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The months after the war were a tricky time for all of 1-A. They’d all been so close out of fear for their lives, out of a need to protect one another through some of the worst times of their lives.
But then, after the war, that sense of urgency just wasn’t there anymore.
They were still hero students, their lives in danger on a daily basis simply due to the realities of life, but they weren’t being hunted in the same way anymore.
Outside of the occasional villain attack due to their status as war heroes, life was relatively peaceful again.
That didn’t necessarily change any of their relationships within the class, but it did allow them all to partially break off into their own groups again instead of just being one tight knit unit.
That was thus what left just Izuku and Shouto to hang out more often than not.
Today is one of those days.
Izuku is sitting in his room, surrounded by his extensive All Might merch collection which honestly should’ve gone to storage two years ago, Shouto sitting opposite him on the other end of the bed.
“What did you get for number 7?” he asks Shouto, his math textbook spread open across his lap.
Shouto hums, glancing down at his page as he continues to fiddle with the end of his pencil. “14log4 + 2^x”
Izuku frowns at his paper. “I got 14log6 + 1.24^x”.
He moves across the bed to sit closer to Shouto so that they can compare their papers.
Shouto lets out a breathy huff and when Izuku turns to look at him it’s to the sight of a tight frown on the other’s face.
“Do you ever…”
Shouto stops there, his fist clenching on the bedsheet like he’s not sure whether to voice his next thoughts at all, or how to even go about talking about it.
Izuku waits patiently, reaching across his bed for the one stuffed All Might plush he’d never been able to pack away with the rest in his closet. Once in his hands he quietly sets it in Shouto’s lap.
Shouto stares down at it before turning to Izuku with a face now smoothed from its previous frown to a look of open confusion instead.
Shouto raises an eyebrow.
Izuku wiggles his own. “Plush Ultra.”
The snort that Shouto lets out startles both of them, Izuku immediately grinning pleased that he’d managed to make Shouto laugh.
Shouto takes the plush into his hands properly, finally releasing his previous deathgrip on the sheets. He pulls the stuffed All Might to his chest, squeezing it tightly against himself as he finally finishes his earlier question to ask, “Does it ever feel like a waste of time to you?”
He gives a pointed nod at the still open math workbooks. “We saved the world and we all almost died doing it. Are we really supposed to care about this anymore? We want to be heroes and we already were. We already are. What’s the point of all this?”
Izuku sets his own notebook aside and stares down at his crooked ruined fingers. “I… it was too soon. We shouldn't have had to. They can’t just let us carry on with full licenses because then they’d need to acknowledge what they did to us by making us fight.”
His fingers grip each other tight enough to hurt, the action alone aggravating the constant chronic pain which rules his life. “It’s easier for society to slot us back into place and pretend they never changed us from the students we were supposed to be. Out of sight out of mind you know?”
Shouto sighs softly, beginning to work his fingers into the plush of the stuffed All Might with a slight amount of aggression. “Yeah, I get it. They don’t want to recognize that they did anything wrong the same way they don’t want to tell anyone internationally that they let children fight in a war.”
Izuku slowly tries to take his fingers out of their death grip. His hands scream at the action, but they’re both content to sit in silence regardless.
Once his fingers are free, he reaches over to one of Shouto’s hands and takes it out of the plushie gently, giving the boy’s hand a soft squeeze.
“I know it feels pointless at this point to do anything other than hero training and patrols,” Izuku takes in a soft breath. “I feel that way too a lot of the time, especially since I need to relearn to fight without One for All, but there’s only so much we can do and learn as heroes at once. There’s a reason that all the other courses don’t really give homework.”
He gives a halted half laugh. “Hell, we never did even finish our first year rescue training. We’re all going to be heroes and we all have long careers in front of us. I think at this point Aizawa-sensei is just trying to make sure we have the skills to stay alive during our careers.”
Shouto takes a deep breath, squeezing Izuku's hand firmly. “I know. I just-” he doesn't finish the statement.
It's been a long few years for them both.
Izuku gets it.
“Thank you, for everything,” Shouto says after a few moments of silence.
“Of course, I'll always be here.”
The words are said simply, almost casually in the way they immediately slip out reflexively.
But Izuku finds that now that he’s said them out loud, it’s almost like they take on a life of their own, billowing and expanding until they start to mean something entirely more serious than the simple reassurance he’d been going for.
Silence seems to follow in the wake of it and suddenly Izuku’s heart is racing in his chest and there’s heat climbing up his neck as the full gravity of what he’s offered rushes through him.
But he doesn’t regret it.
He could never regret it.
“I-I mean!” His hands flutter and his eyes squeeze shut as he tries and fails to articulate himself further. “That is if you want me to be, I would never presume or just—stalk you to remain in your life! If you wanted me to leave you alone I would—I didn’t mean I’d overstep and hang around when I'm not wanted I just meant—“
And Shouto starts to laugh.
It’s a joyous sound, happy and full of mirth, as he slowly turns to look at Izuku and refuses to let go of his hand.
“Yeah,” he says softly, leaning just that bit forward to rest his forehead against Izuku’s own. “I feel that way too.”
Izuku flounders at the ease of it but doesn’t pull away. ‘Are you sure?’ he wants to ask but all that actually leaves his mouth is a small crooked out, “Me?”
“You,” Shouto nods, the motion rubbing against Izuku’s face like a cat nuzzling close for comfort. “It’s always been you.”