Work Text:
It‘s Sunday and Shouto is making gyoza in the dorm kitchen.
He has googled a recipe and has it open as a tab on his phone, alongside a second recipe just for the batter because the first one assumed he’d go with store-bought batter. He has also chosen to use tofu instead of meat since some of his classmates are vegetarians and vegans. Ashido doesn’t like onions, so he has a bought a pack of fresh mushrooms instead of a bundle of spring onions, and since Kaminari, Ojirou and Uraraka aren’t that fond of cabbage, he decided to exchange it with broccoli.
He starts with mixing the batter, calculating in his head how many portions of gyoza he’ll need and then adjusting the numbers on both recipes. When he sees how much flour he’ll have to use, he rolls his eyes and searches the cabinets for a bigger bowl.
There’s a quiet noise coming from the common area, some video game or TV show or movie playing, mere background sound to the chattering and laughing of his classmates. He can’t quite distinguish who’s mingling around.
When he came down from his room earlier, only the Bakusquad plus Shinsou were hanging around, lounging on the couches in front of the TV and lost in their own little orbit, as usual. Shouto saw Iida and Asui sitting at the corner table by the window, textbooks open, already prepared for the next round of classes they’ll have to face come tomorrow. Shouto is already tired from just thinking about getting up early again. He’s always tired, recently.
No one really paid attention when Shouto stepped away from the stairs and made his way over to the kitchen and he’s tremendously relieved about that. He’s had enough of everyone staring at him, waiting for him to do something, to say something, to be something – he doesn’t even know what exactly it is they are waiting for. He just knows that he’s apparently doing something wrong and he hates the look on their faces whenever they don’t find what they’re searching for in him.
All these years and he's still not used to not measuring up to other people's expectations.
He finds a bowl with an appropriate capacity in one of the cabinets under the sink and stops himself from smiling. He remembers that specific bowl from back when Satou used it to mix the batter for the celebratory cake he made when Bakugou and Shouto himself finally passed their provisional licence exams last winter. The cake was an enormous thing with a layer of deep blue frosting and sugary, orange swirls. Bakugou threw a fit, of course, but Shouto, with his meagre social skills, could still tell that he was secretly pleased with himself underneath all the cursing and shouting. Shouto also remembers the tiny spark of proud accomplishment he felt himself at finally having caught up to his classmates.
He fills the bowl with flour and then hesitates. The recipe says he’s supposed to use hot water, but does that mean boiling water? Or would the temperature from the tab be enough? It’s not like he’s in the mood to deal with the kettle right now, so he makes a brash decision and fills the measuring cup with the water from the tab. This is probably why Bakugou always complains about Shouto’s food but the water is hot enough to be uncomfortable where his right hand is holding the measuring cup in his fingers, so he doen’t think it’ll matter.
At first, it’s hard to get the flour and water to mix up properly. It’s a sticky mess clinging to his fingers and palms, but it gets easier the longer Shouto kneads what is soon becoming decent batter. He’s supposed to keep going for at least ten minutes, the recipe states, so the batter will be smooth and less sticky. Shouto grits his teeth and starts squishing and forming with his hands for at least fifteen minutes, just to be sure. It’s nice, using his hands like that, feeling his strength go into something so mundane.
He enjoys the simplicity of this task and the immediate results he can see. It makes for great anger management, almost therapeutic, and he thinks he finally understands why Bakugou, who definitely needs an outlet for his anger more than anyone else Shouto knows, likes cooking so much.
This makes him finally understand. He’s tucked away here, executing a simple task, away from the world outside of U.A.’s little corner. No one can reach him here – the media scared away by Aizawa’s dead-eyed stare.
Shouto decides he’s done with the batter once it’s a firm ball in his hands, nothing sticking to his fingers or the bowl any more.
He washes his hands and checks the recipe for the next step – he’s supposed to split the batter into smaller, separate portions so he does just that, even though he isn’t really sure why that’s important. Maybe for convenience’ sake when he’ll have to roll it out? The recipe tells him to make ten smaller balls and cover them with a wet cloth. After that, they are supposed to rest for half an hour.
He can use the time to prepare the filling.
The cutting board is hidden behind some pots and he has to open a couple of drawers until he finds a sufficiently sharp knife. It’s been a while since he’s cooked a proper meal in the dorm kitchen, Shouto realizes with a start, too busy with his spring work study and the last round of exams to get by on anything that wasn’t cafeteria food or instant noodles (or sometimes leftovers from whatever Bakugou decided to prepare if he felt generous enough to share with his esteemed inner circle of classmates).
Kaminari’s loud laughter spills into the kitchen, high pitched and carefree, followed by the sound of someone getting smacked by a pillow and then more laughter in different voices. Iida’s strict voice mingles with the cackling but he’s not raising his voice enough for Shouto to make out his actual words. He can imagine his friend’s lection just fine, though. His lips twitch again into a smile he doesn’t want to break out on his face just yet.
It’s nice.
Peaceful. Being surrounded by his friends without feeling crowded or trapped or scrutinized.
He sneaks one of the mushrooms into his mouth while he starts cutting them up, munching on the vegetable as he tries to remember how to hold the knife properly, just like Fuyumi taught him.
It’s ridiculous, how much he has to concentrate on getting small, even bits and also not cutting his own fingertips by accident. He should have more precision by now but he continuously finds that cooking is just something he’s frustratingly slow at mastering. It’s alright. He ignores the sting deep in his chest where he always wants to be perfect, has to be perfect, can’t be anything but perfect.
He’s allowed to be a slow learner sometimes.
When he’s done with the mushrooms, and quite proud of how they turned out, he moves on to the tofu. He uses a paper towel to press as much of the wetness out as he can, until he’s satisfied. He cuts it up, too, and it’s fascinating how different it feels to the mushrooms, all squishy and crumbly and dry at the same time. It’s easier to cut the tofu since it’s basically falling apart under the knife by itself.
Shouto thinks he’s a little bit too dramatic when he feels a sudden kinship with the tofu and remembers a time when he’s felt like he would fall apart under the slightest, sharpest pressure, too.
I’m not like you, his mind provides the follow-up thought before Shouto can catch up to it, and it’s not about the tofu anymore.
And isn’t that one of his biggest problems as of late? How his mind takes off on its own, running at a hundred miles per hour, and Shouto is left to try to catch up, always a moment behind, always out of breath. It’s stupid. He’s stupid for letting himself be swayed like that, pulled in a direction he now has to justify to the whole world when he can’t even justify it to himself. So stupid.
The broccoli is the easiest to cut. It only takes a handful of slices, no precision at all, until the green crumbs are spread out on the cutting board, more uneven than the mushrooms and the tofu but Shouto is losing his patience with the knife and the thirty minutes setting time for the batter are almost up and it won’t really matter in the long run, right? He drops the broccoli into an extra bowl, together with the mushrooms and the tofu, and pauses. The recipe states that he’ll need the usual spices, ginger and garlic and soy sauce, but Shouto knows that Bakugou prefers most of his food a lot spicier. Kaminari would probably want to eat a couple of spicy gyoza too, because he has no self-preservation and he likes to annoy Bakugou by showing off how little he can stomach hot sauces and the like.
Shouto doesn’t really get it, but Bakugou doesn’t fail to blow up every time Kaminari sticks out his tongue and gasps for air in his dramatic, over-the-top-ness. It is funny, in a way, he supposes.
Then there’s Jirou, who dabbles in spicy food, and Shouji and Hagakure who aren’t as adventurous as Bakugou but still appreciate a little more chilly or wasabi every now and then. A third of the filling is probably enough. He’ll just have to make sure that he separates the spicier gyoza from the tamer version.
He washes his hands in the sink before he reaches for the spices, not wanting to risk another lecture from Bakugou about how to keep the kitchen and supplies tidy and clean, and Shouto really must be tired because it’s so exhausting, the way the thought of an irritated Bakugou screaming at him grates on his nerves when it’s usually something he likes to provoke on purpose.
The filling squishes between his fingers when he starts to knead it, similarly to how he kneaded the batter, until it’s a brownish, grimy pulp, sprinkled with green and white dots of broccoli and garlic. He leaves it in the bowl, right as the alarm on his phone starts to vibrate – the batter is done resting then. He checks the recipe again, just to make sure that he’s done everything right so far. He has, and he’s a little bit proud of himself for that.
The batter looks nice – not different from when he’s covered it with the wet cloth as instructed, but who is Shouto to question someone from cookingmums.jp. He takes out one of the smaller balls and flings it from one hand to the other, as he’s seen Satou do sometimes with his batter. It’s oddly fun. Fuyumi always scolds him for playing with his food.
The batter is cold and smooth in his hands, it’s nice to hold it. Finally, he drops it onto the kitchen counter. He spreads out some flour, a trick that’s both written in the recipe and that he’s seen Satou do for the cookies he’s made last Christmas, and then reaches for the rolling pin.
He puts his back into it, muscles twitching under the exercise even though they are used to much harsher workouts. He’s not totally cleared for practical training yet, hasn’t been on more than his morning runs for the last few days, so rolling out this batter is the first time since – he’s using his muscles again. It feels good, to be doing something so hands on.
It doesn’t take long until the batter is as thin as the recipe dictates – which is very thin, Shouto has no idea how he’s supposed to work with this – and Shouto looks up the recipe again, just to procrastinate the next step. He knows that they have a round cutter for cookies somewhere, Momo definitely made a couple of those for Shoji’s birthday, when he wished for them all to spend it together, baking cookies and subsequently almost setting the kitchen on fire. Shouto can’t find the cutters right now though, Momo probably donated them like she often does with the things she creates using her quirk, so he settles on a glass instead.
It’s easy to cut the batter, the hard part is peeling it off the counter even though he’s used a generous amount of flour to make the surface as un-sticky as possible. Out of the ten circles he’s gotten out of his first ball, more than half are a little ripped or not as perfectly round as he’d have liked them to be, but – good enough, he decides. He can still work with this.
He hesitates over putting the filling on his wrappers – what if he puts too much on them or not enough? How’s he supposed to find the perfect balance that will leave his gyoza not too stuffed but also not too empty? What if – and this is not about the gyoza anymore, is it.
The first spoonful of filling lands on a wrapper and Shouto doesn’t care that it might be too much. His fingers shake when he dips them into the glass of water he has prepared, and then he’s folding the first gyoza up with clumsy movements and it looks weird and deformed and not like a proper gyoza should look like, but it’s there anyway. Shouto is angry about this in a way that he hasn’t felt in a long time. Something dark and petty sparks up inside him, so cold it burns.
His anger has always been more ice than fire, after all. He is once again surprised by how little things actually changed within him.
Instead of throwing a match or failing a provisional licence exam, he takes his anger out on the gyoza this time, so maybe things still did change for the better.
The first batch of gyoza gets put on the counter, he needs a little more to fill up an entire pan and he knows himself enough to know that he will need his whole attention for using the stove to not accidentally set it on fire – again – and he doesn’t feel quite ready for that yet. The last couple of folded wrappers look almost decent and Shouto is a little proud of that. He’ll get the hang of it.
It's wonderful, to feel accomplishment again, and Shouto enjoys it immensely.
He’s working his way through rolling out the second ball of batter when he gets company in the kitchen.
Bakugou saunters in, attention held by something he’s typing out on his phone as he walks over to the fridge and pulls out a carton of orange juice. He puts his phone down to pour himself a glass and that’s when he notices Shouto.
He scowls as usual, mouth drawn into a lopsided curve. “Oi, Icyhot. You okay?”, he growls, the words like gravel, but there’s a distinct softness around the edges that has started to creep in every now and then ever since their shared remedial classes.
Shouto nods, confused about the question. “I’m fine.” His voice is rough from disuse and … something else.
There’s a beat of silence, then Bakugou drains his glass in three, long gulps and sets it down with a heavy thud. His eyebrows twitch and Shouto knows that look – he’s about to blow up about something. He’s calm, forcefully so, like a glass under pressure that’s about to crack any moment now.
“You’re crying”, Bakugou says.
Shouto stops and blinks away the tears he hasn’t even noticed yet, his vision instantly going blurry.
Oh.
“Oh”, he repeats out loud, still playing catch up to his mind. He hasn’t even noticed? When has he started to cry?
Bakugou stares him down for a long moment and it looks like he wants to say something, but then his mouth twists into an unhappy snarl and he yells, “Oi, shitty Nerd!”
Shouto feels like he got dunked into ice water.
There’s a frustrated groan from the common area and then, unmistakeably, Midoriya yells back, “What, Kacchan?!”
Bakugou’s grin turns absolutely feral and Shouto’s eye twitches. Don’t you dare he tries to say with his gaze; Bakugou shows teeth. “Don’t …”, Shouto starts, but Bakugou is faster and louder.
“Get your stupid ass in here, Half and Half is crying!”, he shouts over Shouto’s quiet curse.
There is instant silence from the other room, then the familiar crackling of Midoriya’s quirk hums through the room as he literally flings himself into the kitchen. “Todoroki-kun!”, he yelps when he gets his balance back. “Are you alright? What’s wrong? Should I get Aizawa-sensei?”
Shouto rolls his eyes and dabs at the tears with the heel of his hand. “I’m fine”, he deflects the worried questions as neutral as ever.
Midoriya eyes him suspiciously, obviously surprised that Shouto is not the bawling mess he probably expected him to be when Bakugou shouted for him. Well, tough luck. Shouto knows they are all just waiting for him to finally crack like his ice always does when it counts the most. He’ll have to disappoint this time (again).
He meets Midoriya’s questioning look with a glare of his own and his friend, bless him, doesn’t push it. Instead, he looks around the kitchen and frowns in confusion when he sees the kitchen counters. He’s just about to open his mouth to ask the obvious question – what is Shouto even doing here? - when Iida enters the kitchen, hands already chopping through the air.
“Midoriya-kun, please do not use your quirk inside the dorms! That is highly irresponsible behaviour! I know you are worried about Todoroki-kun, as are the rest of us, but that is no excuse to break the school rules. Please refrain from doing so again!”
Bakugou smirks at the lecture Midoriya received – not uncalled for. Midoriya has the decency to look a little reprimanded, even though they all know that he’ll definitely do it again, in a heartbeat, and Shouto … Shouto is hit, for the first time, with the direct admission that his friends worry about him.
It’s not like he hasn’t known, hasn’t noticed, it’s just that … no one has said it out loud until now. It was easier to ignore it as long as it was treated like a secret, even if everyone’s already been in the known. It throws him off more than he wants to admit.
There is a warmth pooling in his stomach that he can’t explain. It’s not enough to fight the unpleasant cold that is already spreading through his veins too, the familiar guilt and shame and helplessness freezing him from the inside out, but it’s still nice.
It feels like a small victory, after everything. He’s still allowed to have someone care about him.
“I’m sorry, Iida-kun”, Midoriya apologises, not sounding very sorry at all. He holds up his hands in a peace offering that Iida accepts with a nod and an eye-roll. Midoriya’s face turns soft again and he looks back at Shouto. “What are you doing, Todoroki-kun?”
Shouto swallows, suddenly self-concious under the burning gaze of three classmates.
It’s fine. They’ve seen him in worse situations. They’ve seen him do worse and say worse and be worse. These three were there when every one of his secrets got ripped out into the open. This shouldn’t feel like he’s walking over frozen water, waiting for their judgment (again) to pull him down under (again), but Shouto has been struggling for his footing for the last days now, has been walking too far away from the shore and didn't notice when the ice became too thin to carry him.
He needs more time to get his footing back, but it’s time he is not going to be given, it seems.
“I’m making gyoza”, he says, voice carefully empty. He doesn’t even have to do it on purpose – his throat drops the words without any emotion, like it’s always done in situations like this. There is solace in the reliability of his own impassiveness.
Midoriya blinks at him, all wide eyes and mouth open in surprise. Iida pushes his glasses up his nose with his good arm before he starts. “That’s quite …”
He doesn’t finish.
“That’s … a lot of batter”, Midoriya finally points out, nodding to the counter where one part of the batter is still half-rolled out and the remaining portions of batter that Shouto hasn’t rolled out yet are sitting next to the first batch of sloppily folded gyoza that are waiting to be fried.
Shouto shrugs.
Bakugou snorts into the silence. “I’m surprised Icyhot’s gotten this far without making a fucking mess”, he contributes and Shouto is not above glaring at him. He keeps himself from pouting, but it’s a near thing.
“Oh!”, Midoriya suddenly smiles brightly and Shouto’s heart jumps where it’s not frosted over yet. “You’re making gyoza for the whole class!”
Shouto can only nod. He ducks his head a bit, shoulders coming up almost to his ears and he forces himself to not look away. This is nothing he has to be ashamed of. He will not let himself be ashamed of this.
The eye contact is worth it, because Midoriya’s smile turns from radiant into illuminating and Iida suddenly looks very, very touched. “That is a very generous act!”, he says and it’s been a long time since Shouto has heard him sound so soft. There is no hand chopping, but his shoulders still straighten up from what is relaxed for Iida to class rep posture. “I am sure they will appreciate you putting in so much effort for them!”
It’s all Shouto can do to regulate his temperature to make sure he is definitely not blushing. Iida probably doesn’t realize it himself, but he can be just as bad as Midoriya with his strict honesty and his open admiration.
Midoriya nods enthusiastically. “It’s really kind of you, Todoroki-kun”, he says and Shouto takes it all back, Midoriy is the worst because Midoriya is 166cm of pure, gentle support and Shouto can’t bear to look at him any longer.
He is saved from giving an appropriate reply he doesn’t have by Bakugou, surprisingly.
“Y’all are fucking disgusting, what kind of bullshit”, he spits and effectively ruins the tenderness and Shouto can breathe again. “I called you shitty extras in here because fucking Icyhot was obviously having a moment over his shitty gyoza so fucking deal with that first before you wrap him up in all that mushy crap like some bullshit toddler!”
Shouto fights the urge to ice Bakugou to the ceiling just because he can. Surely, Iida would understand. Maybe even Aizawa, if he manages to somehow turn it into a lesson about quirk control?
“Ah”, Iida says slowly, clearly having given up on trying to get Bakugou to stop cursing a long time ago. Midoriya blinks again and then shakes his head, as if he can’t believe he had to be reminded of the initial reason for him being called into the kitchen. It’s funny because really, Midoriya must know himself enough to realize how easily he can go on a tangent, right?
“Todoroki-kun …”, he starts again and this time Shouto is faster, because he has already started to come up with the perfect line the moment Bakugou started selling him out again.
“I’m fine”, he repeats his statement from earlier.
No one looks convinced. Shouto sighs.
Midoriya bites his lip, thoughts racing behind his eyes, and then his smile is suddenly back. “Do you want help with the gyoza?”, he asks, all innocent helpfulness. “It’ll be a lot faster if we help you.”
Shouto knows a losing battle when he sees one, because Iida started nodding excitedly, while Bakugou is back to sneering at him. “Oi! Don’t rope me into this! I don’t wanna help that Half and Half bastard with his dumb shithow of a cooking hazard!”, he bites out but he’s already putting away his empty glass and goes to wash his hands. Midoriya and Iida share a knowing look. Shouto accepts his fate.
Bakugou demands that he can make a batch of spicy gyoza with a lot of additional cussing – the cussing increases once Shouto informs him that he’s picked up his favourite brand of chilly powder for this specific purpose. It’s funny and a little bit comforting – because Shouto knows he himself is really bad with people showing him a decent level of kindness, but Bakugou is even worse. He literally blows up, palms crackling as he curses Shouto out for being “a creepy fucker with no sense of privacy and also why would he waste his rich boy money on a new pack of fucking chilly powder when Bakugou has more than half of a perfectly suitable fucking package left”. Shouto takes it in stride.
Next to him, using him as a wall against Bakugou and his bad temper, Midoriya and Iida strategise over the best way to fold the gyoza. Between these three, Shouto feels like the calm centre of a storm. Good. Maybe with this, the burning rage he’s been carrying around the last few days will finally die down.
It’s impossible to work in silence after they join him, Bakugou has a habit of coursing at his food and he’s constantly criticising the way Midoriya and Shouto are folding the gyoza or how Iida is "not fucking rolling out the batter thin enough, what the fuck is this shit supposed to be, four-eyes?! "But they are a lot faster and suddenly they have most of the gyoza simmering in two of the biggest pans they could find. Midoriya and Bakugou are bickering over doing the dishes while Iida tries his best to get rid of the chaos they’ve inevitably created in their impromptu cooking adventure. Shouto is folding up the last couple of gyoza. There’s noise coming from the common area, the kitchen smells like spices and the heaviness that comes with the prospect of a warm meal.
It’s … safe. It hits him, suddenly, how protected he’s always been by these people. Shouto feels brave.
“I watched the video this morning”, he admits softly, keeping his eyes on the gyoza he is currently folding, his fingers trembling. He feels the stares of the others on his back and the side of his face. He’s burning up from it. He wets his lips. Forces the images out of his head.
Images of Dabi – Touya – sitting on that couch; he gets nauseous when he thinks about his mother alone in her room when she must have seen it – about Natsuo in one of his lectures, surrounded by his classmates and professor – Fuyumi in front of a class full of little kids looking up at her, having to be called out of her classroom by her colleagues – himself, alone in his room this morning, finally no longer able to avoid it, to run from it, the thought that everyone else knows, everyone else saw, no longer bearable.
He’s watched it three times when he decided to make gyoza and had to tap out of the video to google for recipes.
Everyone still knows, but now so does Shouto.
“Natsuo hasn’t talked to me since … since then. And Fuyumi says it’s be better if I don’t …”
He stops and swallows and why is this so hard. It’s not like he blames his siblings for this, it’s not like he can’t understand – he’s never been a part of their lives anyway. He never had a right to this, why does this still feel so much like a rejection and why does it make his eyes burn in shame?
“… If I don’t come by their house for a while. She says it’s just until things calm down again but …”
But will things ever calm down again. At this point Shouto wouldn’t know calm if it punched him in the face and yelled “Plus Ultra!”. It hurts.
Like the burns and bruises he has spent years hiding from his siblings, his teachers, his friends, everyone he ever met. But this is an open wound, bleeding and aching, and something he cannot hide any longer, something that got dragged out into the open for everyone to see, everyone to know.
“I haven’t … I can’t … bring myself to visit my mum. It just …” It hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts it hurts it hurts.
He can’t bring himself to talk about his father. Can’t bring himself to think about his father. It fucking hurts.
“I just wanted to … ”, Shouto finishes softly without actually finishing anything, surprised that they let him talk so much without interrupting him with an insult about how he’s oversharing, a well-meaning advice, a teary-eyed attempt at consolation. But his friends stay quiet.
They've been waiting for this and now that it's finally here, they probably don't know how to deal with it, either.
He looks down at the mess of batter and filling in his hands, that he’s been about to carefully fold into shape – it’s squished under his shaking fingers, the accurately cut out circle of batter ripped apart, the filling spilled over his hands where it oozes out of the fold. It’s a sad, deformed lump and Shouto, again, can’t help but think it resembles him so, so much.
“Fuck”, he says softly as he opens his hands and the lump falls apart even more and he mourns this little piece of gyoza that he ruined like he ruined everything else (his mother, his brother, his father, his sister, his friends, failure failure failure) and that’s it.
Shouto crumbles.
The first sob tears its way up his throat and wrecks his entire body in the process. He drops the smashed gyoza onto the counter and bows his head, hot tears burning down his right cheek. He bows his head, disgusted with himself but unable to do anything to stop more of the wrenching sobs that make him shake so hard he is actually afraid his knees might give out.
There’s a soft curse to his left where Bakugou was checking on the frying gyoza and a shocked gasp from his right where Midoriya was busy with the dishes.
The next thing Shouto knows that isn’t hot and burning, is that he is pulled against a broad chest, his face pressed into Iida’s shirt as his hand comes up to the back of Shouto’s head and tangles itself in his hair. Iida tugs softly at his roots and brings him even closer, anchoring Shouto in his own body again while his other arm hugs him around his shoulders. There are hands on his waist, still damp from doing the dishes, and then there’s some wriggling and then Midoriya’s arms wrap around his middle from behind. Midoriya rests his forehead between his shoulder blades and hugs himself even closer. Shouto feels … strange. He can’t breathe.
“What is it?”, Midoriya asks gently. “What is it you wanted?”
Not prying, and Shouto knows that he doesn’t want an answer, that he just wants to keep Shouto’s thoughts focused on something that isn’t a panicked blur of so many thoughts crammed into a too tight space. The answer doesn’t come.
What comes is a calloused hand reaching for his own between all those arms and shoulders and chests, grabbing his right hand, the one that is not pressed between Iida and the counter. Sweaty fingers intertwine with Shouto’s freezing ones and squeeze, hard. Bakugou’s presence is like a firecracker going off next to them. He’s not really joining their awkward little group hug but he’s not leaving either.
This is the safest he’s felt in years. It only makes Shouto cry harder.
“I’m sorry”, he sobs, wretched and raw and he hates this, hates that this is what he’s been reduced to. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t … I didn’t want … I’m sorry … I can’t … I don’t know … I don’t know what to do … I don't know what I'm supposed to do now ...”
The arms around Shouto tighten even more, but it’s Bakugou who has a real answer for him.
“Now we eat your fucking gyoza, Icyhot”, he rasps. Shouto never expected anything Bakugou says to make so much sense.
They give him time to calm down. At some point Bakugou lets go of his hand, mumbles some profanities and gets in front of the stove again, making sure they don’t set the kitchen on fire. Iida stays quiet through it all, just continues to card his fingers through Shouto’s hair and lets him thoroughly stain his shirt without a complaint. Soon, his sobs ebb down until they are drowned out by the soothing sounds Midoriya muffles into his back.
The whole thing ends with them sitting on the kitchen floor, Shouto still squished between Iida’s broad side and Midorya’s solid shoulder, both of them handing him paper towels. Meanwhile Bakugou, ever the secret mother hen, finishes frying the gyoza and places them onto a big plate. He sets it down on the floor and loudly searches the drawers for chopsticks.
He levels Shouto with a look and raises one eyebrow, a surprisingly quiet challenge. Shouto knows that he can’t hide this. He knows how he must look like – red eyes, tear-stained cheek, swollen nose, Iida’s shirt – and everyone who sees him will know, too. The thought makes him pause for a moment, but – everyone already knows. What’s left to hide now?
He meets Bakugou’s challenge with a nod and makes grabby hands at the chopsticks.
Bakugou flashes one of his most dangerous grins, the kind that means trouble for everyone involved, and slouches down to sit cross-legged in front of Shouto.
“Oi, shitty extras! Get your sorry asses in here! Icyhot made y’all some fucking gyoza!”, he all but shrieks without even turning his head in the direction of the common room.
There’s a beat of immediate silence. Then multiple voices shout over each other. There’s mumbling and the noise of people getting up from couches and tables, the sound of the TV cuts out and then the first of his classmates come tumbling into the kitchen, surprise and worry and shock and something akin to wonder on their faces.
Shouto smiles and takes his first bite of gyoza.
I just wanted to play with them.