Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“What would you need two bedrooms for, Todoroki?”

“I don’t know. Guests. An office.”

“That could be cool!”

“The space is good for this area. I did some research—”

“You don’t have to research other people’s apartments, Iida.”

“I was curious about the closets…”

Todoroki stands with his back to his friends, looking out the apartment’s wide window on the city below. They’re on the sixteenth floor of the building and he can see everything. Cars zipping through the streets and people, little dots, going about their errands.

Iida raves about the closets. “It’s uncommon to find them so large, even in this style of building…” His voice fades as he thumps into one of the bedrooms, talking mostly to himself.

Midoriya steps forward to stand alongside Todoroki. “I think the real estate agent recognizes us.”

Todoroki looks back over his shoulder: the woman who’d let them into the place, introducing herself as Kita-san, huddles in the kitchen and hammers the screen of her phone. She pauses only to steal glances at her new clients.

“I tried,” Todoroki sighs, tugging down his beanie. People tend to have trouble placing him if he has his hair concealed.

“I think it’s pretty hopeless when the three of us are together.”

“Maybe so.” Their faces have filled enough television screens in the past few years, they could have their own show—and a few months ago they did get one overeager agent trying to sell them on a merchandizing and reality programming deal. (Todoroki still doesn’t get what that means. They were going to be on script? That’s the opposite of reality.)

Midoriya steps closer to the window, peeking down into the street below. He wears his street clothes, a t-shirt, big sneakers, jeans that are a couple of inches too short for him. He hadn’t replaced them after his mild growth spurt in second year. “I think if I were a kid nowadays, I’d find it really cool that Ingenium and Deku came along to help Shouto find an apartment. Apartment hunting would be the noblest thing ever.”

“It is noble of you two. This is mind-numbing.”

“I’m having loads of fun,” Midoriya scoffs. “Iida is having the time of his life.”

“I mean, it’s just unparalleled—” Iida gasps from the second bedroom. Midoriya grins, and looks at Todoroki, who finds it in himself to smile. The window gets a lot of light and it haloes the curls of Midoriya’s hair in early evening sun.

“I like the view,” Todoroki decides.

“Yeah, it’s really nice! A lot of space for one person, though.”

“It’s smaller than where I’m coming from.”

Midoriya’s grin twitches. He quickly turns to peer out the window again. “You wanted to be somewhere different, so that’s good, then, right?”

Todoroki nods.

“But you’ve got to be more specific than ‘some place where my family isn’t.’”

“Some place where my family isn’t… that has a nice view.”

Midoriya laughs, his shoulders shake, his eyes shut. He leans on the windowsill with one arm and massages a bicep with his free hand, probably an old injury. He’s had so many.

Todoroki turns into the interior of the apartment, catching the real estate agent’s attention. Her face goes white. “This one. I’ll take it.”

Peace returned. It took all of their high school years to bring it back; they lost a lot of blood and a few friends. A few heroes. But the forces of violence and chaos went down, key instigators imprisoned in a fortress built for the purpose. Villains always persist, of course, but it would be years before crime on the whole could recover. To counteract the lack of real work available, heroing was fast becoming a looser name for quirk-related celebrity: on television every night were a dozen shows about “heroes” fighting fake villains, and any civil service could fall under a pro hero’s prevue, especially the effort to rebuild parts of the country destroyed in the war against the Villain Alliance. The recovery would take a decade, and it gave it a lot of work to a lot of people.

Historians and commentators on the news took to calling this period of renaissance the pax deku. Todoroki was sitting next to Midoriya the first time he heard this name, his name, on the radio—he dropped his bento on the floor, and Todoroki and Iida pitched in to buy him some bread for lunch. They had yet to finish their third year of high school, and here was Midoriya, written into history.

On Yuuei’s graduation day there were cherry blossoms everywhere, like a manga. Todoroki’s sister had to pick them out of his hair before the ceremony. He submitted to the preening with his eyes closed, and when he opened them again, his mother was smiling at the two of them. He’d persuaded the hospital attendants to let her out for the day. She clung to Fuyumi’s arm throughout the festivities and started at everything, especially the late arrival of their father.

As always, people looked at Todoroki Enji and saw Endeavor. He seemed the most out of place when surrounded by his wife and children.

But his most lasting memory from graduation came during Iida’s speech. Their class president stood up before the audience of parents and grandparents and siblings, and began to read off a list of the class’ accomplishments during their tenure at Yuuei. 

At any other school this’d make for the dullest graduation speech possible. But for Yuuei Academy’s Department of Heroics, a laundry list of feats, punctuated by Iida’s enthusiasm, is enough to captivate a crowd. Mouths fell open in the audience as he went on and on, one impressive victory after the other. If anything, it all sounded more incredible stacked back-to-back like that, without ornament. They were deeds that could speak for themselves.

At the first mention of Todoroki’s name, Midoriya, sitting in the row before his, looked back and gave him a grin. As if to say, did you hear that? He’s talking about you.

He had done this to everyone else, mind. It wasn’t a moment specific to Todoroki. Through the whole speech he was smiling and twisting to look at his friends. Midoriya wanted to celebrate their class, he wanted everyone to feel camaraderie in their accomplishments, he was ecstatic just being alive. He didn’t seem to hear how often his own name was mentioned in Iida’s speech.

Tucked between the collar of his shirt and his jacket, on the back of his neck, was a cherry blossom. It had probably fallen on him and gotten stuck as he headed to the ceremony. Todoroki remembers staring at it for a minute after Midoriya smiled at him, and then leaning forward to pluck the petal free. Midoriya glanced at him, saw it in his hand, and mouthed, thank you.

The image of Midoriya’s lips moving silently, and the fragility of the petal in Todoroki’s hand, these impressions linger for the rest of the day, and then the week, and then it’s been a month and he can recall it very clearly. He didn’t know what to do with the petal afterward, so he cradled it in his palm until he was outside again, and then let it flutter to the ground with the others, where it wouldn’t look so out of place.

The real estate agent promises to draw up the paperwork on Todoroki’s apartment, and then asks to take a picture with the three of them. “My boyfriend is a huge fan!” The picture turns out horrible, both Iida and Midoriya having their eyes closed, while Todoroki plain glares, but the woman’s hands are shaking too much to notice.

They manage to go unrecognized on their way back to the office. Which is not really an office right now but essentially just an office space, having next to no furniture. Their only supplies are a stapler, and a telephone sitting on an empty file box, a couple of floor cushions, and the futon where Todoroki has been crashing since they got the place, in lieu of staying at his father’s house.

“Desks,” Iida declares as they filter back into the space. “That’s the first thing on our agenda. We need to get desks.”

The phone rings and Midoriya hops to answer it. “Triforce Hero Office, how may I help you!”

Iida is pacing around, trying to show Todoroki a potential desk arrangement grid, but Todoroki finds himself more interested in Midoriya’s phone call. They only just set up the line before they left, and he doesn’t think they’ve given out the number to anyone.

“This is him speaking,” Midoriya is saying. “Yes… That’s me. No, I’m not his—my?—representative, I’m really… we don’t have a secretary. Uh, yes we are very hands-on!” He catches Todoroki watching him and pulls a face. “An appointment? Okay, sure… We’ll be here then. Come on in. Do you have our—you do have our address, okay!” Midoriya sinks to the floor. “Goodbye!” He hangs up the receiver. “We have a client. Phew.”

“That was fast,” Todoroki mutters. “I thought we weren’t going public until…” He gives their empty office a long look to conclude his point.

“I didn’t give out the information to anyone.”

“Oh, that was me,” Iida announces, striding back into the conversation. “I had a few networking opportunities pop up, and the key to stabilizing a new business—”

Todoroki glowers. “I thought we were here to avoid business.”

“—is word-of-mouth,” Iida finishes, with bullish determination. “We can still do things differently, but you can’t have a hero office without people to save.”

On reflex, Todoroki closes his eyes. But that’s why Iida is here, to handle this side of their enterprise. And because he’s a good hero, but they graduated with more than a few of those, there’s more to it than that. He thinks of things Midoriya and Todoroki don’t care to.

In many ways, too, it was Iida’s thinking that got them here. In December, Todoroki was laboring over his career placement, staring down a pile of sidekick offers, one from Endeavor Hero Office settled right at the top. He’d shared his dilemma with his friends and Iida had remarked, offhand, how strange it was to be considered sidekicks when their unique school years had afforded them more villain-fighting experience than half the current working heroes.

Of course, he immediately rejected Todoroki and Midoriya’s joint conclusion that they go straight to work as independent heroes. It’s unheard of! he’d croaked. It can’t be done!

At lunch the next day he began listing what he’d noted were the best practices for up-and-coming hero offices, and what began with “if you’re going to be so stupid as to do this” ended with “for the love of All Might, you can’t do this without me.” Todoroki had thought he might need to summon some persuasive argument, or nudge Midoriya to whip out his bewitching enthusiasm, but ultimately Iida talked himself into it, as he was wont to do.

They’d invited Uraraka to join them as well, but the moment Midoriya mentioned everyone was committing to six months of pro bono work until they broke even, she went pale. She did promise to support them in anyway she could, but another office had a paycheck waiting for her, and by extension, for her parents. While she walked away, Todoroki tried to imagine what a sense of duty like that might feel like.

So they registered their office, found this space which had once been home to a tiny insurance company, and set up shop. Or, started to set up shop. Midoriya blinks at the vacant floor. “She said she’s going to be here at four. What’s she going to think when she walks in and it looks like this?”

Todoroki checks his watch: half past noon. “We’ve got three and a half hours.”

“Can we get three desks and then some in here in three hours?” Iida asks, concerned. Midoriya clambers to his feet.

“We’re professional heroes, we save lives. We can handle office furniture!”

When Iida and Todoroki still look skeptical, Midoriya sighs desperately.

“It’s worth a try, isn’t it!”

Unfortunately, when their client arrives, she can’t even make it  inside the office because there’s a desk jammed in the doorway. Midoriya is on the phone with Uraraka, begging her to come over and levitate the desk on to its side, “Or something, I don’t know, please help us—” There’s a nerve-wracking crack in the doorjamb from where he’d attempted to use his quirk to push the thing through.

“Do you know anyone with a butter quirk?” Iida whispers to Todoroki over the stupid thing, which sticks three feet out into the hallway and creates a traffic jam every time the elevator opens at the end of the corridor.

The client, luckily, is a tiny old woman with a lost cat. Todoroki scrolls through his phone to find Kouda’s number and then scribbles it down on a piece of paper for her. Iida doesn’t seem happy they’ve just let a potential customer walk away, but one really icy look from Todoroki and he refocuses his energy on the desk issue.

Uraraka arrives forty-five minutes later, takes one look at their trio of pouts where they sit camped out around this desk that’s shoved halfway into their office, and dissolves into giggles.

“You seem to be having some trouble,” she manages to squeak, in between bursts of laughter. Embarrassment swallows Todoroki whole, not that he’d ever show it, but he ducks his head and he can feel his shoulders tighten too. He considers saying something, about how this is just a stupid inconvenience, nothing important, if it were important they would nail it and there’s no reason to be disdainful—

He’s startled when Midoriya’s shoulder bumps his. He glances over and his friend is shaking. Laughing, Todoroki realizes. Laughing with Uraraka.

And Iida is grinning too, he can see now, as he looks between the three of them and drinks in the brightness on their faces. The tightness in his chest goes slack. His lips part.

It’s been three years and he’s still not used to this. Is it ever going to happen? Will it ever click, and come naturally, being a person and not a machine? Or somebody else’s masterpiece.

A hand brushes his elbow and when he looks, Midoriya is beaming at him, no longer laughing but the giddiness still there. “Are you okay?” he asks, out of breath. Todoroki swallows, blinking. Uraraka and Iida are watching him too.

“We’re idiots…”

There’s a beat, and another wave of laughter, and this one sweeps him up too.

As they’d expected, it’s much easier to carefully slide the desk through when it weighs nothing. For the rest of the furniture, waiting downstairs in the lobby, they throw open one of the large windows and have Uraraka levitate it up to them. With her help the rest of the move takes less than an hour.

“If you want to stay, we’re ordering a couple of pizzas to the office,” Iida tells her while they’re finishing up. Wiping sweat from her brow, she smiles apologetically.

“I’ve got a train to catch, actually. I’m going home for the weekend.”

Iida bows. “Ah.”

“Tell your parents I said hi,” Midoriya chirps. On her way out, she waves at them from the street.

When the pizza comes they all sit at their respective desks to eat it, which prompts Midoriya to decide, “This is all I’m ever going to do at this desk.”

“No one’s going to pay you for that,” Iida points out.

“Dunno! Hero culture is really weird, maybe if I ate the right brand of pizza I could get paid lots.” This prompts Todoroki to snort and dribble cheese down his front.

Iida laughs, but quickly quiets down, staring at his paper plate. After a moment he lifts his head, and addresses Midoriya across the bareness of the office. “You and Uraraka seem to be on good terms.”

Midoriya, who’s already making a face at a too-hot bite, only looks perplexed by this comment. Todoroki’s perplexed too, a little. But less perplexed than Midoriya, no doubt, who probably hasn’t noticed. “Yeah, of course we are, we’re really—we’re all really good friends.”

Todoroki says gently, “He’s asking because you weren’t on such good terms a few months ago.” And for other reasons, Todoroki guesses, but doesn’t think Iida would like him mentioning that. He does throw a relieved glance Todoroki’s way.

The remainder of a slice in hand, Midoriya slides his empty plate around his desktop. “It wasn’t that bad… We’re both over it now, anyway.” It wasn’t that bad. Todoroki knows he’s lying, because he had watched it happen. Midoriya lifts his head and smiles determinedly out at them. “We wanted to stay friends. So we stayed friends. It just took some time.”

“That’s good, great—that’s great, I’m glad to hear it,” says Iida, voice wobbling. Midoriya nods. In the silence that follows, Todoroki looks between the two of them, takes a bite, and chews. Dating is weird.

Midoriya turns to him abruptly. “And how’s Momo?”

Todoroki blinks. “Yaoyorozu?”

“I haven’t seen her since graduation!”

“Me either,” Iida chimes in. “Todoroki, are you…”

Todoroki frowns at him, and then at Midoriya, whose gaze on him feels strangely… encouraging. He wracks his brain for his last conversation with Yaoyorozu, and gets frustrated that he can’t remember. But he’s been preoccupied these past few weeks. “I don’t know,” he finally says. “She’s fine, I think.”

“Are you close?” Iida asks, though Todoroki gets the sense that this wasn’t the question he’d nearly asked before.

“We’ve been friends since first year.”

“I didn’t know.”

Midoriya is smiling. He knew. Todoroki had told him, had confided in him, because there’s something about Midoriya’s face when he’s listening and all his attention is on you, that makes you want to open the vault in your chest. Or maybe that’s just Todoroki.

Iida leans forward over his desk. “So you’re… not interested in her?”

Bristling, Todoroki stops with his slice halfway to his lips, and Midoriya covers his face. “Of course I’m interested in her. We’re friends because we have things in common. I’ve been busy recently, and so is she, and I’m sure she’ll understand when I see her again.”

Iida gawks at him, and Todoroki frowns back. Midoriya peeks out from behind his hand and the sliver of his face Todoroki can see is red. “He meant… Do you like her? Romantically interested, Todoroki.”

He can feel the frown slide off his face. Midoriya is watching him through his fingers, and his left side goes uncomfortably warm. He throws his food back to the plate and the paper’s edge burns a little when it brushes his palm before he stamps it out.

“No.”

“Sorry,” Iida blurts. Todoroki barely hears him.

“I’ve never liked anyone that way. I would assume it’s made up if people didn’t drive themselves crazy over it.”

Midoriya drops his hands from his face, some of his embarrassment fading as he shifts modes, into concern. “By it, you mean—liking people?”

“Crushes and love. There’s no way to know if that’s real. Could just be a lie people tell themselves.” He’s talking rather directly to Midoriya, he realizes. Large green eyes blink back at him, thoughtful.

“That’s not true,” says Iida, sounding hurt that Todoroki could ever think such an unromantic thing. “You’ve never liked anyone?”

“No.”

“Not even a celebrity?”

“No.”

“Not even a guy?” says Midoriya, as though this were perfectly normal, his face round and bright and curious. Todoroki breaks their eye contact to get up, his chair making an ugly noise against the floor. He carries the remnant of his dinner to the wastebasket, where it lands in the can with a thunk.

“Seems like a time suck.”

Behind him there’s a weird noise, and he suspects Midoriya is frantically gesturing at Iida, so they can steer the conversation in another direction. When he stomps back to his desk, they’re both wearing innocent expressions. He stuffs away his annoyance, and finds himself mashing hair over his left eye, obscuring his scar.

“Hey,” says Midoriya, lifting himself up over his desk. “Look at this! We have an office with furniture! It’s real now. We’re doing it. Pro heroes.”

“Pro heroes,” Iida repeats. You can tell he likes the sound of it. Todoroki lowers his head to the desk and sighs.

“We don’t start until tomorrow.”

As soon as Iida announces it’s time to head home for the night, he and Midoriya turn on Todoroki.

“Come stay at my house,” Iida insists. “You can bring your futon and you’ll have a shower.”

“I’ll shower during the day tomorrow.” He knows he sounds tired. They have this conversation over and over.

It’s Midoriya’s turn: “I know my place is further, but we’ve got a guest room, and my mom—she gets so flustered when you’re over, it’s funny.” Up until a year and a half ago, Midoriya’s mother had only known Todoroki from what she saw on television. She’d broken a glass in surprise the first time he walked through the door of their home. Something about his father’s celebrity made her more nervous around him than the rest of their classmates. Todoroki is used to this, everyone starting off nervous or afraid.

And he shakes his head at their offers, like he has every night in the weeks since he left his childhood home. At first he’d stayed at an inn, but once they got the office, it became a waste of money. He bathes after his workout and picks up little meals at the convenience store. He’s not having any sort of trouble with it. He could be moving into his apartment as soon as next week, once the paperwork is signed.

With all this in mind it’s easy for him to shrug off his colleagues’ offers. He rolls out his bed while they put on their coats, then rummages through his things for a shirt to sleep in.

It doesn’t escape him that Midoriya hesitates on his way out. Iida is already through the door, and Midoriya pauses with his hand on the knob. Todoroki, half-dressed, glances up and waits for him to say whatever’s on his mind. Midoriya usually outs with it one way or another, he has never excelled at holding things in. Just in that moment, Todoroki realizes—he likes this about Midoriya. Even though it seems like a logical disadvantage, Midoriya finds strength in this part of himself. It’s interesting.

But in the end he only blurts, “See you tomorrow.” His cheeks are pink and he closes the door. Todoroki’s gaze lingers on the crease of the frame. He finishes pulling his clean shirt over his head. Huh, well. Whatever Midoriya wanted to say will have to wait.

He does think about it while he’s trying to fall asleep. Something about work, maybe, that he’d decided wasn’t pressing. Or an idea that came into his head suddenly and left just as fast. It could be anything. But he’ll bring it up again, certainly. Midoriya wouldn’t leave anything between them unsaid.

He learns the answer a couple of days later.

While apartment hunting, the three of them had planned to visit the Todoroki house and move his things together, when they could be sure his father was out.

But that morning before they leave, Iida has a small meltdown and insists on staying by the phone. “A client could call,” he keeps saying, to himself, but as loud as ever, unable to moderate his panicked tone. Todoroki knows he’s anxious about the future of their business, what with them being so young, and the phone hasn’t rung since the cat lady. It only takes one shared glance with Midoriya to glean that they’re on the same page. They let Iida be. The two of them should be more worried about the business than they are, but Iida has concern enough for three people.

He and Midoriya opt to walk instead of take the train. They go the long way, along side streets and through alleys, to avoid crowds where they could be recognized. Todoroki has his beanie on low, nearly obscuring his vision, but they go unnoticed.

In the easy quiet between them he realizes that this is the first time they’ve been alone, just the two of them, for quite sometime. The peacefulness of it hits him right away, but it takes him half their journey to place the feeling. Midoriya keeps a good pace, looks at the telephone wires running overhead, and every so often mutters something to himself. Usually thoughts about the neighborhood, or an item he wants to remember. Sometimes Todoroki catches them and other times he doesn’t, and either way, it doesn’t matter. They aren’t words for him. They’re just… good to hear when he does.

They’re nearing the house when Midoriya raises his voice enough for Todoroki to know that he means to start a conversation. “By the way… a few days ago.”

Todoroki turns his head.

“I’m sorry I brought up Momo.”

He feels an uncomfortable twinge from his left side. This again. “Why be sorry?” he grunts, eyes ahead again.

“You didn’t seem like you really wanted to talk about… that.”

“You didn’t know.”

“I did, though,” Midoriya says, breathless. Todoroki resists the urge to look at him. “I know you’re not…” Not what? Say what you mean. “I don’t really know why I—I guess what I’m saying is, I should’ve known better. So I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t know how to reply. Midoriya’s tone makes his stomach go tight, and he walks faster, like he would get away from it if he could. No words other than it’s fine or whatever are coming to him, and in the end he just shrugs. That’s as nuanced as he’ll go with this stuff.

“Are you mad?” Midoriya asks, matching his stride.

Mad? Todoroki exhales in a huff; his breath is icy and visible and he swats at it. “No. It makes no sense why you’d do that, but I don’t see why I should be mad.”

“But you might be mad if you knew why?”

Todoroki tries to walk faster. He gets a couple of paces ahead. “I thought you didn’t know why.”

He hears Midoriya gulp but keeps his eyes fixed ahead of them, his chin up, his fists clenched. “I… yeah, I don’t.”

Fuck. This world of question and answer and taking about what you feel in something other than a scream is foreign to him. He can’t imagine he’ll ever catch up, and he isn’t sure he wants to. The idea of looking inside himself and talking about what he sees only offers the terrible possibility that he’ll find something he doesn’t like. Something he can’t reason or fight his way out of.

One thing his childhood taught him: you’re safest acting on logic and packing a strong punch. Anything that isn’t cold or tough will crumble, eventually. It has to be one or the other—fire or ice.

Not that Midoriya has any sense of this reality. Of Todoroki’s reality. Because it isn’t Midoriya’s, he knows; Midoriya is the one who makes weakness into strength. It’s why he’s the best hero, why he was the one to change everything, why Todoroki could only help him. Todoroki is at peace with that fact, but he doesn’t know if Midoriya could understand what it’s like, being someone who just can’t, can’t forgive.

Midoriya has no concept of broken things being irreparable. Or maybe he does, and he ignores it, because… because he’s fucking crazy. You’d have to be, a little, to do the shit Midoriya does.

The awkwardness—and Todoroki doesn’t even get conversational awkwardness, but that’s what this is, no doubt about it—swells between them, making him shrink away like you might from a burst of fire. And then it fades into simpler silence, again, if not as easy as before. Midoriya goes back to examining the phone lines. Perhaps he's not so crazy-reckless after all.

“It’s this one.”

He has never felt so relieved to look at his father’s house. Maybe it’s the conversation he’s escaping, maybe it’s because it might be the last time he ever has to look at this building that holds the worst of his memories, but pausing in the street to stare at the structure brings a tiny smile to his face.

“Is anyone home?” Midoriya whispers, as they go in through the front gate. Todoroki is pleased to find that his key still works. He’d wondered if his father would have it changed, but then again, Enji has never understood. Who knows how long it’ll take before he figures out his son won’t come crawling home, or crawling to the Endeavor office, like a lost pet unable to survive on its own.

“My sister, maybe.” Her house slippers are by the door, but he still calls to her as they go inside: “Neesan?” Silence, except for a bird chirping in the yard. She must be out. His brothers definitely are, because you can hear them stomping around no matter where you are in the house.

Midoriya moves to take off his shoes, but Todoroki says, “Don’t bother.” He can feel he’s getting stared at as he marches into the house, straight for the stairs. “This won’t take a minute.”

His room is already in boxes. He’d bought moving supplies and stashed them in his closet before graduation, and once he’d executed the not-going-home-ever-again part of his plan, he texted Fuyumi asking her to pack up for him. She probably did so without telling their father, which is fine, it’s her life. The worst Enji had done to his sister was ignore her.

It’s shocking how little there is for them to carry out of here. A couple of boxes and a suitcase. He pokes around under the bed and in the desk, just to make sure nothing is missing.

“This is your room?”

Midoriya hovers in the open door. He blinks curiously at the walls.

“Yeah.”

“It looks so bare with your stuff all gone.”

“My stuff’s just clothes and papers, really.” Todoroki tests the weight of one of the boxes. It must have his shoes in it.

“You never put up posters or anything like that?”

He scratches his head. “I think I had a tactical map up at one point.”

Midoriya’s nose wrinkles. He’s holding it in.

Todoroki waves a hand at him. “It’s fine. Just do it.”

So Midoriya busts out giggling, full force, buckling over. “I’m sorry,” he wheezes.

“At least you’re done feeling sorry for me.”

“I feel sorry for you too. I just—oh, I really am sorry.” His cheeks are bright red. Makes his freckles stand out. Todoroki shrugs and examines the grain of the floor.

“It’s good hearing you laugh.”

Midoriya’s pocket starts playing a song from The Lion King. He thrashes to get to his phone. Now it’s Todoroki’s turn to chuckle, though he does it under his breath.

“Iida,” Midoriya declares, reading the caller ID, and he accepts the call. “Hi, we’re almost—”

He stops short, Iida must have cut him off. Todoroki takes the heavier of the two boxes in his arms. They should have a car take them to his apartment rather than trying to make it two wards over with all this crap.

“Oh. Wow.”

The tone of Midoriya’s voice makes him look up, and when he does all the levity is drained from his friend’s face.

“Yes, we’ll… we’ll drop Todoroki’s things off and hurry there. Text me the location.”

He hangs up a moment later, and Todoroki doesn’t ask. He waits. He doesn’t need to do anything else.

“Well.” Midoriya’s hand clutches his phone. He smiles nervously, to seem unshaken, forgetting who he’s with. “We have a client. The police department. There’s been a murder.”

They’ve seen more violence at eighteen-and-a-half than most people see in their lifetimes. Maybe two or three times as much.

And the crime scene still somehow manages to make Todoroki’s stomach churn. It’s the gore, he thinks. Usually everything’s moving too fast for him to notice the gore.

Tsukauchi watches them taking in the body. The police captain waved them over when they arrived, to where he and Iida had apparently been waiting. His attention went to Midoriya, first. “Deku, how is—”

But Midoriya cut him off (surprisingly) and launched right into questions about the victim. Todoroki makes a note to fill Tsukauchi in on All Might before they go.

“Hokori Aki. I think you three may have known him—he was at Yuuei a few years ago. Graduated from Heroics.”

“He’s a hero?” says Midoriya curiously, crouching by the body. Which is in a decidedly mangled state—someone had torn this guy apart. Iida is shielding himself from it behind Tsukauchi and looking green, and Todoroki can’t bring himself to get closer than a couple feet. Going in for a better look… Midoriya. Full of surprises today. And everyday.

“A former hero,” Tsukauchi explains. “He hadn’t worked in months. There’s less crime than ever, thanks to Deku.” Midoriya forces a smile and Iida throws back his head in distress. “He’s a waiter at the restaurant down the block.” He blinks. He has chilling eyes, for a good guy. “You really don’t recognize him at all? That’s the reason I called you three…”

“And thank you for that!” says Iida, loud enough for Tsukauchi to jump.

Todoroki inches closer to the remains. “I don’t remember anyone who looked like spaghetti, no.”

Midoriya pulls a face at him, and asks, “What was his quirk?” He’s examining the guy’s boots.

“Dust manipulation? He could pull it from the air, I think. Make it move around.”

“Oh,” all three of them say at once. At Yuuei, you often learn quirks before you learn names. Todoroki still doesn’t know who the girl who confessed to him in second year is, just that she could turn her breath into helium.

“I remember him! Hokori-kun, of course!” For a second, Midoriya beams at the poor guy’s shredded remains on the alley floor. Then his face plummets. “Oh… Hokori-kun. Oh no.”

A dead former hero, dropped in an alley in a busy ward during the middle of the day. Hm. “Any obvious suspects?” Todoroki asks Tsukauchi, who shrugs.

“He was twenty-one, his family loved him, never had a partner or anything. We’re questioning the staff at the restaurant and everyone seems shocked. So unless something comes up, we’re stumped.”

“We won’t be stumped,” Iida assures the officer.

Midoriya looks up, meeting Todoroki’s eye over the corpse. His expression is knowing and severe in that emotional way of his—only he can be severe and warm all in one look. Todoroki wants to hear what he’s thinking, but Midoriya goes ahead and straightens up, turning to Tsukauchi.

“Can you send the autopsy report to our office? And the list of people you’re questioning.”

“Will do.”

Todoroki lets Iida and Midoriya get ahead of him as they’re leaving the crime scene. He slips Tsukauchi a note with the name of the home and a room number, and mutters, “He likes visitors. Don’t go on Sundays.” Sundays are when Midoriya goes, and the two of them deserve to be alone. Tsukauchi’s mouth opens, shuts, and he nods.

“Thank you.”

Todoroki catches up with his business partners a couple of minutes later, running into the middle of their conversation.

“You’re sure? That’s…” Iida is saying. They both turn when Todoroki falls into step beside them. “Hey—”

“What do you think?” Todoroki asks Midoriya, urgent. He knew there was something heavy in that look. Midoriya swallows, and exhales to steel himself.

“I think I know who did it. And I think it’s going to happen again.”

Chapter Text

“So you don’t actually know who did it?”

When Midoriya looks over his shoulder, Todoroki is giving him one of those cool appraising stares. He’s looked at Todoroki probably thousands of times in the years they’ve known each other and still gets affected by his eyes, the looks he gives. It must be the two-tone color, or something. “No, I—I know who they’re copying.”

“That was quite the overstatement, Midoriya,” says Iida, with fatherly reprove.

There’s a loud hiss and the three of them start. The librarian is staring them down. “No talking.”

Sorry, Midoriya mouths, and hunches back over the computer. He almost has what he needs—a substantial list of numbers leading to resources around the stacks, followed by volumes and dates.

“Your research skills are impeccable,” Iida whispers. He hovers over Midoriya’s shoulder, while Todoroki hangs back, only leaning in to read the screen.

“The Idle Killer? That’s the one they’re copying?” The librarian bristles but Todoroki pays her no mind.

Midoriya jots down the information for the last article and logs off. Gathering his things, he leads his friends into the stacks, away from the librarian’s glare. “There was a string of murders about twenty-five years ago—all heroes who went out of work. They called him ‘the Idle Killer.’”

“So he’s back?”

Midoriya shakes his head. “They caught him! He confessed. He said he hated how commercial heroics had become.”

Iida sighs. “I can see why there might be a resurgence of that sentiment right now.”

“Your evidence that this is a copycat case seems circumstantial,” Todoroki observes. Midoriya squints at the signage on the end of a bookshelf.

“It’s not just that. The Idle Killer’s quirk was ‘razor-blade’—he controlled sharp tentacles like extra arms, and he’d literally slice his victims to shreds in two or three strokes.” Iida makes a displeased noise behind him. They’re almost at the right section; Midoriya bounds along the center aisle in long strides. “Hokori-kun’s wounds were consistent with someone imitating his quirk. Not perfect, but they did their research, too. And the marks on his boots are consistent with being dragged, which was a big forensic thing in the Idle case.” He finds the shelf he’s looking for and begins checking the numbers on the folios.

“You know a lot about this.” That’s Todoroki. Midoriya turns to him. It’s not a question, but—it is.

“I was obsessed with hero stuff as a kid so I learned everything, even about murders.”

Todoroki blinks at him, not responding in any legible way, not even negatively. But Midoriya’s neck starts to burn, and he turns back to the books. Why, why does Todoroki do that? That look? Doesn’t he know what it does to people? Iida is paying him a compliment that falls on muffled ears—something about his ability to retain information being impressive.

“Yeah, thanks. Here’s the paper.” He distracts himself hauling the folio off the shelf. “One of them, anyway.”

“There are more, so give me and Iida the list and we’ll find them and bring them to you to scan.”

Midoriya tentatively hands him the list. “Do you know how to find all this?” Todoroki takes a long look at the paper.

“…No.”

“I do,” Iida offers, and he herds Todoroki down the aisle. “How did you get through high school without learning to use the library?”

“By doing more important things.”

Midoriya listens to their voices carrying away, and opens the folio to the article. KILLER CLAIMS FOURTH VICTIM. He starts to scan the lines for anything useful. Words like brutal and senseless pop out at him. Then, toward the end of the article, a line reads, He is survived by his wife and four-year-old daughter.

He lowers the folio. This had yanked a chord in him, strung him out. That’s One-for-All talking back to him. It still reacts to a line in an article that’s more than twenty years old. So sensitive, after everything.

He hoists the folio under his arm and head off to find the scanners. They have work to do, and not much time.

Two rolling cork boards, fifty pushpins and three paper cuts later, the three of them are staring at a relatively sparse wall of evidence spanning twenty-five years. Midoriya takes a step back to drink it in, arms over his chest, feeling very hardboiled.

Iida makes a thoughtful noise. “We have some information and a framework. That’s an excellent start.”

Hands in his pockets, Todoroki strides back to his desk. “Most hero offices don’t take on detective work.” He always does that, Midoriya notes. Hands in his pockets. Makes it seem like he doesn’t care even when he does. Midoriya follows him, and braces himself on the front of Todoroki’s desk once his friend is seated.

“Yeah, but I’ve got special knowledge of this case.”

Todoroki shrugs. “I don’t object. It was just an observation.”

Midoriya pulls back, ducking his head to hide a flicker of embarrassment.

Iida pokes his head over the desk, between them. “We need to take on cases, regardless of their nature.”

“We aren’t trained detectives,” Todoroki points out. “Our access to police resources is limited.”

“So you do object, then?” Midoriya asks, too quickly. It sounds like he’s trying to catch Todoroki in a lie, he realizes, as he backs off the question by literally backing off, bouncing from Todoroki’s desk back to his own. “I mean, the police are cooperating because they haven’t got anywhere. They hired us so they’ll give us whatever resources we need. It just… is gonna take an extra step.”

“Speaking of which,” says Iida. “When are the files supposed to arrive?”

This is where the majority of their future work lies: in unpacking, combing through, and categorizing the paperwork from the original Idle Killer murders and the new Hokori case. Midoriya hopes to see their evidence wall grow less sparse as they work, and that seeing it all side-by-side will help him draw the connections he’s desperately missing. “Half an hour.”

“And how much is it?”

Midoriya laughs nervously. He’d been afraid to break this part to his partners. “Fifty.”

“Fifty files?” Iida brightens. “That’s not much at all. They must be very succinct—”

“Fifty boxes,” says Todoroki, looking Midoriya right in the eye. Iida stiffens. “That’s what he means.”

Iida jerks from glaring at Todoroki to glaring at Midoriya and then back again. “Box—boxes?” Midoriya thinks he could sink into the floor. And he is, he’s sinking down in his desk chair. “Midoriya-kun, there are twenty-five thousand sheets of paper on average in each one of those boxes, maybe more—”

“You pulled that number out of nowhere,” Todoroki murmurs, impressed.

“Reviewing that amount fifty times over—that is a hundred and twenty-five thousand pages of evidence!”

“We may have a few long nights ahead of us?” Midoriya raises his shoulders. “I’m sorry, the Idle Killer committed eleven murders, and that plus all the Hokori evidence…” Iida huffs a couple more times and stomps over to his desk. His eyes are lit but vacant, like someone’s flipped a switch in him and he’s suddenly seeing another dimension. Midoriya watches him run a hand through his hair once, then twice.

“They can’t bring these files any faster?”

“Midoriya.” He starts at Todoroki’s voice. You wouldn’t think to start at Todoroki’s voice, it’s so low and calm and quiet, but whenever he says Midoriya’s name it goes zap. “How long between the first and the second Idle murders?” There’s no time to be distracted, he tells him, and hastily wracks his memory for the information.

“A… no, it was ten days.” He glances at their evidence board to check. Ten days. Perfect. Nice.

“Do you think the killer will follow his pattern?”

“It’d make sense, given how meticulous he’s been about everything else.”

Todoroki nods. “So we have until Wednesday. Nine days.”

“Those boxes are two months of work, not a week and a half,” Iida says, massaging his temples. “There’s no way.”

“We have to try,” Midoriya pleads with him. “Listen, we’ll put in eighteen-hour days, and do a little off the top of each box and—you know, twenty percent is better than nothing.” He smiles resolutely. When he catches Todoroki’s eye, he’s getting that stare again, the one that makes his throat feel thick, so he turns to Iida instead. Iida, who’s shaking his head.

“There are other things we need to do. Contact Yuuei for a list of alumni and their professions, talk to the victim’s family.”

“Okay—fifteen percent!” Midoriya extends his hand toward Iida. “You can do those things! Be our point man on that stuff.”

Iida blinks a few times and his eyes are focusing properly again. “Right. Yes. I will.”

“Todoroki and I will be here, working on the files.” Alone. Late into the night. In a quiet room. Where they can stare at each other ad nauseam and Midoriya can work himself into an anxious fit. But, he ushers this thought down into the pit of his stomach, for the greater good. “You come and work whenever you have a free moment. We’ll do what we can.”

“This seems like a reasonable plan,” Iida declares, in a speedy reversal. Todoroki covers his mouth with his hand. He might be smiling behind there.

“I’m glad you think so.”

A knock at the door. Beyond it, Midoriya can hear the voices of several men and women, and someone giving what sounds like instructions for a delivery. “Oh. It’s here early.”

Iida is on his feet right away. “Excellent. After all, every second counts!”

Their evidence arrives on Monday afternoon.

By Wednesday night, Midoriya thinks he could never see another piece of police paperwork again and die very happy. And he’s a career crimefighter.

Iida was right: there are many things to do on their case that don’t involve sitting in the office and pouring over files, trying to glean details or patterns, or anything that might say something about the past in order to enlighten the future. So their third partner will be gone for hours at a time in the middle of the day, and sometimes he won’t come back before their quitting hour at midnight.

Midoriya does feel as though he gains the most intimate knowledge anyone anywhere might have of Todoroki Shouto’s habits. For example, Todoroki is good at sitting still. Midoriya is not so good at sitting still, and it’s mind-blowing for him to see a master at work—really mind-blowing, like he sometimes feels like if Todoroki doesn’t flinch once in between page turns, his brain will burst. If it weren’t for breathing, blinking, and the movement of his eyes as he reads, Todoroki would essentially be a human shell. He sits there for hours like this. He won’t accept Midoriya’s offers of tea or coffee or liquor or gum, anything to get him moving. The totality of his concentration is uncanny; he’s probably trained at it for years, knowing his upbringing. And, for a serial murder case, these files are surprisingly dry, which only makes it more impressive. And also infuriating.

At one point he shoots a rubber band at Todoroki’s head and gets a bewildered look when it strikes his cheek. “Oh, sorry, my hand slipped,” says Midoriya, before sticking his nose back into the work. He wants to cup his hands and yell, Just be a person for once.

But there are those brilliant shining moments when one of them finds something. When Todoroki does, he makes a tiny noise, a hmph!, and Midoriya leaps to his feet with an index card for the wall at the ready. When Midoriya does, he wails at the top of his lungs, spins in his chair, and leaps four feet toward Todoroki’s desk for a fist bump. Also, Todoroki now knows about fist bumping. These are great moments.

If only they weren’t few and far between.

“The Hokori case is bizarre,” Todoroki mutters, over one of their stingily-distributed meal breaks. Midoriya has cracked a window—it’s summer now, they should enjoy it—and sits on the sill, drinking in the sound of people being happy doing things other than tedious, rote detective work. “There’s almost no physical evidence aside from what’s imitating the Idle Killer.”

“How much is ‘almost no’?” Midoriya says around a mouthful.

“He had a little frostbite on his wrists.” A furrow appears between Todoroki’s brows. “Our killer might have an ice or freezing quirk. But it’s far from definite. You’d expect more than a little frostbite if he grabbed Hokori’s wrists in a struggle.”

“And there’s no fibers, or fingerprints? Blood or saliva…” Todoroki is shaking his head.

“It’s clean to the point where there must be an explanation for it. No partials, nothing deemed inconclusive.”

“We’re looking for a ghost,” Midoriya realizes, slumping forward.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

Midoriya peeks up and Todoroki is giving his lunch a very serious look. He bites down on his lip so Todoroki won’t see him smile. He does that a lot, he realizes, though he can’t be totally sure why. It just seems like Todoroki wouldn’t want to know he’s cute sometimes, not when he thinks he’s at his most grave.

Chasing a ghost is more work than chasing a flesh-and-blood killer, as you’d imagine. And operating on little-to-no evidence makes for a dull chase. But they keep going, just like they said they would, into the late hours of the night. Each twelve hour day becomes a fourteen hour day, and that fourteen hour day becomes a sixteen hour day, and they go their separate ways outside the office at midnight. Midoriya stumbles to his train, stumbles off it, stumbles to the house where his mother is already fast asleep. He’s out cold by half past one if he’s lucky, two if his mind starts running, which it usually does. And then he’s up a brutal four and a half hours later, for at least an hour of training before work.

After four days of this routine, the lack of physical and mental rest starts catching up with him. Iida has come back to the office to share the results of interviews he’d conducted with Hokori’s family, and Midoriya makes a pot of tea for the three of them to share. He’s carrying it over to Iida’s desk, and Iida reaches to take it from him. Seeing this, Midoriya naturally lets go of the kettle—the problem being that Iida is still about five feet away from him. The kettle shatters over the floor, sending ceramic shards and hot tea everywhere.

For the first few seconds the three of them sit there in silence and stare at the carnage.

Then Midoriya shakes out his arm and says, “Must be an old injury! Sometimes my hands get all shakey—”

“You’re exhausted,” says Todoroki flatly. Iida gets to his feet, glaring.

“Midoriya, are you taking care of yourself?”

“Todoroki and I keep the same schedule!” He flaps a hand at his friend, who doesn’t bat an eye.

“I keep that schedule because I live a few minutes away. You’re welcome to leave earlier because of your commute.”

Midoriya glares fiercely and stomps over to the closet to dig around for the dustpan. “I’m not going to leave you alone here to work for another hour and a half. It’s not safe—”

“We aren’t at war anymore.”

When he turns back around, Iida is holding out the trash for Todoroki, who plucks the bigger chunks of kettle off the floor. “I’m not quitting earlier than you. You can forget it.”

“This is insane, both of you,” Iida declares. “You should both quit at ten o’clock—eleven at the latest.” Todoroki’s expression sours subtly and he glances up at Iida.

“We’re trying to save a life.”

“At this rate you’ll burn out and become useless—look at Midoriya!”

Midoriya’s nose wrinkles. “Hey.” But Iida is… sort of right. His vision is all weird and swimmy, and this is the second teapot he’s wrecked today. The other one was a favorite of his mother’s. He passes the dustpan to Todoroki, and returns to his chair, where he can slump forward over his desk pathetically.

“We need to be working at our fullest capacity,” Todoroki mutters, seeing the sense in Iida’s words. Iida nods.

“There must be a solution. Midoriya, if you won’t leave early—” Midoriya manages a tiny whimper of protest for emphasis. “—then… Todoroki, you have a second bedroom, don’t you?”

Both their heads snap up. When he looks at Todoroki and Todoroki looks at him, it’s funny: he can tell the moment of panic is mutual. How many weeks has Midoriya been painfully awkward around him, and Todoroki had noticed, of course he’d noticed, he’s Todoroki. Iida can have no idea what his suggestion, for all its practicality, means for them.

The worst part is that there are no excuses. He can’t say, oh, no, that would be kind of weird, because then Iida would ask why. And Midoriya would um and uh for a minute before… before sliding under his desk. He can’t even say what it is to himself, how’s he supposed to explain to Iida? Todoroki can see this, and that’s why he clams up, too, as much as he ever does. Bizarre how much they’re communicating when their refusal to talk about this properly is as stubborn as ever.

And Iida is right. His solution makes perfect sense.

“Of course,” says Todoroki, finally, with slow precision in his voice. “You’ll stay with me. You’ll get back a couple hours of sleep every night if you don’t have to commute.”

“That’s so generous of you. I, uh…” Iida stares him down, caring very intensely, while Todoroki buses himself wiping up the remainder of the tea. “How could I refuse! It’ll be like a sleepover. Ha, ha!”

Iida’s face softens in satisfaction. Well, good. At least one of them is feeling better.

His mother packs him a suitcase and delivers it to the office that afternoon, after he calls her to explain the new arrangement.

Iida stays and helps them with the files until they’re ready to stop for the night. Midoriya knows this means he’s keeping an eye on them, but he’s too tired and distracted by thoughts of his future cohabitation to care. Todoroki, conversely, doesn’t welcome the mother hen. He keeps looking up from his work to give Iida appraising stares, and at one point he goes so far as to frown in Iida’s direction, which is extreme for Todoroki.  The hours trade off passing too fast and moving achingly slow.

When midnight arrives, Iida snaps the file he’s holding closed, and Midoriya catches Todoroki’s eye. He smiles hesitantly. Todoroki looks down and starts packing up his desk. It’s hard to say what that means, exactly, but it does nothing to quiet the nerves kicking at his stomach.

They part ways with Iida outside the office building, but Iida stands there watching them walk off for at least a minute, like he wants to be sure Midoriya won’t scuttle away as soon as his back is turned. Maybe Iida is more perceptive than Midoriya had given him credit for—it just always seemed like he was more interested in shouting at people than listening to them.

He and Todoroki walk together in a silence less easy than the one they’re used to sharing. That’s so—frustrating, he realizes, that he’s as frustrated as he is nervous and (fine, sure) excited. Because it wasn’t always like this, between the two of them, and he doesn’t know when things started to change. When he started looking at Todoroki… differently.

He hates to admit, even in the privacy of his own head, that the feelings are familiar. He used to get this way around Ochako, well before they dated. But Todoroki isn’t Ochako, he isn’t even Ochako-shaped. Midoriya keeps rattling the gates of his brain, demanding to know what’s going on, but all he gets in answer is an ominous, knowing silence.

“Iida sure is persistent,” Midoriya blurts, in half-a-laugh, just to get himself out of his head before he starts muttering. Todoroki glances sideways at him but doesn’t say anything. “Thank you, though. Of course. For your hospitality. I’ll sleep well tonight, I bet.”

Todoroki keeps looking at him sideways, and then turns his eyes to the dark street ahead. They’re nearly there already, it really is a short distance. “It’s not a problem. I’m surprised we didn’t think of this earlier.”

“Yeah! It seems obvious now.”

Todoroki nods. The silence seeps back in. Midoriya fidgets, hoisting his overnight bag higher on his shoulder. At least they’re turning into the apartment complex.

In the elevator, Todoroki informs him that he has an extra futon, but other than that the second bedroom is a bit bare. Midoriya shrugs it off. Once they’re inside, he discovers that the entire apartment is a bit bare, actually—the only furniture in the entire living and dining space is a sectional sofa. “I’m still moving in,” Todoroki says under his breath. The kitchen looks mostly empty too, which leaves Midoriya wondering what he’s going to do about breakfast but—it’s not important.

Todoroki lets him have the bathroom first. When Midoriya’s finished, he finds Todoroki lying on the couch in his pajamas, eyes closed, hands folded across his stomach. The sight stops him dead in his tracks. This was exactly what he was afraid of, and his heart pounds, and he wheels away as soon as one of Todoroki’s eyes pops open. Why. They’d been to training camps together, shared hot springs and hospital rooms, changed in the same room everyday after morning training. But there’s something about Todoroki in pajamas that floors him with its intimacy. He’s in a t-shirt and dark grey henley sweats, and blinks sleepily at Midoriya.

“I set up your bed.” He sits up, stifling a yawn behind his hand. Midoriya clutches at his chest. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

“I… thanks. I will?” Oops. Hadn’t meant that as a question. He clears his throat. “I will. Goodnight.”

Todoroki nods and heads for the washroom. “‘Night.”

That’s it, Midoriya realizes, as he settles into the bed Todoroki had made for him. All the awkward encounters he had imagined and in the end, he’d spent a total of thirty seconds being uncomfortable in Todoroki’s bubble. Not so bad.

But things never work out that easy. Not for Midoriya Izuku.

The quiet of Todoroki’s apartment is remarkable. The walls and floors must be very thick, he can’t hear a peep from the neighbors. The bed Todoroki has leant him is comfortable, as comfortable as his one at home, certainly. And he’s tired, bone-tired. He should sleep. He needs to sleep.

But his eyes won’t close. He squeezes them shut and they pop back open a moment later. The problem is his mind, he knows. He can stop his legs and arms and from moving but he can’t stop his brain, always propelling itself forward, fueled by the myriad of issues, topics, necessities, hang-ups, and agendas in his life. He skips from contemplating pieces of evidence to thinking about the small box of Ochako’s personal effects sitting in his room at home, waiting to be collected. And then he’s on Todoroki, again. Wondering if he should offer to go furniture shopping with him. Wondering what this apartment would look like if the two of them put in a couple days decorating it. Wondering if Todoroki really meant the things he said when asked about Momo.

He sits up in bed, sticks his hands through his hair, rubs his eyes. Checking his phone tells him it’s one fifteen already—he’s been lying here for over half an hour, kicking around the covers, and sleep feels no closer.

A glowing beam of silver creeps into the dark bedroom through a crack at the door. Midoriya remembers the big windows in the living room; they must get a lot of moonlight.

He crawls out of bed and slides the door open as softly as he can manage. His backpack sits slumped against the sofa. He stops to stare at it, debating: he’d snuck a couple of case files in there when his partners weren’t looking, so he could have work to do over breakfast.

Now he tiptoes over and pulls the papers out. He settles on the sofa and opens one over the cushions. A bloody crime scene photograph greets him. It hits him somewhere funny, because here he is settled in the softness of his pajamas (a matching set in red plaid, not his purchase), in the safe cocoon of Todoroki’s apartment. The violence of the picture strikes him as unreal.

He sighs and looks up, peeking over the windowsill and into the city below. The light from the moon and the buildings is enough to read by. He pulls a throw pillow to his stomach and snugs his chin into it and watches the clouds rolling out over the mountains, far distant. Out here is better than the bedroom. A tightness he hadn’t noticed in his breathing gradually loosens.

“Is something wrong?”

He gasps and wheels around. Todoroki is a blur in the shadow of the corridor leading to his room. He steps forward and the light from the windows finds his figure. The colors of his hair and eyes are muted by the night.

“No, everything’s fine, I just…”

Todoroki catches sight of the file open on the couch. “You’re working.”

“I couldn’t sleep, so I figured—”

“You have to stop thinking about the case,” Todoroki says firmly, sweeping over to gather the files. “Just for a few hours.”

“I’m sitting here doing nothing.” He watches forlornly as Todoroki confiscates his work, but he’s too tired to put up any kind of physical fight. Todoroki grabs his bag and shoves the files inside. He seems frustrated. With me, Midoriya thinks, lowering his head.

“You’ve got to rest.”

“I can’t sleep, and I’m wasting time sitting around.”

After stashing the bag out of Midoriya’s eye line, Todoroki comes to stand in front of the couch, back lit by the windows. He stands with his arms over his chest. “Why can’t you sleep?”

“It’s, um… complicated.” Todoroki blinks at him, unfazed. “I should probably talk to someone,” Midoriya mutters, hoping that Todoroki will get the message. All Might had reminded him to this every visit for the past year, but there was always too much else to do. The psychological pressures of One-for-All are unique, he’d say. He confessed that he’d been seeing a psychiatrist for years—in secret, of course, because the Symbol of Peace couldn’t show such vulnerability. But that kind of pressure was exactly what made it so necessary.

Whether or not Todoroki gets what he means, it’s hard to say. His response is ambiguous, and very Todoroki in its brutal efficiency: he takes a seat on the opposite end of the couch from Midoriya and says, “Okay. So talk to me.”

Midoriya doesn’t hide his smile this time. It slips over his lips as he realizes what Todoroki’s doing. Trying to do. But it couldn’t hurt. “What am I going to talk about?”

Todoroki eyes him. “I thought—you need to talk to someone, but you don’t know what you need to talk about?”

“I guess it’s more like… I don’t know where to begin.” Todoroki nods. You could say anything now and it wouldn’t be out of place. Midoriya’s mouth moves before he can stop it. “Do you really not believe in love?”

He can’t quite describe the way Todoroki’s face changes, but the expression is most easily described as surprise. “That’s… what you want to talk about?”

Midoriya shrugs, snugging into the throw pillow like a safety blanket. “I want to… um, start there. I think.”

Todoroki’s gaze floats away from him, toward the view. He looks like he’s seeing somewhere far away. “I wouldn’t say I don’t believe in it. I just don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?”

He pauses for a long time. Todoroki, always thinking before he speaks. It’s such a smart thing, a valuable thing, and yet Midoriya wants to shake him. You can tell me, he wants to say. The thing that’s at the front of your mind. I’d like to know what you think, before you’ve whittled it down into logic. Let me see the part of you that’s still raw. Shouldn’t Todoroki trust him by now? After everything?

“I don’t understand,” says Todoroki, after deliberating, “how something like that would feel. It seems like it must be self-fulfilling. The most important part of loving someone is believing you can and do.” He shrugs one shoulder and leans back into the couch cushions. “But I don’t deny it. Manufactured emotions aren’t necessarily less real.”

“Manufactured,” Midoriya repeats, nodding to himself.

“Sorry if that offends you.”

“No, it doesn’t, it just…” That word, manufactured. It reminds him of other things in Todoroki’s life. “Do you feel that way because of your parents?”

He regrets asking this question instantly, but it been said, and he doesn’t pose it out of malice. The look on Todoroki’s face still sends his heart into his throat: not anger, not exactly, but mostly because he’s too shocked to move into that phase of reacting.

“Oh—I’m sorry! I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean it in—in like a bad way, I was just… wondering…” He reaches toward Todoroki, who turns back to the window, his mouth open. “I thought maybe you’d already considered that! Or…”

“It’s all right,” Todoroki mutters. “I know you don’t agree. It must be difficult for you to understand.”

Midoriya retracts his hand slowly. “I understand, I think,” he lies.

“But you’ve felt it. It must be bizarre for you.”

“I have felt it.” And he remembers the first moment he called it for what it was, love, rather than just a crush. He’s never going to forget that moment. Nor will he forget the moment when he realized he didn’t feel that way anymore.

“And I don’t get it at all, do I?” says Todoroki, the corner of his mouth lifting. He’s making fun of himself, a bit. He has a much better feel of how he sounds to other people than he used to—probably because, before Yuuei, he hadn’t spent much time around said other people.

“I don’t know. It’s different for everybody, how it feels.” Midoriya finds himself playing with his fingers. Tracing the scars on his hand. “Maybe for you it isn’t like it is for other people. That could mean it isn’t romantic, like—you love people.” He’s sure of this, that Todoroki is someone who loves people deeply, whatever that means to him. He’s too good of a person not to love people at all. “Your sister, and your brothers, and your mom. You love them.”

Todoroki nods. Midoriya expects him to say something, and he’s definitely got something on his mind, as he sits there watching Midoriya with the same cool look that always makes his stomach flip. Midoriya wants to know what that thing it is.

The impulse gets away from him. Something about the confessional nature of this conversation, and the sense that it’s taking place out of normal time, like the clocks are stopped, makes it easier to ask. “What are you thinking?”

Todoroki’s head tilts to the side. “What?”

“Right now! You’re thinking something and you’re not saying it.” Midoriya scoots forward, closer to him. “Just tell me.”

Todoroki takes a long look at him, and Midoriya puts genuine effort into his pout, opens his eyes wide and begging.

“Please,” he says, and Todoroki snorts lightly.

“If you insist.” He waits another second and then shakes his head. “I was thinking that you’re an extremely generous person.” Midoriya sits back from him. His eyes are still wide, but this is all natural surprise. “And still nosy,” Todoroki adds, as a joke, though it’s lost on Midoriya in the moment. His face feels hot.

He scoots as far away from Todoroki as the couch will allow him. “Th—thanks. Uh.”

“So what does it feel like for you?” Todoroki asks. It’s brutal how offhand he sounds.

“Uh…” Move on. Distract yourself. Midoriya squeezes himself around the throw pillow. The way he’s using it is how you’re supposed to use your seat as a floatation device should the airplane crash. “It was like… when I was around her—around them, I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. The blood was pounding so hard.”

“Hm,” Todoroki muses, letting his head fall back. This draws unfortunate attention to the white lines of his neck, which Midoriya doesn’t think he’s ever noticed.

“But then it doesn’t feel like that anymore.” Ironic, how he starts talking about old feelings just to get away from what he’s feeling right now. “I just mean, that’s how it is when I have a crush on someone. Love is what happens when that feeling gets less jumpy but it’s still there. And it gets all warm and easy and happy.” He absently squeezes the fingers on his bad hand. “Crushes are what make you talk really, really fast about everything, and love is when you slow down enough to realize you don’t always… need to talk at all.”

“And how do you know when that’s over?” Todoroki asks. He’s listening closely. Midoriya swallows. He isn’t sure he wants to describe this part.

“Um, well. Love is about being really safe and content with someone. And feeling like you’re at your best with them. To me, anyway. Sometimes—you start to look in different directions. And you stop feeling content.”

“So you leave them?”

“For me, it was mutual.” Weird to say that out loud. He doesn’t think he’s shared this detail with anyone, and it’s been months since it happened.

“It would be horrible to go from feeling that content around someone to…” Todoroki shakes his head. “Nothing. Being acquaintances.”

Todoroki is talking in the abstract, he knows, but it hits him right in the gut and his eyes are wet. “Yeah. It’s awful,” he manages. Todoroki will notice if he doesn’t rein it in.

“It almost makes it sound like it wouldn’t be worth it the chance it’s going to fail.”

“No,” Midoriya chokes out, louder than he means to. Loud enough that Todoroki’s head turns and now, surely, he can see that Midoriya has teared up. “It’s definitely worth it. Everything special has risks like that.”

Yet another one of those cool stares from Todoroki, but he feels calmer under this one. The swell of emotion fading from his chest makes his nerves look silly in comparison.

Todoroki leans toward him. “Are you okay?”

“Yes! Yes, I’m fine.”

“Are you going to ask what I’m thinking?”

Midoriya’s mouth pops open. An invitation. An attempt to ease the tension. “What—what are you thinking?”

After a pause, Todoroki sits back, rubbing his neck. “No. I think I’ll hold on to it.”

“You’re teasing me,” Midoriya realizes.

“A little, yes.”

“Now you have to tell me. You baited me, it’s not fair.”

“That was a prediction, not bait.”

“Liar,” he gasps, kicking at Todoroki’s leg across the couch. Todoroki lurches away from him, shocked.

“You kicked me?”

The genuine surprise in Todoroki’s voice obliterates Midoriya’s playfulness. “I’m sorry!” He waves his arms in apology. “I didn’t mean—”

“You obviously meant to kick me.”

“Well, okay, yes—”

“It’s fine. It’s not like it hurt.”

Realizing that the teasing has been ongoing, Midoriya  lands another couple of kicks in Todoroki’s direction. His friend wears one of his tiny lopsided smiles while he dodges.

“Hey,” Todoroki is saying. “Hey, it’s nearly two. We need to go to sleep.”

As soon as Todoroki utters the word sleep, drowsiness hits Midoriya like a truck. “Oh no. I’m going to regret this tomorrow.”

“You get to sleep in an extra hour, too. Don’t forget.” Right.

“Thank you so much,” Midoriya exhales. The smile slides from Todoroki’s lips.

“You’re welcome. Are you feeling any better?”

He doesn’t know how he can say it with such confidence, when all they’ve done is sit here and chat for a while, and not ten minutes ago he’d been on the verge of sobbing—but the answer to that question is a resounding, “Yes. I am.” He grins at Todoroki, who mirrors it as best he can. “I think I can sleep now.”

“Good. You need to sleep.” Todoroki gets up, and extends an arm to help Midoriya up. He doesn’t need to do that (Midoriya can get himself up off a couch) but it’s likely some old reflex from the battlefield, from moments when someone needed it. Midoriya reaches up and latches his hand around Todoroki’s, allowing himself to be helped up. There’s more strength in the pull than he expected, and he falls forward before he can get his footing, nearly crashing into Todoroki’s chest. This is closer than they’ve been in quite some time, though it lasts a couple seconds at most—he smells soap and a hint of campfire.

“Sorry,” says Todoroki softly, grabbing Midoriya’s shoulders to steady him. Midoriya’s breathing has stopped, and he knows his face is burning, but there’s something else. Something that makes his hands shake as he retreats to the second bedroom, and clutch his chest as he settles down to sleep. He has to make sure, replaying the moment in his head. But even after review, it’s unmistakeable. He knows what he heard.

His heartbeat in his ears.

They don’t make it to the office the next morning.

This is because, just as Midoriya is putting on his shoes and Todoroki has his keys out, ready to lock up, someone pounds on the apartment door.

Todoroki throws it open to reveal Iida, panting and frantic. “I just ran here from the office. We got a phone call—they found another body.”

“This is too early,” Midoriya frets, as they bypass the office and head straight to the crime scene. He’s distressed enough that the events of the night before flee his head. There’s so much more worth worrying about than heartbeats. “This isn’t right. Why would a copycat killer copy wrong?”

There’s a long pause between the three of them after Midoriya poses this question. Todoroki finally breaks the silence: “The Idle Killer got caught.”

“What?” says Midoriya, frustrated and not catching on.

“Maybe whoever our killer is wants to improve on what the Idle Killer did.”

The crowd of people and wall of police cars comes into view as they round a corner. Iida murmurs, “That would mean all the evidence from the previous cases…”

“It’s useless,” says Midoriya through his teeth. We wasted time. We wasted so much time, and now someone else is gone.

“Shit,” he hears Todoroki say. At first he thinks this is a reaction to their unfortunate breakthrough, but he spots Todoroki glaring at the crowd. He follows Todoroki’s gaze, and… there’s a red sports car parked by the scene. People are taking pictures with it. Oh no. Todoroki’s pace has picked up and he surges ahead of them in the direction of the police line.

Midoriya runs to catch up, but Todoroki spots Endeavor first, talking to Tsukauchi. There’s no stopping him.

“This is our case, you’ve got no right to be here,” he declares, anger bubbling into his voice. He only ever seems to show this degree of emotion in his father’s presence.

Midoriya dives between Todoroki and Endeavor, a literal and figurative buffer. There’s no reading Endeavor’s expression, there never is, it’s just fixed in a fiery glare. “He’s just saying—we covered the first murder!”

“We happened to be on patrol and saw the crime scene,” says Endeavor. His voice makes Midoriya want to shrink down, but he resists the urge, making himself taller instead.

“Thanks, but we’ve got it!”

“We?” Todoroki grunts, glancing back to the car.

Endeavor assesses Midoriya for a beat—it’s creepy how familiar that look is, wow—and then looks to Tsukauchi. “Call me if there’s no movement on this case in a week.” Shit bastard. He can ear Todoroki make a noise akin to a growl under his breath, as Endeavor wheels around and marches back to his ridiculous car.

“You did a pretty fucking shitty job with this one.”

Midoriya’s stomach drops at that voice.

Iida finally catches up to them—he had gotten held to check in with some officers—and he’s the first one to greet their old classmate. “Bakugou. You’re… here.”

“Yeah, sharp observation.”

Bakugou’s in his hero outfit, face locked in his usual twist of post-adolescent rage, observing them at a safe distance. Midoriya can’t remember the last time he saw him… it’s been months since graduation. He looks the same. “What are you doing here?” There’s a tremor in Midoriya’s words that embarrasses him.

“Working, idiot,” says Bakugou, gesturing to his outfit.

“You’re the ‘we,’” Todoroki realizes.

“Now that All Might quit, Endeavor’s pretty much the best around.” Bakugou gives the ground a kick, even though it never did anything to him. “Someone was gonna be his sidekick, since you were stupid enough to pass it up.” Midoriya feels Todoroki stiffen beside him. “Plus, your dad’s fucking loaded.”

Todoroki inhales deeply, then says, “You seem like a good match for him.” Bakugou grunts in offense and turns to go back to the car.

“Tell Kirishima hello!” Iida calls after brightly, earning a look of furious horror from Bakugou, who vanishes into the crow posthaste. Iida claps Midoriya and Todoroki’s shoulders, and Midoriya’s heart lifts. Iida can tell just how bad that encounter had been for them both, for their individual reasons. He is, as always, bowled over with gratitude for Iida’s existence, and for his friendship. “Come on, you two. We’ve got a body to look at.”

Chapter Text

“You’re not going to like this one.”

Tsukauchi says this with such genuine sadness, Todoroki doesn’t know what horrors to expect as they approach the body. It’s another hit in an alley, this time behind a noodle shop. The worst he can think of is a child, but that wouldn’t make sense with the killer’s modus operandi. No, with the M.O. in mind, the worst that could be waiting behind the wall of officers and crime scene technicians is… someone they know. 

Like with Horoki-kun before, the damage is serious, disfiguring, and it takes a moment of peering down at the mess for him to realize. Iida gets there first, he thinks, judging by the abrupt step he takes away from the body, just as it comes to Todoroki: “Oh.”

“Mineta?” Midoriya sounds profoundly surprised, rather than upset. He crouches down to examine the body. 

“I know you were in the same class at Yuuei,” says Tsukauchi gravely. 

“Mmhmm,” Iida answers for the group, in a high voice. 

Tsukauchi scans the three of them. “You never react to these bodies how I expect.”

Todoroki hears the roar of a distant engine and glances over the crowd to watch his father’s car ripping away from the scene. The anger that had quaked in him a minute ago lets out another unhappy shudder. Whenever he gets that feeling, it comes from a well in his chest he didn’t know was there; even though he grew up with hatred in his everyday life, he’s done better everyday he hasn’t had to face it. The fury of that teenage boy doesn’t suit him anymore, not now that he’s known goodness. He would prefer to forget he’s capable of it. 

“Todoroki.” He glances down at Midoriya, who’s frowning at him. “You OK?” He’d noticed the severity of Todoroki’s reaction, probably. It would be obvious to anyone who knew his and Enji’s history. That’s frustrating too, that everyone can see his anger, because he can’t control it.

I ought to ask you the same thing. It isn’t as if he’s the only one who’s just had a strong reaction to a familiar face. Though Midoriya’s ongoing—he can only describe it as fear, that’s what it reads as from the outside—Midoriya’s fear of Bakugou makes no sense to him. This is the pax deku they’re living in. Midoriya established himself as the superior hero long ago, but his anxiety around his childhood friend looks the same as it always has. It’s… silly.

“I’m fine.” Seized by the urge to get away from this crime scene, he turns to a puzzled Tsukauchi. “Is there anything notable we should know about this one?”

“Uh,” Tsukauchi stumbles. “No… so far we haven’t found anything. No prints, no hair, just the victim’s blood. We did find—”

“Frostbite?”

The detective nods. “On his forearms, like Hokori.”

Todoroki glances up the length of the alley. The weather today: sunny, dry. He starts striding away from his partners and the detective and what used to be Mineta.

“I didn’t know he’d stopped working,” Iida remarks.

“Ah, yeah. We’re waiting to hear more on what he was up to, but he wasn’t on the active register. Doesn’t seem like he ever got enlisted after your graduation.”

“How long do you think he’s been here?” Todoroki calls back to Tsukauchi.

“Not long at all—less than an hour—but no one saw him get it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“It’s not.” Todoroki dodges a couple of technicians, paying attention to the pavement throughout the alley. It’s dry, too. Not a puddle in sight, like you’d expect to find from melting ice. The whole alley is like that. “And you don’t think he was killed somewhere else?”

“The blood splatter would suggest it happened here.”

“Todoroki,” says Iida. “What are you thinking?”

Todoroki rejoins them at the body. Midoriya has stood up, and watches him with his lip between his teeth. “If he was using a normal ice quirk, you’d expect to see water on the ground somewhere. It hasn’t been long enough for ice to melt and dry up. There’s too much shade in the alley.”

Tsukauchi slips a pad and pen out of his pocket and starts jotting down things down. “So someone with a special class ice quirk, you’re saying?”

“It’s one explanation.”

“Good catch,” Iida tells him, with breathless enthusiasm. They needed a break. Midoriya smiles weakly.

“If you find anything else, just send it on to us,” Todoroki declares, and starts for the police line. He’s not feeling particularly polite this morning. “Let’s go.”

Iida looks a little taken aback by his insistence, but submits and follows him out. Midoriya, alternatively, is sighing in relief as they leave the crime scene.

“I know he was no one’s favorite,” Iida murmurs, leaning in so they won’t be overheard while a cop escorts them past the crowd, toward the street. “But we could have put on more of a show for Tsukauchi just now… I don’t like the idea of competing with Endeavor on this case.” A photograph lens flashes and Todoroki flinches. He picks up the pace.

“Imagine competing with him your entire life.”

A surprised guffaw forces its way out of Midoriya. Inexplicably this soothes some of Todoroki’s ruffled feathers, but now he’s thinking about Midoriya, too. They’re finally free of the crowd, striding back toward the office, and Todoroki fumbles for his beanie in his back pocket, shoving it on as he turns his gaze on Midoriya. “Hey.” Midoriya’s eyes widen at the snap of his voice. He tries to speak softer when he asks, “Did Bakugou ever apologize to you?”

“Apologize…?” Midoriya rubs the back of his neck. His cheeks are red. “Um.” Iida clears his throat, which Todoroki assumes is some sort of social signal, but he doesn’t know what it means so it’s easy enough to ignore.

“For how he treated you when you were children. And in high school.”

“I never asked him to.”

“Why not?”

Midoriya’s mouth hangs open before he manages, “We don’t talk much?”

Todoroki stops short in the street and Midoriya slams into Iida’s side when he stops too. “You’re a better hero than him,” says Todoroki says efficiently. Midoriya is gaping again. Iida looks horrified, and Todoroki frowns. “You don’t think that Midoriya’s record justifies Bakugou treating him with respect?”

“N-no,” Iida splutters. “Of course—only, it’s a private matter—”

“It’s not private if it affects the reputation of Triforce Agency.” Iida’s back straightens at this reminder.

“I suppose…”

“I’m sorry for making you look bad,” Midoriya blurts, his face scrunching with… an emotion. Upset. He dodges the gazes of his friends and breaks into a half-hearted jog. 

Shit.

“Midoriya. I’m sorry.”

Iida lets out a tiny groan, hands obscuring his face. Slowing, Midoriya turns back and gives him an obviously forced smile. Todoroki quickly assembles the best explanation for his words. Something that won’t scratch at Midoriya’s insecurities.

“I only meant that, as it stands, Deku is likely the Number One Hero.” Midoriya lifts his head, listening. “That makes Triforce the best agency.” Iida puffs out his chest. “You’ve earned the right to behave a certain way. You surpassed him.” And you surpassed me. But he doesn’t include this observation: they’re partners, there’s no use in competing anymore. And if he’d had to choose someone to best him, it would be Midoriya, every time.

“I guess I just… don’t think of things that way,” says Midoriya, with a shrug, but he does seem heartened again. “You’re not wrong, though.” Fine, that was the point. Todoroki gives a small bow.

“That’s all I wanted to say.”

“Good,” Iida barks. At once he’s ushering Todoroki along. “Let’s get back to the office and figure out our next steps.” But Midoriya dives in front of them.

“Wait, wait! It’s Sunday.”

“Yes?”

“Ah,” says Todoroki, realizing.

Iida is looking between the two of them, confused, missing something. The three of them haven’t been partners for long enough to Iida to know.

“We have a prior engagement,” is Todoroki’s abbreviated explanation.

“We’ve got to hurry. See you later,” Midoriya squeaks, as he and Todoroki take off in the direction of the subway, leaving Iida gaping in the street.

“We… we have to solve a murder! This is important. One of our former classmates is dead.”

All he gets from Todoroki is a parting wave. Midoriya calls back, “We’ll meet you  at the office in a few hours!”

Iida watches their backs disappear into a rush of pedestrians emerging from the metro. He folds his arms over his chest, hesitates a moment, and takes off back toward the office, muttering, “You could tell me. You could tell me where you’re going.”

They’d fallen into this routine by chance, actually.

It started ten months ago, when Midoriya—Deku—defeated Shigaraki in a spectacular fight, playing to an audience of millions worldwide.The media swarmed the battle as it progressed, encroaching on danger in helicopters and from the rooftops of nearby buildings.

While the battle of successors raged in one theater, another encounter played out in the shadows, in an abandoned field miles from the center city: All Might and Sensei clashed again, in what would be a final fight for both of them.

Todoroki had since estimated that perhaps six living people in the world knew the reality of the events that unfolded on that overcast day in the September of their third year. The surviving players, Midoriya and All Might, and Shigaraki (currently serving eighty life sentences with a 24-hour guard of four heroes in an island prison built to contain him). Endeavor was the first person to arrive on the scene of the All Might-Sensei fight. Todoroki himself, because by the intersection of luck and ability he’d been at Midoriya’s side that day, and had conveyed the news from his father to Midoriya. 

And then—and this was the probably—Todoroki had never divined if Midoriya told Uraraka, his then-girlfriend, the full story. Like the rest of their classmates, she was there, and received an honor from the Prime Minister specifically for her work freeing civilians from the rubble. She’d saved something like a hundred people that day, single-handedly, but wasn’t close enough to the fighting to know what went on. But if Midoriya had confided in anyone after the fact, she seemed the likeliest candidate.

In the papers, it was reported that all the associates of the Villain Alliance, including Sensei, had been brought down by Deku and the team supporting him—Todoroki, Iida, Bakugou, and Yaoyorozu all had their names and faces in the papers, if at a sixth the size of Midoriya’s. A few weeks later, All Might’s retirement from heroics was officially announced by his publicist, without mention of the Villain Alliance.

In truth All Might had come very near to death in killing Sensei. Weakened by their previous fight, he clung to life by a thread. Reduced to his “normal” form, Endeavor, Midoriya, and Todoroki delivered him to the nearest hospital and submitted him under the name Toshinori; he spent three months unconscious and likely never to wake up.

But he did wake up. He later said that even in a coma he knew he wanted to live a little longer, quietly, not symbolizing anything. He’d proved himself the man Todoroki always admired, possessing of a strength you can’t earn.

He’ll spend the rest of his life in a hospital bed, but it’s a comfortable bed. Visitors welcome, if they can be trusted not to share his state with the world, since the tabloids believe he’s living it up somewhere tropical. His room has a view of the mountains, and it sits in the long-term ward of a respected hospital in a quiet suburb, just one corridor over from where Todoroki’s mother has spent the last ten years of her life.

It took two months for him to finally bump into Midoriya on a visit. He was buying tea from the machine by the stairs and he heard a strangled noise from behind him. When he turned, there was his classmate in a hoodie and sunglasses, but immediately recognizable to Todoroki in the way he held himself. Shoulders slightly hunched.

He’d known All Might’s room and stopped by a few times on the way to see his mother, but up until then he wasn’t aware Midoriya was coming by on their off days. And Midoriya hadn’t even know this was his mother’s hospital.

Once he knew Midoriya would be there when he was, he started to notice him getting off the train at the hospital stop, and then they’d walk to the building together. After a couple of weeks, they planned to get the same train out. They would discuss their lessons or problems with classmates, and greet the civilians who recognized them. Sometimes they’d ride in silence—this was the first time Todoroki realized how easy it was, being in Midoriya’s presence. Almost like being alone, but warmer.

As usual, today they take the elevator together, and part once they reach the right floor. “Meet outside in an hour and a half?” says Midoriya. Todoroki nods.

His mother sits in a chair by her window. Her hair has been white her whole life, but she has the lined face to match these days, the consequence of four children and thirty years of bad marriage. Her view is of the city, the entrance to the hospital and the roads and the buildings jutting up from the earth. With the size and shape of the window, it’s similar to the view in his new apartment. He only realizes now what drew him to that place.

“Shouto,” she says when she sees him, and smiles, and offers him the chair beside her.

When he first started coming to see her, they talked about the past. But that was years ago and he’s said most of what he needed to say by now, so their conversations have lapsed into normalcy. His grades, his friends. More recently, his job. If his father is giving him trouble, they discuss it, but having a parent who wants to know about teachers and whether his new neighborhood is safe… it’s as relieving as laying skeletons to rest. It heals in a different way.

After some general talk about his move and the case, he tells her how Midoriya is staying in his apartment. She looks out at her view. “When will you bring him here and let me meet him?”

“Midoriya? You want to meet him?”

“You talk about him often. And he’s the one who arrives with you, right? You walk up to the building together.” She peeks down toward the entrance, as if remembering.

“Yes.” He doesn’t know why the thought of introducing Midoriya to his mother makes his pulse quicken. They know most of what there is to know about one another already.

“Does he do something at the hospital while you visit me?”

Todoroki swallows. His mother is still staring outside, not watching him. “He visits his father.” This is easier than explaining that her husband’s lifelong rival sits only a few steps away. And it’s the truth, in some sense.

She hums in sympathy. “Poor boy.”

He thinks of the night before, listening to Midoriya talking about love at one o’clock in the morning. It’s weird, it’s like it could have happened years ago.

Do you feel that way because of your parents?

His mother tugs her robe, a soft blue, tighter around herself. He is surprised to find his voice works, when he opens his mouth to speak.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” she says at once, warmly, drawing her attention away from the window.

“Did you ever love Otousan?”

A crease forms between her brows and her mouth makes a tiny O. He ducks his head. When he first started visiting, she would say over and over how he could ask her anything, that nothing was off limits between them. I want you to feel safe with me, she would say, cupping his cheek. Touching his scar.

“That’s a difficult question,” she murmurs. Her mouth settles into a frown, and he can feel her searching him for clues. He got that from her, he knows. The eye for detail. “I’m not sure I can answer. I don’t know.”

“And did he love you? He couldn’t, could he?” He can feel himself grimace. “A person couldn’t do that to someone they loved.”

 “Shouto…”

“If I’m the product of something loveless, what does it make me?”

“Shouto.” This is firmer. It makes him look up at her. “You told me your friend Midoriya had helped you realize, about your quirk…” She reaches out to sweep some hair away from his eyes.

“What?” he asks, knowing it comes out exasperated.

“You are nothing like your father.” His chest tightens. “You are a very loving boy… and kind. You have all the good things in you.” And she touches his face. Her hand is like ice on his left side, and that’s where she always choose to touch him, nowadays. The tightness wells in his chest, rises into his throat.

“It feels like something isn’t right.”

“Maybe something is different. You’re very special.” You’re special. His father used to say that too, but it had another meaning. “But nothing is wrong, I promise.” She taps his cheek with her thumb and smiles. He returns it best he can. She gives him a careful look, an unidentifiable thought playing out on her face. “And I will love you no matter what you… do. Or what you want.”

“I know,” he says hoarsely. Is there something I want? He doesn’t know.

She sits back, taking her hand with her, and sticks her chin out. She does this when she’s insisting. It’s a new trait, for her. “I would like to meet Midoriya-kun.”

“All right,” he relents, and her shoulders drop. “But next week. We don’t have extra time today, we have to get back to work.”

“You work so hard. Do you ever do anything fun?”

He laughs. She scolds him, and starts to ask about hobbies. “Knitting soothes me,” she says. “And my feet are always cold, so I need the socks.”

 He finds Midoriya sitting on a bench outside the hospital, hunched over a notebook, scribbling.

“Hey.” When his friend looks up, his eyes are saucers. “I haven’t made you wait long, have I?”

“Oh, no, just—fifteen minutes. All Might, he told me some things about the case, so I wanted to get it down before I forgot.”

“Finish, then,” says Todoroki, settling beside him on the bench. Midoriya hesitates, then returns his pen to the notebook.

Todoroki glances up at the hospital building. He finds his mother’s room easily—eleventh floor, three from the end of the east wing. And he can see a white dot that must be her head, looking down. She can probably see them sitting together right now. He lifts an arm, gives her a wave.

“My mother wants to meet you.” Midoriya’s pen ceases scratching again.

“She…”

“She says it’s time I introduced you to her.”

“Your mother knows who I am?”

He weighs telling Midoriya exactly how often he comes up in their chats, but decides against it. “She can see us come and go from the hospital. And you’re my colleague. I’ve told her about Triforce.”

“Right,” says Midoriya, sounding relieved. Makes you wonder what he was afraid of hearing. He jots down another couple sentences, then hops to his feet. “Okay. I’m ready.” Midoriya shoves his notebook into his backpack and they start off in the direction of the train.

“So what did All Might tell you?”

“Well, I showed him the Hokori file, and filled him in on Mineta.” He lowers his voice to add, “He didn’t seem very upset, either.” Todoroki stifles a laugh.

“He spent three years harassing Yaoyorozu. That alone…”

“I know. I feel the same. But,” says Midoriya, stoically. “Human life is human life. And All Might pointed out that two Yuuei victims in a row looks like he’s targeting the Heroics Department specifically.”

Of course. Todoroki had been too busy processing a dozen other elements to make that simple connection. “Hm.”

“Hm?” Midoriya echoes, his voice cracking. Todoroki eyes him sideways and the panic is obvious. “This is horrible. Everyone we went to school with is in danger. We need to… warn them, somehow.”

“Did All Might tell you that?”

Midoriya throws him a bewildered look. They’re nearly to the train station. “How… okay, no, he told me to stay calm and not to let the word get out to the public because that’s what the killer wants. How could you know—”

“Because that’s the sensible thing to do, and All Might is a Pro.” Todoroki is smiling. He slips his hands into his pockets once they’ve climbed the platform to the train.

“I’m a Pro,” Midoriya whines. “Two hours ago you said I was Number One.”

“You’’re Number One because you would do anything to protect people. Every hero has weaknesses.” Midoriya’s fists ball at his sides. He shrinks an inch. “That’s why you work well with Iida and I, who are strategically strong.”

His mouth flaps once or twice in protest, and then his shoulders drop. “Do you ever get tired of making sense all the time?”

“Not really.”

Midoriya laughs. He shields his face when he laughs very hard, sometimes.

Todoroki, almost laughing too, certainly smiling, reaches out and presses his fingers to Midoriya’s wrist, pushing his hand away from his face.

It’s a move of inconceivable impulsivity. He can hardly believe what he’s done as puzzlement dawns in Midoriya’s expression, opening up his eyes and mouth. 

“Hey,” Midoriya chokes. Awkward.

“Sorry.” Lie, his brain insists. “You had something on your cheek.” The train is rocketing toward them down the platform and he feels it save his life when Midoriya turns to look at it. “It’s gone now,” Todoroki quickly supplies. Midoriya nods—perhaps he bought it, perhaps not—and they busy themselves with the journey to the office.

Iida drops the just-delivered report on Mineta to his desk. “This is useless.”

“I don’t know what you were expecting,” Todoroki murmurs. “This killer’s trademark is his lack of a trademark.” He sits at his own desk, stirring tea in a small paper cup. The cold spot from when he touched Midoriya’s wrist earlier has lingered—or maybe it’s Midoriya’s imagination. Regardless, he keeps rubbing at his wrist as he paces the length of their evidence wall.

“We have to figure out how we’re going to crack this. We don’t have much time.”

“It seems essential that we contact Yuuei graduates not currently working in heroics,” says Iida, prompting Midoriya to point at Todoroki.

“You said—”

“I said that it was important not to panic.” Midoriya retracts his hand, pouting slightly. He feels weird toward Todoroki. Like grumpy or something. Unusually aware of him. “Calmly alerting possible targets and placing them under guard isn’t panicking.”

“I wasn’t panicking,” Midoriya protests, though the shakes in his knees when he left All Might’s hospital room would suggest otherwise. (His mentor had clapped him on the shoulder and assured him that he knew Midoriya would do his best, when his friends were in trouble.)

“I’ll comb through the list of alumni the school sent over,” Iida announces.

There’s a whoosh from the front of the office and they pause in tandem. Someone’s slid a letter under the door. Admittedly, Midoriya’s pulse picks up—he’s read a couple true crime books where killers would send letters to the people working on their cases. And they’re Yuuei alumni, too, so whoever this creep is must know them. (This thought doesn’t help him with the whole panicking thing.)

Todoroki, who sits closest to the door, gets up and retrieves the letter. He turns it over in his hands once, careful—he probably had the same thought as Midoriya. They have a mailbox, after all.

But Todoroki sees something on the back of the envelope that makes him go, “Ah.”

“What is it?” Iida asks.

“The seal on the back. It’s from the Ministry of Defence.”

Iida is nodding knowingly, and Todoroki opens the envelope with a frown. Midoriya gets the very distinct feeling they’re aware of something he isn’t. “What does the Ministry of Defence want with us?”

“I was wondering whether we would get one,” Iida says, sounding pleased. This doesn’t answer Midoriya’s question.

Todoroki reads from the letter, “The members of your organization are cordially invited to attend the sixty-seventh annual Heroes Ball.”

“A ball?” Midoriya squeaks. (He can’t tie his tie, still.)

“It’s a fundraising gala the Ministry hosts every year to raise money for victims of villainy,” Iida explains. This rustles up memories for Midoriya, of seeing All Might in a tux plastered across a television screen some years ago. “All the A-list heroes and their families get invited, plus government officials. It’s usually all over the tabloids—”

“Yeah, I think I remember now.” Midoriya glances between his partners. “You’ve both been before?”

“Every year,” Todoroki grunts.

Iida puffs himself up. “I went a couple of times with my brother, yes.”

This whole thing—the party, his lack of experience, the idea of schmoozing with two-hundred people for four hours and trying to keep poised—Midoriya’s palms begin to sweat and he paces again. “We can’t do that.” Todoroki’s eyes slip further down the invitation. “We have a killer to catch.”

“It says you’re the guest of honor.”

“I’m…”

“This is good for business,” Iida mutters, steepling his fingers.

“The guest of honor?” That seems like something you call about, ahead of time. Midoriya stumbles to his desk, falls into his chair. Schmoozing with two-hundred people for four hours and trying to keep poised, while they shower him in attention and praise. He could throw up.

“I think we’re committed,” Todoroki says, deadpan. “It isn’t for another couple of weeks. We have time to catch this guy.”

“It would be good if we did,” Iida agrees. “If there’s one place that’ll be crawling with Yuuei alumni, it’s this party. They’re successful heroes, of course, but if the money is what he hates—”

Todoroki tosses the invitation on to Iida’s desk. “The Heroes’ Ball is the epitome of greedy hero culture. It’s supposed be a fundraiser, but they spend as much on the party as they raise. It’s self-congratulatory and self-gratifying.”

“Sounds like a blast,” says Midoriya weakly. He catches Todoroki’s eye and can feel himself being assessed.

“Don’t be nervous. Once you get there you’ll see how stupid it is.”

Iida has plucked up the invitation from where Todoroki left it, and pours over the paper. “An eighteen-year-old guest of honor is unheard of. This is amazing.”

Todoroki says, “The new rankings come out in a few days. The Minister has probably seen it and knows Deku is Number One.”

“I’ll be nineteen by the time of the ball,” Midoriya realizes quietly. He’s started playing with his gnarled hand, a nervous tick, but it grounds him in reality. Iida snaps his fingers and starts shuffling through his desk.

“That’s right! Your birthday! We have to get you a cake. Todoroki, we’ve got to get him a cake.”

Todoroki’s mouth curls into a smile. “Okay.”

“I don’t want anything big.” Midoriya’s elbows slide apart, bringing his chin closer to the surface of his desk. He misses the look that Iida and Todoroki exchange. “Can we talk about the case now?”

Todoroki meanders toward the evidence wall, not much less scant than it was a week ago. He slips his hands into his pockets as he stands there, looking it all over. He’s in the same black jacket he always wears, and the fabric crumples around his hips. Remarkable how he doesn’t get too warm, but then again, his temperature regulation needs are probably… different.

“How do you catch a ghost?”

Todoroki turns back to them as he asks, and Midoriya looks away. Iida glances up from what looks like the shopping list for a birthday dinner (ugh).

“Call the Ghostbusters?” Midoriya offers with a tiny nervous laugh. He gets a smile out of Todoroki (does he get that reference?) and an agitated squint out of Iida.

“I was going to say.” Todoroki saunters back to his desk, hands still in pockets. “Find out what it’s haunting.”

Midoriya blinks a couple times, thinking. Iida says, “What?”

“So… start with the motive? Psychological profile of someone who would hold a grudge against heroes who don’t save people.” Todoroki nods once.

Iida glares at him. “That’s what that meant?”

“Someone with villain relatives, maybe. We should check the family histories of people incarcerated in September.”

Midoriya thinks out loud: “What about people whose relatives didn’t get saved?” Todoroki’s head tilts an inch. “Like, if there were a situation where a hero had arrived but—there was someone they couldn’t save.”

“So… look for incidents with civilian casualties in spite of hero involvement?”

Iida has caught up to their conversation and started on a new list. “We need the records for hero incidents for the last twenty-five years—I’m sure the police have a database, I wonder what search criteria we can specify…”

Todoroki turns to Midoriya and says, smoothly, “That’s good.”

You are the top hero in the country, he tells himself sharply, in order to keep from blushing, but he’s unsuccessful. It’s a somatic thing and not in his control and Todoroki has been so complimentary lately? What is with that?

“Midoriya,” Iida barks, making him jump. He has a legal pad in either fist. “Before I get off on another track! Vanilla or chocolate?”

Midoriya decides he wants to be with his mother when the rankings come out.

It’s sort of a big media production when this happens, annually. Sometimes you get a sense that ratings have shifted and it takes the official charts, which come out every July, a while to catch up. All Might has retained his official Number One ranking all throughout his hospital stay and recovery. Last July, Midoriya had been a student rather than a working hero, and so is unranked—though that’s likely to change in the next few hours, he thinks, as he closes in on his childhood home. 

With all the attention around what happened in September, chances are slim he won’t be included in the Top 50. The Top 10 are revealed in a television spot—All Might would sometimes show up and turn it into a variety show. Midoriya got an interview invitation from the news organization sponsoring the reveal, but declined. He wanted to be with his mother when the rankings came out. 

Todoroki seemed confident the Number One spot would be his. He doesn’t feel the same surety. But maybe he’s in denial, a little. Everything All Might had prepared him for, being the Symbol of Peace, having people care about and admire him in the same way he’d grown up looking at All Might… It’s hard to believe that it didn’t just end when the two of them took down All For One. This is the rest of his life. It’s just beginning.

He lets himself into the house but hears his mother yelp at the sound of the front door. “Izuku,” she squeals, thumping into the hallway. He can hear the television on in the living room. “Izuku, it’s starting! Come quickly.”

He follows her, and watches her settle herself on the couch in what appears to be a prearranged watching station, including tissues, a steaming mug, and a washcloth (which she chews on in moments of extreme stress). It’d never escaped Midoriya that his nervous disposition came from her. “Okaasan,” he says, as he takes the seat beside her. “Where’s Otousan?”

“North. Meeting with a client,” she says distractedly.

“Has your day been all right other—”

“Izuku! Shhhh.”

Kneading his hand again, he turns his attention to the screen. His mother is raising the volume. The presenter is a woman with green skin and antenna.

“…the ranks of Heroes Fifty through Eleven, announced before this broadcast.”

A list flashes over the screen. Midoriya’s eyes go straight to the notable names. Sturdy Hero Red Riot - 41. Jet-black Hero Tsukuyami - 37. Uravity - 30. Exploding Hero Deathtar - 21. Everything Hero Creati - 19. Ingenium - 16. Shouto - 15.

“Due to the battles in September, this year’s rankings feature a record-breaking number of Under-19 heroes. The previous record was two. This year’s rankings include ten Under-19s. All are recent graduates of the Yuuei Academy Heroics Department.”

His mother grabs his hand and squeezes it tightly. “Both Iida-kun and Todoroki-kun have made the Top 20! And Ochako is so high too, that’s wonderful!” Midoriya nods.

Maybe I didn’t make the Top 50, he considers. If he did, then that would mean…

“We will now reveal the Top 10 Heroes for this year,” says the presenter.

Say my name now. Number Ten isn’t so high.

He’s not the Number Ten Hero.

He’s not the Number Nine Hero, or Eight, or Seven, or Six, or Five, or Four, or Three.

Number Two, then. Put a target on someone else’s back.

“The Number Two Hero is Hero Endeavor,” says the presenter, like she’s said it a dozen times before, because she has. Midoriya’s mother lets out a tiny distressed sound as a reel of Endeavor’s most recent feats plays on the screen.

“Izuku…”

Midoriya starts sliding down the couch. Sitting here on the same sofa they had when he was five, his mother fussing over him while an anvil of existential dread hovers above his head, it can really bring a person back. He feels twelve or thirteen, he feels quirkless, and against that feeling it only seems stranger that the presenter says what she says next, with delight in her voice.

“The Number One Hero is Hero Deku.”

“Iiiizzzzzuuuukkkkuuuuu!”

“I know, Okaasan!”

“Izuku, you did it, you did it and you’re safe—”

“Please stop crying, Okaasan!”

His mother calms down enough to put a celebration dinner in the works—he suspects she already had it half-prepared, and he wants to think that she didn’t just assume they’d be celebrating. He doesn’t know whether they should be.

His phone won’t stop lighting up, so he turns it off. It’s hard not to glance at the black screen and feel guilty, but Todoroki and Iida know where he is, if there’s an emergency with the case.

His mother wants to listen to the radio, to hear the coverage of the rankings, and after some weak protesting he lets her have control of the dial. She just seems so happy: her round face glows pink, she bounces through her cooking, she squeaks every time her son is mentioned in the report. So she squeaks a lot.

But he can’t take more than fifteen minutes of the pundit chatter. After the sixth mention of his age, he steps outside into the small yard behind the house, saying, “I  want to get some air.”

“Dinner in twenty minutes,” his mother sings. He slides the porch door shut behind him.

The sky is fast losing light, bleeding orange and pink. He can hear the hiss of a generator and smell laundry drying. His parents never used to come out here, probably because the patio and patch of grass, surrounded by a tall concrete fence, aren’t much to look at.

But it’s changed since he went through high school and stopped being at home so much. Someone has built planters along the sides of the yard, and they host what looks like the beginning of a vegetable garden. Smiling, he wanders over to examine the plants. He recognizes yams and cucumber, and he can smell the herbs, but the rest of it is foreign to him. Gardening is one thing they don’t teach you in hero school.

He doesn’t think yam leaves are supposed to be white, though. He sighs and crouches down to examine the potential problem. If it’s a mold or something, his parents ought to know.

When he touches the substance, it’s cold on his fingertip.

Not mold. It’s damage from frost, and it’s fresh.

Frost. In July. In his parents’ backyard.

He rushes back inside, and turns on his phone.

“How long would you say you missed them by?”

“The plant was still cold, it couldn’t have been more than twenty.”

“And you didn’t notice anything outside the window?”

“Boys,” comes his mother’s voice, shaky, from the open patio door. “I’m sure there wasn’t anyone out here…” Todoroki catches Midoriya’s eye and raises an eyebrow. Midoriya swallows, then forces a smile.

“Okaasan, don’t freak out. We’re going to find you a place to stay tonight.”

“No, no, you don’t need to do that. I’m fine for one night! Your father will be back tomorrow.”

“Midoriya-san!” Iida appears behind her in the door, at which she blinks rapidly. “Can I pour you a glass of wine? You prefer white, if I recall?”

“Oh, Iida-kun, that won’t…”

“Nonsense! It’s my pleasure.” Iida herds her back inside. Midoriya makes sure to keep his voice low enough that she won’t hear.

“I have to stay with her.”

“We’ll make sure she’s in excellent hands. I already have an idea for a safehouse.” Todoroki pulls his phone from his pocket. “I’ll text you, they could be listening to us somehow.” Todoroki says that calmly, but Midoriya’s stomach flips. It’s dark now, the light from the house and the neighbors letting them see.

“I’m going with her.”

Todoroki glances up from his phone. “You know that just puts her in more danger.”

“Why! Why, if I’m such a great hero—”

“They showed up today for you, not her. They probably knew you’d be distracted by the rankings.” Midoriya opens his mouth before he knows what his argument will be, but Todoroki cuts him off. His expression is serious—not neutral serious, like usual, but serious serious. “Remember who they’re targeting. It’s not mothers.”

He’s right, he’s right. Midoriya sticks his hands through his hair, paces a few steps. “Okay. Okay.”

“Check your phone,” Todoroki murmurs.

He does. The text reads, Uraraka. 

“No one will think to find her there.” His ex-girlfriend’s… no, that’s certainly not expected. 

“You’re right.” He’s saying that a lot, it feels like.

“And you’ll keep staying where you are.” At Todoroki’s. Right. “No one stays alone tonight.” Midoriya nods. Todoroki takes a last look at the damage to the garden—no evidence aside from the freezing. Same as the crime scenes. Midoriya’s knees give a tremor.

“Todoroki.”

He looks up, through the fringe of his hair. “Yes?”

“I’m not idle. None of us are.”

Todoroki lowers his head. “I know. It’s hard to know what we’re dealing with now.”

Midoriya swallows hard. “You’d have to be crazy to go after ranked heroes.”

“Crazy or very ambitious,” Todoroki agrees.

“I hope they come after me,” Midoriya realizes—and he’s ready for Todoroki to push back, he’s ready to say again that he’s being reckless and he should see sense. He’s ready to answer, you’re right, you’re right, yet again. Lately his mind is muddled and there’s so much he can’t see.

But instead, Todoroki stands up, nodding. “That’s understandable,” he says, wiping his hands on his jeans. “That way you know you can win.”

Chapter Text

“Today’s not the day.”

Todoroki closes the door to his mother’s hospital room behind him. Midoriya can hear voices inside. “Is everything okay?”

“She’s with the doctor.” It’s obvious that Todoroki doesn’t want to elaborate, so Midoriya nods and steps back and follows him down the hall, back to the elevator that brought them here.

Outside, it’s hot. Another July week has gone by—this one without a murder, thankfully—and tomorrow is Midoriya’s nineteenth birthday. Think of all the amazing things you’ve gotten to see and do and you’re not even twenty years old, All Might reminded him during their visit. But he doesn’t feel like he’s done lots of amazing things in a short period, just that a brief span of his life has run very, very long.

He’s getting better at reading Todoroki. It’s the whole—he keeps accidentally wanting to call it ‘sleeping together’ and then switching to ‘living together’ and that isn’t much better. He settles on referring to it as ‘the apartment situation,’ for lack of anything more precise. The fact is, it’s been two weeks, and he’s settling in. It’s a two bedroom apartment, it wasn’t meant to house just one person. He fits.

Anyway, once you’ve seen someone stumble out of bed at six o’clock in the morning with awful bedhead and give you a squint, like your mere presence is as bright as the sun rising—once you’ve been cooked a small but careful breakfast as an apology for “my morning face”—once you learn that constant temperature fluctuations make for dry skin and moisturizing is essential—once you’ve resigned yourself to the fact that you are definitely hearing your heartbeat in your ears when the two of you come close—once you’ve done this a few times, even the blankest faces get easier to read.

Which is how he knows to ask, softly, while they walk from the hospital to the train, “Do you want to talk about it?”

He watches Todoroki’s eyes flutter close, and the apple of his throat bobs. With the heat they’re both in t-shirts and Todoroki’s collarbones are clearly visible. “No. But thank you.”

“If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

“Noted,” says Todoroki, and he offers Midoriya a little sideways smile that makes his stomach churn.

“You never used to smile so much.” Todoroki blinks. Why, cries a panicky voice in his head. Why would you ever. Holy— “I mean, in high school, at first, you didn’t—and you started to, more.”

“I never noticed.” He supposes it’s a good sign that Todoroki is still doing it. Smiling.

“That’s me, the—noticer.” Midoriya grins until Todoroki looks away and then bites down on his knuckle, hard.

He doesn’t have time for this. Maybe if he were a normal person, not a hero, or his job were at least nine-to-five. But as is, with the Idle Killer Redux out there gunning for him specifically, and the Heroes’ Ball looming, and his being at the eye of a constant media storm… nothing comes simple. It’s not just a matter of being honest with himself about what he’s feeling, and passing the realization onto Todoroki. Their business and their careers and maybe even their lives could be at stake.

That’s what he’d understood coming out of his relationship with Ochako: heroes shouldn’t date heroes.

Preferably, heroes shouldn’t develop ill-timed same-sex crushes on heroes, but that ship has sailed.

“We’re missing something with this case,” Todoroki muses, because he’s a responsible person who’s thinking about the things they need to be thinking about, right now. Midoriya rubs his eyes fiercely and takes a couple of deep breaths. The oxygen will reboot his brain, maybe.

“I… yeah, I feel like there’s a piece we overlooked.”

“Right? It’s frustrating.”

Midoriya opens his eyes and the sunniness of the day, the beautiful landscaping along the walk to the train station, the sound of kids running around on a playground across the street—it hits him that perhaps this is why he’s having so much trouble. It doesn’t feel like the right time to be worried about murder and mayhem, to be hiding his mother away and watching his back. The weather is beautiful and they’re young and… and he wants not to worry about it, for a second. He’s done so much, doesn’t he deserve a break? “Yeah.” He sighs. “It’s definitely frustrating. We’re missing something.”

“We’re due for another killing,” Todoroki murmurs. They climb the platform steps to wait for the train.

“I feel like they marked me, but I don’t know if they were just trying to scare us, or if I’m really the next target.”

“If it’s you, then they’re caught,” says Todoroki simply. His confidence in Midoriya goes unshaken again.

“I know, but somehow—I feel like it’s not going to be as easy as them coming after me like they did they others.” He has spent more time contemplating the potential of his own death than any healthy eighteen-year-old should. “They know I’m aware of when and how they kill. And I don’t fit the profile.”

Todoroki nods. The train’s arriving and he doesn’t try to talk above the noise. It whips his hair into his face as it goes and Midoriya chuckles, watching Todoroki try to rearrange his bangs. Too hot for his hat today. The doors slide open and they step in together.

“I’ve been thinking about why the killer would be interested in you.” Thankfully the car is all but empty, and they choose seats far away from the scattered occupants in order to continue their conversation.

“Yeah?”

“Well, you’re the Number One Hero, objectively the best.”

It is so stupid that Midoriya still gets flustered being reminded of this, but he glances away from Todoroki anyway. He makes eye contact with an elderly lady who’s clearly recognized them, and grins at her. She gasps and buries her nose in her newspaper.

Todoroki continues, “But that’s because of what happened in September. You didn’t save anyone after that because you were in school. The killer may not care that you haven’t taken any endorsements.”

“So that makes me idle?”

“We haven’t managed to save any lives on this case yet,” he adds, a note sadder. Midoriya’s jaw clenches.

“I’m the best hero but I’m not heroic enough because I was in school when I saved everyone, and therefore I deserve to die.” He throws up his hands in surrender. “Life is full of impossible standards! I can’t please anyone, I’m never gonna measure up!”

He hears a strange noise and after a moment realizes that Todoroki is giggling. Doubled over in his seat and snickering under his breath.

“You—”

“You can’t,” Todoroki has to inhale deeply here because he’s winded from giggling, “apply normal logic to a serial killer’s rationale…”

“How are you dying of laughter right now?”

“Weren’t you being funny?”

“I mean—yes, but you are…” Todoroki sits back, wiping his eyes, and Midoriya loses the will to say anything other than what it is he’s really thinking: you’re cute. So he doesn’t say anything at all. He swallows, hard, and hopes that will contain him for the time being. “You are right,” he manages after a calming second passes. “As usual.” He looks back out over the car. The old lady is smiling at them over her newspaper.

“I don’t say things to show you up, you know.” Surprised, he looks back to Todoroki. The traces of laughter are still on his face. “Just to keep you from driving yourself crazy. Or acting rash.”

“Rash,” Midoriya repeats, beating a fist on his thigh. The one that goes numb sometimes.

“Sometimes innate bravery can hinder good judgment.” Innate bravery. His face goes hot. Todoroki’s tone has shifted into his analytical mode, he isn’t being nice, but he makes it so challenging not to like him.

To disguise his frustration, he gives his friend a warm smile. “It would be fine if I felt like I could help you out, too.”

“You do,” says Todoroki obviously. “It goes both ways. You make me braver.”

Midoriya forces a laugh and slips down in his seat. Another reason to hope the killer comes after him: he’d be free of this.

But the killer doesn’t come after him. Not yet, anyway.

The killer does come after two more Yuuei alumni, both in the same day. One had slipped through the cracks and wasn’t on the list they got from the school; another was registered as an active hero but hadn’t actually worked a case in months. Both murders posed the same dilemma as the other cases: nothing but frostbite, as the physical evidence goes.

They get the phone call about the murders the morning after the birthday party Iida had somehow snuck in under Midoriya’s radar, and he’s significantly hungover when they visit the crime scenes, which doesn’t make him feel like the Number One Hero the television proclaims him to be. He got ushered to Iida’s house under the pretense of a work meeting and half their graduating class popped out from behind the furniture to greet him—he was so shocked he nearly activated One-for-All. He isn’t even a drinker, normally, but champagne is sweet and goes down easy, and he’d seen Todoroki standing by himself out on the porch. The feeling the alcohol created in his stomach made it easier to go and greet him, like the difference between moving a balloon filled with regular air and one filled with helium. That night, he was the helium balloon.

A helium balloon who got outside, said a couple of things he can’t remember, and passed out on his friend’s shoulder. He woke up in his bed at the apartment with a wastebasket and a glass of water (both needed) beside him. “It took us twenty minutes to get you to eat a piece of bread,” Todoroki told him over breakfast, sounding like he was trying not to laugh.

The bodies were sobering. He comes out of this twenty-four hour period having decided two things. First, they’re definitely missing something about this case. Second, he should never try getting drunk around Todoroki at a party again.

Which is fine, because the next party on their docket is the Heroes’ Ball, and he’ll be surrounded by cameras the whole night. Not a good time to be drunk, disregarding the fact that All Might hinted this was the only way he ever survived the evening.

Midoriya counts down to that night like he’s counting down to his own execution. And he might be—as Iida pointed out, the gala would be the place to go, if you were very ambitious and hunting heroes with backwards priorities.

He tries to rent a tux but Iida and Todoroki insist he just goes ahead and buys one. “You’ll need it again,” Iida reasons. That isn’t what Midoriya wants to hear, but he takes the advice regardless. On the night of the ball (the afternoon, really, because you’ve got to spend like three hours just preparing for these kind of things), he opens the suit bag that’s hung in his room for days, and has a terrible epiphany: he has no idea how to put on a tuxedo.

There are a million different pieces, and the pants are shaped weird, and when he tried the garment on, the tailor had done everything for him. Looking at all the black satin laid out over his bed, he’s bowled over by dread.

He pokes his head out into the living area. Quiet. “Todoroki?” He knows his roommate is home, it’s just a matter of finding him. He glances down at himself—he’s wearing his undershirt and boxers and nothing else, but it’s not like he hasn’t walked around here in a towel a time or two. He steps out and pads across the room to the hallway, and then down it to Todoroki’s door. It sits ajar by a few inches.

“Todoroki?” He taps the door. “Are…”

“Half an hour.”

When he peeks in, he sees Todoroki, dressed but for his jacket. He’s fiddling with something around his neck. Half an hour? “What?”

“Oh.” Todoroki turns. His bowtie, that’s what he’s putting on. “Sorry. I thought you asked when Iida is getting here.”

Midoriya slinks into the room. “Nope.”

“My mind is somewhere else,” Todoroki mumbles, then leans to check his work in the mirror. He did a good job.

“You look nice.”

Todoroki glances at him with a weird sort of surprise. Admittedly Midoriya can’t convince his heart not to pound. He doesn’t even know what he’s hopeful for. “You too.” What. They stare at each other, Todoroki’s eyes widening a fraction of an inch. “I mean, when you’re dressed, you will.” He opens his mouth like he wants to add an apology to the end of this, but Midoriya waves his hand.

“You said your mind is somewhere else! Don’t worry about it.”

The two of them are so good at so many things, and absolutely terrible at whatever is happening right now.

They turn away from each other. Todoroki coughs and goes about slipping on his jacket. Midoriya can see the full form of the tuxedo, now. It’s like Todoroki was made to wear one—he can’t imagine he’ll look that good, when and/or if he manages to get into his.

“I don’t know how to put a tux on,” Midoriya finally blurts. Todoroki’s lips part at his confession.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, could you—”

“Of course.”

Midoriya smiles in gratitude and pads out of the room with Todoroki following him. To fill the silence as they walk, he explains, “The guy who fit me for it didn’t really tell me what he was doing, and it seems like there are—a lot of parts?”

“Yes.” He can hear the smile in Todoroki’s voice.

“Okay, well.” The enter his room and there it is, in pieces all over his bed. “Please guide me.”

Todoroki plucks the clean crisp tuxedo shirt off the bed, examines the sleeve, then hands it to Midoriya. “This first.” He nods and starts pulling it on.

“You’re good at this stupid fancy stuff!”

Todoroki watches him do up the buttons. “Yeah, I’m an expert in stupid fancy stuff. Do you have cufflinks?”

“Um.” He glances around the clothes. “They…”

“Come in a little velvet box?” Todoroki supplies. Midoriya blinks.

“No… no, I don’t think so?”

“Give me a second,” says Todoroki, and he disappears. Midoriya passes the time trying to run a comb through his hair with limited success. When Todoroki returns, he reaches for Midoriya. “Your wrist?” Midoriya lets him have it, and watches Todoroki slip a tiny piece of something that looks like jewelry through a hole on either side of the cuff, securing the fabric around the wrist. “Now the other one.” Midoriya obeys and, while Todoroki works, holds his free arm up to examine the cufflink. It’s small, made of embossed metal. Half snowflake, half flame.

“Seems like you should be wearing these.”

Todoroki snorts and finishes up the other wrist. “They were a gift. I think they’re hideous, honestly.” Midoriya makes a tiny noise of surprise—he’s never heard Todoroki disparage anything for bad taste. But the moment he thinks about it, it’s like, of course Todoroki has excellent taste. Of course. “I’m sorry you have to wear them. I only have two pairs.”

“What do yours look like?” he wonders aloud, trying to get a peek.

Todoroki holds up his arm to show him the small white-ish stud. “Mother of pearl.” It’s definitely nicer than what Midoriya has on, but also… Todoroki leans over to grab the pants off the bed. “These next.”

But also, something about wearing a tiny, tacky, Todoroki-specific item on his person makes him feel slightly less unnerved about this entire evening. Like a protective charm. “Yes, sir,” he chirps, and accepts the pants.

After that comes the belt—he gets that part easy enough—and then Todoroki picks up a piece Midoriya wasn’t able to identify. “Cummerbund.”

“Cum…mer…bund. That’s not a Japanese word, wow.”

Todoroki is doing his lopsided smile when he reaches forward to smooth down the front of Midoriya’s shirt. “The shirt has to be crisp when you put it on.” Todoroki’s hand slides over Midoriya’s chest and stomach and even two layers of cloth can’t make that less intimate, and strange, and exhilarating. His heart lodges in his throat, eyes locked on the lapel of the jacket across from him. There’s a half second where he thinks the hand lingers, and Todoroki might even make a little curious noise—but then the weight of his palm vacates Midoriya’s torso.

Already dizzy, Midoriya gets spun around, and the cummerbund (this is the worst word he’s ever heard) appears over his waist. “There we go,” Todoroki murmurs. Does he sound flustered? At all? Even a note of it in his voice would make Midoriya feel better about the fact that he could pass out right now.

“Thanks,” he wheezes.

“I’ll tie your tie,” Todoroki offers, nudging him to turn back around. When he does, they make eye contact for the first time since Todoroki stroked his chest and stomach, and he can tell they’re searching one another’s expressions. Looking for cracks in one another’s exteriors. He’s sure Todoroki can see many cracks in him—the question is, what does he think of them?

“I’m glad I don’t have to know how to tie a tie everyday anymore,” Midoriya admits while Todoroki works on the fabric at his neck.

“You never knew how to tie a tie.”

“Hey.”

“Don’t argue that one.” Midoriya bites his lip, because Todoroki had never once in three years mentioned his terrible tie-tying skills, though he’d clearly noticed. Todoroki brushes his shoulder, takes a step back from him, and exhales. “Okay. Put on your jacket.”

He does, and he steps to the side to get a look at himself in the wall mirror. “Oh.” It looks like someone took his head and stuck it on a fancy man’s body.

“Your tailor did a good job,” says Todoroki from somewhere beside him, apparently speaking to the floor.

“Yeah.” He adjusts his lapel and the bowtie and sure, he supposes. The tuxedo is fine. “Yeah, okay. This works.”

“You sound unconvinced.”

“No, I—it’s just a weird situation.” He tosses Todoroki an sheepish grin. “I can’t tie a tie and there’s a whole gala honoring me.”

Todoroki slips his hands into his pocket and assess him for a beat, then asks, “Are you nervous?”

Midoriya laughs, genuinely. Like a full belly laugh. It’s part self-deprecating and part hysterical. “Nervous! Me?”

“What parts are you nervous about?”

“Oh… the part… with the party?” When Todoroki’s response is just a raised eyebrow, he knows he hasn’t satisfied the requirement. “Having everyone looking at me, I guess. I don’t think I’m what people want a Number One Hero to be. And I don’t puff up my appearance when I’m not fighting in order to meet their expectations, like All Might did.”

Todoroki ruminates for what feels like a while. In all their time spent together lately, Midoriya’s Todoroki-reading skills have progressed far, but not this far. It’s a mystery what his friend is going to say until he says it. “That’s not your problem.” OK, whatever he expected, it certainly wasn’t that.

“It’s… not my problem?”

Todoroki shrugs. “People are always going to want things out of you that you can’t deliver. Give them what they need, which is the actual heroics, and then the rest is up to you.”

His solution is so simple. He has no idea what he’s talking about—as well as they’ve gotten to know each other, Midoriya’s never made clear the mission passed down to him—but the ease with which he prioritizes Midoriya’s needs is comforting anyway. Todoroki will always be satisfied with him, no matter what he looks like. He doesn’t care about superficial details. “That’s a nice thought,” Midoriya agrees.

“We should eat something. They never serve enough food at these things.”

He trails Todoroki into the main room and watches him put some rice on to cook. Midoriya perches on the arm of the couch while Todoroki leans on the kitchen island, both of them enjoying the view.

“When I went to my first one of these,” Todoroki tells him, “the thing that made me the most nervous was the dancing.”

“There’s dancing?” Midoriya squeaks, going stiff.

“You don’t have to dance.” Todoroki pauses. “Actually, you’re the guest of honor, so you probably have to dance.”

“What is—is it like real dancing?”

Todoroki nods. “Western-style ballroom, yeah. But it’s not hard to pick up.”

Todoroki knows how to dance, clearly. Midoriya stares at him for a second and, once again, unfortunate words tumble from his stupid unforgivable mouth: “Will you teach me?”

“What?”

“To dance. Real quick.” Midoriya swallows. “You said it’s not hard to pick up, right? I don’t want to look like an idiot. Everyone’s going to be paying attention to me.”

Todoroki glances at his rice cooker, then back to Midoriya. “Sure…” Fuck. He comes out of the kitchen and motions silently at Midoriya; together they push back the couch so they have room to work. “No music,” Todoroki says, by way of an apology.

“That’s fine! We can just hum.”

Todoroki’s lips twitch. The two of them stand opposite each other in the floor they’ve cleared, in their tuxes, and there’s a moment where Midoriya realizes that they won’t be able to dance for the rest of the night—there’s no way, given the visibility of the event, the whole gender thing, and his wanting to have as much privacy as possible in his life for as long as he can manage—but if he could ask Todoroki to dance, he would. So this is their chance. His chance. He has to stop making hopeful assumptions or it’s just going to hurt more, down the line.

“I’ll lead first,” Todoroki says, stepping in to put a hand between his waist and his shoulder blade. “And show you how, and then you can do it to me.” He reaches down and laces his fingers with Midoriya’s, then raises their entwined hands. Fuck. Fuck.“Put your other one on my shoulder.”

Midoriya obeys. He’s biting his lip again, this time in concentration, to keep from—fuck, who knows, he’s already gotten himself into the worst possible spot. Todoroki has started moving them in an easy circle. Midoriya gives his shoulder the smallest squeeze to test its firmness. Whatever song they’re supposed to be dancing to, it’s a slow one.

“You lead with your weight. From your body, not your arms. Gentle. Keep good posture.” Todoroki speaks to the top of his head, his chin tilted up. Midoriya can feel breath rustling the hair on his forehead. That, and the way he can surrender to Todoroki’s lead, relaxes him. “You want to step confidently. Even if you aren’t confident, fake it.” His partner knows what he’s doing, and dancing isn’t scary like this. He wishes they had music. His eyes slip half-closed.

Todoroki’s hands slip away and yank him out of the lull. His friend has his head down, averting his gaze from Midoriya’s. “Try leading me now.”

Blinking away the over-contented haze, he places his hand on Todoroki’s torso in the same spot Todoroki had held him before, and laces their hands again. “Like…”

“Yes.” There’s a hitch in Todoroki’s voice that makes him look up. Todoroki’s lips are parted and he stares at him with emotion in his eyes, inexplicably, a heat Midoriya has scarce seen from him. It excites and terrifies him, like looking down the edge of a cliff.

Todoroki’s hand sears hot in his own and he drops it with a yelp.

“Shit. Sorry.” He grabs Midoriya’s hand with his right one, chilling it instantly. “I don’t think it’s burned. Sorry, I’m not used to following.”

“I’m good,” Midoriya manages, laughing, even though that’s the opposite of the emotion raging through him right now. What was that look? There was something in it new to Todoroki, as far as Midoriya knows—he wishes he could name the feeling.

The timer goes off on the rice, and like the second note in a song, the doorbell buzzes.

Todoroki goes to take care of the food. “Can you let Iida up?” 

Midoriya scampers to the door and hits the button to allow Iida in. His feet slip on the wood under his feet as he waits, leaning against the wall, hoping for his heart to stop pounding. There’s much more to think about right now than dancing quietly with Todoroki in the privacy of a half-empty apartment, but that won’t stop the moment’s impression from haunting him the rest of the evening.

They lose Midoriya as soon as they’ve arrived, swept away in a storm of cameras and microphones. Todoroki decides this is just as well—what they need right now is some time apart. It seems prudent.

He can’t say what’s gotten into him lately. He has never been an impulsive person and so he has never needed to exercise any form of impulse control. The concept that his body or mind should compel him to do anything unwise, it’s beyond his ken. But his hands have been doing things he regrets, things like touching a friend’s wrist, and smoothing down his shirt. He must be too comfortable in their relationship, he reasons. It’s the only explanation he can come up with. He’s losing sight of the boundaries.

With at least four hundred attendees, a full wait staff and orchestra, and a limited number of journalists permitted into the event, the Heroes’ Ball and all its fanfare takes over the grounds of the National Museum in a swarm. Only a hundred of the guests are proper heroes—the rest are their families and partners, government people, some actors and singers. The museum’s ample outdoor space is lit by lanterns, lending the proceedings an ethereal magic. There are hors d’oeuvres, a hall in one of the buildings becomes a ballroom, and as the night trips on the media are ushered out, because the bar is open and even celebrities take advantage.

Todoroki has never enjoyed the event. The first time he went as a child he’d felt some measured excitement, because he would get to see All Might in person, but the allure wore off in the first hour. None of his siblings had been allowed to come along, and he was the youngest person in attendance at eleven years old. He spent the entire night at his father’s side, getting introduced and then ignored for the rest of the conversation.

Being here now brings him back to that night, and the ones like it that came each year. Nothing has changed except the fashion. And that’s minimally different, at best.

Iida must sense his discontent. After they’ve gotten their drinks—he orders a watered-down scotch and Iida, freezing up, requests the same—his friend taps him on the shoulder. “We should see if we can find anyone.” By which he means, anyone they know.

That’s what makes tonight different, he realizes, as they work their way through the crowds of laughing socialites. Now he gets to be here with his friends.

The first person they find is Uraraka, because she’s jumping up and down, waving at them. He hears Iida give a tiny gasp when he sees her, probably because he wasn’t actually looking for anyone else. She wears a long sleeveless satin gown. High neckline, rose-gold. It picks up the color of her cheeks.

“Iida-kun! Todoroki-kun…” She claps as they reach her.

“Hello,” Iida says, a little too near to Todoroki’s ear.

“Hello! Hello. How are you both? Isn’t this wild?”

Iida is speaking before Todoroki can open his mouth. “We’re well! Yes, it’s quite the production.”

“Where’s Izuku-kun?”

“Reporters,” Todoroki explains succinctly. “We’re well, apart from the case.”

“Ah, the case, yes.” Uraraka’s smile shrinks. “I have a police guard on… on my special guests, tonight, while I’m gone.” Todoroki gives her an appreciative nod. They’ve been diligent about not revealing the details around the protection of Midoriya’s parents.

“Thank you, Uraraka-san,” Iida answers breathlessly. “It is so wonderful of you to help us like this—we’re eternally grateful, I hope you know.” She smiles at him with curiosity.

Todoroki steps back. “I think I see Yaoyorozu,” he says, which is a lie, but he does plan to find her. He slips away from the two of them. Iida’s jaw drops, but he’s smart. He’ll adapt.

He circles the entrance plaza. Music carries over the party’s noise, drifting from the ballroom building. In their high school years Yaoyorozu began attending the gala, and they would spend some of their night together in the ballroom.

It satisfied both their families to see them dance, he thinks. Something about two young, rich, marriageable people engaging a centuries-old ritual spoke to the evening’s purpose. Keeping the elite, elite.

She likes dancing more than him, so he assumes he’ll find her already there, pre-selecting her partners with intelligence and care. And he sees her as soon as he enters the hall: the red dress and the fan of her signature hairstyle are unmissable. From the opposite side of the room, she gives him the tiniest of waves, then motions for him to join her. He works his way around the floor, already swirling with dancers.

“Hi,” she sighs when he finally joins her.

“It’s been a while.”

“It has.” The song ends, and another one begins, with a different rhythm. “A waltz,” says Yaoyorozu, pleased. She gives him a smile that wants something, and he reaches for her hand. “Great. You can actually dance this.”

“Barely.”

“Don’t be modest. You’re a good dancer.”

The corners of his mouth turned up, he leads her on to the floor, and they take their position before falling into movement with the song. It comes easy to them, familiar, a little more involved than walking but not by much. The song’s slow, for a waltz, and no one can overhear them if they talk while they dance.

“So how have you been?” she asks, a few steps in.

“Strange,” he answers honestly.

“Strange? Strange how?”

He can only shrug. He doesn’t know.

“You’re working with Midoriya and Iida, aren’t you?”

“Yes. We have a serial murder case.”

“I heard about that. Sounds difficult.”

“And you?”

“Hm, well, I thought I would like being a sidekick more. It only makes me wish I was the boss. Also, I think I’m a lesbian.”

He nearly trips up their step in surprise, and pulls back to get a better look at her face, gone red.

“That’s not public knowledge!”

“I’m not telling…”

“I’ve just,” she continues, frowning at his collar, “been seeing—a person, recently, and… I’m almost sure. Something is different this time.” Todoroki remembers what his mother had told him a few weeks ago. Maybe something is different.

He has to think of a proper response, but eventually he comes up with, “Congratulations.” Which makes her smile.

“You never said what was strange about how you’ve been.”

“Because I don’t know.” The song gets a little faster and the volume of the music demands they raise their voices. “I haven’t felt like myself. I’ve acted out of character.”

“Are you doing anything bad?” she asks, brow furrowing.

“Not exactly.”

“Maybe you’re just developing.” Her voice goes scientific. “A great deal of adult development happens in this age bracket, particularly for males. Your adult personality could be setting in.” So his adult personality would be… weirdly drawn to touching Midoriya.

“I have no idea,” he says, now having to shout above the music. They dance the rest of the song without talking, but she pats his shoulder affectionately as a sign of support. When the dance is over, he escorts her off the floor.

“I don’t think I’ve seen your father yet. You won’t go again?”

“That was for you, not him.”

Her mouth pops open, but after considering him, she grins broadly. “Thank you, then.” He bows. “We should have dinner soon.”

“Yes, I’d like to meet your person.”

She inhales. “Maybe. Maybe, eventually.”

Todoroki leaves his friend with a smile, and slips outside again, this time heading for the gardens at the back of the museum complex.

He had learned to hide out here during his third ball. In the last hour, as the party wound down, it could even be peaceful. Most of the people he passes on the path are walking the opposite direction, back toward the festivities.

He tries not to dwell on the fact that it’s been nearly an hour since he last saw Midoriya. Logically speaking, he’d be at his safest surrounded by reporters, and he deals with the attention better than he realizes. He knows how to smile and say something positive and, sporting a record like his, that’s all it takes to win over a willing public. He can handle himself, on all accounts—there’s no reason to keep thinking about him. Yet here Todoroki is, blinking down at his reflection in a dark pond, and remembering the birthday party a week ago. A pink-faced Midoriya snoozing on his shoulder. He passed out after asking several times about Todoroki’s favorite season. Not summer was the answer.

“Fucking failure—”

His head snaps up. He’s come to know the sound of Bakugou swearing well.

It’s hard to make him out in the darkness, but Todoroki finally spots his old classmate on the opposite side of the pond, maybe thirty yards away. He’s stomping somewhere and shouting over his shoulder, though Todoroki can’t distinguish the rest of what he says.

Out of the shadows cast by an expansive tree, Midoriya steps forward. Todoroki can just barely hear his voice, but he’s too far away to catch any words. He speaks softer than Bakugou. They’re arguing.

Bakugou swears a few more times, spitting angry about something. It’s impossible to see the exact expression on Midoriya’s face, but the way he stands makes him look small. He says something more to Bakugou, Bakugou replies, and Midoriya shakes his head. He takes off in the direction of the main party. Bakugou shouts an epithet at his back.

This last move does it for Todoroki. Calling names at a person’s back as they scamper away from you, it’s wrong. Disgraceful. Not the way you treat a person who is so definitively, unquestionably above you.

He moves around the lake, toward Bakugou, who stamps the ground with his foot.

“You have no place speaking to him like that.”

Bakugou’s foot freezes mid-stomp. He turns, slowly, face distorted at the sound of Todoroki’s voice. “What—are you doing here?”

Todoroki halts a few feet from him, and slips his hands into his pockets. He doesn’t know how to do this other than saying it how it seems to him, which is obvious and fair. “You owe Midoriya more deference.”

Bakugou slams his foot down. “What the fuck does this have to do with you? Fuck off.”

“He’s too kind to tell you himself,” Todoroki says, an edge in his tone he hasn’t heard in a while. Maybe since the last time he argued with his father. “But you don’t deserve the treatment he gives you.”

“That’s pretty fucking bold of you to say, asshole.” Bakugou takes a step toward him. That’s meant to be threatening, he supposes, but all it gets out of him is a blink. He doesn’t get threatened. He doesn’t play Bakugou’s game, get caught up in his show. Not even when he’s angry.

And he is angry. Hmm.

“I figured it was time for someone to tell you, you’re making a fool of yourself.”

“You know I’ll kill you, right?”

“The reason you can’t see why Midoriya deserves your respect is the same reason you’ll never be half the hero he is.”

“Fucking—” Bakugou lunges for him but Todoroki gets a hand around his wrist, lets it burn for a second, and then shoves him off. His would-be opponent misses a step, coddling his seared appendage, but with a feral hiss quickly arranges himself to make another pass. This time Todoroki raises his ice hand.

“Stop!” Oh. Midoriya. “Stop, stop—why—” There he is, Hero Deku, charging between them, arms up. Todoroki’s stomach drops at the look of dismay on his face. “You can’t fight here.”

“Bastard,” Bakugou spits at him, around Midoriya’s head. He backs off and breaks into an angry jog toward the main party. “I’ll take your whole fucking inheritance, just watch.”

“You can have it,” Todoroki murmurs. The two of them watch Bakugou blow up a small shrub as he makes his exit. “I didn’t think he’d attack me,” he says, turning back to Midoriya. He notices a dusting of ice on his cuff, and brushes it off.  “It could have been worse.”

But when he glances over, Midoriya looks just as upset as before Bakugou left. Strange. Todoroki gets the odd feeling that some of this upset might be directed at… him.

“Did you go up to him?” Midoriya demands.

“Yes.”

“And you were fighting about me? Is that what I heard?”

“Someone had to tell him his treatment of you isn’t acceptable.”

Midoriya’s fists ball at his side. Todoroki dislikes that, right away. He doesn’t want to be the object of Midoriya’s ire. “How do you know that’s not what we were arguing about just now? How do you know—”

“It was obvious from the body language you weren’t saying what needed to be said.”

“So that makes it okay for you to barge in?”

“You did that for me,” Todoroki says coolly. Midoriya’s eyes widen. He takes a step back.

“Me and Kacchan aren’t you and your dad. It’s not—you never had trouble telling your dad what you thought of him!” Todoroki’s gaze slips down, away from Midoriya’s. He hadn’t considered he might be drawing parallels, but subconsciously? “You like to pretend that you’re all cool and logical but you’re just as emotional, and crazy, and stupid as the rest of us.” Midoriya is stepping toward him again but he can’t bring himself to look up. “That’s why you came after Bakugou, right? He reminds you of your dad so you think it’s the same?” There’s a pleading note in this question. An element of, let it be that.

“I…”

“That’s the only reason why you’d act so stupid—standing up for me like that. That has to be it, right? It has nothing to to do with me?”

He finally manages to lift his chin. He hates being the object of Midoriya’s ire, he hates having to watch that bottom lip quiver. There’s a freckle just by the corner that seems especially precious. “That must be it,” he murmurs. Midoriya’s huge glossy eyes squeeze shut. “It’s the only explanation. For why I would do that.”

Midoriya opens his eyes and opens his mouth and Todoroki thinks, he’s about to say something he might regret. To make a confession he can’t take back.

So Todoroki speaks faster. “I did act emotionally.” Midoriya shuts his mouth. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I think sometimes, around you, I tend to become… passionate.” Passionate. A dangerous word. He could have chosen something safer. “It’s a positive influence, I’m picking up on one of your strengths, but I need to learn to control it. That’s a good catch, though. About Bakugou and my father.”

He stops talking long enough that Midoriya becomes indebted to speak, instead of continuing to stare at him, looking deeply sad. “I… thanks.”

“I’m sure the scotch I had didn’t help.”

Midoriya doesn’t even fake a laugh. That’s fine, he wasn’t joking, but his not joking has never stopped Midoriya laughing before.

“Should we go back to the party?” he asks quietly.

Midoriya glances at the museum buildings, glowing against the night sky. His face goes blank. “Yes… let’s do that,” he decides.

So they walk together. “I may call it an early night,” Todoroki says under his breath. “You can give my apologies to anyone who asks.”

Midoriya doesn’t answer for a long time, and then just says, “Yeah, okay, sure.” It’s easy not to look at his face when they’re walking. The moment they reach a populous spot on the grounds, eyes flock to Midoriya and he gets approached. A couple of people want Todoroki’s attention, too, but he isn’t afraid of being impolite and slips around them.

He exits the party and, though they arrived in a town car, he catches the bus home. It’s typical for him to get stared at on public transport, whether or not people know who he is, because his hair and scar make him stand out. But it’s worse when he’s in a tuxedo. He didn’t even think that was possible.

The apartment greets him with air conditioning and quiet. It’s ten o’clock at this point, excuse enough to sleep after a long shower.

He’s woken by the sound of Midoriya returning to the apartment. The clock reads two o’clock in the morning.

He listens to footsteps shuffling toward the bath and sits up. In his raw, half-sleeping state, there’s a voice in his head saying clearly, Talk to him. Talk to him. Go tell him now.

But he had sworn to control it, this newfound passion. So it’s decided, they decided it together. No more emotion. He falls back to his pillow, and goes out like a match.

And Midoriya thought everything was terrible before he got here. Ha! Ha!

A woman in a massive hat tries to recruit him for her hero agency, and by the time he’s done politely declining, Todoroki is gone. He doesn’t know what to do with the combination of confused and angry and disappointed he’s feeling right now, after that encounter. He wishes he’d had the foresight or guts to say something like, fine! Leave. See if I care. But instead Todoroki just sneaks off. He’s devoted to frustrating Midoriya’s plans.

Midoriya makes him passionate, he said, but at the same time he agreed that confronting Kacchan had nothing to do with Midoriya himself? It doesn’t make any sense, he doesn’t make any sense, and he’s supposed to be the most sensical among them.

His watch tells him it’s half-past nine, which means the ceremony in his honor—yes, there’s a ceremony in his honor—will take place in half an hour. He wishes he had stayed by the pond and waited it out. Weaving through the crowd with his head down, he makes a B-line for the ballroom, moving fast enough to pretend like he doesn’t hear the occasional cries of, “Is that Deku? Hero Deku?”

“Midoriya!”

Iida. He would die for a friendly face.

He wheels around, looking for the glint of glasses, or one of those big meaty hands waving at him. Instead he sees… Ochako. She looks lovely, and that doesn’t improve his mood. Her arm is looped through Iida’s—he’ll deal with that development later, he decides, squeezing past someone with a boulder-esque mutant quirk to reach his friends.

“How is it going?” Iida asks urgently.

“Fine. Fine, it’s just a lot of people.”

Ochako nods reassuringly. “I overheard someone saying how nice and charming they thought you were.” Embarrassed, Midoriya ducks his head.

Iida reaches for his shoulder. “There’s just one more person I was hoping you could talk to.” Knowing Iida, this is probably a business connection, but that kind of thing matters to his friend. So Midoriya puts on a brave face and lets himself be steered across the plaza. “I think it’ll mean a lot to both of you…” Ochako follows them, floating the hem of her dress so she can keep up with Iida’s pace.

“Who is it?”

“Do you remember Akita-san?” It rings a bell. “The Idle Killer’s fourth victim.”

Iida directs him toward two women, standing apart from the crowd. They look very alike, both sandy-haired and pale-skinned, but there’s a big age difference. A mother and daughter. The mother glows at the sight of him, and the daughter, who’s about half a foot taller, looks more subdued. He is survived by his wife and four-year-old daughter. Midoriya’s heart sinks.

“When she told me who they were, I figured you’d want to meet them,” Iida says in his ear. He releases Midoriya’s shoulders, allowing him to approach the women.

“Hello… Akita-san?”

The mother bounces and bows. “Deku-san, Deku-san, it is a great honor!”

“The honor’s all mine.” This gets a squeak out of the little old lady. Her daughter smiles at her, and then at him.

“Thank you for greeting us.”

“Of course. Of course I would. I know it’s—really, really belated, but I’m sorry for your loss…” I’m a prick, he’s realizing. I’m the worst Number One Hero ever.

The old lady says, grabbing his hand to squeeze it, “If my husband were alive, he would be thrilled to see someone like you as All Might’s successor.”

“Okaasan, you’re coming on too strong,” the daughter whispers. She wrangles her mother’s hands away from Midoriya’s. “We know you’re doing everything in your power to catch the new killer, Deku-san. We believe in you.” She says that like she means it, looking him right in the eye.

“I am,” he chokes. Liar. He leaves them as quickly as he can politely manage and stumbles back toward Iida and Ochako.

This is what’s happening while he spends his time fretting over some stupid, unrequited feeling for a self-described love skeptic—more widows, more daughters without fathers, more people who are going to worship him even though he doesn’t deserve it. He couldn’t even assert himself to the kid who’d tortured him for fifteen years.

He wishes All Might were here so he could ask him: how did you do it? How did you keep yourself from being human, and getting caught up in everyday problems? How did you turn your back on the part of yourself that wanted time just to be—normal? Are you just stronger than me?

Midoriya didn’t know about this part, back when he was fourteen. When he’d declared, surrendering himself, I want to be a hero.

They’d defeated All-for-One. It seems like he should have the right to move on, if he wants, but here he is again at the crossroads between Midoriya and Deku.

“Are you all right?” Iida is asking, a hand on his back.

Ochako murmurs, “Izuku?”

“I think I need to go,” he breathes. He feels like he’s going to be sick. Iida and Ochako exchange a concerned look.

“Are you sure?” Iida murmurs. “The award ceremony—if they cancel it, people will talk.”

This is exactly the problem, isn’t it? You put your needs before the needs of your city, of your country. He swallows hard and runs a hand over his face.

Shut it away. This is just another quirk he needs to active—turning this part of himself off. When he thinks of it that way, he knows what he has to do. Shove it down, shut it away.

He straightens his shoulders, inhales, and sticks out his chin. A drumroll starts up from the ballroom. They’re ready for him. “Nevermind. Let’s go.”

Chapter Text

“We’re missing something.”

Iida peeks at Todoroki around a file. “You mentioned that.”

“I did?”

“Several times just this morning, actually.”

Today it’s just him and Iida in the office: Midoriya is at the police station, combing through some of their databases for new leads. He’d indicated this to them in a group text, and Todoroki left this morning before he got out of the shower, so he hasn’t laid eyes on their third partner since he departed the Heroes’ Ball last night.

“I’m sorry.” Todoroki slumps forward over his desk. “I’m distracted today.”

“Is that so?” says Iida, feigning ignorance, like it’s the polite thing to do. It must be obvious Todoroki isn’t himself. A bad sign, considering how much trouble people have reading him on a more regular day. “I don’t know what informational resources are available that we haven’t already tried. I suppose Midoriya-kun could turn something up today, but…”

“That’s not what I mean.” Todoroki sighs and pulls himself up. Their evidence wall is sprawling, and packed, and so far it’s proved useless. Today he’s going over a list of registered special-class ice quirks in the metropolitan area, but there are dozens of names and nothing has stuck out to him. It feels wasteful to spend all this time uploading raw data into his brain. “The information we need is in front of us. What we’re missing is a connection.”

Iida stares at him and says, as though this were only just occurring to him, “This isn’t strictly about research.”

“No. We need to do the detective work.”

Iida smiles. “If Midoriya were here, I’m sure you two could have a productive brainstorming session.” This statement catches Todoroki off guard.

“Why just him?”

“You have a… rapport that’s well-suited to it. You problem-solve similarly.”

“Are you being self-deprecating?”

“No,” Iida snaps, springing to the defensive. Todoroki senses he’s hit a nerve. “I mean—I suppose I sometimes do feel your conversations are inaccessible to me. But it doesn’t affect my sense of—”

“Iida.” Sheepish, Iida adjusts his glasses. “Ask if you need something explained. Don’t hold back, you’re our partner.”

Iida looks at him for a long time and draws a couple of deep, measured breaths. “I know. But thank you for reminding me. I don’t mean to suggest that you and Midoriya aren’t excellent partners to work with, that I expect anything different—”

“I understand.”

“You just have a particular kind of rapport.” This is the second time Iida has referred to his and Midoriya’s rapport. He must be thinking about it.

“What do you mean by that?” Todoroki swings his chair to face Iida’s desk.

Iida opens his mouth but doesn’t speak right away. He’s considering what he’ll say, Todoroki deduces. He wishes Iida wouldn’t do this. He doesn’t mind bluntness. Mincing words wastes time. “When you… the two of you. When you get focused on each other, it’s… sometimes, I should say, only sometimes, like there’s no one else in the room. You don’t seem to see anything else.”

Todoroki gets the strange sensation that something is stuck in his throat. But swallowing hard doesn’t dislodge the feeling. He can’t come up with any kind of coherent response, so he just stares at Iida.

Eventually Iida can no longer endure this and blurts, “I’m sorry, Todoroki-kun, but did something happen between you and Midoriya?”

Todoroki is not the world’s most adept liar. It never came easily to him, not like it did to his father, who would often stress the necessity of deception in their work. But for Todoroki, who never thought of himself as creative beyond combat, false truths demand too much energy. Instead he’d trained himself to give away nothing with his face—neither truth nor lie. A different kind of deception.

And Iida, his friend, saw through him anyway. Friends get close to him in ways he never expects, ways he keeps discovering. So here he is faced with a question outright, and he can’t make up an answer to hide behind. It won’t come to him.

“Yes.”

Iida’s eyes widen. Perhaps he hadn’t expected Todoroki to be so candid. “I…” Now that he knows, he doesn’t seem like he’s sure what to do with the information. Todoroki’s desk feels like a cage, suddenly. He pulls himself to his feet and wanders toward the window.

“We had an argument.”

Another realization dawns on Iida’s face. “Oh.” Oh? What did he think Todoroki meant? What else could have happened between them? “Oh, you fought. Is everything okay?”

“I’m not sure,” Todoroki answers honestly. “I haven’t seen him since it happened.”

“When was that?”

“Last night, at the party.”

Iida frowns at his desktop. Perhaps he’s putting two and two together about something or other. Todoroki gives him time, looking down on the street from their window. This view isn’t as magnificent as the one in his apartment, but the windows let in good light. He can see more detail.

“I can’t say I’m not alarmed, Todoroki.”

“I don’t think anything will change.” Todoroki looks back at Iida. “But you deserve to know if it does. You won’t be excluded.”

Iida forces a smile, but he’s more preoccupied with the first thing Todoroki said. “Is it serious enough that something could change? If the two of you… if you stop…”

“Stop what?”

“Being friends,” Iida murmurs, a deep wrinkle in his brow. If Todoroki and Midoriya stopped being friends—Todoroki can’t ignore the way this possibility creeps like frost over his chest. He can remember what his life was like before he called Midoriya his friend. You never used to smile so much.

Iida asks softly, “What happens to Triforce, then?” Todoroki turns, and leans back against the window.

“Nothing. We’re professionals. This is our business, the three of us.”

Iida shuts his eyes and nods. “It wouldn’t be as much fun.”

“Are you having fun, Iida?”

His eyes pop open. “Well—I mean, beyond all the death and danger, I—yes, yes I would say I’m having fun.”

Todoroki feels his lips sneaking a smile. “Don’t worry about Triforce.”

“I’m afraid that ship has sailed,” Iida sighs, and Todoroki’s shoulders shake with a silent laugh. “But I will… try not to worry about Midoriya and yourself. The key word there being try.”

“Good.” Todoroki strides the distance back to his desk, but he spins his chair to face the evidence wall. Enough staring at data, it’s time to make sense of all this. He clears his mind as best he can, shrugging off the sensation of Iida’s eyes on his back.

Maybe Iida did try to drop it, for a while. Todoroki has no way of knowing how long his partner’s resolve lasted, except that it had to have been less than five hours, because that’s when he gets a text from Yaoyorozu. She invites him to dinner that night at her apartment. Iida is checking in at the station with Midoriya, and so out of the office when Todoroki receives the message.

(18:49) I was going to cook anyway, it’ll be fun

(18:54) A little short notice.

(18:54) I’m working.

(18:55) You have to eat!! Iida said you might need someone to talk to

After reading this text, Todoroki has to put his phone in his desk door, shut it, and glare at Iida’s empty chair for a minute before he can compose a reply. Midoriya had used that phrase, talking to someone, the first night he spent in the apartment, when they sat up together. It feels coded, but it’s not a code that Todoroki intuitively grasps.

(18:59) I’ll come over. But I’m fine.

Yaoyorozu responds with an emoji and the address.

Whatever her gripes over being a sidekick, the job pays her enough to afford a loft in a chic neighborhood, possibly without parental help. Todoroki’s jealous at that thought. His bank account is in his name, but it’s not money he earned, just a fund set-up by Enji to look after his favorite son. One morning he expects he’ll wake up and the account will be empty, the final phase of his disownment, but by then Triforce might be making money. And he could make appearances or offer private training for extra cash, as much as the idea of throwing celebrity around to make ends meet pains him. The apartment is his now, and as long he has somewhere to live, he’ll get on fine.

About an hour has passed between their conversation when Yaoyorozu buzzes him into her building. There’s no elevator so he has to climb four flights to get to the place, which is more annoying than challenging. Considering the regimen they do everyday, he could probably go twenty flights without breaking a sweat, but it takes him time and he feels to some extent like he’s about to walk into an ambush.

He knocks. When the door swings open, he steps back.

“Jirou-san.”

His former classmate is wearing a huge t-shirt and what would appear to be men’s boxer shorts. “Hey.” She retreats into the apartment, minus explanation, leaving Todoroki to catch the door before it closes. He lets himself in.

The interior of the loft is like you’d expect: wide open spaces with tall ceilings, the living and dining and kitchen spread through the main space, and then a large industrial sliding door which much lead to the bedroom and bath. The finishes and furniture are all nice, in good taste, befitting Yaoyorozu. He slips off his shoes and steps up into the room, while Jirou pads over to the giant leather sofa, where she must have been sitting when he knocked. There’s a dent in the cushions and a half-eaten plate of eggs on the coffee table.

“She’s cooking,” Jirou explains, picking up the eggs. “But I got hungry. I eat a lot. She’s making steaks.” Jirou plops back down, folding her legs under her. Todoroki tries not to stare too openly at her. He hadn’t known she and Yaoyorozu were close. Unless that’s recent, and he really has missed out on a lot in his friend’s life.

“Where is she now?”

“Shower. She heard the buzzer, she’ll run in here in a minute.”

It’s a prediction that comes easy to Jirou. And, spookily, the industrial door slides open a moment later. Yaoyorozu appears in a white skirt and a short-sleeved black turtleneck, towel around her hair.

“I’m so sorry,” she gasps. She gets a look at Jirou on the sofa, and turns to him again. “I’m so sorry. It’s short-notice, like you said.”

He shrugs. “It’s all right. Though your text made it sound like you wanted to talk privately.” Jirou’s eyebrows fly up.

“I do want to talk! I want to talk, Iida said—”

“He was exaggerating.”

Yaoyorozu pulls the towel off her hair, and it falls around her shoulders. She looks different with it down and that disarms him for a moment. “He said you seemed very distracted, and that you and Midoriya had a fight yesterday?”

Jirou lowers her chopsticks. “Wait, you and Midoriya are—?”

Yaoyorozu wheels around and hisses at Jirou, but the damage is done. Todoroki’s left side feels uncomfortably warm through his clothes.

“Midoriya and Todoroki are friends and business partners,” Yaoyorozu says, careful to annunciate each sentence. “They had an argument which upset both of them, quite a lot. But they are not—”

“Got it.” Jirou puts her thumb and pointer finger together: OK.

Todoroki slips his hands into his pockets and sighs. “Jirou, do you hang out here a lot?”

“Yeah.” Jirou’s eyes narrow. She looks between Todoroki and Yaoyorozu, who is suddenly shielding her face. “Do you…” Jirou sets down her bowl. “You didn’t tell him.”

“I was going to tell him today,” Yaoyorozu blurts. “In person!”

“Momo.”

“Tell me what?” Todoroki demands, his voice sharp and clear enough that they both turn to stare at him. He can’t help it. He’s starting to get frustrated, having people talk over his head.

Yaoyorozu straightens up, and looks between him and Jirou one more time. Jirou’s expression is hard. She wants Yaoyorozu to say it, too.

“Kyouka and I are dating.”

“Oh,” says Todoroki. Now the boxers and the eggs and the fact that he’s sure he saw Jirou staring at Yaoyorozu’s legs, it makes sense. “Okay.”

Yaoyorozu blinks, her mouth falling open. When she turns to Jirou, her girlfriend is giving her a look that reads, what did you think was going to go wrong?

Yaoyorozu puts on the steaks and Todoroki takes a seat on one of the stools at the island; Jirou comes over and takes the stool at the opposite end, not too close but not unfriendly. He asks questions. How long it’s been, how it happened. Jirou says something dry and Yaoyorozu laughs, which is rare from her, as far as he knows. They seem… happy. Too happy to talk about themselves for too long.

“Don’t think I’m going to let this thing with Midoriya go,” Yaoyorozu informs him. “I want to know what happened.”

His host has poured drinks for them—wine for herself and him, a beer for Jirou. Todoroki fingers the rim of his glass. “We argued.”

“About?”

“Bakugou. I think.” Now that he turns the conversation in his head, he isn’t sure that was the problem. Jirou pulls a face at Bakugou’s name. “My behavior,” he amends. “I fought with Bakugou because… I wanted him to treat Midoriya better.” Yayorozu glances up, considering.

“And Midoriya was angry about that?” Jirou asks, in disbelief.

“He’d said before that he didn’t want to handle it that way.”

“Oh,” say Yaoyorozu and Jirou at the same time, exchanging a look. Yes, hey’ve been spending time together. Todoroki buries himself in his glass.

“It makes sense,” Jirou elaborates, “because Midoriya’s a self-starter. And you have that whole never-need-help vibe.”

“Midoriya wouldn’t want to feel like he needed anyone to solve his problems for him,” Yaoyorozu agrees. She goes to turn the steaks, and when she returns, asks, “Did you tell him you were sorry for interfering?”

Todoroki nods. “I apologized for being so emotional. I’ve started acting very… impulsive, around him.” Jirou sits up, suddenly more interested. “I told him I’d work on it.”

“And that’s it?”

“He said he thought that I had gone after Bakugou because the way he treats Midoriya reminds me of the way my father treated me for a long time.” Jirou (who doesn’t know the specifics of his upbringing, they had never talked much) glances at Yaoyorozu, confused, and Yaoyorozu gives a tiny shake of her head. “And I agreed,” Todoroki continues, sighing. “I couldn’t think of another explanation. For why my behavior has changed.”

Yaoyorozu’s face has sunk into severity. “So you told him you were acting emotional around him, but that it had nothing to do with him? It was just… about your father?”

“Yes.”

“Ay,” Jirou murmurs, as though this pained her.

“What?”

“Well,” says Yaoyorozu. “I could see how that might be… confusing and alienating, for him.”

“How?”

The girls look at each other, and back to him. Todoroki massages one of his temples.

“Let’s back up,” Jirou begins, suggestive, but of what? “You’ve been acting differently around Midoriya? Or because of him?”

He has to think about it for a moment—he hasn’t heard it put this way, exactly. But it’s true: his attitude toward and around Midoriya has changed. He nods.

Smiling crookedly, Jirou gives Yaoyorozu a knowing look. More nonverbal communication between the two of them. Yaoyorozu takes a long sip of wine and swallows, like she’s steeling herself for something she knows she has to do. “When I spoke to Iida. He seemed to think that you two might not be friends anymore.”

“I’m not sure.” Todoroki frowns into his glass. “I haven’t seen him since then.”

She follows up, her voice soft, “And how would you feel, losing him as a friend?”

He lowers his head. How would he feel. That question strikes him as—insane. Bizarre. Asking him to look into a possible future and guess how something will affect him, when all he can know for certain is what he feels right now, in the present.

He doesn’t realize what a sullen image he’d just made until Jirou pats him on the shoulder, awkward. “It’s… okay? Friend?” It’s weird and obviously prompted, so he glances up and sees Yaoyorozu shaking her head at her girlfriend. “I tried,” Jirou protests.

“I don’t want that to happen.” Todoroki drags the conversation back into seriousness. Yaoyorozu is biting her lip. “I don’t…” He heaves a breath. “I just don’t.”

Yaoyorozu grips the edge of the counter. “Todoroki. Todoroki-kun.” He squints at the honorific. It’s been a while since they used them. She’s trying to instill a sense of seriousness to what she’s about to say. “Have you considered that the way you act toward Midoriya has changed because your feelings toward him have changed?”

The timer on the stove starts beeping. Yayorozu swears and scampers to go take their food off.

He can feel Jirou watching him, her chin on her fist.

Has he considered it?

Yes.

He isn’t stupid. He’s considered. He’s considered the impossibility that any feelings he could ever have, toward anyone, could twist themselves into a shape that would make him so impulsive. Passionate, that was the word he gave Midoriya. And he regretted it, but it was the correct word. Is the correct word.

Jirou leans toward him. “She’s trying to say—”

“No, you have to let him get there on his own! Kyouka!”

Get there… Todoroki finishes off his glass of wine. It’s definitely not enough for this. “Just tell me. I’m tired of not understanding what’s going on in my own head.” He’s never had that problem before. Even where other people fail to make sense, Todoroki Shouto has always been the arbiter of logic. It was something to keep him afloat. If he’d let everything he could feel swallow him up, he would never have survived his childhood.

“No,” Yaoyorozu insists. She raises a hand to stay Jirou’s mouth, too. “Just think about it. You’re smart. You’ll get there eventually.”

“And what if I don’t?”

The girls exchange another one of their looks. It annoys him even more, now that they’re holding out on him. Jirou is the one who finally suggests, smirking, “Ask Midoriya what he thinks.”

“The last time we talked it didn’t go very well,” says Todoroki, his throat tight.

“Try again,” Yaoyorozu suggests, brightly. “Be honest. With yourself. With him. You’re not the only one who’s smart, and if you tell him why you’re confused, he… I think he’ll want to help you.”

Jirou regards Yaoyorozu with a little smile. “Wise.”

“Don’t tease me, Kyouka.”

“You like it.”

“Can we eat?” Todoroki asks, low on patience. “That’s how you got me over here.”

At eight o’clock, the police station closes to everyone who isn't authorized night personnel, or a civilian in an emergency.

This is a policy without exceptions, Midoriya learns. It’s the first time he’s ever tried to use his rank to skirt a rule, and the secretary has no time for him. She seems used to confronting entitled heroes and her tone gives him the impression she would drag him from the station with her own wrinkled, arthritic hands if it came down to that.

So there he is, relegated to the street outside, eight o’clock sharp. He has nothing to show for his day at the station: his spur of the moment idea this morning, to check for unsolved cases featuring similar MOs to their killer, led him nowhere. He’s wasted another day. 

And he can’t even tell himself, well, it was worth a try! Because he isn’t sure it was. He’d done it because he didn’t want to show up to the office this morning; he’d done it because he didn’t want to see Todoroki. Iida visited him around six and told him, firmly, “Todoroki sends his regards.” Maybe he knew what happened. Todoroki could’ve told him, perhaps he didn’t see anything private or revealing about the encounter.

All this makes his journey home one that passes too quickly. He wishes there were more steps, a stop or two further to go on the train. He has no idea what to expect when he steps across the threshold of Todoroki’s apartment, but his insides are twisted to the point where he thinks that no matter what happens, he’s bound to hurt.

It’s too late, he’s realized, to get out of this without a few emotional scrapes and bruises. He woke up this morning and replayed their fight and knew he had let it go too far to turn back. And he feels stupid about that, but he was always too inclined to let his heart into the driver’s seat. Todoroki would never make that kind of mistake.

The sun has set and the lights are off in the main room of the apartment when he comes in, as quietly as he can manage. He hadn’t considered the possibility that Todoroki wouldn’t be home yet—but they’ve been pulling late nights, so it would make sense—and he relaxes at the thought. That has to be it. He’s fine, no confrontation or awkwardness or whatever could happen the next time he faces Todoroki. No acting as if that conversation meant nothing.

He pads down the entrance hall toward the kitchen, socked feet slipping on the floors. A sigh shudders in the darkness and he jumps before the expansion of his chest catches up with him. He’d made that noise. Sighing without realizing it, he does that now.

Something on the sofa moves.

He instantly activates One-for-All. Its light fills the dark room.

“Who—”

“It’s me.” Todoroki. The voice, and when the figure at the couch stands, Midoriya recognizes the broadness of his shoulders. “Don’t freak out.”

He releases the tension in his glowing hand—the power dissipates in a puff of air that makes their hair flutter. The light fades and the room is dark again.

“You’re home,” Midoriya manages. His heart beats no slower than when he thought he was facing an intruder.

He’s an intruder in my heart.

(Oh, that’s beyond stupid. Like, kick-me-in-the-face-for-even-thinking-it stupid.)

Todoroki interrupts his self-deprecation. “I needed somewhere to think that wasn’t the office.”

“I’ll let you think, then.” And Midoriya makes to hide himself away in his room. He might have to skip dinner, but it’s worth it. Funny how he’s supposed to be afraid of nothing, and he can’t face rejection.

“Wait.”

The word seizes him, holds him in place. A tiny voice in him says, easily plied to any thought or command Todoroki could have for him, okay! The tilt of its tone is how some demeaning portrayal of a lovestruck schoolgirl would speak. He hopes the room’s darkness will disguise the red in his cheeks.

Todoroki doesn’t say anything. Eventually Midoriya murmurs, “What were you thinking about? Something to do with the case?”

Todoroki turns away, enough that Midoriya can’t see his face. Again, he doesn’t speak.

Barely holding himself together, Midoriya waits. He can hear distant sirens somewhere in the city, and a clock ticking in one of the other rooms. It tells him how much time passes, in reality, while he waits a figurative eternity for something to happen in this living room. Something that makes sense. Todoroki is supposed to be good at that, right? Things that make sense.

Todoroki takes a step and the floor creaks under his foot. He steps again, and again, coming out from behind the couch. Coming toward Midoriya.

Midoriya opens his mouth to say Todoroki’s name, maybe in warning, but nothing more than a whimper escapes him as Todoroki approaches. His gait is slow and careful and has something animal in it, like the way a wolf might approach an unfamiliar beast.

As the gap between them closes foot by foot, a foreboding helplessness overcomes Midoriya. He realizes that he won’t move, he won’t runaway. He has forgotten how to send these commands to his body, or maybe he’s just surrendered to the intensity of the look on his friend’s face, which burns even through the dark. His eyes glint, more and more animal, their power unmissable. The absence of light drains the color from Todoroki: he looks black and white, a sketch in charcoal, or a watercolor bleeding ink from its lines.

He pauses, finally, a foot from Midoriya. They are both breathing ragged, winded, just from looking at each other. That’s the only classic sign he gets that Todoroki is overwhelmed, but the rest of this… it’s hard to read. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen. And it doesn’t matter: he isn’t going anywhere. Whatever Todoroki can say, he’ll say it. Whatever Todoroki wants from him, he can have it.

Todoroki takes another step, and Midoriya gulps. Their feet are mingling, and if either of them fell forward, even an inch or two—their arms, surely, would brush. Their chests might bump. Their noses could touch.

Midoriya tries not to let his mouth hang open. It feels too obvious, like he’s begging for Todoroki to kiss him.

And he isn’t. He thinks. Probably.

His friend still hasn’t said anything. He stands there very close, staring, drinking in what he can of Midoriya. Maybe he had to get in close because he couldn’t see properly in the dark?

Todoroki exhales and his breath stirs against Midoriya’s cheeks. It’s chilly, but that’s half because Midoriya’s cheeks are hot.

He doesn’t want to die here and he thinks it’s possible he could so he asks, “What are you doing?” In a small, small voice. Not above a whisper.

Todoroki closes the gap between them another inch and Midoriya can’t help it anymore, his lips part. He has to suck in deep breaths to keep himself from… from doing something he’ll probably regret.

It’ll have been about, what, ten years since he heard Todoroki’s voice? “Can I touch your face?” Oh. And that was not what he wanted it to say. Maybe, I’m staring at you because you’ve got chocolate on your nose, or have you always been this ugly? Not this strange request, with its forward intimacy. As though Todoroki didn’t understand. But he must understand, to some extent. Perhaps he’s not attuned to nuance but what’s going on right here, right now, between them—it’s devoid of nuance entirely.

“Okay,” he murmurs. Because he isn’t resisting. He’s given himself up to the moment for as long as it bolsters his hope.

Todoroki lifts his hand, the left one, and cups Midoriya’s cheek. Immediately he feels how warm it is and surprise flashes in his eyes, and he drops his hand. He raises his right one instead, the ice hand; he lays the palm against the opposite side of Midoriya’s face, even gentler before.

Todoroki’s lips have parted too, somewhere throughout this exchange; now as he runs his thumb over the skin beneath Midoriya’s eye, they twitch with unformed words. Things he might say if he knew how. He has the impulse to speak but not the ability.

Midoriya leans in. Of course he does, he always leans in when it comes to danger. This is no different than a fight with a villain three times his size, this is no different than when he’d charged into battle still quirkless. His body moves on its own.

“I’m trying to figure out how I feel about you,” Todoroki says, and swallows hard. A dark patch has appeared on the left side of his face—he only blushes on one side, that makes sense, and knowing it squeezes a person’s heart. Surely that’d squeeze anybody’s heart? He moves in, his nose bumps Midoriya’s. His eyes slip down to stare at Midoriya’s mouth. Their breaths mingle, hot and cold, in the sliver of air between them. Todoroki’s is now cold enough it makes a silvery mist. When it hits Midoriya’s, tiny ice crystals form in the air separating their lips. Snow. A little blizzard, just for them.

Impatient, Midoriya musters the voice to ask, “Is it working?”

Todoroki is still staring at his mouth. Well, fine, good. That way it won’t be a surprise attack when Midoriya finally plants one on him.

But Todoroki pulls away.

In that second where Midoriya grasps what’s happening, he thinks that this might be the worst moment of his life. It’s not—there’ve been moments he’s faced so difficult only one other living person could ever understand—except that tonight, he’s nineteen and he’s never quite had his heart broken before.

“Ice,” Todoroki is saying. Was he staring at Midoriya’s mouth, or—his hand vacates Midoriya’s cheek to brush the snow from the air. His brow furrows, he’s thinking, he’s totally moved on. And so easily? Midoriya’s heart but at the same time he’s slowing down. The gears of his eager imagination grind to a halt. “Water vapor… the cold breath makes the water vapor turn to ice.”

Midoriya steps back and turns away, chin to his chest. “That’s… fascinating.”

Todoroki’s hand appears on his elbow. “It’s the case.” When Midoriya looks up his gaze is serious and pleading and apologetic. “I’ve been trying to figure out how frostbite could happen without leaving behind any kind of water. But it’s not frozen water, it’s dry ice.”

“Dry ice?” Midoriya echoes, listening but not quite recovered from how close they were just now, and how quickly it went away.

Todoroki releases his arm and paces a few feet. He’s glaring at the ground, caught up in his deduction. “Frozen carbon dioxide. I’ve been looking at special-class ice quirks, but that was never enough to go on. There are a thousand registered quirks in Tokyo involving variations on ice production. Knowing frozen carbon dioxide is involved could narrow it down to a dozen names.”

He’s about to congratulate Todoroki on the big break, when he… solves the case.

Later he comes up with a theory: the snap that turned a first kiss into an almost made his mind go blank, emptied it of all the pressures and concerns and wants he’d been filtering for weeks; with the new clarity and the snippet of information from Todoroki, he made the connection necessary to set them on the right path. Funny, all that worrying about how his developing feelings for Todoroki had distracted him from what was important, and those same feelings had indirectly lead him to the break he needed.

He smiles weakly. “Would a quirk where someone could freeze and manipulate carbon dioxide be the kind of thing you’re looking for?”

Todoroki lifts his head. He’s gaping as much as Midoriya has ever seen him gape. “Yes. That would do it.”

Midoriya screws his eyes shut—he takes a beat to determine if this is truly necessary, or if there’s some way out of it that would allow them to stay here, together, alone. Perhaps they’d wind the clock back a couple of minutes and finish what they started. But those aren’t allowances you can make in their line of work. “We need to go. I think I know who the killer is.”

By a miracle of luck, they arrive at the office building in the same minute as Iida. Their partner appears looking harried.

“I was halfway home when I got your call.”

“Thanks for coming,” Midoriya says breathlessly, while Todoroki unlocks the front door. By now it’s after nine and the other businesses that share the building have emptied and closed.

“You said you cracked the case, of course I came.” Iida looks between the two of them expectantly. Todoroki pushes open the door and holds it as they filter in. “So? Who is it?” They take the stairs, two at a time.

“I’ll explain in a minute! I have to see something first before you’re going to believe me. Before I’m going to believe me.”

“I believe you,” says Todoroki.

“Todoroki knows?” Iida sounds terribly hurt to be the only Triforce member excluded, but Midoriya supposes he’ll fix that soon.

“We were… together, when I realized.” That was not the right way to say that. Not that Iida’s going to pick up on it. Unless maybe he is? Oh, that would be bad. Even though it wasn’t even that kind of together, it was the regular kind of together… verging on that kind of together. Close enough to that kind of together, he’d stumbled over the word when he explained it. At a distance, what happened tonight would’ve looked more like one kind than the other. So who is Midoriya kidding, really?

Murder. Murder. He has to finish solving several murders, right. He slams his way up the steps, trailing Iida but ahead of Todoroki.

They burst into the office and Todoroki goes straight for his desk. “Here it is.” He hands Midoriya a thick stack of papers bound with a binder clip. “All the special-class ice forces registered in the city.”

Midoriya begins frantically flipping through the pages, muttering to himself: “Akita. Akita.”

“Akita?” Iida echoes. “Like… the Idle Killer’s fourth victim? The family from yesterday?”

Midoriya nods. Todoroki is frowning. “Who…”

“Last night at the Heroes’ Ball, Midoriya and I met the wife and daughter of one of the original killer’s victims. The Akita family.”

“Todoroki, what you said today made me remember.” He glances up at them, then flips another page. “Akita-san who was murdered. His quirk was the ability to create and puppet figures made of dry ice, using carbon dioxide in the air. It’s called Ghost.”

One side of Todoroki’s mouth turns up, like half of him wants to smile but the other half just doesn’t agree. “Ghost.” The irony is painful, at this point, with lives lost to it.

“And you think his daughter might have the same quirk?” Iida asks, frowning deeply. Midoriya nods, and his eyes land on the name at last.

“Here! Akita Kumiko, age 29. Quirk - Ghost.” He straightens up. What was it that she’d said to him? We know you’re doing everything in your power to catch the new killer… We believe in you.

“But Akita-san’s father was murdered by the Idle Killer,” Iida says. He sounds distressed. This isn’t quite coming together for him and Midoriya can see why. “She’s—she’s the opposite of our profile for this villain.”

Todoroki shakes his head. “We’ve got to find her and question her even if we don’t understand the motive right now. Her quirk fits.”

Midoriya is running through it all in his head: the meeting last night. “If Akita did it then she sought us out last night. That means she’s not afraid of us figuring it out. She might’ve been… helping us. But she’s going to strike soon, before we catch up with her. Or—or to make sure we catch up with her!” The newspaper article that was the first piece of evidence he’d discovered in this case. “There’s something else, something I remember.” He snaps his fingers until it comes to him. “The mother! The mother, she’s quirkless. I remember.”

“Why is that important?” Iida barks, increasingly frustrated by how much he’s missing. And they’re all missing the answer to the last question, the why.

“It’s plenty important,” Todoroki assures him, and strides for the door. “Midoriya, where’s she going to strike next? How much time do we have?”

“I’m not sure.” At least Midoriya can still look Todoroki in the eye without combusting. Whatever they’re about to run into, combusting probably wouldn’t be much help. “I mean…  she’s playing with us. She went to that party to draw us out. But where… here?” He glances around at the interior of the office. They haven’t had much time to fix up the place and there isn’t anywhere to hide.

“Aha!”

Midoriya jumps and Todoroki blinks: Iida has just hopped in the air.

“I’ve figured it out! And before both of you, haven’t I?”

“Iida,” Todoroki hisses.

“If she wants to play with us, she’ll target what we have in common with her other victims.” Iida sticks out his chin and looks between his partners pridefully, waiting for them to put the pieces together.

They arrive at and announce the answer in tandem: “Yuuei.”

Chapter Text

“I’m beginning to think my deduction was absurd.”

Staring at the gates of their iron fortress alma mater, locked up tight and dark,it’s easy to understand why Iida might say such a thing. They’ve been out of school for four months now and Midoriya had already forgotten—Yuuei is impenetrable.

Anticipating a fight, they changed into their hero outfits before rushing here, but now that they’re here at the school in the dead of night he can’t figure out how they can get in, let alone how Akita could’ve done it. “Do you think our key cards still work?”

“Perhaps,” Iida says, pushing back the mask on his helmet to speak clearly. “But I don’t carry my old student ID with me. We would be better off heading to the police station and attempting to locate the home address.”

“Then we’re just going to bust in on her mother.” Midoriya remembers at the party, Akita had touched her mother with genuine care. “She loves her mother. I don’t think she’ll be with her, if she’s planning something violent.”

“Yuuei knows it’s important.” Todoroki’s voice makes him jump. (But he’s not getting distracted by—no. Now is business.) Todoroki is striding toward a panel on the side of the gate. “It must have an emergency system in place, if heroes need access to the building after hours.” He presses what looks like a large buzzer; the panel slides open to reveal an electronic screen. 

A speaker blares to life. After the initial shock of the noise, Midoriya recognizes the voice as Nedzu. “Hello, and welcome to Yuuei Academy. Plus Ultra!”

Iida makes an interested noise and goes to look over Todoroki’s shoulder. “I’ve never been in through the visitor’s entrance!”

Midoriya hesitates joining them, because he doesn’t want to get too close to Todoroki, but he supposes he can handle two feet. He scoots over and peeks at the screen. It reads, IDENTIFY YOURSELF.

“Todoroki Shouto. Accompanied by Iida Tenya and Midoriya Izuku.”

A new message pops up, and a drawer pops open beneath the panel. PLEASE PRESENT HANDPRINT FOR SCANNING.

“Biometrics,” Todoroki murmurs. He presses his palm against the glass surface in the drawer. PRINT RECOGNIZED. Iida and Midoriya do the same. PRINT RECOGNIZED. PRINT RECOGNIZED.

“I wonder if this Yuuei-designed engineering. It’s fascinating,” Iida gushes.

“You will now be escorted into Yuuei Academy! We are paging our 24-hour security team.”

“There’s a night guard,” Midoriya realizes. Todoroki is nodding, slowly, squinting at the screen. SECURITY BEING CONTACTED… SECURITY BEING CONTACTED… SECURITY BEING CONTACTED…

“Maybe they’ve gone to use the bathroom,” Iida suggests weakly. But Midoriya’s stomach is sinking fast.

FAILED TO CONTACT SECURITY. SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.

Midoriya steps forward, around Todoroki, and talks into the computer. “Can you tell us if the building has had any other visitors this evening?”

“Do you think the AI is that advanced?” Todoroki whispers. The thought crosses Midoriya’s mind that he could probably feel Todoroki’s breath on his neck, if he weren’t in his costume.

SORRY! WE CANNOT REVEAL THAT INFORMATION TO THE PUBLIC.

“My name is—Deku, I’m Hero Deku.” He fumbles in his pocket for the laminated ID card they issued when he registered with the Department of Defence. He shoves it toward the screen. “I have the highest security clearance level!”

“You do?” says Iida. A light pops on above the screen and scans his ID.

“Yeah it’s a—it’s a Number One Hero thing,” Midoriya mumbles, a little embarrassed. He’d had this whole meeting with the Secretary of Defence to discuss his privileges. (Seems like the secretary could’ve mentioned the upcoming ball in his honor, actually? But that’s a different issue for a different time.)

SECURITY CLEARANCE CONFIRMED, HERO DEKU.

“So tell me, have you had any other visitors? Since the school closed for the day?”

ONE VISITOR SINCE 1800 HOURS:

MINETA MINORU.

“Ah,” Todoroki sighs. “That explains how she got in.”

Iida snaps his mask down. Ready to go. “She must’ve gotten his keycard, somehow. Let’s go in.”

“Computer,” Midoriya shouts, leaning toward the screen. “It’s me again! Hero Deku! Please give us access to the building. It’s an emergency, your security has been compromised.”

An ellipse appears on the screen, telling them to wait. “I think it’s processing,” Todoroki says.

AUTHORIZATION CLEARED.

There’s a loud metallic shudder as the gate opens.

“Should we split up?” Iida whispers as they slip into the school grounds. It looks different now, under darkness, and eerily empty. Like being in a new place.

“If we do, it makes the most sense for me to go alone,” says Todoroki, raising his left hand. “My quirk is best suited for hers.”

Midoriya swallows. Todoroki’s right about their quirks, but—the idea of sending him out on his own doesn’t sit right. “I think we’re best off sticking together.”

“How does this Ghost quirk manifest itself?” Iida asks.

“Well,” says Midoriya. “I only read the description, I’ve never seen it, so I’m not totally sure, but… I’d guess there’s a reason it got that name.”

“So when you say ghost, are we talking horror movie or ’Ghostbusters’?” Iida and Midoriya stop dead in their tracks to stare at Todoroki. “What? I don’t have any real-life ghost references to go off of.”

“Ghost is a good film,” Iida says to himself.

Midoriya asks, sounding excited in spite of himself, “You’ve seen Ghostbusters, Todoroki?”

“I had a shitty parent, I wasn’t living under a rock.”

Something akin to but somehow less dignified than a giggle escapes Midoriya. Iida’s head turns at the noise, and though his head’s obscured by his helmet, Midoriya gets the sense he’s alarmed. 

Todoroki approaches the front doors of the school. He tests them and they’re locked, but he makes a b-line for a panel on the side of the building, like the one outside the gates. He offers its scanner his fingerprint, and the doors click open.

“We should try to locate the night guard,” Iida whispers as they go in. 

“He’s dead,” says Todoroki, without a shred of doubt. 

Midoriya starts to ask, “How do you—” But Todoroki is just pointing into the lobby, toward the security kiosk. Upon closer examination, the security guard is sitting there, his cheek against the desk. His eyes are open and empty, and there’s a dark purple circle around his neck. “Oh. I don’t think he’s sleeping.” 

Iida clicks his tongue sadly and goes over to close the man’s eyes. From the lobby, three hallways lead off to different parts of the main floor, one to the left and one to the right, and a wide central corridor going straight ahead. Todoroki starts creeping down the main hallway. “Is he still warm?”

“I’m not going to touch the dead body again,” Iida hisses.

“Just do it, Iida.”

“You come over here and do it!”

“I’m not a good judge of temperature.”

“—okay, fine, no, he’s fairly cold.”

 “So she’s been here for a while,” Todoroki surmises. “I wonder what she’s been doing.”

Something moves in the periphery of Midoriya’s vision. A white shape, almost but not quite human, darting across the far end of the left corridor. He blinks and it’s gone. “I… I think I saw one? One of the ghosts.”

“Yeah,” says Todoroki, tone darkening. “I’m seeing them too.”

Midoriya turns and there, amassing at the end of the central corridor to stare Todoroki down, are three white, faceless, not-quite-human figures. They remind him immediately of the noumu, but their solidity is questionable—they must be composed of solid dry ice but they seem made of smoke instead. The effect is… ghostly.

They lumber down the hall toward Todoroki. Three turns to four, another one creeping in from the stairwell. Without thinking, Midoriya drifts to stand at Todoroki’s side. He hears Iida saying beside him, “I’m calling for reinforcements before this gets bad.”

“Are they conscious—sentient?” Midoriya mutters. “Are they homunculi?”

Todoroki raises his hand to keep Midoriya from coming any closer. “I’ll take care of them—”

“No splitting up!”

“Go find her,” Todoroki barks, and his hand bursts into flame. “Her range must weaken the more of them she controls. Try directly above me, on the second floor.”

Midoriya’s feet don’t want to move, but Iida starts dragging him down the corridor to the right—there’s another staircase at the end, they’ll go up and double back to the central corridor. “I hope Yuuei has excellent fire insurance,” Iida declares. “Midoriya-kun, should I carry you?” 

“No! No, I’m coming.” He tears himself away just as Todoroki sends a lash of fire toward the ice creatures. The flame brushes one and it evaporates with a hiss. 

Iida surges ahead, engines coming to life, until Midoriya has the good sense to activate his quirk and then just barely keeps up with him. In a matter of seconds they’re entering the stairwell. 

Where they’re greeted by a giant wall of ice, completely blocking the exit to the second floor.

“It’s just ice, right?” Midoriya says, approaching the smoking white barrier. “So we should be able to—bust through it?” Akita must have spent the past few hours preparing for their arrival. Which makes him wonder what else she’s got planned for them, and he’s all the more eager to get through this wall. Todoroki can handle himself fine on his own, but Midoriya doesn’t want that to be necessary. Not when they don’t know the full range of what Akita can do.

“Don’t let it touch your skin,” Iida warns, as Midoriya approaches the frozen doors, fist raised. The ice cracks and crumbles away in a punch and three solid kicks—he doesn’t even need One-for-All. He climbs through the hole he’s made and pushes open the door, then motions for Iida to follow.

Entering the second floor is like stepping into a sauna. A dark, empty, creepy sauna.

Iida immediately throws up the visor on his helmet. “I can’t breathe!”

“Why’s it so hot if she’s making ice?”

“Perhaps she’s like Todoroki, and needs to keep herself warm if she wants to keep producing cold?” Right. Midoriya has started to  sweat, and pulls back the hood of his jumpsuit. “Like, how the back of a refrigerator gets hot…”

“Yeah, I think you’re right.” They’ve made it halfway down the hall, and they’re starting to come up on where Todoroki said he thought Akita would be. The lights start to come on in the hall—motion sensors. If the lights are off, Akita’s been gone for at least ten minutes. “Where is she?” They reach the point at the very center of the floor, where four corridors meet and branch off in different directions. “She’s hiding.” Midoriya spins in a circle, then stops. The door to a nearby classroom sits partially ajar. “Iida—”

“Midoriya…”

“Deku,” says an unfriendly voice.

He wheels around. Ice is creeping up Iida’s chest, and the look of terror in his eyes as it covers his neck, and then his face, and his head completely—Midoriya’s heart stops. Iida isn’t afraid of what’s happening to him, Midoriya realizes. He’s afraid of what will happen now that Midoriya is alone.

Akita appears, stepping out from behind the Iida-sized block of smoking dry ice.

She looks different now than she did at the party. Like that night a happier spirit took possession of her body, and now it’s fled. She even carries herself differently, hunched and limping, her face drawn. Like Iida had predicted, she wears a heavy winter coat and a thick woollen hat. “He’s not dead yet,” she says, as if it were a petty concern. She moves toward Midoriya slowly and then pauses at a cautious distance.

“This isn’t a fight you want to have, Akita.” He finds a strong voice, calls it up from his chest. His arm tingles as he calls up One-for-All. “There are more of us than you. There’s no endgame—”

“I know that.”

“You’re taking on three of the best heroes, in one of the most important strongholds in the city. There’s no Villain Alliance to help you.”

“I don’t want a Villain Alliance,” Akita snaps, her rage coming out of nowhere. “I’m not a villain. I’m not a hero. I don’t expect to come out of this alive.” She raises her hands and Midoriya watches the icy smoke pour from her fingertips. It looks eerily like the ice half of Todoroki’s quirk. “I’ll die, but I’ll take you with me.” A faceless creature grows from the smoke, getting bigger, catching up in size with the ones he saw before. He should sucker punch her now, but at this range it’d kill her, and he hesitates to take a life if they can get her alive.

“Why?” The word comes out of him like a bullet. “Why are you doing this? Your father—”

At that word, father, a light snaps on behind Akita’s eyes. “You’re stupid! Why! Why not?” She flicks her wrists and the homunculi raise their heads to look at him with eyeless faces. He can’t fight the instinct to back away. They’re just ice. I’m wearing gloves.

The homunculi lunge for him, each latching around an arm. He’s about to hurl them both against the wall—Akita is already building another pair to replace them, but a touch of his quirk could shatter the floor under their feet, let alone a glorified ice sculpture—but he feels something seeping through the seam of his suit, through the minuscule gap between the threads. Under the cuff of his glove. Beneath the hem of his sleeve.

It hurts more than he expects, when the gas turns solid against his skin, trapping his arm. At first there’s just a twinge and he hisses and then the longer the cold presses against him, the more it hurts, until he knows it’s burning him. The homunculi appears to melt and reform around his body. His arm numbs, the joint of his shoulder numbs, and… and he can’t feel One-for-All. Can’t feel his arm enough to activate it, to do anything.

He slams his still-free arm down, shattering the homunculi latched there before it can do the same thing to his other side. But there are two more of them on his feet, and a more human touch ensnares his wrist. Akita is grinning at him. She freezes up his other side, immobilizing him completely. His vision starts to tunnel.

He might as well be fourteen again. Grasping for some straw of ability, something to fall back on. Something to keep living.

The feeling cripples him, physically, psychologically. Can I no longer be brave when I’m quirkless? It’s been so long, he’s done so much. Am I not the same person All Might thought was worthy? Did I lose it?

Akita releases her grasp, but leans in to murmur, “Are you really the Number One Hero, if you can’t get out of this?” She turns her back on him. Walks away. Words are failing him, and their absence deepens the tremendous lack in his chest. “I’m doing everyone a favor,” she says to herself. “I am. I am, I really am.”

It’s annoying, how long it takes Todoroki to join his friends upstairs. As it turns out, Akita planted another half dozen of her ghosts in classrooms around the first floor, and they all came out to see him when they heard the commotion. They seem to flock like zombies in movies—hive mind, bumping up against walls and furniture, but still strong enough to kill.

Thankfully, one or two seconds of fire and the things dissipate into gaseous carbon dioxide. He can also shatter them with a spike of ice, no problem. As he’s destroying them, it occurs to him that Akita may have laid this trap on the first floor intentionally. She knew his quirk was her biggest threat, so she set up an obstacle she knew he would take on, and bought herself time with Midoriya and Iida.

He channels the revelatory frustration into demolishing the ghosts in broad strokes of fire. It leaves him sweating buckets, but he’s finally alone in the (scorched) first floor hallway.

There’s ice over the doors at the end of the hall,  another annoyance keeping him from his friends, but he gets through it fast enough.

Or maybe not fast enough.

The scene that greets him on the second floor isn’t the worst he could have imagined, but barring death or major injury, it’s pretty bad.

He wonders what happened to Iida, then places the shape of an ice pillar. Shit. His suit’s sturdy enough to keep him alive if trapped, but that’s one less ally for this fight.

Akita’s figure is smaller than he expected, just a petite woman weighed down by a long winter coat. And it’s hot in here, too, she must have the heat up—hot enough to keep her internal temperature safe, but not hot enough to melt the foot of ice around Iida. Not at the speed Todoroki would want, anyway. And Midoriya—

“Finally,” she says, when she notices him. She sounds tired. “You’re the difficult one.”

“Don’t get close!” That’s Midoriya’s voice. Todoroki rushes a few paces down the hall and sees Midoriya around the corner: each of his appendages encased in ice, he’s frozen to the ground. But alive. Todoroki almost sighs in relief.

“You can’t bust out of that?”

“I can’t feel anything.” Midoriya’s teeth chatter and a strange emotion rears in Todoroki’s chest. He turns on Akita.

“I’m ending this.”

“It would have to be you, wouldn’t it?” Todoroki lights a fire in his palm. Akita is backing away from him, but he matches her strides. “You’re the one who understands me. We’re the same.” Confusion crosses Midoriya’s face when Akita says this.

Todoroki hates that he knows exactly what she means.

And it’s not about their quirks. That’s just some cruel irony, something he considered after the fact.

“You know nothing about me,” he answers evenly.

“No! No, I know everything. You only have to look a little—blind items, hospital visits. I do my research. Your family is so famous.”

Akita is smiling, manic. He swallows. Changes tactic. “Why did you hate your father?” Akita’s face twists into agony.

“Why? How do you not know why?”

Todoroki approaches her, letting the flame in his hand lick higher. “Your mother is quirkless.” Akita points at him, nods frantically.

“Yes! You do get it—”

“Your father quit heroics. He stopped working to protect people like her.”

“He deserved what happened to him.” Extending her arms, Akita starts work on a new homunculi, twice the size of the others. “Heroes who can’t defend themselves, let alone others! He left us alone—he was useless. He made my mother cry when he died, because he was so fucking useless. He left us.”

“I see,” says Todoroki, examining the hall behind Akita. One good move, at the right angle, he could wall them in. Keep her from escaping.

“So you do understand!”

“You have none of my sympathy. You’re a murderer.”

Akita’s face falls. She stops backing away and, after a pause, steps toward him. Her hands fall away from the homunculi she’s created, and it rears its faceless head, moving like a gorilla. “But, Shouto,” she says, with genuine confusion. “If someone could give your father what he deserves, wouldn’t you want to be like him, too?”

He can’t remember the last time his heart beat so hard in the presence of a villain. Not even in September had his body reacted like this. Unnerved. Hairs standing on end. “You’re right, I’m nothing like my father. But I’m nothing like you, either.” He sends a wash of fire at Akita, and her giant pet. It temporarily obscure his view of them but he hears Akita’s screech.

From behind him there’s a sound like a gunshot or—a car engine backfiring. He twists around, as much as he can without taking his eyes off their opponent.

“It’s Iida,” Midoriya shouts. He’d stayed quiet throughout that whole encounter. Listening.

Iida’s busted through the bottom half of his cocoon and crouches to free himself. “The heat—from my exhaust,” he hacks, “I melted. The ice!” He manages to raise a fist in the air, then dissolves into a coughing fit, which is the perfect distraction.

Todoroki steps hard and throws up a wall of ice to the ceiling, blocking off the exit behind Akita. Now she’ll have to go through two—three of them to escape. Akita hisses, and her ice gorilla starts lumbering forward, in his direction.

Recovered, Iida yells, “Free Midoriya, I can hold it off!” Todoroki takes his word for it and dashes back to where Midoriya’s frozen. His face has gone pale and clammy, and he shivers incessantly, eyes half-lidded. He’s weak, it makes Todoroki sick to see him like this. Hypothermia, maybe, since he can’t use his quirk to strengthen his body against the cold. But the way the ice encases his limbs, it could take hours to melt it off safely without burning him.

“Todoroki, do it quickly.”

He stiffens. Midoriya has pried his eyes open and looks him right in the eye. “I could burn you,” Todoroki says in an exhale.

“You have to do it! There’s no time—”  Behind them, Iida sideswipes the ice monster, making sure it catches the wave of heat from his exhaust. But that’ll never kill it, just buy them a minute.

Todoroki’s hand is shaking, he realizes. “I don’t want to hurt you.” He looks at his palm and he can see Midoriya’s instead—the cracks along the knuckles. Midoriya felt pain, and it was his fault, and those scars never went away.

“You’re helping me—I can take the pain, you know I can.”

“Let me do it slowly—”

“There’s no time!” This Midoriya shouts at him, a layer beneath his voice that’s astonished and horrified Todoroki could ever hesitate like this, in a moment when the stakes are high. And it’s true, if it were anyone else, any other friend he needed to rescue or even a civilian, he would apologize and tell them they could have their life in exchange for the pain. That is the rational, practical, effective thing to do.

I’m trying to figure out how I feel about you.

At least he can walk away from this knowing for sure, what seemed so strangely possible a few hours ago, in the intimacy of his living room.

He’d hoped Midoriya wouldn’t cry out, but this was never going to be easy or fun, so he shouldn’t have hoped to begin with. Todoroki does it, though—smothers his friend in flame and keeps the heat up until Midoriya screams that he can feel it, meaning he feels something. Once he has sensation back in most of his body, he activates his quirk and his skin starts to glow. There are smoking holes in his jumpsuit and Todoroki can see the skin of his arms, flaming red. It must hurt a lot, but Midoriya charges for the ice monster as if unscathed. Maybe he can’t feel it over the adrenaline.

“You take Akita, we’ll take this thing,” he barks over his shoulder.

Todoroki goes after their villain wordlessly. She seems more frightened of him than she did before, like he changed in the minute since they last went head-to-head. He backs her into the ice wall he created and charges her, slamming her against the hard surface. Clearly she isn’t trained in hand-to-hand, and he has the size advantage. When she tries to ice him, he burns her, and ultimately he encases her hands in ice as a restraint—her quirk only thickens the frozen brick around her hands, backfiring, ice creeping to her elbows.

She looks up into his eyes, knowings she’s caught, and whispers, “Kill me.”

“No.”

“You’re just like him,” she says, big-eyed. “Just like Otousan.” It doesn’t matter whose she means.

He turns in time to watch Midoriya deliver a single punch that shatters the ice monster from head to foot. The shards fly and Midoriya’s fist sails through, colliding with the tile floor, which also shatters.

It’s quiet in the hall, a quiet victory. The three of them are panting.

Iida finally breaks the silence to wheeze, “Where on earth are our reinforcements?”

Once the police and emergency crews arrive, Midoriya gets rushed into the care of an EMT (as per usual), Iida takes over the arrest and transport of Akita, and Todoroki disappears for a solid half an hour. Midoriya looks for him, but he must have gone into a classroom or to another floor. He tries not to let himself worry too much. That conversation Todoroki had with Akita, the things she’d said… Midoriya would need a moment to himself, too. To be quiet. To remember who he is.

The pain distracts him for a while. The technicians take away his tattered hero costume—that always happens, always—and give him a t-shirt and clean shorts, in just the right size, like they were prepared for it. After some morphine, he gets the burns and frostbite along his arms and legs looked after and bandaged. “You’ll probably have some scarring,” one of the technicians tells him. More for the pile, great.

A clean-up crew has gone to town on the scorch marks and melting ice scattered everywhere. Nedzu-sensei has arrived, and puzzles over the crater Midoriya’s fist left in the middle of the hall.

Iida comes over and says a quick goodbye. He’s given Tsukauchi his statement and will go back to the police station with Akita. “Have you seen Todoroki? They need his statement, since he apprehended her.”

Midoriya shrugs. “I think it might have to wait.”

“Ah. Okay. Just… let him know.” Iida reaches out and mimes patting his shoulder, which is still sensitive to touch. “Good work today.”

“You too, Iida.” He sends his partner off with a smile.

After a while, sitting on a stretcher doing nothing, his eyes slip closed. On his finger’s a heart rate monitor, and he taps it against his knee. He opens his eyes a minute later because he feels someone watching him.  Todoroki, down the hall. He leans on the wall and stares openly at Midoriya.

Midoriya raises a hand and beckons him. Todoroki moves toward him stiffly. He must’ve pulled something during the fight. He can’t seem to help staring at the bandages.

Midoriya doesn’t need him to say he feels guilty, outright. “I told you to do it.” He tries to smile, a little.

Todoroki isn’t smiling. Wordlessly, he slips his hands into his pockets.

So Midoriya stops smiling, too. “Do you want to talk about…”

“I hesitated.”

After a beat, he nods. “It’s okay—”

“It’s not okay,” Todoroki says, looking down. “I’ve never hesitated saving someone before. Even when there were risks.”

The tone of Todoroki’s voice is scarier than anything else that happened today. Hour ago they were so close and now, everything rests on the edge in Todoroki’s voice. “And… you think that’s about…”

Todoroki lifts his head. “It’s you. Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” Midoriya says reflexively.

“Don’t apologize. I never,” Todoroki clears his throat and continues, louder, “really have to tell myself to do things that… make sense. I always do them automatically. I’ve never questioned logic, once I understood it.” Midoriya’s pulse is doing something crazy. The EMT who has his heart rate monitor glances over at them curiously. “Today I hesitated because I didn’t want to hurt you. I’m…” He lowers his head again. “Afraid. That something will happen that’s permanent. To you, or me. Something worse than a scar.”

Midoriya starts to say, “It won’t—” But Todoroki is shaking his head before he can finish the thought.

“It could. It’s our job to take those risks so other people don’t have to. We understand that about each other. That always comes first.”

He’s right. He’s right, and Midoriya finds himself wishing yet again that he weren’t.

“But.”

If there were ever a word Midoriya wants to hear right now, it’s but. The utterance of this syllable pulls Midoriya up, physically, stiffens his back. Todoroki’s eyes are squeezed shut.

“Either of us could not be here tomorrow. We live with that. It only makes sense to live like…” He struggles to put the last idea together. He wants to say it just right, Midoriya can see that in his face, and it fills him with a soaring feeling. “I wouldn’t want to regret that I never told you.” He tilts his head back. “I guess I probably wouldn’t regret it if I were dead, because I’d be dead.”

“Yeah?” says Midoriya, about to burst out laughing. He can barely contain himself.

“I’m doing poorly, aren’t I?”

“No! No, keep going, please.”

“Do I need to say it?”

“Yes.” Midoriya could kick him for this question. He’s smiling like an idiot. He can see Todoroki wants to smile too.

“You know what I’m—fine,” Todoroki says, when Midoriya makes a distressed noise.

Todoroki takes a long look at him, his mouth opening, looking soft to the touch. He seems trapped in the moment of almost, as though he didn’t think it could be this easy and he’s waiting for a final hurdle to stop him.

“I’m in love with you.”

What.

“What?” Midoriya hears himself say.

Todoroki’s face opens curiously. The surprise confuses him, and it confuses Midoriya too. They both thought they knew what was about to happen.

In love with you.

“You love me?”

Todoroki shifts back, away from him. No, it’s not like that. Don’t move away. “What did you think?”

“Just—that you like me, or—”

“I think I skipped the crush.” That does sound like him. Todoroki Shouto with a crush. Midoriya should have known, should have guessed. “Now you see why it complicates things.”

“Complicates things,” Midoriya repeats. He can’t quite think what to say—he’d prepared I like you too, sort of, in the back of his head. But this floors him. Anything he could say would be inadequate, wouldn’t it?

“But I’m glad I told you,” Todoroki is saying. His voice has lost some of its rawness, it slips back into the tactical and precise. Is he hurt? Does he think—could he have read rejection, somewhere in Midoriya’s response? “I wouldn’t want it to go unsaid, as long as we’re risking our lives together.”

“Todoroki—”

Todoroki bows. When he straightens up, his face is blank.

He’s… going to leave. It was a confession, but—just that?

“I should head by the police station for Akita’s booking,” he announces. “I’ll see you later.” And so Todoroki turns and leaves, moving fast. Too fast.

“You can’t just say that, and—” Midoriya starts climbing off the stretcher but the pain comes at him from every angle, and the end of his complaint turns into a yelp. Then he gets swarmed by the emergency technicians, and it’s all Deku-san, you have to go slow. Deku-san, calm down.They have no idea.

Watching Todoroki go and not doing anything about it is like letting the future walk away. In Todoroki’s words, it just doesn’t make sense. And Midoriya Izuku has never been one to let an opportunity slip away.

Todoroki showers in the locker room at the station. Bloody soot runs off his skin and circles the drain. He has more injuries than he’d thought, scrapes and bruises and whatnot. As he’s drying off, he wipes clear one of the mirrors over the skin. A cut on his cheek is deeper than he thought. Might need to have it stitched up. Or he could have a scar on his right cheek to match the burn on his left.

He takes the change of clothes he’s offered and spends half an hour giving his statement and answering Tsukauchi’s questions. By the time they let him go, the sun is coming up outside.

Iida, in his street clothes, is dozing off on a bench by the door. Todoroki stands over him, waiting to see if he’ll wake up on his own, then nudges his friend’s foot. Iida’s eyes fly open.

“Hi!”

“Why haven’t you gone home?”

“I wanted to check in with you.” Iida clambers to his feet. “I haven’t seen you since Akita was captured. You did extremely well.”

“Thanks.” The two of them start to walk out together.  The street outside the station is pink and quiet in the daybreak.

“They have her in custody and some kind of mental health rehabilitation is being discussed.” Iida produces a small piece of folded paper from his pocket and hands it to Todoroki. “Tsukauchi gave me this.” Todoroki unfolds it: a check. A decent-sized check, too, considering how long it took them to catch her.

“Are you happy?” Todoroki asks, returning the paper.

“Of course! We’ve—Triforce had its first success.” Iida is smiling, but when he glances at Todoroki, his nose wrinkles. “Aren’t you happy? You were the one who caught her, really.”

“We all did that.” It’s not Iida’s fault he doesn’t know about the things Akita said to him. He couldn’t have heard. And it would be hard to explain, without repeating everything, why it was Todoroki disappeared after the fight ended. How he needed to be alone, to sit in the quiet of a third floor bathroom and remember himself.

Voices argued across the interior of his mind. You are just like him, Akita said, but he could hear his mother, too. You have all the good things in you. He heard them and he saw—Midoriya. The outline of his face in his darkened living room, earlier that night. How pale and sick he’d looked later, trapped and shivering.

He came out of that contemplation with a weight on his chest. He needed relief.

So when he told Midoriya, he didn’t seek reciprocation. He never hoped for I feel the same. He was only prying open up a part of himself, letting this neglected corner of his heart breathe. For so long he thought it didn’t exist; giving the feeling a voice was supposed to satisfy him.

And yet Midoriya’s response had surprised him. He didn’t know what it was he’d expected instead, but he walked away feeling not quite the relief he sought. Why was that? Hadn’t he done what he set out to do? Rationally the problem had been solved. But he didn’t feel any better.

“You don’t seem particularly happy about it,” Iida says, with his Iida-specific attempt at gentleness. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes.” He ducks his head and lengthens his stride, passing the entrance to the metro. “I think I’ll walk back to my place. You take the train.”

Iida stops and glances down the stairs. His brow furrows. “You’re sure? I can get the next station over—”

“No. Go home and rest. We all deserve a day off.”

Iida sucks in a deep breath, exhales, and nods. “Rest well, Todoroki-kun,” he says, and descends into the metro.

He makes it home just as the sun rises over the city. He stands outside the door to his apartment and stares at the lock before fitting his key into it. On the way out, Midoriya struggled to lock up behind them because his hands shook. Todoroki had to do it for him. He unlocks it easily now and slips inside.

He stops short in the doorway. The apartment, his apartment, always dependably quiet and empty, is… filled with music.

It’s not particularly loud or bombastic, as music goes, but it’s more than he’s ever heard in here. He doesn’t even have a stereo. The sound is soft and bouncy, a crackle just under the melody, like you’d expect from something older.

Todoroki silently removes his shoes, then shuts the door behind him. At the small noise it makes, announcing his presence, he hears a tiny startled sound from the living room.

Midoriya.

Todoroki finds him sitting up on the couch, rubbing his eyes. There’s a record player on the floor nearby, spinning out music. The tune is recognizable, the lyrics in English. “I fell asleep,” Midoriya mutters.

“You should be in the hospital.”

“They wanted me to stay for observation, but I…” He pauses and sways in his seat. Todoroki starts to reach out and support him, but he’s getting to his feet. Determination hardens his expression. “I had to come back here.”

“At least go to sleep now,” Todoroki says, regardless of how the adrenaline’s kept him wide awake. It must be four or five o’clock in the morning. The sunrise turns the living room pink and orange.

“In a little while. First—first.” Midoriya stumbles away from the couch, and extends his bandaged arms to Todoroki. “We’re going to dance.”

That… wasn’t what he expected.

“You want to…”

Midoriya nods once, his lip between his teeth. “Last night, I never got to lead you. Let’s do it now.” Todoroki doesn’t move. The best course of action won’t come to him. If he dances, what happens? And if he doesn’t, what then? Everything in this moment is loaded with uncertainty. His left side feels warm. “Please,” Midoriya says. “It’s celebrating, okay? We won.” His face makes Todoroki’s body do stupid things. Things his brain doesn’t sanction. He moves toward Midoriya as if entranced and tries not to consider that his confession is being used against him.

“Where did you get the record player?”

“I have my ways.” Smiling, Todoroki stops a foot from him and glances down. Midoriya adds, losing his coyness, “For some reason my mother only has Jackson Five records, sorry.” Last night when they stood in this spot, they wore their tuxes, the night was black outside the window, they moved to silent music. Now they’re both wearing borrowed sweats, dancing to an old song in the light of the morning. Midoriya offers Todoroki his hand, and he takes it gingerly, wary of the bandages.

Midoriya slides his palm under Todoroki’s shoulder and Todoroki’s stomach contracts. The same thing happened the last time Midoriya led him, even for a second—he clenches his jaw to keep his hand from getting hot again. “Lead with your weight, right?” Midoriya mutters, eyes on his feet.

“Don’t look down.” Midoriya’s head pops up. Todoroki can barely remember what he meant. “You’ll start running into things. You’re supposed to pay attention to your partner.”

“Okay.” He wishes he’d never said anything: now Midoriya looks him right in the eye. They move slowly, to a slow song. “How am I doing?”

“Bad.”

“Wow,” Midoriya laughs. “You’re honest.”

“If you start stepping on my feet, we have to stop.”

“I’ll be careful. I promise.” Midoriya keeps smiling up at him and takes them another couple of steps. “You left pretty quickly before.” Letting himself be guided around the floor, Todoroki’s eyes slip closed.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I just didn’t have time to respond, is all.”

“How did you want to respond?” Todoroki asks, though he isn’t sure he wants to know. Midoriya’s hand slips away from his shoulder, and then the other vacates his hand. He opens his eyes just as Midoriya’s palms cup his face, and Midoriya throws himself up on his tiptoes, his chest pressing against Todoroki’s he leans in.

Over eighteen-odd years, Todoroki has trained his reaction time down to a perfect sliver of efficient calculation, honing his natural reflexes into a weapon. But, somehow, in this corner of his apartment that’s safe and quiet and easy to occupy at this moment, totally divergent from every battlefield and stadium ground, he fails. He has the thought that he needs to act, in the critical half-second where he could, but the clock runs down to impact and he doesn’t move.

He is too slow to stop Midoriya Izuku from kissing him.

His nose wrinkling sweetly, Midoriya presses his lips against Todoroki’s, and that’s it. It’s done, it’s happened. He defeated Akita but he lost to Midoriya’s mouth.

Never having been kissed before, and never having contemplated what it would be like if he were, everything about the sensation surprises him. It’s warm, it’s wet, the exchange of breath in the air between them feels humid like before a rainstorm. He doesn’t move except to hold Midoriya’s shoulders, unsure what to do with his hands. Midoriya parts his lips, and his—tongue? At the small gasp that escapes Todoroki, Midoriya pulls away an inch.

“You have to—relax, open your mouth, okay?”

“Midoriya—”

“You’re going to regret it if you don’t kiss me back.” Todoroki’s protest sticks in his throat. Midoriya sees through his hesitation, gripping his face desperately. “Please, it’s what you were saying before… There’s no reason you shouldn’t. You can have this.” He smiles, though his eyes are wet. Ah. Fuck. “I want to give it to you.”

“Don’t cry,” Todoroki manages, his voice cracking.

“I’m trying.” Midoriya swallows hard, his smile gets bigger. “Do you trust me?”

“Of course.” Completely. With my life.

“Then,” Midoriya exhales. “Open your mouth and kiss me.” His hands slip down to Todoroki’s shoulders, and he sinks down from his toes. “If we have to be ready to die tomorrow, then we deserve to get what we want today.”

So that was the problem before. Why he couldn’t get relief, just saying how he felt. Because he conceived of love as a opinion, a passive response to this person in his life—when it was wanting he felt, really. And no wonder, he’d called himself impulsive because he acted without reason, but there had always been a reason, only it was one he couldn’t see. The reason was that he loved Midoriya, and wanted to be close to him.

It takes Midoriya saying this word, want, for him to get it, but understanding fills his lungs like cool air. His chest expands. It lifts him up.

He steps closer and, with the touch of his thumb, tilts back Midoriya’s head. A hint of anxiety flashes in Midoriya’s eyes: all that speech-making, pulling out his hero’s rhetoric, and still he gets flustered when he succeeds. He is too modest, sometimes. Doesn’t know his own strength.

“Open my mouth?” he confirms, leaning down. He gets a tiny nod, one that makes their noses bump. He covers Midoriya’s mouth with his own and feels Midoriya sigh against him, his shoulders shuddering. He moves his lips, pressing back into Todoroki, who feels fingers sneaking through the hair at the nape of his neck.

The tongue thing begins to… make sense. In fact, he’s considering that it might be the smartest idea anyone has ever had. Ever. In history.

Midoriya breaks away from him, wheezing. “You’re really hot?” Todoroki blinks. Admittedly he has had a few people remark on that, but—horror comes over Midoriya’s face. “Temperature-wise, I mean! You’re getting super warm.”

“Oh. Yes, I’m freaking out a little.”

“That’s the most monotone I’ve ever heard anyone say they’re freaking out,” says Midoriya, about to laugh. Todoroki starts pulling off the sweatshirt they gave him at the station and almost takes the shirt with it. When his vision’s clear of clothes, he can see Midoriya, red-faced, looking away. Hmph.

“I also think you’re attractive,” he offers helpfully. But Midoriya buries his face in his hands? “Sorry, was that…”

“No, no, thank you!”

Todoroki leans back and nods. Midoriya peeks at him between splayed fingers and, recovering from embarrassment, drops his hands from his face. Todoroki gives him a smile, and that seems to make him smile, too.

“You need stitches on your cheek.”

Todoroki reaches up to test the cut. “Are you sure?”

“Yes! I know injuries.” And that won’t get easier to handle now, Todoroki realizes with a frown. “We should try to get some sleep first, though.”

“But,” says Todoroki, eyeing the record player. “I like this song.” Midoriya’s mouth falls open, and Todoroki extends his hands. “One more?”

He watches Midoriya’s eyes trace his palm, and then the corners of his mouth lift. “Only if you lead.”

“Whatever you like.”

“Okay then.” Midoriya presses their hands together, a big grin splitting his face. The sun has made its entrance to the day, and its light haloes him in gold as it streams through the windows. “One more.”

Chapter Text

They take a day off. Todoroki starts to think they should take two days off.

“I’m more famous.”

“I have more distinguishing features.”

“It’s your name on the order! If he sees me, he might put two and two together—”

“He won’t expect to see Deku and you’re not in costume. He won’t think anything of it.”

“But if he did recognize me, in your apartment…”

Todoroki sighs and shuts his eyes. “Fine. Do you want me to bring you the pizza in bed?”

Midoriya, his face shoved into a pillow, peeks at him with one eye. He nods. It’s childlike, and a bruise purples his cheekbone. This makes Todoroki want to… do something. His general revelation about his feelings for Midoriya hasn’t percolated into the understanding of his momentary whims. So, for now, meeting Midoriya’s will have to suffice. “All right, I’m getting up.” 

Midoriya punches the air above the bed in victory. Todoroki sits up with a wince. In the activity following the fight, he forgot to stretch, and whatever he pulled taking Akita down has gone stiff. Seeing him limp, Midoriya half-clambers out of the bed.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I pulled something in my back.”

“You… are you eighty?”

“It happens, when you have a lot of muscles in your back.”

As Todoroki shuffles out of the bedroom, he hears Midoriya gasp, and say, “Are you calling me skinny?”

The doorbell is ringing incessantly. Todoroki digs through the hall closet for his beanie and a pair of sunglasses. He answers the door wearing both, shoves cash at the bewildered delivery guy, and shuts the door the second the pizza is in his hands. Not the politest, but he tips two-hundred percent. 

Midoriya bursts out laughing at the sight of him. “You’re wearing sunglasses at six o’clock at night.  He had to know you’re famous.”

“I don’t care if he knows I’m famous, as long as he doesn’t know what kind of famous I am.”

Midoriya shrugs and beams, accepting the pizza so Todoroki can carefully lower himself back into bed. Todoroki makes to open the box and get himself a slice—he can’t remember the last time he ate, and his stomach is getting impatient—but Midoriya’s fingers ensnare his wrist, and he gets pulled into a less-than-coordinated kiss. “Sorry,” Midoriya says when he sits back, pink-faced. “That was for before you eat a bunch of cheese.” But who gives a fuck about cheese, honestly: Todoroki leans forward, chasing his mouth. (He prefers open-mouth to closed, he’s figured out, now that he knows about these things. It’s a superior kind of embrace.) He gets a hand around the back of Midoriya’s neck and pulls him into another kiss, this one deeper, Midoriya making an alarmed noise at his tongue. But he doesn’t think you’re supposed to announce when you do that, or anything.

After the shock’s worn off it turns more mutual. They’d taken a few minutes to make out in bed before falling asleep, and he learned that some nipping and tugging with teeth is okay, and also kissing the neck. Being kissed on the neck by Midoriya made him singe a pillowcase, but it was worth it. For the educational experience. Yeah.

Midoriya makes little flustered noises as they kiss and Todoroki climbs closer to him, but a hand materializes over his mouth. “Mm, wait. I want to eat this pizza, I do. I’m starving.” Todoroki is starving too, but starving in more ways than one. The hunger either way is… equally valid. He settles back and opens the box for the both of them.

“I can’t believe it’s already six o’clock,” he thinks out loud, around a too-hot bite. He doesn’t mind the heat—if he chews it on the right side he can cool it down. Midoriya is puffing on his slice to get it to a reasonable temperature. 

“That’s probably because we slept until five.” Midoriya finally gets a bite of food and talks with his mouth full. “My sleep schedule is going to be so weird. Oh, after we eat, we have to take you to the ER and get your cheek stitched up.” Todoroki nods.

“They should check on your bandages, too.”

Midoriya gives a tiny shrug and takes another bite.

Todoroki imagines this hospital trip, and how they’ll return home with plenty of time left in the evening. And they’ve both slept so long, they’re bound to be up late. Spurred on by these considerations and some unknown force that makes his stomach flip, he asks, “Do you want to sleep together tonight?”

Midoriya’s chewing slows. He swallows. “Oh, you mean, in your bed. Like we just did.”

Todoroki shrugs. “I was asking if you want to have sex.”

A strange thing happens on Midoriya’s face. His eyes go big, at first, and then narrow, and then his mouth twists like he’s just eaten something sour. And then, bizarrely, it goes blank. Todoroki eats and waits patiently for him to work through whatever is happening. “Todoroki.” He raises an eyebrow, yeah? “You’ve never…”

“No.” Todoroki finishes up his slice and reaches for a tissue from the nightstand to wipe his hands. He grabs one for Midoriya, too. “But it shouldn’t be tough to get the hang of.” Admittedly he hasn’t thought about the process much, but it doesn’t sound especially challenging. (Though if he did have trouble, the resulting tension would be detrimental to his and Midoriya’s fledging relationship. And there’s a lot that could go wrong—suddenly he regrets bringing it up. He’d just wanted clear expectations.) 

Midoriya ducks his head. “That’s… not really what I’m getting at.”

This reaction, Midoriya’s immediate reservation, puzzles Todoroki. He knows Midoriya had dated someone for over a year, so it seems like it should be more straightforward than this? He should know if he wants to or not. They can get the conversation out of the way. “You’ve had it before.”

“Not with…” Lip between his teeth, Midoriya’s glance is shy. Oh. So it’s the logistical challenge. 

Todoroki nods decisively. “We can take it slow, then.” He tries not to let relief creep into his voice. 

“You—Todoroki, do you feel ready?”

The feeling of readiness is abstract and foreign to him. He wouldn’t know it if it passed through him. He shrugs again. “We can do whatever you want.”

“It’s not about me.” Midoriya shakes his head. “Well, it is about me, but it’s about you too. It’s about us. We have to agree on it.”

“What is there to agree on?”

“That we both want it! That…” Todoroki can feel Midoriya’s eyes on him, searching, and he occupies himself devouring another slice in order to deflect. “You asked me because you aren’t ready.”

Midoriya sounds so fucking confident in that read, and it’s unsettling how true it rings to Todoroki, too. He hadn’t even noticed. “So how do I know when I’m ready?”

“I don’t know, it’ll probably just happen organically.” What if it doesn’t? he wants to ask. He’s nagged by the thought that something might be wrong with him, yet another way he’s broken. Midoriya’s voice gets very quiet when he says, “We can always work up to it.”

“What does that mean?”

“Um. I… can’t talk about it while we have a pizza in the bed.”

“Fair enough.” Todoroki starts on his third slice. “Show me later.”

Midoriya smiles behind his hand. “Okay, I will. I’ll show you later.” He raises his voice to add, “So stop freaking out.”

“I’m not freaking out.” Todoroki can’t even convince himself with that one. 

“Aha!” Midoriya thrusts a finger in his face. “I got it! I read you like a book, didn’t I?”

Todoroki can’t help that Midoriya’s good humor is infectious: he smiles. “Are you going to stop asking what I’m thinking?”

“It’s no good when you don’t even know.”

“Mmm,” he agrees, mouth full.

“This is fun,” Midoriya declares, starting on another slice. Todoroki nods. It is just that, fun. Somehow he never got the impression that this kind of thing, romance, could be fun. After a moment of chewing, Midoriya nudges him with a socked foot. “Hey, can I float an idea by you?”

“Yeah?”

Midoriya grins at him. “What if we take tomorrow off, too?”

They crawled into bed together at about six o’clock the morning after the fight, but first they made a pact: to turn off their phones, together. They put them side-by-side and watched the screens go blank in the same second. It was an agreement to belong only to each other for a few hours. They left the phones in the kitchen, relegated to a drawer like twine or matches or other useful but unimportant household accessories. 

Around noon the following day, after thirty hours of radio silence from both of them, Midoriya finally takes a shower. It’s long and hot and steamy, and he feels swoopy from everything that’s happened, like he’s been riding a low-rise roller coaster the whole time. With a big hill at the end that left him weak-kneed and drunk on adrenaline—if that’s how working up to it made him feel, he can’t imagine how he’s going to survive the real thing, but that’s a problem for future Midoriya. They both dozed off afterward. He woke up first and tiptoed off to get cleaned up.

On the way back to the bedroom, he catches sight of the kitchen drawer and pauses. Even through their brief excursion to the hospital, the phones went untouched. Todoroki chose their seats in the waiting room so they wouldn’t face the television playing a 24-hour news cycle.

Thirty hours is a long time to go without contacting the outside world, even with everyone aware of their whereabouts and having left plenty of reliable people in charge. The Symbol of Peace doesn’t get vacation days.

Midoriya swallows his doubts and drags himself away from the kitchen. 

Now awake, Todoroki is stretching over the length of the bed, naked but for his underwear, the sheets pushed down to his hips so his torso is all… out there. Midoriya, with just the towel around his waist, pads over and rifles through the dresser for a t-shirt and a pair of boxers. The latter is hard won. “I can’t believe you wear boxer briefs,” he says, more to himself than Todoroki. Boxer briefs are tight and leave nothing to the imagination, as he discovered last night.

“I can’t believe you can move efficiently in boxers.”

Midoriya pulls a face. “What are you talking about?”

“No give,” Todoroki says sleepily, like that explained it. 

Midoriya gets the shirt on first; he and Todoroki have objectively comparable bodies but Todoroki just seems to fit the muscles better. The way he lies in bed topless is borderline pornographic, whereas Midoriya sometimes looks down at his chest and panics, because that can’t be his body? He spent fourteen years of his life stick-thin, he’s always startled to remember what he’s become.

He challenges himself to get on Todoroki’s lone pair of normal boxers on without dropping the towel or revealing himself or falling flat on his face. He spends a long moment standing there, looking around and hoping the answer will come to him.

“I’m covering my eyes.” He checks over his shoulder and Todoroki has slung his arm over his face. Midoriya exhales, drops the towel, and hastily pulls on the boxers. “I’ve seen everything, you know—”

“This is different! This is super different.”

After a beat of quiet, Todoroki mutters, “I’m definitely gay.”

“Did you peek?”

“No, I was remembering.”

Now clothed, Midoriya wheels around. Todoroki immediately points out, “Those are my clothes.”

“Yeah, we’re pretty much the same size, I think.”

“But they’re mine.” He sounds… confused? “Why don’t you want to go to your room and get your clothes?”

Midoriya blinks at Todoroki, and then down at his commandeered pajamas. He doesn’t know how to answer that question. Why had he instinctively moved to take clothes from Todoroki’s wardrobe? He could’ve easily grabbed a shirt and boxers from his stuff on the way back from the bath. But he hadn’t even considered it. Huh.

A memory flashes through his head: Ochako parading around in one of his sweatshirts. Oh no.

He murmurs in disbelief, “I’m the girl.”

“You’re definitely not the girl.” He didn’t mean for Todoroki to hear that, damn. Now he’s got a pair of mismatched eyes staring him down. “We’re both men. Why would one of us be a girl? That doesn’t make sense.”

 Midoriya perches on the edge of the bed, one leg tucked under himself. “I don’t know. If people ever know about us, they might ask. Like, people who only date opposite genders.”

Todoroki sits up. “That’s idiotic.”

“What would you tell them?”

“I’d say, ’which one of you is the driver?’ And when they said, ’what do you mean? We both drive,’ I’d say same here.”

Midoriya blinks at him, then smiles. “I like you, Todoroki.” 

Todoroki raises an eyebrow, and glances down when he says, “You can wear my clothes if you need to.”

“You can wear my clothes, too!”

“Even that penguin sweater?”

Midoriya brightens. “You like my penguin sweater?” Said sweater, patterned in baby king penguins, is one of his most controversial clothing items. To think it has Todoroki’s approval—

And then he catches the smirk. He grabs a pillow and tries to swing it at Todoroki’s head, but an arm snakes around his waist. “Don’t attack me.” Midoriya rallies against him and they fall back to the mattress, tussling. 

“You made fun of me!”

“Because your sweater’s ugly.” 

“I thought you couldn’t make a joke, Todoroki—”

“Call me Shouto, you’ve sucked my—”

Blushing scarlet and (ironically) straddling Todoroki, Midoriya shoves the pillow over his depraved mouth before he can finish the sentence. 

Somewhere in the apartment, a phone begins to ring. 

Midoriya almost says, I’ll get it, before he remembers their phones are in a drawer, very much dead to the world. He removes the pillow from Todoroki’s face, but doesn’t climb off him. 

“What is that?” 

“The landline, I think.” Todoroki starts to get up and Midoriya lets him go. 

“You have a landline?”

“It’s for emergencies, I gave you the number?”

Maybe he does remember that, hm. Todoroki disappears into the main room, and after a moment of sitting alone, Midoriya gets up and follows him. 

Todoroki is leaning on the window, phone to his ear. He didn’t bother throwing clothes on so he’s just like, parading around in boxer briefs, and Midoriya has trouble not staring at… everything, really? “What’s the problem?” Oh, a problem. That’s sufficiently sobering. Midoriya swallows and settles on the sofa, hugging a throw pillow to his chest. Todoroki glances up. “I asked what the problem is, Iida.”

“Iida?” Do they have another case, or… or did something happen with Akita? The thought of returning to work squeezes his chest—he doesn’t realize just how much he’s enjoyed their vacation until faced with the prospect of ending it early.

“Why do we have to come in?” Todoroki listens, and then his eyes drift to Midoriya. “Yeah. He’s here. I’ll bring him.” He hangs up.

“What’s going on?”

“He wouldn’t tell me.” Todoroki spins the handset in his palm. “He said it was urgent. He didn’t sound afraid.”

“That’s something,” says Midoriya weakly. He offers Todoroki the tiniest smile and gets a frown in return. “We can always come back here after.”

Heaving a sigh, Todoroki strides into the kitchen, where he slams the phone back into its stand. He leans over the island and squeezes his eyes shut.

“I don’t want to go either,” Midoriya says, peeking at him over the back of the couch.

“I know.” Todoroki looks back under his shoulder. “It fucking sucks.”

His honesty is always something to smile at. And when Todoroki sees him smile, he lurches toward the couch. “Wait, what are you doing?” Todoroki climbs over the back of the couch and on top of a startled, squeaking Midoriya. “Shouto—”

“Five more minutes,” Todoroki grunts, going limp on top of Midoriya like some kind of bulky, half-heating half-cooling human blanket. “Five more minutes,” he repeats, this time into Midoriya’s neck. Midoriya’s arms fold naturally around his shoulders. His heart’s pounding, this is almost too much, he shouldn’t be able to survive it. He isn’t sure he will, for several reasons: 1) Todoroki has a few pounds and inches on him, and he’s noticing that now more than he ever has before; 1a) Todoroki is still in his underwear; 2) Todoroki has melted into puppy-like contentedness, curled around and against him.

Five more minutes. If only it were hours, or another whole day.

He reaches down and brushes a lick of red hair away from Todoroki’s face. Most of the skin he can see here is scarred. Todoroki reaches up and pushes the hair back down to cover it.

How weird. And come to think of it, Midoriya remembers seeing him do this before—absently while they were working, or in class. Last night, while they were… he lay back with the scarred side of his face turned toward the pillow.”

“Hey,” Midoriya starts to ask. “You know you don’t have to—”

“I don’t want you to have to look at it.” He’d correctly anticipated what Midoriya wanted to say. He doesn’t look up as he explains, but he doesn’t sound upset. “It’s worse up close.”

“You know I don’t care, right?”

There’s a long pause, and then, “Yeah.” Wow, try to sound less convinced, Midoriya thinks, clenching his teeth.

“I’m serious, I don’t think—”

Todoroki’s hand clamps down on his mouth. “You’re trying to erase fifteen years of internalized bullshit in one pep talk. Shut up and hold me.”

A laugh forces its way out of Midoriya. He pries Todoroki’s fingers from his face. “Okay, but I’m gonna do it.”

“Good luck.”

“You know I like a challenge.”

“With the scars to prove it.”

“You’re handsome.”

Todoroki tries to cover his mouth again but this time Midoriya fights back, fights him until he can plant a kiss on Todoroki’s lips, and five minutes turns to ten, and then to twenty, time sneaking out the back door while their attention is turned to each other.

By the time they get to Triforce, Iida is mad.

“You stopped for boba?”

And maybe he’s got good reason. “It was his idea,” Todoroki immediately confesses, making Midoriya’s face pucker.

“You folded so easily!”

“Sorry…”

Midoriya wistfully sucks up a tapioca ball. Iida looks between the two of them, flabbergasted and furious, then flails his arms. “You two have absolutely no clue what’s going on, do you!”

“That was sort of the point, actually,” Midoriya tells him, his pout lapsing into a frown. They were supposed to be the only thing going on.

“Oh, we should turn on our phones,” says Todoroki. He pulls his phone from his back pocket, and Midoriya does the same. After the screen lights up, he slips it into his pocket again; Midoriya deposits his on his desk. It’ll be a few minutes before his service returns and he gets all the messages he missed. 

“We just wanted a vacation, Iida.” Midoriya makes to sit on his desk, but gets a death glare from their partner and obediently shuffles around to his chair. “You know how it is. You have to cut yourself off, or somebody finds a way to you. No phones, no television, no newspaper. I think we deserve that much.” He catches Todoroki’s eyes when he says this, and smiles warmly.

Iida taps his foot. “But what if you are the news?”

Todoroki hops up to sit on the edge of the desk, and meets Iida’s reproving gaze with steel. “Can’t say I give a shit about the Akita coverage.”

“Not the—you two—” Iida gesticulates wildly. “Did you two visit an emergency room last night?”

Midoriya stiffens. “How did you…”

“So you saw I’ve got stitches,” Todoroki dismisses. “What’s the point?”

Iida sinks from anger into concern and—and sadness? Midoriya watches the change play across his face as he looks between his friends, and it’s scary. What is there to be sad about? “You really don’t know.”

Dread curls up Midoriya’s spine. He has a bad feeling about this. “Know what?” Todoroki has gone silent, listening closely.

Iida swallows, nods to himself, then begins his explanation. He paces the center of the office while he gives it. “A couple of days ago, the day after the ball, a small hero fan blog posted an article about the cufflinks Midoriya-kun wore that night.” That feels so long along, now. So much has happened in such a short span of time. “There were plenty of photographers, you know. And they were your cufflinks, weren’t they?” he asks Todoroki simply. Todoroki nods. “This particular blog is one that follows, uh… relationships, between heroes?”

“A gossip blog,” Todoroki simplifies.

“Uh.” Iida is a little red. “More hopeful than that. They focus on specific hero… pairs. They’re very creative. But anyway! You two have something of a following, so at first I didn’t think anything of it.”

Midoriya squints at Iida. He’s spent a lot of time looking at hero stuff on the internet, but he never stumbled across this corner. “How do you know all this?”

“I have google alerts set up for all our names, of course!” Todoroki is smirking. Iida continues, “The cufflinks incident must have spurred someone to investigate, and today when I checked, there was a new post. A new post that’s getting a lot of traffic.” He’s looking at them like he hopes they’ll suddenly remember: oh, that post! And he won’t have to show them. But he’s out of luck. Dragging his feet, he returns to his desk and flips his laptop open. “Come over here.”

They do. Todoroki reaches out and pats his shoulder. Midoriya keeps thinking, don’t guess. Don’t guess. He only has a few moments left of freedom from knowing, and he doesn’t want to spend them speculating about whatever’s about to ruin his day.

The first thing that comes up on the screen—it must have been the last thing Iida looked at—is, weirdly, a picture of Midoriya and Todoroki. Their faces are obscured but the dark of night, and Midoriya’s back is to the… camera. But he knows it’s a picture of them because he can remember the moment it captures.

Todoroki went to the ER in his usual disguise, a beanie smothering his hair and big sunglasses covering his burn. Midoriya didn’t bother, but as Todoroki pointed out during the pizza debacle, it’s easier for him to go unnoticed in his civilian clothes. It worked out nicely because there was a guy in the waiting room with a trunk like an elephant, who appeared to have a nasty head cold, and he monopolized everyone’s attention. No one gave them a second glance.

Maybe that was what left Midoriya feeling bold enough that, on their way out, he’d pulled Todoroki into a dark spot off the hospital plaza and kissed him. They were shielded from view by some low-hanging branches off a tree and by the night itself, but Todoroki still protested. “This is stupid, someone will see,” he murmured against Midoriya’s mouth. 

“No one’s going to see.” That was all the reassurance Todoroki needed to kiss back, and he was aggressive about it, too. You’d think his inexperience would make him timid, but inexperience couldn’t change his quintessential attitude: straightforward and unafraid to show his strength. Midoriya nearly lost balance trying to contain his kisses.  

And a part of Midoriya had also decided—good, let them see. I don’t care.

He’d let himself get too happy, probably. He’d worked himself into a fever dream where everyone would be happy if he were happy, so they couldn’t possible have anything but congratulations for the two of them. Nice to think about that, even though it was pure delusion. 

While he’s looking at this picture of him and Todoroki kissing, posted on the Internet for anyone and everyone to see, he realizes he does actually care. He cares a lot. Because if this can’t stay private, it’ll be harder to be happy than it ever was before. And that’s scary. 

It’s a low-resolution shot taken with a night-vision camera, but he knows their shapes, and he remembers the moment. 

“So that’s a real photograph of you?” Iida says, his voice clotted, like there’s something lodged in his throat. 

Todoroki straightens up, and turns from the computer. “That’s us, yes.” He makes his way toward his chair, head down.

Iida looks sideways at Midoriya, whose stomach has started to hurt. He grips the side of Iida’s desk, all he can do not to double over with the pain. “You said this was getting a lot of hits?”

“Yes.” Iida folds his hands in his lap. “Assuming no one recognized you in the hospital and that their records don’t leak, no one can place you there. It’s not a good photograph, we could easily argue it was staged by impersonators…” The level reason in Iida’s voice breaks. “I’m—I’m sorry, I can’t pretend I’m not a little hurt that you two wouldn’t tell me about this. We are friends—”

“You’re the first person to know,” Midoriya says, giving his shoulder a squeeze. Iida’s mouth falls open. “That we’d want to know, anyway.” Because thousands of people could know by now, strangers. Pretty soon it could be general knowledge. He slides to the floor, back against the desk, feeling vaguely run-over. 

Iida looks between them. His brow contorts in sympathy. “I… Congratulations. I’m happy for you both.”

“Thanks, Iida,” Midoriya mutters. Todoroki still hasn’t said a thing. Midoriya’s phone has started buzzing against the desk repeatedly—he reaches up to silence it, he can’t deal with the barrage of texts and emails in this moment.

“I’m sure with a little damage control, we can keep this from harming either of your careers.” Iida gets louder when he’s trying to instill confidence. “These are modern times! It’ll be historic, even, having our Number One Hero be an openly—”

“That’s not the issue.” Midoriya wishes it were just political. Crusading, fighting for his rights, that he can do. “We just… it’s only been a few days. I’m not ready for people to talk about us—we’ve barely talked about us. I don’t even know if we’re dating, or…”

He glances at Todoroki. Now would be the ideal time for him to pitch in and clarify. But, now seated, he just stares at his lap. His hair falls in his face so Midoriya can’t catch his eye.

“We can try to hush it up,” Iida offers. “Like I said, we can deny that’s even you two. It hasn’t hit major news sites yet. We’ll put out a statement—I know one of the Yuuei marketing graduates—”

“Don’t bother.”

Iida and and Midoriya’s heads snap to look at Todoroki, who finally lifts his chin to gaze out blankly at his partners. Midoriya can’t help feeling a little annoyed that this is how Todoroki’s finally chosen to contribute.

“Todoroki-kun,” Iida begins, but Todoroki is shaking his head.

“It won’t get out. If you know about it, the Endeavor Agency publicity team knew about it two hours ago.”

Midoriya can tell his mouth’s hanging open. “You… do you really think we can trust him to keep it quiet?”

Todoroki leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. He looks placid, smooth and easy like the surface of a pond on a windless day. It’s at least slightly feigned, Midoriya can tell. A cool front to disguise his mental gymnastics as he sorts through what’s happening. “It’s not about trust. We just got lucky. If it were anyone else, he’d use this to try and knock you out of the Number One spot.” Midoriya had never considered that his and Todoroki’s relationship could hold extra implications for Endeavor—his heir in love with his greatest rival’s successor. “He won’t want anyone knowing his son fucks boys.”

These words come out like the lash of a whip, and a cold silence falls over the room. The mention of sex must shock Iida because he freezes up. “But,” Midoriya manages. “It isn’t about that.”

Todoroki hasn’t opened his eyes. “It doesn’t matter. All he’s going to see is some failure of his own masculinity. He’s sick, he’ll think of it as me submitting to you.”

Midoriya remembers before, fifteen years of internalized bullshit. He’s at a loss for words, partly because he doesn’t know how to express his anger at this whole situation. Beyond that, he’s always known Todoroki’s greatest weakness was in his own head—it was one of the first things he learned about his friend—but it’s only now that he’s realizing how deep that scar runs, and much work he still has to do, so Todoroki can live the life he deserves. 

Midoriya pulls himself to his feet. “Fine. He’s helping us out by being an asshole. That’s the first time that’s happened so we’ll take it.” Iida clears his throat awkwardly, as though he just wants to make sure they remember he’s there. 

Todoroki’s eyes flutter open, and he blinks slowly at Midoriya, who’s come to stand over his desk. They could be arguing about some villain or a plan of attack. “There is,” Todoroki says, “one other thing.”

“Okay, what’s the thing?”

“I’ll have to leave Triforce.”

He speaks softly but it hits Midoriya like a fist to the chest, and he’s taken a few. Iida gasps, almost theatrically, except it’s Iida so you know he’s not kidding. 

“But—Todoroki,” he splutters. “It’s… Triforce—tri—that means three! Triforce!” Todoroki blinks, and Iida, seeing he’s getting nowhere, slumps over his desk. “This is a disaster.”

“Why?” Midoriya asks softly. 

“He’ll be cutting me off any minute now. Speaking of which,” Todoroki gets to his feet. “I need to get to a bank and withdraw as much as I can, before he freezes my accounts.” It takes Midoriya a moment to connect this to him quitting Triforce.

“Wait, this is about money? Because none of us get paid?”

Iida springs to his feet. “Take your share! We’ll pay off the office a little slower, Midoriya and I will be fine—”

”If I do one commercial I can pay it off in a day,” Midoriya says. It might be exaggeration—but no more than two commercials, for sure. He’s fine with skipping out on his principles for a day if it means keeping their team together. 

But Todoroki doesn’t answer their pleas, though Midoriya senses it’s tempting for him. That’s why it takes him a second to say, “I refuse to burden either of you.” 

Iida sighs, near to giving up—but, without taking his eyes off Todoroki, Midoriya flaps an arm in their third partner’s direction. Iida quickly follows his lead and glares Todoroki down.

After that it only takes a moment for Todoroki to fold. He’s less stubborn than you’d think. “I’ll consider working less hours here and getting a second job in the meantime.”

Iida raises his arms. “Triforce lives on!” 

“I said consider.”

Midoriya beams at Todoroki, holding his question until he gets a small smile in return. “What would you do?”

“I was thinking private combat lessons. For kids who want to ace the Yuuei entrance exam, that kind of thing.”

Though he’s secretly elated, Midoriya pulls a face. “You didn’t even take the exam.”

“What do you think would have happened if I had?”

Midoriys considers this. Iida says, nodding, “He makes a good point.”

“Anyway, I gotta get to a bank,” Todoroki announces, striding for the door. Midoriya is right on his heels and beckons for Iida to join them. “Let’s go steal my dad’s money.”

(16:41) This isn’t how I hoped to find out

(16:41) But I’m happy for you both

(16:42) Are you okay?

Todoroki runs his thumb over the screen of his phone. This is the third time in fifteen minutes he’s revisited the text from Yaoyorozu. It’s the only thing to do while he’s waiting on the bank teller—stewing, contemplating her question. So it’s ironic he finds a way to avoid it, with a question of his own.

(17:02) How did you find the pictures?

(17:02) All the good agencies watch the blogs

He leans back in his chair and exhales. The heroics community is smaller than it seems, and news travels fast. The phone vibrates in his palm with a follow-up text.

(17:02) The post went down ten minutes ago, and we just received a memo from Endeavor Agency saying it was staged with actors made to look like you

(17:03) Everyone seems to believe it

What a fucking elaborate excuse. As if anyone other than Endeavor himself would expend that much energy on ruining Midoriya’s reputation.

(17:03) But that’s not true, is it?

(17:03) Why do you say that?

(17:03) Because I’ve heard you talk about him

He hits the sleep button on the top of his phone and the screen goes black.

“Your new account is ready now.” Swallowing hard, he looks up at the teller, who’s reappeared, putting together a file for him. “Your funds have been transferred, as well.”

“And this account isn’t linked to my old one at all?”

The teller bows. “No, Todoroki-san.”

“Thanks.” He takes the folder and leaves the bank as fast as his feet will take him; it seems wise to get out before they notice his original account has been liquidated.

Midoriya and Iida are eating frozen yogurt on a bench across the street from the bank. “More sweets,” Todoroki points out as he approaches. Midoriya licks some chocolate from the corner of his mouth. That makes Todoroki feel weird, like he needs to stop thinking… things.

“Are you not sweet enough for sweets?”

“You don’t think I’m sweet?”

Iida clears his throat. “Now that you two are being open about this, I’m going to have to insist that you not flirt in front of me, or in any professional workplace situations.”

Midoriya turns red and spills yogurt down his front while trying to shield his face from them. Todoroki gets carried away in quiet laughter as Iida facilitates the clean-up.

On the way back to the office, they walk by Yuuei. The school shows no signs of what happened here a few days ago, as stoic and shiny as ever. That’s intentional, the administration probably hushed up the Akita incident after their various security concerns in the last three years. It’s always amazing to remember how much of heroics is the way you look while you’re saving people—he never saw that until high school, but realizing it helped him to understand a lot about his own upbringing. That’s why they did Triforce how they did it: small-scale, no frills, not much money.

“I’ll stay with Triforce,” he announces, turning his face into the setting sun’s heat.

“Really?” says Iida delightedly.

“Three days a week. The others I’ll give lessons.” He feels a nudge at his arm and there’s Midoriya. Smiling at him.

“I think that’s a good call!”

“Of course you do.”

Iida extends his arms in a wide stretch. “With that settled, why don’t we call it an early night?”

It takes Iida a moment to realize that Todoroki and Midoriya are staring at him.

“What is it?”

“Iida,” says Midoriya slowly. “You want us to… go home early? To play hooky?” Todoroki is feeling like they’ve entered some alternate universe. “You don’t think that’s irresponsible?”

Iida steps back, frowning. He glances at the sidewalk around him, like he had an explanation in his pocket and it fell out on the way here. “I… I wouldn’t think of it as ’playing hooky,’ when we’re adults who run our own business! We won’t pick up a case in the next two hours. And besides, I called you two in on your day off, and you obviously…” His eyes rest on the spot between Todoroki and Midoriya; Todoroki notices they’ve ended up standing quite close together. “Well, we all need time to ourselves after a tough case, don’t we?”

Midoriya gives him a look and a shrug; Todoroki nods. Midoriya turns back to Iida. “We’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

“Yes! Certainly.”

Todoroki shoves his hands into his pockets and starts off in the direction of his apartment, Midoriya keeping up with him. They make it three feet before Iida’s voice stops them.

“There’s just—one more thing. Midoriya-kun.”

Midoriya wheels around, and Todoroki turns back a little slower. He’s impatient for them to be alone again. “Yeah?”

Iida pushes his glasses up his nose, and swallows. “I’d like to ask Uraraka-kun on a date.”

Todoroki watches Midoriya’s face change and has to stifle a laugh. He doesn’t laugh much, but today has been full of hilarity. Some comically bad shit and some very good.

“Are you… Iida, are you asking my permission?”

“No! No, no. It’s more of a—” Iida waves his arms. “—notification. Because we are friends, and you have a history with her, and—”

“I didn’t notify Uraraka,” Todoroki realizes. “Or has she seen the pictures? I can call her.” He looks between Midoriya and Iida for some kind of guidance. But Iida is caught up in his own confession, and Midoriya seems genuinely… horrified. Yes, that’s the word for that expression.

“You don’t—” Midoriya starts shaking his head with increasing forcefulness. “No one needs to notify anyone’s ex when they start—this is just weird, don’t you see how weird this is?”

Blinking, Iida leans back. “So you… wouldn’t mind?”

“No, I don’t mind, I think it’s great. Ask her!” He spins on his heel and there’s a finger in Todoroki’s face. “And you, don’t you dare—”

“Got it.” Todoroki wraps his hand around Midoriya’s, tucking away his accusatory finger.

“Excellent,” says Iida in an exhale. “Excellent. I will.”

Midoriya gives him a thumbs up. Todoroki can’t help it, the impatience is overwhelming, he hooks his hand through Midoriya’s elbow and drags him away while he’s still talking to Iida. “Good luck! See you tomorrow, Iida!”

Iida gives them a salute and the three of them part ways. Beaming, Midoriya shakes off Todoroki’s hand as they fall into step.

“Where are you hurrying to?”

“Home. The apartment. Now we know we can’t look at each other in public anymore.” Todoroki’s tone is more revealing than he intends, and Midoriya doesn’t miss it.

He lowers his voice to ask, “How are you feeling about… everything?” It’s still strange, being asked plainly about his emotional wellbeing. He’s gotten more of it in the last three years than he did in the first decade-and-a-half of his life, but he has yet to adjust. He doesn’t have many words beyond fine and good and angry. Maybe Midoriya will help him expand his vocabulary.

“I knew it was coming,” he sighs. They’ve taken a side street and it’s not crowded, so they can stroll and chat. It reminds him of something—that day they walked to his father’s house to pick up his things, the day of the first Akita murder. It was sunny and Midoriya’s gentle, nervous presence soothed him, much like today. “I didn’t expect this to be the tipping point, but I also didn’t expect this to begin with.”

Midoriya’s eyes fall to the sidewalk. “Honestly, I feel a little guilty.”

Todoroki shakes his head. “Don’t do that.” This is one burden Midoriya shouldn’t have to shoulder.

“You got cut off by your super rich, powerful father, because of me—and specifically me, maybe he’d have been more accepting if it were someone else. Plus, you said someone might see, and they did.” Midoriya smiles to himself, a reflex of astonishment at their bad luck. “I can’t just not feel bad about that.”

Todoroki hesitates before saying what it is he wants to say, because he thinks perhaps it’s too much, that Midoriya will laugh or blush and tell him he can’t just drop that, while they’re in public. But Todoroki can’t filter the comment, either. Can’t soften it or water it down. “I’d give up him and his money ten times over to keep having you in my life.”

As he suspected, they pause in the street, and Midoriya answers him with a stare. Though it might be softer than a stare—a gaze, maybe. Time in the sun has brought more freckles to his skin, and they’re precious, like the light sifts out flecks of gold hidden just beneath his surface. “Hey.” Midoriya drags his lip between his teeth. He should stop drawing attention to his mouth. “Can you wait a few hours to go back to the apartment?”

“What?” Todoroki feels his face go sour. “Why would we do that?”

“There’s something I want to do.” Frustration stirs in him, he wants to be alone, he wants to pick up where they left off. But Midoriya’s fingers curls around his arm, and he’s grinning. “Come on. Don’t you trust me?”

(Completely. With my life.)

“This is exciting—Shouto never comes any day other than Sunday.”

“It was Midoriya’s idea,” says Todoroki, not looking too comfortable wth his mother doting on him in front of someone.

“I decided it was high time we met, Todoroki-san.” Midoriya throws himself into a bow.

Todoroki is dragging a chair up to the window, by his mother’s, and he offers it to Midoriya with a gesture.

It’s mostly because he feels bad about rushing Todoroki out to the hospital, but he tries to refuse the seat. There are no other chairs in the room, and he doesn’t want Todoroki to stand when he was clearly (or, as clear as it gets for him) fighting off nerves on the way here. He should at least be comfortable.

But Todoroki shakes his head, and nods when Midoriya lowers himself into the chair. He stands a couple of feet away with his hands clasped behind his back, like an attendant or political advisor.

“It’s true.” Todoroki’s mother reaches out to pat his knee; her touch is familiar in its slight chill. “I’ve been hearing about you for so long! He talks about you, how much you’ve helped him.”

Midoriya glances up at Todoroki. His eyes are fixed on the cityscape outside the window. Midoriya bites back a smile. “He’s helped me a lot too. Definitely somebody you want on your side in a fight.”

Todoroki’s mother notices her son’s quietness, and frowns. Her face moves more easily than his but some of the expressions are familiar. “Shouto, go down the hall and ask to borrow a chair. You don’t need to stand like this. It’s silly.”

It’s funny, actually, the ease with which Todoroki obeys her instructions. Midoriya has never seen him so pliable, not even last night. All the parental deference he never showed his father had to go somewhere, apparently.

The moment Todoroki is out of the room, his mother leans toward Midoriya, her eyes huge with interest.

“Do you care for him?”

Oh boy.

“Um.” Blood is rushing to his face and he slumps in his chair, feeling like an cell under a microscope. Would Todoroki—what is he supposed to say? Is his mother going to react the same way his father did? Probably not to that degree, but he needs to be careful— “I do. I care for him.” Or… he could not be careful. He winces, his stupid fucking mouth, at it again.

Todoroki’s mother sits back. He wishes he knew her name, so he didn’t have to call her Todoroki-san. It doesn’t sit right. She looks satisfied but not pleased by his confession. “Shouto has been hurt by people who love him. He deserves…”

It surprises Midoriya, the ease with which he replies, “I know.”

She breaks their eye contact—he hadn’t realized how intense it was, but the relief is instant—and her gaze drifts out to the window. “I watch television. I know who you are. I would never have hoped for someone so complicated, for him, but perhaps it helps you understand each other.” She looks back to Midoriya. “He feels things so intensely he sometimes doesn’t realize they’re emotions at all. I want you to know what you’re getting yourself into.”

“I understand, we knew each other in—”

She raises her hand, just an inch, and he falls silent. “You understand as a friend and a coworker, but you don’t really know. This role you’re stepping into is different from all that.” Somehow his heart has begun to race. “He will bare everything to you. He will want to trust you. He will show you how deeply he’s been hurt.”

Midoriya knows exactly what she means. Fifteen years of internalized bullshit. He’s already seeing it, and it’s been two days.

He swallows hard. “I don’t know what I can say to make you believe that I’ll take care of him, but I will, I swear.”

She gives him a little smile. He’s never seen a smile from Endeavor that didn’t terrify him, so it’s safe to say that Todoroki gets his smile from his mother. “I know it’s foolish to say, Midoriya-kun, but if it came down to a choice between the world and my son, I would pray for you to be selfish.”

They stay at the hospital until after the sun’s gone down. Todoroki’s mother talks a mile a minute compared to her quiet son, even Midoriya can barely keep up. She’s full of questions about Midoriya and about the two of them. Their being together is never directly addressed, but she folds the implication into a couple of her comments, enough that even Todoroki picks up on it.

“She knows, doesn’t she?”

They’re leaving the building and walking back to the train. Midoriya breathes in the early evening warmth. “She knew the moment we walked in.” Todoroki makes a small noise. He shoves on his hat and sunglasses, even though it’s hot and dark out. “Actually, I think she may have known before we got together, which is creepy since she never met me.” Midoriya slides him a sideways smile. “I knew you got your sixth sense from somewhere.”

“I wish my intuition went beyond combat maneuvers.”

“I bet you could hone it.” Brimming with nervous energy, Midoriya hops ahead and turns to walk backwards, so he can face Todoroki while they talk. “I could help you practice!”

The corner of Todoroki’s mouth sneaks up. “Great.”

“I’m serious! Some of it is just that you haven’t spent as much time around people.” Midoriya rearranges his face into neutrality. “Here. What am I feeling?”

Todoroki blinks. “Hungry.”

“That’s…” Out of nowhere, his stomach growls. “Spot on, actually. Let’s get dinner.”

They stop at a neighborhood joint and get food to go. One thing Midoriya is realizing: the suburbs are easier. Fewer people, fewer chances to be recognized. Todoroki gets a funny look for his sunglasses-at-night deal, but otherwise they pass unnoticed under the street lamps and through the quiet streets.

Todoroki leads him to a pedestrian path that winds through the hills. “I used to come up here after I went to the hospital, when I didn’t feel like going back to the house.” They take four or five flights of stairs and emerge on to a walkway cut into the rock, just above the tree line. Here the tightly-packed houses pattern the hillside, and beyond the suburban blanket are the city’s towers, jutting up from the earth.

“Wow,” Midoriya murmurs. The city looks bigger at a distance, strangely. The lights are beautiful.

“I don’t think anyone knows it’s here.” Todoroki heads for a bench a little ways down. “Either that or they’re too lazy to take the stairs. I’ve never seen another person up here.”

It hits Midoriya: to Todoroki, this place is a sanctuary. Somewhere he’d go to escape his father, to be quiet. And he’s let Midoriya into his safe space.

He will bare everything to you.

It’d be unfair for Midoriya not to do the same, wouldn’t it?

Todoroki is rooting through the bag with their dinners. The lamps lining the walkway and the glow from the buildings gives them more than enough light to eat by. “Come on, this one’s yours.” Midoriya shuffles over to the bench and accepts the container and chopsticks, then lowers himself to sit. Todoroki is three bites in by the time Midoriya opens his own meal, but suddenly he’s not as hungry as he was.

“By the way,” says Todoroki, mouth full. “I wanted to tell you.” Oh. Todoroki has something to tell him, hilarious.

“Yeah?”

“My apartment.” Todoroki looks up at him and swallows. “I think you should stay.”

Shit. “You—wait, as roommates, or as a couple?”

Todoroki shrugs. He hasn’t thought about it that way. “It’s closer to work and you’re already settled. Doesn’t matter what room you sleep in.”

Now Midoriya’s heart is pounding. He sets his untouched dinner down roughly. “Well, you probably won’t even want me to move in with you after I tell you what I’m about to tell you, so hold that thought!”

Todoroki’s chewing slows. “Okay.” He swallows. “What’s that, then?”

Midoriya draws a deep breath, and lets his head fall back. It’s been years since he told anyone. He has to summon the words all over again, and he’s scared. Shaking.

He will trust you.

So Midoriya has to trust him, too. That’s the way it works. If he occupies this role in Todoroki’s life, Todoroki should fill it in his. And that means he has to know.

“It’s about my quirk.”

Todoroki’s brow contracts. “Your quirk.”

“Yeah.” Another deep breath. Midoriya frowns at his lap. “You remember how when we first started high school, I had trouble controlling it? Like I wasn’t used to it.”

“Yeah, you were a disaster.”

“Thanks,” says Midoriya, almost finding it in himself to laugh. But not quite. “There was a reason for that. I was new to my quirk, because…”

He lifts his chin. Todoroki watches him curiously, with those mismatched eyes, one light and one dark. So attentive and ready to hear what Midoriya has to say. I trust him with this, Midoriya realizes. I do. Sometimes I forget he doesn’t already know.

“It’s because I got my quirk from someone else.”

He waits a second and determines that he isn’t going to be sick from nerves—a small victory. Here it is, out in the open. I see all of you, you see all of me. He’s offered up the rarest view of his heart.

Todoroki’s expression hasn’t changed. “That can happen?”

“Yeah, um. Just my quirk specifically, it’s been passed down—”

“From All Might,” Todoroki says, turning away as he starts to piece it together. “That’s why it feels the same.”

Midoriya nods, forcing a smile. Todoroki turns back to him.

“What else?”

“What… what do you mean, ’what else’? That’s huge?”

“You made it seem like I would be upset about something, so there must be more to it.”

Midoriya sits back. He’d braced for a weird reaction, but this is… “I lied. I’ve been lying to everyone for years.”

The strangest thing happens, just then: Todoroki grins. Midoriya has to stifle a noise, he reacts so strongly to this sight, of Todoroki grinning. “Why would anyone care where your power comes from? All that matters is what you do with it—”

“Oh, no, don’t say it—”

“It’s your power,” Todoroki declares, voice booming. Midoriya hurls a grain of rice at him.

“I wish I never said that to you. You’re using it against me!”

Todoroki’s grin lapses into a smile, but what a smile it is. “In all seriousness, it doesn’t make a difference to me. I always knew there was something weird about your quirk, but I never questioned your right to be at Yuuei. No one can say you didn’t make good use of it.” His eyes drop to his meal. “You’re more deserving than most.”

To distract from how warm his face has gotten, Midoriya finally wills himself to try his food. His appetite returns with the first bite. “It’d make a difference to some people,” he answers quietly.

“Who knows, other than me?”

“All Might. Recovery Girl.” He sighs before he adds, “Bakugou.”

Todoroki shakes his head. “I don’t want to know.”

Midoriya’s nose wrinkles. That conversation is for another day. “You don’t, you’re right.”

His dinner somehow already gone, Todoroki extends his arms along the back of the bench, and lets out a long breath. “So your quirk is related to what Sensei’s was? And All Might picked you to give it to?”

Midoriya nods. “He got the job at Yuuei to look for a successor.” He considers for a second whether to divulge, but the detail slips out of him unbidden. “He might’ve chosen you if he never picked me.”

Todoroki doesn’t really react to the suggestion that it could’ve been him, not Midoriya, who defeated Sensei and claimed the Number One title. Midoriya knows he has ambition in his veins, so that’s strange. “No offense to him,” says Todoroki easily. “But both me and All Might would be dead if he hadn’t picked you.”

He finds himself wanting to laugh. “You have a crazy amount of faith in me.”

“I don’t.” Todoroki looks not at him but at the city beneath them. “Faith is believing in something you don’t know for sure. It’s not faith.”

Finally Midoriya finds himself at a loss for words.

Todoroki’s head is turned out to the view, so he leans forward and presses a kiss to his cheek. He lets his lips linger for a second before he sits back.

He gets a shy glance on the retreat; Todoroki is rarely shy, but it seems right that this is what would pull it out of him. A tiny piece of unsolicited, unadorned affection.

Midoriya considers telling him something along the lines of, I’m never going to hurt you.But saying it aloud empties the phrase of its meaning. A promise should be something you do.

Todoroki clears his throat and sniffs, refusing to meet Midoriya’s eye. He might be blushing. “You never said if you wanted to move in or not.”

“I’m… not sure, I guess. I’ve really liked living with you. But I don’t want us to move too fast.” Wait. Todoroki is nodding, accepting the practicality, but it’s—wrong. “What am I doing?”

Todoroki looks confused. “Eating dinner?”

“No.” Midoriya sits up, shaking his head. “I like living with you. I could be dead tomorrow, so why am I worried about moving too fast? I don’t want to leave your place.”

“I don’t want you to leave, either?” Todoroki’s maybe half-following his train of thought, but it’s enough. They deserve to get what they want.

Midoriya settles back down. “Then I’ll stay. In the second bedroom, though!” He bites his lip. “Except for some nights.”

Todoroki answers him with a smile. “Okay.”

“And if anyone asks, we can say we’re—”

“Roommates?”

“Exactly! It’s perfectly innocent.”

Todoroki snorts, which makes Midoriya laugh, it’s such a weird and ungainly noise. The sound of his laughter carries down the hillside and echoes off the sides of houses.

When he’s finished eating, they clear the space between them and slide closer together. Midoriya leans into Todoroki’s side, the cool one, finding some relief from the lingering heat. He breathes in the smell of campfire. Todoroki pays extra heed to his bandaged arms, afraid to hurt him any more.

They take in the panorama of a city that’s challenged and embraced them; it’s more beautiful at a distance. Midoriya feels he could sit here for hours.

“I like the view,” Todoroki decides.

“Me too.” Midoriya presses his cheek against Todoroki’s shoulder. “Me too. I like the view.”