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The dorms smell like burnt curry again.
You’re pretty sure it’s Bakugou’s fault this time, because Kaminari ran screaming past the common room five minutes ago with a used ladle, and he followed two seconds later holding a pot that was definitely on fire.
So you’ve retreated to your little corner on the balcony outside your room, knees pulled up, hands wrist-deep in soil, trying to coax a wilting hydrangea back to health while pretending the screaming indoors is just ambiance.
Then you hear the softest knock on the sliding glass door behind you. It’s so quiet you almost miss it. So soft it could’ve been wind or a particularly polite rabbit.
But you look up— and there’s Todoroki Shouto. In your room (your door was left open). Hair a little tousled. One of his socks is mismatched. His appearance here isn’t a regular thing.
You blink at him. “Uh. Hi?”
“I forgot to get flowers,” he says, very gravely. “For my mother.”
“Oh.” You wipe your hands on your strawberry-embroidered apron and gesture to the little garden around you. “You’ve come to the right place, then?”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” he smiles softly.
Your cheeks warm. Mt Lady was right when she’d said that just one smile from Todoroki Shouto and all the girls (and boys) would be dead. But you’re not letting yourself think too hard about it: his boyish features, accentuated by his roguish scar.
Instead, you scoot over on your mat, patting an empty spot. “What are you trying to convey with the flowers?”
“Gratitude. And also apology. For forgetting.” He slots himself next to you, sitting with his knees to his chin. His shoulder brushes yours, inevitable due to his stupidly broad frame.
You laugh. “And what’s your mother like?”
“My mother?”
“Yeah. I want the flowers to suit her. Not just, like, look pretty.” You bite your lip. “So… I guess I need to know what kind of person she is. If that’s okay?”
He stares at you for a second.
“...She’s quiet, but not because she’s shy. She’s just… thoughtful.”
“Oh.” You light up a little.
He looks away, but his words are more deliberate now. “She likes things that feel warm, even if they’re simple.”
“Warm,” you echo, thinking of oranges and soft pinks, things that look like the sky before sunset. “And she’s soft-spoken, you said?”
He nods.
You smile. “Then she needs something tender. But not fragile.”
He’s quiet for a beat too long. When you glance up, he’s watching you, his expression unreadable.
“I think she’d really like that,” he says finally.
Your quirk hums in your palms as you guide the blooms to the surface: ruffled peach ranunculus, gentle chamomile blossoms, blush garden roses.
You nudge the stems into his hand. “Here. Hold them and I’ll go get my bouquet materials.”
He looks down at them, admiration in his eyes. “They’re perfect.”
You feel warm again. In the chest this time.
-
You’re doing your homework in the commons that evening, just because the sun is nice and you like how the light hits your notes at this hour. You’re halfway through breaking down a math problem (really, you're just breaking down) when Todoroki— who you'd only ever spoken to in passing before this whole bouquet thing— sits down across from you, textbook in hand, and glances at the mess of petals on the table (your stress relief is flower-shaped).
“She wants to meet you.”
“She— what?”
“She liked the bouquet,” he says, shifting his weight and scratching his cheek. “She said… you must be very kind. And that I should bring you next time.”
“Oh.” You’re very much not dressed for this moment. For him. You’re in bunny slippers and your lion pajamas and probably have a leaf in your hair. “Oh.”
“She was very insistent.”
You consider the petals. You consider Todoroki, settling himself with an open textbook and a working calculator.
“Okay,” you say finally. “Only if I can make her another bouquet.”
“She’d like that.”
-
You’re holding the bouquet a little too tightly. You didn’t mean to crush the peonies, but your fingers are clammy and your quirk keeps tickling at your palms, and one more baby’s breath might pop out from your sleeve if you don’t lock in. You’ve rearranged this bouquet five separate times since stepping off the train.
“She’s been excited all week,” he says, which helps zero percent .
“Right. Cool. No pressure. Just meeting your mom, no big deal.”
She opens the door after the first knock.
The resemblance is clear, not just in the slope of her nose or the pale sweep of her hair, but in the way she holds herself— composed and effortlessly elegant. You’d know she was Todoroki’s mother even if no one told you.
“You must be the florist,” she says, voice warm and even, like sun through cotton curtains.
“Technically I’m a student, but yes? I mean, I made the bouquet. This one, too!” You thrust it forward a little too eagerly and try not to wince.
She accepts it and smiles like you’ve already been forgiven for your nerves.
“Oh,” Rei murmurs, fingers brushing the ribbon. “This is beautiful. You have a very precious quirk.”
You flush. “I—thank you. I tried to pick the right ones. Based on… what Todoroki told me.”
“Well,” she says, a light laugh in her throat, “you must be very good at listening. He’s not always the most forthcoming.”
“You know, I’m also a Todoroki,” she tilts her head slightly, eyes twinkling. “Maybe you’d like to call Shouto by his first name?”
You blink. “Oh! Okay. Um. Right. Shouto.” It feels strange in your mouth, like saying a secret out loud.
Behind you, you hear a very small cough. You glance back and Todoroki— no, Shouto, is studiously looking at the empty vase on the windowsill while his hand comes up to scratch his cheek.
“I mean,” you say quickly, hands flailing a little. “If he wants. I just— didn’t want to assume— because— formality! Respect!— but if he’s okay with it then—?”
“I don’t mind,” he says, very seriously, very quietly. The temperature in the room fluctuates for a second.
Rei smiles into her teacup.
-
After that day, something shifts.
You’re not sure what, exactly, maybe the way Shouto— no, Todoroki, starts engaging in small talk with you when he passes you on the way to the kitchen, or the way he lingers by your room’s door, waiting for your approval to come in while you’re on your balcony. He’s never been much of a talker, but now he says things like, “What flower is that?”, “These smell better than the flower shop’s down the street” , “You moved the ferns,” and sometimes, just “Hmm,” while staring at your lavenders like they’ve provoked a philosophical thought in him.
It’s not weird. Not really. You made something for his mother, and she liked it. Of course that would make him curious. Of course he’d stop and hover, just a bit. And ask if a cactus would survive in Japan’s climate.
(You try not to think too hard about the way he starts bringing soba for two onto your balcony and sits, legs crossed, politely.)
One night, you see him staring at a blue wildflower that’s the exact shade of his left iris. He doesn’t say anything, but he watches it sway in the breeze for a long, long time.
So you pinch it carefully from its stem, cup it in your hand, and offer it to him.
“Here. You can have it.”
He looks at it like you just plucked a star from the sky for him.
-
You start making Todoroki flowers a lot after that.
Not just for his mom. For him. Because he can appreciate them.
At first, it’s just a little sprig of something tucked into his notebook, a small sunflower bud balanced on the cap of his water bottle, a tiny crown of forget-me-nots you left on his head while he was napping on the couch (he wore it for two hours before noticing).
Then you made him take a “what flower are you?” uQuiz. You watched his expression the entire time while he answered what’s your worst fear (he selects ‘hurting the people i care about’) and do you believe in soulmates (he selects ‘OF COURSE’) with the solemn seriousness of someone taking a lie detector test.
He got baby blue eyes.
When you give him a little arrangement of them the next morning, he blinks once and says: “Oh. These are me.”
“Yeah.”
He smiles at the bouquet. “These are my favourite now.”
Your heart stumbles. “Well, then, I’ll make you more.”
And you do. You make him more. Again and again.
So when one day he gives you flowers, you are touched by his kindness and friendship.
He stands at your door with a small bouquet— lilacs and yarrow— and says, “For you.”
You blink hard and try not to tear up. Because no one’s ever given you flowers before, not like this.
“Thank you, Todoroki,” you whisper. “I love them.”
And he nods, with a devastating grin. There’s a quiet light in his eyes, something soft and content, as if everything is exactly how it’s meant to be.
“It’s Shouto,” he corrects, before whispering your given name like it’s poetry.
-
To be fair, you probably should’ve guessed something was up when he invited you to a Todoroki family dinner.
“You’ll sit beside me,” he said simply. “It’s important.”
(You wore your nicest cardigan and panicked for three days straight.)
His sister teased him. His father’s smile, unfortunately, looks like a glower. His mother immediately adorned your bouquet in a delicate glass vase. His brother rolled his eyes when his father placed a forceful karaage in your bowl, and when you spilled water on yourself, Shouto wordlessly passed you a napkin.
You went back to the dorms that night in a fog of confusion and warmth. Shouto’s jacket that swallowed your frame, because it was just slightly chilly, didn’t help.
-
But then things got weird .
It started with you putting a daisy in Bakugou’s hair.
It’s Mina’s idea. You just grew the daisy. She did the shoving.
And then you laughed, and Bakugou yelled, and Kirishima cheered, and then —
Shouto walked in.
He stopped.
Stared.
You waved. “Want one too?”
He didn’t answer. Just blinked at Bakugou. And then he turned and walked away, like the whole thing was suddenly too much to handle.
You’re left standing there with a daisy in your hand and a lot of confused looks from the others.
-
You find him in his room. He opens the door for you when you knock and goes back to sitting on his tatami floor, hugging his knees to his chest.
You have a lily of the valley in your hand and about six apologies tumbling out of your mouth at once.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” you promise, “We were just being silly. Mina thinks Bakugou looks cuter when he’s mad, and I guess I like annoying him too but like— oh my god it’s not like I was flirting with him or anything—”
“You gave him a flower,” Shouto says, quietly.
You blink. “Yeah? Um, if it helps, I gave you flowers first.”
“You gave me a lot of flowers,” he pouts. “And then you accepted mine. So we’re dating.”
You stop.
“What?”
He frowns. “Are we not exclusive?”
“ What? ”
“You said you loved them,” he sighs, brow furrowed. “And you keep giving me more."
“Oh my god,” you whisper, epiphany hitting like a brick to the forehead. “Shouto, I thought we were just… exchanging.”
(In hindsight, you should’ve given him credit that he’d know what lilacs represent.)
His face twitches.
“You didn’t say you liked me,” you ramble, flustered. “You just said ‘for you.’ That’s not— that’s not asking, that’s offering. Gifting. That’s a very big difference!”
He tilts his head slightly, like he’s trying to make sense of it all. “So I have to ask.”
You throw your hands up in exasperation. “Yes!!”
He brushes his hand above yours.
You suddenly forget how to breathe.
“Okay,” he decides, matter-of-factly. “Then I’ll ask. May I be your boyfriend?”
The wind stills. The whole sky holds its breath.
You blink. “Yes. Yes, of course, yes.”
And then he takes the flower from your hand and tucks it behind your ear like it’s always belonged there.
-
Later, at night, you sit together on your balcony for your first date (not the first one for Shouto), knees brushing, the quiet settling around you. You coax his baby blue eyes into bloom between your fingers. He receives it with a smile that makes your heart lift, and you’re smiling too, widely and fondly before you even notice.
"You know, I've always thought flowers exist just to make people smile," you confess, voice soft.
He looks at the flower, then looks at you— clear, certain.
“They do. You do.”
And then he laces your fingers together like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
You never stop growing these budding things.
But now, he’s your favourite reason to.