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Shouto looks across the common room at Kirishima as he walks in, and almost does a one-eighty to go straight back out.
It’s—it’s fine. Really. Kirishima doesn’t know, couldn’t know, and just because he’s—wearing that, doesn’t mean Shouto’s going to ask him to take it off. There’s nothing wrong with it. From anyone else’s perspective, there is nothing wrong.
Shouto almost literally bites his tongue. Metaphorically, he cuts it clean off.
He thought that if there was going to be one good thing about the dorms, it was that he wouldn’t have to see his father’s face every day.
He should have expected the merch. What high school kid doesn’t have hero merch these days? Of course there would be someone with Endeavour merch, he just—
Shouto closes his eyes, counts to ten, and when that does nothing to help calm him down, he starts on some breathing exercises Midoriya taught him after the Sports Festival.
“It’s called box breathing,” Midoriya explained. “It’s saved me on more than one occasion. In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. Rinse and repeat. I tried some others, but having to remember certain numbers, even a logical sequence, was just—it just didn’t work, for me. Box breathing is simple enough to get through, when I’m alone. Anything else would require someone else’s instruction.”
There had been an implication there that there was no one for Midoriya to trust with that responsibility. Shouto hasn’t yet worked up the courage to ask him why that was.
Shouto takes a breath in. He holds it. He lets it out. He holds it. He closes his eyes, and it helps, if only a little. Endeavour may not be out of mind, but he is out of sight, and Shouto will just have to settle for what he can get.
In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. Rinse and repeat.
In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. Rinse and repeat.
In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. Rinse and r—
“Todoroki!”
Shouto nearly jumps out of his skin, but it doesn’t show. His whole life has been spent keeping his cards—his emotions—close to his chest, and it saved him more trouble than he could hope to measure.
But lately, with Midoriya, with his friends, with the USJ and Hosu and Kamino and everything else—he’s been letting it out. Just a little. It’s been a weird kind of catharsis, and he’s still not too sure how to feel about it, but over all it’s been so much better than he previously expected. He feels things like fire, now that he’s found it within himself to unleash it. It warms his heart in a way he never knew he needed until it was suddenly just… there.
However, there are also some downsides.
He’s more expressive, now. Not by much, but for those who spend a lot of time with him, it’s a noticeable difference.
Shouto breathes out for a final time, then opens his eyes and turns his head towards Iida’s voice. “Yes?”
Iida sits beside Uraraka on one of the couches. They’re both looking at Shouto with something akin to how Midoriya had looked at him, just after he was told Endeavour’s darkest secrets from the one who had to carry them everywhere he went. The look is not something Shouto can put into words.
“Are you alright?” Iida is saying, and Shouto has to really focus in order not to look over at Kirishima again.
He really wishes that Midoriya were here right now.
He opens his mouth, like he has an excuse for this. He takes a breath like he’s ready to speak, and it’s as if his brain just shuts down.
Conversation stops, and out of the corner of his eye, Shouto sees Kirishima and the other people he was talking to—Ashido, Sero, and Kaminari—looking between him and the other two on the couch. They’re not the only ones in the room—most of the class is here, save for Kouda, Jirou, Bakugou, Ojirou, Shouji, and, unfortunately, Midoriya.
Shouto swallows, and says nothing. What even is there to say? Should he spill his deepest, darkest secrets to his entire class, or as good as? Expose himself like that when he’s spent his whole life suppressing even the barest hint of emotion? No, he can’t. Whatever his father is to him, whatever monster he sees out of the corner of his eye and whatever he was denied—to everyone else, Endeavour is a hero.
He’s not even a bad hero—some might even say he’s a great one, and there’s nothing Shouto can do but agree to that. Endeavour is the number one hero for a reason, and he didn’t keep his title of Number Two for so long by being careless. Public relations, villain takedowns, power—it all accumulates into the persona the civilian population knows and respects. He’s strong, really strong. If not for All Might, he’d be the one everyone looks up to. He is the one everyone looks up to.
But as good a hero as Endeavour is, as a father… he simply does not measure up.
“Yes,” Shouto says after a pause that goes on for far too long.
Iida frowns. “Are you sure? Do you want us to call Aizawa?”
Shouto opens his mouth, then closes it again.
He wants them to know. He wants to tell Kirishima that his T-shirt makes him want to vomit from the memories it calls up; from the phantom blows he can feel driving fists into his stomach. He wants them to look at his father and see the man behind the hero, and the remnants of the monster Shouto thought he was when he was younger.
But the words don’t come.
Shouto swallows back his trauma, and keeps his face carefully blank.
“No,” he says, like he could ever hope for that to be true. He looks for a way out and doesn’t find one, so he makes his own. “I’m tired.”
He turns on his heel and goes straight to his room. He doesn’t stop when Ashido calls for him to come back, nor when Uraraka shouts for him to have a good nap.
He slams his bedroom door behind him.
-
Izuku Midoriya, Shouto thinks, is like a sledgehammer. His punches sure feel similar, and he doesn’t hold back on his words either.
Shouto got his first taste of it during the Sports Festival. Given that just about the entire country saw what happened there, he doesn’t feel the need to elaborate.
Hosu was when the courage to truly stand up for himself started to rub off on Shouto. He talks back to his father all the time, but he is never active in doing so. He reacts; it’s never him who attacks first, verbally or otherwise. Mouthing off to the Chief of Police was never the brightest of ideas, but that was the first time Shouto ever felt safe enough to do so.
He wonders what that says about him—that being hours away from potential legal action is more comforting to him than just sitting in his own house when his father’s home.
Shouto thinks all of this because, about an hour and a half after he left the common room, Midoriya knocks on his door.
Shouto lets him in. He doesn’t have an excuse not to, and honestly, he doesn’t want to keep hiding from everyone. Well, he wants to keep hiding from most people, but not from Midoriya. Midoriya is safe.
Sometimes, Shouto wonders why that is.
They both sit down on the tatami flooring, leaning side by side against one of the walls with their legs stretched out in front of them. They haven’t spoken, but that’s okay. When they need to, they will. Midoriya’s legs are much stronger than Shouto’s, and they definitely look it. Faint scarring is visible on his shins and knees, trailing up under his shorts and down into his socks. It’s not as bad as his hands, just cosmetic damage. It’s sort of mesmerising.
Midoriya is the one to break the silence.
“I heard about what happened in the common room,” he says, softly.
Shouto opens his mouth. He doesn’t get further than that.
He doesn’t understand what’s wrong. He’s never struggled with speaking before, and he doesn’t know what could have caused this. And he can speak up, now that he’s away from his house and his father and training for the foreseeable future—there’s nothing to stop him; no immediate painful consequences, no chance of anyone overhearing.
So why can’t he talk about it, even to someone who already knows?
In the end, all that leaves his lungs is a bone-deep sigh, one that rattles around in his rib cage like it’s checking to see if his bones are hollow. It’s weird. He doesn’t like it. He closes his mouth.
Beside him, Midoriya also sighs. There’s a dull thump as his head meets the wall, and when Shouto turns to look he sees that Midoriya has closed his eyes.
“I wasn’t expecting it,” Shouto whispers, afraid of the judgement of a non-existent audience. “I should have, but—the dorms were supposed to…”
Shouto Todoroki is not someone who stumbles over his words. That’s what makes this all so jarring. He’s off-kilter for the first time in what he thinks is since his quirk training started, and he doesn’t like it. It makes him feel strange, and he can’t properly place it.
It scares him, just a little.
Midoriya lifts his head and repositions himself so that he’s properly facing Shouto, opening his eyes. They stare at each other for a little while, endless complexities communicated through nothing but eye contact. Shouto doesn’t need to finish his sentence—Midoriya already knows what he means.
“Is it going to get better?” Midoriya asks. It’s not an expectation; it’s not an accusation or anything of the sort—it’s just a question.
Shouto thinks for a moment, then slowly shakes his head. “No,” he says. He doesn’t see it improving, not in the near future. He was looking forward to being away from Endeavour so much that he didn’t account for the fact that no one else knows why he thinks of his father the way he does. None of them have telepathic or empathic quirks. They couldn’t know the things their new Number One has done.
“I think you need to tell Aizawa.”
Shouto straightens. “No.”
Telling people doesn’t work. It didn’t work for Touya, it didn’t work for Fuyumi, it didn’t work for Natsuo, and it’s never worked for Shouto. If it really ends up being that simple, that obvious, then—
Then what has he been doing with his life, wasting away under his father’s care?
What did Touya die for, if not his freedom?
Midoriya tilts until his shoulder hits the wall, leaning his head against it. “Aizawa’s not like my old teachers and he’s not afraid of your father. He’s not the Hero Commission’s lapdog and he’s not going to dismiss you outright. The absolute worst that can happen is if you tell him what’s happening and he doesn’t have enough power to do anything about it.”
“It won’t work,” Shouto says, shaking his head. “Endeavour is the number one hero. Society just lost All Might—what would it do to us, if I took Endeavour away too?”
“His ranking doesn’t matter, Todoroki,” Midoriya insists. “What he did to you and the rest of your family is illegal. If you don’t want to press charges that’s fine, but it’s not good for you to keep living like this.”
“The second I say something the media will be on it like vultures,” Shouto argues. “No matter how many NDAs I or anyone else sign, the moment I open my mouth those articles are an inevitable consequence.”
Midoriya is quiet for a moment. It’s probably no more than a few seconds, but to Shouto it stretches on for eternity. “Todoroki,” he says. “You’re not happy. I respect your decision if you don’t want to tell the world, but staying totally silent is only going to cause you more pain.”
Huffing, Shouto turns his head to face forwards and brings his knees up to his chest, looping his arms around his legs and resting his chin on top. “It’s not like I haven’t had worse,” he mumbles. He’s right. This is nothing compared to what he’s lived with for almost his entire life.
There’s a pause. “You shouldn’t have,” Midoriya says.
Suddenly, something slots into place in Shouto’s mind. Some puzzle piece Midoriya’s words overturned to make it fit into the bigger picture.
Midoriya understands Shouto in a way that goes far beyond the simplicity of a well-intentioned bystander. When Shouto told his story, Midoriya got it. There was no other way of explaining it—Midoriya knows Shouto’s experiences all too well, and it just didn’t click until now why that might be.
“Neither should you,” Shouto says, and this time it’s Midoriya’s turn to straighten up.
“What?”
Shouto glances at him out of the corner of his eye. “You know what I’m talking about.”
Midoriya shakes his head. “I—”
“Bakugou.”
It’s so obvious. Bakugou hates Midoriya, or at least he did at the start of the year. Shouto still can’t believe how vicious he was in the battle trial exercise. He could list all the times he should have noticed, but then he’d probably die trying.
“You flinch when he uses his quirk.”
It’s less noticeable now, but only because Midoriya’s gotten better at hiding it. Every wayward spark, every unannounced crack in Bakugou’s palms draws a sharp, quiet inhale of breath from Midoriya.
At the start of the year, that almost unnoticeable reaction was a full body jolt and a stream of apologies.
“That’s different,” says Midoriya.
“Why.”
Shouto doesn’t phrase it like a question because it isn’t one. He doesn’t quite know what that means.
“It just—” Midoriya struggles to find the right words. “He’s still learning. He’s a high school boy who’s never been told no until this year. Until this school. He’s been the undisputed king for so long he’s forgotten… he’s forgotten he’s human too.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s not responsible for what he’s done.”
“It’s different.”
“Why,” Shouto repeats. “He hurt you. I know he did. He hurt you like my father hurt me, only he didn’t do it because he thought you were strong. He did it because he needed you to be weak.”
“It’s different because I forgive him!” Midoriya exclaims, getting to his feet to stand over Shouto. Shouto has to crane his neck up to continue looking at him. “It’s different because Kacchan isn’t like Endeavour!”
“It’s not different because the fact that you flinch when he uses his quirk without warning is on no one but him,” Shouto argues. “It was wrong. He was wrong.”
“I know it was wrong! The difference between me and you, Todoroki, is that Kacchan knows it too!”
And all of a sudden, Shouto’s train of thought is abruptly and violently derailed.
“You…”
The answer was right there in front of him and he was too blind to see it.
Midoriya takes a breath in for four, holds it for four, breathes out for four, and holds that for four. Shouto mimics the pattern. It doesn’t last for long—just three cycles of the exercise—but it helps both of them to calm down enough to keep their heads. After they finish, Midoriya sits back down beside Shouto, adopting the same position as him and hiding his face in the little space it creates.
“Sorry,” he says, but it comes out muffled.
Shouto examines him for a moment longer, then decides to follow his lead and bury his own face in his knees. It makes him feel a little safer. “It’s okay,” he says to the tatami mats beneath his feet.
“Sorry,” Midoriya says again. “I shouldn’t have got angry like that.”
Shouto frowns, though he knows Midoriya can’t see it. “I shouldn’t have pushed you about Bakugou. I was trying to avoid my problems by focusing on yours.”
There’s a huff of laughter, and Midoriya heaves an exhausted sigh. “Yeah, well. That makes two of us.”
Hesitation grips at Shouto’s tongue, and he has to fight to say what he wants to. He’s been quiet for so long out of necessity that now he has the opportunity to speak up, he almost doesn’t want to. It’s almost easier to just slip back into his little bubble and pretend he doesn’t like what’s outside.
But he doesn’t let himself do that. He can’t.
“You’re right, though,” he says eventually.
“About what?” Midoriya questions.
The words come easier to him, this time. “My father knows he’s done something wrong, but he doesn’t realise how bad it is. Fuyumi tends to downplay, not that I blame her. Mother’s been receiving gifts from him. Natsuo’s not around enough to have an impact on his perception of our family. Touya’s not around at all. I don’t—” His voice cracks. “I’ve learnt that actions speak louder than words, but—even though I didn’t do it for him, using my fire…” He trails off. He unclasps his hands and lets his legs fall to the floor, pushing himself away from the wall until he’s lying down, staring at the ceiling. His shirt crumples in one spot at his back, but he can’t bring himself to care. He threads his fingers together over his stomach and stretches his toes a bit. It’s strangely relaxing.
Midoriya lifts his head and slumps back against the wall. “He’s trying, but he hasn’t stopped to think about why he has to do that in the first place,” he says quietly.
Shouto nods. “I can’t forgive him because he won’t realise what I’m forgiving him for. And until he does, I just…”
“You want him out of your life,” Midoriya whispers.
“Yeah,” Shouto whispers back, like it’s some big secret.
That’s when the off-kilter feeling hits him full force. Shouto’s glad he’s lying down, otherwise he’s sure he’d topple over. The feeling flows all over him, making its way though his body from his heart to his fingers and toes. As it spreads, Shouto finds himself relaxing more and more, feeling less overwhelmed now that his thoughts are slowing themselves down.
It’s relief. That off-kilter feeling is the same one he felt before, during, and after his and Midoriya’s match at the Sports Festival, and it’s relief. He almost wants to laugh in a blend of joy and hilarity because was that really what he was afraid of? Was the weight on his shoulders really so heavy that relief is the thing that now sends him stumbling?
It doesn’t seem so scary, now that he lets himself feel it. It doesn’t seem scary at all.
There’s a shuffling of fabrics, and Midoriya lays himself down next to Shouto, one arm rested against his forehead and the other on his stomach. Shouto lets out a long breath and allows his eyes to close. Behind his eyelids, the lights in his ceiling look like distant fires.
“I still think you should tell Aizawa.”
Shouto frowns slightly and turns his head away, even though his eyes are still shut. “So should you.”
Midoriya sighs. “That’s different,” he repeats.
“How?”
There’s a pause.
“I can live with seeing Kacchan every day,” says Midoriya. “He is getting better, we’ve both seen it. But—” Midoriya searches for what he needs to say. “If what happened today is going to keep happening, then you clearly can’t say the same.”
Shouto ponders this for a long moment. There’s a logic in Midoriya’s words that he can’t deny, and there’s a large chunk of him that wants to just blurt everything out to get it over with, but he knows that’s never going to be the case. Things are never easy for Shouto Todoroki, even after joining UA. He’s been happier, yes, but allowing himself to feel joy doesn’t mean it’s not hard.
Bakugou is a problem that Midoriya has learnt to handle. Bakugou is different from Endeavour because Midoriya’s not handling him on his own. Bakugou is manageable because he’s genuinely trying to improve, and because he has so much more than a surface level understanding of what he’s done wrong.
Midoriya is different from Shouto because he doesn’t have to prepare himself before he sees Bakugou in class anymore. It’s a difficult line to draw, but it’s a significant one. Shouto’s been holding himself together with nothing but temporary measures. Now, with all these people—all these friends—trying to work their way into his heart, his hold is weakening.
What Midoriya is suggesting means that he doesn’t have to keep hiding. And Shouto… Shouto doesn’t want to keep hiding.
“Okay,” he says, curling in on himself a little. It’s stupid, really, how he’s surprised when the word doesn’t make the world shake with the weight of it.
“Okay what?” Midoriya asks.
Shouto allows himself one last second to think it over, one last chance to back out.
“I’ll tell Aizawa,” he says.
It’s a lot simpler than he thought it would be.
-
A month. It takes Shouto a full month until he finally bites the bullet and asks to see Aizawa after class.
“It’s pathetic,” he tells Midoriya as they’re changing for their afternoon heroics class.
Midoriya stops putting on his boots to rest a hand on Shouto’s shoulder. “It’s progress,” he says, and for Shouto, that will have to be enough.
It’s habit, partly. He’s just so used to being on his own that the thought of others being there for him isn’t really something that crosses his mind anymore.
Aizawa’s so different from his previous teachers. Maybe most of that is due to being in an actual class instead of being tutored, but his strict tendencies are somehow more relaxed than Shouto’s used to. His threats aren’t empty, but there’s a margin for error that Shouto wishes was there in his early days of training with his father. UA is competitive to no end, but it’s also a safety net, and Shouto’s been living without that for a long time.
After classes finish, Shouto changes quickly and makes his way back to the classroom as soon as he can. Bakugou tries to stop him, no doubt frustrated at his team’s loss against Shouto’s in the exercise they were doing, but Kirishima holds him back.
Since that day in the common room, Shouto hasn’t seen him wear the offending Endeavour T-shirt. Maybe that doesn’t mean anything—they’ve hardly been in the dorms for a long time, it’s completely plausible that he just hasn’t wanted to wear it again yet—but looking at him now, there’s something apologetic in his face, and a little voice in the back of Shouto’s mind tells him that the apology is not on Bakugou’s behalf.
Shouto nods to him, then to Midoriya, and heads off.
Walking the halls of UA after hours isn’t a new experience for him, but it does serve to make him more and more jittery as he gets closer to 1-A. His footsteps echo through the halls, and he picks up his pace just a little.
He doesn’t want to prolong the inevitable. He’s set it in motion now, and knowing Aizawa, he can’t take it back even if he tries. Aizawa knows that something is happening in his life that he feels he needs to talk about, and avoiding it now will only ensure that the ensuing conversation is not on Shouto’s terms. He has to get this out in the open while he still has this reckless relief flowing through him.
He’s put it off for long enough already.
He doesn’t knock on the door of class 1-A, just walks in and closes it behind him. Aizawa is sitting at the teacher’s desk, but gets up and steps in front of it as Shouto enters, facing him as he leans back against it and crosses his arms. Shouto doesn’t know where he’s supposed to stand, so he just stays where he is. One of his hands comes up to grip the strap of his bag.
“Todoroki,” says Aizawa. He looks relaxed. Shouto envies that.
He opens his mouth, but he only ends up clearing his throat. His voice is acting up again. His shoulders hunch a bit before he remembers Midoriya’s hand from earlier, and forces them back down. Straightening his posture, Shouto steels himself for what he’s about to say.
There’s a chasm of silence before him.
Aizawa doesn’t move from where he’s standing, but he almost seems to slouch, like he’s trying to lean down but also trying not to show it. “Was there something you wanted to say?” he asks.
Shouto shuffles in place, but for the most part, stands his ground. He takes a deep breath in, far more obvious than he would have allowed himself back at home, lets it out long and slow, and looks Aizawa directly in the eye. He focuses in on that breath, allowing his eyes to close as he steadies himself.
In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. Rinse and repeat.
When he opens his eyes again, he’s strangely calm. Everything feels a bit more surreal, and he’s not sure if that’s good or bad. Aizawa’s still in the same position, watching as Shouto gathers himself up for what he came here to say.
He’s as ready as he’s ever going to be. It’s now or never.
“You know who my father is.” He says it more like a fact than a question.
Aizawa nods slowly. “Yes,” he says. “I do.”
No more keeping quiet—no more holding his tongue. No more hiding the sins of a man who has done nothing but beat him and his family down and still made Shouto care. No more covering for his father, not in the only place he’s ever truly felt safe.
God only knows he doesn’t deserve it.
“You know how I didn’t use my fire at the start of the year.”
Aizawa’s eyes narrow, but not in confusion—almost like he was expecting this, or something similar.
With a reaction like that, Shouto half wonders why he waited so long.
Shouto opens his mouth, and this time, he speaks.