Work Text:
You are halfway through wiping soy sauce off the microwave handle when the front door to the dorm common room clicks open.
It’s late enough that the room has emptied of its usual noise. The TV is off. Only the lamp by the far wall is lit, casting a yellow glow that makes everything feel dimmed, softened by tiredness rather than comfort. You only came downstairs to heat up leftovers, to give your hands something to do while you waited. You need to be up early for training. You should already be in bed.
Because Shoto said he was going home for dinner. Home, technically. Not really home at all, and that’s always been part of the problem.
You turn at the sound of the door.
He steps inside and lets it close behind him. At first glance, nothing seems wrong. He’s still in his uniform trousers, his tie missing, the collar of his shirt loosened at the throat. His hair is a little out of place, but not enough to look messy. His face wears the same composed, unreadable expression he so often carries when he’s thinking. Shoto isn’t exactly easy to read, even at the best of times.
It’s only when he lifts his head and looks at you properly that your stomach drops.
He doesn’t look angry. Angry would be easier. Anger has shape. Anger moves. This is something quieter, and far worse. He looks as if somebody has hollowed him out and left only the outline behind.
"Hey," you say, and your voice comes out softer than you meant it to.
"Hey."
Even that sounds normal.
He takes two steps into the room and stops. You wait for him to say something else. He doesn’t. His hands hang loose at his sides; no tension in his shoulders, no irritation, no sign he wants to leave. He just stands there, strangely still, like he made it all the way back to U.A. and then forgot what came next.
You set the cloth down on the counter.
"How was it?"
His gaze passes somewhere over your shoulder, settling on nothing. "Fine."
The lie is so thin, so exhausted, that you don’t insult either of you by pretending to believe it.
You move around the kitchen island and stop in front of him. Up close, it is easier to see. Not in any dramatic way; there never is anything dramatic about Shoto. But his eyes won’t meet yours, his face is too still. Even his breathing seems careful, shallow in a way that makes him look cold all over.
"Shoto."
His attention shifts back to you, and you can tell he is trying. That, somehow, makes it worse. It’s like watching somebody from the wrong side of a window.
"You wanna come upstairs?" you ask.
He nods.
You can’t remember the last time he looked this unguarded. Or this far away.
He follows you down the corridor and up the stairs without a word. Your room is small in the same way all of the dorm rooms are, neat mostly because there is nowhere for anything to go. Desk, bed, wardrobe, a low shelf with textbooks stacked sideways and a cheap lamp that throws a pool of warm light over one corner. Some of the others have done more with their rooms. You never really saw the point—not when there’s so much school work to be done.
You close the door behind him and turn to find him standing just inside it, waiting.
"Sit down," you say gently.
He lowers himself to the edge of your bed with both feet flat on the floor and his hands resting on his knees.
You stay standing, because you’re suddenly not sure what version of him you are dealing with.
This is not the Shoto who gets quiet because he is thinking. Not the one who says something unexpectedly blunt and then looks faintly offended when other people laugh. Definitely not the one who kisses you like he means it, slowly and carefully, because getting close to anyone is something he has to choose on purpose every time.
This is something else. You’re not sure you’ve seen it before.
After a moment, you sit beside him. When the mattress dips under your weight, he doesn’t move.
"You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to," you say.
"I know."
You wait. He stares at the floor.
Carefully, you lift a hand and touch his shoulder. Usually, there is some answer in him, however small. A turn of his head. A glance. Some subtle shift that means he’s paying attention even if he’s not saying much. Now there is almost nothing at all.
He doesn’t even pull away. You think that would probably hurt less. He just allows the touch, as if he can’t quite reach the part of himself that knows what to do with it.
Your hand drifts down the length of his arm, thumb rubbing idly over the cool fabric of his sleeve.
"Did your dad say something?" You ask.
There’s a long pause.
Then: "Yeah."
"What?"
His mouth flattens. "A lot of things."
You wait again, but he doesn’t keep going. You can feel him thinking, not about the words themselves, but about whether speaking them aloud would serve any purpose. His eyes stay fixed on that same spot near your shoes.
So you lean in and press a kiss to his cheek.
Still nothing.
Not rejection. Not really acceptance either. Your lips touch skin turned cool from the night air, and he just sits there, still looking somewhere far beyond your room.
The small sting of it catches you before you can stop it. It hurts more than it should. But you swallow that down. This is not about you.
You draw back and study his face instead. The scar on his left side is pale in the lamplight. His jaw is tight, as if unclenching even a little might let the whole evening spill out in the wrong order and leave him responsible for gathering it back up again.
You try once more. Softer this time.
"Was it bad?"
After that, he’s quiet for so long that you begin to think he won’t answer at all.
Finally, he says, "It was just everything."
The words come out flat. No drama. No self-pity. He just seems tired, if anything.
You fold one leg beneath you and turn more fully toward him. "Shoto," you say quietly, "what does that mean?"
He blinks once. "Fuyumi was trying all night to make it better."
Immediately, you can see it: the table laid out too carefully, the food arranged with too much care, Fuyumi smiling brightly and filling every silence before it can settle into something unbearable.
"Natsuo barely spoke," he adds. "He looked like he wanted to leave."
"And Endeavor?"
At that, something in his shoulders tightens beneath your hand.
"He kept acting like…" He stops, presses his thumb against the side of his index finger, hard enough to whiten the knuckle. "Like we were doing something important by being there with him."
The room falls still around the words.
You know enough about his family to understand the weight of that. His mother is still in the hospital. Fuyumi has been trying, for what feels like forever, to hold together a family that was broken long before she ever had the strength for it, while Natsuo is angry enough to cut himself open on it. And Endeavor just sits at the table as if being present means the same thing as being forgiven.
"What did he say?" You ask.
Shoto gives a short shake of his head. "Nothing huge."
That tracks. You’ve met his father. You know firsthand, he doesn’t need to raise his voice to ruin a room.
"He said we should do it again," Shoto says at last. "Like that’s supposed to mean anything."
Your fingers tighten slightly around his sleeve. His eyes flick down to the movement, then away.
"He said it was a start," he adds, quieter now. "He never says the parts that actually matter."
He swallows. The movement is small, controlled, but you see it.
"Mom’s still in hospital." He says it with the same even tone he has used all evening, and maybe that’s what makes it cut so deeply. No tremor. No break. Just the plain, unbearable truth of it.
Without thinking, you move closer and lift your hand to his face, your thumb tracing gently along the edge of his scar. "Shoto—"
He closes his eyes for a second at the contact. When he opens them again, he is looking past your shoulder, somewhere distant.
"I know he’s trying," he says. "That’s what everyone keeps saying." A bitter little twist touches his mouth. "It doesn’t stop it from feeling like he’s just waiting for us to make it easier for him."
You don’t have an answer that will help.
Anything soft would sound empty. Anything angry would only sharpen what is already cutting him up. So instead, you do the only thing you can think to do. You lean in and kiss him again, this time at the corner of his mouth, and then rest your forehead briefly against his temple.
He lets you, and that’s all.
That nasty little hurt flares up in your chest again before you can stop it. He’s not being cruel, you know that. But he came here, to you, and still there’s this distance in him you can’t cross just by wanting to.
Embarrassment pricks at the back of your neck. So you pull back. It’s only then that, slowly, finally, do his eyes find yours.
"I’m sorry," he says.
"For what?"
He looks down at his hands. "For coming here like this."
The bluntness of it almost undoes you.
Your throat tightens. "You’re not, I—I mean—it’s ok."
You look at him for another moment, and then you make yourself stop.
Stop trying to draw him toward you. Stop reaching for a kiss, for a response, for reassurance that he can meet you halfway. Instead, you shift closer until your shoulder rests against his and stay there.
The room hums quietly around you. Somewhere down the corridor, a door shuts, distant and unimportant.
After a while, you say, "You don’t have to... be anything right now, okay? Whatever you need, I’m here."
He sits with that. Then, in the same flat voice he’s used all night, he says, "I don’t expect anything, from anyone."
You stare at the opposite wall because if you look at him, you think you might cry, and that would shift the shape of this moment into something else—something where he would have to comfort you, when he’s barely managed to bring himself here in one piece.
"That’s... a horrible way to live," you say softly.
A minute passes. Maybe two.
Then, something changes so slightly you almost miss it: the tension in his back loosens. He shifts, slow with it, like he is moving under a weight, and his shoulder settles more fully into yours.
You go very still.
Another few seconds pass before his head tips sideways and comes to rest against your shoulder.
Relief rushes through you so suddenly that it’s almost painful. You could cry from it, from the smallness of it, from how much it means. You don’t let any of that show. You only lift your hand and thread your fingers carefully into his hair, smoothing it back from his forehead. This time, when you touch him, he doesn’t feel absent. Just exhausted. Human again. Fragile in the quiet way he never allows himself to be.
His eyes close beneath your touch.
You keep your fingers moving through his hair in slow, gentle passes. Not trying to fix him. Not trying to mend what cannot be mended tonight. Only giving him something warm and real, something wordless, something that asks nothing of him in return.
After a long while, he whispers, "Stay with me?"
You swallow hard.
"Yeah," you murmur, pressing a kiss into his hair. "Of course."
His hand shifts against the bedspread until his knuckles brush your thigh. Then, as if that is not enough, his fingertips curl slightly into the fabric there, holding on without lifting his head.
It’s the smallest thing.
But it means everything.
So you stay.
You sit with him while the dorm settles deeper into the night, his head resting against your shoulder, your hand moving through his hair over and over again. And you never ask for anything more of him than this.