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The thousand sighs trapped inside Izuku’s chest blossom like a rose that's too young to have its own thorns but decided it was ready for the world anyway. He is only human, though, so he has to let them out one at a time, long, deep exhales that tell of a grueling day.
His shoulders move in circular motions and, slowly, he unfurls himself from his place facing his apartment door. The weight he has been carrying his whole shift falls to the floor unceremoniously, like he can finally feel air reaching the roots of his lungs again.
When his eyes open, the inside of their apartment greets him with a grand nothing. Even the peephole’s persistent shine is almost unnoticeable from this side of the door. He’s too tired to even look for their old-fashioned switches, and their awkward lime green just served as a small temptation that’s easy to ignore. The dark is comforting, in a way. Easy in the eyes.
One of Izuku’s hands branches out from the safe spot near his body and moves to the wall. He leans on it for support as he takes off his shoes.
As the first red sneaker hits the floor with a small thump, Izuku finally notices that the small entrance corridor is quieter than it’s supposed to be. His breath echoes in the walls too close to his chest, like the wilting petals that fall at the end of spring.
He stops, and perhaps it’s counterproductive but, with one foot stil draped in red, he turns around. The apology at the tip of his tongue gets swallowed back down because of a glimpse of red and white.
Izuku sighs, the exhaustion settled deep in his bones hasn’t disappeared. He takes the other shoe without even looking down, eyes glued on the now empty doorway that leads to the living room.
There’s only his socks standing between the soles of his feet and the cold floor made of fake wood. There’s only a deep breath, before he goes to follow the person living with him.
It takes effort to move his feet away from their spot planted on the ground. There’s a pit at the bottom of his stomach, and he entertains the idea that it’s where his energy was sapped from.
When he turns it into a joke, it gets comically easy to make his way inside their apartment. It’s not hard to spot the other person either, the lighter hair seeming to almost attract the moonlight pouring in from the large window in their living room.
Shouto’s steps are quiet and calculated, almost floating around the house. Izuku is too busy watching the dark blue patches the light outside casts on the floor to fill the silence that haunts their apartment.
Except Izuku’s hands move before he can think, reaching out to the almost ghost in front of him. His fingers barely brush against the soft fabric that donned those shoulders. They are left tingling with the echoes of a touch that barely didn’t exist, with the echoes of silk that couldn’t be more than polyester.
“Shouto…” Izuku whispers, not even looking at the ethereal being he had dared touch.
There’s no reaction. Not to the touch. Not to the name he had finally managed to say out loud. There’s no reaction and the surface of the lake that is Izuku’s chest freezes over, and he almost has to take a step back to avoid hypothermia.
In front of him, Shouto stops. Wishful hope grows in Izuku’s chest for a moment that could have lasted the whole night if the phone in Shouto’s hands didn’t exist.
A small crack forms in the ice rink of his heart.
“Shouto,” he calls out again, more resolute this time.
Izuku needs the fire.
When he opens the fridge, it starts to make a buzzing noise. Perhaps it’s only noticeable because, in their unspoken agreement of remaining in the dark, the white light is an awfully grey area.
“I’m tired.” Izuku’s eyelids stay down for a little too long for his gesture to be called a blink.
Leaning against the wooden arc where the kitchen door is supposed to be, Shouto hums. Does he even know what he’s agreeing to?
Silence grows between the two of them again, though it’s fairer to say that it had never really left in the first place.
Izuku peeks over the fridge’s door. The faint white that reflects over their polished cabinets makes his friend look too pale, too thin, too frail for them to pursue their own dreams. His hand gets too cold for him to ignore, so he places the two yellow containers from the fridge on the sink.
There’s one last glance thrown at Shouto, his furrowed brows focused on the blue from his phone’s screen make a hauntingly perfect sight. A sight to imprint on the very back of his memories, to burn his retina for, to make the back of Izuku’s eyes sting.
He looks away, choosing to press the microwave’s ‘start’ button a random number of times instead. Izuku uses his foot to close the fridge, catching the last shine of metallic paint. It can’t hide the fact that everything in this house is only made of plastic.
The soft humming from the microwave stretches time into something thin, longer than it was supposed to be. Three and a half minutes turn into forever and a bit more. Izuku doesn’t know when he caves, but he presses the power button on his phone.
The sudden brightness didn’t hurt as much as the fact it has only been ten minutes since Izuku traded a full train for their concrete building with a broken elevator. His left leg twitches at the memory of walking up too many sets of stairs.
A beep interrupts the silence, and the tray leaves the microwave with two containers of steaming hot food. They go to the sink because it’s the closest place Izuku can see and he doesn’t want to burn his own hands.
Tonight, they’ll dine like kings. If kings ate the same reheated comfort food for the third time in a week, of course.
Izuku leans into the cabinet, head swaying when his eyes close and he almost passes out right then and there.
They had ordered katsudon to celebrate breaking into the top 50 heroes together. Izuku landed himself the nice spot of 41 so he got to choose the food first. Next week they’d let Shouto, number 46, order his bowls of cold soba.
It was supposed to be only two portions for a single person, but clearly the restaurant’s definition of ‘enough food for one human person’ was wrong and now the fried pork was rubbery.
A sigh comes from the door; it seems they’re equally tired.
The food has finally cooled down enough for Izuku to move it for more than a few inches at a time. He puts the bowls of what looks like anything but katsudon on the counter they use as a table.
Shouto doesn’t seem to have noticed the food is ready, or, at the very least, he doesn't react to Izuku, who simply turns around and opens the first drawer beside the sink. He takes the two pairs of chopsticks, and places the green ones on the opposite side of the table, keeping the pink ones to himself.
Izuku finally sits down, melting into a deep breath as his shoulders relax. When the table remains empty, even after calling out to the only other person in their apartment, the green haired hero pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s not angry or frustrated, but there’s a scream dead on his throat and it almost makes him want to laugh.
Unsurprisingly, this little episode of his goes unnoticed. Even when red and white, still bathed in the light blue of a cell phone, finds the seat opposite of Izuku, there’s no reaction. They eat in silence, but, sometimes, the space between them is filled by the sound of lacquered chopsticks dragging against their ceramic bowls.
The lime green of a glow-in-the-dark switch swims at the edge of Izuku’s vision. His hands move before he can think, and, soon enough, they both flinch at this flickering yellow that covers them.
For a moment, wide mismatched eyes land on Izuku’s green irises. He feels the rise of a spark, small enough to create a fickle glow that goes unnoticed on the warm light in their kitchen. It dies, unceremoniously, and they go back to eating.
“Hey,” Izuku starts, his voice a frail thing like the crystal glasses they aren’t able to afford. “How was your day?” The green haired hero cringes at his own generic question, at least it’s not silent anymore. He has never been good with social interactions, has he?
Shouto’s chopsticks clink against his bowl. It somehow echoes, and the sound shifts into that of cracking glass.
Izuku’s eyes remain forcibly neutral as he waits for a response.
“Average,” says the half cold half hot hero, barely trying to mask the disinterest in his voice. Shouto has never been fond of small talk, has he? “The detective asked me to drop by the precinct tomorrow and I took down a gang of villains near the end of my patrol.”
“You?” Izuku asks, hoping that the disbelief in his voice isn’t mistaken as a lack of faith. “Alone?”
Shouto nods. “They were quite troublesome to deal with, but that’s about it.” He starts to munch on his food again.
“That’s incredible!” Izuku can’t help the genuine awe lacing his words. It feels out of place in their run down apartment. “I’m so glad you got out of it unscathed.”
“I did.”
Izuku nods in understanding. “You’re unmatched out there, Shouto.” He tries to make his voice sound as natural as possible but he feels like a motivational speaker that doesn’t believe his own words. “I’m always worried about fights at a numerical disadvantage. They have this way of keeping you at the edge of your seat, you know? I think it’s why the media likes it so much.”
“The gang only had three members,” Shouto answers the unspoken question with an edge of disappointment to his voice. “And it’s okay, you can say it. It’s not taboo or whatever.”
Izuku blinks a couple of times, as if he was just now adjusting to the warm light above them. There must have been some kind of misunderstanding; he chuckles awkwardly. Izuku had said everything he wanted to.
“I’m just number 46…” Izuku wants to stop him right there. He wants to interrupt Shouto and tell him that they’ve run themselves into the ground, that it’s only been five years since graduating, that they’re already enough.
Like always, Izuku wants a lot of things, but that’s all this is: a want. The green haired hero, whose words coming from above would only sting more, remains quiet, waiting for Shouto to continue.
“If the fight had been more… flashy, the media would have eaten it up.” Shouto shrugs. “They’d have to pay for it to appear on the news, and the image of low ranking heroes is always relatively cheap. That extra money would have been nice.”
“We will manage,” Izuku affirms, not realizing those words were the wrong ones until…
“We will manage,” echoes Shouto. “But we shouldn’t have to, in the first place.”
“Shouto.” Blue and grey eyes land on Izuku, who just sighs. “You know there isn’t much we can do about that, right? Don’t beat yourself too much. We just… we weren’t prepared for the climb up to take this long, were we?”
“No, we weren’t,” Shouto agrees, sighing. Some of the steam from the rice—or is it his quirk?— leaves his mouth. “Do you want to give up?”
For a moment, it’s like Izuku forgot how to use the pastel pink pieces of wood in his hand. He chokes on his own spit but, after a few coughs, he manages to say “never.”
“Good.” Shouto doesn’t add anything else after that, his full attention focusing back on the food in front of him.
Izuku is left to stare at his own portion of katsudon as silence grows strong once again. He’s barely touched any of it. If the pork gets cold, it will be too rubbery to eat. Why can’t he just shove the meat in his mouth already?
“Today I just patrolled, even the usual troublemakers seemed calmer today.” The green haired hero sighs, lost in the trance of mundane memories. Shouto might not have asked him about his day, but the freckled cheek still shows the dimples of a small dreamy smile as if this were the conversation of the millenia. “I’m sorry. I just wanted today to be a little different, to break away from our silent routine, to just stay together, closer, for a while longer.”
“Isn’t this why you asked for this?” Shouto doesn’t move his hand to gesture, but the chopstick frozen mid air and the raised brow are more than enough.
“It was.” Lacquered wood shouldn’t weigh as much as they did at that moment, especially not when they’re empty. “I—” Izuku pauses. A deep breath later, he continues, “I’m getting a new case this week.”
Shouto hums from across the table and Izuku mistakes it as a sign to keep going.
“It hasn’t been long since our promotion, but this might bump me up a few numbers in the ranking.” Izuku sounds too hopeful, even for his own liking. “Just enough to put me above number forty. We’re so close to that life we promised, right?”
“We keep saying that.” It seems Shouto doesn’t share the same excitement as Izuku. “At this point, it feels more like an excuse than anything.”
“That’s because it is,” Izuku deadpans in a manner that could rival the stoic person in front of him. “Shouto, I think I’m going undercover this time. I might disappear without a trace for months, of course I’m looking for any excuse that makes this less dim.”
Shouto finally gets over the shockwave from those words. “What case can be that important?” He asks, not demands, because he knows he is in no place to make demands tonight.
Izuku bites on a piece of pork, not wanting to answer. It squeaks inside his mouth and Izuku barely chews his meat before swallowing. It doesn’t go down smoothly.
“Can you not tell me or do you just not want to?” Shouto asks. “I feel like it’s both.”
The pink pair of chopsticks scrape the bottom of his bowl. Izuku hadn’t even noticed there was so little of his food left. He knows he has to say something, because silence is the same thing as not denying, which is basically agreeing, but it takes a while to gather his thoughts.
“I still don’t know anything about it.” The green haired hero sighs. “Just that it might make me disappear for a few weeks.” —Shouto’s mouth opens but he doesn’t get the chance to say anything before Izuku continues— “Don’t worry about anything, I’ll leave my part of rent and money for groceries.”
“Izuku.” The name coming out of Shouto’s lips sounds desperately like a plea. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”
There’s a sigh, and the hero with two quirks pinches the bridge of his nose.
Izuku ignores it, of course. He picks the now empty bowls, watching Shouto’s green chopsticks stain their table towel with leftover grease. Nothing is too far away in their cramped apartment. All he has to do is turn around and...
“What are you worried about, then?” The dirty dishes clink against the metallic sink. “Look, just— you can go to your room like you always do, Shouto. I’m not mad.” Izuku’s words left a bitter taste in his mouth that couldn’t be explained away as expired soy sauce.
The chair scrapes against the floor; Izuku flinches at the loudness of it. He waits, but it’s clear enough that his ears didn’t catch the soft petal steps walking away.
One of the sighs trapped in his chest worms its way out. Cold water runs through his hands at the sink and Izuku watches, for a moment, as it carries away chunks of unwanted food.
There isn’t much to clean, in fact, but Izuku can’t quite bring himself to leave the kitchen as soon as he’s done. He turns around, confirming that the ‘dinner table’ was indeed empty. At least the towel is folded neatly, even if it will just go to the laundry basket later.
Izuku moves the vase on the counter a little to the left, the plastic roses inside it shaking with leftover inertia. His chest feels a little too tight, but it gets easier to breathe when he turns that yellow light off.
He’s the limelight hero taking comfort in a dark empty kitchen, how ironic.
There’s a small smile on his face at the thought, and Izuku runs a hand through his hair. He closes his eyes just for a second, for a small moment, and he can’t help but wish it were someone else’s fingers combing through his scalp.
Izuku yawns, finally opening his eyes to the dark nothingness of his home. His lips settle into a thin line as he leaves the closed fridge behind, noticing that the house isn’t quite as silent as he had thought.
There’s some ambient noise keeping him company.
It’s not the rain, even if the sky had been covered in clouds since he stepped into the badly kept street of their neighborhood, that much is obvious. The sound is almost entirely human, a voice he can hear but not understand.
He follows it, noticing the unlit corridor’s darkness isn’t quite as prominent on his way to the living room. Izuku doesn’t know what he’s chasing at his snail’s pace, perhaps he's just looking for Shouto, for some human company he can still have, for a chance to say sorry even if he doesn’t have anything to apologize for.
The living room’s window is as large as it has always been, masking the walls on the brink of crumbling. It gives the place an air of ‘modern’ the rest of the apartment doesn’t quite have, even if the sight isn’t the greatest one out there.
The bars from across the street are still closed, in a silence that fills the holes in their sidewalk almost perfectly. The neon signs, or maybe they’re just LEDs, don’t shine yet. It’s too early for that, but, even so, the moon had already lost its battle, as their TV covers everything in an artificial bright blue light.
It’s loud and bright and everything a television should be. It’s a large screen that demands Izuku’s attention. It’s his green eyes looking teal instead, whisked away by the marvels of technology before he even has a chance to look at the cheap leather couch on the right wall and the lonely figure sitting there.
The tv shows one of the lesser known news channels, unremarkable in all its aspects, just like the simple square they call a ‘logo’. Even the reporter looks plain, without any obvious signs of a quirk and average, common, brown hair.
The last traces of white letters disappear to the left of the screen, leaving the obnoxious red line empty. As the image of a water bottle appears, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what it means; the commercial break starts.
Frivolous products go through the screen. Explosions of colors that are too expensive for them. Cursive letters dance, spelling the name of the latest smartphone or something. It’s all quite… entertaining, though ‘distracting’ would be just as good of a word to describe it.
Izuku only manages to tear his gaze away from the screen when it’s overrun with red and white for a toothpaste commercial. “Four out of five dentists recommend it!” and Izuku finally remembers where he is, what he’s supposed to be doing, and why he is still standing in the doorway to their living room.
Elbows resting on his knees, Shouto leans forward. The porcelain skin of his hands covers his mouth. It’s obvious the number 46 is trapped inside his head. He is waiting, with that kind of undivided attention that makes you lose track of what you were waiting for.
The room grows blue, and Izuku’s eyes turn just in time to see the sky background of the anchor station and their reporter again. They shake their head, getting their thoughts together; the pile of paper in front of them is probably just a prop.
Two images appear, breaking the sky blue of the news with two photos that look more like mugshots. Izuku doesn’t know when they took that picture of Shouto, but that thought gets shoved aside by the sinking feeling in his chest. There, right beside the one person who had gone as far as one could go, was the flaming beard of the number one hero.
When the reporter blinks, it lasts too long for it to be natural, the frame clearly frozen. Time starts ticking again soon enough, and a dash of red crosses the screen, before the white letters of the headline appear. Nothing has been said yet, but those letters are enough of a red flag.
Izuku crosses the living room, arms outstretched to grab the black brick that is their remote. The sound of static replaces the sentence they’d never hear from the reporter.
It seems the moonlight still has its chance to win in the end.
Izuku’s hair looks less green and more turquoise, almost like when he uses too much of his quirk. Maybe he should be using it, so the sparkles in his skin could fill the living room. Maybe he’s going into battle again, in their small cramped apartment, standing so close to Shouto.
If there’s a speech at the tip of his tongue, if the seeds of what he wants to say have already been sowed, it all withers and dies. Mismatched eyes turn to Izuku with an intensity that burns and salts the land of Izuku’s feelings.
The couch squeaks as Izuku sits down, covering a weird yellow stain on the synthetic white leather. He’s not looking down at Shouto anymore, but it seems a little too late for that.
Shouto’s lips are never dry, gleaming with not only the light pouring in from outside, but also an ever present coat of frost. They open with a faint irrelevant smacking sound.
“I was going to watch that.” Voice as stoic as ever, Shouto still manages to sound like he’s angry at Izuku. “Now I’ll have to wait until they upload it to the internet with a thousand more ads.”
“You were going to watch channel 4 news?” The green haired hero raises his voice a little. He was never quite able to match Shouto’s ability to sound unbothered by everything. “Voluntarily?”
“And if I did?” The person who couldn’t decide between red and white hair shouldn’t be the one sounding so sure of his choice of tuning in to the local, and clearly biased, news source.
Izuku takes a deep breath. He can’t stay mad at Shouto, maybe because he hadn’t been mad in the first place. He can’t stay mad at anyone, but Shouto especially.
“It wasn’t going to be any good.” Izuku shakes his head a little, hair ruffling against his ears. “You know it wasn’t going to be any good, Shouto. It’s channel 4 news, the only thing that comes out of there is toxic waste.”
Izuku smiles, a wobbly little line that waits for Shouto to admit he might be going insane.
“Yeah, that’s the whole point,” is what comes instead. “I need to be prepared. This isn’t the first time and it…” Shouto’s voice falters.
“And it won’t be the last,” Izuku finishes for him.
“We’ve been over this, haven’t we?” Shouto sighs. His gaze drops to the side, as if eye contact meant nothing more than just eye contact. “I keep saying it will be better if we know what they’re saying about me, but it won’t. It never is. Every few weeks. Aren’t you tired of this yet?”
The thing about sighing is that, sometimes, it’s just as contagious as yawns. The green haired hero lets out a long exhale. It probably sends Shouto the wrong message.
“There’s nothing about you that needs to change.” If you use a sword too much, the blade dulls. If you try to make the same point one too many times, using the same words you always do, then…
Izuku only realizes he had quoted his past self a little too late “I’m sorry, that was probably insensitive of me,” he admits.
“No, it wasn’t.” Shouto shakes his head. “You’re right, like always. I just wanted to know what it was this time.”
“Whatever it was, they’re always wrong.”
“Are they?” It’s a genuine question, apparently. “Because last time they had some really good points. I like being able to take some of my frustration out on villains. I get angry when fighting. I care about our rankings, and I worry about that way more often than I should.”
“Shouto,” the green haired hero calls out. “Look at me.”
A low thud comes from the window. Then comes another. And another. Another. Another. Another.
Thud thud thud. The drops of rain hit the glass in a rhythmic cacophony. It echoes in their small apartment like a pulse, a heartbeat.This very moment was alive and breathing like a real living being.
“Shouto,” Izuku breathes out, and the back of his eyes sting for some reason. “Just look at me, please?”
“I am.”
Two pearls focus on Izuku. They shine, even in the dimly lit living room.
“You are.” Izuku is the one who blinks. He needs those milliseconds where he doesn’t have to see the person in front of him.
“We promised so many things that were out of our control, didn’t we?” Izuku cups Shouto’s cheeks. Their eyes finally meet, and there’s no telling between the stormy blue sea or the green meadows or the cloudy sky. “It was naive and stupid of us.”
“But we were young,” Shouto protests, not moving away from the hands holding his chin up. “We still are.”
“Yes.” Izuku’s skin burns, even before his fingers start tracing the lower edge of Shouto’s scar. “So I’ll keep a bit of our innocence and believe this will get better. I’ll hold onto that belief for as long as it takes for it to actually get better.”
Shouto forgot Izuku isn’t just a broken record of motivational phrases. This was new, as new as the rising sun each morning. The starstruck look that crosses his eyes glows like the shine of a massive star, ready to crumble under the pressure of its own gravity. Except there’s someone, living deep inside the core of his heart, ready to push back, ready to win against that force of nature.
Izuku could turn this moment into as much poetry as he wanted, but time won’t wait for his creative daydreams.
“Okay?” Izuku asks. In a single word, he confirms that ‘No, he’s not tired. He never will be’
“Okay.” The number 46 hero, one of the strongest people in the country by far, looks so frail as his head tilts to the side, pressing more against the calloused fingers that hold him up. “It’s just that… Wouldn’t it be so much easier if I just gave them what they wanted? If I just played along?”
Izuku’s hands don’t leave their spot. They have no reason to. It feels so natural for them to stay there, holding Shouto with all the care in the world. Izuku might wear his heart on his sleeve, but when he gives it to Shouto, it’s through his hands.
“Do you want me to answer that?” Izuku doesn’t see the nod as much as he feels it in his palms. “No. It would only eat us inside, you can’t just give up on your soul willingly like that. Endeavor won’t last much longer. Even if they can’t accept that, we’re just ourselves in the end.”
“Still… This isn’t what we promised either.”
“Maybe it's not.” Izuku shrugs. “But I don’t care we’re not living in a three storey house as we become the youngest heroes to ever reach the top 5.”
Shouto’s eyes widen, as if he hadn’t considered the possibility that promises aren’t religious dogma he has to follow. But Izuku isn’t done, and his voice raises to match the loud thrumming in his ribcage.
“I don’t care we’re not beating Hawks’ record by a landslide. I don’t care that there is no penthouse. That the small library we were supposed to build doesn’t exist. I don’t care about the fact this place is so small that we have to share a room when we haven’t even—” His hands touched.
Shouto was supposed to be there, between his hands, but they touched.
Izuku falls against the couch again, and when he looks up all he can see is the vague outline of the lamps in their ceiling.
“Sorry.” The words come easily out of his mouth, now that the pressure of blue and grey eyes is gone. “I wish we had those things. Heroism was never supposed to be easy, but you deserve more than this. I’m not bitter or jealous or anything like that.”
“It’s okay,” Shouto reassures, but his whisper gets drowned by the rain.
“We just—” Izuku closes his eyes. “We were so sure of ourselves when we decided to go down this path, you know? We were ready to take on the whole world, because even the biggest villain couldn’t defeat us. Now, though…”
“Now we’re here,” Shouto finishes for him. His voice is loud and clear.
“Now we’re here,” Izuku echoes. “In an apartment so small it gets almost suffocating when our friends come over.”
That wasn’t an attempt at lightening the mood but it works all the same. They both chuckle.
“Shouto, we’re a mess.” There’s an airiness to Izuku’s voice, as if he’s just throwing words to the wind. “What are we even doing?”
The window is still closed, and, once the full weight of that question hits the glass and can’t escape into the rain, they have to face the music of water droplets.
“We’re trying to make good on our promises?” Shouto tries, after a while, frowning. That felt like the wrong answer.
“The ones we made on our sleepovers back at UA?” Izuku raises an eyebrow. “Or the ones from our nights at the dorm’s rooftop? From the battlefield?”
“Yeah… all of them.”
“Shouto, we keep using them as excuses,” Izuku states as if it were the truth. Maybe it was. His outburst at the dinner table feels so far away.
“Then…”—Shouto gulps—“What are we doing?”
“We’re wasting time.” Izuku offers no further explanation.
“Izuku, we know it’s impossible… We can’t just hope we’ll move up the ranks at the same speed as our—”
Oh.
From across the street a large neon sign lights up. It makes the image of a martini glass, with an olive and everything. The bright pink covers their living room, making the white of Shouto’s hair look like cotton candy. His lips feel just as soft as it, too.
Still drunk in the surprise of having another pair of lips on his, in the novelty of this feeling, Izuku’s large calloused hands move without thinking, circling over them. Like the roots of a rose that’s about to bloom, the embrace covers the whole space between them, covers their unpaid expenses, covers the holes in their hearts.
Shouto returns the hug awkwardly, still unsure of how things got here. He’s not going to pull away, though. If it’s up to him, he’ll never pull away.
“We have wasted so much time already,” Izuku says, barely separating from the mouth he wanted to taste more of.
Their foreheads touch, too close to open their eyes, too afraid to open and see will come once they allow themselves to hear the raining clouds again.
“I don’t care about all those naive promises two teenagers made.” Izuku crashes into Shouto again. It’s as hot and as cold as Izuku expects, which is just warm, but ‘just warm’ has never felt quite as good. “The penthouse doesn’t exist, why would I care about it?”
“It was a small house in the suburbs, so you could have all the space in the world if you ever wanted any kids,” Shouto points out, and they both end up laughing.
The echoes of happiness bubbling out of Shouto always make Izuku’s chest feel too tight. It's beautiful, in the most overwhelming sense of the world, like witnessing a grand orchestra play for the first time in your life.
“Was it?” Izuku asks, once a tear slips past his right eye. “I thought we wanted an entire penthouse in the middle of Tokyo to share with our classmates, so we wouldn’t lose touch and all of that.” He raises an eyebrow, teasing. “Are you sure it wasn’t just you who wanted that?”
“Whatever,” Shouto huffs.
“Whatever.” Izuku smiles, his closed eyes still crinkle. “We have been miserable for a while,” he whispers, voice airy as if a couple of kisses had revealed to him all the secrets in the universe. “But it’s not because of this cramped place.”
Like separating two magnets, Izuku feels the whole world resisting the motion of pulling away from perfect lips wet with saliva, lips he wanted to call his.
“And yes, it doesn’t help that I wish it was us in the top 20 instead of him, but…” Izuku’s looking at Shouto. “We never settled on what this was supposed to be. We were too scared to give it a name, to say what we wanted this to be. Then we got too caught up in ourselves to do anything about it.”
Izuku sighs. There isn’t much of his heart left to pour, and his hands drop to the side, breaking what had never quite been a hug in the first place. He’s looking at Shouto, waiting, with that kind of undivided attention that makes everything disappear.
“I wasn’t scared.” Shouto’s face remains unpassive, but it almost sounds like he’s pouting. “I just didn’t know how to act.”
“Shouto.” The name leaving Izuku’s lips sounds almost like a laugh. “We live in a single bedroom apartment with two beds.”
“That was to save costs,” Shouto shoots back. It is almost comical, how oblivious they can both be.
“It wasn’t.” Izuku can’t resist the gravitational pull in their living room. His lips move before he can think, aiming for Shouto’s scar, and the skin feels as soft as velvet.
Shouto bites his bottom lip before admitting, “It wasn’t.”
A smile blossoms in Izuku’s face, spreading the joy of a sunflower who has just decided to follow the moon instead. His chest feels so achingly full when they’re like this, and Izuku lets his head fall on Shouto’s shoulders.
It feels as soft as cotton candy.
“I love you, I love you, I love you
I love you, I love you, I love you
I love you, I love you, I love you!”
—Mitski, Pink in the Night