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Izuku honestly wasn’t aware of the fanfics for a while after they were first discovered. Nobody told him about them, after all — both Uraraka and Iida were under the impression that the other had told him, Yaomomo apparently assumed that someone else would tell him, and Asui admitted that she hadn’t even thought about it.
He finally found out about them when he overheard Kaminari and Mina discussing them (or, rather, laughing at them). He didn’t actually get to ask about it, though — Mina just noticed him hovering awkwardly and filled him in on the situation. She showed him a few, too — and while those particular fics themselves didn’t really interest him, the whole concept certainly did.
Izuku’s always been a curious kid — he loves research. When he was little, it was about All Might, then all kinds of heroes, and now he looks into pretty much any topic that piques his interest. He likes knowing things.
So, well… despite not knowing what Archive of Our Own was the day before, he spends his afternoon looking at it and exploring different aspects of the site. He mostly just pokes around at first, searching for shows and books he likes, but he feels like it’s kind of inevitable that he ends up looking up his own name after a while.
He’s a little surprised to find out that he has his own tag — he didn’t honestly think he was cool enough for people to be interested in writing about him. But he supposes if everyone else in their class does (which they do, according to Kaminari), then why not him?
He scans fics, reading tags and summaries to see if there’s anything that he’d actually be interested in reading, since he’s obviously curious about the kind of things people say about him. He does actually end up reading a few, mostly because the tags sound interesting: he realizes pretty quickly that AO3’s tag system allows users to basically create whatever tags they want, which leads to interesting ones like ‘deku has a dog because i think he would have one’ (honestly, Izuku probably would have one if he could) and ‘can you call antigravity flying? i’m going to act like you can’.
Izuku decides he likes the tag system. It’s arguably more descriptive than most book blurbs are (‘lots of fighting and rescues’ sure says a lot more than ‘thriller’).
He calls it a night after a couple hours, planning to come back to the site tomorrow and see what more he can find/read.
‘Tomorrow’ turns into every afternoon for the next several days — the more he gets into it, the more he wants to see and learn. He reads fics about a lot of things: his favorite shows, a manga series he likes, heroes (lots of heroes), and even more about himself. Not that many, since it’s honestly a little bit weird reading about himself from someone else’s perspective, but a few.
It’s through the fics about himself that he finds the ‘Todoroki Shouto | Shouto/Midoriya Izuku | Deku’ tag. He wasn’t looking for ship fics — the thought honestly hadn’t occurred to him — but he’s figured out by this point what the difference is between ship tags and platonic tags, so the difference immediately sticks out to him.
Now, Izuku’s never really thought a whole lot about relationships in general. He’s only liked a handful of people, and never very intensely.
Until Todoroki.
He’s sorta known he was bi for a couple years now, but Todoroki is the first guy he’s ever had a crush on, and just how much Izuku likes him basically cemented his bi-ness as a stark reality rather than a nebulous idea.
Because he likes Todoroki. A lot. More than he’s ever liked anyone. He thought girls back in middle school were cute, sure, maybe thought about holding their hands or walking home from school together. He even liked Uraraka, briefly (before realizing that they’re too similar to date each other), and he definitely imagined having study dates or training together, but no one has ever taken over his mind so completely like Todoroki has.
It’s not just thoughts of hand-holding and walking home and study dates and training (though those definitely do still happen), but he also finds himself noticing and sometimes buying things he thinks Todoroki will like — food, little trinkets, a couple shirts. He started taking pictures of cats he sees because he knows Todoroki likes cats and he wanted to send them to him. He feels happier when Todoroki is around, or talks to him, or smiles at him (Todoroki rarely smiles, so every time it feels like an honor).
When Todoroki is around, Izuku is (usually) with him. When Todoroki isn’t around, Izuku wants to be with him. It feels stupid, honestly, how infatuated he is.
That’s mostly why he hasn’t told anyone about the crush. He’s been picked on for less — he’d rather not be ridiculed for having feelings. (His mom is kind of vaguely aware that he likes someone, but he hasn’t told her about the bi thing yet so he hasn’t told her who it is.)
His massive, embarrassing crush on Todoroki is what causes him to immediately start exploring the ship tag, because, well, the idea that other people think they would be good together makes him feel nice (as well as slightly embarrassed by the thought that random strangers can tell he has a crush).
The tags on these fics aren’t quite as hilarious as the other ones he’s been reading, but most of them are very… soft, is the best word he can come up with. Fluffy. Like, no, the tag ‘they hold hands a lot because i think they should’ isn’t at all comedic, but it does spark a warm, fuzzy feeling in Izuku’s chest — and that’s just as good, in his opinion.
The ship fics quickly become his main source of entertainment (though he does still read some of the other ones). He actually finds himself spending longer and longer stretches of time reading fics in general, partially because they’re mostly ship fics.
There’s just something so captivating about being able to indulge in dumb fantasies that, while they’re not quite like the ones he’s come up with on his own, are sweet and sappy and similar enough to his daydreams that the two start to mesh together. So even though the idea that he’s not the only one thinking about this stuff is, honestly, a little bit weird, he’s at least getting a lot of new material for his own brain to run away with and expand upon.
Izuku’s daydreams aren’t a particularly common occurrence — he tries not to zone out during class or when there might be something important happening — but when he has a free moment to himself and doesn’t feel like reading, he likes to let his mind wander off with thoughts of Todoroki.
Todoroki is, honestly, an enigma. Izuku constantly feels like he knows a lot about the guy, but at the same time, he also feels like there’s a lot Todoroki hasn’t told him. But with how neutral his default expression tends to be, it’s hard to gauge how accurate that feeling is.
Izuku wants to know about Todoroki. He wants to know everything about him — his favorite color, his happiest memory, his darkest fear. But they’re not the kind of people (or even the kind of friends) who just talk about that kind of thing. Honestly, when it’s just the two of them, it usually ends up with Izuku rambling about one thing or another and Todoroki just quietly listening.
And that’s fine. Izuku does enjoy that.
But he still treasures the rare times that they’ve been able to open up — the brief occasions where Todoroki has talked about his family, a one-off moment of vulnerability where Izuku let slip his concerns about his mom. A near-forgotten conversation about why their favorite foods are their favorites.
His daydreams tend to center around conversations like those.
The Todoroki in the fics (and, subsequently, Izuku’s own head) is still mostly the same, but slightly more open — less shy, able to touch on emotional topics without clamming up. And he’s not the only one — Izuku is bolder in his fantasies, too, able to look Todoroki in the eye without turning bright red or stumbling over his words. And yeah, like that they’re able to talk about pets they’d want or their favorite sightseeing spots or foreign countries they want to visit. In his mind, Izuku and Todoroki could talk for hours about all sorts of things and never get bored of each other’s company or the sound of each other’s voices.
They’re closer, too — physically, that is. He could never cuddle up to Todoroki’s side in real life, but in his mind they’re regularly right up next to each other, or only inches apart — cuddling, laying together, walking side by side with held hands. The kind of thing some of their classmates can get away with and not even get a second glance from anyone else.
Well… he says ‘some of their classmates’, but if he’s being honest, Izuku is only able to call Kirishima and Kacchan to mind. Sure, Kaminari and Mina are pretty touchy, but they’re like that with everyone — Kirishima and Kacchan are the only two people he knows who can get away with being attached at the hip all the time without anyone batting an eye, and even if it’s not a romantic thing for them, it’s still something Izuku would love to have.
Going down the rabbithole of ship fics, Izuku finds after a while that there aren’t as many that give him new ideas. He’s not opposed to more of the same, but he’s kind of liked the change of pace, and would’ve liked to keep that up longer.
He resigns himself to the same set of tropes and tags for a while before he stumbles across a fic that actually does switch it up somewhat, in a way that catches him totally off-guard.
It’s not betrayed at all by the tags, but this fic has a long section with exactly the kind of deep, introspective conversation that he’s imagined having with Todoroki (though he’s never been quite able to imagine it properly, not having any idea what Todoroki would talk about).
The conversation in the fic centers around Todoroki’s relationship with his family — mostly his dad, but his siblings are mentioned, too. He talks vaguely about what it was like growing up without his mom at home, relying on his sister to fill that role instead. He mentions how it felt living within the looming shadow of his eldest brother, being a little kid expected to fill a dead boy’s shoes and even go past that; the expectation to be the best, no matter what he had to sacrifice to get there, whether that be his hobbies or his happiness.
It’s honestly kind of sad.
Who is Izuku kidding. It’s really sad.
In the fic, Izuku is reassuring and supportive, way more composed than he probably would be if he were actually having this conversation in person. Just reading this stuff, knowing that it’s fiction and real life isn’t that bad, has Izuku tearing up. He’d probably break if he were legitimately hearing Todoroki say this.
But it’s all so sweet at the same time — fic-Izuku reassures Todoroki that he’s perfect just the way he is, and he doesn’t have to be the best at everything to be worthy of love, and when Todoroki tells him he doesn’t have to lie, Izuku shuts him down and tells him that he’s not lying. He loves Todoroki regardless of what he does, because he’s him. And that’s enough.
At that point in the story, both of them are kind of teary, which makes real-life Izuku feel a little more justified about his own watery eyes. There isn’t a spoken ‘I love you’ from Todoroki in return, but the kiss he gives fic-Izuku gets the point across just as well.
Honestly, the whole thing sends Izuku on such an emotional rollercoaster that he feels like he has to see if the author has written anything else that’s similar, which is how he ends up browsing through willworkforsoba’s works. This is the first time he’s ever looked at a specific writer’s profile — he usually prefers to just let the tags and summaries help him decide — but he’s also never had a fic strike him this deeply before.
They haven’t posted a ton, so Izuku decides to go all the way back to their first fic and work his way through them all until he gets back to present day.
They’re all similar to the one he started with, though he’s able to tell the difference between that one and the first few, which are more tentative and don’t get into the deep stuff as much. One of them doesn’t touch on anything that dark or personal at all, even — it’s just a fic of the two of them going on a solo mission together and honestly having kind of a fun time with it (obvious danger aside). Izuku can’t decide which he likes better, the introspective vulnerability or the good old-fashioned ‘just happy to be together’ feeling.
Then he supposes that they all have an undercurrent of ‘just happy to be together’, so the long talks are probably still his favorites.
And willworkforsoba has written a lot of those. Most of them are Todoroki-centric, diving deeper into his home life and his insecurities and, honestly, a lot of stuff that still feels incredibly personal and makes Izuku feel like he’s reading someone’s private diary, even if he knows it’s all fake. But the misplaced feeling of guilt doesn’t win out over his desire to read more, so he mostly just tries to shove it down and ignore it.
It takes him about a week to get through the entire collection, leaving kudos on each one and comments on the ones where he actually has something to say, even if it’s just this was really good, i hope you write more.
(He doesn’t remember when in this whole saga he actually signed up for the site, but he now chooses to hide behind the username smaller_might — since smallmight, small_might, and smallermight were all taken already.)
He keeps up with willworkforsoba’s writing, reading everything new as soon as it comes out and, as before, leaving kudos — and the occasional comment if he feels like he can contribute anything.
He gets a few rare responses from the author, usually short (never more than about ten words) but appreciative. It makes him smile — after all, willworkforsoba’s works make Izuku happy, so he’s glad he can return some of that to the author with his comments, even if they don’t know exactly how much this means to him specifically.
So far, he hasn’t talked to anyone about any fics (aside from the conversation where Kaminari and Mina told him about them in the first place, that is). It’s been kind of a hot topic with most of his classmates — but Izuku doesn’t have anything to talk about that he’s willing to share with any of them, so he hasn’t participated at all.
He’s sort of eavesdropping (can you call it eavesdropping if everyone involved is in the same common area?) on one of those conversations when Momo comes to sit next to where he’s trying — and failing — to focus on his homework.
“Midoriya, can I talk to you about something?” she asks, resting her elbows on the tabletop with her chin resting in one hand. She seems… troubled.
He sets his pencil down. “Yeah, of course. Is something wrong?”
“Not exactly.” She sighs. “You’ve heard about the whole fanfiction thing, I assume?”
“Hard not to.”
She laughs a little. “Yeah, that’s true. So, I obviously read some of them — I was just curious what they were like, and it turns out some of them are really well-written.”
“Oh, yeah?” Izuku knows this, but he’s not about to get into an intellectual discussion with Momo about the writing quality of (largely weird) fanfiction.
“Yeah. That’s mostly what kept me reading past the initial period of curiosity, honestly. But recently there’s something that’s been bothering me about the stories I’m reading.” She frowns slightly. “I sort of feel like some of them are written by people we know.”
That piques Izuku’s interest. “What makes you say that?”
“Just little things, you know? Stuff that seems inconspicuous at first but then you realize it’s a little too specific to be completely random.”
He cocks his head at her. “Like what?”
Her brows furrow. “Like, there was this one I read a few days ago that mentioned how my bed is one I brought from home. And it didn’t seem that strange when I read it originally, because that’s something that everyone in our class knows, but then I realized… it’s something everyone in our class knows. Some random person who’s never met us before wouldn’t be able to know that.”
“That is odd,” he agrees.
She nods, adding, “And it’s not the only time that’s happened! It’s like after I noticed the first one I was suddenly able to to see a bunch of other ones.”
“Other ones?” Izuku feels a little bit stupid for asking all of these questions.
“Just stuff that you would have to know us — know me — to know. Like what my house is like, or about my tea collection, or specific milestones from my transition. And there’s this one writer who I’ve read a lot of stuff from — they write a lot of songfics, and at least half of them are based on songs that I’ve mentioned are my favorites. It’s just too much to be a coincidence, you know?” She sighs heavily. “So I’ve been trying to figure out who that writer is.”
“Do you have any ideas?”
“I have a guess that I’m pretty confident about, but I think a part of me… doesn’t want it to be true, in a way.”
Izuku gives her a confused look. “Why?”
“Because, I mean…” Momo sighs again, then admits, “I think this person, lyrical_lesbian… is Jirou.”
“And that would be a bad thing?”
She shrugs helplessly. “I’m not even sure. I mean, on the one hand, if it is her, and I ask her about it, it’s kind of hard to explain writing ship fics about us without the possibility of her having a crush on me, which would be awesome. I think she’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen, and so sweet, and the only reason I haven’t asked her out already is because I wasn’t sure if she’d want to date a trans girl and I was scared of getting rejected — you know how it is.”
“I do,” he agrees. Fear of rejection is a very familiar feeling to him.
Momo nods, continuing, “But on the other hand, if it isn’t her, and I ask her about it, I’ll look weird and I’ll probably be ruining whatever miniscule chances I had with her in the first place, which is literally the opposite of the ideal outcome when it comes to asking her about this. And in that case, I risk losing our friendship, too, which would suck.”
Izuku nods sympathetically. “What makes you think it’s her, specifically?”
She considers that for a moment. “Well, I mean, the whole account just has her vibe — name, profile picture, bio, and the writing style of the fics. But, there’s also the fact that one of the fics seems to reference a private conversation we had that I’ve literally never told anyone else about. It’s innocuous enough on its own, but combined with everything else it seems like it should mean something, no?”
“That makes sense,” he agrees. He pauses before he says, “From what you’ve told me so far, it doesn’t really seem like it could be anyone else. I mean, there’s just too many things to be a coincidence, right?”
“That’s what it seems like.”
“And you don’t have any strong evidence that it isn’t her?”
“No, not really.” Momo shrugs. “Mostly that she’s not the only music-loving lesbian I know, but I have to admit that I don’t think any of the others would be this interested in writing fanfiction about me and Jirou.”
“Then maybe you should talk to her about it. I mean, if you’re this confident in your guess, you might as well give it a shot, right?”
“You think so?”
He shrugs. “The worst thing she can do is say it’s not her and reject you. Which would be awful, obviously, but you’d be able to heal from it with time. If you don’t ask her, the suspicion is just going to eat you from the inside out.”
(Izuku feels very much like his words are not his own all of the sudden — he sounds like his mom, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is weird. He’s not usually an advice person, and certainly not advice this coherently delivered.)
Momo considers his words for a long moment before she decides, “You’re right.”
“I am?” He’s honestly surprised — he’s not used to being right.
“Yeah, you are,” she repeats. “I’m never going to know if I don’t ask. I’ll talk to her about it tonight, probably.”
He nods a little. “Well, good luck. I hope it goes well.”
Momo gives him a small smile. “Thank you. So do I.”
And with that, their conversation is over, though she sticks around to help Izuku figure out his math homework ‘as thanks for the pep talk’.
Izuku doesn’t really dwell on Momo’s specific situation, but their conversation does make him think, and he finds himself recalling it when he’s reading willworkforsoba’s newest work a couple of days later.
‘Stuff that seems inconspicuous at first but then you realize it’s a little too specific to be completely random.’
He hadn’t really thought about small details like she mentioned before — the throwaway lines kind of fade into the background in comparison with the main plotline and most pivotal moments. But now, he’s consciously reading and processing them. Making connections, realizing things.
Like, it’s a little bit weird that this writer knows how Todoroki’s room was renovated.
And that Izuku’s hero costume was largely designed by his mom.
There’s a description of Izuku’s journal page for All Might that’s maybe a little too specific (and accurate — Izuku even has to double-check, because he’s sure at first that he’s misremembering his own notes, but some of them are almost word-for-word).
These are all things that would be really odd (nearly impossible, really) for anyone who didn’t know them to know. And, like Momo, Izuku finds himself rereading older fics to see if he missed anything — and, like Momo, he sees all of the glaring examples now in hindsight.
The first ones that jump out at him are things that any of his classmates might know: his favorite food, the rarest piece in his All Might collection, the fact that his quirk used to break his bones before he got more of a handle on it. Not common public knowledge, but anyone who’s spent any significant amount of time with him would probably know these things.
Then there are some more specific ones, that most people probably wouldn’t be aware of — the situation with his dad being overseas for work, his insecurities about living up to his mom’s expectations, his history of being bullied for almost all of his childhood. These things severely cut down on the amount of people who could know, leaving just his closest group of friends and Kacchan, who grew up alongside him.
As he continues pondering these things, he feels like he can understand how Momo was feeling, because he’s starting to feel the same way. He almost definitely knows who wrote these stories… but he honestly hopes he’s wrong.
It can’t be Kacchan — sure, he would know all of these specifics about Izuku’s life, and it’s plausible that he could have noticed Izuku’s crush, but he would never waste this amount of time even thinking about Izuku, much less writing about him.
Iida is also off the table, having never shown any interest in romance in any capacity, his own or anyone else’s. Uraraka wouldn’t have time between homework, training, and helping out her family to write this extensively — she works her ass off, Izuku is sure she has more enjoyable hobbies for when she does have a free moment. Tsuyu isn’t really a writer, and she doesn’t seem to take an interest in other people’s relationships in the first place.
Momo is almost certainly not it, given that she seems to be in the exact same position that Izuku is now.
But when Izuku eliminates all of those people, he’s only left with one option.
Todoroki.
Unlike Momo, Izuku doesn’t pursue that thought much further. In fact, he actively tries to ignore it and convince himself that he’s wrong, just reading into things that aren’t there. He continues reading willworkforsoba’s stories under the self-imposed delusion that the author is still a faceless random that Izuku doesn’t know and will probably never meet.
That works for a little while — up until what Izuku is personally referring to as D-Day, when what feels like about half a million things all happened at once and he genuinely forgets about reading fanfiction at all for a bit. Between Dabi being Todoroki’s supposedly-dead brother and Kacchan almost sacrificing his own life for Izuku’s sake, he just has more important things at the front of his mind.
He finally comes back to AO3 after a few weeks, once he’s past the worst of the pain and has mostly managed to reconcile the other mental sucker-punches the universe decided to hit him with all at once.
Somewhat to Izuku’s surprise, willworkforsoba has posted a new fic within that time. It’s not a solo fic, either: it has a co-author, groundzero420, and the tags range wider than the usual — the most glaring one being ‘Kirishima Eijirou | Red Riot/Bakugou Katsuki | Dynamight’ alongside Todoroki and Izuku’s own ship tag.
It only takes a couple moments of scrolling through groundzero420’s library to find out that that’s mostly what they do, in a similar vein to willworkforsoba and lyrical_lesbian — all of them write about one particular ship, exclusively and extensively.
He goes back to the collaborative fic and contemplates giving it a read, but nothing really jumps out at him as sounding excessively interesting about it until he sees the author’s note (authors’ note?).
willworkforsoba: i’ve never worked with someone else before, but i honestly enjoyed this. apologies if parts of it are disorganized or rambling, but given recent events i’m not quite on my a-game.
groundzero420 - given that this may be my last work for a while, i thought i’d go out with a bang and try something completely new — teamwork! it’s been a hell of a ride, readers, so i hope you enjoy.
That actually piques Izuku’s interest, so he starts reading.
The general plotline of this fic is ‘Kirishima and Kacchan start dating, Kacchan gives Todoroki relationship advice and they become friends, and Todoroki and Izuku eventually start going out with each other as well’. But the actual plot isn’t as important to Izuku as the details, and as he reads, he realizes a few different things, for which he creates a mental list.
- willworkforsoba is Todoroki. This he already knew, but he can’t ignore it anymore after this story includes multiple moments of Todoroki’s internal monologue regarding his brother, father, and the rest of his family. The only person who could write something so raw and panicked from a calm, collected guy like Todoroki is someone who’s actually been inside his head.
Izuku still hasn’t decided what he wants to do with that information, so he files it away to come back to.
- groundzero420 must be Kacchan. The name is very him, and there’s enough specifics about his relationship with Kirishima and his experiences with traumatic events that it couldn’t be anyone else. There also aren’t that many people that Izuku could see Todoroki writing fanfiction with, and Kacchan is probably at the top of that list.
- If willworkforsoba is Todoroki and groundzero420 is Kacchan, then Kacchan is in love with Kirishima and Todoroki is probably in love with Izuku.
- If Todoroki is in love with Izuku, that means that Izuku’s feelings are reciprocated and probably have been the whole time.
He also ends up with several questions (a few of them being ‘are Kirishima and Kacchan actually going out with each other?’, ‘how long have Todoroki and Kacchan been friends?’, and ‘if Todoroki is in love with me, why hasn’t he said anything about it?’), but he shoves those to the back of his mind and revisits the two most important pieces of information:
Todoroki is willworkforsoba (a name that feels incredibly obvious with context), and he is also probably in love with Izuku.
In his infinite stupidity, Izuku finds himself walking to Todoroki’s dorm room without anything even resembling a plan. He doesn’t know what he’s going to say, he just knows that he would rather talk about all of this now instead of putting it off any longer — even if it is ten at night.
He stands outside of Todoroki’s door for a minute or so before deciding to knock, but the door opens before his knuckles can even hit the wood.
“—anks for letting us hang out,” Kirishima is saying over his shoulder. Kacchan is koala-ed onto his front, obviously sleepy. “Sorry for intruding on your —” He interrupts himself as he sees Izuku. “Oh, hey, Mido-bro. You here to talk to Todoroki?”
Izuku stutters incoherently for a moment before he manages a weak, “Yeah, I am.”
“Then we’ll totally get out of your way,” Kirishima assures him as he slips past Midoriya into the hallway. “Sorry for holding him up all evening!”
“Hey, Eijirou,” Kacchan grumbles.
“Yeah?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Kirishima chuckles softly. “Yeah, yeah. C’mon, let’s get you to bed.”
When Izuku turns back towards the doorway, Todoroki is standing there, also watching Kirishima and Kacchan head down the hall. After a moment, he finally meets Izuku’s eyes.
They’re both silent for what feels like an eternity before Izuku stupidly says, “I didn’t know you were close with Kacchan and Kirishima-kun.”
“It’s… kind of a recent development,” Todoroki says vaguely. “I heard you say you wanted to talk about something?”
“Right,” Izuku agrees, then asks, “Can I come in?”
Todoroki doesn’t respond, but he opens the door wider so Izuku has room to head inside.
The awkward silence stretches out between them again as they both take a seat on Todoroki’s futon. Izuku doesn’t think that quiet has ever seemed so loud to him before.
This time, Todoroki is the one who speaks first. “So… there’s something you want to say.”
“Yes,” Izuku agrees.
“I assume it’s important.”
“Very.”
“And you haven’t said it yet because you think it will bother me?”
“Yeah,” Izuku admits sheepishly. “How’d you know that?”
“You’re my friend. I pay attention to things like that.”
“Mm.”
A beat.
Another.
Izuku blurts out the question: “Are you willworkforsoba?”
It’s a question that would only really make sense to someone involved in all this. The writer themself, their collaborator, a knowing reader. Izuku wants Todoroki to look at him weird and ask what he’s talking about, because then he won’t have to confront all of… this.
But Todoroki doesn’t do that.
He hesitates for a beat, then simply says, “Yes.”
And that’s it. The final nail in the coffin for Izuku. All his feelings of trepidation and anxiety have led up to this moment, where the pieces of the puzzle fall into place and everything will hopefully start to make sense.
All he can ask at this point, though, is “Why?”
Todoroki sighs. “Because it was easier than telling you.”
Izuku doesn’t have a good response to that. “So — so instead of telling me that you liked me, you decided to… to just write us falling in love over and over again?”
“Basically,” Todoroki agrees. “I mean… the thought of telling you was terrifying. It is terrifying. I like you so much — I admire you for who you are, and you could do so much better than me, and I was scared that if I pushed the limits of our friendship that I’d lose you completely.”
“I could never do better than you,” Izuku mutters.
“Yeah, you could. I’m messed up, Midoriya — I’m the result of a broken family and a horrible childhood and way more trauma than any one person should have to deal with. I’m still trying to figure out who I am underneath the image of what my father wants me to be, and I still don’t truly feel like my own person yet.” He sighs heavily, brows furrowed in obvious frustration. “You shouldn’t have to put up with all of the problems that come from being close to me, when you could choose basically anyone else — including someone more put-together than I am.”
Izuku frowns, scooting closer to Todoroki so that Izuku can rest a hand on his arm. “I don’t need you to be put-together. I know you’re messed up — I am, too. Maybe not in the same way, and maybe not as much, but I still get what it’s like going through that healing process, you know? And you may not be able to see the parts of you that aren’t from your dad, but I can, and I love them.”
“Anyone else would just write me off as a lost cause.” Todoroki’s voice is soft and somber.
“Well, I’m not ‘anyone else’. And you’re not a lost cause.” Izuku tightens his grip on Todoroki’s arm, just a little. “You’re sweet, and thoughtful, and compassionate, not to mention insanely hardworking. You try to support the people around you even when you’re struggling with your own problems, and even if you’re not the best at showing it, I know you care about people. You’re amazing, Todoroki.”
“Shouto,” Todoroki says softly.
“Huh?”
“You can call me Shouto. Honestly, please do.”
“Shouto, then. My point still stands — you’re amazing. I wish I could even be half of what you are.”
Shouto laughs softly. “I could say the same to you.”
“Nah, I’m not anything special.”
Shouto shakes his head. “Izuku, you’re the kindest person I know. You do what’s right, even if it’s hard, and you stand up for the people who need support even if everyone else is against you. You push yourself harder every day to be the best version of you that you can be, and when you get knocked down, you just get back up and keep going. I wish I could do that.”
Izuku almost lost his entire train of thought when Shouto said his name, but he manages to respond. “You can, if you try. It just takes practice, like anything else.”
“Mm.”
“You know what this sounds like?” Izuku asks after another moment.
“What?”
“It sounds like both of us just think we suck, and that the other one is amazing, and we’ve never talked about feelings before just because both of us thought the other one was way out of our league.”
Shouto laughs. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”
God, Izuku loves Shouto’s laugh. It’s such a rare sound, so hearing it feels special.
Izuku laughs a little, too. “We should stop making so many assumptions.”
“Probably.”
There’s a moment of silence — not awkward, like earlier, but calm.
Then Shouto asks, “Can I kiss you?”
Izuku barely finishes saying ‘yes’ before Shouto does just that — it’s clumsy, unpracticed, but Izuku couldn’t care less. It’s Shouto.
They kiss for a few moments, with Izuku occasionally giggling because he’s just so happy. When they finally pull apart, Shouto is honest-to-god grinning, and he’s so handsome Izuku swears he can feel his heart skip a beat.
Still smiling, Shouto asks, “So… are we dating now? Is that how this works?”
“I don’t know,” Izuku admits. “I’ve never dated anyone before.”
“Neither have I.”
“I want to date you,” Izuku tells him.
“Then be my boyfriend.”
“I’d be happy to.”
That earns Izuku another kiss, this time accompanied by an uncharacteristically eager hug that knocks them both down onto the futon, now laying together rather than sitting.
They spend a moment just smiling at each other before Izuku remembers a question he had earlier. “Hey, on the topic of dating…”
“What about it?” Shouto asks.
“Are Kacchan and Kirishima really going out with each other?”
“Oh, yeah.” Shouto rolls his eyes a little. “They’re sickening.”
Izuku cracks a small smile. “Not surprising.”
“Mhm.” Shouto reaches out to run a hand through Izuku’s hair, adding, “Don’t tell them I told you, though. Bakugou would probably kill me. Or you. Or both.”
That gets Izuku to laugh. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”