Work Text:
On his second day of UA, Shouto stared at himself in the mirror for a long time before he started getting ready for school.
He looked at his own cold eyes, ignoring the glare of his father’s, and took a half a breath, steeling himself for the day ahead of him.
Yesterday, he’d started his day just like any other day. He’d assumed there wouldn’t be any threats to his position at school, had assumed he would be first, just like he always was. He’d thought — no, he hadn’t even thought — he’d known he would focus on his classes and be distracted by nothing.
Then he made eye contact with Midoriya Izuku and all of that went flying across the softball pitch and out of sight.
Midoriya Izuku who, yesterday, shattered a finger without so much as tearing up, just so he could prove that he could, what, throw a ball kind of far? Well, Shouto got his further. Midoriya Izuku wasn’t a threat to his standing in school or the hero world. So why did Shouto feel so… strange around him?
It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he focused.
Last night, he’d mentally made himself a list of rules to follow, rules that he couldn’t break if he wanted to be able to really, truly spite his father. If he wanted to be successful, if he wanted to reach the top, he had to ignore distractions and keep steady on his rules. He had to not break any of them.
Rule One: Reach for the top, and only the top. Focus on Number One, and ignore everything else.
Rule Two: Don’t make any friends. They’ll just end up dragging you down.
Rule Three: Never let down your guard.
They were very simple rules, he thought. They should be more than easy enough to follow.
And yet. Midoriya—
No, see that broke rule one and two, and maybe even three. Focus on the top first, and ignore everyone else. He could do that, he’d been doing it his whole life. What made this any different? What made Midoriya any different?
“Shouto!” his father screeched through the bathroom door and Shouto knew his time for dissecting all his life decisions was over.
“Coming,” he muttered, grabbing his toothbrush from the counter and slipping out the door. He stalked right past his old man on his way to his room, ignoring whatever angry speech he was going on now.
The fact of the matter was, Midoriya was a distraction. Friends were a distraction. And Shouto needed to focus on the top. Thus, the rules, and thus, no Midoriya.
—
Ignoring Midoriya was decidedly more difficult when Shouto was teamed up with him for a school project.
It was an in-class school project, thankfully — Shouto had the feeling that if Midoriya came over to his house, or if Shouto went over to his, his precious rules would collapse in on themselves and die, like a crumpled and damp paper in an empty wastebasket. Luckily, they were allowed to do the project in class during their study period, which was slightly better.
Shouto tried changing partners but Aizawa gave him the most tired glare Shouto had ever seen and told him to sit back down. Midoriya didn’t seem to take Shouto’s request very well, because when he moved to switch places with Yaoyorozu, he gave Shouto a worried look, almost hesitant as he sat in the desk next to him. Shouto stared at the front wall of the classroom, determined to ignore Midoriya.
“We can split the project in half,” Midoriya said eventually, voice bright despite how cold Shouto was attempting to seem. We can each write down some thoughts, and then we can trade and look over what the other person wrote and edit it and stuff! My notes are kind of messy so if you could just make them make sense, then this should work out fine. And I’ll see if I can edit yours too.”
Shouto honestly hadn’t been paying attention to the assignment, but whatever Midoriya wrote, he’d trash it and restart so he could make sure it was exactly what Aizawa wanted. Still, Midoriya seemed so desperate to be helpful, it would be cruel to leave him hanging, so Shouto nodded once.
“Cool!”
In a flurry of movement, Midoriya yanked a notebook out of his bag, flipped it open, and started writing, muttering quietly under his breath. Shouto tuned him out, reading over the assignment. It didn’t look too difficult, just analyzing a hypothetical hostage situation and planning a way to beat the villains, knowing only their names and quirks. He could complete this easily, even if he had his father breathing over his shoulder the whole time. Which he didn’t, but the point was this project would be easy regardless of pressure. He pulled out a blank sheet of paper and started meticulously taking notes, keeping his handwriting as neat as possible so Midoriya would be able to read it better later.
Twenty minutes later, Midoriya leaned over the aisle and gently slid his open notebook onto Shouto’s desk. Figuring that was a signal to trade, Shouto passed his page of notes over too.
“Thanks!” Midoriya said. He nodded at his notebook, eyebrows furrowing a little. “It continues on the back and then the next page, by the way.”
Shouto looked down, eyes widening when he saw how much Midoriya had written. His handwriting was small and sloppy, but somehow he’d managed to fill… one, two, three, four entire pages of notes. Shouto sent him an amazed look.
“Sorry,” Midoriya said, wincing a little. “I just find quirks really interesting.”
Shouto opened his mouth to say something, maybe something like why? , but then he thought better of it. He wasn’t supposed to be talking to Midoriya, he was supposed to be focusing.
Unfortunately, Midoriya must have somehow read the question in his eyes, because he explained carefully, “I take a lot of notes on quirks, because I guess I thought if I could break quirks apart and think through them well enough, then maybe I…” His eyes got a weird haunted look for a split second before he shook his head and said, “I could learn to control mine better. I just thought it would help me change.”
Shouto glanced down at the pages of notes he’d written, trying to wrap his mind around that. Midoriya was reaching for the top too, just in a different way than Shouto was. Turning to actually ask him for clarification on that, Shouto found him buried deep in notes already, pinching his lip as he muttered and circled parts of Shouto’s careful writing.
Not wanting to be left behind, Shouto dove into Midoriya’s page of notes.
They were detailed, much better work than even Shouto had done, and for the first time, he realized Midoriya might be a bigger threat to his position than he thought — not just because the guy seemed so determined to be friends with everyone, but also because he was strong in his own right. Someone whose only goal was to learn and change was dangerous. Shouto would try to keep up, and he’d keep careful track of Midoriya’s progress.
—
Rule One: Reach for the top, and only the top. Focus on Number one, and ignore everything else.
Rule Two: Don’t make any friends. They’ll just end up dragging you down.
Rule Three: Never let down your guard.
—
Here was the truth of the matter:
Shouto knew exactly who he was. He knew exactly who he was going to be, and he knew that once he reached success, he would have achieved the purpose of his existence. Because of that, there was no way for him to not reach his goal. He believed he could become Number One, he expected he would become Number One, he did his best to behave like the future Number One, and so the only logical result was that he would become Number One. That was the definition of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
However, Shouto had neglected to factor in external variables.
Variables such as Midoriya.
Shouto wasn’t sure why he’d decided to spill his life story to Midoriya a few moments ago— well… No, he knew why he’d started it, but then Midoriya had been such a good listener that it turned into something entirely different, something that honestly bordered what Shouto was pretty sure was called trauma dumping.
He hadn’t intended to talk for so long, but he’d never been able to talk about his family and his problems so openly before, and once he started he couldn’t stop. Midoriya listened to him quietly and patiently, and when their conversation ended Shouto thought it honestly couldn’t have gone much better than it did.
But now.
Now he regretted that conversation, because Midoriya had clearly become determined to get Shouto to use his fire again, and Shouto couldn’t do that. Because Shouto had defined himself using his father’s image, and Shouto had promised he’d make it in the hero world without Endeavour’s fire, and if Shouto couldn’t do that, if Shouto could be beaten by a guy who broke all his fingers to prove a point, then who was he and why was he here?
If Shouto couldn’t achieve his one goal, if Shouto couldn’t reach the top, if Shouto used his fire, everything he’d built up, everything he was, would shatter.
And that was terrifying.
Shouto didn’t get scared easily. He’d learned, over the years, how to keep calm under any and all circumstances, how to stay still under fire.
But when he looked at Midoriya across the arena, when Midoriya screamed, “It’s your power, isn’t it?!” he was pretty sure he’d never been more terrified.
Because it had never been a self-fulfilling prophecy at all, had it? It had been an other-imposed prophecy, one so heavily influenced by his father Shouto didn’t even know who he was anymore. But now Midoriya was here, and Shouto could actually see that he didn’t know what he wanted.
Shouto had now approached what he was pretty sure was called a ‘leap of faith.’ He could either jump over the edge and no longer know anything about what he wanted, or he could stay stubborn and lose this fight, and still not know what he wanted. Either way, he was going to break his goal, he was going to fail. He was going to fall. Neither option was particularly pretty, but…
Well. One of them had Midoriya.
So his left side lit up and he took a leap.
—
Since the Sports Festival, and subsequently Hosu, Midoriya wouldn’t leave Shouto alone. Shouto wasn’t sure how this had happened, but somehow he’d become a member of Midoriya’s friend group without filling out an application. He suspected it had something to do with a life-or-death fight with a serial killer, but that wouldn’t explain why Uraraka and Asui had welcomed him in too. Had he passed some kind of test maybe? Or maybe they’d somehow been fooled into thinking they liked him.
Shouto wasn’t sure if he’d ever been liked by someone before. Maybe Fuyumi and Natsuo, but he didn’t see much of either of them. The chances of someone wanting to be friends with him had always been low, so he’d eliminated it as a possibility.
Midoriya in particular refused to be shaken off. During study period, he came back to sit with Shouto a lot, often joined by Uraraka and Iida, and occasionally Asui, and the four of them would talk and do work and Shouto would listen. Midoriya started inviting Shouto over to sit and eat lunch with them, and so he would eat and listen to the others talk. Between periods, before school, in the hallways, during heroics training, Midoriya was always there and Shouto would listen. Shouto was doing a lot of listening lately. It was like the Sports Festival had uncovered his ears and now he could hear everything in all its brilliance, for maybe the first time ever.
Maybe it was just that he was paying attention now.
Or maybe now that he’d been thrown off the tracks leading to his final destination, he was wandering around lost and needed to listen in order to find himself again.
He didn’t know what he wanted any more. He didn’t even know if he wanted to be a hero anymore. All he knew was that something about Midoriya was softening out his hard edges. Something about Midoriya made him feel… different.
Maybe it was just that Midoriya seemed to care about Shouto, more than anyone Shouto had ever met before. Not that Shouto knew him very well, but from what he could see, Midoriya seemed to give his heart away like it meant nothing to him, but he knew how much it would mean to others. He gave love out like candy on Halloween in America, seemingly unconcerned by the risk that posed to himself. He gave without considering how he could be hurt.
Shouto realized he wished Midoriya would consider that, a little. Maybe then he’d stop breaking himself.
And when he realized that, he also realized that he cared about Midoriya.
Whatever plans he’d had, whatever goals he’d had for himself, they were now officially gone. Midoriya had taken one look and thrown them all across the world.
So much for prophecies.
—
Rule One: Reach for the top, and only the top. Focus on Number one, and ignore everything else.
Rule Two: Don’t make any friends. They’ll just end up dragging you down.
Rule Three: Never let down your guard.
—
As the school year kept hurtling by, Shouto felt himself getting drawn closer and closer to Midoriya. Everything he did was fascinating, all his expressions like puzzles Shouto desperately wanted to solve. Slowly, Midoriya became the person Shouto would call first if he was in any kind of trouble, the person Shouto looked to when he needed help.
The training camp came, was interrupted violently, and then went. Bakugou came back furious with Midoriya for some reason, but what else was new, really?
And they all moved into the dorms.
The dorms were both the best thing that could have happened to Shouto and the worst thing. On the one hand, he got to leave his house, which he suspected would help him sort out who he was. Everything always became infinitely easier to understand when his father wasn’t around, and now Shouto would be taking an extended leave of absence from his father.
On the other hand… Midoriya… was such a distraction.
Shouto entered this year determined to not be distracted by anything, and now he could barely focus on his classes at all because Midoriya was two seats ahead of him and to the left, at an angle that allowed Shouto to see his hair and a good portion of his face. He had a very nice jaw. After school, he did his homework with Midoriya, ate with Midoriya, spent a great deal of time in Midoriya’s room or with Midoriya in his own room.
And it wasn’t that Midoriya seemed to mind— the opposite, actually, he seemed pleased. But Shouto couldn’t help but think that something was happening. Something big . Something that Shouto could barely wrap his mind around.
This all became the smallest bit clearer while they were doing their homework in Midoriya’s room one day.
“Okay, so on problem five did you get a decimal answer too?” Midoriya asked, tipping his head up to look at Shouto. He was sprawled out on the floor with his homework in front of him, Shouto sitting cross legged just past that.
Shouto checked his homework and shook his head. “I got all whole numbers on all of them.”
“That doesn’t… Hmm.” Midoriya made grabby hands at Shouto’s paper. “Do you mind if I take a look?”
Shouto passed his homework over. Midoriya looked it over, chewing on his lip, probably to stop himself from muttering. Shouto kind of liked the muttering, actually. Midoriya was really smart, so whatever he said was usually interesting. And even if Shouto wasn’t paying attention to exactly what Midoriya said, even the sound of his voice was soothing by itself. He wondered why.
“ Oh, I see what you did… Okay.” Midoriya gave Shouto’s paper back and started writing again.
Shouto looked around at all the All Might merch on the walls. Midoriya really did like All Might a lot. He was so passionate about being a hero. Unlike Shouto, who felt a little like he’d gotten a rug swept out from under him at the Sport Festival and hadn’t been able to get to his feet again.
“Hey, Midoriya?” he asked quietly.
Midoriya looked up, blinking at him curiously. Shouto really liked his freckles. They were like constellations on his cheeks.
“I was just wondering… This is really off topic, sorry, but… why do you want to be a hero?”
Frowning, Midoriya set his pencil down and sat up, tucking his feet under him. “Um… well, I want to be able to save everyone I can, I guess. I want people to be able to smile! Like All Might!”
Hmm. Shouto tucked his hands inside the cross of his legs, resisting the urge to rock back and forth. He felt weirdly vulnerable right now. Maybe it was all the All Mights staring at him from the walls. “How do you know?”
Midoriya frowned at him for a long minute, like he was trying to figure out what he was really asking. Shouto would be impressed if he could, given that he didn’t really know what he was asking either. “I don’t know,” he said finally, pinching his bottom lip while he thought through his answer. “I guess I can just feel it.” He pointed at his chest. “In here.”
“Your rib cage…?”
Midoriya laughed, face scrunching up. “My heart.”
“Oh.” In his heart. Shouto felt in his heart for a moment, trying to figure out what it was trying to tell him, but all he could see in there was Midoriya.
“Do you have a reason?” Midoriya asked him softly. His tone suggested he was worried something would break if he was too loud. “To be a hero?”
His heart beat da da dum Izuku da da dum, but that couldn’t be a reason. Could it? Well, if Izuku could be a hero for All Might, and Shouto could originally be a hero for his old man, then… sure, it must be a reason.
“I guess…” he said slowly. “It’s you.”
Midoriya stared at him, eyes widening, and then his face turned bright red and he hid it behind his hands, making a weird squeaking sound. “What?” he asked, voice cracking.
“I think you might be my reason for being a hero,” Shouto said more confidently. “I want… to be more like you.”
Even though Midoriya’s face was disguised with his hands, Shouto could still see his ears turning increasingly red— an almost concerning shade of red. Shouto wondered if he’d said something wrong.
“O-oh” he stuttered. “That’s nice, um…” Ducking his head, he grabbed his homework and picked it up, using that to cover his expression instead. “Did you get 9 on problem 6?”
Shouto checked his homework, deciding to roll with the subject change, even if it was weirdly timed. “Yes,” he said, looking up. “I did.”
Midoriya was crying. Shouto took a second to process that, trying to figure out what was wrong with his homework. Or maybe it was something Shouto said? Had he offended him somehow?
“Do you need a tissue?”
“N-no,” Midoriya said, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve. He’d set his homework down now, fully exposing his red face. Shouto was trying to figure out what to do when Midoriya whispered, “Do you mean it? That… I…”
“I like you a lot,” Shouto said, not sure if that was what he was asking, but willing to share that information.
Midoriya’s face, if it was even possible, turned even more red. “I like you a lot too,” he said. “Um… but when you say that do you mean like… like like, or just… like?” He made a face. “Sorry, I’m not trying to be awkward…”
“What do you mean like like? What does saying it twice mean?”
Midoriya gave him a stricken look and slapped both hands over his eyes, making another weird squeaky sound. “I don’t — ah… Never mind! Um… So, problem… 7…”
Shouto shrugged and let the conversation go.
The next day, however, he still had questions, so he walked right up to Ashido and asked bluntly, “What does it mean to like like someone?”
Because if anyone knew the answer to that, he suspected it would be Ashido.
Her mouth dropped open, and sure enough, she squealed, “Todoroki Shouto, do you have a crush on someone? Who? Who? ” Her eyes narrowed. “Wait, I know. It’s Midoriya.”
“A… crush?” Shouto was pretty sure he’d heard that word before, but he wasn’t completely sure what it meant.
“Yeah, like…” Suddenly she looked horribly offended. “Are you saying you don’t know what a crush is?”
Shouto shook his head, waiting for an explanation.
“It’s like — it’s like when you like someone a lot!” she tried to explain, waving her hands around to help. “Like more than the normal amount, like you want to date them and kiss them!”
Dating Midoriya? Kissing Midoriya?
“Oh.” Hmm, yeah Shouto thought he would kind of like that, maybe. He didn’t know much about kissing, but he could imagine with Midoriya it could be kind of nice.
Ashido made a quiet wailing noise. “You scare me sometimes, Todoroki-kun,” she said, patting his shoulder a little.
Not sure what that meant, Shouto went to find Midoriya. He found him in the kitchen of the dorms, holding a mug of tea with two hands and staring into its murky waters, evidently lost in thought.
“Midoriya-kun,” Shouto said quietly. Midoriya’s head jerked up. “Do you think you’d like kissing me?”
Midoriya’s eyes went so wide Shouto was worried they might fall out. Maybe he’d phrased that weirdly. “Um… I’m not… what?”
“Sorry, what I mean to say is—”
Midoriya set his mug down on the counter with a sigh, a determined look suddenly coming over his face. It was the expression he got when he was preparing for battle, and Shouto almost took a step back, unsure of what was going on. “No, um. I’ll answer that.” He made a clear concerted effort and met Shouto’s eyes. “Todoroki-kun, I like you a lot, and when I say that I mean I have a crush on you and I’d like to date you.”
Oh.
Oh.
Da da dum Izuku da da dum.
—
Rule One: Reach for the top, and only the top. Focus on Number one, and ignore everything else.
Rule Two: Don’t make any friends. They’ll just end up dragging you down.
Rule Three: Never let down your guard.
—
“I can’t believe you, Todoroki-kun,” Ashido said, sounding pained as she watched Todoroki try to smooth down his hair. They’d taken over one of the bathrooms so she could help him get ready for his first, and hopefully not only, date with Midoriya— Izuku. Apparently he had gotten the right to call him Izuku out loud now. “You just asked him? Just like that?”
“Well, I didn’t know it was a big thing,” he answered, poking at his scar a little.
“You could have asked me! I would have told you!”
“I apologize.”
Ashido released a heavy sigh, pressing the back of her head against the wall of the bathroom. “I’m done with both of you.” Todoroki looked at her in the mirror just in time to see her open her eyes, a grin spreading across her cheeks. “Bet you ten thousand yen he’s making a mess of his tie right now.”
“I’m not taking that bet.” Todoroki answered, checking over his own tie. “You’d win.”
Ashido cackled, pushing off from the wall and opening the door to the bathroom. “I would, you’re right. I’ll go help him.” She left, and Todoroki frowned at himself in the mirror, trying to decide if he looked okay. He’d never gone on a date before, or at least not a real one where he actually liked the person. The fake ones his father tried to set him on didn’t count.
He started mentally making a new set of rules for himself. A set of rules Izuku wouldn’t be able to break.
Rule One: Pay attention to everything, but mostly pay attention to Izuku, because he is beautiful and you might be falling in love with him.
Rule Two: Keep your friends. They’ll have your back when you need them most.
Rule Three: Let yourself have questions. Someone (Izuku) will probably have answers for them.
There. Those looked good.
Shouto didn’t know who he was, but he trusted Izuku to help him find out. Shouto didn’t know what he wanted, but he knew he would figure that out eventually. Shouto didn’t know why he acted the way he did, but he knew that he liked Izuku, more than the usual amount. That was all he really needed to make a new (hopefully self-fulfilling) prophecy.
He was going to fall in love with Izuku and stay in love with Izuku and by virtue of caring for each other, both of them would learn to care about themselves. That was what Shouto predicted, what Shouto wanted, what Shouto hoped was coming next.
Checking himself over one more time, Shouto hurried into the hallway to meet Izuku.