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Breakfast, Shouto thinks, is Hawks’ way of prolonging a joke that had gotten old over three years ago.
His exasperation doesn’t stop Shouto from showing up every Sunday morning to take his seat between a perpetually furious Natsuo and a content Fuyumi while Hawks flirts obnoxiously with his father and his mother looks on with fondness as she sips her tea.
“Can you not throw yourself at him while I’m eating?” Natsuo gripes - just like every Sunday - and Shouto doesn’t know how he has the energy left. Hawks is a horny demon and nothing, especially not something as tedious as social norms, will stop him.
“No can do, Frostbite. I’ve tried, it’s not good for my health.” Hawks quips, running a hand down Endeavor’s forearm just to watch the way it makes Natsuo’s head steam. Shouto thinks the only thing preventing him from full-on sitting on Endeavor’s lap is the presence of his mother across the table. Hawks is such a hoe he’ll wear one of Endeavor’s sweaters and potentially nothing else (Shouto knows to not look too hard just in case) to breakfast, but apparently he draws the line at sitting on dick in front of a man’s own wife. Ex-wife. Wife?
To be quite honest, Shouto is a little overdue for some therapy.
“Shouto-kun,” his mom says, interrupting Natsuo from trying to strangle Hawks from across the table. “Would you be willing to be a hero representative at Pride next weekend?”
Shouto blinks. “Me?” He can name a few other heroes, specifically a few other heroes in this room, who would be expected to make an appearance over him.
“They will have taken care of everything,” his mom continues. “All you need to do is show up.”
And well…
“Okay,” Shouto says.
—
In hindsight, maybe he should have asked a few more questions. Or any questions at all, really.
“Oh, Todoroki-kun!” Midnight says, sashaying towards him in a full leather body harness that somehow makes her look less intimidating than her typical hero outfit. “Here’s your flag, please try to smile. You’re such a serious looking boy.”
He looks at the flag in his hands and he has to do a double take when he sees what it is.
“Um,” he starts, wondering if this is just some kind of weird optical illusion, because he has an idea of what this flag means and his brain makes a grinding noise trying to figure out what’s going on..
“Um, Midnight?” He can’t quite meet her eyes. “I’m not—”
When she smiles at him it does absolutely nothing to reassure him. “Of course, Todoroki-kun. It’s so great you could be here as an ally to your family.”
—
Inevitably, because Shouto never learns any life lesson, the next day he’s trending on Twitter.
And that would be fine, he expected it honestly. Heroes don’t just show up for events and get ignored, especially not when that event is Pride. He’d been ready for speculation to run wild after he’d made the decision to represent his community, but the thing is, it’s not just his stoic face as he holds up a poly pride flag that’s getting internet traction.
Of course, it’s not just that.
He hates Twitter.
Instead, there are photosets and images so believable that Shouto has to take a second look to realize they’re photoshopped, and he’s the one in the pictures.
This is a gift from the multishipper gods, one tweet reads, linking to an edited photo of Shouto holding the poly flag with nearly every hero he’s ever worked with surrounding him. He balks at how close they’d put Bakugou next to him, but he also recognizes photoshopping talent when he sees it.
It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, even if it’s a little more uncomfortable being directed at him this time, so it’s not until he reads @endeavorofficial @todorokishouto is really following in your footsteps now huh? that he actually realizes why he was given that flag in the first place.
Oh no.
—
“Oh, Twitter has nothing on Tumblr,” Shouto hears Ochako say happily as he walks into the Wonder Duo hero office. She’s talking to Midoriya by the window, swinging her feet as she scrolls through her phone.
“What?”
Ochako’s head snaps up and Shouto gets mildly alarmed at how quickly she goes red. “Ah--nothing, Todoroki-kun! Was that Iida-kun? Yes, he definitely needs my help, yup.” And the next thing Shouto knows, he’s alone with Midoriya.
“Ah! Todoroki-kun,” Midoriya shouts, face a bright burning red that Shouto really doesn’t want to ask about for fear he’ll have to ask Bakugou to explode his eardrums.
“Even you’ve seen it?”
“S-seen w-w-what?” Midoriya deflects terribly, beet red and shaking his hands around like there’s a fire that he needs to put out.
Shouto checks. There isn’t.
“Everyone will forget about it soon! I mean, just last week there was that story about Aizawa-sensei and, um, not that I believed it or anything, um--” Midoriya claps a hand over his mouth for a second before slapping it back down. “Nevermind!”
By god, Midoriya is a genius.
—
His biggest weakness may just be his biggest strength. Who knew Twitter held the secret all along?
He must look a little crazed, because Midoriya is trailing after him, stammering out a confused mess of, “Todoroki-kun, wait! Where are you going?”, but he has a goal. And that goal is his laptop.
“Midoriya,” he intones once his laptop is safely ensconced in his arms. He turns around and Midoriya runs into him before taking a step back, (a tiny one, he’s still close enough that when he looks up, Shouto can see every flicker of green in Midoriya’s eyes). “Who does Bakugou like?”
Midoriya squeaks. “Kacchan? Wh—why would you need to know that?”
“Twitter,” Shouto says, gesturing at his laptop. “I can use it to bring people together, just like last time.” And then everyone will stop asking about his relationship with every single person he’s ever come in contact with in his young life. It’s not starting rumors if it’s for a good reason.
“I…” Midoriya looks like Shouto had just admitted he’d prefer a career change to villainy. “What?”
“Matchmaking. Like I did with Hawks.” And another hero that will be left unmentioned.
“Um. I think that was going to happen without your influence.”
Shouto sighs. Midoriya is too optimistic sometimes.
“It’s my third quirk.”
Midoriya chokes.
—
Midoriya refuses to tell him who Bakugo likes out of some form of misplaced loyalty, so Shouto has to take things into his own hands.
Kirishima and Kaminari, Shouto decides after serious prolonged contemplation (and a game of eenie-meenie-miny-moe). They’ll be the first couple--the first of many--he vows. At least until the love life of anyone in the Todoroki family is buried so far under the love scandals that no one mentions them again.
He starts slow, the way he had before, because he’s found out that the best way to get people talking is to be as vague as possible.
It’s just a picture of the two at the last UA reunion, arms slung across each other's shoulders, matching beaming grins on their faces. There’s nothing overtly intimate about the photo, but that has never seemed to matter to the general public.
Shouto posts it to Twitter, captionless because he’s mysterious like that, and pats himself on the back.
They’d be great together. They just need a little push.
—
It takes less time than Shouto expects. Maybe he’s more powerful than he thought.
He apologizes to Kirishima and Kaminari - not meaning a single word of it of course - and they both take it in stride, laughing it off.
Within a week, #kirikami is trending and Shouto has had to put a comment block on the original post because he’d forgotten how… descriptive people could be. Unfortunately, he also has to put a comment block on his Pride photo because people had started tagging him in links to fanfiction sites and Hawks had liked six of them, which means he was reading them.
It only gets worse when Yaoyorozu shares her own photo of Class I-A at the UA reunion. Objectively, it’s a great photo. Bakugou is mid-yell, Sero, Kaminari, and Kirishima rustling his hair and being general nuisances. Midoriya is laughing from his spot on Shouji’s shoulders and Aoyama is practically sparkling in the center of the photo. It would be harmless, a great memory of all of them, except nothing is harmless when you’re a pro-hero. Shouto has his arm around Jirou’s waist and Ashido is hugging him from his other side, smile wide on her face.
The fanart practically draws itself.
He doubts Yaoyorozu has ulterior motives because she’s a genuinely good person, but it sets Shouto back at least two weeks.
He’s just planning his next tweet, the next tiny push, when Midoriya comes up to him, stubborn little crease to his brow.
“Todoroki-kun, I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep pushing Kirishima-kun and Kaminari-kun together.”
“Why?”
“I--” Midoriya pauses, eyes flickering to the side before he meets Shouto’s gaze again. “I can’t tell you that.”
Shouto takes in the line of Midoriya’s shoulders, the firm set to his jaw, and crumbles like ice.
“Okay.”
—
Regardless of Shouto’s lack of interference, it’s too late now, and in some kind of karmic retribution (or further proof of his own latent power) KiriKami becomes so popular that Shouto gets asked about it during his next interview, and he can’t exactly escape the question without looking suspicious.
“I think they would be good together,” he says before he realizes it and--
It’s almost sad how quickly that sound bite circulates.
—
Bakugou gets so furious about the sudden upsurge of KiriKami fanclubs that the next time he and Red Riot team up, he dips him in full view of the tv cameras and gives Kirishima a kiss so filthy it would make even Eraserhead blush.
And well... that clears a few things up to be honest.
It’s not exactly Shouto’s intention, but he can still give himself a pat on the back for bringing people together. If #kiribaku rises to number one on trending and #polyrokis drops down into the low twenties, it’s just a very nice side effect.
That would've been the end of it, but then someone has the great idea to ,i>add him to their KiriBaku fan comic and it’s…
(“Really well written! Honestly a riveting plot! That’s all!,” Iida tells him, trying to pull his comic back from where Shouto dangles it over a palm of flames.
“You’re a traitor.”)
Shouto has to rethink his strategy. He wants to avoid seeing as much explicit fan art as possible and if he starts another trending hashtag then Midoriya will be upset with him and that… doesn’t sound great.
Maybe he needs another woman’s opinion.
—
Shouto doesn’t like dropping by his parents’ place unexpectedly because of that one time in high school that he had walked in on Hawks and Endeavor fucking in the dining room and that other time during his internship where they were fucking in the living room and the other time they - he digresses. Sometimes concessions must be made.
He makes sure to make as much noise as physically possible when he comes in, knocking an extra vigilant hand against the wall a time or two, and then heads to the living room where he can hear the muted sounds of the television in search of Fuyumi.
Hawks is sprawled on the floor, head resting on his hands as he kicks his feet in the air and laughs at the game show on the television. Endeavor is next to him, running a hand distractedly through Hawks’ hair as he reads what Shouto recognizes is the novel Natsuo had recently bought Endeavor for his birthday. Shouto’s mother sits on the other side of Hawks, tenderly stroking through Hawks’ wings, aligning crooked feathers and picking out dust bunnies.
Oh god.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting there watching (too long, he has no excuse or explanation for this), but suddenly his mother is standing up, pressing a soft, loving kiss to Hawks cheek before making her way to the doorway.
Thank god for stealth training, Shouto thinks, safely halfway down the hallway and hidden behind another doorway before she’s even gotten one hand on the sliding door.
So. Maybe Midnight had a reason for handing him that flag after all.
Shouto doesn’t know what makes him do it, but as his mother turns the corner to her room, he reclaims his vigil at the doorway to the living room, looking for something he’s not sure he’ll find.
And really, he should’ve known better, because Hawks always acts like he’d live out the rest of his life in Endeavor’s lap, so of course that’s where he is now.
He can’t hear anything; they’re speaking too softly, in the hushed tones of lovers, and it should make Shouto recoil because his father showing affection in general still gives him a rash to even think about, but—
Shouto looks at Hawks’ face, at the sheer adoration as he grins at the way Endeavor pointedly sets down his book to put his arms around Hawks’ waist to hold him as they talk.
He expects it to escalate—at which point he will have no choice but to claw out his own eyes—but they just talk in an ebb and flow rhythm that seems to be a cherished routine.
Shouto makes sure the door is silent on his way out.
—
There is something to be said about the phrase, If you can’t beat them, join them.
That next Sunday, in the middle of Natsuo flinging his rice bowl at Hawks cackling face, Shouto snaps a photo, posts it to Twitter, and captions it: Family.