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The sun paints the sky in hues of pink, orange, and purple as a cool breeze makes the treetops wave.
Shinsou Hitoshi stands on the UA roof, one forearm leaned against the chain-link fence so his forehead can rest against it. His hair rustles deliciously in the wind as his thoughts swirl lazily in his mind.
He’s done it. He’s finally here. The UA hero course…
So why does it feel like he’s still somehow waiting for something else to happen...
The door creaks open behind him and Shinsou sighs.
Well… the peace was nice while it lasted.
He doesn’t turn around, his gaze still fixed on the rustling treetops and the slow descent of the sun on the horizon. Maybe if he makes it absolutely clear that he’s not interested the interloper will simply go away.
"I figured I'd find you here"
The words give him pause, more so than the soft tone of voice being used, and Shinsou slowly turns around.
It’s Midoriya.
Because of course it is.
“What do you want?” Shinsou’s tone is gruff and snappy, at once clashing with the tranquil air he’d been enjoying before being disturbed and the thought alone makes him angry.
Midoriya simply smiles at him, that stupid wide beaming one that practically lights up his face. “For you to feel settled here of course. It’s a big adjustment joining a class so late. I don’t want you to ever feel like you’re intruding…”
‘You’re the one intruding!’ Shinsou thinks but doesn’t say.
“And what’s in it for you?” he settles on, hissing out a breath and clenching his fingers tight around the chain-link fence hard enough to hurt. God but dealing with other people is exhausting.
Midoriya doesn’t answer him right away, stepping closer to the fence instead and looking out at the sunset with his hands clasped behind his back.
The wind picks up speed, rustling through Midoriya’s hair as the boy turns his head just enough to face Shinsou as he says, “I just don’t want you to go through what I did.”
Shinsou’s mouth opens but no sound comes out.
Midoriya turns back to the sprawling view, his hands still clasped behind his back, his head straight and proud despite the whirlwind still racing through his hair. “I didn’t have any friends before coming here. So it took me a while to fully accept that that’s what was happening. When Tenya came racing up to me on the first day of school, I was braced for an attack because that’s all I’d ever known. No one had ever rushed up to me like that for anything else. When he apologized instead for how he’d treated me during the entrance exam, I didn’t really know how to handle it. Part of me thought that he was just saying it, that all of them were just playing a game with me and one day I'd discover I was the loser. It took a long time to realize that UA was different, that our classmates were different, that friendship could be in the cards for me after all.”
He turns to face Shinsou properly this time, that beaming smile shining on his face once more. “I don’t want it to take that long for you.”
Shinsou’s heart pounds in his chest at the full force of Midoriya’s sincerity.
A part of him wants to play it cool, wants to ask why Midoriya would even assume all this stuff about him.
But he can’t bring himself to put the question to words.
Like recognizes like after all.
And Shinsou might somehow have missed the years old pain lurking in the depths of those shiny green eyes, but here and now it’s suddenly impossible to ignore.
His earlier feelings of restlessness resurface and it’s only now that he can place that what a part of him had been waiting for was for the other shoe to drop. He’d been on edge since moving to Class A because he’d been bracing for it. People like him aren’t so easily accepted, he’d known that from day one. And so the way the class had been welcoming to him had been at odds with this engrained fact within him and he’d been unable to relax.
‘I don’t want you to go through what I did.’
Is that truly all it is? Is that really all Midoriya wants from him? Is the hand he’d extended in friendship genuine? Can Midoriya truly relate to what Shinsou himself has gone through?
It feels impossible.
His mouth is opening to ask a question before he even fully processes it.
“You really didn’t have any friends?”
It rings through the quiet and even the wind seems to hold its breath as the words hang in the air.
“Even with a quirk as powerful as yours?”
Midoriya stills, his mouth twisting, his eyes lowering in shame, and Shinsou finds himself stepping forward hands raised because that was such a fucked up thing to say, holy shit.
Before he can backpedal any further or even apologize Midoriya looks up at him again and this time the smile on his face is softer.
“Why not? A powerful quirk never stopped them from doing it to you.”
The words hit Shinsou with the force of one of Midoriya’s punches.
He’d never so much as thought of his quirk as being powerful.
But faced with the pure shining admiration in Midoriya’s eyes, Shinsou finds that he suddenly can’t deny it.
And as Midoriya joins him in watching the rest of the sunset on that delightfully breezy rooftop he can’t help but think that maybe he is here to make friends after all.