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To Shoto, falling in love is something he read about in fairytales. It’s something his mum would whisper about at night like a distant dream. To fall in love was to try and reach for a supernova, too bright and far away...impossible.
Nonetheless, he'd dream of it. He'd dream of finding a love to cherish, be it he play the role of shining knight or damsel in distress. Shoto simply wanted to love and be loved, in any and every way possible. So, he'd read his fairytales and listen to his mum's sweet whispers, knowing he was reaching for a supernova and stretching his arm out regardless.
Shoto thought of love and equated it with forever, believing falling in love was sacred and special and, above all, reserved. He would only ever love one unlike every other, love one so he could never love anyone else.
And it wasn't that Shoto never loved.
He loved his mother, upon a distant memory and vivid dreams. He loved his sister, at dinner tables when she'd sneak him dessert whenever he behaved. He loved his brother, whenever they played tag around the house when their father wasn't home. He loved his other brother too, who he remembers so faintly in snippets of white hair and cold fire. He loved them all, so strongly and fiercely.
But this love, the one he dreams of, remains a kindred flame reserved in his heart, thriving despite the years of misery and madness fighting to extinguish it.
Unlike his love for his mother, forgotten like her promise of protection. Unlike his love for his sister, forgone for detest when playing house became more important than him (than their reality.) Unlike the love for his brother, curled up in quiet melancholy at every meeting of his frigid grey eyes. Unlike the love for his other brother, dead, like his memory...like him.
This promise of love has yet to die. Rather, it grew. It grew and grew in Shoto's desperation for a happily-ever-after that did not exist for him. It grew until it burned all the sweetness inside him for something aeons too lethal to be curled around his heart and beat into his blood. This love was red, wretched, finding a home where all the goodness was burnt and infecting him with rot.
This love that he savours.
For Shoto became too rotten to see it as anything but an ultimate strength. It begs to wear his skin, to move his limbs, to make him run and run until he finds the kindred soul who'll share his poison and ignite the world in their rotting flames.
But Shoto is not foolish, he does not let this madness show on his face. He keeps people metres away, waiting, patiently, for that precious person to pass by and rip off the mask of indifference he wore so expertly. He will wait, for decades and centuries and reincarnations, for them to light the waiting fuse at Shoto's tail.
And Shoto will cherish every part of them.
He swears that this love (warped and misshapen) that he's read about in fairytales will not die.
On his bleeding heart and rotten flames.
***
A festering rot...
...and hearts that pump blood black as tar...
...will find a twinning fire...
...infected with decay...
...just as red...
...and so willing to love...
...so they will burn.
***
He meets him for the first time at death’s door.
Class 1-A is a disappointing group of people. Shoto expected more from heroes to be, but they're all rather boring or brutal or (Bakugo) beastish. It isn't that their plain, per se, far from it as a matter of fact, but Shoto acknowledges them at a distance and the flame in his heart whines pitifully. None of them makes him tick in all the best ways, like a bomb waiting to detonate. The USJ trip is a welcome distraction from the sting of disappointment and the bruises littered across his torso after his previous night's training session.
It's a simple rescue exercise. At least, it's supposed to be, up until a herd of villains decides to show up uninvited and everything goes terribly wrong.
Nonetheless, Shoto breezes through the flock of sheep without so much as beading sweat. He spots the Giant-Creature-From-River-Styx™ and shoots a river of ice stemming from his feet in its direction in an attempt to trap it in place. It is only as the thing tears off its limbs to free itself from the caging that Shoto catches sight of him.
He smiles when he meets Shoto's eye, a baring of teeth all fang and bite and no love or warmth, running over to him like he's dancing on air.
Shoto feels something dangerous pool in his gut. (It is not a warning, it is not fear.)
"Why, hello there," he sings. His voice is like sandpaper scratched against his vocal cords and saccharine dripping down his tongue. Shoto is momentarily stunned, standing frozen amongst the bloodshed of violence and chaos. It is only the shock of crimson in his peripherals that prompts him to take off where Aizawa's been knocked out.
(A large, roaring, aching part of him knows it is to get closer. To see.)
"Ah, ah, ah," the same voice tuts; Shoto's staring at the domed ceiling of the facility before he can take another breath. His head is wringing where it slammed against the ground and a sharp knee is pressed right against his beating heart. He tries to push it off only to have his arms swiped by what appears to be a staff. The person wielding it—the owner of that voice—easily pins Shoto's wrists above his head in a vice grip, rolling his palms inward to keep him from activating his quirk. They wrap their thighs around Shoto's shoulders and use their free hand to press the end of the staff against Shoto's neck, a thin blade attached to the weapon cutting the skin.
Shoto’s heart pounds violently, loud enough to be heard over the ruckus of villainy, like a beating drum, a repetition of 'thrum' 'thrum' 'thrum'.
"I wouldn't move, sweetheart. One wrong step and I'll slice that pretty throat of yours."
Shoto grunts but obliges, finally looking up. (And then...)
The world bursts into a cacophony of colour, the most vibrant colours Shoto's ever seen in his life. It's pandemonium, too much and yet not enough, and Shoto wonders how someone can fit so many shades of green in their eyes. The person is young...he is young, perhaps younger than Shoto.
‘Oh.’
He's...he's beautiful. His large, lowered eyes, reflect a blue light that makes them look like emeralds sitting at the bottom of a riverbank; tanned skin with stark freckles bunched around his nose and across his cheeks; full lips pierced with silver metal, like fangs, and stretched into a manic smile; gnarly and mean scars that criss-cross against his skin and move with the ink that snakes across what Shoto can see not hidden under his clothes; so incredibly beautiful. (Shoto wonders if those scars ache with ghost pains on cold days and sleepless nights, ache with the memory of them like his do.)
He tilts his head down to look at Shoto, loose, large curls, a green so dark they almost look black, falling past his shoulders and casting a dark shadow around them.
"Who are you?" Shoto whispers, afraid that raising his voice would shatter the illusion of vivid colour and beauty that entraps them. He thinks he could live in this kind of world forever, with him forever.
"People call me Bunny." He's whispering too, the same voice of sandpaper and saccharine, the same untamed smile, whispering like he too could live in this world forever, with Shoto forever. "But, you, dear, can call me Izuku." The blade pressed against his throat starts to drag along his face, a constant sting that Shoto knows is trailed by little red rivulets. He knows because Bunny...because Izuku follows the trail with his eyes, gleaming with a depraved hunger that makes Shoto's cheeks warm. "Only you."
“Izuku,” Shoto repeats, so softly.
Izuku leans over, laps at Shoto's throat right where he'd been cut, and leans back with a vicious smile, tongue red with blood. Shoto swallows.
“Let me hear it another time, Pretty Boy.”
And then he’s off.
The hulking monster has regrown its limbs, and Bakugo’s charging in with explosions at his palms.
The colours are muted now; duller, the way they always have been. Shoto's hands find his cheek where Izuku had dragged his blade and come back stained crimson. He smiles and feels like licking it off his fingers to find out if it tastes as sweet as Izuku made it seem.
"Fuck!"
Shoto startles and drops his hand, shaking his head to ground himself. He runs to the centre of the fight, ice (and only ice) coming out of his blood-stained fingertips as he moves like he's been programmed to, a marionette who knows nothing else.
Soon, All Might arrives, and Izuku leaves. (And he leaves, but not before meeting Shoto's eye and smiling like a cat who's caught the canary.)
The flame roars.
***
The start of this romance is not love.
There is no such thing as love at first sight.
Fairytales lie.
It is impossible to love at first glance, all at once.
But to be infatuated...
...oh to be infatuated.
For the roaring flame in his blackened heart...
...once crying in starvation...
...is finally being fed...
...as ravenous as a hungry lion threw into a pit of raw, bloodied steak.
It is gruesome. It is red.
That is the start of this romance...
...infatuation and hunger...
...ultimate sin.
***
Shoto receives the first rose three days after the USJ incident.
It’s red, blood red. Deep dark crimson with thorns sticking out of its stem in every direction. With it is a note, no fold or wrinkle on the part though the edges were torn and some of the ink smeared. The handwriting is pretty, all clumsy cursive and loopy letters.
‘ 𝐹𝑜𝓇 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓅𝓇𝑒𝓉𝓉𝒾𝑒𝓈𝓉 𝒷𝑜𝓎,
𝒶 𝓅𝓇𝑒𝓉𝓉𝓎 𝓇𝑜𝓈𝑒, 𝒸𝓇𝒾𝓂𝓈𝑜𝓃 𝓁𝒾𝓀𝑒 𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝒷𝓁𝑜𝑜𝒹.
- 𝐼 ’
I…
I…
I...
…Izuku.
‘Izuku.’
Shoto does not question his conclusion, so sure it was him.
It has to be.
The rose sits at the centre of his desk, an anomaly in his room that Shoto loves. He knows, logically, he should be frightened and check for signs of a break-in or hidden wires and cameras. He's the son of Japan's #2 hero, a hero in training at the best heroics school in the country. A villain had come into his room without setting off a single alarm, traceless save for the note and thorned rose.
Shoto doesn't feel frightened, though. It's Izuku.
He can tear off his limbs and Shoto would still be at his beck and call.
Shoto takes the paper, holds it between the bad of his thumb and ring finger, and stares. That is his writing. It belongs to that beautiful face, that riveting voice. It was written by the same inked and scared hands, the ones that pinned Shoto's wrists above his head and dragged the blade across his skin.
Shoto's eyes find the rose. (Blood red.)
He reaches for it with an open palm and wraps his hand all the way around, hissing as the thorns pierce his skin. He squeezes despite the pain, squeezes harder and harder until a single line of blood drips down the green stem, hitting his desk.
Shoto looks at it; compares the colour of his blood to the colour of the rose.
That same shade of crimson.
‘A perfect match.’
And oh, oh Shoto feels giddy. Izuku remembers the colour of his blood. Remembers what it looked like as his blade cut Shoto's skin, what it looked like on his tongue and at the corner of his lip. He remembers it down to the shade of ruby, dark enough to look black (to look poisoned), viscous and cold. Izuku remembers.
Shoto puts down the paper and dips his finger in the slowly growing puddle, licking it off.
It tastes sweet.
Shoto's lips curl at the edges, manic as his. (And his mask of apathy shatters, for it does not fit such a deranged expression.)
Oh, this love.
As perfect as red roses and thorns.
As tragic.
***
Shoto learns how to press flowers that night. He goes out and buys a leather notebook; paying more than he should for the simple design. It’s worth it, for him. For him and the love that grows darker as the days pass.
He presses in his first rose, accompanied by his first note.
The first of many.
He sings it off with a sloppily drawn heart.
Written with his dark ruby blood.
***
It’s a rose a day. At night, when Yuuei’s sent their students home and Shoto can’t keep himself from trudging up to his house, there will be a rose at his desk, the same colour, never a shade off, and with it a note, simple and conscience, in that same messy cursive.
Shoto never comes home before eight, and the rose is always there without fail.
Sometimes he wonders if it'd be okay to break the routine. Come earlier and see whoever it is that leaves those letters.
(He can’t imagine anyone other than Izuku himself.)
It brightens his night, so his dreams are nothing but colours and green hair and eyes like broken emeralds.
He’s losing himself.
To the sweet, syrupy, seductive scent of love.
***
The night before the Sports Festival, Shoto receives a different flower. Shoto frowns when he sees no thorns attached to the stem. He's grown fond of the scars that run along the length of his palm; enjoys singing off each page with a heart of crimson blood. He cannot lick at the small pool on his growing desk, and cannot savour the same sweet taste Izuku felt weeks before.
Nonetheless, it is beautiful. A lily with big, folded petals, a long green stem and floppy leaves. The lily is different to the ones his mother used to grow in their garden. It's red, with yellow edges and specklings, almost like cartoon flames.
Shoto’s heart thuds louder than it should as he reaches for the note.
‘𝒾𝑔𝓃𝒾𝓉𝑒 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝓂𝑒.
- 𝐼 ’
(Shoto already has. Is already a raging mass of flames the colour of tar, a promise of his love for him. For him and only him.)
“I will,” he whispers to the flower.
No promise or oath or grudge holds candlelight to the ever-growing love—obsession, infatuation, desire, yearning—he has for Izuku.
Nothing else matters.
***
Shoto decides it is okay if the flower does not have any thorns.
A blade will do just fine.
(His blood is so damn sweet. He wonders if Izuku's is too.)
***
When Shoto’s at the Sports Festival, he’s aching to set everything on fire. He knows Izuku is watching and he wants to put on a show; put on a spectacle.
He wants to be someone Izuku can show off to the world and be proud of. He wants to be his forever, bend and break at his every demand. Shoto will do it, will do anything...everything.
Nothing else matters, not his father or his mother or the cheering crowd; not the vow he made to himself to never use Enji's fire. Shoto would rather slit his throat than use Enji's fire at Izuku's. Izuku is his, and he is Izuku's. And Izuku asked for his flames, for his heat. (So Shoto, right then, has reclaimed its ownership, even if it is only for today, only for a second. The fire is his, as it is Izuku's.)
He wants Izuku to see him and only him. No one else. Never, anyone else.
As Shoto steps up for the 1v1 battles, facing an opponent whose name he never bothered remembering, he finds himself smiling, too wide and too much and too violent.
He ignites.
***
Shoto wins.
For Izuku.
(Everything is for Izuku.)
***
The night after the Sports Festival, there isn’t a flower on his desk; there isn’t a note.
Instead, there’s Izuku. Flesh and blood, in a large t-shirt and distressed jeans, his clothes old and worn, ripped and stained and stretched out. Like this, Shoto can see more skin, more ink and scars and freckles. He’s on Shoto’s desk, seated as if he were today’s flower.
Shoto stops and stares.
(And stares and stares.)
Izuku grins at him. It isn’t the same feral smile that Shoto remembers from the USJ. It’s a little calmer, mellowed out, more vindictive and nervous.
He waves with crooked fingers. “Hi.”
Shoto slams his door shut and locks it, jumping over to where Izuku is and reaching for him. Izuku's a villain, notorious, spiteful and corrupt. He's everything Shoto’s supposed to hate, supposed to fight, supposed to fear. But Shoto jumps on him like he’s his only lifeline, the only good thing in the world.
Izuku startles, hands reaching for Shoto and wrapping around his shoulders. Shoto buries his head into Izuku’s shoulders, nose to his collarbone, and breathes in the scent of worn clothes, smoke and pines.
“Oh!” Izuku chuckles. “Didn’t expect such a warm welcome.”
Shoto pulls away, keeping his arms wrapped firmly around Izuku’s middle, eyes blown wide with incredulity. “You’re here? And real?”
Izuku draws his eyebrows, lips quirking in amusement. Shoto follows it with his eyes, shameless.
“Real?” he repeats. “You’re telling me I show up in your hallucinations?”
Shoto shakes his head, gently drawing his gaze back to those beautiful eyes. “You show up in my dreams.”
Izuku’s smirk falls to something a little softer, a little more predatory. “I do?” He doesn’t ask for a response, but Shoto nods anyway. A hand slips off his shoulder to cup his cheek, trailing just below the skin of his scar.
“I saw you today,” Izuku says, “you lit the stage on fire. I saw it, you did it for me, right?”
Again, Shoto nods.
“You’ll do it all for me.” Izuku leans in closer, close enough that Shoto’s eyes cross inwards. “Right?”
“Yes,” Shoto breathes, feeling Izuku’s breath against his face. “Yes.”
Izuku tilts his head forward and pulls Shoto in for a kiss.
Shoto’s melting, freezing, dying, resurrecting. He’s feeling everything he could possibly feel and falling in love with it all.
The flame in his chest is screaming, reaching for Izuku and giving itself willingly after years of sitting in Shoto's chest. (If it dies out in Izuku's palms, let Shoto die with it.)
“Prove it to me,” Izuku whispers when he pulls away, keeping Shoto’s face cupped in his hand.
He gives Shoto no time to respond, diving in for another kiss, harsher, more demanding. He slides off Shoto’s desk and pushes him against the tatami mat, climbing over him as he licks into his mouth, along his teeth, tongue on tongue, feeling the metal of his piercing and whimpering at the cold sting.
Shoto lets him.
Lets him tug off his clothes and run those calloused hands along his skin. Izuku’s own clothes slip off and he’s free to marvel at the expanse of ink all over his chest and back and thighs, all his scars, lithe muscles and freckles. He traces those lines, curves and dips with his nails, feels those legs wrap around his torso, listening to the voice that's telling him to move.
Shoto lets Izuku unravel him and break him and piece him together again and again, all in a mess of moans and heat and taste and skin. Lets Izuku wreck him, hears Izuku shout and plea and cry; obliges his every request for 'more, more, more'.
When it’s over, Izuku’s still holding him, drawing patterns into his chest with his forefinger and thumb.
“You’re like us, aren't you?” he asks softly. “Another little broken boy, fucked over by everyone in your life. It’s why you’re letting me do this to you, it’s why you think you could love me.”
Shoto turns to face him.
“Does ‘why’ matter?” he frowns. “I’ve promised myself to fall in love someday, and I promised that I’d devote everything to the person who made me feel that way. You are that person Izuku.”
Izuku grins, that wild, deranged grin Shoto has seared in his memory.
“You’re fucked up.”
Shoto matches the grin with something far more lovesick.
“All for you.”
‘Always for you.’
***
Let him drown in feeling.
Let him get drunk on poison and want.
And become a sick man to his addiction.
A sick man in love.
***
“There’s something different about you, Todoroki,” Uraraka tells him randomly after class. Shoto looks up at her, blinking slowly.
‘Why is she approaching me?’ he thinks disdainfully.
“Pardon?” he says instead.
Uraraka smiles. “You seem a little bit livelier, since the Sports Festival.” She wiggles her eyebrows. “Anything interesting happen since then?”
Tattooed skin and sweat and lust. The feeling of his tongue licking Shoto’s abs, the warmth of his breath ghosting his skin. The claw marks on his back, the hickies on his chest, how tight and hot and seductive he is. The blinding whited-out bliss.
“No,” Shoto lies, “nothing.”
Everything.
(Him.)
***
Shoto bites Izuku's neck hard enough to draw blood.
"Fuck!" he hisses, but Shoto pays no mind. Dichromatic eyes fixate on the wound and Shoto leans forward to lick it, panting against the skin like a dog and moaning at the taste, blood smearing across his lips and chin.
Izuku harshly pulls him back, leaning forward and licking Shoto's lips.
He grins down at Shoto.
"It's not as sweet as yours."
Shoto tilts his neck to the side and gestures at himself like a lamb for slaughter. Izuku's eyes gleam, all those beautiful shades of green brighter than toxic waste.
"Prove it."
***
They're sharing a class with 1-B when Kaminari asks Vlad King if he's ever tasted his blood.
"Once," the hero admits with a shrug. "It tasted like shit. I felt like I was swallowing iron for a month."
"Ugh, gross."
Shoto bites back a scoff.
The bastard doesn't know what he's talking about.
***
“I want to get a tattoo,” Shoto tells Izuku on one of the nights when he’d managed to sneak in. He’s lazily retracing one of the drawings on Izuku’s shoulder—a skull with a jester’s hat, the words ‘dead men get the last laugh’ written under it in scratchy font.
“Oh?” Izuku turns to face him. “What do you want?”
“Your first letter and a bunch of roses,” Shoto replies without hesitance, “and then the lily you got me with the words ignite for me.”
“You’ve already thought about it?”
Shoto hums.
“Okay then.” Izuku bends down and kisses Shoto right behind his ear. “I’ll take you to where I get mine done, soon.”
Shoto doesn’t ask when. He knows Izuku will take him.
He trusts him.
Morbidly, he trusts him.
With every part of him, every bone, every drop of blood. Everything.
That is his love.
***
One week later and Shoto’s admiring the ink running across his torso, by his waist, different pieces on either side. The tattoo artist—unlicensed, self-taught and apprenticing Izuku—is nice to Shoto. Is nice even as he told Shoto about the little crosses tattoos over his chest for every life he’s ever taken. Is nice even as he degrades the term ‘hero’ despite knowing who Shoto is, what he's training to be.
Not that it matters.
Shoto’s never been a hero.
Twisted desires and trauma make no hero.
They simply make a broken man with a bleeding heart.
So maliciously in love.
***
The familiar man with ashen skin and pale blue hair from the USJ shoots Shoto a disdainful look.
“This is him?”
“Yes.” He tightens his hold on Shoto’s hand, showing him off like a trophy. Shoto beams. “This is him.”
“Oh, he’s cute!” a young girl in a schoolgirl outfit squeals, making a break for Shoto and Izuku. Izuku instantly steps in front of Shoto and disarms the blade headed right for him, turning the girl on her stomach and pinning her arms behind her back.
“He’s mine,” Izuku growls and Shoto smiles like a love-sick puppy at the objectification of himself. “Touch him and I snap your hand.”
“Damn, Bunny,” the heavily scarred man whistles, “treat him like a person, will you?” He says it sarcastically, with no meaning or conviction. Still, Shoto shoots a glare at him, feeling his quirk flicker at his sudden anger.
Izuku treats him incredibly. Like an object, like a possession, a trophy, a diamond. Like something that belongs to only him.
Because he does. He’s branded himself to promise it, to prove it.
Izuku gets off the girl and moves back to Shoto, eyes gleaming. Shoto’s glare melts into something more anticipatory.
Izuku holds out a hand, and gestures beside him. “Kneel for me, Love,” he orders.
In seconds Shoto is on his knees, at Izuku’s side, eye-level with his hips. Izuku gently grips Shoto’s hair and tilts his head, moving to undo the buttons of Shoto’s shirt with practised finesse, only enough to slip it off his right shoulder.
“What the fuck?” the scarred man astonishes, grimacing.
Shoto tilts his head further, the grip on his hair tightening at the motion.
There, on the pale expanse of his skin, right above his collar bones, are the word ‘𝓫𝓾𝓷𝓷𝔂'𝓼’ in bold, blank, cursive ink, sitting right beside a tattoo of a bite mark.
Bunny’s. Izuku’s. His.
Izuku lets go to undo his own collar, showing a similar tattoo of a bite mark identical to the placement of Shoto's. (Right by it is an open wound, still fresh and bleeding, in a similar mark. Shoto licks his lips.)
“Like I said,” Izuku says as he trails the letters with a free hand and points to his own tattoo with the other, “Mine.”
‘Yours.’
***
“Holy shit!” Kaminari exclaims, pointing as Shoto undresses in the common room. Bandages are wrapped around the tattoos on his hips, bandaids hiding the one on his collarbone.
Shoto turns to him, eyebrow raised.
“What?”
“Dude, do you have a girlfriend or something?”
'Of course not.'
Shoto has no girlfriend or boyfriend or partner. He has Izuku. He belongs to Izuku.
'Only Izuku.'
“No,” Shoto answers truthfully.
“Well damn, tell whoever did that to your neck to calm down.”
Shoto clicks his tongue and throws on a shirt. He doesn’t hide his marks, but it’s the first time someone’s noticed. (A small part of him moans in satisfaction. Now they know he’s someone else’s. Now they know he’s taken for, forever.)
“Mind your business,” he murmurs, his voice carrying across the locker rooms, where other students were staring per Kaminari’s exclamation. He’s gotten colder, harsher, more manic, more lost.
He's losing his sanity.
And finding comfort in the unravelling of his mind.
***
“I think it’s time we introduce you,” Izuku whispers to Shoto, cradling his face. Shoto’s laying in his lap, staring at Izuku through his lashes, gaze soft with love.
They’re at the League’s hideout, the members long since accepting Shoto and Izuku’s forever.
(And they will be forever.
Come hell or high water.)
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Izuku bends down and presses a kiss to Shoto’s lips. “You promised to be mine forever, let’s prove it to the world.”
***
Shoto walks up to the front of the battle, collar wrapped around his wrist, matching Izuku’s perfectly. He looks different, his shirt cropped at his navel, red hair dyed black and tattoos on display.
“Shoto?!” Endeavor screeches, fire flaming wildly. The students from 1-A stare at him incredulously, Aizawa’s eyes blown wide with shock. They look horrified and confused. Silence deafens the battlefield, and Izuku’s smile stretches far, far, far.
Shoto can’t help it. He laughs; a wild, loud, free thing. Izuku wraps an arm around his waist and pulls him to his side. Shoto laughs and laughs, and when he calms down, he pulls Izuku in for a kiss. A heavy, hungry, desperate kiss. Something lustful, shameful, explicit and bold.
To show the world, to show everyone, how much he loves.
How mad he loves.
“Call me Lovesick.”
***
All for him.