Chapter Text
Sleep had never come easily to Shouto Todoroki.
It had never been something he could simply decide to do. As a child he had spent countless nights lying rigid beneath his blankets, staring blankly at the ceiling while the rest of the Todoroki household settled into silence around him. His eyes would trace the faint imperfections in the white paint until he had memorised every crack and uneven brushstroke, watching shadows stretch and shrink across the room as headlights passed outside. Sometimes he counted backwards from one thousand. Sometimes he matched his breathing to the slow ticking of the clock on his bedside table. None of it made much difference. Of course, his body would eventually force him to sleep.
His mind, however, refused to let him rest.
Dreams blurred so seamlessly with memories that he often couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. He would find himself standing in the training room again, the air unbearably hot as flames licked across the walls. His father's voice boomed through the haze, barking corrections with the same detached disappointment that had followed Shouto throughout his childhood.
Again.
Again.
Again.
He was back in his bedroom, so, so young, watching Fuyumi kneel in front of him with a first-aid kit balanced on her lap. She worked carefully, even as tears streamed down both of their faces. Neither of them spoke. They rarely did after training.
Other nights Touya appeared.
Sometimes he was still twelve, sneaking out of the house with soot already staining the cuffs of his sleeves. Sometimes Shouto heard the shouting first, his brother screaming back at their father, Endeavor's voice shaking the walls in return. Those dreams never lasted long enough for him to see how they ended.
His subconscious always knew where to take him next.
Smoke, ash and a mountain swallowed by blue fire. Shouto always woke before he could reach him.
His time at UA had only added to the collection.
Stain's bloodied grin, the suffocating weight of collapsing rubble, and Midoriya at the sport festival.
The words: “Call me Touya.”
His mind replayed them all with relentless precision, stitching his old wounds together with new ones until they became impossible to separate.
Some nights he woke gasping, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets with his pulse pounding in his ears so violently he could barely hear anything else. Other mornings there was no panic, instead a heaviness that settled behind his eyes after another fractured night's sleep.
Neither outcome surprised him anymore. Nightmares had become as routine as brushing his teeth, which was perhaps why, on the first Monday of second year, Shouto wasn’t surprised when his eyes snapped open, his heart racing so fast he swore he could hear its frantic pumping against his covers.
The digital clock on his bedside table glowed 2:47 a.m in an ominous red, casting his room in a dark shade of maroon. He stared at the numbers for a long moment, waiting. Sometimes, if he stayed perfectly still, sleep found its way back to him.
This time it didn’t look like he was going to be so lucky.
With a quiet exhale, he rolled onto his back, rubbing the heel of one hand across tired eyes. The remnants of the dream were already slipping away, leaving behind only disconnected fragments of smoke,heat and someone shouting. The phantom sting of burns that had long since healed.
He closed his eyes again, praying silently for sleep to take him once more
Five minutes passed, then ten.
He shifted beneath the blankets, turning onto one side before rolling back again moments later. The sheets felt too warm. His pillow was somehow both too soft and too firm. Every position became uncomfortable within seconds.
Outside, a lone cicada buzzed somewhere beyond the dorm windows, and the sound of the building's plumbing echoed faintly through the walls.
Everyone else seemed capable of something Shouto had never quite mastered.
Resting.
Sighing, he opened one eye to look at the clock again.
2:59.
It had barely been twelve minutes. He grumbled under his breath before throwing back his covers and slipping his feet into the house slippers by his bed. There wasn't much point in staying here anymore.
Cracking his bedroom door open just enough to peer through the gap, Shouto paused, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness beyond. The corridor stretched away from him in complete silence, empty and undisturbed, bathed only in the pale wash of moonlight spilling through the narrow window at the far end. During the day the hallway felt inviting, almost lively, filled with the distant chatter of classmates drifting between rooms, doors slamming shut, music leaking through walls, or Kaminari and Ashido shouting about something or other. At this hour, though, it hardly resembled the same place. The soft green carpet that ran the length of the floor had lost all of its colour, dulled to a muted grey beneath the weak light, while the framed photographs decorating the walls cast long, distorted shadows that stretched unnaturally across the carpet.
Satisfied that nobody else was awake, Shouto stepped into the hallway, easing his door shut behind him until the latch clicked into place with barely a sound. The cool air prickled pleasantly against the warmth lingering in his room, carrying with it the faint scent of laundry detergent and baked goods (no doubt due to Satou being his neighbour) that seemed permanently embedded into Heights Alliance. He stood for a while, breathing in the atmosphere of his first true home, where he’d felt comfortable to open up and talk.
Walking a few more steps, his gaze drifted instinctively towards the far end of the corridor. For the better part of a year, the room at the end of the hall had remained empty, its dark doorway serving as little more than a reminder that Heights Alliance had never quite been full. Now, however, a small silver nameplate had appeared beside the door-frame, the neat lettering reading Hitoshi Shinsou. The room no longer stood abandoned, yet the habit of acknowledging it each time he left his own room had never disappeared. His eyes flickered almost absentmindedly to the narrow strip of darkness beneath the door.
No light. Not surprising, given how often Aizawa assigned additional training to Shinsou, he was probably making the most of the few hours he had to sleep before another exhausting day began. Shouto lingered for only a moment longer before looking away. It wasn't as though he had expected anything different. Most people were asleep at this hour. He supposed they were lucky enough that, when they closed their eyes, sleep simply came to them without demanding anything in return.
The thought settled heavily in the back of his mind as he turned towards the stairwell opposite his room.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
His footsteps were barely audible against the carpeted stairs as he made his way down the four flights to the ground floor, one hand trailing absentmindedly along the smooth wooden banister. The building remained almost unnervingly still, every creak and quiet exhale of the old structure amplified by the absence of voices. Despite the change of scenery, however, his thoughts refused to move on.
The dream lingered stubbornly at the edges of his mind, no longer vivid enough to replay in full, but unwilling to fade completely. He could still remember the heat pressing against his skin, the smell of smoke clinging to the air, the hollow ache that always settled in his chest after waking. He had thought, when he first moved into the dorms, that it would get better. Safe places were supposed to quiet frightened minds. That was what Recovery Girl had implied, what Hound Dog had encouraged him to believe. Yet the further he distanced himself from his childhood home, the more his subconscious seemed determined to drag him back there every night.
It was utterly exhausting.
With a slow breath, Shouto forced the thoughts aside. Dwelling on them had never accomplished anything beyond ensuring they stayed with him for the rest of the night. He reached the bottom of the staircase and crossed the short hallway leading to the common room, pushing the door open with a quiet creak.
Warm light spilled across the polished wooden floor. A single lamp glowed beside one of the armchairs tucked into the reading corner, its amber light casting long, soft shadows across the bookshelves and coffee table. It took Shouto a moment to register why the sight felt so unusual.
Someone other than him was awake.
His eyes settled on the figure curled comfortably into the chair.
Oh.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Hitoshi Shinsou sat with one leg tucked beneath the other, a book resting open in his lap as his eyes scanned steadily across the page. The warm glow of the lamp softened the sharp lines of his face, turning his usually cool-toned purple hair almost lavender at the edges, while the rest of the room remained wrapped in darkness. He hadn't noticed Shouto's arrival, too absorbed in whatever chapter he was reading to look up.
Shouto paused halfway across the room, stopping as he took in the sight before him.
It wasn't as though he'd never found someone else awake at this time of night before. There had been several nights after Midoriya returned from his brief stint as a vigilante where Shouto had come downstairs to find him sitting in the same spot, insisting he simply wasn't tired despite the dark circles beneath his eyes suggesting otherwise, and during the weeks leading up to the first-year midterms the common room had become something of a second classroom for Kaminari, Ashido, Kirishima and Sero, who had declared that staying awake until four in the morning would somehow improve their grades. ( It hadn't).
This though, was different.
There was no television in the background, no scattered notebooks. The only sounds came from the occasional turn of a page and the faint ticking of the clock mounted on the wall above the kitchen entrance.
Shinsou seemed perfectly content to sit there in the silence.
Shouto didn't know him especially well. They'd trained together often enough since his transfer into the Hero Course, and there had been the war before that, but beyond exchanging the occasional conversation before class or during combat exercises they had never really spoken. Even so, he respected him. Shinsou had worked for the place he now occupied in Class 2-A more than most people ever would, spending the better part of a year proving to anyone willing to watch that he belonged there just as much as the rest of them. It wasn't difficult to admire that sort of determination.
For a brief moment, Shouto considered turning around and leaving. Shinsou was clearly occupied, and although sitting alone in the common room at three o'clock in the morning was an unusual choice, it wasn't Shouto's place to interrupt him simply because neither of them appeared capable of sleeping.
Unfortunately, he had spent slightly too long thinking about what the polite thing to do would be and not quite enough attention on where he was putting his feet.
Attempting to step backwards as quietly as he had entered, the side of his knee connected sharply with the solid corner of the nearest sofa.
"FUCK-OW!"
The words escaped before he had the chance to stop it. Well great. So much for leaving unnoticed.
Shouto watched Shinsou's head lift from his book, surprise flashing briefly across his face before settling into cautious curiosity. For a second neither of them said anything, simply staring at one another from their sides of the room.
Shouto hadn't actually considered what he would do if somebody else happened to be awake. The possibility hadn't seemed particularly likely.
"...Hello," he offered eventually.
It sounded just as awkward aloud as it had in his head.
Shinsou blinked once before closing the book in his hands and setting it down on the end-table beside him.
"Hi."
Another silence settled between them.
Shouto shifted his weight, immediately regretting the movement as the bruise forming on his knee reminded him of his less-than-graceful entrance. Attempting to recover at least a little of his dignity, he rested one hand against the edge of the coffee table beside him, aiming for casual and suspecting he had missed the mark entirely.
"I didn't, uh, realise anyone else was awake."
"Well surprise," Shinsou replied, one eyebrow lifting almost imperceptibly. "I'm actually kinda interested in what brings you here."
It wasn't an unreasonable question.
Shouto considered the answer for a moment, debating whether to tell the truth or to make an excuse for his late night adventure. He quickly weighed his options before deciding to trust Shinsou.
"I-um, couldn't sleep."
Shinsou studied him for a second longer than was entirely comfortable before giving a small nod, as though that explanation was enough. He was very good at looking directly through Shouto, like he was seeing inside his mind somehow, which, due to the nature of Shinsou’s quirk, may not have been an unreasonable theory, certainly one Shouto would have to explore later.
"...Right."
Shouto appreciated the lack of follow up questions, glad he didn’t have to fully share the reason for his shitty sleep schedule. He found himself looking at the book on the end-table. "So..." he began, immediately realising he hadn't actually thought of the rest of the sentence. "...you're reading."
Shinsou glanced down at the book before looking back up again.
"I was, yeah."
"...Right."
Another silence followed, and oddly enough, it wasn't too uncomfortable.
"...You know," Shinsou said after a moment, gesturing vaguely towards the empty sofas, "you don't have to stay standing. It's your common room as much as anyone else's."
He paused briefly before adding, almost as an afterthought,
"Probably more than mine."
Shouto frowned. What an odd thing to say.
Crossing the room, he lowered himself onto the chair opposite, drawing one leg beneath him as he settled into it.
"What makes you think that?"
Shinsou shrugged, eyes dropping back his hands as they anxiously curled around each other.
"I’ve only just transferred into this course."
"So?"
This time it was Shinsou's turn to look up.
"You earned your place here," Shouto continued. "You worked harder than most people to get into the Hero Course. I've seen it. It wouldn't make sense for you to have any less right to be here."
The words left his mouth with little more thought than that. To him, it was simply a statement of fact.
For just a fraction of a second, something unreadable crossed Shinsou's face.
Surprise, perhaps.
Or disbelief.
Whatever it was disappeared almost immediately, hidden behind the familiar expression Shouto had come to associate with him as Shinsou cleared his throat and glanced back down at his book.
Fishing his phone from his pocket, Shouto unlocked it and opened HeroNet, scrolling absentmindedly through articles he wasn't really paying attention to. Across from him, Shinsou picked his book back up without another word.
The silence settled easily between them.
Every so often the quiet was broken by the soft rustle of another page turning, or the muted tap of Shouto's thumb against his phone screen, but neither of them seemed particularly interested in filling the gaps with conversation.
Time slipped by unnoticed in that easy sort of way until the quiet was interrupted by footsteps descending the stairs, causing Shouto to look down at his phone.
6:25 a.m.
Morning had arrived far quicker than he'd realised.
Given the time, it was almost certainly Midoriya or Iida heading out for their usual run before classes, and a second later Iida appeared in the doorway exactly as expected. He paused for the briefest moment upon spotting the two of them occupying the matching armchairs, offered them both a polite nod, then continued into the kitchen in search of the glass of orange juice that invariably preceded his morning exercise.
Shouto watched him disappear around the corner before looking back across the room.
Shinsou was already looking at him.
After a moment, Shinsou closed his book, stretching until his shoulders gave a quiet pop before standing from the armchair.
Shouto mirrored the movement, slipping his phone back into his pocket. He hadn't managed to get any more sleep, but the roar of fire and flame in his mind had dulled to a peaceful smoulder, a rare feeling.
Turning towards the stairs, he had barely taken two steps before a hesitant voice stopped him.
"...Todoroki?"
He glanced back.
Shinsou had one hand shoved awkwardly into the pocket of his joggers, the other rubbing absentmindedly at the back of his neck as though he wasn't entirely sure he'd meant to say anything at all.
"What you said earlier..." He cleared his throat. "About me making a good hero."
He hesitated.
"...Thanks."
For a second, Shouto simply looked at him.
Then he gave a small shrug.
"It was true."
Shinsou blinked.
"You'll make a great hero."
There wasn't any hesitation in the words, nor any attempt to soften them into a compliment. They were delivered with the same certainty Shouto might have used to comment on the weather or tomorrow's timetable.
It was just a simple fact.
Something in Shinsou's expression shifted, too quickly for Shouto to place.
"...Right," he murmured.
Shouto nodded, as if to reinforce his feelings.
"I'll see you in class."
With that, he turned back towards the stairs, catching his foot on the bottom step just enough to slightly trip him up, before continuing upwards as though nothing had happened.
Behind him, he could have sworn he heard a quiet snort.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Tuesday night happened much the same as Monday had.
Shouto slept.
He woke.
He slept again.
By the time his eyes opened for what felt like the hundredth time that night, the remnants of another dream had already begun to slip through his fingers, leaving behind only the familiar ache in his chest and the phantom sting of old burns across his arms. This one had been kinder than most. There had been no smoke rolling over Sekoto Peak, no blue flames, no voice announcing itself as his brother. Instead, it had been one of the older memories; Fuyumi quietly cleaning and bandaging the burns scattered across his arms after another training session, neither of them speaking because there had never been anything to say.
It was strange, Shouto thought, that his subconscious considered that one of the better dreams.
He rolled over, blinking blearily at the digital clock on his bedside table.
4:09 a.m.
Later than usual, albeit not by much. Perhaps that explained why he didn't feel quite as exhausted as he normally did, or why the weight pressing against his chest wasn't nearly as suffocating as it had been the previous morning. It wasn't exactly a good night's sleep, but by his standards… it could’ve been worse.
Shouto lay there for another minute, waiting to see if sleep might return now that the dream had passed, but it remained stubbornly out of reach. Eventually, with the quiet sigh of someone who had repeated the same routine more times than he cared to count, he pushed back his duvet and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
A change of scenery, he decided, would probably do him more good than staring at the ceiling for the next two hours. There was always the common room.
As Shouto quietly pushed open the door to the common room, he wasn't entirely sure what he expected to find on the other side. It was considerably later than the previous night, and whilst the common room had been occupied before during his occasional sleepless wanderings, it had almost always been for a reason. Bakugou had more than once been found making coffee before an early morning training session, Iida was prone to beginning his morning runs at what Shouto considered an unreasonable hour, and Satou occasionally appeared before sunrise whenever he had decided the class deserved fresh baking for breakfast. Four o'clock, however, sat somewhere awkwardly between late enough that most people had long since given up on being awake and early enough that the rest hadn't usually started their day.
It was for that reason, that Shouto was surprised to once more see Hitoshi Shinsou.
He was occupying the very same armchair as the night before, although the book had disappeared, replaced instead by the faint glow of his phone screen reflecting off his face as he scrolled lazily with one thumb. If anything, he looked even more comfortable than he had yesterday, one leg thrown over the arm of the chair in a way that suggested he'd been there for quite some time.
Shouto paused.
Perhaps last night hadn't been a coincidence after all.
The thought lingered for only a moment before he continued into the room. Having already discovered that silently attempting to leave without acknowledging Shinsou generally resulted in minor injuries, he decided it was probably worth trying a different approach this time.
"Hi."
It was short, simple, and significantly less embarrassing than walking into another sofa.
Shouto watched as Shinsou jumped slightly, his eyes darting up from his phone until they landed on him, the surprise in them fading almost immediately into a small smile.
"So," Shinsou said, locking his phone and setting it down beside him, "we meet again."
He gestured lazily towards the armchair opposite.
"Step into my office."
A smile tugged at the corners of Shouto's mouth as he crossed the room, lowering himself into the chair opposite. It took him a moment to get comfortable, eventually settling into a rather questionable position with one leg tucked underneath him and the other hanging awkwardly over the armrest. Judging by the amused look Shinsou was now wearing, he hadn't managed to make the manoeuvre look particularly dignified.
As Shouto adjusted the sleeve of his hoodie, his eyes caught the graphic stretched across the front of Shinsou's t-shirt.
"...You like Second Nature?"
Shinsou glanced down at his shirt before looking back up.
"Oh, yeah."
"I didn't know anyone else in class listened to them." The words left Shouto before he really had the chance to think about them. "Gravity's probably my favourite song, although Afterimage's a close second. Actually, the whole White Noise album's really good. I tried getting Midoriya to listen to it once, but he said it was too depressing, which I suppose is fair enough, although I don't really think it's depressing so much as..."
Shouto stopped.
He hadn't intended to say quite so much.
Looking up from where he'd been absently picking at a loose thread on the arm of the chair, he found Shinsou watching him with an expression he couldn't quite place.
"...Sorry," Shouto muttered after a beat. "I got a bit carried away."
For another second, Shinsou simply looked at him.
Then, to Shouto's surprise, he laughed.
Not loudly, nor for very long, but enough that the corners of his eyes crinkled.
"I was just thinking," he admitted, "I don't think I've ever heard you say that many words in one go."
Shouto felt heat rise to his face, and he looked away from Shinsou rather than risk holding his gaze for too long, like it might make the words come out differently if he did.
“I—uh… I think I get a bit carried away with music,” he started, then paused as if he was only just hearing his own sentence properly. “It’s just… I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like it’s not just sound, it’s like… someone taking whatever you’re feeling and arranging it properly so it actually makes sense when you hear it back.”
He frowned slightly, as though trying to decide whether that made any sense at all.
“That probably doesn’t… sound right,” he added more quietly, eyes flicking briefly down to his hands. “It sounds better in my head.”
For a moment he didn’t look up, expecting the usual pause people gave when they weren’t sure how to respond to him. The kind of silence that meant he’d said too much again, or said it wrong.
Instead, Shinsou didn’t look away. He let out a small breath, almost like he was thinking out loud.
“…No,” he said slowly. “No, I think I get it.”
He shifted slightly in the armchair, gaze drifting away from Shouto for a moment. “It’s like… you already feel everything, but it just sits there, kind of tangled up, and music… it pulls it into shape. Makes it… easier to look at. Like it gives it edges?”
A pause.
Then, a little more uncertainly, “That sounds… less weird in my head too.”
Shouto looked up at him properly now, catching the way Shinsou’s expression wasn’t quite confident, but wasn’t dismissive either.
“…Yeah,” Shouto said eventually. “Something like that. I didn’t think other people thought about it like that.”
Shinsou glanced back at him.
“Neither did I.”
The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable.
It just stayed there, the same way it had been before, except neither of them seemed in a hurry to fill it anymore.
Shouto found his gaze dropping without meaning to, settling somewhere on the carpet near the coffee table. He didn’t really think about it at first. It was just easier to look there than anywhere else.
He blinked once, then again, slower this time.
“Are you tired?” Shinsou asked.
Shouto paused for a moment, as if checking.
“I…I think so,” he said.
Shinsou shifted slightly in the armchair.
“You can sleep you know,” he added, like it was obvious.
Shouto didn’t answer straight away.
He adjusted his position on the armchair, pulling his legs in a little more.
“Yeah…Okay,” he said after a moment.
A few seconds passed and his eyes closed.