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Sunlight hits Touya’s eyelids and he barely has the time to marvel at the fact—he could’ve sworn he’d closed the curtains yesterday—before there’s a weight on him, punching the air out of his lungs.
“Touya-nii!” a shrill voice exclaims urgently, and he gets a knee in the stomach as punctuation. “Touya-nii you have to get up, it’s almost time!”
Touya waves a clumsy hand in the air, catches on a nose.
“Get lost,” he mumbles.
A gasp. “But it’s almost time!” the weight—Shouto—insists and Touya winces. Damn, that kid’s voice is loud.
From the other side of the room, a miserable groan comes in protest. Touya sympathises. He doesn’t know what time it is but what he does know is that it’s too damn early to even consider rolling out of bed—especially when he’s barely slept a wink all week just to study for that horrible algebra test he probably failed yesterday. Dad also told him he needs his help to deweed the backyard so he won’t even have some time for himself today—apart from now, where he could be cramming some more Zs into his system instead of being woken up by a five-year-old banshee.
So with finality, Touya blindly pushes the kid off of him and rolls onto his stomach, stuffing his hands underneath his pillow.
He should’ve know better though—Shouto is one stubborn little brat after all. “Come on, nii-san,” the kid whines as he decides to climb onto Touya’s back like it’s Mount Everest. “I let you sleep five minutes more than last week just like you asked—so you gotta wake up!”
At which point the kid has the actual gall to start shaking Touya’s shoulders like he’s dusting a carpet over the balcony. It makes his heart rattle in its ribcage.
And well damn if he ain’t wide awake now, huh. Falling asleep has always been a chore for him so he knows there ain’t no way he’s falling back asleep anytime soon.
But whereas Shouto excels at stubbornness, Touya does at pettiness.
(Not like Shouto isn’t petty too though—that kid follows Touya everywhere and, well… monkey see, monkey do.)
“Go wake up Natsu, kiddo,” Touya says, voice shaking along with his shoulders, “see if I’m over there.”
(There’s another miserable groan from brat #2. Then, “Touya I hate you.”)
But Shouto gasps. “No!” he says so scandalously, it feels like that time mom broke it to him that Touya saying chocolate milk comes from chocolate-coloured cows was a tall tale. Poor kid had stopped talking to Touya for three days, he’d felt so betrayed.
It was damn funny.
“Natsu-nii doesn’t know what the right channel is!” the kid continues. “He’ll just put on that boring old man’s science show.”
A muffled, “Science is cool,” comes from across the room, but it’s clear Shouto doesn’t notice as he keeps barreling out sentence after worked-up sentence.
“Come on, it’s almost seven, Touya-nii, you have to get up!”
“Yeah Touya,” Natsu speaks up again, voice sleepy and muffled into his pillow, “get up.”
“No you,” Touya shoots back, speaking into his pillow.
“How about all of you,” declares a new voice. Both Natsu and Touya groan in unison and Shouto shifts happily, stepping onto Touya’s toes. The yelp he bites out falls on deaf ears.
Heartless, the lot of ‘em.
“Fuyu-nee!” the brat exclaims happily like he’s just seen the first snow of winter.
And Fuyumi chuckles. “Good morning Shou,” she says, her voice radiating a fondness that belies the cruelty with which she stomps in and rips away Natsu and Touya’s covers. Goddamn it’s cold. “Get up you two, The Mighty League is about to start.”
Shouto must activate his Quirk then because tiny frozen fingers grab at Touya’s bare foot, and Touya yelps. Louder this time. “Brat!” he accuses before unscrupulously pushing him off his futon. The kid goes down with a thump and a surprised yelp of his own.
Fuyumi makes a noise of protest but the kid shoots up to his feet in less than a second. “Couch potato!” he counters angrily before resorting back to shoving Touya’s shoulders left and right. “Come on, All Might was about to get swallowed up by the Jack-in-the-box villain, I wanna know what happens next!”
Yeah, he remembers that part from last week’s episode—it was a pretty mean cliff-hanger. Though it’s not like Touya’s interested in finding out what happens next… That show is much too punny and predictable for his tastes, he can hardly stomach more than two episodes in a row. Missing a week wouldn’t be too big a loss, he thinks to himself. Besides, he knows Shouto will basically recount the whole entire episode to him in his excitement before diving into his predictions for next week—with each idea more fantastical than the previous one.
(Touya’s pretty sure that the fictional All Might won’t be sprouting wings in this episode to fly out of the box… But you never know with that show.)
“Fuyumi knows the channel,” he counters easily, stubbornly keeping his eyes shut. “Ask her.”
He doesn’t expect the earthquake to stop with those words—he doesn’t expect anything he says to make the earthquake stop—
But it does.
Those tiny talons on his shoulders even let go.
Huh, weird.
“But you promised,” Shouto says quietly.
Touya’s snaps an eye open.
Oh shit.
Shit, Shouto sounds hurt.
And it’s true too, that he’d promised. With the haze of sleepiness fading away, Touya can remember it clear as day now—that morning one month ago where Shouto fell on his elbow trying to reach the TV remote atop a high shelf, just so he could watch The Mighty League without waking anyone. He remembers how his kid brother had been hurting and scared that day in the ER, how the adults around them had been throwing words around like ‘elbow dislocation’ and ‘reduction’ and ‘pain’—and Touya had just wanted to reassure the kiddo.
So he’d promised.
“I’ll watch every episode of The Mighty League with you from now on, ok kiddo? Don’t cry, think about all the fun we’ll have.”
Yeah, that’s what he had said.
Natsu had been the first of the other two to notice Shouto and Touya waking up early in the morning—and frankly, that blockhead isn’t much better than Shouto in the copying-whatever-Touya-does regard. He just does it without the doe-y eyed look.
The three of them had gotten through only one episode before Natsu had remarked that it was kind of mean to leave Fuyumi out… And so it had become a Todoroki-children tradition, to wake up early and watch a kiddy show together on Saturday mornings.
Yeah, it was tradition.
Born from a promise—from an older brother to a kid brother.
Sacred.
Touya huffs, groans loudly and rakes his hand through his hair roughly, frustrated with himself. “I did promise didn’t I,” he says. A piercing pair of eyes Judges him from afar, tracking his every move as he sits up brusquely, but the eyes he’s looking for are stubbornly trained on the ground. Trying to hide a wobbly lip.
Well that won’t do.
“Jack-in-the-box villain, you said?” Touya asks thoughtfully. “He sure looked tough, I bet he’ll beat All Might.”
Fire sparks in blue and grey as Shouto looks up, angry again.
Heh.
“No,” the kiddo bites with indignation, “All Might will win, he always does. The villain only got lucky with that one punch!”
Touya grins, stifling a yawn. “You think so?” he asks, injecting every ounce of doubt he can muster. His eyes sting from lack of sleep but he looks up to the clock ticking away on their wall—it reads three past seven and guilt pinches his heart. When he catches his kid brother’s eyes again, he winks.
“Tell you what, little brother—if I win, then that means I’m right and All Might loses this fight.”
The confusion on the kid’s face at his fighting words is laughable, but Touya only enjoys it for a second before springing to his feet and wordlessly rushing out the room. Shouto is a bright boy and has excellent reflexes, though, so he wastes no time in following suit, throwing accusations at his brother for cheating and not giving him a countdown.
It’s not cheating if you intend to let your opponent win though, Touya reasons…
But Shouto doesn’t need to know that.
The halls fill with the five-year-old’s squawks and squeals as he slips on the wooden floorboards while Touya tumbles into a wall on his way to the living room—and he thinks regrettably that the racket is sure to wake their parents up... But they’ll probably forgive their antics.
The peals of laughter Shouto makes are too precious for them not to.
As expected, Shouto makes it first, barreling into mom’s favourite blue sofa, and he guffaws while looking at Touya defiantly. He gloats not with his words, but with his eyes, and Touya is glad to see that spark back in there. When Fuyumi and Natsu make it to the living room at a more leisurely pace, Touya is already surfing through the channels with the TV remote Shouto could’ve easily grabbed from the kotatsu—and the kiddo himself is lying on his stomach, excitedly kicking his feet in the air. Natsu orders him to scooch over so he can join him and Fuyumi affectionately nudges Shouto’s cheek before coming to sit cross-legged next to Touya a bit further behind.
When she catches his eye, she smiles at him. Proud.
“You’re a good big brother, Touya-nii,” she whispers, leaning in and bumping her shoulder with his.
“Yeah, I guess he's ok,” Natsu says distractedly, eyes trained on the TV as The Mighty League’s opening number finally resounds in the room.
(He must still be hung up on Touya’s earlier betrayal huh.)
And even though All Might appears on the screen, Shouto looks back at Touya, smiling that tiny smile of his that he wears when he’s truly happy.
“Mm,” he agrees, “Touya-nii is the best.”
Touya blinks, stunned. He scratches his cheek while his heart stutters and his eyes sting. From lack of sleep.
Yeah.
After blinking some more, he notices excited feet dancing smack dab in the middle of his field of vision, and so just for good measure, he pounces, mercilessly tickling his two brothers’ bare feet. The scuffle that ensues is one for the history books, one he engages with no intention of letting the two brats win.
Which they don’t, of course.
(Years later, if you happened to ask Touya what he remembers of that day, he would not be able to recount how exactly All Might beat the Jack-in-the-box villain… But he would talk in great detail of his siblings’ laughter trickling like sunlight through the curtains on that warm Saturday morning, he would talk of the easy banter and the camaraderie etched in each of their hearts—and he would proudly tell you how he never in all his life broke a promise to any of his siblings.
As for Shouto, well he might disagree with a cheeky smik, but his eyes would undoubtedly betray how much it means to him—
That he’d never known a world where he couldn’t count on Touya-nii.)