoroki, go see Recovery Girl,” Aizawa-sensei cuts in. His voice is edged with frost, but there’s the faintest hint of concern buried underneath.
He shakes his head. “'M fine,” he manages to choke out through lips sweet with iron.
“Recovery Girl. Now.”
He lifts his head and glares at his teacher through red-rimmed eyes. “I said—”
“Another word and you’re expelled,” Aizawa-sensei snaps, and Shouto knows that he’s lost this fight. “I won’t say it again.”
He staggers to his feet, tries not to sway too noticeably. As he begins to trudge in the direction of the infirmary, he catches Ochako’s eye. She’s pale, trembling, her hand pressed to her mouth as she watches him pass. She moves as if to reach out but pulls back at the last second, uncertainty darting over her face.
It pinches something inside him, makes him feel hot and tight and suddenly he’s so angry he can’t see straight. He wants to lash out, wants to hurt her the same way he’s been hurting all these weeks, wants to break her down and make her cry and choke on the nauseating taste of petals slick with his blood. He wants her to suffer, to know that she’s the cause of all of his agony—
A hand lands on his shoulder, shocking him out of his wrath. It’s attached to Midoriya, who tilts his chin up and gives him a strained smile.
“I’ll take you to Recovery Girl,” he says.
Shouto narrows his eyes. “I don’t need you to accompany me.”
The grip on his shoulder tightens fractionally. “I already asked Aizawa-sensei. Let’s go.”
He relents with a huff and jerks his arm away. There’s no use arguing with Midoriya, not when he has his mind made up like he does now.
They walk towards the infirmary shrouded in heavy silence. When they arrive at Recovery Girl’s office, she gives the two of them a once-over and rolls her eyes.
“What seems to be the problem now?” she asks, although not unkindly.
“Nothing—”
“Todoroki-kun got pretty banged up while sparring,” Midoriya talks over him. “Aizawa-sensei sent us here to make sure he didn’t crack any ribs or something.”
He plasters on a winning smile for good measure.
Recovery Girl releases a drawn-out, long-suffering breath and shuffles over to Shouto. “Where does it hurt?”
“It doesn’t—”
“He got kicked in the chest.”
He glares at Midoriya, who doesn’t bother to look at him. He’s being strangely reserved, and a flicker of unease passes through Shouto.
The old nurse places her hand over his chest and feels around. He winces as she gently probes at the place where he'd had the wind knocked out of him, and she tsks, muttering to herself.
“You kids, always so rough with each other. Never a moment of peace.”
She withdraws her hand. “Luckily for you, your ribs are only bruised. Be more careful next time.”
He stoops so Recovery Girl can kiss his forehead, a pleasant warmth flaring inside him and easing some of the soreness. She’s done this for him and his classmates too many times to count, but even still, it’s hard not to marvel at her quirk. Useful doesn’t cut it, not when they’re all dependent on her to fix them up after their scrapes.
“Now shoo,” she says once she’s finished, motioning them out of her office. “I better not see either of you anytime soon!”
Both boys dutifully chime in their gratitude, Shouto’s “thank you” sounding entirely too clipped. He’s itching to get out of there, to return to the P.E. grounds and leave this all behind him. As soon as the door shuts after them, he’s striding down the hall, not stopping to wait for Midoriya.
“Thanks for your help,” he says over his shoulder, “but I didn’t need you to—”
“Todoroki-kun.”
He stops.
Midoriya’s voice is stiff and flat and cold, and Shouto would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little surprised. For a moment, he wonders if his ice comes even close to being this biting. His mind’s screaming at him not to turn around, not to engage, but he forces himself to anyway.
“When were you going to tell me?” Midoriya asks curtly, his eyes blazing with anger and concern.
There’s no mistaking it. He knows.
Nevertheless, Shouto slants his head and plays dumb. “Tell you about what exactly?”
Wordlessly, the other boy walks the distance between them, shoves a pamphlet into his hands. It’s one of those brochures that litter hospital waiting rooms, all big block letters and infographics that he might’ve let his eyes wander over in the past but that now grab his attention and make him swallow hard:
How to Tell If You Have Hanahaki Disease: Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment.
The booklet flutters out of his grasp onto the floor.
“Who,” Midoriya all but demands.
Shouto remains silent, turns his head to the side.
“Yaoyorozu?” his friend presses on. “Tsu-chan?”
A beat passes.
“...Ochako?”
He doesn’t dare chance a look at the other boy. He doesn’t need to. His silence confirms what he doesn’t have the courage to admit.
Midoriya lets out a resigned sigh. “When did it start?”
There’s no point in hiding it anymore. Tiredly, Shouto meets his gaze. “Beginning of this term.”
“So you’ve been keeping this to yourself for—for over two and a half months? Why?”
A blossom unfurls in his trachea, its roots stretching languidly and settling in his lungs. Stubbornly, he refuses to cough. “What good would it have done to tell anyone about it?”
“We’re your friends,” Midoriya explodes, a palm coming up and smacking against the wall adjacent to him with so much force that the ground shakes under their feet.
He’s seen Midoriya angry before, has seen him bend steel and rip up concrete in the heat of battle, but his fury has never been directed at him. His face, normally placid, is stony and severe, mouth set in a hard line as he glowers disapprovingly. Shouto appreciates it, he really does, but at the same time his friend’s distress makes him wish all the more that he’d never found out in the first place.
He shrugs.
“Why don’t you at least tell her?” Midoriya says hotly once it becomes clear he won’t get more of a response. “Maybe she feels the same way. You never know.”
“I do,” Shouto finally whispers. Any louder and it’s like there are knives in his throat scraping away at his vocal cords. “She’s in love with Shinsou. They’re in love. Anyone can see it. I’d just be making a fool of myself if I were to say something.”
“Then get it removed, damn it! You’re not an idiot, Todoroki, you know this can kill you.”
Midoriya’s so sincere, and he clearly means well, but he just doesn’t get it.
Shouto bites back a sardonic laugh, shakes his head. Even that hurts, and he can feel another bulb pushing its way up his lungs. “You wouldn’t understand.”
An unusual shadow settles over Midoriya’s features. His eyes become guarded, unreadable—it’s like looking at a stranger.
“You think I don’t know what it’s like?” he asks, his tone uncharacteristically sharp and flinty.
Shouto says nothing, waits for the other boy to elaborate. Midoriya sighs and pushes his hair out of his eyes. He looks older than his years, a faraway, almost wistful look on his face.
“It was last year, around the start of third term. I stopped being an idiot, but by that time, well, you know. She wasn’t waiting around for me anymore. I was coughing up petals every day for ten weeks, give or take.”
“You...?"
“Got them removed,” he finishes with a wry grin that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “It was strange at first afterwards, but you get used to it.”
It all makes sense now. The secrecy with which Midoriya acted last winter, his skittishness around Ochako, his unwillingness to be alone with her. The furtive looks he would shoot her from time to time when he thought no one was looking. His sudden tendency to vanish at unexpected intervals, reemerging moments later pale and shaky. And then, a couple months later, his odd behavior had ended, replaced with an unnaturally cool and detached Midoriya. Especially towards her.
Ochako’s face, eyes shiny and full and inconsolable, swims in his consciousness.
I don’t know what I did wrong, she had sobbed to him once in the library after Midoriya had declined her invitation to hang out yet again. He’s acting so different, so distant. I don’t know if I made him upset or angry because he’s not telling me anything!
He remembers trying to soothe her and failing miserably, tripping over his own words and not knowing what to say. He remembers how her tears soaked into his shirt, how little her fists were as they bunched into the fabric. He remembers confronting Midoriya the next day, only to watch in confusion as the other boy smiled knowingly, if a little ruefully.
Ah, I suppose I’ve been ignoring her feelings, eh? Thank you for telling me, Todoroki-kun. I should’ve been more considerate.
The next day, he’d returned to his friendly demeanor and that had been that. Or so Shouto had thought, now that he knows what had really been simmering underneath. What Midoriya had been hiding for so long.
“I know, Todoroki-kun, because I’ve been there before. She really has a way of bringing you in, right? Like it’s just you and her.”
Like you’re the only one who matters.
Midoriya smiles sadly.
“But the world needs you. You’re going to be a great hero someday. You can’t rob it of yourself.”
He takes a step forward and clasps Shouto’s shoulder.
“I know you’ll make the right decision.”
-
He makes up his mind the next day.
It only takes a couple phone calls, a string or two to be pulled in order to schedule a consultation and then set the date for the surgery a week and a half later, since his classes are on hold for winter break. The Todoroki legacy has its uses, after all, and the disgust that seethes inside him when he invokes the number one hero’s name is nothing compared to the relief of knowing that his requests will be fulfilled promptly and discreetly.
He signs off on the medical consent forms, forges his father’s signature where it’s required. Asks Fuyumi to wire him the money, no questions asked, through his separate checking account, not the one under his father’s name. He doesn’t need Endeavor knowing that his son is even weaker than he already thinks. He doesn’t need him to know that, of all things, he’s been crippled by love.
(“The process is irreversible,” his specialist had told him grimly. “Once you go through with it, its effects cannot be undone. And may I remind you that those entail—”
“I’m well aware of the consequences of the surgery,” he’d interrupted, drumming his fingers restlessly against his thigh. “Just do it.”)
As they wheel him into the operating room, Shouto closes his eyes and steels his nerves.
He feels the nurse fit the rubber anesthesia mask over his mouth and nose. There’s a tiny hiss as the gas starts traveling through the tube into his lungs, and immediately he feels the numbness seep into his bones.
“Just relax and count down from ten, okay?” the surgeon, renowned pulmonologist Matsumura-hakase, says somewhere above his head. “You’ll be awake again in no time.”
Groggily, Shouto nods his assent. Or he tries to, at the very least. He can’t tell if he’s moving, not when everything is foggy and time is slowing to a sluggish crawl. He feels heavy, so heavy, and he can already feel himself drifting away, the insistent pull of the sedative stealing his senses one by one.
His last thought before going under is of pink petals and even pinker cheeks, peach-raspberry lozenges and the gravitational constant of one Uraraka Ochako.
-
When Shouto wakes up, it’s as if nothing’s changed. He’s back in his hospital room, the curtains separated to let in the watery sunlight. It’s quiet, the silence punctuated by the intermittent beating of the patient monitor by his bed. It’s almost peaceful.
He pauses. Flexes his fingers, wiggles his toes. For the most part, everything seems to be the same. He traces the raised surgical markings through his flimsy hospital gown, splays his fingers over the neat stitches spanning his chest. There are two long, precise incisions running parallel on either side of his breastbone. Idly, he wonders if they’ll leave scars.
He buzzes the nurse, asks for a cup of water to combat the extreme dryness in his mouth. When she returns, she jerks her head in the direction of the door.
“You have a visitor, shall I send him in?” she says blandly, a practiced, professional cadence to her words.
“Who is it?”
“He says he’s a classmate of yours. Green hair, about your age, wearing a U.A. uniform. Does this sound like someone you know?”
Shouto deliberates for a moment before nodding. “You can let him in.”
A minute later, Midoriya’s skidding into his room, his eyes wild and frantic. He relaxes visibly when he sees that Shouto’s awake, collapses into a chair by his bedside.
“How do you feel?” is the first thing he asks, the note of anxiety obvious in his voice.
Shouto sucks in a deep breath, shuts his eyes as he instinctively waits for the first itch to bloom in the back of his throat—
Nothing. The roots and tendrils that have suffocated him for so long have disappeared. Like they never existed in the first place.
(All that’s left is...)
He clears his throat.
“I feel fine,” he answers with a careful smile. “Just fine.”
The look Midoriya shoots him is one of quiet sympathy, and they leave it at that.
-
He feels nothing now. When Uraraka smiles at him, he smiles back without the familiar searing sensation in the back of his throat. When she takes his hand in hers and pulls, he feels no spark, no warmth. And when she laughs, he stops listening for a melody and instead lets his eyes fall elsewhere. There’s a stark emptiness in his chest, a cold, clinical vacuum that reminds him of vacant hospital beds and the lingering smell of antiseptic. It’s better this way. Easier.
(And yet, sometimes, he can’t help but wonder if he should’ve let the flowers crowd his lungs instead, if the bitterness of the petals would’ve tasted better than nothing at all. He watches as she kisses Shinsou and thinks, briefly, distantly, that it should’ve been him.)