Work Text:
(1)
They seemed to think Shouto was joking. He wasn’t.
He was dead serious, so he didn’t understand why Midoriya and Iida kept laughing uncontrollably. Maybe it was the pain medication they were on. Should he call for a nurse? The morning after their fight with Stain, Shouto felt fine, but Iida had been a lot worse off and needed surgery. And although Midoriya had mostly only suffered the same scratches Shouto had, there was a non-zero chance he could have had a concussion. It would explain his laughter bouncing off the hospital room walls.
Shouto’s hands—his own unscarred, unbroken hands—curled against his legs.
Despite his confusion and justified worries, he had to confess Iida looked happy. Finally. And Midoriya’s laugh… Well, the sound alone made Shouto realize once more that they had survived what no three high schoolers should have been able to, and it made him trust that everything was going to be okay from now on. It trickled into his ears and filled his chest.
When Midoriya’s eyes, lashes brimming with tears of laughter, locked with his own, Shouto’s heart jumped and his stomach twisted. The warmth in his chest rose to his cheeks.
Huh. That was odd.
Maybe he needed to see a nurse.
He pushed the thought aside as Midoriya walked over to his side of the room. The boy’s mirth subsided. “We’re sorry for laughing, Todoroki. I mean it.” He sat on the empty bed opposite him. One slippered foot gave Shouto’s a reassuring nudge. “It’s very sweet that you’re worried about us, but I promise you”—he giggled again—“you’re not cursed.”
“But—”
“But,” Iida interjected, “you saved me, Todoroki. Thank you.”
“Hear that?” Midoriya leaned over to take Shouto’s hand in his. Shouto couldn’t help but stare at the scars stretching along his skin. The injuries he’d sustained fighting him, for him. Midoriya laughed again, as short and light and airy as the lift of his shoulders that went along with it. “You’re a hero, Todoroki.”
And maybe if Midoriya said so, it was already true.
(2)
The early summer sun warmed the back of Shouto’s neck while they were supposed to be picking strawberries. Not eating them.
“Midoriya.”
The boy quickly stuffed another one into his mouth, still chewing as he turned to face Shouto, hands tucked behind his back and head tilted like he was the picture of innocence.
Strawberry red stained his lips.
To be fair, it was a picking farm. To Shouto’s understanding, whatever they picked, they could take home to eat—after paying for it all.
“I’m going to tell them to add a few grams to the total!” Midoriya cried. He shifted on his feet, a basket with only a handful of strawberries in it dangling from one hand. “It’s just that I skipped breakfast this morning and these are the best looking strawberries I’ve ever seen, so I just wanted a taste.” He pursed his lips, thinking. “Or five.”
The realization hit Shouto that he would buy Midoriya all the strawberries the boy desired. He shook himself, asking instead, “Why did you skip breakfast?”
Midoriya dug his heel into the ground. “I was excited, and nervous about missing the train here.” He lifted his head, the morning sun illuminating the smile on his face. “I couldn’t risk making you wait!”
Shouto turned his head to hide the warmth crawling up his cheeks. He crouched by one of the strawberry bushes, lifting one full fruit between his fingers and breaking it off at the stem. He dropped it into the basket Midoriya set by his side.
“Aren’t you picking any for yourself?” Midoriya leaned closer, shoulder against Shouto’s as he reached across to pick another one.
“We’ll share. I’ll pay.” Midoriya opened his mouth to protest. “Because you offered to come with me.”
“You don’t have to. I wanted to come.”
They’d been handed a flyer advertising the picking farm, and no sooner had Shouto mentioned that he’d never been to one or Midoriya decided they should go, picked a date and everything.
Shouto ignored him now. He pried another strawberry from between the leaves, one with a large green crown, and held it up for Midoriya to see. “This one looks like you.”
Midoriya sputtered, then laughed, light and high.
It was as warm as the sun, as comforting as the blue skies above their heads. It made Shouto’s skin tingle, his fingertips fidget with the strawberry in his hand.
I can do that, he thought with a smile. I can make him laugh like that.
A laugh that smelled of strawberries, Shouto noticed, with how close they were sitting. He dropped the strawberry in their basket and his hand found Midoriya’s resting on the edge of it. Fingers looped together.
Midoriya looked down at their hands with the warmth of his laughter still lingering between them. A huff ghosted Shouto’s lips as he leaned in. His nose bumped Midoriya’s, and he heard his breath catch. He tilted his head and his mouth brushed–
“Look!”
They jumped apart.
“Don’t run too far, you two!”
A pair of sisters dashed past them, holding hands, their parents following behind.
Midoriya stared intently at the bushes in front of him. His face was as red as the strawberries that had dyed his lips, but before Shouto got a chance to point it out, his friend was on his feet, rubbing the back of his neck.
“We, uh, we should go look somewhere else.” He pointed far away. “Over there.”
“Oh.” Shouto gathered their baskets, each near empty still. “Right.” He wasn’t sure why though. Midoriya rushed off ahead of him, his step quick, his head down.
Shouto let his hair fall into his face. His heart beat against his ribs. He wiped his thumb over his bottom lip, surprised it didn’t come back red.
(3)
Because Midoriya laughed often and loud, Shouto wasn’t surprised to learn one afternoon that he could easily pick the sound out of a crowd.
This time when his classmates went to the mall, he went with them. Cleared his schedule, didn’t actually need anything, but he learned soon enough that needing to get something from the mall wasn’t the most important reason for going.
Groups had split off. Shouto had just survived some of the girls putting cat ears on him in a store filled top to bottom with pink, and had walked out with a pen with a kitten perched on the end.
“Let’s go check out that one!” Ashido cried, arms wrapped around Uraraka’s elbow to pull her along to the next store. She turned over her shoulder. “No boys allowed here.”
Shouto didn’t take another step. “Oh. Okay.” The girls giggled as they went ahead.
He’d just have to go and find Midoriya, then. They’d only gotten separated a few moments ago.
He heard his laugh, first, then found Midoriya by a pair of benches in the food court, crouched in front of a small child red-eyed but smiling. Midoriya’s hands moved, talking animatedly, and laughter creased the corners of his eyes. The child nodded fervently at whatever Midoriya was telling him. He bumped his little fist against Midoriya’s, and jumped from his seat just as Shouto walked up to them. He watched the boy run off to a man only a few seats away and throw his arms around him, the man cupping the back of his head protectively as he hugged him close.
“He had a fight with his dad,” Midoriya explained.
“What about?”
“He got a bad grade, and argued it wasn’t important because all he wants is to be a hero.”
“Ah. You told him to study hard?”
“Of course. Those hero course exams are nothing to sneeze at.”
After filling him in on where the girls had gone, Midoriya agreed to wander around nearby. Shouto let himself be talked into buying a manga he’d been eyeing, and he convinced Midoriya to give in to the All Might themed sweets that seemed to be making his mouth water on sight.
They found a seat tucked away in a corner.
“They’re good!”
“You sound surprised.”
Midoriya popped another one into his mouth. The bag of sweets crinkled as Shouto took one for himself.
“Feels wrong that you don’t get these at a discount.”
“We’ve been over this, Todoroki. All Might is not my father.”
They shared a look. Midoriya couldn’t hold back his laugh.
It sounded bright and clear and… sweet.
So Shouto decided to try it.
This time he didn’t waste a single second. Midoriya’s laugh ebbed between their lips.
Shouto pulled back and dug another sweet out of the bag, while Midoriya stuttered next to him.
“I—Wha—”
“I like your laugh,” he muttered quickly, averting his eyes. “Wanted to know what it tasted like.”
“Oh. That’s…”
He dared a glance up to find Midoriya touching his fingers to his lips absentmindedly. Shouto had to press his mouth into a line to keep from smiling.
He startled when Midoriya grabbed his hand, making him look up, his eyes pleading. “Can we do that again? Can you…” Kiss me again? “... Please?”
Shouto’s own laugh welled out of him. He tried to hide it in the collar of his shirt, but when Midoriya tugged at his hand and a line furrowed between his brows, question marks spilling out of his half-open mouth, all Shouto could do was nod.
“Okay.”
Midoriya’s smile was a softer warmth than his own quirk, gentler in the way it warmed him from the inside out.
Their second kiss was better because it didn’t come as a surprise. Midoriya held onto his arms for balance and still he was so enthusiastic that Shouto had to catch his weight as he fell into him.
A laugh that could have come from either brushed between them.
“Yours too,” Midoriya said, staying close so the words touched Shouto’s lips. “Your laugh. It’s sweet.”
(4)
They’d agreed to tell their moms. Midoriya was the one who kept putting it off.
“It’s not that I don’t want to!” he said, squeezing Shouto’s hands like he really needed to drive that point home. “But it’s—And she keeps asking—And I don’t know how—”
This boy had saved the world at sixteen, and at eighteen he was too nervous to tell his mom he was dating someone.
His mom who, if Shouto had to guess, already knew. Because Midoriya kept meeting up with him, and his mom kept asking if Shouto didn’t want to come over for dinner, and the last time Shouto had seen her, she’d shown him the toddler picture of her son she kept in her wallet.
It was adorable.
Midoriya had been very embarrassed.
“I never meant for you to worry about it this much,” Shouto said.
“I know.” His thumbs brushed the back of Shouto’s hands. “But I want to tell her, I really do.”
Shouto had tried talking him out of doing it today, though, because graduation was nerve-wracking enough as it was. People kept coming up to them, congratulating them, asking what their plans were. Some wanted pictures. Midoriya at the same time had figured it’d be easier to have both their moms present, but now they were hiding behind the school while elsewhere people celebrated, and Shouto could think of only one way to stop Midoriya worrying his lip.
He kissed him.
Midoriya grumbled against his lips for a second—”You always do this.”—but like every other time Shouto stopped his runaway thoughts with a kiss, he caved easily. He pulled Shouto in by the lapels of his school jacket. When he grinned his teeth brushed Shouto’s top lip.
“Oh! We’re so sorry!”
Midoriya froze. His fists tightened in Shouto’s jacket. He looked at him like a deer in headlights, his voice pitched high.
“Tell me that wasn’t my mom’s voice I heard.”
The only one in the right position to see the people standing behind him, Shouto met Midoriya Inko’s eyes over her son’s shoulder. “If it makes you feel any better,” he said, “mine’s here too.”
Midoriya thunked his head against Shouto’s chest like that did not, in fact, make him feel much better. When his shoulders started shaking, Shouto panicked.
Then he realized Midoriya wasn’t crying.
Laughter rumbled against his chest.
Nervous, anxiety-ridden laughter, but laughter all the same. Midoriya’s fingers trembled where they gripped the front of Shouto’s shirt.
“Izuku.” It was Midoriya’s mom who spoke. Shouto watched her smiling that same smile he knew so well on the face pressed to his front, clutching her hand to her trembling bottom lip. Next to her, the happiness radiating off Shouto’s own mother made tears spring to his eyes.
A deep breath expanded Midoriya’s ribcage. He relaxed his hands and smoothed the front of Shouto’s jacket best he could. He straightened the brooch pinned to each graduate’s lapels with unsteady fingers.
Shouto had always loved the determination that burned in his boyfriend’s eyes once he made up his mind. Watchful mothers be damned, he cupped Midoriya’s cheek and ran his thumb over his freckles. Midoriya leaned into it with a smile.
He took Shouto’s hand in his and turned to stand next to him.
“Hi, Mom. Hello, Todoroki’s mom.” Nerves trembled through the squeeze of his fingers around Shouto’s. “So. There’s something we’ve been meaning to tell you.”
(5)
As soon as he became aware what was happening, Shouto’s ears stopped working, like giant plugs had been jammed into them. He heard only a buzz.
But he saw Izuku laugh and knew exactly what it sounded like.
He couldn’t read Izuku’s lips but he watched his hands move as he talked. There was stuttering and clenched fists and fingers awkwardly clutching at the side of his neck. After knowing him for over seven years, Shouto knew the way his voice pitched when he lifted his shoulders and how it dropped when he tucked his chin against his chest.
But above all, he knew Izuku’s laugh.
Like right now, he knew it was shy by the way he rubbed the back of his head. The kind of laugh that was light and thrilling, that despite the nerves raging through him he couldn’t hold in if he tried. The kind of laugh Shouto had heard hundreds, thousands of times before, and that made him fall in love all over again, and again, and again.
His lips were still moving. Shouto still wasn’t hearing a single word of it. He couldn’t stop staring at the small, square box in Izuku’s wildly waving hands that he’d all but shoved in Shouto’s face a little over thirty seconds ago.
They were the longest thirty seconds of Shouto’s life.
Finally it seemed to dawn on Izuku, too. His hands stilled while his shoulders were up to his ears.
“You’re not saying much.” His voice wobbled. The smile on his lips trembled. “Shouto?”
“Yes.” It was a breath, barely audible, but Izuku’s frown lifted. Another laugh spilled from his lips, high and unbelieving, the sound flooding Shouto’s ears and breathing air into his lungs.
Tears, happy tears, burned behind his eyes. Within a second Izuku was in front of him, wiping them from his cheeks, cupping his face.
“Yes?” he asked.
Shouto wrapped his arms around him, burying his face in the crook of his neck and clutching one hand around his shoulders.
The other closed over the small square box and the ring hidden inside.
“Yes,” he repeated, holding Izuku as close as he could. Of course yes. Always yes. He kissed Izuku and survived on his laugh. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”