Chapter Text
Shouto knows the moment he wakes up that something is wrong. His throat feels rough and thick, he can’t breathe well through his nose, his whole body aches, and oh, yes, there’s a hot pile of embers burning inside his skull.
He should’ve stayed farther away from Midoriya when he was sneezing in class two days ago. At least he knows Midoriya is fine now, so it’s probably just a 24, 48-hour thing. That’s good. Maybe longer for him, and of course that doesn’t help him on a Wednesday when he still has three days of class ahead, but at least he won’t be in hell for two weeks.
He thinks back to the time he had the flu as a kid and shudders. No. Not going to happen.
(An entire month- )
(It’s not the flu. Calm down. )
As much as he wants to roll over and bury himself under the covers, he can’t. Endeavor always made him train when he was sick, for two reasons. First, it was a punishment for his weakness. He needed to overcome it, be stronger. Diseases always seemed to be just as strong as Shouto, though, and those one or two week spans where he was feverish and coughing were some of the worst in his childhood. Which is saying a lot.
The second reason is that the heat of the fever suppresses his ice side, and conversely makes his fire side more volatile and harder to control. It was always Endeavor’s best chance to force him to use it.
Hence why Shouto hasn’t gotten so much as a sniffle since he was eleven.
Gods, he forgot just how much being sick sucks. But he needs to be up in the next five minutes if he wants to be on time. He was strong enough to train through sickness as a kid. He’s strong enough now. The last thing he needs is all of his class and his teachers knocking down his door.
He’s still almost ten minutes late to class, caught up in trying to make sure he looks presentable, and pausing every so often to cough or sneeze, and once graying out as he remembers the last time he was really sick in his own home.
Not now. The gray fog is still threatening the edges of his mind, but he’s under enough suspicion without that there to mess him up. He digs his fingernails into his palms and fights to focus as Aizawa drops a dry remark about being late. He manages an apology. He doesn’t hear what comes after. If he’s in trouble he’ll be reminded at the end of class.
He just needs an easy day of hero work. That’s all. If they don’t do anything too strenuous, no one has to know his quirk is messed up. He just has to avoid working with his fire as much as possible; avoiding it for so long has made it even harder to control even without the fever stoking the flames.
He hides his left fist under the desk so no one sees the tiny sparks.
Naturally, this is when Aizawa announces they’re having a pop quiz. A practical exam, no less.
If Shouto were the type, if he were allowed weakness, he might consider crying. As it is he stands to get his PE uniform like everyone else and changes as quickly as he can, in the corner by himself. Midoriya slides up to him on their way out to the training field.
“Hey. You okay?”
Shouto shrugs. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You just seem….off.”
“Didn’t sleep that well. But I’m fine.”
Midoriya gives him a long look and drifts away, leaving him alone while he babbles to Uraraka and Iida.
The gray fog creeps in and Shouto squeezes his eyes shut as he walks for a moment. His head is pounding, and now nausea has joined his list of symptoms. It’s not bad yet, just uncomfortable. He can manage. He halfheartedly tries to spread some frost over his arm, maybe cool down his core temperature, but it takes a level of control, and a level of ice willing to work with him, that he doesn’t have.
He stumbles and opens his eyes, but no one seems to notice.
“Okay, everyone, partner up and pick a circle,” Aizawa announces.
Shouto immediately veers away from Midoriya. Partners will either be fighting each other or working together, and while they’d make a good team, he absolutely cannot handle going up against that quirk right now. He barely handled it in the Sports Festival.
He tries to ignore the brief look of hurt that flashes across Midoriya’s face, and partners with Asui instead. That turns out to be a good decision.
“All right, you’ll get five minutes to fight your partner while I observe. After that point, partners will rotate and the process repeats. After three rounds, I’ll tally up the results.”
Right. Okay. Shouto glances around him. Midoriya is far across the field, little chance of them getting paired, but on either side of him are Iida, Uraraka, Kirishima, and Sero. Not his most powerful classmates, but they all made it very far in the festival.
There’s a sinking feeling in Shouto’s stomach that this is not going to go well.
Aizawa calls for them to start and he sends ice along the ground, but Asui dodges easily when it’s far slower and smaller than usual. Flames flicker in his hand as she dodges his next few ice attacks, and once she wraps her tongue around him and throws him down.
He grabs her tongue with his left hand, unthinking, and she yelps as she retracts it, burned flesh and all. Shouto barely stops himself from apologizing. This time he manages to catch her leg in his ice, and quickly encases the rest of her lower body as well before drawing up a short wall of ice to hide behind; she can still use her tongue to throw him around.
He waits out the last two minutes or so before the round ends fighting not to cough or fall asleep. The sunlight hurts his eyes. Aizawa drifts past, taking notes, and his gaze lingers for a moment too long on Shouto.
But he doesn’t say anything, moving on to the next circle.
The next fight puts him in with Sero, and more importantly, moves Bakugou to Kirishima’s circle.
Please don’t put him in mine next, Shouto thinks, trying to project the message as hard as possible toward Aizawa. Their teacher only calls for the next round to start.
This is fine. Shouto beat Sero at the Sports Festival. He can beat him again now.
Just like at the festival, Sero wraps his tape around Shouto immediately, pinning his arms to his body. It’s a move Shouto should’ve seen coming, since he’s seen it before, but with his head full of cotton he doesn’t even get to think of dodging.
Sero starts spinning him around, like before, and immediately the nausea changes from a faint simmer to a roar. Shouto doesn’t usually get dizzy so easily, but right now it feels like all of his organs are bouncing around inside the cavity of his skeleton, like his stomach could fly out of his mouth.
No, no, no-
He manages to grab the tape, somehow, and freeze it, snapping it off and sending himself hurtling to the ground a few feet outside their circle. Sero grins, gearing up for another attack, and that’s all Shouto sees before he’s on his hands and knees, breathing through his mouth and trying very, very hard not to throw up.
He can’t. Not here. Not in front of them all.
Footsteps jog over to him. He heaves, but thankfully nothing comes up. The back of his throat tastes like bile. His entire body hurts, and his muscles tremble from the effort of holding himself together, holding his flames at bay.
Dimly he recognizes Aizawa crouching in front of him. “Todoroki. Are you alright?”
He swallows once, twice, three times, until he’s reasonably sure he won’t throw up, then he sits back and nods. “Fine.”
“Would you like to take a break? There’s still a little over three minutes left. I can exempt you from this round, it won’t affect your-”
“No. I’m fine.” If this round isn’t scored and Shouto gets paired with Bakugou next and loses, he’ll fail for sure. He needs to win at least this one.
He staggers to his feet and Aizawa follows, frowning faintly. “Are you sure?”
Three minutes in this fight, five in the next. Ten minutes at most, and he’s done. He can do that. He can survive ten minutes of anything.
“Absolutely.”
Sero manages to throw him around a bit more before Shouto finally gets his ice to cooperate enough to freeze him up to his elbows. It’s getting harder every time, and he keeps feeling like he’s tilting, off balance, his vision swimming. It makes aiming hard. He’s wasted a lot of ice.
His fire is humming just under his skin, burning up everywhere, and it’s taking most of the shreds of his focus not to use it. It would be so easy.
Easy to win, and easy to kill. To scar.
He won’t use it. Not today.
Naturally, his third matchup is with Bakugou. Aizawa comes by again while everyone is getting situated.
“You’re sure you’re alright? You don’t look good, kid.”
“I’m fine. Just got dizzy for a second.”
“Don’t think for a second I’m gonna go easy on you just because you almost blew chunks last round, IcyHot!” Bakugou yells. He’s always yelling.
Shouto’s head hurts.
Aizawa announces the start of the final round and Bakugou lunges. Shouto loses track almost immediately of what’s happening. There’s so many explosions his ears ring, and his ice won’t work properly, and everything fucking hurts like the fire is burning away the seams holding him together.
Bakugou is yelling, like always, but Shouto can’t track the words. He can’t think, can’t strategize, can’t react.
He just takes a beating.
Once, when he was nine, he had the flu. And his left side burst into flames he couldn’t put out for two hours. He was lucky the whole house was so well fireproofed, including his room, because there was no way he could cry or scream for help and the door was locked from the outside. Couldn’t get anyone else sick, could only come out for training.
Stop thinking about it. Focus.
Then Bakugou hits him with a particularly violent blast, yelling something about giving him a real fight, you bastardcowardweaklingsoft and Shouto finds himself on his back, on the ground.
Get up. He doesn’t know if he thinks it, or says it, or if someone else does. The memory of his father and the reality of Bakugou and his own in-between voice in his head are all blending.
For a moment he allows himself to drift, sliding away from all the ugliness in his body. There’s heat close to his face, but it smells like gunpowder; that means something, means someone, but he can’t grasp it. It’s so loud that it’s silent, save for a faint high tone.
“-roki, Todoroki, can you hear me?”
He can. He opens his eyes—did he close them?—and stares at Aizawa.
“Something’s not right,” his teacher mutters. “Did you hit your head? Do you know where you are?”
Shouto shakes his head. “‘s not my head,” he mumbles. “I’m fine. I know where I am.”
“Well, I didn’t understand a word of that,” someone, somewhere, says.
Shouto’s eyes fly open again and he struggles to sit up. “I’m fine, ” he spits, as clearly as he can. “I’m on the training field. Everything’s fine. I’m just, just tired, or slow today, or something.”
Aizawa supports him with a hand splayed across his shoulder blade. Shouto allows it for one, two, three seconds before he stands up. He barely even sways.
It’s a win. He’s fine.
He just has to make it to lunch. There’s still the afternoon to deal with after that, but…he’ll find a way.
Aizawa clearly doesn’t believe he’s fine, but he’s standing, uninjured, and coherent, so he goes back to the middle of the field to project their scores. Shouto trudges up to the group last, and stares at the blurry characters for a long time before they make any kind of sense. Stares at the score beside his name for even longer before it sinks in.
He failed the exam.
He
failed.
Just like that he steps to the side, out of his body, away from the sickness and the fire and the crushing weight of panic and guilt. From the outside, he pilots his body silently back to the classroom. They still have twenty minutes until lunch, so Shouto is allowed to sit in his seat and drift.
Everything else in the world is trapped behind layers of ice. The ice keeps him safe. Nothing can melt it, not even Endeavor’s fiery wrath. Behind the ice there is nothing, but there are so many things worse than that. Shouto has never complained.
No one bothers him. Maybe they don’t want to upset him. Maybe they’ve all realized he’s worthless, a failure, a boy created to destroy All Might who can’t even pass high school. Maybe they want nothing to do with him now.
After a long time, or maybe none at all, he becomes aware of a warm, solid weight on his right knee. It feels important. He swims toward it, through the nothing, the gray fog, the fragmenting wall of ice.
He blinks, and the blurry colors in front of him resolve into Aizawa, kneeling on the floor with a hand on his knee.
“Are you back with me, Todoroki?”
He blinks. It’s all he’s capable of doing. Everything aches. He’s so tired.
“Okay. How about you blink twice for yes, once for no. Do you hear me?”
Two blinks.
“Do you know who I am?”
The answer should be obvious, Shouto knows him, he does, he’s certain, but it takes an agonizing second to put a label to familiarity. He blinks twice.
“Good. I’m assuming you were dissociating just now, is that correct?”
Shouto frowns minutely. He doesn’t understand.
“It may feel like you aren’t in control of your body, or that the rest of the world is very far away,” Aizawa supplies. Warily, Shouto nods, and then remembers that he’s supposed to blink, maybe, and then he’s too tired to think.
“Does this happen often?”
Shouto pulls his knee away, curling more into himself. There’s a note of something in Aizawa’s voice, something wrong, and he’s already failed. He’s fucked up enough today, he can’t do it again.
He can’t admit the truth and be weak.
He can’t lie and be caught.
Aizawa’s hand lands on his knee again. “You are not in trouble, Todoroki. I am not angry with you. I just want to know, for your safety. Does this happen often?”
Almost against his will Shouto finds himself nodding.
“Every day?”
It feels like a terrible, miserable confession to nod again.
“Right. Do you know of anything that helps?”
He doesn’t. He’s never tried to fix it before. He shakes his head.
“Does this help?” Aizawa’s fingers tap on his knee. “The touch?”
Slowly Shouto moves his hand to cover Aizawa’s. Staring at his knee, he nods.
“Okay. Do I have permission to touch you a bit more, then? I don’t think it’s safe for you to be walking around school like this.”
Shouto wants to protest that he’s fine, he’s always fine, at least fine enough that no one ever noticed before, but he can’t get his mouth to move. Aizawa waits patiently.
After a long time, he nods.
“I’m going to start with your arm. You can stop me at any time you feel like it.”
That wasn’t a question, so Shouto doesn’t bother to respond. A hand starts rubbing up and down his bicep, somehow warming him up even though he feels hot all over. He tries to focus on that, follow the steady rhythm of the movement. The hand moves up to his shoulder and then makes a cautious leap to his hair.
Shouto tenses, but nothing bad happens, just fingers gently carding through the strands.
The world feels a little bit more real. He meets Aizawa’s gaze.
His teacher frowns.
That’s not right.
Aizawa lays his hand across Shouto’s forehead, his frown deepening. “Todoroki, you’re burning up.”
“Yeah,” he whispers, voice hoarse and tongue thick in his mouth. “‘m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. You should have told me you were sick, I wouldn’t have tested you today. I should’ve noticed; it’s not like you to fail a physical exam.”
At the reminder Shouto tenses, shuddering all over. He might not be in trouble now (is he? Aizawa said he wasn’t. Maybe he was lying), but when Endeavor finds out…
“Hey, hey, Todoroki, look at me. Don’t go away again.” Aizawa’s hand is cupping his cheek now, and Shouto blinks furiously, struggling to stay present.
“You’re okay. I’ll take your test score off your record, and when you feel better I’ll figure out a replacement test for you, okay? You aren’t failing anything today.”
Shouto nods.
“Good. I’m giving you the rest of this week off to recover, okay?”
Shouto freezes. Not literally. He doesn’t have a single snowflake left inside of him. His lungs feel scorched. He just goes still.
“But I can’t miss training.”
“You absolutely can. You’re sick, you can barely function. Don’t think I didn’t notice how weak your quirk was today. How were you going to train with it suppressed like that?”
“‘s not all suppressed.”
“What?”
Shouto swallows. “‘s only the ice. Fire’s, fire’s really easy. Too easy.”
“Too powerful, you mean?” Aizawa nods to himself. “That makes a surprising amount of sense. How are you feeling now? More present?”
He is, actually. That’s a surprise. “Yes.”
“I’d like to walk you back to your dorm, if that’s okay. You need to rest, but you shouldn’t be alone right now.”
Shouto bites the inside of his cheek. His voice sounds too small when he asks, “What…what about lunch?”
Aizawa checks the time. “Lunch is over, kid. Once everyone left without you, I figured something was wrong, but it still took about thirty minutes for you to give me any kind of sign you were in there.”
Shouto breathes in and out. thirty minutes—close to an hour, counting the time before class ended—sounds like a lot, but. More often than not he feels like he’s viewing the world through a thick sheet of ice anyway.
Makes life easier.
“Can I walk you back to your dorm?” Aizawa repeats.
This time Shouto nods. He even manages to stand up and walk on his own, even if he’s dizzy. Aizawa reaches for his left shoulder to steady him, and Shouto flinches violently away.
“I’ll hurt you.”
“I’ll erase your quirk,” Aizawa returns easily.
“Not before I hurt you.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Shouto can’t actually bring himself to protest when Aizawa rests a hand on his shoulder again. He does grit his teeth and focus as hard as he can on not burning his teacher, which means that eventually his vision blurs and it starts getting harder to put one foot in front of the other. He closes his eyes, focusing on keeping his feet moving and following where Aizawa leads and keeping his fire contained.
He doesn’t even think about how he just trusted Aizawa to lead him well until he’s already sitting in his dorm room, on his bed. Aizawa is gone. He doesn’t remember getting here.
He’s alone again. As usual.
Then the door opens and Aizawa appears with a steaming bowl of soup. Shouto lets his hands fall open, loosely cupping the bowl in his lap and staring at it.
“I’m not leaving until you eat,” Aizawa says simply.
Shouto eats, stiffly, mechanically. The bowl is halfway finished before he tastes any of it. When he’s finished, Aizawa gently replaces it with a thermometer, which only tells them that yes, Shouto has a fever, but no, it’s not high enough to be dangerous. Yet.
He’s still got at least five days, probably, for it to get worse.
“I’m going to let you stay here alone on a few conditions,” Aizawa says as he grabs some medicine. “First, you take your meds, on schedule, with food if you can. Second, you take your temperature every few hours and text me what it is so I know you’ve done it. And third, you’ll let Midoriya in to check on you once in a while. I assume he’s the reason you got sick, so there’s less chance you’ll give this back to him, right?”
Shouto nods. Aizawa seems surprised he agreed to the conditions so readily, but they’re not that bad and he’s too tired to argue.
“Okay. We will be talking about what happened earlier as soon as you’re feeling better. Try to get some rest.”
Shouto doubts that’ll work, but he nods at the floor anyway, and barely manages to make his mouth work to say thank you.
He looks up afterward, and he is alone, and he doesn’t actually know how long it’s been since Aizawa left.
He manages to lay on the bed, on top of the covers—it’s too hot. The dorms are supposed to be fairly quirk-proof, but he doesn’t want to take any chances. And if Midoriya comes in…
He drifts again. It’s easier.
Some time later he comes back to a hand gently shaking his shoulder.
“Todoroki, wake up.”
He peels his eyes open, finds Midoriya bent over him. “Wasn’t asleep.”
“It looked like it. How long have you been here?”
Shouto sits up, or more like props himself mostly vertical with his right hand, curling his left against his stomach. He still feels too volatile, and it’s getting worse with every moment that Midoriya forces him to reinhabit his body.
“What time is it?”
“Around 4:00. I just got home.”
Midoriya calls the dorms home. It’s endearing. For him, it doesn’t mean his house with his mother is any less a home, just that he has more than one. He has enough of himself to do that. Shouto can’t bring himself to put UA and Endeavor’s mansion in the same space, however distantly.
Midoriya is still looking at him, waiting for an answer, so Shouto forces his sluggish brain to do the math. He and Aizawa must have left not long after lunch ended, which means…
“Four hours, I think?”
“Aizawa told me to make sure you were doing what you were supposed to do. I dunno what that is, though, do you know what he meant?”
Shouto fumbles for the thermometer, forgotten amongst his blankets. His temperature is the same. He texts Aizawa the number and nothing else, not caring if it’s rude, too tired to think of anything else to say.
A second later his phone buzzes, a single text in response flashing on the screen.
Thank you.
Huh. He was just following orders. Simple ones, and pretty badly.
Whatever. He’s too tired to think about it. “There’s meds, on the desk.”
Midoriya squints at the assortment of bottles and rifles through them for the correct ones, passing two over. Shouto squints at the tiny writing for far too long before he can make it out. Four hours for one, six for the other, so he doesn’t need to take anything yet.
The last thing Aizawa told him to do is already done, so Shouto relaxes. He’s half ready to drift away again, maybe try to actually sleep, when Midoriya tilts his head. It’s such a small movement, but Shouto is attuned to everything he does.
“Did you see Recovery Girl yet at all? Kacchan was really beating on you.”
It takes Shouto way too long to remember that Kacchan is Bakugou. “Um. No. It’s fine.”
It really is. He’s sore, but part of that is the fever anyway, and he’s intimately familiar with all the feelings of broken bones and concussions. Bakugou didn’t do him any lasting damage.
“Then why are you holding your side like that?” Midoriya reaches for his left arm, all innocent concern.
Shouto bares his teeth and jerks away, scrambling back on the bed until he hits the wall. “Don’t. Don’t touch me.”
Midoriya looks hurt. Shouto amends that too, “Don’t touch me there. ”
“Your left side…” Midoriya mumbles, not really to him. His mouth moves soundlessly as he frowns, no doubt running through his usual babble of thinking things through.
Shouto lets him. There was never a chance he would hide anything from Midoriya. It almost doesn’t bother him, maybe because there’s nothing he could do, not when he’s too perceptive for his own good.
“You’re afraid of hurting me with your fire? But you’ve been getting so much better at controlling it! But you didn’t use it at all in training today, either, even though you were fine with it earlier in the week. So it’s got something to do with the sickness, right?”
He pauses for a beat, but Shouto doesn’t get a chance to process anything, let alone answer, before he rushes on.
“Fevers warm your body temperature up, so…so it’s making your fire more powerful?”
This time he does stop, long enough for Shouto to nod and move away from the wall a little. “I don’t know if I can control it. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Got it. Can I sit with you, though? On your right?”
Shouto wants to tell him to go away, leave him alone, but he doesn’t. He just nods, and allows himself to lean against Midoriya. Allows himself to wallow, just a little, in his misery.
“I’m sorry I got you sick.”
He doesn’t bother to reply.
“You can sleep if you want to.”
Shouto doesn’t sleep, but he does slide silently out of his body, out of time. Midoriya’s shoulder against his keeps him from going too far, but everything goes fuzzy and muted, soft. It doesn’t hurt so much.
Aizawa seemed concerned about it, but Shouto doesn’t know why. It’s fine. It’s always been fine.
He survives, doesn’t he? He trains, and he fights, and he gets better, and that’s all anyone has ever needed from him.
So, sometimes he forgets. He doesn’t remember much of the whole year he was ten, fine. Nothing important happens when you’re ten except for getting better, and he did, or Endeavor would’ve killed him, so it’s fine.
He doesn’t know how long it’s been before he feels a hand in his hair, stroking gently, and reluctantly returns enough to himself to look at Midoriya.
He’s lying down. He doesn’t remember getting there, which would be more disconcerting if he didn’t frequently wind up places he doesn’t remember going. His head is in Midoriya’s lap and Midoriya’s hand is in his hair. It’s soft. It reminds him of being a child, somewhat unpleasantly, but he can’t bring himself to pull away.
“Kacchan brought you soba. I think he feels bad, but don’t tell him I said that or he’ll blow my head off. I didn’t want to wake you, though. Or…disturb you. Were you sleeping?”
Shouto reluctantly pushes himself up to eat. He should just lie. Midoriya doesn’t need to know.
But Midoriya is also about the closest thing he’s got to a friend (it’s distinctly possible that they are friends, but he’s not going to ask).
“I…I go away, sometimes. In my head.”
Midoriya frowns. Shouto focuses on eating, not looking at him. “Go away? What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shrugs. At least he’s not the only one who doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. “It’s easier. Don’t have to be in my body.”
“That…doesn’t sound good.”
He shrugs again. “Time?”
“Almost six.”
“Sorry.”
“For what?” And that’s…Midoriya sounds genuinely surprised.
“Keeping you here? With me? For two hours?”
“I didn’t mind. It was…nice. You seemed, um, happy. Or not happy, exactly, should I not say that if you weren’t even here, do you know what I’m trying to say? I just don’t want you to feel bad about it because it wasn’t bad at all and you don’t need to kick me out! Unless you want to be alone, which, um, maybe you shouldn’t be, but I’ll totally leave if you want me to and-”
“Midoriya.”
He shuts his mouth with a soft click.
“My head hurts. Please stop talking.”
“Oh. Sorry. Do…do you want me to go?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
Shouto is quiet for a second, maybe more than that. “You can keep touching me, if you want.”
Midoriya leans against him. When Shouto’s finished eating he takes some more medicine, checks his temperature—down a little bit—and texts Aizawa.
“Wait, don’t send that-” Midoriya reaches for his phone, in his left hand, and Shouto flinches. “Sorry, just, you typed it wrong, you’re gonna give him a heart attack if you say your body temperature is hotter than an oven.”
Shouto squints at the slightly blurry screen and gives up, passing the phone to his right hand before giving it to Midoriya, just to be safe. His fire feels slightly easier to control at the moment, but he can never be too careful.
He’s so dangerous; that’s the point of him.
“Smile!” Midoriya says, but Shouto barely gets to look at the camera before it flashes. “Whoops, didn’t mean to blind you. I’m sending Mr. Aizawa proof that you’re alive.”
Shouto can’t find it in him to protest that. “Okay. Did you eat?” There was only one plate, and if Midoriya never left him…
“Oh, yeah, totally! While you were…gone.”
“You’re a really shitty liar.”
Midoriya ducks his head. “I don’t want to leave you alone.”
“I’m not going to die.”
Midoriya searches his face and finally nods, getting the same look of determination he usually gets before a test, or heading into battle. It’s sort of funny, seeing it now.
“Okay. Don’t go anywhere.”
Shouto knows he doesn’t just mean physically. “I’ll do my best.”
And he does. He feels a little bit ridiculously proud of himself when Midoriya comes back fifteen minutes later and beams when he sees Shouto’s face.
Endeavor, in the back of his head, snarls that he is acting like a child.
I’m fucking fifteen, Shouto snaps back, and focuses on Midoriya bouncing onto the bed beside him.
“All good now! Hey, how do you feel? Better than this morning?”
Shouto is surprised that he doesn’t have to lie. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Do you want to do something? Maybe a movie?”
Shouto considers. He doesn’t really feel like doing much of anything, and his head still hurts, although the pain has receded some. Most of his experience with movies comes from hero documentaries or, sometimes, action films that Endeavor ruthlessly critiqued for inaccuracies.
But on the other hand, if he’s forcing Midoriya to stay with him, he can’t expect him to just do nothing.
“Sure,” he says finally. “Just…”
He trails off. Don’t whine, Shouto, don’t make an inconvenience , Shouto, show a little goddamn gratitude. To your father, for all the things he’s given you.
His scar tingles. Midoriya nudges him. “What?”
“Nothing. Nevermind.”
“No, you’re the one who’s sick, what were you gonna say? I really don’t mind anything, if you don’t want to watch a movie I can run to my dorm and get some things to work on too, or-”
“Midoriya. It’s fine.”
“Okay, so, what were you going to say?”
Clearly he’s not getting out of this. This is why it’s better to be quiet.
“Just…not something too loud.” Is that even possible?
Midoriya grins. “I have the perfect thing.”
The perfect thing, as it turns out, is some little film called The Adventures of Chatran. Midoriya babbles something about almost picking a Disney film, but they’re not always quiet and he might have to sing along, and Shouto frowns.
“What are you talking about?”
Midoriya pauses. “You know, Disney?”
“What’s that?”
“Are you delirious? Are you doing the thing again?” He grabs Shouto’s chin, squinting at his face.
“What? No. I’m not delirious. I just don’t know what that is.”
“ Disney? Did you have no childho—oh.” All at once Midoriya’s righteous indignation fades, though Shouto can’t figure out why. His brain still isn’t firing on all cylinders. “Nevermind. I am absolutely going to have to fix that when you’re better, though.”
“Fix what?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it. C’mere, this is a cute movie, we have to snuggle.” Midoriya pulls him down, careful to only touch his right side, until they’re both laying on the bed with Shouto’s laptop propped across their thighs.
It’s warm, but not fever-warm. Comfortable. Shouto is pressed between Midoriya and the wall, but for once the position doesn’t make him feel trapped. The movie starts, and it’s actually sort of like a documentary, but about a little orange cat and a pug instead of heroes and villains. The only sounds are the narrator's voice, some music, and the ambient noises of nature.
It’s very cute. Sort of silly. It seems more like a kid thing, but Shouto doesn’t mind. The quiet means his head doesn’t hurt and it’s simple enough to follow along even when he keeps zoning out. Not going away, just…he’s tired.
“Are you gonna fall asleep?” Midoriya whispers.
“No,” Shouto mumbles into his shoulder, eyes barely open.
“Well, just in case, I have a question.”
“Mm?”
“Do you want me to stay here tonight? Or leave after you fall asleep?”
Shouto can’t imagine changing a single thing about what’s happening right now. He’s too comfortable. It almost doesn’t hurt. Even his fire seems a little more inclined to behave.
But then he remembers that he has nightmares, that Sunday night Bakugou came banging on his door telling him to shut up and also go to fucking therapy. Shouto doesn’t know what that has to do with anything, since he’s not crazy and half the class has nightmares anyway, but he knows he’s loud. He knows that sometimes he activates his quirk in his sleep. So far at UA, only the ice, but right now…
“Todoroki,” Midoriya whispers, nudging him. “Are you asleep?”
“‘m fine,” he mumbles. “‘m fine. Just. You can’t stay.”
“Why not?”
“Gonna hurt you.”
Midoriya smooths some of his hair out of his eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
But he has to believe him. Shouto can’t, he won’t, he won’t hurt him. He won’t burn him, he can’t, he has to be better. He has to do better. He’s just a weapon, just a thing made to kill, but he will not do it to Midoriya.
But if Midoriya won’t leave, if he won’t believe that he’s dangerous...
“Todoroki, you’re shaking. Hey, calm down, just breathe. It’s okay. What’s wrong?” Midoriya’s sitting up now, panicked hands fluttering over him like he isn’t sure what’s safe to touch.
Nowhere. Nowhere. Nowhere.
He’s so, so dangerous. All his father ever did was hurt, how is he supposed to be different?
“Don’t,” he hears himself rasp, “don’t touch me.”
“Panic attack,” Midoriya is mumbling to himself, gripping his unruly green hair in his fists. “Panic attack, something triggered him, movie is unlikely since it’s only animals and there’s no violence involved. He doesn’t want to be touched but he’s been fine with that for hours so unless something changed that can’t be it-”
Shouto wants to tell him to stop talking, he’s right here, and he’s fine, everything’s fine, as long as Midoriya leaves and doesn’t get hurt. But his mouth won’t work. His tongue feels swollen and thick. He can’t breathe. Breathing’s not important right now. Not for him.
“-ather’s most likely but what was the trigger, we were just talking about staying the night and he said something about hurting me and—is that it? Todoroki, look at me, try to breathe. Are you worried you’re going to burn me?”
He flinches for no good reason, stupidcowardworthlessweak, but he manages to nod.
“You’ve never hurt me before, not even today with your quirk acting up. Hey, even at the sports festival the only injuries I got were from myself! There’s no reason to believe you’ll suddenly hurt me out of nowhere.”
Shouto is shaking his head, desperately, because he has no words to say that Izuku—that Midoriya is wrong. He has plenty of reason.
“I could,” he gasps. “I have.”
“Not me.”
“Not you,” Shouto repeats, but that’s not the point. “But, but I have.”
Midoriya sits back on his heels, and Shouto is half desperate for him to come closer and half grateful he’s staying away. “You’ve hurt other people with your quirk before, and you’re afraid it’ll happen to me?”
Not exactly, but if he’s finally getting it Shouto doesn’t have the energy to correct him. “Yes.”
“But I’ve been here for ages and you haven’t hurt me. You’ve never hurt anyone at UA by accident.”
“When I sleep,” Shouto grounds out. Midoriya looks confused. “I have nightmares.”
His face opens as understanding dawns. “ Oh. Oh, I get it! I had a nightmare two weeks ago and I accidentally activated my quirk and broke a window. Like that?”
“Yeah.”
Midoriya tilts his head. “I guess I can’t argue with that. Some quirks can be pretty dangerous if you use them in your sleep.”
Finally . Shouto sags in relief. Midoriya grins. In the background, the movie is still playing, and he wants to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.
“Can I touch you again?”
Shouto hesitates. “I don’t know.”
Green eyes trained on his face, Midoriya gently brushes his fingertips over Shouto’s knuckles. “Is this okay?”
He swallows. His tongue won’t move, so he nods, quickly. Midoriya’s fingers drift up his arm, to his shoulder, back down along his side to his hip. Is this okay, is this okay, is this, is this, and his gaze never wavers and Shouto keeps nodding and slowly the tight band around his chest loosens.
Midoriya’s knee bumps his thigh and he’s nodding before he can even ask. Fingers brush the edges of his white hair and he closes his eyes without meaning to. Midoriya keeps going, moving slowly, whispering, until they’re wrapped even closer together than they were before.
Shouto forces his eyes open, forces himself to watch the movie. He doesn’t really track what’s going on, but he tries to laugh when Midoriya does. Eventually it’s over, and they sit in front of the scrolling credits for a moment. Sleep is tugging at Shouto’s edges, but before he gives in he needs to know Midoriya understands.
“Please leave,” he says.
Midoriya tenses beside him and slowly begins to crawl out of bed. Panic sparks in Shouto’s chest, he didn’t mean it like that, and he grabs Midoriya’s wrist.
“Wait.”
Midoriya turns back, waiting patiently, and Shouto has to close his eyes because he can’t handle that expression. He struggles for a long moment to get himself under control, to get his thoughts in order.
“Sorry-”
“Don’t be,” Midoriya says, very softly.
Shouto swallows another apology. “I just. I don’t. You can’t be here when I’m asleep.”
“....But you’re not asleep yet.”
He looks straight ahead so he doesn’t have to embarrass himself.
“Do you want me to stay until you fall asleep?”
“Yeah,” Shouto says, but it comes out like “ Please. ”
Midoriya climbs back into bed. They send Aizawa another update, and Midoriya takes another selfie (this time, Shouto can tell that his eyes are puffy, and he doesn’t remember crying but he doesn’t remember a lot of things, so he just rolls away and buries his face in the pillow until Midoriya’s done.
“He’s going to think I smothered you,” he whispers when Shouto presses back against him.
It’s not snuggling. It’s just…something.
“Whatever.”
“Go to sleep. I’ll leave as soon as you do. I promise.”
Shouto believes him. And he doesn’t drift away. He just sleeps.