Chapter Text
Tenya’s legs hurt.
That, in and of itself, wasn’t too unusual an occurrence. His engines were heavy—so much so that, in spite of his quirk-adjusted musculature, working long hours had always taken something of a toll on him. Many nights saw Tenya half-limping home, desperate for something to ease the painful swelling that would crawl up his calves and into his hip flexors after spending a day on his feet. This pain, though, was different—duller than he was used to.
Tentatively, Tenya stretched himself out, savoring the cool rasp of fabric against his skin as he lengthened his limbs in full and arched his lower spine. No resistance rose to meet him. Back to hip to knee, everything functioned as it should. Only a slight twinge in the meat of his thighs signaled that anything was amiss, which was easy enough to put out of mind.
There was light in his face, too. Odd.
Tenya flipped onto his stomach and buried his face in the pillow nearest to him in an attempt to block it out. He wasn’t the sort to sleep in, not even on weekends. Why hadn’t his alarm gone off? Based on the sounds just outside his window—of cars rushing past in hasty spurts of gasoline—it definitely should have by that point.
Did I forget to set it? What happened last night?
Sleepily, Tenya’s mind cast about for an explanation, sticking on the evening prior—hazy amidst the heat-sweet glitz of his memory—and attempting to play it back.
The HPSC mixer, Midoriya and his speech, tangy screwdrivers served in highballs, Todoroki glancing at him through half-lidded eyes, Todoroki pressed to his side in a taxi-cab, Todoroki thrusting him headfirst into his crotch–
Oh, shit.
Tenya’s eyes snapped open, the room—his bedroom—little more than a blur beyond the inches nearest to his face. A glance at his bedside table revealed his glasses, which he hastily shoved onto his face as he tried to push himself upright.
An arm hooked around his waist kept him from doing so. Broad and pale and lying along the line of Tenya’s hips, it tugged at him tiredly, urging him to lie down again.
Oh, shit, he thought again, following the arc of that brilliant arm with his eyes to where it broadened into shoulder, then further, to Todoroki’s sleep-slackened face. Shit, shit, shit!
The other man was lying on his side, facing Tenya, and letting out soft puffs of air as he breathed. The usual lines of concentration—of well-honed stoicism—that settled about his eyes and mouth were nowhere to be seen. In sleep, Todoroki’s face was the picture of idle, trusting beauty. Tenya’s heart panged in his chest. He’s forgotten how soft the other man’s features could be when not fighting.
Slowly, he acquiesced to the insistence of Todoroki’s hold and allowed himself to be pulled onto his stomach once more. His head was heavy against his forearms as he settled, his eyes even more so as they attempted to commit the rare sight he’d been allowed to memory—that of a completely unfiltered Shouto Todoroki.
Bars of honeyed light seeped in through the bars of the blinds and splayed out over the other man’s back in miniature sunbursts, casting him in a lovely shade of gold. It rounded out the cuts of his jaw and cheekbones until even the scar tissue surrounding his eye seemed like it would be soft to the touch. Tenya’s fingers twitched toward the spot instinctively, then fell away, curling into a fist that he tucked beneath his head in lieu of resting it on Todoroki’s own.
It would be wrong to touch him there. Especially when he can’t tell me not to.
Todoroki had always been sensitive to that part of himself during high school. He’d hated it, and so endeavored to hide it as much as he could, allowing very few to ever see it uncensored. Thoughts of the man’s first hero suit—of frost biting into still youth-soft skin—swam through Tenya’s mind.
I’ll keep my hands to myself.
Todoroki huffed out a breath, pressing himself impossibly deeper into the bedding, and Tenya shivered as he felt it brush against his lips. Lying so close to him, it wasn’t difficult to imagine that they were proper lovers—that, beyond a single, stupid one-night-stand, he and Todoroki chose to come back to one another every day. It was a foolish thing to think of, having spent so little time with the other man (intimately), but Tenya couldn’t help himself. He’d always been something of a romantic.
Tenya squeezed his eyes shut on a sigh, raising a hand to rub at the tension building in his temples.
And so the virgin fell in love with the hooker.
Except Todoroki wasn’t a hooker, and Tenya wasn’t a virgin. They were both grown men, working in the hero industry, who were perfectly cognizant of what initiating sex with one another meant at the time of doing so. Grown men who, without so much as an ounce of decorum or care, had thrown themselves upon one another like animals the moment they stepped past the barrier of Tenya’s doorjamb, and fallen asleep amidst their filth.
Sour heat rose in the back of Tenya’s throat, sharp with the bite of his stomach acid, and he choked it down with a small exclamation of shame. High and too loud, it escaped his lips.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Tenya dragged his eyes open again, then stiffened. Todoroki’s pupils were bigger than they usually were, pools of dark ink that shrank in on themselves as they adjusted to the brightness of the surrounding room, and focused on the ceiling. Blearily, the other man scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Morning,” he murmured, his tone low and rough. It sent a rasping sort of thrill down Tenya’s spine, sandpaper against bone.
“Good morning.”
Nestled there, within the welcoming heart of his bed, Todoroki was prettier than Tenya had ever thought possible for a man. Only spirits could have ever hoped to best his loveliness.
“I wasn’t expecting you to stay the night.”
“Mm. It wasn’t my initial intention. But then you fell asleep.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“Well,” Todoroki drawled, half-mast eyes dragging heavily to Tenya’s own. “Since you were asleep, we couldn’t clean anything up after we’d…finished. And that made me feel bad, because I know how much you care about your hygiene, so…”
“So…”
“So, I stayed. Moved you to the bedroom, cleaned us both up a bit, and took care of our suits. Yours is in the bathroom, by the way.”
A lopsided smile spread across Todoroki’s face, still pasty with sleep, and Tenya’s skin flushed. Sneaking a glance beneath the comforter, he suddenly realized why the bed had seemed so much softer, more indulgent, than it usually did. He was nude. Naked as he had been on the day of his birth, and similarly clean. There was no sign of stickiness anywhere on his lower half—from the flesh of his inner thigh, to the curls of his pubic hair, to the clammy mass of his softened cock. It seemed, to him, as though Todoroki had been meticulous in his efforts to tidy him. Amorous, heady fantasies of the other man straddling him as he ran a warm cloth between his legs shot through Tenya with a tangible heat. He shuddered.
“Ah.”
He shuffled deeper into the sanctuary of his sheets, shirking the comforter up around his shoulders so that only his head could be seen above it.
“Are you also…”
“No,” Todoroki laughed, finally raising himself into a seated position. His hair fell in feathery tufts about his head without product, and he swept them out of his eyes as he spoke. “I still have my undergarments on, at least.”
Tenya swallowed, suddenly too aware of his dick as it sat between his legs and its embarrassing closeness to Todoroki. He pressed his thighs together tightly.
“I have some spare sets of clothes in the second drawer of my dresser if you wouldn’t mind getting us some.”
Todoroki inclined his head in understanding, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and moving toward the piece of furniture Tenya had indicated. Silently, he sorted through its contents, back muscles rolling beneath his skin as he worked.
In daylight, there was so much more of Todoroki to see. The lean muscles of his limbs, his well-defined waist, the dimples pressed into the flesh just above his tailbone—all of it was on display, bared to Tenya in a sweet rush of pale skin that made the taller man’s eyes sting at their corners. Todoroki’s was the sort of figure Tenya would have expected to see in paintings—immortalized in the loving cuts of a woodblock print—so beautiful that it, against all odds, could supersede the passage of time and remain as it was when it was first beheld. Perfect. Foolishly, he wanted to play a part in making that so—wanted to craft an intimate, tactile map of the other man with his mouth and hands until historians in the far future would be able to tell that they had suited one another simply by the way Tenya’s bones still held the impression of Todoroki’s hips.
A soft bundle of clothes dropped into his lap, breaking him out of his reverie.
“Here. I can turn away while you change if you’d like.”
Tenya blinked up at Todoroki and nodded.
“That would be much appreciated.”
Dressing was a quiet affair, and one that passed quickly apart from when Tenya tried to pull on the sweatpants Todoroki had offered him. They were old and slightly too small and dragged painfully across the rows of bruises bitten into the backs of his legs as they met his skin. Craning his head back allowed him to glare down at them stiffly.
Awesome, he thought, only slightly bitter.
“You okay?”
“Yes.” Shuffling more slowly into his clothes, Tenya settled them about his hips. “Quite all right. Don’t worry yourself on my account.”
Turning on his heel and tugging on a shirt, Tenya stiffened as he caught sight of Todoroki at the far end of the room. The other man was leaning against the bed, long legs bent as he attempted to cuff the bottoms of his borrowed sweatpants. A few inches too long and several more too wide, they were all but falling off him—pools of threadbare fabric that he was all but swimming in. Tenya dropped his gaze to the floor.
“Thank you for this, by the way. I was dreading having to commute in yesterday’s suit,” Todoroki said, his tone light and easy—bright as the sunshine catching in his hair.
Tenya nodded soundlessly. His fingers made a sloppy knot with the tie of his waistband.
“It’s no issue.”
Todoroki straightened, his chest shapely beneath Tenya’s slightly better-fitting (though no less distracting) shirt, and ducked to retrieve his suit from where he’d discarded it at the foot of the bed. It, too, was prettier in the daylight—ice-blue with fineline pinstripes along the waistcoat that complemented the otherwise plain Merino. There were wrinkles in the pants. At its waist and knees, where Tenya had hastily bullied his way into pleasuring the man who wore it, snowflakes of folds expanded out and through the thick, woolen fabric. Tenya painstakingly dragged his gaze to Todoroki’s eyes, face burning all the while.
“You’re leaving now?”
“Yes. I have patrol tonight. If I didn’t, I’d be more inclined to linger.”
Tenya pointedly ignored the way his heart kicked into double time at Todoroki’s words, stepping into the living room. He didn’t mean it like that. He didn’t want anything more than a casual hookup. He didn’t want Tenya, not for more than one night. Hoping to clear his thoughts, he shook his head.
“I’ll walk you to the door then.”
Side by side, they moved through Tenya’s apartment until they reached the genkan, where Todoroki tried to toe on his shoes without the use of his hands. Since they were already tied, it took a fair bit of struggle and ended in Todroki scuffing his heels against the doorjamb in an effort to even them out. It should have looked silly, and likely would have had anyone else done it, but Tenya thought the odd, half-stepping motion was quite charming on him.
“Last night was nice. Thank you for…everything.”
“It was nice.”
Todoroki shifted slightly where he was standing, finally setting his suit down so he could adjust the backs of his loafers. Fabric rustled against fabric as he moved, and it was with his back to Tenya that he spoke.
“We should do it again sometime.”
Tenya’s heart dropped into his stomach. Once, twice, thrice, he blinked.
“I’m sorry?”
“We should do it—this—again sometime. I liked it, and if my memory serves, you did as well.”
Todoroki’s words weren’t any easier to understand the second time around. He shook his head stupidly.
“I thought you weren’t looking for anything serious.”
“I’m not.” Todoroki shrugged. “But we’re adults, and though I can’t speak for you, I like sex quite a lot. It would be nice to have it semi-regularly.”
“And you want to do that with me?”
“Sure. We’re both single; we both understand the drawbacks of dating within the hero pool,” Todoroki glanced back at Tenya over the arc of his shoulder. Bicolored eyes drew up and down in his body in slow, silent consideration, and Tenya fought back against the urge to shy away from the attention. “I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t. Last night worked.”
Worked. The word echoed unpleasantly in Tenya’s ears—clinical, almost—as though what they’d done could be measured and filed away like a mission statement.
“I wouldn’t have any idea of how to approach an arrangement like that.”
“It’s not a contract, Iida,” Todoroki said, slinging his suit over his arm as he straightened. “If we’re both available and in the mood, we meet up. It’s intuitive.”
Tenya swallowed. His throat felt dry. ‘Intuitive’, in his mind, was just a polite way of saying informal—and there was nothing that he resented more than informality. It welcomed instability, made even the most mundane of situations completely unpredictable.
“I don’t particularly enjoy that sort of thing.”
“Well, that much is obvious.”
There was no bite to the observation. If anything, Todoroki’s voice was almost soothing—low and sweet as he looked at Tenya through the icy fringe of his lashes. He stepped slowly closer and stopped just shy of crowding him. Up close, in the clear light of morning, there were faint reminders of the night prior scattered across his skin as well—in the slight swelling of his lips and the near-invisible marks bitten beneath them.
“You’re overthinking this,” Todoroki said, matter-of-fact. “This thing between us doesn’t need to be complicated. Not unless you make it that way.”
Tenya let out a weak breath.
“And if I said no?”
“Then nothing changes. We go back to the way we were before.”
“What we were before,” Tenya repeated.
“Classmates. Coworkers. Friends, if you want to call it that.”
There was a staunch lack of hesitation in Todoroki’s tone. No strain. No sense that anything he sincerely cared for hung in the balance of their conversation. Tenya envied that, distantly.
“I see.”
Silence swelled between them. Todoroki glanced momentarily at the door.
“I’m not asking you to decide right now,” he said. “Just think about it.”
“Think about it.”
Tenya pressed his lips together.
“I…can do that much.”
Todoroki’s gaze softened. Then, just as quickly, his face took up its usual unaffectedness.
“You have my number,” he said, reaching for the door handle with his free hand. “Let me know what you decide.”
He pulled the door open, allowing cool, fresh air to slip in from the hallway beyond it. Subtly, Tenya shivered.
“I will. Take care of yourself.”
“You too, Iida.”