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The thing was, Shouto had known he would eventually have to pick an actual hero name instead of his placeholder.
That Shouto had been allowed on his provisional license had actually been a surprise, and well, as his sister had recently pointed out, Shouto didn’t really want the whole world to call him by his first name.
Unfortunately, this did mean he had to find a real hero name — and he still had no real ideas.
(Well, he had options. Midoriya had made up an entire list for him back in first year, and he updated it every other month. Kaminari had gotten hold of it somehow, and everyone had been voting for their favorite name since then.
So far, the runner-ups were Entropy and Fire Penguin, though Shouto was rather sure the latter was a joke, and the former sounded too serious for him.)
Sighing, Shouto let his pen drop and rubbed his temples. That stupid form would be the end of him, but he had to fill it in at some point.
He sort of wished he could just get someone to assign him a name and take this issue off his shoulders, though, but his real options were his father — which, no — or Midoriya, who had Shouto’s opposite problem of having too many ideas instead of none.
No, Shouto would have to make a choice here. And sooner rather than later, unfortunately.
He sighed again and—
“Would you fucking quit it already?” came Bakugou’s harsh tone.
Shouto’s head snapped up, and he was unsurprised to find himself staring at a hard scowl. Shouto didn’t know when Bakugou had wandered into the room, but that was the danger of communal dorms, really. He’d grown (mostly) used to it.
Bakugou was still staring at him though, and Shouto blinked back. Hm… “No,” he said, just for the flash of rage he knew that would instill.
Little pops and cracks bloomed from Bakugou’s clenched fists, but those had never been intimidating to him. the snarl that followed was even less so, especially since Bakugou reined it in quickly enough, heaving a long sigh of his own through a jaw clenched so tight it had to be painful.
“Whatever, Icyhot. See if I care. Can’t you just take whatever dumb crisis you’re having elsewhere then?”
Shouto almost wanted to applaud — that was almost polite, really.
“N—” he started to say again, and then paused as his eyes fell back to his empty sheet.
Hero Name, the empty field still read, but right now, it didn’t feel like it was taunting him.
Now there was an idea…
Aizawa-sensei didn’t sigh as he took in Shouto’s filled-in form and saw the name he’d put in. He didn’t grimace, or scowl, or start banging his head against the wall, or do any of the hundreds of things he could do to show how tired he was.
Because it was very obvious that he was.
“Really?” he said instead. “That’s the name you’ve chosen?”
Was there a hint of despair in that tone, or was Shouto just making it up.
“Yes,” Shouto replied nonetheless.
“And you understand that you probably won’t be able to change it again.”
Shouto nodded calmly. “Yes.”
This time, Aizawa-sensei sighed. “Alright, then. I’ll send it in, and you should get your new and updated license in the next week.”
“Thank you, sensei.”
The first time Katsuki heard that Half’n’Half had actually picked a hero name, his only thought was, Finally.
And then he heard the actual name, and almost missed his landing, narrowly avoiding faceplanting into one of Cementos’s mockup buildings in training ground Beta.
“What was that?” he shouted as Half’n’Half glid to the other side of the roof.
The bastard only blinked back at him, his face unbothered. From the corner of his eye, Katsuki could see Deku almost tripping over his feet to intervene, before one of his friends tugged him back.
“Oh, right, I should probably thank you for the suggestion,” that fucking bastard continued, smug as anything.
(Behind them, someone choked on what suspiciously sounds like laughter.)
Katsuki growled and he clenched his fists before he did anything he would (not) regret. “That wasn’t a suggestion.”
Half’n’Half shrugged. “Of course.”
And then, like it was absolutely normal for him to have named himself Icyhot, like that wasn’t the dumbest fucking thing Katsuki had heard since Deku had decided to use that as his hero name, he turned around and said they should focus on the exercise.
Oh, Katsuki was going to show him focus all right…
Starting by winning this stupid training exercise.
Of course, Midoriya cornered him as soon as he could.
“So… You really picked Icyhot as your hero name?”
It was hard to say exactly what was in his friend’s voice besides curiosity — it wasn’t fear, exactly, nor was it anything sad, really, but… Something adjacent to both, maybe.
Shouto paused in removing his hero costume and moved to face his friend.
“Does it bother you?” he asked, frowning a little. He hadn’t thought about Midoriya while making his choice, and he didn’t know why Midoriya might feel… uneasy about it (his relationship with Bakugou was nothing like it had been at first, but they still oscillated between best friends and rivals in a way that had made some of their classmates go ‘ah, siblings’, which Shouto didn’t really understand.).
“No, no, of course not!” Midoriya hastened to reply, shaking his head. He bit his lip, though, and looked down. “Or, maybe? It’s nothing, it’s just— Well, I guess in a way Kacchan gave us both our hero names, ahah…”
“He hates that,” Shouto replied with a smirk.
Midoriya barked out a laugh and then flushed red. “I— Well, that is, he’s not…” He deflated. “Probably. But it’s not… I mean, you’re… okay with that?” Midoriya’s voice broke a little on the okay, and he sounded so stressed out that Shouto paused to really consider it.
He may not really understand why his friend was so concerned about this, but Shouto could and would do his best to help him.
But even so, his answer was the same.
“I chose it,” he said, and Midoriya let out a nervous laugh again.
“I— Yes, you did, that was—” His shoulders relaxed. “You did.”
“I did,” Shouto agreed, nonplussed.
Midoriya grinned. “You did,” he repeated, and somehow, it sounded like Shouto had done far more than pick a name he could work with (that would also piss off Bakugou and his father, even if the latter would now try to pretend it didn’t).
This time, Midoriya’s laugh sounded relieved — and Shouto laughed with him.