Archive of Our Own ^beta

"sho...?"

shouto hummed. he leaned his bare back against the cold edge of the tub, let his eyes slip shut. the blackness behind them was comforting, quiet. interrupted only by the blossoming static of phosphenes against his eyelids, the faint shifting of the dark as soft light peered through his lashes. his mind was still malleable, dazed from the dream. it wanted to draw his mother's face from the empty air, ache beneath a phantom of his mother's touch against the quivering lift of his cheek. but he blinked again, let the fluorescent light bulbs cut at his retinas, shatter the fantasy of her wobbling pink mouth and purplebluepurpleblue palms splayed over his ribs. he breathed and the thick scent of lavender bundled itself up like warm laundry in the cavity of his lungs. easing the lingering burn of smoke and bile.

"shouto, are you alright?" izuku called again. his voice sounded sticky and sluggish, still clinging to sleep.

shouto had been so super careful not to wake him up. izuku had been tired recently. he said it was because of winter, that the cold always made him sleepier, slower, like he had snow sludge in his bones or something. shouto didn't want to worry him, and the nightmare wasn't so bad, wasn't all blood slick floorboards and broken bodies and burning flesh. he'd only dreamt of his mother, of her damp, moth eaten cardigans and her trembling blue wrists. he didn't know why he'd woken with his heart bleeding between his teeth and his breath spilling too fast out of his body. it wasn't a big deal.

but, he'd gone and worried him anyway. now izuku was pressed up against the bathroom door, tapping his fist against the wood, calling for him in that low, floaty voice like his lips were still dozing and he kept prodding them awake.

shouto sunk further into the bath water. it was cloudy now, brimming with white, foamy bubbles. momo taught him how to run himself a bubble bath last week, and she'd even gifted him some lavender bath foam and epsom salt. she said it was good for self care, and so he'd run himself a bath and had been sitting in it for the last thirty minutes. his knees and fingers were pink and pruny, and he was beginning to lose feeling in his legs. he frowned.

i should probably get out now.

"shouto—"

"i'm okay," he said, at last. it came out weird, wonky, too rough around the edges. he coughed and tried again. "i'm okay. i took a bath."

izuku sighed against the gap between the door and its frame. shouto drew himself up, very slowly, propped his wet hands against the side of the tub and lifted himself out of the water. the air felt even colder now. it bit with tiny, fanged teeth, clawed with ragged hands at his goosebumped shoulders.

he stepped carefully over the tub's edge and grabbed for his clothes, folded up neat and tidy on the shiny white counter top. his hair was sopping down his neck, into his eyes, it was so long now, long like mom's, and it stung because he'd forgotten to rinse the soap out of his bangs. he flipped his hair back, pulled the gnarly wet strands behind his ears, and shoved a powder blue sweater over his head. it was so warm, his skin ached in relief. he shivered hard as the hem skimmed his thighs, and now his knees were quivering, so he stepped into the holes of his sweatpants and pulled them up to his hips. mm, softsoftsoftsoftsoftsoftsoftsoft like mom.izuku knocked on the door again.

"shouto, are you sure you're okay? can i see you?"

see me? shouto would open the door, but he was still thinking about blue wrists—my shouto—only—already—my shouto and he didn't want izuku to find the damp, moth eaten cardigan strung up on the clothesline of thought he was tying behind his eyes.

he looked in the mirror and saw himself as his mother must have all those years ago. his face, exposed for once to the fullness of the bone stripping light. the white and the red of his hair mixed so violently, he couldn't tell where his father ended and his mother began, the mismatch of her and him battling along the hard set of his jawline, the soft slant of his eyes, the weight of his mouth pulling itself taut, the scar the scar the scar and his eyes, his eyes. the ache of wet earth and the cauterizing burn of a star worn heaven, a sky come to die behind the fall of his eyelid.

"...shouto..." shoutoshoutoshoutoshouto izuku kept calling for him. he'd never been called for quite like that. like a prayer and a plea and a revelation. he peeled himself away from the mirror, and his reflection bled away into static, a ghost in his periphery.

he tried to stop thinking of his father. he didn't know why he was thinking of his father. he didn't know why shouto, your father—not like him—your father—just like him because he'd dreamt that it's alright sweetheart he'd dreamt of his mom. his father had tried so hard to eat her. shouto had watched him every day, trying to swallow her whole, but of course, he'd never really succeeded. his father was blood slick floors broken bodies burning flesh and his mother was softer, was cardigans bruises—smoke in her hair.

"shouto—"

he opened the door, and izuku was there, ragged around his eyes with worry.

shouto must have looked messy. he'd come undone in slumber, plucked apart by thin, cold hands under the belly of the slow breathing blackness, and the bath water had only made him softer, rosined the blood rushing high to his cheeks and buzzing beneath his pinched lips. he was almost too soft now, spilling out over the collar of his sweater, chewing the mush of his decimated words between his teeth, pushing them to the tip of his tongue, wincing and squeezing at himself when they dribbled from his sluggish mouth without shape, gasping for an outline in the chafing wheeze of his breath.

izuku took one look at him, shaking like a tiny little baby in the snow, dew kissed and pale fuchsia from the bathroom's choking heat, and it was like he knew. at least a little bit. his forehead was crumpling in on itself, and his mouth kept slipping and sliding down his face, fighting fruitlessly against gravity. he must have been very worried, and he also looked so tired. he was a little hunched in on himself, like the world was sitting between his shoulder blades, like his bones were folding themselves up inside his body, like sleep was still clinging to his ankles, still warm beneath his stumbling feet. he reached for shouto. pressed his palm flat to the rough, red skin of shouto's left cheek, and god, god, he was warmsoftwarmsoft and it felt so good, so sweet that shouto's knees melted into strawberry jelly for a moment and he went all wobbly. izuku had to catch him around the crest of his hip with his free hand before he could topple over.

"sho, love, what's going on?" izuku breathed, folding his fingers against the curve of shouto's cheekbone. he stroked the skin there, just once, with the pad of his thumb, and shouto shivered so hard his teeth clacked together.

"i—" he tried, gasped gasped, grappling for izuku's wrist. his eyelids dropped and then fluttered, and again, his heart was a humming bird pecking at the milk white bars of its cage. "i don't—i don't know. had a—a dream."

"about your father?" izuku hummed, close enough now to kiss. shouto shook his head and a few wet strands of his bangs popped out from behind his ears and slapped the side of his face.

"no, about mom. wasn't bad, not really..." smoke in her hair. izuku raised a brow, disbelieving.

"sho..." he said, slow and soft. almost a croon.

"it wasn't bad," shouto reiterated. izuku was looking at him funny now, holding him so quietly, rubbing his fingers against his cheek and his hip in that way he knew was distracting. "and i took care of myself, like momo taught me. i ran myself a bath."

"and you did good," izuku was quick to reassure him. he smiled a little bit, and it scrunched at the tired slants of his sleepy eyes. he pressed his soft mouth to the curve of shouto's jaw. "you did so good shouto. i'm proud of you."

shouto's stomach ached. he hummed, something pliant and telling, and izuku's shoulders hitched with a giggle. it was a little raspy in the early morning. his eyes were binding, and shouto kept losing himself whenever they swallowed his own, nothing more than reflection, izuku's devoted perception of him.

"you should wake me...next time." izuku murmured then, and that rippling sadness was back.

izuku was...easy to read. most of the time. it was like he was bleeding through his own skin, too small to hold the magnitude of his heart, so it pushed through his eyes and his nose and his lips and through his very pores. shouto could just touch him and feel the pounding in his bones, the rushing of his blood, the quick, feral beat of that forever giving heart, and he knew and knew and knew. but sometimes, even izuku was difficult. now, shouto knew he was sad, but there was a strange tinge to his sadness. a color to it that shouto never learned the name of. izuku kissed him again, on the corner of his mouth. then the hollow of his throat. the slope of his collarbone. shouto trembled against him, loosed a small, embarrassing noise into the crown of his head as his chest tightened and pooled with hot honey.

"you're tired..." shouto breathed, blinking fast. izuku jerked his head no.

"never too tired for you." he swore. shouto blinked again, nearly saw stars, and his skin was starting to hurt now, his bones beginning to meld into his muscle tissue, fuck, and he felt a little dizzy and he wanted izuku to kiss him again and never too tired for you—touchtouchtouchTOUCH—

"i'm gonna make myself some t—tea..." he heard himself whisper from a distance. his tongue felt big, too warm in his mouth.

izuku pulled back, just enough to really look at him can i see you? his eyes were careful again. so forest green, pretty pretty prettyprettypretty. “green tea heightens brain activity, boosts metabolism, reduces cancer risk, lowers cholesterol, regulates joint pain, and can assist with treating type 2 diabetes—" shouto cut himself with a rough gasp. izuku huffed a near silent laugh and rocked back on his heels. his hands came away from shouto's skin, and he had to stop himself from face planting into izuku's shoulder.

"mm, where'd you learn all that sho?" izuku teased, but his smile was so gentle. fond, shouto's brain supplied happily. he—likeslikeslikeslikesLIKES me—

"shinsou likes tea." he said. izuku laughed again, louder this time. shouto flapped his hands at his sides. made him laugh!

"yeah, ye—yeah i know. and you like it too, huh?"

shouto bobbed his head. "yes. i'll make myself green tea. it will help."

"okay," izuku sighed. he blinked his eyes a little too roughly. a yawn wriggled out of his mouth, and izuku stuffed his knuckles against his lips in an attempt to shove it back in. "do you want me to come with you?"

tired, he's—never too tired for you—he's so tired—

"no, i'm okay." shouto decided. "go to sleep."

"...sho..." izuku started, skeptical, but shouto shook his head. he kissed izuku on the soft lift of his brow, and then on the tip of his nose. forced the corners of his mouth to tilt up a bit.

"i'm alright. go to sleep."

"but—"

"sleep izuku."

"oh, fine." he surrendered at last. he made a show of rolling his eyes and crossing his arms tight over his chest, but even as he did so, he was drifting back in the direction of the bed, as though he had been resisting its tempting pull all this time and had only needed shouto's encouragement to give in.

shouto watched izuku mess with the rumpled covers for a moment, a hazy sheen steadily coating his tired stare, and then carefully tuck himself into the soft crease of the mattress. he sighed as his cheek sunk into the cleft of the pillowcase. so often, izuku appeared larger than life itself. a divine revelation bound to mortal bone and flesh, an awakening born to the shape of a boy, but in these moments, as the dozing sun began to breathe into the glass of their curtained window and izuku laid, raw beneath its shivering light, so softly frayed at his edges like a fading dream, so very small in his oversized all might pajama set, that shouto remembered how very young he was, and how very much like him. broken and beautiful as anyone.

"drink some tea sho," izuku murmured through the sticky daze of slumber. his eyes were already closed, his mouth falling slack. "and come back to bed after, mm? gotta make sure...you're okay..."

shouto felt the smile rise from within him, so suddenly he didn't have the time to bite it back. he felt just a brief ache of panic as it pulled his lips, but then he breathed, tasted the lavender and the cold of the invading winter air. his skin still tingled from izuku's touch. the panic slept.

"i will." he promised. he waited until izuku was well and truly asleep before departing.

he was wearing a sweater, but there was no shirt underneath and the air in the hall was even colder. the floorboards creaked beneath his padding feet, and the silence was nearly oppressive, an absence where there should have been chaos, that natural symphony born from the pure artistry of domestic living. shouto felt like the loudest creature on earth, could hear his heart thumpthumpthumping just a little too loud. he squeezed his arms around his hips. his hair was beginning to dry, but the nape of his neck was utterly soaked because he hadn't toweled off properly, and he could still feel the soap suds he'd forgotten about slowly melting at his back. the dream was growing distant from him now. his thoughts were a bit sharper, took on a more concise shape and traced a clear path to the kitchen.

he shuffled into the living room, and it took him a moment to realize it wasn't nearly as empty or as cold as the rest of the dorm. there was a quiet fire going, sleepy orange flame swelling over a bundle of wood in the hearth, popping so gently shouto had to strain to hear it. the silence too, had given way. delicate footsteps brushed the floor, and a light grunt sounded from the bookshelf. shouto turned his head and found bakugou standing there.

his back was turned to shouto. he seemed rather busy, in the middle of watering one of tsuyu's long, spidery houseplants dangling from the top shelf. if he'd heard shouto come in, he gave no acknowledgement. he was focused, shouto realized.

he's pretty.

that thought surprised him. bakugou was hardly doing a thing, was standing so very still, shouto could have mistaken him for a statue. but he was lifting his arms above his head to reach, and his black t shirt was stretching up his stomach, revealing the pale curve of his waist, the soft dimple at his lower back. his hair was more fluffy than spiky, and a little droopier than usual. the sun kept catching the white-blonde curls at the back of his head, and they looked almost angelic when they glowed like that. shouto wanted to—touch it, touch him touch him touch him touch him touch him TOUCH him— and his throat was so tight, he could hardly get his next breath down. he was getting that dizzy feeling again, but no one was even touching him. he pressed his own hand to his bare collarbone and ached. pathetic PATHETIC.

bakugou turned around. his eyes fluttered over to shouto, standing awkwardly by the door with his palm splayed over his own chest. he didn't seem surprised by his presence, just appropriately irritated. his mouth bent into a fuzzy version of his usual scowl, but his eyes were so gentle a red, his brow smooth and unworried. he gave a soft grunt as he placed the watering can on the sill of the window. shouto assumed this was the only acknowledgement he was going to receive and nodded his head in greeting.

bakugou quickly returned to what looked to be morning chores. the routine seemed practiced, and bakugou moved through it effortlessly.

shouto shuffled to the kitchen while bakugou vacuumed the rug in the living room and started boiling water on the stove. he busied himself with the mail while the water heated rather than watching the bubbles rise, did his best to ignore the soft creaking and popping of the stove top. he could feel his mother's fingers skating down the dip of his spine, but he kept pressing his fingers hard against his lips, remembering the weight of izuku's mouth and the burn of his hand. he breathed against the soft bend of his wrist and filled his head with more lavender when the smoke started to curl beneath his tongue and that made him feel nice. a little floaty. once the tea was finished boiling, he poured himself a cup, and, on a whim, poured bakugou a cup too. he let the tea bags steep for two minutes before adding sugar, honey, and a dash of milk.

bakugou was sweeping up snack crumbs when shouto emerged with two mugs of tea in hand. he noticed the extra cup and huffed a bit, his brows flicking up in what shouto thought might be amusement.

"that for me?" he mumbled, quieter than shouto had ever heard. there was a tired rasp to his voice, a gravelly tone to it that, for some reason, made shouto's teeth buzz and his stomach warm. his eyes were so weird. so intense and so sharp and so unforgiving with their attention, but somehow so safe too.

"green tea," shouto provided, only a little breathlessly. he placed his own cup down on the coffee table and held out bakugou's. bakugou raised a brow but took it from him without complaint, his hand skimming shouto's—TOUCH ME TOUCHTOUCHTOUCH—as he pulled away. "green tea heightens brain activity, boosts metabolism, reduces cancer risk, lowers cholesterol, regulates joint pain, and can assist with treating type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure."

"fuckin' nerd," bakugou mumbled, but it didn't really sound angry. he was smiling a little, and smiles were happy. "you've been hanging around that damn deku too much."

"you like tea." shouto said, because bakugou did like tea. he'd heard him discussing it with momo once, when he thought no one else was in the kitchen. the spicier ones were his favorites, like cinnamon orange and chai. he drank tea more than coffee.

bakugou stared at him like he was insane, which shouto found a little insulting considering the fact that if anyone was insane out of the two of them, it was definitely bakugou.

"you're so weird." he huffed, shaking his head.

shouto frowned. "you're weird."

bakugou hummed, a smirk playing on his lips. he took a slow sip of his tea, and though shouto didn't know why, he felt his chest clench. he knew bakugou didn't like things that were too sweet, so he'd only given him a little sugar and honey, but he wondered if maybe he'd done it wrong, if maybe he'd still put too much, or he hadn't put enough and the tea would be too bitter to swallow. he grasped the fabric of his sweatpants between his fingers and stared adamantly at bakugou's weird, confusing face. he pulled the cup's rim away from his lips and tongued at the corner of his mouth.

"mm," he sighed, cradling the mug between both his palms. his eyes flicked back up to shouto's. "not bad half n' half."

shouto sighed. "oh...really?"

"yeah dumbass," bakugou rolled his eyes, took another sip of his tea before setting it down on the coffee table. "s' good tea."

shouto felt a warm tingle in his knuckles. he looked down at his hands. they were flapping again. bakugou seemed to notice too, and his eyes got all soft, like the first breath of dawn.

the rest of the morning passed quietly. bakugou put on a cartoon for him. he said it was to keep shouto busy, so he wouldn't bother bakugou while he was trying to get shit done, but when he noticed shouto stifling his reactions so he wouldn't get on bakugou's nerves, he called him an idiot and told him to laugh when he wanted to, so shouto didn't think he was all that bothered.

he cuddled up on the sofa and drank his tea, and he watched bakugou work. he was so efficient, only ever stopping for a moment to take a sip of his tea before going back to furiously cleaning all the communal spaces. it occurred to shouto that bakugou must do this every morning, or at least very often. he'd always wondered how they always woke to a spotless dorm room, no matter the mess they'd left behind the previous night, and had come to the logical conclusion that cleaning faeries lived in the walls and crept out at night to tidy up. but it wasn't cleaning faeries, it was just bakugou. it seemed like a lot for one person to do.

shouto had forgotten, he was supposed to return to bed after finishing his tea. izuku had wanted to know—can i see you—gotta make sure you're okay—had wanted to know he was alright now. but he'd gotten distracted. the cartoon bakugou had put on was really interesting and bakugou was really pretty when he was soft and tired like this. he didn't remember the promise he'd made until the others began trickling in, and izuku stumbled into the living room with his eyes glued half closed and his cheeks blooming a furious shade of pink.

"sho,” he whined once he caught sight of him, still nestled into the sofa cushion. "you said you'd come back."

"oh..." shouto realized. he frowned. "oh, i'm sorry. i forgot."

izuku hummed. he planted a messy kiss on the crown of shouto's head and bakugou gagged into his open palm.

"are you alright?" izuku whispered, dragging a hand through his hair. shouto shivered, managed a tiny nod as little goosebumps spread along his arms.

"i—i'm okay," he said. "bakugou was here."

"oh, well that's good," izuku giggled. there was a sharp gleam to his eye, but shouto didn't know what it meant. then izuku pulled another hand through his hair and he no longer cared what it meant. "thanks for looking after sho kacchan!"

"fuck you deku, i didn't do shit," bakugou scowled, his softness melting away to make room for his rage. "i was minding my own damn business and icyhot just kept fuckin' staring at me with his dead cow eyes—"

izuku giggled into shouto's hair.

shouto smiled. this is nice.

///

winter came sleepily, and snow came with it.

everything was so quiet. quiet like it was at home, when mom buried herself beneath the crisp sheets of her too big bed and nestled her mottled cheek against the cleft of her pillowcase, whispering sorry honey, i'm just not feeling too well like her tears weren't lining the floorboards. quiet like when fuyumi took natsuo and hid in the closet, their crackly breaths heaved against their palms, and his father retreated to his own studio to throw his bronze fists into his punching bag. quiet like when shouto was glad he wasn't being punched instead.

except, this quiet was a little different, though shouto couldn't understand why. silences were fundamentally the same. the absence of sound. but, this silence wasn't quite the same as his mother's eyes or his sister's fingers trembling against her hips. he sat against the base of the sofa and he could hear the sound of the wood splintering in the fireplace. the warmth spilled from the hearth's open mouth and laved his skin in heat. his cheeks were all rosined and his eyes watery with sleep and pleasure. and shinsou was breathing so softly into the crook of his elbow, so pretty. he was sleeping on the sofa, his lanky legs stuffed beneath him, his bare toes tucked against the arm rest. his head was lolling to one side. he looked funny and beautiful all at once, with his pale cheek squished against the edge of the cushion and his pale pink lips parted. shouto didn't disturb him and neither did tsuyu. he needed the sleep.

the others were outside. they were playing like all the children do—not like them shouto. the snowfall came in white sheets and blanketed the world in glistening ivory. when they'd realized it was snowing, denki had run up to the glass and plastered his clammy hands against the window, his eyes bubbling like the liquid from a broken glow stick. everyone had grabbed their scarves and coats and mittens and stumbled outside to roll the snow into little balls and throw them at each other's heads. aoyama wished to drag his limbs through the ground to create what he called a snow angel. they must have all been very cold, but they didn't seem to want to come inside where it was warm. they liked the snow.

"thank you for staying with me todoroki-kun," tsuyu croaked from behind him. she was bundled up in at least six blankets. "i'm sure you'd rather be out with the others, kero."

tsuyu didn't do well in the cold. it made her very tired and very sad, and the last time someone had left the window open, she'd passed out in uraraka's arms, unusually pale and fuzzy eyed. she had to stay inside, and so shouto had decided to stay with her, to keep her company. he was sure playing in the snow with the others would have been quite enjoyable, but he was drained from training. he'd have time to play with them later. his father not like them not like them not like them you're special his father wasn't there to keep him locked away.

"oh, i don't mind." he told her quietly. his voice felt slow as drizzling honey. he felt lethargic, sitting so long by the fire, listening to shinsou breathe. she leaned forward, and shouto felt her knees skim his upper back. she placed a nimble hand atop his head, and he flinched though he was unafraid.

"you're a good boy todoroki-kun." she cooed, and shouto heard the smile in her voice. his blood swam in his head. she likes me—you're a good boy—what a nice, good boy. he squeezed his arms around his stomach. his heart was fluttering so quickly, aching behind his skull.

"mm," she hummed. shouto felt her finger trace his head, and he was overcome with warm chills. he trembled faintly, a tingling flush steadily working through his skin. "your hair is getting so long."

touch me, touch touch shouto bobbed his head too hard. "yes. i think i like—mm. i like it this way. i think. yes."

yes, yes, yes he did. it was so long pretty sho like his mother's smoke in her hair. like fuyumi's. it was growing past his ears now, it was nearly at his shoulders. his bangs too were beginning to grow into his eyes, and they sometimes got caught between his lashes when he blinked. he would have to trim them, though he'd like to keep growing out his hair. maybe it would be as long as his mother's one day. tsuyu hummed beneath her breath and flicked the uneven strands resting at his nape.

"may i—may i braid it?" she asked, and there was a quiet undercurrent to her tone that wasn't usually there, a shift from her casual bluntness.

"braid it?" he repeated.

"yes, kero kero. i've been told i'm quite good. i used to braid my little sister's hair every day before school, and mine as well. and your hair...it's very pretty. it's soft and long enough now to style. do you mind?"

she said all of this carefully, matter-of-factly. as though she knew this proposition was an odd one for him, knew it was an offer he might run from. she was by no means new to him. he knew the press of her arms around his chest, the scent of petrichor clinging to her plaits and easing into the seams of her clothing, the coolness of her lips when she kissed his brow. she was familiar as a sister and just as warm, but still. he was still. cold boy, why are you so—?

his mother used to comb through his hair with her thin fingers when he was a small child. she'd separate his red and white locks, brush them down on either side of his soft head and then mouth her love into the line where it split, as if she could mold him into a real and whole boy with her adoration alone. when she left, fuyumi took to brushing it when she could, always very quickly, and with an air of urgency. since then, very few had touched his hair. only izuku, and once, denki, during their movie night.

he tilted his head back and found tsuyu's face hovering over his own. her hair was pulled back into a huge ribbon which sat upon the crown of her head and was secured with a fuzzy pink scrunchie. her eyes were steady as they always were, as earthly a green as a forest canopy. but there was a tiny frown between her thin brows. her face was soft, open. it urged him to become soft and open as well. he jerked his head in a quick nod and she smiled very quietly, as though her pleasure in itself were a silent treasure. she's happy, smiles are so happy.

"come, kero, scoot a little farther back." she directed, stretching her legs from their crossed position and letting them fall over the sofa cushions. she spread her knees apart so shouto could sit between them. she must have had hair accessories and things inside the pocket of her pom pom purin sweatpants, because she didn't hesitate before grabbing a fistful of his red hair and twisting it up in a hasty knot. he pulled a stirring gasp beneath his tongue as the strands pulled away fast and his head thrummed. his heart began to gnaw feverishly at his ribs, already succumbing to a blushing daze.

she began to plait his mother's hair first—his white hair. she pulled his bangs away from his face and the warm air kissed his exposed forehead. her fingers were small and nimble, and her work was so gentle, shouto hardly felt a pull when she began to cross the strands over each other. with each tug of her hand, he felt only the smallest sway, and he breathed slowly, a little heavily through his nose as his body gave the lightest of rocks back and forth. his cheeks were rosined and hot, like the furnace flame had climbed beneath them. he felt a little achy. his chest was clenching and gripping against himself, braced against the peak of something, braced against the fall. and yet somehow, shouto's mind was very quiet.

his eyelids grew heavier by the second, and he found that he was dozing beneath her hands. it was such a wondrous feeling, to be touched like this. his head felt as though it were erupting in goosebumps, and a sort of humming warmth sung at the back of his head first and then branched out through the rest of his body. he felt like a silent stereo or a broken record player, spinning and thrumming with a quiet energy. she did not speak. she was very focused. she only broke her silence once, shaking him from a light sleep to ask which color ribbon he'd like. he chose a rich shade of green for izuku. and, as she smiled at him, her eyes creasing into emerald crescent moons, he decided the green should be for her too.

he slept through most of her work on the left side of his head. it was so easy. he often worried about sleeping in front of other people because CONSTANT VIGILANCE SHOUTO but everything about his friends was easy. they coaxed him open with their lily bud fingers and blossom eyes and bundled up their love like a warm cloth only just pulled from the dryer, tucked it safe inside the cold, hardened cavern of his chest and then sealed him back up with a kiss. he knew they would not hurt him, knew they wouldn't use him whilst he slumbered because his vulnerability, to them, was not something to be taken but something he gave.

he woke only when he felt tsuyu's tiny hands tapping at his back. he had to fight with his eyes as he opened them and he felt her breathy rasp of a giggle ghost the back of his neck.

"you're finished," she hummed, rubbing a thumb into his shoulder. "would you like to see?"

"yes please." he mumbled blearily. she pressed her phone into his palm. the case was still warm from her heat and patterned with small lime green frogs perched on pink lily pads. she'd opened up her camera and he caught his own reflection in the screen.

his face was entirely exposed. his scar was a terrible, deep red thing sprawled across his blue eye like some crude branding, with all the rugged violence of a slur scrawled hastily on a wall. unsightly—he's only five—UNSIGHTLY—already five! he despised it. he despised looking at it. he blinked hard and moved his attention away, up to his head.

tsuyu had done up the front of his hair into big braids that began at the middle split of his hairline and encircled his skull like a crown. she'd woven the green ribbon between the strands and secured the ends into tiny little buns that squished side by side at the back of his head. the two thinner strands by his hair had been twisted into skinny plaits and secured with hair pieces. they must have belonged to tsuyu. they were twining bands of silver with emerald stones encased inside. the rest of his hair had been left to curl at the back of his neck, though she'd fluffed it with her fingers to give it more volume. it was beautiful. he looked...sho, my love...he looked almost like...

"you look very beautiful kero.” tsuyu said. he felt her thumb at the base of his neck, at the top bump of his spine, warm and firm. his throat felt unbearably tight, almost like someone could have been choking him, like his father's fingers could have been there, pressing into his pale jugular, pulling at his breath, leaving him gasping. but when he placed his own palm against his throat, there was nothing but the flush of heat, the tickle of a careful warmth, the stickiness of a tear stained love.

beautiful, so beautiful, my sho—shouto swallowed hard. the warmth dribbled down to his stomach.

"thank you." he said, or tried to say. it came out half silent, half the sound still stumbling at the back of his mouth. he frowned. why are you—so beautiful—heart hurts? why, why—

tsuyu smiled. she kissed him then, on the crown of his head, where the red met the white, like shoutoshoutoshouto my good boy. he was trembling. he felt like he was blossoming from inside himself, like something was growing through his veins. he was blushing blushing blushing—you're so pretty when you blush sho—he squeezed his nail beds to his palm. he handed tsuyu back her phone, and she didn't mention the way his skin had gone all pink or the way his breath had gotten all loud and sluggish. she didn't even comment on his wet, shiny eyes when he turned to look at her. she just hummed, squeezed his shoulder.

"do you want to try braiding my hair?" she asked, so simply, so easily. shouto nodded.

"yes please."

and so he tried. tsuyu settled between his legs, and he untied her bow with clumsy hands, and her deep green hair cascaded down her back like a mossy waterfall. it was pretty and so sooo soft soft and it smelled like her, like petrichor, like rain and earth. he spent a while, just twisting the ringlets about his fingers, and she let him.

he'd never braided anyone's hair before. he'd never touched anyone else's hair before save izuku's, and he'd never tried to style it—it was so thick and curly, shouto couldn't have managed it even if he wanted to, but—he tried to braid tsuyu's. he'd seen the girls do it to each other, and it hadn't seemed too difficult. just a three way criss cross really...it should have been easy. except, shouto's fingers were slow and stiff, and her hair was pure silk gathering in the hollows of his pale knuckles, spilling through the crevices of his fingers whenever he tilted his hand. the ties she'd given him would slip off the tail ends of her braids if not strung around at least three times, something he learned from trial and error, and though she didn't voice any irritation, he knew he was taking a far longer time than she had.

eventually, he managed. he pulled her hair into two long braids at each of her shoulders, slipped a fuzzy scrunchie on both ends to secure them in place. and they were...clumpy. he hadn't pulled it tight enough, so it was loose near her scalp, bunching up in some places, squeezed too tight in others. springy strands escaped their patterns and formed little green frizz clouds behind her pale ears, above the nape of her neck. even the part was jagged, uneven. nothing like how she'd done his, all neat and pretty and perfectly sectioned off. shouto's was a mess.

"can i see kero?” she said can i see can i see can i see you?

"yeah..." he felt himself whisper, even though his entire body was screaming no no no no nononononononono. he didn't know what he did wrong. he did it just like the other girls had, he'd been so careful. tsuyu trusted him with her beautiful, beautiful hair and he'd tried so hard to be careful and soft and gentle like mom had been with him. he'd wanted to be soft like mom. he'd wanted tsuyu to know he could be soft with her. but he'd—pathetic pathetic pathetic NOT LIKE THEM—he'd fucked it up.

he could feel that burning, that hungering heat from an unseen flame buried so, so deeply within him. it was wild and frightful, a thrashing force at the pit of his stomach. sour and violent as sickness, he folded his palm over his trembling mouth so he wouldn't loose some tortured sound, wouldn't say something dumb dumb dumb dumb and make tsuyu hate him more than she already would once she saw what he'd done to her hair.

she held her phone's camera before her face. he turned his eyes away, nestled his gaze somewhere in the fluff of the carpeting so he wouldn't have to see that moment—unsightly!— when her soft face cracked into jagged pieces, open glass on worn linoleum, bloody porcelain in a child's quivering hand.

but she didn't shout. she hardly even—she hardly even twitched. she moved only to tilt her head, and her mouth didn't cut across her face like a seeping gash. it just pursed briefly in thought before slackening again, easing into something sleepy, something pleased. he let his hand fall from his lips. he didn't disguise their shaking, their endless shaking, as the flame spluttered in confusion. she turned to him, and her eyes hadn't changed. she kissed his forehead and he felt like moss, suddenly wishing he could be the green of her hair.

"it's beautiful," she told him. her cheeks pinked and curved with the sweet sway of her smile. she fingered at the end of one, lumpy braid, rubbed her thumb against the crooked rubber band he'd wrangled onto the end. "thank you todoroki-kun."

he blinked.

"you're welcome," he half whispered. his words felt very distant from him. "i'm—i'm sorry it's so messy."

sorry i ruined your hair, sorry i fucked everything up and ruined your hair, sorry i ruined it, i ruin everything, i ruin everything everything EVERYTHING—

"well, kero, it is a little frizzy," she hummed, flicking at one of the puffy tufts curling away from its loose pattern and bunching just behind her ear. "but my first braid was frizzy too, and very knotted. my little sister still loved it."

shouto stared. faces were very odd, very strange, and tsuyu's moved so quietly.

"you don't hate it?"

his voice was small. like a child's.

she held his cheeks in each of her cool palms. his skin felt full of fire in comparison, his heat bleeding through her knuckles. she laid her kiss to his nose and her giggle was low, rumbling and raspy as thunder.

" i love it kero. because you did it for me."

shouto's teeth clattered together. he pushed his fingers into his swimming stomach, felt the way it hitched. just like it did when shinsou pressed his mouth to the underside of his jaw or when izuku pushed his hands into his shoulders or when bakugou squeezed his arms around his hips. he knew this sweet, warm feeling bubbling up inside like dizzy cherry wine. he felt it too, when he heard the words "i love you."

"oh."

tsuyu giggled again at his dewey eyes, patted his cheek once more before withdrawing her hand.

"do you want to braid shinsou-kun's hair now?"

"mhm."

as shinsou slept, he and tsuyu wove little braids into his soft hair. it was very curly and sooo soft, and shouto had more fun playing with it and letting his fingers catch in the springy ringlets than he did actually braiding it. tsuyu pulled his curls into rather elaborate plaits and fastened them with hello kitty hair clips and pastel pink scrunchies. she seemed familiar with his hair, and, when asked, revealed that she often brushed out and braided shinsou's hair for him, though only in the privacy of his room.

"i taught him how to braid," she explained. "he wanted to learn for eri-chan. he's a good boy kero."

this, shouto had known for a long time. since the moment shinsou first touched him, a hand soft as rain against his shoulder, his eyes sleep worn in the dark. he nodded along. stared at shinsou's slackened face and thought, not for the first time, that he was very beautiful.

shinsou woke up just as they were finishing, though they'd been very gentle so as not to.

"hey pretty..." he half slurred when he noticed shouto hovering over his head. his voice was even deeper with slumber clinging to it. sweet and sticky, like sleep was a syrup caught on his teeth and tongue. his brow lifted once he noticed the pull of fingers through his hair, and the unfamiliar state of shouto's. he hummed. "what'cha doin'?"

"we're braiding your hair. is that okay?"

shinsou smiled a little bit. it was a warm, quiet thing, and very fleeting. gone before shouto could commit it to memory.

"yeah, i like it," he assured. tsuyu brushed her cold hand along shinsou's smooth brow, and he pressed into her fingertips. maybe he feels like moss too. he seemed happy to see her. "hey tsuyu-chan."

tsuyu hummed at him. "hello kero. you should go back to sleep."

"nah, it's okay. bout time i woke up." he stretched his legs down, towards the arm of the sofa, and let out a soft groan as his bones gave a quiet pop.

shouto combed his fingers through the very top of shinsou's hair again, but this time, shinsou shivered. it was small, hardly noticeable if you weren't paying attention. but shouto saw it just as much as he felt it beneath his touch. shinsou's ears burned a faint pink and his eyes were blackened, big as a cat's.

it was only then he remembered—i was touch starved too before my dads adopted me. shinsou was like him. so...so maybe...

he did it again, and shinsou hummed so softly, more breath than sound.

"that's nice..." he mumbled, but it was like his words had gone all mushy in his mouth. his eyes were hazy, lavender static on the frayed edges of a dream. his mouth was so soft and loose with content.

shinsou reached up, brushed the pad of his thumb against shouto's throat, and then he realized he was flushed down to his chest. shinsou smirked. "awe, you're sweet kitten."

tsuyu gave a little, huffy laugh, and shouto frowned in confusion. sweet? what for?

he wanted to ask, but then the front door swung open, and winter's draft descended upon them. tsuyu pulled her fingers from shinsou's hair and instead tucked them against the curve of her stomach, curling further towards the sputtering hearth as the others stumbled haphazardly over the threshold, ripping their wet coats from their shoulders and whining about the snow trapped under their shirts and how very hungry they were. bakugou was the last inside, tripping over the doorframe with kirishima sprawled over his back, laughing against his cheek. he kicked the door shut and shouto sighed as the cold withered to death.

"bakugou, bakugou!" mina called, grasping for the opening of his jacket. "can you make curry katsudon again? please, please, please?"

bakugou kicked his shoes off and left them in the genkan, shrugged kirishima off his shoulders.

"fine. gotta change first." he grunted. then he caught sight of sero squeezing his wet hair out over the expensive hard wood floors and promptly lost his head. shouto settled back against the warm sofa cushions as bakugou shoved izuku in the direction of the bathrooms and screamed at kaminari for leaving snow in the entryway. shinsou retreated to a dim corner by the fireplace and curled into a tiny ball, and sero quickly stole his spot on the couch.

kaminari got hold of the tv remote and channel surfed until he found a subtitled marvel movie to watch, and uraraka plopped herself down on the living room carpet and dragged tsuyu between her legs so she could pepper kisses along the soft side of her throat.

kirishima bent over the back of the sofa to wind his arms around shouto's neck, which startled him, but then he pressed a soft kiss to the line where the red met the white, an action so familiar and so gentle in nature, that he sunk into the embrace.

"you look pretty." he mumbled against the crown of shouto's head, his breath warm and shaking. his voice was rumbly from the cold, and he smelled sweet, a little bit like bakugou's burnt sugar and a little bit like pine and snow and a little bit like himself, cinnamon and earth.

"tsuyu did my hair." shouto mumbled, practically sighed. his lips felt as flushed as his cheeks. kirishima hummed through his bones, brushed a calloused finger over the braid just above shouto's right ear.

"it's beautiful." he said, and shouto could hear his smile in the lilting curve of his words. he seemed to feel it, the hard kick of shouto's heart, the sickening churn of his stomach as desire warmed him, the watering of his eyes as his breath grew syrupy and stuck in his throat. it was like he could hear the metronome, the touch touch touch me touch touch touch me and he stepped away before shouto could get dizzy and open mouthed, chuckled so softly at the way shouto followed his hand, a kitten seeking heat. kirishima took a seat at the far end of the sofa, and kaminari was quick to crawl into his lap.

shouto held himself tight around his hips and squeezed his knees into his ribs. his heartbeat was so furious, pounding into his legs. embarrassment buzzed at the fringes of his thought, but he tried to remember shinsou and his hands and his don't be ashamed. he waited for his breathing to steady and his heart to slow and he tried to watch the movie.

bakugou came back down moments later, freshly showered and drowning in one of kirishima's extra, extra large red riot hoodies. he beelined for the kitchen, and before shouto could really think about it, he was rising to follow him.

the kitchen was a bit of a mess. earlier that morning, kirishima and kaminari had attempted to bake cupcakes and failed spectacularly. they'd thrown away the bland cakes, but left the leftover batter to dry on the counter tops and all the dirty dishes were piled on top of one another in the sink. bakugou was scowling to himself when shouto walked in, frantically scrubbing at a stain on the counter with the edge of a wet cloth. his hair was all puffy like dandelion fuzz, his usual spikes softened by the bathroom's heat. shouto wanted to stick his hands in it, but he suspected that would be a bad idea.

bakugou eyes flickered to him for a moment and he grumbled beneath his breath.

"if you're looking for your dumb boyfriend, he's in the shower—"

shouto shook his head. "i wasn't looking for izuku. i was looking for you."

bakugou scoffed. it was a harsh sound but shouto didn't think he was really angry. maybe a little frustrated, but not at him. he was glaring at the stain, still rubbing the cloth into it.

"well, you found me. the fuck do you want?"

shouto shrugged. he didn't know what he wanted. he didn't really know why he'd come in. he just knew that his skin was itchy and hot and bakugou's hair was really cute. he didn't tell bakugou that.

"can i help?" he said instead.

bakugou scrunched his nose. his furious scrubbing ceased for a second, and he rubbed his fingers into his shoulder, wincing like it was hurting him. when his gaze found shouto again, his eyes were softer. still intense, just as searing flame or rising dawn, but softer. shouto didn't know what to make of that.

"what's up with your hair?" bakugou asked quite abruptly. his mouth had slackened into a not-quite frown. shouto reached up a hand, felt at the braid pulling the hair away from his face.

"tsuyu braided it. kirishima told me it was pretty."

"tch. course he fucking did."

shouto hesitated. bakugou was still staring at him with those soft red eyes. made it hard to think.

"do you...do you like it?"

bakugou sniffed. looked him up and down, and shouto tried not to squirm.

"i like it fine," he finally mumbled, glaring a bit. he scuffed his toe against the kitchen tile. "i could do better."

"could you?" shouto murmured absently. bakugou seemed to take this as a personal insult.

"course i fuckin' could!" he growled, and a bit of sharpness returned to his face. he resumed his scrubbing, and when shouto did nothing but stand in the entry way, swaying from side to side, he rolled his eyes.

"fuckin' hell, what?" he huffed. shouto rolled the bottom of his sweater between his thumb and forefinger.

"i said i wanted to help." he said, petulant. he pressed out his bottom lip, and splotchy red rose to bakugou's cheeks.

"stop pouting dumbass," he groaned. "you wanna help so bad, go wash the damn dishes. fucking extras don't know how to clean up after themselves. they're like fucking babies."

"you say fuck a lot." shouto observed. bakugou crossed the kitchen in three broad strides and flicked him hard on the forehead, right between his brows.

shouto frowned. "ow."

"shut the hell up and wash the damn dishes."

bakugou planted a rough hand on his shoulder, and his grip was unbearably firm, stripped of any hesitation. shouto had always liked that about him, liked that no matter what he did, bakugou was someone he couldn't scare away. bakugou shoved him in the direction of the sink and shouto stumbled a little, grasping for the edge of the counter. the dishes looked especially daunting up close. they were piled high, almost spilling over the sink's silver basin, and still caked over with wet dough and crusted butter and oil.

fuyumi often did the household chores at home. shouto had offered to help, but she always refused him, flapped a dismissive hand in his direction and insisted that she enjoyed doing housework, that it made her feel useful. he suspected she'd simply stepped into mom's household role once she'd been carted off to the hospital, had been standing in her footsteps so long, she didn't know how to step back into herself anymore. but she got all...pale and trembly whenever natsuo vacuumed the living room or cooked them dinner, so shouto didn't bother fighting with her on it and allowed her to bear the brunt of the house chores.

now, he wished he had a little more experience. he'd insisted upon helping, but he felt at a loss, staring at the ceramic plates and mixing bowls crowding each other beneath the faucet. he reached for the sponge, since that seemed a good first step, and turned on the faucet so he could soften it. he dribbled dish soap over the plate closest to the top and began to scrub at the wet food.

then his thumb brushed something...mushy.

"ah!" he cried out without meaning to, yanking his hand back. the sponge fell into the sink. his tongue was curling into the back of his throat, the way it did when he was going to throw up, and discomfort was a physical sensation beneath his flesh, a rubbery pointiness and a warm prickling.

"you touched wet food dumbass. feels gross, doesn't it?" bakugou growled when he noticed.

"i don't like it." shouto whined, scrunching up his brows. bakugou snorted.

he waddled over the the sink, nudged shouto out of the way with his hip. shouto rubbed his hand frantically against his sweatpants and watched as bakugou bent over and opened up the cabinet doors.

"here, put these on," bakugou instructed, tossing him a pair of lime green gloves. "and run hot water over food that you can't scrub off."

shouto took the gloves, and, after a brief moment of inspection, pulled them over his hands. they felt cold and strange, but not unpleasant.

"thank you." he hummed, smiling as well as he could. bakugou's so nice.

bakugou glanced at him with those soft red eyes. his mouth was soft and pink and lightly tilted at the corners. pretty pretty pretty touch? shouto's thumbs itched to press into bakugou's soft, cotton candy cheeks. before he could even begin to think about it, bakugou knocked his fist against shouto's forehead.

it was a gentle action. bakugou's knuckles were warm, so warm warm warmer than—and he did it so softly. shouto tried to lean into it, but bakugou did this weird, gruff chuckle thing and withdrew his hand, shook his head so his staticky hair swayed.

"you're so fuckin' weird." he huffed. shouto didn't know what he'd done this time. bakugou was the one who'd tenderly punched his head.

"you're weird." he retorted as bakugou strode over the fridge.

"wash the dishes icyhot."

"hm."

shouto washed the dishes. it was easier with the gloves, and it was so rhythmic, shouto began to find it soothing. there wasn't any silence now, but it wasn't so loud that it hurt. there was the light chopping of bakugou's knife as he sliced up vegetables and the soft sizzling of the pan warming on the stove and the sleepy buzz of conversation from the living room, interrupted every so often by hushed laughter. it was so nice nice nice nice, and sometimes bakugou would speak. just to ask for a dish or to correct shouto's washing methods, but his voice always sounded so gentle, and so warm warm warm and shouto was so happy that he wasn't making him angry likes me HE LIKES ME—that bakugou was comfortable with him.

once he was finished washing the dishes, shouto was put on prepping duty so bakugou could really start cooking.

"c'mere." bakugou said, reaching for the sleeve of his sweater. he wasn't quite looking at him, but he found the cloth around his wrist easily, pulling him forward and between his arms so thoughtlessly as though he was familiar, as though he was known. shouto's hands were pruny from the warm water, and soft from it too. they were quick to tremble as bakugou's firm arms—hug me hug me HUG NOW—settled around his own and his heartbeat sunk into the hollow between his shoulder blades.

bakugou slipped the handle of a knife between shouto's fingers. his breath was sleepy, dizzying just beneath his ear, just above the skin of his nape, his lips so close, shouto was shivering as though he was being kissed. and bakugou was so calm. his voice was rough and steady as he pressed his thumb against shouto's.

"you remember how you cut the strawberries?" he murmured. shouto blinked hard. he swallowed and his throat stuck with burnt sugar and caramel and mm touch me touch me touch me touch me touch—”you cut potatoes the same way, 'cept you gotta cut 'em in half first, like this—"

somehow, shouto managed not to embarrass himself. by the time bakugou stepped away from him, shouto was a little weak on his legs and blurry eyed, breathing a little too heavily and so hot in his cheeks but bakugou didn't call him out on it. he just cocked a brow and returned to the stove, continued making the curry sauce. shouto cut the potatoes. they were far from perfect, but when he handed them off to bakugou, he...he smiled. well it was more of a smirk but still smiles were so happy—likes me, he LIKES ME. he hummed in what seemed like approval, and he did that knock thing on shouto's forehead again.

"not bad icyhot." he mumbled, and shouto practically glowed.

he let shouto stay with him in the kitchen until he finished dinner, had him cut up vegetables or hand him ingredients when he needed them, let him talk absently when the impulse struck him, let him sit on the counter and swing his legs back and forth and watch bakugou work when there was nothing for him to do. and the whole time, bakugou was so breathtakingly calm and so clearly in his element. he was so much of himself and so much of something else, a side of bakugou that shouto hadn't met before. his eyes, that soft, dozing dawn red.

he called the others to the dinner table once he'd cleaned up the kitchen, and they all stumbled to their seats, giggling and gooey eyed. they laughed and smiled and hugged bakugou's waist as he served them, gasped and hummed over the food, scraped their plates clean. they laved bakugou in praises, and it seemed that for all the confidence he wore, bakugou was still unused to being acknowledged for anything beyond his strength, because he got warm and pink in the ears the same way shouto did. he spluttered and cursed to distract from the sheen of his gaze and the quirk of his mouth, but shouto saw it. he didn't know what it meant, that bakugou looked so much like him sometimes. he just knew that bakugou was making everyone so happy. that seeing everyone so happy was making bakugou happy too.

everyone was smiling and it was so beautiful, and shouto had forgotten that it could look like this.

///

he visited his mother on sunday.

it had snowed again, some time between one and three in the morning. the asphalt streets and dying fields were shrouded now in an endless gleam of white and distilled clouds slept too close to the earth, clogging the sour air with crystalline dreams that easily gave way to illusion.

shouto saw colors on the wind, paint on air, but when he blinked, the light shifted and withered so the world lay blank and quiet again. it was so silent, and he didn't think of broken bodies or blood slick floorboards. he hardly even thought of moth eaten cardigans. winter was too tired and too lost for thought, too distant to remember a mortal life. this was why he loved it. there was a peace to death. a stillness to it never quite achieved in life, and yet the cold ached like a unbeating heart and a breath untaken.

so often, it was shouto who was unwound and frozen still, forever trapped in a cage of flame or ice, a fortress of his father's or his own making. it was he who fell still whilst the world moved through him. he could do nothing but wail fruitlessly against the violent throes of time, a spectator on the fringes of a life that was never his. a scream over such endless sound.

winter was still with him though. that slow breathing, quietly moving body, giving in to rest. the cold was still and steady and it felt like his mother's hands. the snow like his mother's hair before the smoke touched it.

he boarded a bus to the hospital. he took an empty seat at the back and ignored the young woman who's eyes kept digging through his clothes, searching for something that made him itch, and looked out towards the snow. the road was slippery and far too giving, so it took a little longer to get there than it normally would have, but shouto didn't mind. once they arrived at his stop, he squeezed through the narrow aisle and bowed to the bus driver before departing.

he wasn't wearing as many layers as he probably should have been. he'd slipped out of the dorms before izuku or bakugou could lecture him and force him into an extra coat or wrangle a scarf around his neck, and now he felt the bite of the cold more fiercely. his quirk wasn't perfectly regulated. he felt the cold deeply, even if his body gave no real reaction, and he wondered if perhaps he should have grabbed something else. a beanie or...no point thinking of it now. he shook his head, tugged at a too long lock of red hair by his cheek.

he stopped by the used bookstore a block away from the hospital to pick up something for his mother, allowed himself just a moment to pet the cat that lurked behind the book shelves before making his purchase and continuing on.

he didn't get nervous the same way he used to, when his renewed relationship with his mother was so fragile, he thought one slip up would end in blood. but, he did get a heaviness at the back of his throat, in the pit of his stomach. an anticipation, an almost fear, a longing, a guilt, or maybe just the remembrance, the remnants of he's only five—already five!—pathetic—can't raise this child anymore—shouto!—UNSIGHTLY—the things that would always burn between them, no matter how cold her hands, no matter how soft the snow.

shouto watched him every day, trying to swallow her whole. he hadn't hadn't—smoke in her hair—succeeded.

shouto pushed open the front door. the hospital greeted him, the same as always. quiet, creamy white, squeaking under rubbery shoes and rubbery gloves, whispering with hushed conversation and stifled crying. the woman behind the front desk told him to head on up. he walked the familiar path to his mother's hospital room, ignored the pale faced people who passed him by. he knocked on the door before he entered, waited for his mother's wispy, "come in," before slipping inside.

she was sitting by the window. she was often sitting by the window. she was watching the snow, just as shouto had, her eyes dull and crowded. she was smiling, but it was...it was wrong. shouto had recently learned that not all smiles were happy, some people smiled when they were really, really sad. izuku smiled when he was trying not to cry, and kaminari smiled when he was embarrassed, and sero smiled when he was nervous. shouto's childhood was full of his mother's smiles and all of them, all of them were wrong.

"oh, shouto," she hummed, a few seconds before she looked to him. her mouth was wonky, wobbling. she was still so beautiful. "my baby, how are you?"

"hey mom, i'm okay," he whispered. he didn't know why he always whispered when he spoke to her. "i brought you a book."

her smile deepened. her eyes were still crowded, too many thoughts inside them, but they seemed gentler now, always gentler when they found him. he felt more like that child in her lap not like him not like him when he saw himself in the reflection of her eyes. he pressed the book into her trembling hand and she brushed her fingertips along the yellowing pages.

"oh, i've been wanting to read this!" she gasped a bit, hummed a tired, lilting tune. shouto hummed in return, some of the tension in his shoulders melting away.

"i know," he said, a little bit proud of himself. "there's a used bookstore a block away from here. they have a cat named luna. they named her after the cat from sailor moon."

"sailor moon? your sister used to love that show."

"did she?" shouto murmured, brow furrowing. he couldn't remember that. but—not like them— he couldn't remember a lot of things. he could hardly remember what his sister looked like as a child, never mind what shows she liked.

"did you watch it with her? or with izuku?"

shouto liked the way she said izuku's name. always so gently, like it was something precious she'd been trusted with.

"with izuku," shouto hummed, and she nodded to herself, seeming almost pleased. "i watch a lot of things with izuku. almost everything because he watches a lot of movies and tv shows and he thinks it's terrible that i've never seen them. do you know, um...do you know studio ghibli?"

his mother seemed a little amused now. she was breathing a little more audibly into the palm of her hand and her eyes were scrunching at the corners. laughing? laughing. she's laughing. she bobbed her head and her stringy bangs swayed.

"yes, i love studio ghibli movies."

shouto grinned just a little bit. his wrists were doing a floppy thing, flapping his hands up and down. "we've been working our way through them. izuku's already seen them all, even grave of the fireflies, though he thinks we should skip that one since it's very upsetting and he doesn't want me to be upset. i've told him though that i'm not as sensitive as he is. izuku cries over everything."

"oh, i don't know shouto," she cooed, and her voice was different now, both lighter and more...there. like more of her was inside her body. "you're quite sensitive yourself."

"but i don't cry? not like izuku." he retorted matter-of-factly, and she laughed—laughed? again, covering her mouth with her hand.

"crying isn't the only way to express strong emotion baby," she said so gently. "people express feelings in all kinds of different ways. just because you don't cry like izuku does doesn't mean you don't feel just as strongly."

hm. shouto had never thought of it like that. izuku was like a bleeding heart with too much love to hold inside his body, and he seemed to feel so much all the time. that was why he was always crying. shouto had always thought of him as the definition of sensitivity and kindness. he'd never met anyone who cared as brutally as he did. he'd never once thought he could match it, and when they were just a little younger and shouto was still unused to the feel of his hands on his skin, he used to worry he couldn't love izuku as izuku loved him. that his father had molded him, had made him into something hard and hollow and unfeeling. that izuku would pour his heart into an empty shell and wither as his mother did when he realized he'd loved a man without a heart of his own.

but, when his mother put it that way...he supposed he did feel. he felt all the time. he didn't understand what he felt most times, but he felt them still, aching and swelling and burning. he felt all the time.

she laid a hand on his shoulder and he tried very hard not to flinch. he could feel the quivering in her fingers. she brushed at the dangling strands of his hair with her knuckles. her brows flicked up at the inward corners.

"your hair is growing so long." she pondered.

he nodded, sat as still as he could manage while she combed through the back. his neck was beginning to prickle with heat and, desperately, he wanted to be in her arms again. when he was so small, he'd found the most comfort in her, curled up against her stomach, pressing his cheek to the slow beat of her heart, feeling her ribs squeeze with her breathing. but she hadn't held him in years. she still touched him like she was afraid. of him or of herself, he couldn't be sure.

"i think..." he mumbled, and her gaze found his. "i think i want to let it grow out. long. like...like yours."

"really?" she said, and there was a different note to her voice now. shouto didn't know how to describe it. her wrong smile widened, but now it looked different, and he didn't feel so sad looking at it. "you would look so beautiful."

she swept her hand along his cheek, so faintly he could have imagined it, before drawing it back into her chest. he realized then, as she tucked her arm across her ribs, that her wrist was far thinner than it had been before, the blue veins within it far too visible through her pale skin. her whole body was thin and small now.

"i would?" he asked, but it came out as more of a gasp, raw with desperation, because how could he be? how could he be when he was still so unsightly? when he was still half his father's, half the man who broke her, half the child she'd tried so hard to love?

but she smiled and nodded like it was easy. like he was soft soft soft boy—good boy like he was easy to look at.

"you already are." she whispered. for just one moment, her eyes were bright.

shouto shook his head. he was...he was confused. his face was burning like it had that day. he pressed his hand to its left side, felt the scar tissue. it was still rough and angry beneath his flushed fingertips, unforgiving in its permanence. it was ugly ugly ugly as he must have been before it, before unsightly UNSIGHTLY before the kettle and the water. she was too kind. she still wanted to love him, even if he was ugly and half the man who broke her. he'd look better with long hair, but only because he would look less like him. that must have been what she meant right right right right?

"mrs. todoroki?" a voice called. shouto flinched, ripping his hand from his eye and folding it between his knees instead. his mother smiled at someone over his shoulder. must have been the nurse of course it's the fucking nurse, stupid, STUPID.

"i've brought your lunch," the nurse said, and shouto heard her pad across the room, over to the desk by his mother's hospital bed. "try to eat it all, okay?"

his mother only nodded, and her eyes were going dull again. that seemed good enough for the nurse though. she offered shouto a brief greeting before departing from the room.

"maybe i should give you my hairpins then," she said, so happily, with her wobbly smile shaking against her cheeks. the nurse had scared her, she must have, because now she was trembling again, holding herself too tight. her wrists were so thin and so blue. she kept speaking, though her voice was too tiny, sort of strained. "i don't use them anymore, but they would look wonderful in your hair once it's long enough. i think i have a few here, let me—"

she moved to stand, but she was trembling all over. her knees turned to jelly and wobbled against each other, and she stumbled. he stood and grabbed her elbow before she could fall, and he felt her shoulders tighten and spasm. i scared her the nurse had really scared her. or maybe she was scared, you scared her just tired.

"i'm sorry dear, i just got dizzy all of the sudden..." she breathed, and shouto tried to smile.

"it's okay. you should rest."

she murmured some soft sound of assent, pulling towards the bed, and shouto pressed his weight beneath hers. she smiled at him
as he swung her arm around his neck, and he felt her hip bone poke into his own as she leaned into him. she was too light, like air and bones. so brittle, he worried he'd grip her too tight, and she'd shatter under his hands. he lowered her onto the mattress, and her trembling sigh ghosted his cheek.

she was such a pale white now, and her cardigan had slipped over her shoulder, so he could see the sharp wing of her collarbone just above the v neck of her hospital shirt. he eyed the food the nurse had left. soggy udon. it didn't look very appetizing, but it was food, and she must have been hungry.

"here mom," he began, grabbing for the tray. "you should eat something—"

"no, that's okay love. i'm not hungry right now."

what? but...but shouto was so sure...

he looked to her again, perched on the edge of the mattress, her thin fingers curled tight around fistfuls of the linen sheets, her mouth pale and her bones dark against the lines of her gaunt face. her collarbone practically pulling out of her skin...he was...he was so sure, she must have been hungry. he couldn't have gotten it wrong again, the signs were so clear.

"are you sure—"

she shook her head, and maybe he was imagining it, but the twitch in her brows looked almost pained.

"i'll eat later."

her eyes were full to bursting with some strange feeling he couldn't place. he wanted so badly to understand her. that's what sons were supposed to do, right? understand their mothers?

but...maybe can't raise this child anymore—shouto!—unsightlyUNSIGHTLY weak like your mother maybe he wasn't made to. maybe after all this time he was just...

"okay mom." he whispered. he felt so sick and the words stuck like blood to his teeth. something was wrong but he didn't know what. stupid stupid stupid.

she smiled more softly now, and it seemed to drag at the corners. he wasn't sure, but he thought he could make out some unspoken gratitude in it, though he didn't know what she'd be thanking him for.

"so..." she hummed, patting the space beside her. "tell me about school."

he sat down and told her. the snow fell outside and made the world quiet, and his mother kept laughing and smiling and running her fingers through his hair. the food remained untouched and the sick feeling never faded.

///

sometimes, shouto got a little lost in bakugou's hands. they were rough, broad hands. big enough to cup the sky, to capture the cosmos. worn enough that the aching burn of a bursting star wouldn't peel the skin of his palms from his sinewy veins, but glean them in space dust instead. and they were warm. warm like the fire they breathed, like the explosions that slept in their crevices, in their soft hollows. they were strong hands, and they were unafraid, and when they grasped him, he felt raw, like a boy laid bare beneath the bloody sun. he felt flayed open even, and all his secrets burned into the tip of his tongue, boiled on his lips. bakugou put his hands out and touched shouto as the sun touched the dying, and he told him whatever he wanted to know.

"teach me how to cook." was what bubbled out of him that evening, as bakugou's fingers closed around his elbow.

they'd just sparred for half an hour on the floor of ua's gym, and bakugou's hand prints were marked all over the inside of shouto's skin. now his heart felt cracked right open and his ribs were shuddering in his chest. the outside air was sharp and cold, but he could barely feel the way it stabbed at his lungs because that flame inside of him was dizzyingly hot and he could taste smoke beneath his tongue. bakugou couldn't feel the fire. the cold hurt him more than it did shouto, and he was sniffling and trembling behind his orange scarf. he'd only reached out for shouto so he could leech off his heat, but the metronome was starting up again touch me touch me touch touch touch and shouto didn't really care so long as bakugou's fingers stayed where they were.

"hah?" bakugou huffed, and his breath steamed up from his lips. shouto hummed. he stumbled a little bit, since he had jelly stuck in his knees, and bakugou hefted him upright with a rumbly grunt before he could face plant in the snow.

"i'd like you to teach me how to cook." shouto repeated, slower this time. bakugou's mouth creased at the corners, folded into a tiny frown.

he glanced briefly in shouto's direction. his brows were dark and crumpled in the middle, the way they got when he was confused. it made him look softer somehow, that confusion. it was one of the easiest bakugou emotions to spot because it was so different from everything else. quiet and easy around the edges.

"what the fuck..." bakugou mumbled, more to himself than to shouto. he blinked against the descending wind, ducking his head as it cut across his pink cheeks. "why the hell do you want that?"

shouto smiled a little.

he'd been dreaming of his mother every night since sunday. it wasn't bad. it wasn't a big deal. it wasn't blood slick broken burning was just his mother, who was beautiful and scared. it was just her cardigans and her bruises and her breathing. was just the cold of her wobbling mouth and the plastic of her smile and the desperate gasping of her love as it reached out for him and the bile of its heaving as it choked on the smoke in his blood. it wasn't a big deal.

except, shouto couldn't have been wrong. he couldn't have gotten it wrong. his father had spent his entire life trying to eat her and maybe he hadn't succeeded, but maybe she'd starved between his teeth.

"i want to make mom smile." he said.

i want to be easy to love.

bakugou stared at him like he could see it. can i see you can i see you can i see you like shouto was unspooling, like he'd already come undone. izuku always knew, but izuku always knew everything, and he especially knew shouto, so he was an exception. but bakugou shouldn't have been able to see him like this. shouto wanted to close himself up but bakugou's handprints were all over him. he swallowed the panic crawling up his throat and pulled the hem of his beanie further over his ears.

bakugou sighed.

"fine. whatever. just—" he shook his head. there was something strange happening on his face. too much feeling passing over it for shouto to even try to make sense of. his fingers squeezed at shouto's arm for a moment and he nearly stumbled again. "meet me in the kitchen when we get back. you're a fuckin' visual learner right?"

"i suppose." shouto murmured absently, and bakugou rolled his eyes.

"watch me make dinner," he said simply. "i'll talk you through it."

shouto's chest squeezed a bit, though he wasn't sure of the thing pulling itself taut within it. it almost hurt, meeting bakugou's steady gaze. he felt he could shake apart.

"you'll teach me?" he asked, to clarify. there was something odd about his voice. it sounded sort of melty, mushy the way it got when izuku kissed him and he was trying to speak into his mouth.

bakugou knocked his shoulder into shouto's. the tiniest of smirks pulled at his lips.

"i'll teach you. don't make me regret it."

shouto smiled.

"i'll do my best."

when they finally made it to the dorms, bakugou disappeared immediately to bathe the sweat and cold from his skin. shouto decided he'd better do the same, and he ran himself another lavender bath. he soaked in the water until his eyes started to burst with blooming color and his breath began to sit too heavy in his lungs, and when he emerged from the tub, his hands were trembling. he pulled an oversized sailor mercury sweater over his head, stretching the neckline with his fingers so his hair didn't dampen the fabric, and then tugged his new purple sweatpants up to his hips and tied off the drawstring.

he squeezed his hair out over the sink. it was getting to be quite pretty. it sat at his shoulders now, and it had a soft, coiling pattern to it once soaked in moisture. he wondered if he should leave it out this time. if maybe bakugou would like his hair out. he fluffed it out with his fingers, let it fall against him. his bangs practically obscured his eyes, and they caught on his lashes when he blinked, so he split them down the middle and tucked them behind his ears. he studied his reflection in the mirror.

he looked...strange. almost unfamiliar. he was small inside his sweater. it made his shoulders look nimble and thin where they'd been broad before. disguised the sinewy muscle beneath and made him soft. he squeezed his arms around the fabric at his stomach, and the sweater tightened around his waist. it looked tiny, silhouetted like this.

and the purple on his skin...he knew he was quite pale, had always been, like his mom, but...rather than just pale, his skin looked delicate. the red of his lips and the pink blush at his cheeks looked that much starker for it. and his hair. his hair was so silky. it was uneven at the ends, sure, but shouto could see it if he thought about it. he could see it coiling at his waist, braided around the crown of his head. he could see it swaying at his hips while he walked, twisting about his fingers, pooling at the hollow of his back. he felt almost giddy as he saw it in his mind's eye. hair as pretty as momo's or tsuyu's or fuyumi's or mom's, and he could shampoo it with something sweet and scented, so it would never smell of smoke—

he swallowed. he could hear a faint commotion from outside. the others were probably settling down in the living room. perhaps they were playing a game. bakugou was most certainly finished bathing by now. shouto was...he needed to stop distracting himself.

he spared one last glimpse at his reflection. yes, i'll leave it out. he left the bathroom and closed the door.

he found bakugou already in the kitchen, as he'd suspected he would. he was taking ingredients out of the fridge and lining them up along the counter. he caught a glimpse of shouto standing in the doorway and hummed in way of greeting.

"hey," he murmured, distracted. he pulled a green cabbage from the vegetable bin and placed atop the brown cutting board he'd set out. "tonight, i'm making tonkatsu and onigiri. i have some frozen pork chops thawing in the sink, and i got flour, panko bread crumbs, and canola oil. for frying the pork cutlet. green cabbage is for the garnish."

"garnish?" shouto asked, and bakugou snorted in faint disbelief.

"embellishment. goes on top of the finished dish, adds flavor."

"oh."

"karashi and tonkatsu sauce for the garnish too, and i'm gonna cook up some rice for the base."

bakugou shut the refrigerator door. turned around. stopped.

shouto had hoped bakugou would notice his hair. he'd hoped he would like it, and he knew he wasn't supposed to do that anymore, wasn't supposed to want bakugou to like things so he could like them too, but he just...

"your hair." bakugou said, and his voice was weird. his eyes were weird too and his mouth and his brows and he looked weird and none of it was familiar and expressions were so weird, so weird, so what if he hated it? what if he thought shouto's hair had grown too soft for him? what if he thought shouto's hair was too red or too odd to look pretty, what if it still smelled like blood and smoke, what if he could smell the smoke, what if shouto was still rough tough boy and you're so—and shouto knew bakugou wasn't like that. he knew, but he was trying to pluck apart bakugou's face, trying to make sense of him, trying to understand because don't good sons? but maybe, after all this time, he just wasn't meant to—

shouto blinked. he hadn't noticed bakugou moving, but he was there now. in front of him.

bakugou took a strand of blood ruby red between the pad of his thumb and forefinger. shouto's breath was spilling out of him. he could feel a hotness to his mouth too, a quivering to it. bakugou stroked along the line of a faint curl, and his eyes were all...dreamy. sunrise as it dozed on the golden hills, dawn before it knew itself. laid bare as a blushing wrist to honeyed lips and rosined tongue. he pulled just slightly, and that familiar ache burst behind shouto's skull. goosebumps rose all over, and he was touch me touch me touch me touch me touch me oh, he could just shake out of his bones.

"it's pretty," bakugou said, so quiet, shouto might not have caught it had he not felt it, a whisper on his own lips. a smile unfurled at the corners of his mouth. a happy smile. “needs a trim though."

"mm," shouto breathed, and he could taste the blush of his face on his tongue as he spoke. bakugou was so close and so very beautiful. shouto wanted to fall into him. "my—my bangs are...they're too long...they keep getting in my eyes."

"i bet." bakugou hummed. he reached for the bang tucked behind shouto's ear. took it out, fiddled with it for a moment. placed it back with a tenderness that almost hurt. his calloused thumb brushed the tip of his ear for only a second, for half a second, and shouto still gasped like he'd run his hands all over him. like sun to the dying. bakugou shook his head, took a broad step back. away from
shouto touch me PLEASE TOUCH TOUCH TOUCH—

"go sit on the counter," bakugou said, already returning to his original spot. "i'll talk you through it, so you better pay attention."

absently, shouto did as he was told. he hasn't said fuck for a while, he thought distantly as he lifted himself onto the counter top.

from a height, shouto found observing a little easier. bakugou was truly in his element in the kitchen. at ease in a way shouto only ever really saw him when he was blasting explosions from his palms or when kirishima hooked his arm around his waist. he was calm. so calm, shouto could think he was untouchable, and he moved with a lazy confidence, giving each task extraordinary attention yet so unbothered by the risk, as if he'd been born to do this and had lived to master it. shouto watched as he cut the raw pork into relatively neat ovals and lined them up in a row on the cutting board. he pulled an assortment of spices from the cabinet overhead, and began sprinkling fine amounts of each over the meat with a steady hand. he spoke aloud as he did so, naming each seasoning, describing its taste and its contribution to the recipe, lecturing shouto on the importance of it in each and every dish.

then bakugou placed three shallow bowls on the counter beside shouto.

"this is flour, panko bread crumbs, and beaten egg." he said softly as he did so, gesturing briefly to each ingredient. he walked shouto through the breading process as he coated each slab of pork in a thick layer of flour and shook off the excess so it lay in scattered piles about the board. he dipped the coated pork in the bowl full of beaten egg yolk and then completely covered it in panko bread crumbs. shouto watched him repeat the action several more times, humming and nodding in all the appropriate places. sometimes bakugou would ask him questions.

he said he wasn't testing him, he just wanted to gauge how much he knew already, and so shouto didn't feel too badly about answering most of his questions wrong. bakugou didn't seem all that surprised by his lack of knowledge.

"fuckin' rich kid." he scoffed, but that sharp smirk was still there, curling up at the end of his soft mouth, and his eyes were alight, so shouto didn't think bakugou was all that bothered about it.

bakugou poured the canola oil into a deep pan on the oven and heated it to exactly 171 degrees celsius. he used a frying thermometer to be absolutely certain of the temperature, which shouto thought was rather admirable. he had such a deep devotion to the craft.

while he deep fried the pork, bakugou got to work on the rice and the onigiri. bakugou said there was rarely a moment of rest in the kitchen, especially if you were cooking a meal. he was always doing something, and if there was nothing else to prepare, then he'd get started on the dishes.

"clean as you cook." bakugou said. he sounded very adamant about that.

while the pork chops fried on the other side, bakugou cut up the cabbage into tiny, thin slices and soaked them in ice cold water. then he drained them in a strainer and then he did it again and again until there was enough tiny cabbage slices for their whole class. shouto had never realized how much work went into cooking for nearly twenty students. and bakugou was only one person. he cooked breakfast and dinner for them almost every day, and shouto had never known how hard it must have been. he'd never really thought about it.

bakugou's so nice.

bakugou left the rice in a huge pot so the others could serve themselves and placed the cabbage slices and tonkatsu sauce in bowls and dishes beside it. once all of the pork chops were fully cooked, he cut those up into long strips and placed them out on a pan, and then he took the onigiri and lined those up in pretty rows on a big ceramic platter.

"there," bakugou huffed, hands on his hips. the perfect picture of triumph. "dinner's fucking served!"

and his smile was so big and broad and showed off all of his teeth. shouto couldn't help smiling too.

"you're really cool bakugou." he hummed, kicking his feet happily.

"course i am! i'm fucking amazing!" bakugou retorted, but his ears were glowing that quiet shade of pink. he rubbed his palm into his hair. his eyes were soft lidded and sort of dim beneath his spiky bangs. shouto wondered if people often told bakugou he was cool. kirishima, surely, and kaminari as well, but...well, had shouto ever said so? had shouto ever told him how cool he was?

bakugou tapped him on the knee. his warmth pressed so suddenly into his skin, shouto couldn't suppress his light shiver. he managed to tense up his legs before they could shoot into bakugou's chest, did manage to keep still as bakugou tilted his head up to look at him.

"this weekend, we're going grocery shopping," he informed shouto simply, casually, painfully unaware of how brutally his heart was beating. "saturday. i'm gonna wake you up bright and early so i don't wanna hear any damn whining."

shouto frowned.

"i don't whine."

bakugou gave him a look. it was...it was all soft and stern at the same time, his brows dark and furrowed but his mouth still half smiling. he pushed his thumb against shouto's bottom lip. his skin was so warm warm WARM and had he gotten closer closer touch me please closer touch closer closer?

"no pouting either." he said. shouto tried not to tremble against his touch.

bakugou pulled away no come back come back closer please please please please—

"go head and serve yourself, i'll get the extras."

shouto watched him saunter out of the kitchen. he heard him screaming over the others, heard kirishima's broad laughter break the air.

he sat on the counter, slowly remembering how to breathe.

///

snow had come overnight, and so that saturday morning was very cold. bakugou did wake him up bright and early. some time around seven, maybe a little earlier. the sky was silver and gold. just a shadow of day, and the sleepy white of the world kept everything silent, so even as shouto roused beneath bakugou's gruff, shaking hands, he still felt half a dream.

bakugou hovered above him, already dressed and sleep frayed with his loopy yellow hair sticking out from the folded up hem of an orange beanie, and for a moment, shouto thought he was dreaming. he was goosebumped all over from cold, shivering even under his linen sheets and pressed up against izuku's warm hip, but bakugou's hands gripped his shoulders and his soft mouth moved with sound. he looked almost angelic like this. shouto felt floaty like he did when he was soft and spilling between cotton.

it took bakugou a while to drag him from the bed. he kept his voice to a rough whisper so as to avoid waking izuku, and he seemed uncomfortable being in his room. maybe because of how tumultuous their past had been, how complicated their relationship was now. there were so many boundaries set between them, even this felt invasive. bakugou seemed almost guilty as he waited for shouto to grab his clothes from izuku's drawers. kept his eyes to the floor, like he'd be condemned for looking too long at izuku's all might posters.

once he was certain shouto wouldn't crawl right back into bed and fall back asleep, he stomped down to the kitchen to make them a quick breakfast. shouto showered and dressed himself in something warm. a pair of light wash blue jeans and the thick, oversized piplup sweater kaminari had gotten him. he pulled on a powder blue beanie with a fluffy white bauble to match and tucked his bangs behind his ears.

he pressed a parting kiss to izuku's sleeping brow before he left.

most people used saturdays to sleep in, so there wasn't really anyone awake save for tokoyami and shouji, who were playing chess in a corner, and shinsou, who'd probably never quite gotten to sleep. he was watching sailor moon on the flat screen, curled up on the sofa with a cup of jasmine tea. he smiled when he saw shouto, but he didn't speak. his eyes were dark and sunken, the whites almost blotchy. he looked truly exhausted, and maybe something more too. something sadder.

shouto sat beside him for a while. he didn't speak either. he could tell shinsou was having a no voice day, and shouto understood that. he got those too, so he didn't say anything. he only laid out his hand, splayed his palm face up on his thigh, inviting as izuku invited him when he felt crowded into himself. after a few seconds, shinsou took it. he wove his fingers between shouto's, and his hand was soft. cold. his fingers were slender. shouto's chest ached almost unbearably, but somehow it was still quite pleasant. when he glanced over at shinsou, he was blushing. only a bit. shinsou's like me. shouto wondered if he also felt a metronome.

shouto watched sailor moon with shinsou and held his hand until bakugou told him his rice ball was ready. he felt bad, leaving shinsou to be sad on the sofa, but shinsou smiled at him
again, and it looked a little more real this time.

he pressed a kiss to shouto's knuckle, and his lips were gentle and chapped. shouto let out a soft, trembling gasp. even after shinsou's lips had left his skin, he felt it like a ghost imprinted upon him. a mark.

thank you, he signed.

shouto blinked. he knew the sign, knew the basics because of present mic's impromptu jsl classes, but—he didn't know that shinsou...

you're welcome. he signed back. his hands were stiff and clumsy. shouto's face felt hot with shame, but shinsou's eyes warmed. then bakugou called again and shouto drifted off to the kitchen to join him.

they ate rice balls at the kitchen table.

"shinsou is having a bad day." shouto informed bakugou quietly. he thought it was important for bakugou to know. he and shinsou bickered a lot, but sometimes he saw them sitting together, talking beneath their breaths with their heads nearly pressed against each other.

bakugou paused for a moment. there wasn't any surprise on his face, at least not the kind shouto could read. instead, there was something in the set of his jaw, like...maybe he'd known.

"we'll pick up some boba and jelly pouches while we're out." he said. his voice was still lulling with fatigue.

shouto quirked his head.

"boba and jelly...?"

"safe foods. he chews on the boba, makes him feel...better..." bakugou grunted out the word like it physically pained him to say. his ears were burning pink again. "and the jelly pouches...it's like cold soba for him."

"oh." shouto hummed. that makes sense. cold soba always made him feel better when he was sad.

satisfied, he finished his rice ball and stood to grab his coat and scarf. bakugou wrapped himself up in several layers until he sort of looked like a penguin. he made sure shouto was properly wrapped up too, and when shouto asked if he could bring his switch, he sighed and nodded. just told him to hurry. shouto packed it up in his little blue backpack and met bakugou at the door, and they departed for the train station.

shouto had traveled by train before. he didn't really like it, but he'd learned how to deal with the pulsing crowds and squealing train tracks and buzzing chatter. bakugou seemed to sense his discomfort though, because he let shouto hold onto his elbow like the regency era women did with their suitors as they walked.

the train wasn't so full yet, so they were able to snag two empty seats, and shouto took the one closest to the window. he showed bakugou around his animal crossing island on the way to the supermarket. he'd been trying to redecorate now that he could build cliffs and waterscape. bakugou had a great eye for design, considering both his parents were fashion designers, and he revealed to shouto that, when he was younger, he'd briefly entertained the idea of being an interior designer or an architect, possibly in addition to being a hero. he gave shouto a few pointers on how to improve the island's layout. well, they were slightly aggressive pointers, but they were pointers all the same, and when shouto showed him his shopping district, bakugou actually sort of smiled at him happy happy happy smiles.

"you're not half bad at this shit half n' half." he huffed, and he knocked on shouto's forehead again. for some reason, it made shouto flush.

the voice over the intercom soon announced their stop through the crumbly static, and shouto took bakugou's arm again as they stood to exit the train. they pushed through the opening and spilled out into the station, where the noise bounced and echoed. thankfully, bakugou was good at navigation and managed to bring them to the surface before shouto could get overwhelmed.

the snow was everywhere, spread all over the sidewalk, and bakugou kept cursing under his breath and sneezing into his scarf as they trudged through it. shouto maneuvered himself so his hot side was pressed up against him, and that seemed to help a little, but shouto could feel him shivering into his shoulder.

if he hugged me he would be warm.

shouto did not ask bakugou to hug him. he really wanted to though.

he tried to just be content with holding his arm and feeling the press of his muscle beneath his palms, but it was touch me more more more more moremoremore wasn't really enough, was never really enough.

they did make it to the supermarket before bakugou could work himself into a rage. shouto wanted to ride in the cart again, but after last time, bakugou didn't seem keen to repeat the experience. plus, he wanted shouto to be fully involved in the process, wanted to teach him how to shop. he had him read the grocery list aloud for him as they perused the aisles, and bakugou pointed out the signs hanging from the ceiling indicating what they'd find in each. he made shouto read the ingredients label on the products they bought, gave him a tutorial on how he selected his products, showed him how to distinguish ripe fruits from bad ones. he was a stern and attentive teacher, and a very good one too. whenever shouto did something right, bakugou knocked his fist against his head or did that smirk-smile thing that made shouto's heart hurt.

leaving the grocery store, shouto felt far more knowledgeable than he had coming in, and his blood was singing with the warmth of bakugou's praise. he was so caught up in his own giddiness, he almost didn't notice that bakugou wasn't leading them back towards the train station.

he was, instead, tugging him further down the sidewalk, into a more compact shopping area, where the shops squeezed between each other, distinguished only by their glowing display signs and differing exterior aesthetics. the snow had capped their rooftops in gleaming white, and the fog obscured their windows, so shouto couldn't guess at where he was being taken. he ventured to ask, but bakugou only shook his head and told him he would see.

he found himself being led to a store front completely shrouded by winter. its blinking lights were buried under the snow, and any flyers plastered on the glass had been covered by the silvery frost. bakugou kicked his boots against the door mat to dislodge the ice and snow at his heels, and shouto did the same before following him inside. a small bell chimed above their heads.

the inside was warm. shouto's breath was suddenly stinging between his lips, as his risen blood felt too flushed in the sudden heat. bakugou unwound his scarf as he stomped in, freed his arm from shouto's clinging fingers, much to his chagrin. they seemed to have arrived in a salon of some sort. soft leather reclining chairs were scattered about the room, only a few feet away from long, thin mirrors and black marble counters crowded with product and hair utensils. a row of sinks was pressed to one wall, and a desk stood at the very back, most likely the residence of the cash register. there were people too, though not very many. just the stylists, who milled about speaking softly to one another.

bakugou was moving towards one of them, a young woman with pale, pointed ears and lavender hair piled up into a high bun. shouto trailed after him, wildly confused.

"this one here," bakugou grunted, jabbing a thumb in shouto's direction. "he's trying to grow out his hair, but he needs a light trim. just to chop off the split ends, even out his bangs. can you do that?"

"sure, yeah," the woman replied easily, her mouth split on a practiced smile. "i can do that for you no problem! are you looking to get anything done or—"

"no, just him." bakugou interrupted. the woman hummed, unfazed. her eyes slipped to shouto's. they were a rather luminescent shade of blue. a little neon.

"alright dear," she crooned, and though her voice was sweet, there was a weird, sticky factor to it that had shouto scrunching his nose in distaste. "why don't you take a seat in this chair and i'll be with you in a moment."

shouto pulled his hat off of his head, and his hair cascaded around him. his bangs brushed the bridge of his nose, and he could only make out soft slivers of mustard florescent through the gaps between them. bakugou chuckled in that rumbly way, and shouto's teeth buzzed like he'd caught sugar in them.

"here, gimme that." he said, pulling shouto's hat from his grip. he felt bakugou's firm fingers curl around his shoulders, felt the pressure of him as he lead him to the chair. he's so warm so warm so warm warm warm warm warm—his breath hiccuped as bakugou grasped him by the dip of his hip to help lift him into his seat. his thoughts were beginning to doze in dizzy, feverish sleep. bakugou brushed his bangs away from his eyes, gave him a smirk once his vision was free.

"you took me to get my hair trimmed." shouto stated rather obviously. bakugou's smirk morphed into an aggravated scowl, though the pad of his thumb remained flattened against his forehead, as though he'd forgotten it there, as though he didn't feel shouto's thunderous heart slamming storms into his cotton candy skull.

"obviously dumbass. you can hardly fucking see as it is now, how the hell do you expect to train?"

shouto shrugged.

"i don't know."

"exactly idiot," bakugou grumbled, and he tucked his hand away into the crook of his crossed arms. "you weren't even thinking about it."

that was sort of true. shouto wasn't really used to making hair appointments. it was often his father or his sister who did that for him back home, and of course, his mandated stylist was aware that they were to give shouto a proper cut to keep his hair short and neat looking. he wasn't used to booking his own, to having his own opinion on what he wanted to do with himself. he wasn't used to anyone listening when he did.

but bakugou listened. bakugou hadn't taken him to the salon so they could cut all his locks away and mold him back into a rough tough boy. he'd brought him to the salon so his hair could be pretty and soft like he wanted it to be. the thought made him ache down to the marrow of his bones.

shouto wanted to thank him. tried to pull the words through his tightening throat, but before he could, the purple haired stylist returned, bearing an easing grin and a long black cape in one hand. shouto flinched as she moved to step behind him. flinched harder when she laid the black cape over him, when her small, cold hands scratched against his nape as they tied soft drawstring around his neck. his panic must have been obvious, must have broken through before he could choke on it, because then bakugou's palm was on his knee.

"easy icyhot." he whispered just beneath his breath. his stare was steady, weighted with something intangible and warm. shouto hummed. his chest blossomed with heat.

"alright dear, if you'll follow me over to the sink, i'll wash and condition your hair." the stylist said, gesturing towards the row of black marble sinks. shouto nodded sluggishly and slipped from his seat to follow her.

bakugou sat down on the soft waiting room chairs by the front entrance, and shouto tried not to worry about that, tried not to reach out for him like a little kid, tried not to ask him to stay with him because he was scared just a little unused to this. instead, he sat in the chair the stylist directed him to, and he let her push him slowly onto his back. the base of his skull fit in the divot of the sink's basin. he heard the faucet squeak on and then the fast rush of water. he felt it soaking his head in warmth.

"too hot?" the stylist asked, and shouto shook his head. then her hands were on him.

and...it didn't quite matter that she was a stranger. that her voice was sticky and her smile wasn't very real. because her fingers were soft and precise in their movements, and her hands were practiced, gentle. so gentle, it made him think of his mom combing through his hair whilst they sat in front of the tv, of izuku twisting his locks between his knuckles and kissing him on the uppermost bump of his spine. it was so gentle a touch and the water gnawed through his mind with its gurgling heat, and he melded into sleepy pink putty right there, all over the leather upholstery.

everything was...fuzzy. after that. the metronome was so loud, shouto couldn't see over it, could almost hardly breathe over it. his skin was both itchy and numb all at once, coated in goosebumps and shivering with each pull of his hair from his head. he was sure he was blushing and slow breathing, and from beneath his closed eyelids, he could feel the hot tears gathering, pushing up as his lips fell open and quivered. he hoped he hadn't trembled, but he couldn't have disguised it if he had. he was being slowly pried open. at times, the stylist would speak, but he couldn't answer her. perhaps she thought he'd fallen asleep.

when it was all over, she wrung his hair out over the drain and wrapped it up in a towel. he was lead back to the chair, and the stylist squeezed all over his head for a bit before pulling the towel away and going at it with a comb. he zoned out then. everything was beginning to feel hazy around the edges and far away, and his eyes were heavy with sleep. he let himself doze and let himself drift and only came to when he really needed to. once she was finished ridding his hair of tangles and pulling it all down to its maximum length, she pulled out her scissors.

"and you're sure you want to grow it out?" she hummed, twirling one of his white locks around her finger. shouto heard a small growl, and a familiar, broad hand gripped his thigh.

"that's what he said." bakugou's voice huffed, exasperated. shouto didn't remember when he'd come to stand beside him. his fingers were scalding through shouto's jeans.

"alright, alright, just making sure." the stylist retorted in a strange, forced tone. like maybe she thought bakugou was being annoying.

then she started trimming. she started with the back and slowly worked her way towards the front. she sometimes hummed as she worked, and her voice wasn't so sticky in melody, was instead quite airy and lulling. shouto dozed off again as she trimmed the white hair at his shoulder and woke just as she reached his bangs. he closed his eyes as newly cut hair cascaded around him and joined the red-white circle surrounding his chair on the floor.

she worked for a while, spinning him this way and that. he mused that being a hair stylist must take a great deal of skill and attention to detail, and that, for that reason, bakugou would be quite good at it. bakugou could be quite good at a great many things, and if he wasn't so very set on being a hero, he could probably dabble in a bit of everything.

"all done!" she proclaimed at last, spinning his chair around to face the mirror.

he looked...

well, he looked almost exactly how he'd imagined he would. he looked almost exactly as he wanted to be. the almost was a petty, incessant thing that writhed in a wailing fit at the fringes of his thoughts, gnawing fruitlessly at his perception, and he was able to leave it to its crying for now, because he looked almost exactly how he'd imagined.

his hair, before...it had looked unkempt, and most horrifically, it had looked unintentional. he drowned beneath it, wrangled it into ponytails because he didn't know what to do with it, let it twist itself into bloody white knots and bunch in fuzzy baubles at his neck. he could see...glimpses of that soft, sweet thing he so desperately craved when he caught his reflection in the corner of his eye or in the shine of izuku's gaze or in the reverence tied between the letters of his name, he would...he would see what he wanted but didn't quite have, and maybe there was still an almost in his face that made him ache, but his hair...

he looked like he existed on purpose.

his choppy bangs had been evened out. they rested at his brow now, and rather than parted at the middle, his stylist had taken the time to ruffle the red and white together so the center took on an almost pinkish hue. whatever product she'd used in his hair had made it fluffy. it looked cloudy as izuku's or bakugou's after slumber had ruffled it. it looked as soft as tsuyu's and it rolled in sleepy waves all the way down to the very tip of his shoulder blades. it swayed each time he moved his head, caressed his cheeks and skimmed his collar. it was—beautiful sho, so beautiful—beautiful?—you already are was so—

"it's pretty." bakugou said.

and shouto sort of wanted to cry.

you're quite sensitive yourself.

"thank you." shouto told the purple haired woman, and maybe she heard something in his voice, because suddenly her smile was so blindingly real and shining up to her eyes.

"it was my pleasure." she said, and her voice wasn't sticky at all. it was just kind.

shouto paid for the trim. bakugou tried to argue, tried to insist he be the one to handle the bill since it was his idea or something along those lines, but after shouto mentioned he'd be using his father's credit card, he backed down and allowed him to cover the cost.

the walk back to the train station was quiet. shouto felt all gooey and sleepy, and his goosebumps hadn't gone away. his thoughts were watery, and he couldn't keep a firm enough grasp on them to string them into coherent speech, so he allowed the silence to sit evenly between them, interrupted only by the gentle push and pull of bakugou's clouded breathing and the loud pulsing of shouto's own heart, bursting and swollen against the too small gaps in his rib cage, bleeding into his stomach whenever bakugou's arm strong arms are good for hugging—HUG ME HUG HUG HUG NOW pushed into his.

he felt clingy. he was jelly down to his toes and his pretty hair kept swishing against his shoulders and the wind made his mouth hurt. he shivered even though he wasn't cold enough to. bakugou's heat burned so much more ferociously when he felt flayed and too tired to sew himself up. he was grateful when they got to the station, even more grateful since it was crowded and gave him a good excuse to hold onto bakugou's shoulder as they walked. his bones creaked with closer closer closerclosercloser touch MORE and he tried not to be weird, but as soon as they were settled in two empty seats, he was spilling through himself.

he couldn't stop it, the way his lungs squeezed and his throat tightened, the way all his blood rushed to his head and made him dizzy. he melted. sprawled himself against bakugou's side, practically fell into him. bakugou grunted in surprise as shouto's head thunked against the junction of his shoulder. shouto couldn't see him but he knew he was being so weird, that he needed to stop before bakugou regretted taking him anywhere, that it didn't matter that shinsou don't be ashamed didn't mind curling his hands over shouto's ribs when he felt like he'd just crack out of himself because most people didn't like that, didn't like him and bakugou bakugou bakugou BAKUGOU wouldn't he hates me like him if he melted all over him like this, like PATHETIC—

"sorry," he croaked, and he sounded wobbly. “i'm sorry—"

"no, it's..." bakugou made a sound, a weird, garbled sound like he was choking on smoke something in her hair—"fuck, it's fucking fine."

shouto gasped a little too hard. he could smell bakugou, that heart wrenchingly sweet burnt sugar. he leaned further into him and he didn't mean to, but oh the metronome was loud.

maybe bakugou knew it in the way shouto's fingers curled into the hem of his coat, in the way his shoulders shuddered as he breathed. he splayed his palm against the side of shouto's head, and he was warm and so unafraid.

"you're a goddamn mess, y'know that?" bakugou hummed so, so softly as he pushed shouto's head further against him, as he pressed his own cheek to shouto's hair.

and touch touch TOUCH strong arms are good for— shouto felt so sleepy and safe here.

"mhm." he mumbled. his eyes were heavy, and as bakugou stroked gently through his bangs, he let them slip closed.

and they stayed like that, for a long time. so long, it felt a little like forever. bakugou kept holding him against his shoulder, kept stroking through his pretty pretty hair and breathing so they both moved with the rise and fall of his chest, and it was wonderful and shouto was happy, and when forever finally ended at their stop, he was smiling so big because he just couldn't help it.

and bakugou saw him smiling.

he tapped a finger against shouto's fizzy cherry cheek, and said, "what's that for?"

and shouto lost himself in bakugou's hands. when they were on him, he'd tell him anything he wanted to know.

"it's for you."

it bubbled out of him like a laugh, too quick to choke it down. bakugou heard it and when he  heard it, he smiled too.

"fuckin' moron." he groaned, and sometimes bakugou was hard and confusing and weird, and sometimes, shouto didn't understand him.

but he thought, maybe, he understood this.

///

bakugou was kind.

shouto knew this already. but he also knew that most people didn't know this. that he was incredibly lucky to be privy to such information, even luckier to be on the receiving end of it. he knew what it was to be touched by him. knew what it was to blossom beneath his fingertips, to bleed under his eyes. he knew the warmth of his breath on his skin. he'd never known a person so warm, like fire in and of himself, and now, he knew what it was to be taught by him, and it was nothing like he'd expected.

bakugou was patient. and he was...he was calm. especially in the mornings, those early, cold mornings before the silence knew to break itself, before the world began to stir. those mornings, bakugou was so quiet, shouto would have to pull closer to hear him, would have to stand against him as he spoke. those mornings, bakugou moved slow like winter, and he warmed his dry hands against shouto's hips, splayed his fingers across his waist as he taught him how to dice. he was all the more intense in the solitude, and seemed to think a great deal less about what he did with himself because he touched shouto a little more, stared at him a little longer. he played with shouto's hair a lot.

in the evenings, tsuyu would braid it away from his face so it wouldn't get in the way while he cooked—you're a good boy—and bakugou would teach him how to make dinner. the kitchen was busier then. kaminari would come in to grab snacks from the pantry, and shinsou would make himself tea on a free counter, and sometimes kirishima would come in to hang off of bakugou's waist while he cooked—how was your day kats?

bakugou was more reserved with an audience, but the way he spoke to shouto didn't change.

he didn't yell at him much, kept his voice low in his throat and soft, even when he was swearing or lecturing shouto about some rookie mistake he'd made. and when shouto did good, he'd smile and knock his fist into shouto's forehead or ruffle his bangs around so they turned pink and call him strawberry—nice one strawberry—that for me, strawberry?—think you're real cute, huh strawberry—and it was so nice nice nice HE LIKES ME!

after the first week, bakugou trusted him enough to prepare things on his own. simple things mostly, soups and porridges and omurice, but shouto had never prepared anything before, so this felt like...like something monumental. especially when the others ate the food he'd made, humming and giggling and rubbing at the stray rice grains on their cheeks while they thanked him for the meal, and maybe this was why fuyumi loved to cook for them so much, why bakugou had taken up cooking for their entire class without complaint. he felt so warm when they cradled their full stomachs and meandered off to their bedrooms with sleepy eyes, sated and fed because he'd fed them. because he'd looked after them and contributed to preserving their health. it was his efforts that had pushed those happy happy HAPPY smiles onto their lips.

when he came to bed that night, after cooking up dinner with bakugou, izuku had taken his hands in his own and laid his mouth to the soft blue veins running through the insides of his pale wrists. he felt his pulse against his lips and sighed when he felt shouto tremble underneath him. he kissed his wrists and told him he was amazing.

"thank you for taking care of me." he said, and shouto wanted to cry for the pain and bliss of that gratitude. he was still half the man who ruined his mother, but izuku thought he was...izuku thought he was amazing. izuku smiled as he fell asleep. izuku was happy with shouto in his arms. shouto, who couldn't be a hollow thing, if izuku's hands made him tremble, if izuku's words made him cry.

bakugou didn't teach him over the weekend. most of class 1a returned home that saturday, including izuku, so it was really just shouto, bakugou, and kaminari in the dorms most of the time. kaminari said his house was overstimulating, since he had five sisters, and his parents were busy. bakugou never really wanted to go home. shouto didn't ask him why, but he could recognize the hard set to his jaw, the dark creases beside his eyes. the way he folded his arms around his ribs like he was pushing his heart as far into himself as he could. like shouto, bakugou wasn't born into kindness. bakugou had learned to be kind all on his own.

he spent saturday and sunday morning watching cartoons with kaminari on the sofa and listening to a fiction podcast shinsou had suggested during one of their late night meetings. he did try to sit in on one of kaminari and bakugou's tutoring sessions, but it seemed to be an intimate affair. sometimes kaminari got frustrated, starting gnawing on his soft lip hard enough to draw blood, twitching through his shoulders and jerking his neck, and bakugou had to help him breathe so he didn't hurt himself.

shouto could tell kaminari was embarrassed to be seen like that, blinking away the soft wetness to his eyes as bakugou murmured words too soft to hear against the crown of his head. he had nothing to be embarrassed about, but shouto understood. he understood better than he understood most things. he took up residence in izuku's bedroom and played animal crossing until they were finished, until denki came to fetch him, his mouth creased into a guilty frown and his cheeks smattered with peony buds, suffocating misplaced apologies between the pinch of his lips. then they'd settle back in the living room and do something fun, like stim or play video games whilst bakugou took his alone time.

he visited his mom in the evening, though it was a shorter visit than usual. she wasn't doing very good. she'd just laid in bed, shivering and gaping at the ceiling, her breath too raw on her tongue. the doctors ushered him out after only fifteen minutes. they said she was having flashbacks.

shouto understood why he couldn't be there. he wasn't sure he'd wanted to be there. her eyes had been almost as crowded as they had that day can't raise this child anymore. he looked more like her than ever, but his father still bled through his eyes. he took the subway train back to the dorms and fell asleep on izuku's bed, still fully clothed. he dreamt of moth eaten cardigans. he dreamt of broken bodies.

///

the following monday was a little different. bakugou woke him early like he usually did, led him down to the kitchen so they could get started on breakfast. but, instead of pulling out ingredients, bakugou leaned back against the counter edge and leveled shouto with a calculating stare. shouto stared back, too tired to make an attempt at plucking apart bakugou's weird facial expression and rearranging it into something he could understand.

"you said you wanted to make your mom happy." bakugou said, finally. his head was tilting to one side. his mouth folded around some unspoken question, pinched against a bare bone thought, and shouto blinked. bobbed his head a bit stupidly, and his hair moved against his neck.

"what did you mean by that?"

shouto hummed. it was strange to recall now. almost difficult. not because the memory escaped him, but the meaning had begun to fade between his teeth, wither on his tongue. sound couldn't capture it anymore. he thought of her, and he knew she wasn't happy. that it was still silent inside of her, not as silence fell with snow, but as silence fell with the splatter of blood, as it followed the thump of bones on hardwood. he knew her wrists were blue blue blueblueblue and that she breathed like there was a fist inside her lungs and that her bones pushed out of her pale, paper mache skin and that her hair smoke in her hair had grown dull and sad as her eyes. that her cardigans had never stopped smelling of tears.

he knew his father was still trying to eat her. that she starved between his teeth.

"she doesn't eat hospital food." was what came out of shouto's mouth.

"hospital food is shit," bakugou agreed empathetically. he peered at shouto from beneath his lashes, violent red bruising the golden hour. "so, what, you wanna give her a home cooked meal?"

"mhm."

shouto supposed that was what he was trying to do. he supposed that was what he'd been working towards all this time. he hadn't really put it all together until now. until bakugou had strung together something cohesive from the bloody mess of his thoughts for him.

bakugou nodded like all of this was simple. he crossed his arms over his broad chest, and the muscles of his biceps flexed, and hug me—strong arms are good for hugging—hug now! shouto wanted very desperately to fold himself between them. he imagined it might be pleasant, to be crushed by something as warm as bakugou.

"alright, what's her favorite food?" bakugou asked. shouto's eyes snapped back up to his face. fixing themselves on the lift of his cheekbone rather than finding his gaze.

he tilted his head.

"i'm not sure."

bakugou paused. shouto watched a muscle in his shoulder spasm with some withheld effort, his jaw flexing and twitching beneath his fumbling tongue. his eyes narrowed to sharp, bracing points. shouto scrambled for something to hold onto, winded by the brutality of his attention.

"you don't know your mom's favorite food? are you fucking with me?"

shouto shook his head. he didn't know. he wasn't sure he'd ever known, there always seemed to be so many other things to think about. his family didn't spend dinners speaking or eating as normal people did. they spent dinners with their heads bowed towards their chests and their mouths gripped so tightly shut that their teeth ached from the pressure. shouto would hide his trembling hands beneath his thighs and fuyumi would sneak frightened glances at their father and natsuo and touya would converse telepathically from across the dining table. and his mother would barely eat, even then. he never cared much to stare at her plate.

fuyumi would probably know. she was always so good at knowing people, so good at understanding understanding because she's a good daughter, and don't good daughters—?

"i'm sorry." shouto offered. his throat suddenly felt knotted tight. like those fingers were at his jugular again. bakugou huffed and frowned, but the bow of his back loosened and he let his hands fall limp by his sides.

"it's whatever, don't...stop looking at me like a sick cat, fuckin' idiot."

sick cat?

shouto wasn't really sure what that meant, but he tried to fix himself up. bakugou rubbed his knuckles up against shouto's hairline, warm and on the perfect side of rough. shouto pushed into it with a gasping eagerness that made his stomach bubble with shame, but it was easily forgotten when bakugou snickered at him, his face slack with amusement.

"you're a damn weirdo."

"you're—"

"weird, yeah, i know."

shouto didn't know why, but he was smiling. bakugou traced the curl of his lips with his eyes.

"i can call my sister." shouto offered. bakugou dragged his gaze back up. there was a soft hue to his cheeks. sunset watercolor across his skin.

"yeah, you do that," bakugou agreed, and his voice had somehow gone rougher, gotten smaller. "and have her text you the ingredients."

"we're gonna make it?" shouto hummed, and bakugou flicked him hard between his brows.

"fucking obviously moron!"

shouto pouted, and bakugou tapped his thumb against his bottom lip until he pulled it back in with a sigh.

"you're lucky you're fuckin' pretty, otherwise you'd be hopeless in the world."

shouto blinked what what what what pretty? “you think i'm pretty?"

bakugou flicked him again.

"ow."

"call your damn sister!"

shouto found out his mother loved a multitude of foods. mostly comfort foods, and he found she particularly loved steamed buns and yakitori. he also found out that she loved mapo tofu, much like bakugou, and that her mother, shouto's grandmother, had once lived in china and passed down a few traditional chinese recipes. it was part of the reason fuyumi had taken to cooking mapo tofu for family dinners. she suggested he make her mapo tofu and yaki onigiri with miso and butter sauce and bring it to her in a bento. she was adamant that their mother would like that very much.

when shouto relayed this information to bakugou, he simply smirked and said, "your mom has good taste."

"are we going to make mapo tofu?" shouto asked, and bakugou nodded, emptying a board of freshly chopped green onions into a spare bowl.

"yeah. tonight. i gotta go shopping for ingredients. we'll make it together until you can make it yourself, and then you'll bring it to her sunday."

shouto tilted his head. "and she'll like it?"

bakugou snorted. "she fuckin' better."

shouto flapped his hands, just a little bit happy.

///

bakugou went shopping after school let out, dragged sero along with him so no one could accuse him of going out alone with the league of villains on the loose. shouto played board games with shouji, izuku, and tokoyami while he was gone. well, really he just watched them take turns playing intense and complex games of tsumego while uraraka and mina braided each side of his hair into neat plaits and decorated the crown of his head with flower pins. once they got back, armed with groceries as promised, he followed bakugou into the kitchen.

"round cheeks fucked up your braid pattern." bakugou grumbled when he caught sight of his hairstyle, and shouto shrugged, toying with the tail end of his plait.

"it's a little crooked," he admitted, offering a one armed shrug. "but i like it."

"i could do better."

"you've said that before."

"and i'll fuckin' say it again!"

shouto hummed. he would like it if bakugou did his hair. he had such wonderful hands. he sometimes even fell asleep to the thought of them, the remembrance of their gentle roughness, their calloused tenderness, a palm flattened against the crown of his head, a finger combing through the tangles in his bangs. he might have asked, but the words burned in his throat. they still felt shameful to say, so he kept them to himself, and moved out of the way as bakugou maneuvered around the kitchen, setting up different stations and laying out ingredients.

while he did so, bakugou relayed some interesting facts about mapo tofu that shouto hadn't known before. most mapo tofu recipes had been altered, because the original dish, created in china's sichuan province, was so tongue numbingly spicy, most foreigners couldn't handle it.

"we're making the original recipe," bakugou stated rather adamantly, with that same intensity to his eyes, that same fire. "unless your mom's a coward."

"she is not a coward." shouto huffed, a little offended that bakugou would even consider the idea.

"mm, i guess we'll see." bakugou shrugged. shouto frowned. he was sure his mother could handle it. positive.

bakugou proudly announced that he'd managed to find them some good, high quality sichuan peppercorns, that he wouldn't have settled for anything else, and let shouto inspect them carefully as if their scent and appearance would mean something to him. it didn't, shouto wouldn't know the difference between a high quality peppercorn and a low quality one, but he still hummed and nodded appreciatively because it made bakugou smile, and shouto loved bakugou's smile happy smile smiles are so happy.

first, bakugou ground the peppercorns into fine grind in a spice grinder. he explained he could have also used a powerful blender, but shouto hated the sound of the blender, and shinsou and tsuyu always went hunting for their noise cancelling headphones whenever anyone in the dorms had to use it, so it was typically avoided. then he heated a wok over low heat and had shouto toss in a 1/4 cup of oil and add ginger and garlic.

bakugou had been thawing out the ground pork in the sink, and he had shouto fetch it and drain the water and weird meat juice from the packet before handing it off to him so he could toss it in the wok and break it up. shouto hated working with oil. it tended to pop rather loudly, and sometimes hot sprays of it would hit shouto's wrists as he cooked, but bakugou was adamant that he get used to it since so many recipes included frying. they'd found a strange compromise. bakugou had shouto fry the pork until it was cooked, but he stood behind him
instead of attending to other duties, keeping one hand over shouto's and rubbing a thumb over the back of his hand when his wrist flinched. it helped rub away the tension, bakugou's steady grip on him, his heartbeat pressed into shouto's back, his gentle instruction at his ear. eventually, he stepped away to let shouto do it himself, but his heat lingered so relentlessly, shouto felt the phantom weight of him pressed upon him like he was still there.

once the meat was fully cooked through, they added the ground peppercorns and spicy bean sauce, which tinted the whole thing a rich, reddish brown. bakugou added chicken broth and trusted shouto to cut up the tofu while it simmered. bakugou added a cornstarch mixture to the sauce and shouto poured in the chili oil, and the kitchen smelled of spices.

they'd been cooking for a while now, and shouto was a little hot, and dizzy from hunger. he tugged lightly on bakugou's elbow and waited until bakugou's eyes dragged away from the wok to speak.

"i feel a little wobbly." he breathed, blinking the spots from the corners of his vision. bakugou frowned at him, pushed his palm into shouto's forehead like he knew shouto's knees were swaying, trying to tip him too far over.

"wobbly huh?" he mumbled. his eyebrows pinched and creased, and it was a little hard to distinguish this look. he rubbed his knuckle over shouto's temple. he was so warm. he breathed in and he tasted spice in his lungs.

"sit down and drink some water. we're pretty much done anyway. just gotta add in the tofu and some garnish."

"and garnish is...embellishment." shouto hummed proudly, pushing up into bakugou's hand, urging him to touch more more more please more and bakugou felt it because he chuckled all low and grumbly and brushed across his hairline, down his cheek.

"yeah, look at that," he huffed. "you fuckin' learned something. now go get some water and sit down before you pass out."

shouto did as he was told, though he took a seat on the counter so he could watch bakugou finish up. the water did help. he finished the entire cup and bakugou patted his knee in silent praise. though he'd made a fuss about adhering to the original recipe, he did make another, less spicier batch for some of the others who would have struggled to keep down the first.

he called the others in to collect their dinner, and they expressed a level of surprise at the dish they'd chosen to make, but thanked them all the same. bakugou didn't even put up a fight when mina hugged him this time.

"again tomorrow?" shouto asked as he made his own plate.

bakugou smirked in that beautiful way of his.

"again tomorrow."

///

"okay, i'm almost afraid to ask this, but when are you gonna stop making mapo tofu for dinner?" kaminari asked one wednesday night with his mouth pressed into the delicate curve of bakugou's neck.

bakugou shrugged to shake him off, but kaminari was relentless, clinging like it was all he'd known to do since the moment his life began, like his soft, tiny fingers were made to slip into the dips in bakugou's teeny tiny waist and hold there. bakugou didn't seem all that bothered really. shouto had known him angry, had known him prickling with discomfort, but now his face was still and red. maybe from the heat of the stove or the sharp scent of chilies and peppercorn lingering in the cramped air, or maybe from the weight of kaminari's body against his. shouto was a little woozy from it himself, his cheek still tingling from the kiss kaminari had planted there upon his arrival.

bakugou held out his hand for the tofu shouto had prepared, and shouto quickly passed it to him, moving to stand over his shoulder while he added it the wok, and oil popped around his hand. then bakugou passed off the spatula to shouto so he could mix it about himself, stepping back and dragging kaminari with him.

"when icyhot can make it on his own," bakugou finally replied as kaminari nosed impatiently against him. "get the fuck off me."

"no thanks!" kaminari sing-songed.

shouto's back prickled. he could feel both their gazes digging into the space between his shoulder blades, watching the movement of his body as he cooked. waiting for him to fuck up watching him cook. the oil popped against the inside of shouto's forearm. the burn it burns ached on his flesh. like he was raw. he watched it simmer and bubble at the corners of the wok.

"seriously though, you're just gonna keep making mapo tofu until todobro is...perfect at it?"

"as close as he can get." bakugou huffed, and he sounded tired but not, not angry. shouto was doing okay. he'd actually done most of the work this time, he was doing fine.

"but it's your mom, right?" kaminari mumbled, sounding distracted. he probably had his face squished into bakugou's shoulder. could probably feel how warm warm warmer than izuku he was, could smell burnt sugar instead of pop pop pop POP oil. "i mean, it's for your mom, so...wouldn't she be fine with anything, as long as you made it for her?"

no. no, that wasn't the point. kaminari was probably doing that small, pout thing he did with both his lips and his eyes when he was worried, but he didn't have a reason to be worried, it was just...shouto's mom wasn't like anyone's mom. wasn't like anyone else's. she would pretend to be fine with anything because she'd been pretending to be fine for as long as shouto had been alive, and so something like a half assed meal wouldn't make her smile for real. wouldn't make her more solid, wouldn't make her stop shaking, wouldn't make her love him. no, it had to be perfect. it had to be.

a spray of oil hit shouto's wrist. he blinked. he'd twisted the spatula too hard. was the oil bubbling too fast? was the heat too high?

"stop feeling up my damn waist!" bakugou shouted from behind him. he strangled the flinch writhing beneath his spine. stop—SHOUTO STOP—

"but it's so small, i just wanna squeeze it all the time—"

"i'll blow your fucking hands off!"

a dull thud sounded, like bakugou had bumped his hand into kaminari's chest or shoulder or pop POP POP the oil was burning too fast, bubbling too fast, fuck, was the heat too high? had shouto turned it too high? he scrambled to turn it down, but his fingers were trembling and clammy. they slipped against the knob. he tried again. his breath was heavy, sticking in his throat like melted candy or, or, POP—get up shouto UP—

"bakugou. i think...i think the heat's too high..." shouto tried to say. tried to say loud enough for anyone to hear him, but his father's fingers were pressed against the sides of his throat, and his tongue was flopping uselessly against his teeth. it was too hot. the spray was hurting his hand, it was scalding like UNSIGHTLY!

"bakugou..." he tried again. he was spilling out. fuck. FUCK. his fingers were shaking like his mother's wobbling mouth, like his sister's knees as she tucked her wet face between them, as touya's body on the floor broken bodies broken bodies on the floor shit. "bakugou..."

"get off me dammit! fuck, go bother eijirou or something—"

bakugou was right there, close and miles away and miles and miles away. the oil wouldn't stop popping. he tried to turn the heat down. he stretched his arm over the wok and scrambled to turn the heat down and POPOPOP it hit him, across his skin, and his mother's hands were pushing against his face shouto, i'm sorry—OH MY GOD—what have i done to my baby?

"bakugou!"

"fuck!"

it burns!

"todoroki, fuck, come here!"

hands grasped for his shoulders and he realized they were shuddering. that his mouth was open and gaping, and he could taste metal between his teeth.

"baku—?" he begged, blinking blinking blinking bakugou? his face felt raw. it hurt. his skin was boiling right off, and he swore, his mother's hands were scratching into his cheeks, trying to pull the pain from his flesh. there were fingers wound around him, pulling him back. the popping was farther now. the heat wasn't biting at his wrist anymore. it wasn't biting him anymore.

"hey, hey, icyhot," bakugou was saying, was breathing against him. "hey, look at me."

shouto tried to pry his eyes open. he hadn't realized he'd let them close. he'd been blinking so hard, when had he stopped? he pulled them open, and bakugou was right there. he was pressed close. his eyes were bleeding again, but differently than before. like the sun was setting too fast, wailing and flaring as it fell into the horizon. his hands were warm on shouto's shoulders, but he could barely feel them through his sweater. he wanted them flat against him, on his flayed skin, pushing him back inside himself before he splattered all over the floor.

"bakugou?" shouto gasped, and his trembling hand was reaching out, twitching pitifully in midair. "it was hot—"

"i know, fuck, i know, i'm—" bakugou said so quick, grabbing onto shouto's hand. there was a big, drooping frown on his pretty pink lips. a big, soft drooping frown and a twist beside his sun burnt eyes. angrysad? “listen to me shouto, listen. okay? you're safe. you're at the ua dorms, okay? and you're in the kitchen, not at home or wherever the fuck you think you are, you're here. you're with me."

"with—" shouto keened. it hurt. it hurt. his lungs were beating into his rib cage, trying to squeeze themselves tight enough to tumble through. the sound of them, furious and thumping, sounded like his father down the corridor, like his sister's panicked hissing, like mom hitting the ground again again again again.

"bakugou?" he whimpered. "i'm—i'm scared?"

he didn't know why he asked. he didn't know why he—why am i so?—

bakugou pressed his forehead into shouto's. warm warm warm shouto's skull almost ached with the pressure. his thoughts sort of pulled together for a moment.

"hey," bakugou hummed, and oh. oh, he was so soft. “hey shouto, can you breathe with me? here, gimme your other hand."

bakugou grasped it for him, callouses rubbing against shouto's palm. there was something so familiar about them, about the way bakugou was looking into him, bleeding out and so warm, shouto could die from it. bakugou pushed both shouto's hands into his chest, and it was so firm and broad and so strong, so so strong, wonder if he could—and his heartbeat was there, beautiful and bold as thunder.

"feel that?" bakugou said into his mouth, almost against his lips. "that's me. "

"that's—you." shouto repeated, choking it out with a wheeze, and bakugou nodded. pushed harder against shouto's hand like he could mold them together.

"so, breathe with me. no one's gonna hurt you, no one's gonna lay a fucking hand on you here, i won't let them. and you know me, i'm fuckin' strong."

shouto hummed. it shook out of him.

"the st—strongest."

"yeah. yeah, so...so, follow my breathing, and just...you're fine. i won't let anyone hurt you, okay? breathe."

bakugou's chest swelled beneath shouto's palm. slowly, intentionally. his heartbeat thumped loud into his fingers, and then softened. so gently.

shouto followed him.

he followed him and coughed and then followed him again. bakugou held his hand so tightly. like he'd float away if he loosened up even a little bit, and maybe shouto would, would just burst into nothing if bakugou didn't keep him folded between his palms. it wasn't so hard though. wasn't as hard, when bakugou smelled of sugar. when his heart sang a lullaby of its own. when he touched him like this, like...like nothing shouto could do would scare him away.

he fell back into himself eventually, and when he did, he was sitting on the kitchen floor with his legs crumpled up beneath him. bakugou was sunk down on his knees in front of him, keeping him cornered up against the cabinets, hidden away behind his arms. he was bruised up underneath his skin, like his father had punched his bronze fists through his bones. bakugou was tender with him. he brushed his thumb across shouto's knuckles, sighed when he felt shouto shiver into him.

"shouldn't have left you alone with the oil." bakugou said. he was...difficult now. shouto was tired. he could barely see bakugou's face with how close he was, and he couldn't decipher the smallness of his voice. he just shook his head. twisted his fingers into bakugou's shirt and let himself ache.

"next time, i'll keep you here, huh?" bakugou mumbled. he lifted a hand to shouto's jaw. cupped it against his palm, as though shouto were small enough to be held so easily. "right where i can see you."

"hm," shouto breathed. his voice was ragged. "can't...cook on the floor."

"well, well, i'll just fuckin' hold you then. so, so when you call for me, i'm right fuckin—"

"bakugou," shouto whispered. "i'm glad you were here."

bakugou gasped, and his chest shook as though the air was rushing too fast inside him. as though he were bruised up inside too. oh.

oh.

he'd been...scared. he'd been scared too.

"yeah," bakugou said. "i'm here. i'm right here."

and it sounded like a promise.

///

bakugou stayed close after that. it wasn't as though shouto had lost his trust. bakugou wasn't the sort of person to lose so easily, to anything, especially shouto. he was strong—the strongest he couldn't be frightened away or frightened into anything less than himself, and so this bakugou that moved so gently through the parting air as though waiting permission to disturb it, was still the same bakugou that broke the world apart beneath his fingers and shook the sky from its cosmic strings with his palms.

they were so one and the same, shouto couldn't have doubted that. he was not being pitied, and bakugou was not shrinking into himself to make room for him. he was opening up for him. opening up around him. shouto felt a little easier in his arms now, because bakugou had brought him in of his own volition, if only to feel the weight of the breath in his lungs and the ache of the warmth in his blood.

his mother had mouthed her love into the line where white met red, as if she could mold him into a real and whole boy with her adoration alone. bakugou held him as though he'd never been separate. as though he wanted to feel him brutally, in his entirety, his every curve and dip and hollow, his every push and pull and pulse, as though he wanted to know him so deeply, so darkly, to the parts of himself he could barely stand. to the parts of himself he couldn't bear to touch.

and shouto cooked for his mother, because in his dreams, he felt her cold. he felt her sprawled all around him, like snow. laid across the barren earth, a stomach thin with hunger, a mouth cracked from wind. her eyes so faded as the world walking beside death. in his dreams, he knew the burn of her bruises, the blue-black patchwork stitched across the lines of her ribs, the mottled purple of her hands. he dreamt she'd blackened with ash, that she'd spent so long in a house on fire, she could only smell the smoke. that she choked and choked and choked on that smoke, on the smoke of burning flesh, on the smoke of branded children.

he cooked for her because his father tried to eat her for as long as she'd tried to love him. that now, she ate herself until she was too small to breathe. he cooked because he was half the man who ruined her and he still wanted her to love him. he cooked because he couldn't remember what she looked like when she smiled.

that was why it had it be perfect.

and yet, when bakugou pulled him between his arms and pressed him up against the counter's edge, when he placed his mouth against the curve of shouto's ear and kissed down his throat with breath, he could almost forget. because it was just nice. it was just so nice to be with bakugou. bakugou was so nice.

the days passed more quickly. it was saturday before shouto could blink, and soon, everyone was emptying out of the dorms to go visit their families. they wished him good luck with his mom. they really liked him like me THEY LIKE ME because they all gave him super tight hugs and smacked their lips against his jaw and told him he was perfect—perfect?—my perfect, shouto—which was untrue, but so very kind, and izuku pushed him up against the wall in the corridor and kissed him all across his collarbone until he shook so hard, he thought he was dying, and then he told him "you don't need to earn her love. you don't need to give her a reason."

and maybe izuku didn't really understand, because he hadn't been there the day she tried to burn his father out of him, or maybe he did, because he had been there the day she cried into his hair and thanked him for loving her son. shouto wasn't sure. it was confusing. he didn't want to think about it.

he rested for a while. bakugou went on a run after the others left and shouto played hollow knight on the switch until he came back. then bakugou started on an english project that wasn't due for two weeks while shouto binged sailor moon in the living room. then he agreed to play a match of mario kart with shouto and laughed when shouto got tenth place and he got first.

once evening fell, bakugou grabbed his hand and pulled him into the kitchen.

"you ready?" he asked, already pulling all the ingredients from the fridge and laying them out on the countertop the same way he'd done every day that week.

shouto nodded. his stomach was hurting a little bit, and his lungs felt pulled taut, like someone had strung wire around them. he'd made mapo tofu a hundred times by now. he knew the steps. he had no reason to unspool now.

maybe bakugou heard him. he was being careful to keep quiet, even as his heart became a panicked humming bird wriggling around behind his milk white cage, as his breath began to shudder and cling to his teeth, desperate to remain in the warm cavern of his lungs rather than face a brutal birth into light. still, bakugou turned around and his face...shifted. smoothed and drooped, though not in a sad way. in a soft way. like everything had been frayed or smeared or melted. he pressed his hands into shouto's shoulders. pushed his thumbs against the wings of shouto's bare collarbone, against the skin izuku had kissed, and stroked slow, up and down and up and down, until shouto felt like crumpling under the weight of him, until he felt like he might have been spilling through the seams of his cotton sweater.

"what's your deal?" he mumbled, scrunching his brows together. he dug a thumb into the place shouto's shoulder met his neck, and then shouto realized he'd gotten all knotted up there. he was tying up all his tendons like shoe laces and bakugou had noticed. he's so nice.

"i don't know." shouto said, which was a lie. he must not have been a very good liar, or maybe bakugou was just good at understanding people. he scrunched up his forehead so violently, shouto could tell just how much he didn't believe him.

he knocked his fist on shouto's head, still so soft.

"you've done this a thousand fuckin' times," he said, and though he was gruff as ever, something about the way he said it was soothing. shouto's teeth buzzed in his mouth, like little bees. "you know what you're doing. so stop making that dumb face."

and there was a smile. small and sleepy and cowering into the creased corner of bakugou's mouth. it made shouto bloom, made him burst within his veins like little seedlings were coming to life inside of his skin. and beneath bakugou's hand, he felt a little looser. there was something bone stripping to an honest boy like bakugou, bone stripping as white light and his reflection in the mirror. if bakugou held onto him without flinching and told him he could do it, shouto could...he could sort of...he could believe it. just a bit.

the routine was familiar to shouto. the prepping, the washing, the cutting. his hands knew the process by now, and he hardly had to think as he moved around the kitchen. the only difference was bakugou. he stood on the fringes of his vision, giving him space. watching him with that brutal attention, binding him to a perception darker than izuku's, clearer without the bloody adoration, but kind, and comforting. shouto's lungs tasted less of metal when bakugou's eyes caught his and burned him into something whole. he could barely see his father in the face bakugou saw. the hands that made food for his mother had never harmed her. not...not like he had.

it was familiar, and shouto wasn't as scared as he thought he'd be. he finished the prep and he'd grounded the peppercorns and he'd swallowed the scent of spice that stung the back of his throat. made his mother the authentic chinese dish, because she wasn't a coward. he toasted the chilies until the smell hurt his nose, until bakugou nodded at him. then he poured the peppers and the oil into the wok.

bakugou came closer once the wok started sizzling. shoved his shoulder into shouto's. splayed a palm at the small of his back and touch me shouto wished he could curl his rough fingers around the notches of his spine. keep him upright with his strong hands. he only rubbed into the hollow of his back, pushed his bunchy sweater flat against the dimples at the base of his spine and pressed his thumb into the small dips. and shouto tried very hard not to shake. he tried so hard not to shake, he could hardly feel the popping, sizzling, hissing heat, because he was already sizzling in the marrow of his bones.

"keep your hand steady." bakugou whispered right up against him, so his breath made the hair behind shouto's ear twitch.

shouto gripped the spatula so firmly that his knuckles whitened. bakugou grabbed the tray of tofu and, in one fluid potion, tipped it all into the wok, without spilling.

shouto's chest lurched with a sick panic. no no no—

"i'm supposed to do it on my own."

he sounded a little accusatory. he didn't mean to sound that way. his fingers were stuck, spasming around the handle of the spatula.

bakugou looked at him evenly. steadily, with a bracing grip to his eyes that made the floor beneath shouto's feet snap back into place underneath him. the panic writhing and wrestling itself in his chest, wrangling up all of his blood vessels and veins, ceased for a moment in panting stasis.

"you're an idiot," bakugou said, but there was nothing angry about him. his voice was quiet. weighted with something heavy. his thumb moved against shouto's back, stroking up the bumpy line of his spine. "i'm just giving you a fuckin' hand. i'm here, might as well make use of me."

shouto shook his head. his hair popped out from behind his ears and hit the sides of his face.

"but the point was, that i—i was supposed to do it myself. to make mom happy, to make her—so she'll smile. for real this time, a—a real smile, and—" shouto gasped, he hadn't been breathing. ow. those fingers were at his throat, pushing, pushing. bakugou was trying to smooth him out underneath his touch, and shouto's skin was prickling with goosebumps, but his tendons were shoelaces done up by a toddler's clumsy hands. the hot oil snapped against the vein of his wrist, and he fought the urge to yank back. bakugou frowned. frowning's bad—you made him angry—HE HATES YOU—

"hey, careful," bakugou blurted, urgent sounding. he wrestled the spatula from shouto's vice like grip and scraped a bit of tofu from the edge, where it had begun to stick shouto was messing up. “look, you—you're way too stressed out about this, you're thinkin' too damn hard. seriously, the fuck are you so worked up about?"

shouto pulled his lip between his teeth. he bit hard enough for the ache to splinter through his jaw. he hates me now.

bakugou sighed he's annoyed with you—PATHETIC—you've made him angry shouto, good fucking job—he's angry angry angry

"hey, hey. strawberry." he huffed, knocking his fist on shouto's floppy stupid stupid head with his free hand.

"i'm not pink." he blurted, without thinking. the panic was like a fire, like that hungering, gnawing fire that wouldn't go out. bakugou looked at him funny. looked at him like he was weird. like there was something wrong with him not like them.

"hah?"

the oil popped pop POP and shouto twisted his fingers in the hem of his sweater and pulled until the neckline nearly slipped off his pale shoulder.

"you only call me strawberry when i'm pink. when you mix me up, so...so i'm..."

bakugou stared at him. he was being so weird. he was messing everything up and being so weird and bakugou hated him HE HATES ME and rough, tough boy—so cold so so so— and he was never gonna make his mom smile at him because why would she when he wasn't pink was all red and white and why did bakugou call him strawberry anyway—strawberries are red red red red RED like he was, red like the ugly slur scrawled across his face the scar scar scar and—

bakugou turned off the heat.

"what—what are you doing?" shouto scrambled, but bakugou grabbed his hand before he could reach for the oven's knob.

"it's just for a sec, calm down," bakugou told him, and shouto didn't know why he sounded so calm, so unbothered. "i just—come here for a second."

shouti frowned. come where? bakugou was already so close and—

bakugou sighed, a long, suffering thing, and grabbed him by his hips. he yanked him in like it was easy, splayed one palm between his shoulder blades and another just above his waist and fit him up against his chest so perfectly. as though he'd already known how they'd mold together, had memorized the places where shouto bent and where he softened and where he sharpened and knew how to place him, knew how to hold him, like he was always meant to do it.

shouto breathed in, sharp, quick, against bakugou's shoulder. his mouth was pressed to the painfully soft skin of bakugou's neck, his lips just resting there, and his own hands trembled and grasped for purchase. he clung to the fabric of bakugou's shirt. felt the drumming pound of his heart between his ribs. bakugou's fluff of blonde hair tickled shouto's temple, and he swallowed a whimper god oh god oh god dizzy from the scent of him, the warmth of him.

it wasn't the first time he'd been held like this. there were...all those nights with izuku, pressed beneath his lips, hands wound in knots of evergreen curls, breaths that shook with sobs, and shinsou's fingers tracing his frame in the dark. and mornings with bakugou, slumped into his side. cradled beneath his palm. but he'd never...he'd never get used to anyone...to bakugou touching him when he was raw.

"tell me about your mom." bakugou mumbled, and shouto nearly missed the meaning of the sound, so focused on the motion of his mouth, on the heat of the exhale pressed from his tongue.

he blinked as recognition set in.

"what?"

"tell me about your mom." bakugou said again. he stroked a circle into shouto's skin. squeezed him tighter when he shivered.

shouto's forehead crumpled. he didn't know why bakugou wanted to know about mom don't wanna be someone who hurts you mom. he supposed it was natural to be curious. he'd spoken of her so much since this all began.

he thought. he let himself think about it. let himself sink into bakugou's arms. let his eyes flutter and his mother's face stir in the blackness behind them. a strange shape. from the blackness of a bedroom never seen, from the abyss of a bed within which his mother lie, like a corpse. pale and cleaving some nightmare from the hard ceiling. her shoulders pushing against phantom hands that reached to rip her open. shouto standing at the doorway. so small. cowering in the faint light of the corridor, nursing the dull throb of his stomach beneath his small, clammy fingers. calling for his mom to hold him and make him forget the sound his ribs made when they cracked beneath his father's knuckles. wanting to breathe her life into him and remember the weight of a woman who still wore kindness on her bones.

he remembered her now too. bathed in light, though this light was sickly. quivering with its own sort of terror, laving fitful patients in whitened shadows. remembered her folded inside of herself, a crumpled origami swan, a woman of wet paper maché. her eyes, so loud. so scared. her palm on the cold, cold glass of her window. looking out. always out. at winter's sky.

"she's like the snow."

he spoke, almost without realizing.

bakugou didn't waver. he kept a deep pressure against him so he didn't feel in danger of coming apart. breathed for the both of them as shouto grappled for footing in his own body.

shouto smiled into bakugou's skin, but it was heavy on his mouth. it nearly hurt.

"she's...soft," he murmured, remembering her moth eaten cardigans—blue wrists. "so soft, it's almost numbing. you feel like you could sink into it. and she's quiet. when she...held me...i listened to her heart beating. when he let me near her, when we could be alone. and it was so slow and quiet. like sleep and like...like the snow. she made everything quiet too, i could almost forget he was..."

i could almost forget he was there. could almost forget he'd touched us.

he'd seen her on the ground all his life. trembling beneath his father. bruised in the shape of him. he wanted to know she lived. he had to feel it. he used to press his tiny thumbs to her pulse. used to push his face to her throat, feel her breath warm on his head.

i don't wanna be someone who hurts you mom.

"she always wore lotion that made her smell like flowers," shouto kept going. "but her hair always smelled of—of smoke. and she cried at night. when she thought i couldn't hear. she laid so still. sometimes i wondered..."

a heat pushed up to his neck. bakugou's palm at the back of his head, and his fingers winding themselves so gently into the tendrils of his hair. shouto didn't need to say. bakugou knew.

"she always said she was alright," just not feeling well “but i saw him, i saw him trying every day to eat her, to swallow her and she—he hit—"

only five!—ALREADY FIVE—mama?—can't raise this child anymore—PATHETIC—MAMA!—run shouto he's—

"you're crying." bakugou breathed.

shouto blinked.

oh.

oh. of course.

his shoulders ached. they burned. his face was wet with tears. he'd soaked bakugou with it too, with those pathetic tears. there was a sob ripping through his stomach, clambering up the walls of his throat like a deranged animal, starved and frightened and—

"bakugou..." shouto begged, and it came out raw. it came out trembling.

bakugou held him, held him so tight with that perfect pressure so shouto couldn't snap apart, couldn't shake out of his bones, couldn't shatter from his own chest like an angel born into salvation. he held him so tight, the metronome died for a moment, and the flush that squeezed the oxygen from his lungs and made him weak enough to melt simply settled, so death didn't feel so near a friend to love. so it felt like comfort instead. he'd settled into bakugou's touch. into his wonderful, wonderful hands that could cup the cosmos and capture the stars. bakugou had given him home here.

the realization only made him sob harder, because bakugou liked him HE LIKES ME LIKES ME LIKESLIKESLIKESLIKES ME and he put his hands all over shouto's skin like he'd never once been afraid of what it could do to him.

"you're such a goddamn mess," bakugou sighed into his cheek, his mouth so sweet and so near, shouto wanted to fall into it. "no fuckin' wonder you're fucked up over all this. how long have you been keeping this twisted up inside you? you know it'll make you fuckin' sick, letting yourself get knotted up so bad."

"you do it all the time." shouto gasped between cries, and bakugou laughed like crumbling gravel.

"well obviously, i'm stronger than you."

and shouto really was a goddamn mess, because he giggled then. it just burst out of him, still too soft and more breath and tears than sound. but bakugou squeezed him tighter when he heard it, squeezed him so tight, shouto felt the way his heartbeat skipped, and then sped up.

"you're so goddamn precious."

shouto's eyes blew wide.

water spilled from the extra space, but shouto couldn't feel it. so goddamn precious—what?—precious—what what what what whatwhatwhat—bakugou—what?

"i'm—"

"shut up," bakugou gritted out. he sounded like he was in pain. “just...don't say anything."

"o...okay." shouto agreed, if only so bakugou would stop sounding so sad.

bakugou was breathing a little funny now. shouto could feel the way his chest was hitching in uneven beats.

"you think your mom..." bakugou started, and he sounded strained. "you think what happened to her was your fault. right? or you know it's your shitty old man's fault and you think you're like him, so you want this to be fuckin' perfect so you can prove to yourself that you're not."

shouto flinched. he couldn't strangle it in time, and it told the truth, even as his lips moved to lie.

bakugou huffed.

"bingo."

"look, i—" shouto said, tried to say calmly, slowly, but gasped and scrambled instead. "i just want to make her smile. she hasn't smiled for real in—i don't remember if she's ever smiled for real and i need to make her smile—"

"now how the ever loving fuck do you know that?"

"not all smiles are happy bakugou," shouto argued, desperate now, so desperate it bled through his mouth, and he blinked and blinked until the last of his tears dislodged from his lashes and scattered across bakugou's neck like dew drops. "some smiles are sad—"

"yeah, and some smiles are sleepy or like, pained, or nostalgic or bittersweet, like—put any goddamn emotive descriptor in front of the word smile and you've got a type of smile," bakugou grumbled, so unbelievably certain. "smiles can be all types of expressions and just because they're not happy doesn't mean they're not fuckin' real."

"but izuku said some people smile and they don't mean it—"

"oh deku would say some oversimplified shit like that." bakugou groaned. he didn't sound angry, not at all...maybe just tired, and a little...warm. fond.

bakugou pulled back. not enough to completely disentangle them. just enough for their eyes to meet. for their breaths to dance between each other's lips, and to know the aching blush of their cheeks matched in shades of pink. bakugou slid his fingers through shouto's hair. from the crown of his head to the tail ends, and shouto couldn't help it, it was so tender, he loosed some terrible sound, high and trembling. his neck prickled with goosebumps.

"look, that's true sometimes, but not fuckin' always," bakugou insisted in so gentle a tone, shouto was lulled by it. "i seriously doubt your mom's faked every single smile ever since you were born, that just doesn't make any logical sense. plus, people are so damn complicated, and you're not a mind reader. the farthest thing from it actually, so don't go assuming shit like that and then use it to feed the twisted ass belief that you're unlovable or something cause your dad's a bitch. it's stupid."

mom...smiles?

shouto tried. he tried to remember her smile. what it looked like, and he could see it. he could see it on her lips when she saw him, so small and quiet, like she was trying to keep it secret, and he...was that her real smile? that small, shaking thing she pressed into the creases of her mouth? that sad thing she gave him when he found bruises on her stomach? she must have smiled differently, if there were really so many kinds but...why couldn't he remember? why couldn't he remember, why couldn't he be a good son and remember, just remember what she looked like when she was happy, what she looked like when she wasn't in so much pain, why couldn't he remember—why couldn't he understand—

"i don't remember. bakugou, i—i don't—"

"it's fine," bakugou said quickly. it was like he could feel the fire too. he curled his hands around shouto's jaw, pressed his thumbs into his cheeks. shouto's breath fell into the heel of his palms, against the curve of his wrists. "it's fuckin' fine. she'll smile. she'll smile when she tries your mapo tofu, yeah? it'll be so damn good, it'll fry her tongue off."

"i don't want her tongue to fry off—"

"fuck, it's a damn metaphor," bakugou grumbled, squishing shouto's cheeks so his lips pushed into a pout. "you're so weird."

"y'ur weurd." shouto huffed out best as he could. bakugou snickered.

"dumbass," he muttered with that same, warm fondness. he released his grip and shouto's lips returned to their usual shape. "i just meant that you're...if you stop freaking out and just cook and just...just enjoy it, she'll smile. people can taste that sort of thing in a dish y'know? if you're miserable cooking it, they'll be fuckin' miserable eating it. so lighten up and just...relax. you don't have shit to prove."

you don't have to earn her love. you don't have to give her a reason.

maybe izuku didn't understand because he hadn't been there the day she tried to burn his father out of him, or maybe he did, because he had been there the day she cried into his hair and thanked him for loving her son. maybe bakugou didn't understand how much he missed his mom, even when she was right there. maybe he did, because he'd felt him sob as he said it. maybe no one could really understand who she was, and maybe he couldn't either. or maybe he already did.

or maybe it didn't really matter. maybe it was enough. for now, it was enough to want to cook for her. because he still loved her and wanted to remember what she looked like when she smiled. maybe it was enough that he'd found her again, even if she couldn't touch him how she used to. maybe he was enough. if only for now. if only for a moment. maybe he didn't need to scour for love anymore, didn't need to break himself in half in order to be worthy of it. maybe he had enough of it as it was.

maybe he was loved enough...as he was.

"okay." he said. and bakugou gave him another smile then. one that nearly blinded him, so like the sun sprawling gently over her bed of mist, and he curved towards it. ached to be near it. like sun to the dying.

they turned the heat back on. they set the wok back on the burner and they cooked together this time.

and shouto tried to lighten up. he tried to relax. he let bakugou guide him and hold him when the oil popped into his skin and he giggled when bakugou made fun of him even though he should have been offended. and he tried to cook because he enjoyed it. because people could taste that sort of thing, and that didn't make sense.

but it also sort of did.

and he hoped his mother smiled when she ate it. he hoped she felt like she was home. because shouto cooked with all the warmth he felt in the home bakugou had made for him.

///

he dreamt of strange things that night. of abstract things. of hands curled against the soft undersides of his knees. of lavender sprigs dangling from between his lips. of a mouth whispering reverence into the column of his throat, so close to his pulse, his blood sang in tune with the rhythm of their breath. he dreamt of hair pale as newborn daylight, and of the sway of quiet bones into broad palms. he dreamt of a small flame. tiny as a child, with orange limbs splayed about its cherubic red body. its eyes huge and bright with untainted mischief. its exhales curling as plumes of wispy gray smoke from its gaping yellow mouth. the smell wasn't acrid. wasn't sickly or bloody or sharp. it was, instead, quite sweet. like melted caramel. like burning sugar.

he woke to the sound of birdsong. to a white sky, strung with yellow light, and white snow, glimmering beneath it.

he shivered as he bathed and shivered as he dressed and shivered as he combed out his hair and as he stumbled down the stairs. the cold could not fit its swelling body beneath the doors, and warmth tumbled from the vents, but shouto still shivered. izuku had left him a good morning text, had bid him good luck—good luck my love, remember what i told you—and shouto wished he was there with him, pressing shouto's face to the hollow of his golden collarbone, laying his warm lips along his head and molding his hands around shouto's ribs until the hummingbird behind them began to sing. the night had been merciful, hadn't strangled him half to death whilst he slept, but he still felt heavy and dizzy, like he'd been choked. izuku makes everything better but izuku wasn't there and shouto would need to get used to it.

bakugou was waiting in the kitchen. cooking breakfast for the two of them. his eyes were still half closed, weighted with fatigue, and his shoulders rippled softly with his breathing. when he heard shouto's clumsy footsteps, his eyes flickered and found him. shouto drowned and shivered shivered shivered shivered in his too big sailor mercury sweater. he wanted to hide but his bangs were no longer long enough to cover him. and bakugou laid him bare. he knew, always knew,because—can i see you—bakugou was honest and could make him honest too.

he was across the room in half a second, and his hand, those hands that captured the stars, that cupped the cosmos, held him by the curve of his jaw.

"breathe." he ordered, and it was only then that shouto realized his lungs were slowly wringing closed, squeezing the oxygen from him.

he breathed. followed the tired rise and fall of bakugou's chest. fixed his own gaze somewhere along bakugou's cheekbone as bakugou devoured him within his own. some of that heaviness melted away, and his shoulders lifted more easily.

"relax." he murmured. he stroked the pad of his thumb along shouto's skin. shouto hummed, haziness quivering at the fringes of his vision.

"can't stop shivering." shouto whispered, and bakugou huffed.

"trembling dumbass. you're trembling cause you're having an anxiety attack."

"oh."

bakugou snickered against him. it was soft and teasing, and it made shouto's heart hurt wonderfully. he drew away then, so shouto could no longer feel the warmth of his skin, but bakugou left his hand where it was, against his face.

"you're gonna be fuckin' fine. your mom's gonna love it. i helped make it didn't i? everything i touch turns to gold."

shouto's brows pinched in confusion. "no it doesn't—"

"metaphor," bakugou sighed, tapping at shouto's cheek. "just—it's obviously gonna be good. she'll like it."

shouto hummed again. izuku wasn't there to make his bird heart sing, but he didn't miss him so horribly when bakugou held him against his hands. he felt like a star sometimes, with the way bakugou looked at him. with the way he touched him, somehow both delicately and violently, with a sort of self certainty that boldened him. he touched shouto like he couldn't hurt him. not because he didn't have the capacity to hurt, but because bakugou believed that he wouldn't. believed that he couldn't if he tried, that bakugou could breathe him back to life before he imploded, that bakugou could hold him no matter how unbearable it could be to love him. the strongest, he was the strongest. he touched him like it was a choice. he didn't do anything on accident.

"bakugou?" shouto said.

"hm?"

"will you come with me?"

bakugou didn't seem surprised. his face was becoming more familiar to shouto now. expressions are weird but bakugou's emotions made a little more sense. even if shouto didn't know the why or how of them, he could feel them better. and bakugou seemed as though he'd been waiting to be asked. or wanting to be asked. or knowing he'd be asked.

he knocked against shouto's forehead, that quiet tenderness blossoming with his smile.

"moron." he grumbled fondly, and shouto took that as a yes.

they ate breakfast at the kitchen table. shouto watched the snow drift through the shrouded glass of window, and bakugou's foot knocked his beneath the table. it was a pleasantly silent morning, not silent like his mother with her mottled cheek against the cleft of her pillow, or silent like fuyumi and natsuo folded up like crumpled origami birds inside the closet, or silent like the gratitude that he wasn't being punched instead. it was silent like the snow, which swathed the earth in a weighted blanket and rocked it softly to sleep. it was silent like izuku's hands stroking over his hips, like the hymn of love pressed through his lips, like the reflection in his eyes, of a boy splayed out and undone and bleeding beautifully through his skin.

there was so many wonderful kinds of quiet, shouto had come to realize. there was something so soothing about a silence like this one. about a silence that pervaded that winter's day, when tsuyu placed her small hands in his hair and made him beautiful.

the thought of her filled him with such an intense longing, it left him breathless.

she'd gone home to visit her parents, and her little sister satsuki. it made sense that she would have a little sister. she could make shouto feel little too, even pressed up against her small, curled up body. perhaps he should have felt guilty that he knew her better than he did his own sister. the sister who knew the smell of vomit and blood and smoke, who remembered the broken bodies, the thumping of bones smacking the polished hardwood. the sister who had memorized the sound of his screams from the inside of a closet, holding natsuo close while their father punched shouto's guts from his mouth.

he did love fuyumi. he loved her very much. but he didn't know her. locked away in a fortress of ice and fire, and locked away from each other, her love was distant and frantic and small, because she hardly had enough love for herself. she loved him desperately. sometimes it scared him. she loved like mom did before the water, like that love could save her. it wasn't her fault.

it wasn't his either.

if he said that enough times, maybe he'd believe it.

bakugou was watching him. shouto had gotten lost and perhaps bakugou had noticed. he missed tsuyu now, her mossy hair, and her affection endless and steady as a river. he missed izuku and the way he loved him with everything he had. he missed his mother. but bakugou kicked his ankle beneath the table and as shouto met his eyes, the panic still cowering between his ribs ceased its flailing.

"you don't have shit to prove." bakugou said, unwavering. he didn't look annoyed, nor tired of reminding him.

shouto bobbed his head. bakugou kept staring, like maybe he also had to pluck apart people's faces to figure out what they meant. he seemed to find what he was looking for.

"when you're done eating, pack up, and then put on a damn coat. i'm gonna change."

shouto did what he was told. he didn't know why, but it could be easy to do what bakugou told him. he never felt the push for rebellion he so often felt at his father's house, never felt defensive, like he had to clamber for his right to think. bakugou was just...certain. strong strong the strongest—strong arms are good for—wonder if he could and shouto felt steadier when he followed him.

he finished his food and packed away his mom's bento into his little blue backpack. he pulled on a thick winter coat and a beanie as well, and waited on the living room sofa until bakugou came down.

he'd bundled himself up rather adorably, and he was wearing a crimson riot sweatshirt beneath his black coat that shouto was certain belonged to kirishima. bakugou offered shouto his arm as they left the dorms.

"so you don't wander off or trip and fuckin' die or something." he mumbled, and a watercolor dawn spilled across his cheeks.

shouto took him up on his offer and wound his fingers around the firm muscle of his bicep. they trudged through the snow to the nearest bus stop and waited on the freezing cold bench until the bus rolled to a slippery stop in front of them.

they took two seats at the back and bakugou let him have the one nearest to the window, so he could watch the snow fall. there were others on the bus. another woman, young and dark eyed, who caught sight of bakugou and shouto nestled together and leaned forward to dig her eyes through their clothes. but bakugou was so strong, and he protected them both. glared at her with those fiery red eyes until the heat began to burn, and she turned away with her head bowed. no one's gonna lay a hand on you. bakugou was so strong.

once they arrived near the hospital, shouto took bakugou's arm again and let him guide them off the bus. he so dearly despised the cold, and though he tried to be subtle about it, shouto could feel him burrowing into his left side as they walked, eagerly seeking his warmth. he let him. he could feel his hands starting to flap because he was so happy happy happy HE LIKES ME but he tried to keep them still. he pointed out the bookshop he so often stopped by, and the black cat, luna, watching them from the bay window. bakugou hummed and then let shouto ramble about sailor moon until they made it to the hospital.

the hospital was the same as always, but shouto saw it through bakugou's eyes. quiet save the far off hum of sleepy chatter, the creak of gurneys down the white tiled halls, the soft sound of sobbing, just muffled by a closed door. the smell of soap and anesthetic. vases full of flowers that had begun to yellow at the tips of their petals and smiling nurses with tight lines by their eyes.

he greeted the woman behind the desk. notified her he'd be bringing a visitor with him this time while bakugou stood by and observed the lobby with a pensive frown. she assured him that his mother was doing well today, and surely wouldn't mind another visitor. he thanked her with a bow before grasping bakugou's arm and tugging him down the familiar hall, to his mother's room.

bakugou grew stiff as they approached his mother's room near the end of the corridor. it was unfamiliar, the tension pulling his muscles taut. shouto's hand squeezed closer to bakugou's ribs as he pushed into himself.

"are you okay?" he whispered, and bakugou scowled, though it seemed a little soft.

"fuckin' peachy," he grumbled. his brows pinched together, some untold worry creased between them. "just...is there anything i should know? like, not to do or whatever."

"mm," shouto pondered. "try not to yell. i don't think she likes it."

"kay." bakugou huffed as they came to a stop in front of her door. his shoulders were still strung too tight. shouto wanted to touch them, rub his fingers into them until they fell, like izuku so often did for him.

"she'll like you." he said instead, and bakugou scuffed the toe of his shoe against the tiled floor.

"i know, i'm the fuckin' best. just open the door already."

shouto frowned, but did as bakugou said. he knocked first, waited for his mother's "come in" before twisting the doorknob and leading bakugou inside.

she was sitting on the bed this time, not by the window, and she did look different. the nurse had said it was a good day for her. shouto could see it. she was wearing a pastel pink cardigan. she so rarely wore any color that wasn't blue or white or grey, and it had been buttoned all the way up to her collarbone, the hem cinching her hospital gown at her waist so it looked more like a white dress. the front strands of her hair had been pulled away from her face and tied at the back of her head with a baby blue scrunchie. her cheeks were warm with life, her mouth steady and twisted up at one side, like she'd just finished laughing. she'd packed her pillows up so she could rest against them comfortably, and she had a book splayed on her lap, though she marked her page and shut it as they came in.

her eyes were big and almost unbearably bright as they found him.

"shouto," she breathed, like a sigh of relief, like he was satisfying a yearning in her that had been denied far too long. "it's wonderful to see you my love. i've missed you."

shouto quirked his head. his heart was moving faster, though not out of fear. there was none of that writhing or that gnawing or that prickling that came with panic, with the sickness of falling into memory and flailing to break out. instead, his chest was warm. pooling with hot honey. she was looking at him and her eyes weren't crowded at all. they were so clear.

"i've missed you too, mom." he said back, a little louder than a whisper. she beckoned him closer, and he nearly tripped over his feet in his haste to get to her, to fit into the space she was opening for him.

she grasped his hands in her own. they were cold and small, but...untrembling. she squeezed him tight, and her mouth lifted and lifted into a smile, dizzying in its beauty.

"oh," she cooed, taking him in. "you look so beautiful. your hair is longer."

there it was again. beautiful. beautiful after unsightly, beautiful as he'd never been. he swallowed the gasp that rose to choke him. he squeezed her hands back, tried not to hold on too tight, like a child clinging to love.

"who's your friend?" she hummed, noticing bakugou still standing in the doorway. he was watching them again, but strangely. there was a bright flush climbing up to the tips of his pale ears, and his eyes were shiny and flickering.

nervous? is he nervous? scared nervous?

"that's bakugou. bakugou katsuki." shouto breathed, and she nodded in understanding.

"bakugou. i've heard a lot about you."

bakugou seemed to tighten up again at that. he had the look of a caged animal, his shoulder blades crunching in so ferociously, shouto half expected to hear a crack, and his stare swiveling about the room as if mapping out escape routes. shouto was abruptly reminded of the time he'd hidden beneath his bed to escape shouto's touch. the time kirishima told him bakugou feels a lot. that shouto made him feel a lot. he was probably feeling a lot now. he probably wanted to hide.

scared, he's scared, fix it fix it fix it fix it—

"bakugou protects me," shouto told her, a little too urgently, and her eyes flared with surprise. "he says no one's gonna hurt me, cause he's the strongest. he protects me, mom."

no one's gonna lay a hand on you—keep you right where i can see you. bakugou made some soft sound. a shocked sound.

her face slackened for a moment in something like shock but...stranger. sadder? did i make her sad? she hummed, but there was something watery about it.

"oh, he does?" she said, smiling. but it was a droopier smile now. tender and soft and—and sad? was this a bittersweet smile or a sad smile? "well that's very special, isn't it? i'm so happy he protects you."

she bowed to bakugou. it was a small thing, but bakugou still jumped back like she'd fallen to her knees.

"thank you, bakugou, for protecting my son."

"i—" bakugou stammered. he never stammered. his eyes were huge, like two crimson moons. "it's—it's nothing. i didn't do anything."

"you did," mom insisted, so bright and so firm, shouto knew she had so much of herself inside her body. "you did. shouto trusts you. and i trust you too."

bakugou floundered for a moment. his soft lips were agape, fumbling for sound, which seemed to have left him. he was unwinding, the tension bleeding away from him, and his face was oddly threadbare. his hands clenched at his sides, the veins beneath his skin pressing up at the pressure.

"thanks..." bakugou eventually murmured. he was so rosy, from his ears to his throat. shouto wanted so badly to touch him.

he did not. he looked to his mother instead, squeezed her soft hands once more before dropping them.

"i brought you something." he told her, his voice shuddering with nerves. the fear was making him itchy. he yanked off his coat and beanie with a startling urgency, passing them off to bakugou, who placed them on the dresser before reaching for his backpack. and she tilted her head, as he so often tilted his. that must have been where he got it from.

he pulled the bento from his bag, and his mother's eyes shined as though glazed by stardust. he passed it to her, and she ran her thumbs along the cloth covering it. her smile was gone now, but the absence of it didn't ache, like a loss. bakugou moved slowly to stand at his side. shouto caught the subtle quiver of his mouth as he drew in a breath. maybe his stomach was tying itself into knots as well.

"what's this?" she asked softly. shouto wrung his hands together until the blood left his knuckles.

"i—i noticed you don't like hospital food..." he began. his words drifted far away from him, he had to scramble and grasp for them with his fingertips. "or at least, you don't eat it. you don't eat very much, you're thinner, i—" she was drooping. wilting like a flower. you're ruining it you're ruining it STOP FUCKING TALKING he was making her sad, so sad, he didn't know why—

bakugou's hand grazed his back, the warmth nearly unbearable.

"he wanted to do something for you." he said, sounding so small and sweeter than shouto had ever heard.

"that's kind of you." she hummed. her face was full of thought. her small fingers carefully plucked at the bow atop the bento, slipping the fabric from its knot and pulling apart an opening. she lifted the bento from the fabric now bundled in her lap.

she opened it as softly as she did everything else, the sharp smell of mapo tofu bursting forth and coating the air in spice.

shouto could have suffocated.

it was only bakugou that kept him from writhing and choking until he rotted. only bakugou that kept his spine from folding and his ribs from snapping away from him. he felt like a child again, like a kid with clammy hands and bloody lips, like a kid who slammed his little cotton head into wooden walls so hard, his brain trembled because he needed to bang the noise out. like a kid who stifled sobs in the hem of his mother's sweater, who screamed when she pushed his tiny body away like it burnt her to be near him. like a kid waiting for the other shoe to drop. paralyzed as the kettle rushed for his face. as the water seared him.

but things were different now. his mother was tender as she stared at the food he'd made her. her hands hovering in the air, her cheeks pale. bakugou pressed his palm into the dip of his hip and squished him hard against his side. he'd taken off his coat as well. shouto could feel him now, his warmth, in its excruciating detail.

"is this..." mom began, her voice crackling like crumpled paper. she blinked so harshly, her soft brows scrunched. "is this mapo tofu?"

shouto bobbed his head. felt his neck ache from the force.

"and—and onigiri."

she hummed. bakugou's hand was on shouto's hip, but it sort of felt everywhere. the tremors had started up, but he didn't know if it was because of his mother or because of bakugou.

"you made this yourself, love?" she whispered, eyes cottony with a dream like film, and when shouto nodded again, she exhaled sharply, pressing one quivering palm to the soft lift of her chest.

"you're just...you're just so kind shouto," she said, shaking. her eyes looked like they were sobbing. "my boy is so kind."

shouto gasped. the air was a knife puncturing his chest, but the pain was sweet. warm. so kind. izuku called him that. told him he was just so kind, though he'd never been before. his mother had known him from the moment he was born. she'd seen him made and then broken. she'd pushed herself in front of him, shielded him with her back even as hands smashed into her spine. she was kind for as long as he'd known her, and he'd only just learned to be, and so...

she thought he was kind kind so kind my boy is so kind and oh that was—

"i haven't had mapo tofu in so long." she said. she reached for the utensils shouto had placed in the bento, moving to scoop up a spoonful of tofu, sauce, and vegetables.

"your...mom?" he tried, but he was seizing up. he watched her blow softly on her food to ease the heat and he was seizing up like he was about to have a panic attack. fuck fuck fuck.

"yes, my mom made it for me when i was younger," his mother hummed, but she sounded distant. "i've missed it..."

she might have said something else, but shouto's ears were full of blood. bakugou's breath kissed his cheek. his mouth pressed close to his skin, the ghost of a tender touch hovering like a confession between them.

"shouto," he said, breaking through the bubbling panic flooding through head. shouto, he said shouto. “i need you to breathe for me."

breathing wasn't simple, it was so damn hard, but when bakugou said it like that... both soft and firm at the same time, like it wasn't a question, it was...shouto tried. bakugou had told him to and he didn't feel wrong, doing what he said. bakugou made it easier by telling him to. by i need you i need you i need you to breathe and if bakugou needed it, shouto would do it, he would do it.

he sucked in a full breath as his mother took her first bite.

and her expression expressions were so weird it was really, really difficult, and shouto was so muddled up inside, he didn't know how to pluck it apart. but he tried not to need to. tried to just watch her. tried not to feel stupid because he didn't understand. tried to feel like it was enough.

she took another bite. and another. she was humming as she chewed, making small, happy noises, and he knew those were happy because izuku made those noises too whenever he was happy and that was a good sign. it was a good sign wasn't it?

"my goodness, shouto," she giggled between bites, covering her lips with her hand, and oh gosh giggled giggled giggled—good sign good sign good sign!— “this is delicious. how did i never know what a talented cook you are?"

shouto flinched. didn't know why. bakugou's grip on him tightening, like he could feel his consciousness snapping apart from his brain. his mother was laughing which was good good SHE LIKES ME LIKES ME LIKES ME but how did he know she was real? that she wasn't lying for his sake, as she'd done for forever and ever and ever, always pretending to keep everybody happy. it wasn't easy to love him.

she was smiling, and it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. it was so soft and bright and bigger than he'd ever seen. so big, it rolled her pale cheeks like mochi, so big, it crinkled her eyes and filled them with unbridled white light. she was smiling at him like he'd captured the moon between his palms, smiling at him like he'd given her the heavens in a bottle. she was laughing and smiling, as people so often did when they were happy. and she was shaking and shiny eyed and fast breathing, as people so often did when they were scared. and she was softer than the sleep dazed clouds draped over the sky's soft baby blue thighs, softer than the blankets of snow making up a bed of cold on the ground. soft in the way people were when they loved. when they loved so much, it made them weak.

but, though this had been his hope, though his heart was swollen too big for his entire body, he was no less certain of this smile than he was of any other. no less certain of the love that softened her around him than he had been before. because though he was her son, he didn't understand her. he didn't know how to pull her apart and rearrange her, and he didn't know how to learn her now that they'd spent so much time apart. didn't know how to fill out her starved stomach, or how to color her wet paper collarbones. didn't know how to pull her from his father's teeth. didn't know how to find the fractures of her misshapen heart she'd mistakenly given, didn't know how to make that misshapen heart love him again, the way it did before.

there were things that would always burn between them.

no matter how cold her hands.

no matter how soft the snow.

but she reached for him. her eyes were strung with stars and she reached for him. her smile was loud as a child's laughter and she reached for him. and when he left bakugou's side to meet her, she pulled him down to her lips and she kissed him on the crown of his head. where red met white.

"i love you so much, baby," she whispered into his soft, long hair. her hands cradled his cheeks. sunk through him. "so much."

she touched him like she used to.

he cried like a child.

"i love you," his mother kept saying, kept repeating, like a confession she couldn't stop making, like a revelation she couldn't stop realizing. "i love you, i love you, i love you."

she cradled him close, as close as she could. moved the bento from her lap so shouto could kneel on the floor and lay his head in it. his tears soaked her hospital gown. her fingers brushed through his hair, so softly, he ached ached ached.

"mom." he breathed, and it felt warm in his mouth. tasted sweeter than honey.

"i'm here." she said, and it sounded like love. like real love.

and shouto didn't understand much.

he'd wanted to be easy to love. his mother said she loved him, and maybe he would never know if she meant it.

but maybe that was okay.

he didn't understand her, and maybe he never would. maybe he'd spend the rest of his life trying.

but he understood this.

he understood the feel of her hands in his hair. the tremble of her breath from her wobbling pink mouth. the dampness of his tears in her cardigan. he understood the worn smile bakugou gave him as he passed him a strawberry milk carton from the hospital vending machine. understood the ghostly kiss he pressed to shouto's forehead. understood the tenderness of the whispers he traded with his mother as he drifted between sleep and consciousness. understood the weight of the words that left his mother's lips just before he dropped off completely.

"my beautiful baby."

he understood this. he understood this.

shouto slept in his mother's arms.

he dreamt beautiful dreams.