Work Text:
“You can take the mask off now.”
Deku turned his head slightly, just enough to send Shouto a scalding glare from the depths of his hood. The silver mouthpiece covering the bottom half of his face glinted harshly under the ruthlessly bright fluorescents, turning his eyes a sort of apple green. It was a more cheerful look than that of the deep emerald tones Shouto was used to.
And wasn’t that just something? That Shouto was so used to seeing Japan’s most prolific vigilante, to the point where he was nitpicking the shade of his eyes?
“I’m alright, thanks,” Deku replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Shouto scowled back at him, firmly meeting his eyes and refusing to think any more about their color. “We’ve been in this damn cell for hours - and who knows how long it’ll be until someone comes and springs us,” he said, his voice low. “I’m not trying to set you up here, I’m just saying that you can take the mask off if you want to.”
“And risk exposing my identity to the Number Eight?” Deku replied, his voice carefully flippant. “I’m not an idiot, Entropy. I know how the game works.”
Shouto’s frown deeped, tugging his eyebrows down. “Are you trying to say that I organized all this - getting kidnapped by some lowlife villain group and thrown into a Quirk cancelling cell - just to figure out your identity?”
Deku turned his head, angling himself away from Shouto once more. “I know
you’re
not an idiot, either. I’m just saying that it’s not gonna be that easy.”
Shouto spent another minute glaring at Deku’s back before he sighed deeply, dropping his head back against the grey concrete behind him. The whole cell was concrete, from the floor to the ceiling. There was no furniture, nothing at all to aid a potential escape, should Shouto need to figure one out. The only discrepancy on the walls was a door made of thick steel that wasn’t budging anytime soon - Shouto had tried.
And, of course, the most obvious fixture in the cell. His lovely companion - Deku.
Deku was a household name in most of the country, a fact that the higher ups at the Hero Commission were none too happy to admit. He was the most ... effective vigilante in the greater Tokyo metro area - and probably all of Japan. He fought ruthlessly, but he never killed. He was like a machine, constantly churning out the steady flow of lowlives and abusers that he left bound at the steps of the local precinct. He’d sign off with a Post-it stuck somewhere on the culprit’s body, on which the only thing written was a doodle of some obscure, long-retired Pro Hero done in a ballpoint pen.
No one knew his real name - in fact, no one even knew where the nickname Deku came from. Shouto himself wasn’t sure if it was a moniker that had been chosen, or chosen for him.
And, of course, Deku wasn’t exactly willing to share.
Aside from his name - or lack of one - there wasn’t much to be known about Deku, period. He’d joined the vigilante scene (or at least his signature had) at around the same time Shouto had graduated from Yuuei, and had been a thorn in the Hero Commission's side ever since. He was on the shorter side, but he was stocky and strong. Smart as a whip, and unbelievably analytical, especially in battle.
And he was Quirkless.
True to form, Endeavor had taken Deku’s existence as some sort of personal slight - but instead of hunting the vigilante down himself, he’d decided it was an obstacle for his perfect creation to take on.
Shouto had been thrust into Deku’s orbit before he’d been aware enough to understand just what that meant - that you couldn’t just meet the man once and forget. He hadn’t realized that all it took was one look in those fierce green eyes and suddenly you’d never forget them.
Of course, it wasn’t Deku’s fault that Shouto stayed awake thinking about him in the long night after their paths had crossed on a patrol. It wasn’t Deku’s fault that when both of them got hurt in a fight, Shouto cared more about the vigilante's injuries than his own. It wasn’t Deku’s fault that suddenly green was Shouto’s favorite color.
Deku was a star, superheated and celestial. He was beautiful and brilliant and scintillating - and very, very dangerous. Shouto knew the risk of flying too close, of inevitably getting burned.
Deku was a star, the sun - and Shouto was trying his damndest not to be Icarus.
...Granted, this was the first time they’d ever been in the same room for longer than ten minutes without fighting a villain. Or each other - they’d done that a few times. It was always exciting and challenging, and Shouto’s pants were usually a bit too tight by the time Deku had him pinned on his back, straddling his hips.
In a non-sexual fighting sort of way.
Of course.
Just sitting with Deku was more… awkward than Shouto would have expected. Usually his meetings with the vigilante were incredibly fast-paced and action-packed, leaving room for only a couple lines of witty dialogue between the villain fighting and subsequent vigilante escape. Now, sitting in a concrete cell with nothing but air between them, Shouto had absolutely no idea what to say.
It had already been what felt like hours, and the only conversations they’d had had been an argument on who was stupid enough to get them caught (and it definitely hadn’t been because of how distracted Shouto got when Deku had shown up out of nowhere) and the occasional back and forth about something inane (like the mask).
Other than that? Silence.
Shouto glanced at Deku out of the corner of his eye, watching the way he picked at a stray thread on the cuff of his pants. He looked utterly casual.
It was kind of infuriating.
Deku rolled the loose thread between his fingers, then flicked it away. He dropped his head back against the wall, much like Shouto - only when he shifted to sit up straighter, a pained hiss escaped from his mouth guard.
Shouto immediately straightened, his hand going for one of the medicine capsules on his belt.
“You’re injured,” he stated. It wasn’t a question - he knew Deku well enough after all those years to know that a martyr like him wouldn’t make a noise if the pain wasn’t bad.
“I’m fine,” Deku replied, through what sounded like gritted teeth.
Of course.
“You’re not,” Shouto replied, fixing him with what Yaoyorozu told him was a ‘freezing glare’. “You got injured in the fight and you didn’t say anything.”
Deku clicked his tongue, like what Shouto was saying was amusing to him. “I said I’m fine. Drop it.”
Fine. Deku certainly wasn’t fine - it was obvious now that Shouto was looking for it. The way his torso was purposefully angled away from Shouto, how he’d been more snappish than usual, the fact that he hadn’t actually adjusted his position in all the long hours they’d been stuck there.
Deku certainly wasn’t fine.
Shouto scowled at him again, pulling the capsule from his belt with a click of the holding mechanism. Even from behind the mask, he could see the way Deku was eyeing him warily, watching him to see what trick he might pull next.
Shouto furrowed his brow and threw the capsule at him.
As expected, Deku instinctively went to catch it - only to falter with his hand just barely lifted, a stuttered gasp of pain cutting through the silence as he curled in on himself, his other arm wrapping around his waist protectively. The capsule bounced off of his chest uselessly and clattered to the ground, rolling to a stop by those obnoxiously bright red shoes.
“But you’re fine,” Shouto echoed, his voice maybe a tad too scathing. “Let me treat it.”
Deku dropped the hand he’d curled around himself to the floor, still hunched over. “No way in hell. I am fine - it’s not my fault if you don’t believe me.”
“I don’t believe you because you're lying,” Shouto replied sharply, sitting up straighter. “What, do you not trust me to help you?”
”Trust you?” Deku snapped back, his head whipping to face Shouto. His green eyes seemed to glow in the dim recesses of his hood, glinting with indignance. “Are you insane? No shit, I don't trust you!”
Shouto’s jaw snapped shut with a dull click, his eyes wide.
Of course - of course Deku didn’t trust him.
Deku was a vigilante. His entire existence was illegal, and Shouto was a Pro Hero, ranked number eight out of everyone in Japan at only twenty years old. Shouto didn’t just enforce the law, Shouto was the law. Of course Deku didn’t trust him.
So why the hell did him saying so hurt that badly?
Deku had no reason to trust him - not after the game of cat and mouse they’d been playing for the last two years.
Entropy and Deku were on different sides of the fight.
They couldn’t afford to trust each other.
And yet…
“If we’re going to have any shot at getting out of here, you need basic medical treatment,” Shouto said instead of explaining the strange war in his mind. “There’s no way you can fight your way out if you can’t lift your arm.”
Blunt, straightforward, brusque. Just like Shouto had always been. He couldn’t afford to treat Deku any differently, no matter what kind of havoc the vigilante seemed to wreak on his mind.
“You can just leave me behind,” Deku grumbled, not looking up. Shouto frowned harshly.
“No.”
A small laugh, though there wasn’t any humor in it. “I thought as much. Do you have anything for first aid? Is that what those dangly bits are for? I could never figure it out.”
Shouto pulled a second capsule from his belt, popping the cap to show Deku the disinfecting cream inside. They all held different things, but it wasn’t like Shouto was giving a presentation. Just one would do.
“Smart,” Deku said, tipping his head back again. Shouto ignored the way his heart fluttered at the compliment. “Alright, doctor. What kind of operation would you be performing today?”
“Depends on the wound,” Shouto replied quietly. “I can’t see any blood on your clothes, so it’s either all internal, or you’ve just broken a few ribs. Or it’s just in a place I can’t see. I can set any dislocations - which I bet you have, based on your range of motion - and bandage any open wounds.”
A moment of silence stretched between them, long and tense. Deku’s eyes were closed, as if he were silently deliberating something.
“No.”
Shouto blinked. “What?”
“I said no,” Deku repeated. “No to the setting and the bandaging. I said I was fine, and I am. No.”
Was this man insane? Shouto sat up, leaning forward to get a better view of the way the vigilante sat, curled into himself in pain. He was hurt, very badly injured, and he was… what? Refusing medical treatment?
What the hell was wrong with him?
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Shouto snapped. If he’d had his Quirk, his left side would have started heating up. “Why are you being so damn stubborn? You got injured, I’m offering to help you. Would you rather I just let you suffer? What, are you some kind of masochist or something?”
Deku’s masked face whipped towards Shouto, his eyes alight. “Stubborn? Well, I’m sorry I can’t find it in myself to put all my faith in a goody-two-shoes hero like you, Entropy,” he bit back, his voice positively caustic.
“A goody-two-shoes? Would a goody-two-shoes hero let an illegal vigilante stay out on the streets for two damn years?” Shouto snapped, his entire body tensed.
“Oh, you let me, did you?” Deku replied, his stare withering.
“If by that, you mean the fact that I’ve been swiping your file from my father’s desk since you showed up, I’d say yes!” Shouto practically snarled.
“...What?”
Oh.
Oh, no.
God fucking damn it.
“Entropy… You’re joking, aren’t you? Because it’s not funny,” Deku warned, his voice shaking just a bit. “It’s a shit lie, Entropy, it’s a shit lie and you know it-”
“I’m not lying.”
The sound of Deku’s exhale was unsteady. Shouto just hung his head, staring down at the flecks of mud on his white boots.
“I… didn’t mean to say that - but it’s not a lie,” he continued quietly. He couldn’t meet Deku’s eyes. “You weren’t… supposed to find out. Especially not like that.”
Deku laughed breathlessly, and without humor. “So… what? You’ve been keeping me under the radar? Putting the warrant for my arrest through the paper shredder?”
Shouto scowled, though it was more to himself than aimed at Deku. “No. They’d just print a new one.”
“Entropy-”
“I’m not wiping you from the system or anything - I’m just... making it harder to find you,” Shouto grumbled, still unwilling to lift his head. What would he see in Deku’s expressive eyes? Anger? Indignance? ...Gratitude?
“What I’m doing is illegal,” Deku stated bluntly. “And you’re saying that you - the Number Eight Pro Hero - have been actively helping me do illegal things.”
Shouto closed his eyes, squeezing them tightly until little patterns of lights started to dance on his eyelids. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry - this is ridiculous, you can’t possibly expect me to believe-”
“What you’re doing is right,” Shouto interrupted. Deku stopped in his tracks, and if Shouto had the balls to look at him, he’d guess that he looked shocked. Nevertheless, he plowed on. “What you’re doing is the right thing to do. It’s only illegal because the system is fucked - I know that better than anyone.”
The system was what allowed Endeavor to beat his wife, to train his children into soldiers. The system was what created Dabi. The system was beyond corrupt - it was fully blighted.
And then in came Deku.
He was doing the impossible - he was trying to reverse a supernova.
And he was succeeding.
“Every day, you're out there. You’re out there, and you’re making a real difference” Shouto whispered. “You’re out there doing something. And I- I can’t. I can’t just… be who you can be. I can’t disappear like you can. You’re fixing things, things that I’m helping to break, and- fuck.”
Deku stayed quiet.
“You’re changing the goddamn world, Deku. I’d have to be a real idiot not to help you out.”
It was quiet for a long moment, but Shouto didn’t mind. He’d never really minded silence. In the silence, he could pretend that it was just him in this concrete cell, that Deku was off somewhere tying up crooks and blissfully ignorant to the damned battlefield of Shouto’s mind. He absently registered the sound of shuffling, but ignored it in favor of squeezing his eyes shut once more.
Until something tapped his shoe.
His eyes flickered open instinctively, lifting his head to see Deku sitting in front of him, facing the opposite wall. His finger drummed on Shouto’s boot again.
“...What are you doing?”
Deku let out a sharp exhale - almost a laugh, but not quite.
“Fix me up, hero.”
Shouto stared at the expanse of Deku’s back, covered by a thick, dark green hoodie. It was torn in places by the hem, but largely unscathed - save for the blood and grime that came with the job. His shoulders were broad, despite being so short for a grown adult.
Shouto had never noticed quite how broad they were before.
“Are you serious?” He asked, his voice scratchy.
Deku clicked his tongue, tapping Shouto’s boot again. “What, were you joking about bandaging me up before?”
“No.”
“Then do it, Entropy.”
Shouto reached out, his hand stopping just before he could touch Deku’s shoulder.
This was crossing some sort of line, he was sure. Something would be different the second he touched Deku’s skin with his own.
Shouto wasn’t sure he cared.
His hand moved the rest of the way on it’s own - and distantly, it registered in Shouto’s mind that this was the first time he’d ever touched Deku without any stakes. There was no bomb planted on the top floor, no villain leering in the shadows.
Just the two of them and a room made of concrete.
Deku pulled down the zipper on the front of his hoodie, leaving Shouto to help him shrug out of the thick material with a little struggle, until he was left in his tight undershirt. If Shouto had had his Quirk handy, he could have made a knife of ice and cut the material from his skin, but as it was, he was stuck ripping the black fabric with his hands.
The shirt fell away.
Shouto’s hands twitched in shock.
Deku was covered in scars.
Thick white lines criss-crossed the expanse of his tanned skin, competing with his litany of freckles in sheer magnitude. Dozens of scars, probably, littering his back and crawling onto his shoulders.
But those were expected. Any hero had those kinds of scars, and a vigilante was no different. Those scars didn’t surprise Shouto in the least.
What did was the burns.
Starbursts of red, pink, white - old scars, old burn scars, danced up and down Deku’s torso. Violent explosions of puckered skin dotted his back, his spine, his shoulders. Shouto could see where they trailed down into the hem of his pants, up to the nape of his neck, down his arms. Those kinds of scars were ruthlessly familiar to Shouto - the burns Deku had looked like the ones Shouto had gotten when he was a child.
Deku had been a child.
“Who did this to you?” Shouto managed to grit out, his voice low and raspy and almost unrecognizable to his own ears.
“No one important,” Deku had the gall to say, but the flippant tone of his voice was obviously fake. Shouto could see - Shouto knew that those scars hurt the most.
Maybe not physically - but those scars hurt the most.
“Deku, who did this to you?” Shouto repeated, his hand instinctively rising to brush against the largest starburst of pink on his shoulder, right next to where it connected with his neck.
“Drop it,” Deku breathed as the palm of Shouto’s hand brushed over the scar with a feather light touch. “It’s nothing special, is it? You have just as many, don’t you, Entropy?”
Shouto swallowed tightly. “Yeah. I do.”
Scars that spoke not of villains or heroism, but of an abuser, of a desecration of trust. Scars that hurt years after they healed over. Scars that woke him up in the middle of the night, a scream trapped in his throat.
Shouto had plenty of those scars.
And Deku…
It seemed Deku had some scars of his own.
“Drop it, Entropy,” he repeated, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “It’s not… Just- don’t. Please.”
“Todoroki Shouto.”
He could see the way Deku stiffened in shock, his shoulders tensing. The muscles of his back rippled under that cascade of scars, and if Shouto had been in any other situation, he would have been utterly enraptured.
“What?”
“It’s my name.”
Deku huffed. “I know that. Why are you telling me?”
Shouto pressed his hand to Deku’s tanned back once more, as lightly as he could. The skin was warm to the touch. “You trusted me. It’s only fair I put some skin in the game too, right?”
Shouto could feel Deku laugh under his fingers, and it might have been the most incredible thing he’d ever experienced.
“I guess you’re right, Todoroki-kun. I can't… You know I can’t…”
I can't tell you mine.
“I know. This is enough.”
Enough trust for one day. Enough vulnerability.
“This is enough,” Deku echoed.
And it was.