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Tooru was used to being overlooked. It was just in the nature of being invisible. Much harder to remember a face that doesn't exist, after all. Just because she was used to it didn't mean she wasn't affected by it, though.
All throughout her life, she had been ignored by many people, solely because they just..forgot she was there. It was never done with any malice in mind, and they usually apologised when they realised their mistake, but the fact that it happened at all made Tooru feel like she was an outsider in her own life.
So, she learned to adapt. She would gesticulate wildly when speaking to get her emotions across. She made sure to speak louder than others had to when she wanted to say something. It was a lot of hard work but it did help establish an actual presence for herself in the room. However, sometimes it was far too tiring to keep up these mannerisms all day, she just wished it could be as easy as it seemed to be for everyone else.
One time she'd asked her father, who's invisibility she had inherited, whether it would get any easier, and he just gave what she imagined was a pitying look through his floating glasses. He'd explained that while the feeling would never go away fully, there were people out there who could make it better, people she would be able to trust. She just had to find them.
Tooru had held onto that hope even when it seemed like it would never come to fruition.
Before highschool, although she had many friends, she could only really say a small few of them were real friends. Most just wanted the novelty of knowing a girl who was completely invisible. They'd be friendly, sure, but when Tooru wanted to vent or even just talk about something other what her "friends" were up to, they'd effectively ghost her. It was a rather lonely social life, in all honesty.
Now she was at UA, things were much better. She had so many friends it was sometimes overwhelming, and they liked her for her. Perhaps it helped that all of them had quirks that were as weird, if not weirder than hers.
Almost all of them, if she was being technical.
Midoriya Izuku was a kind, hardworking and absolutely adorable boy that she was beyond proud to call her friend. He was also the first Quirkless student in UA history.
When she and the rest of their class had found out that tidbit on their first day, they had admittedly written him off as having gotten lucky in the entrance exam. It was unfathomable to Tooru, she was basically only one step up in power from him (since invisibility didn't exactly have much apparent use outside of stealth) and she remembers having to fight for her life against those robots. The idea that this boy without a quirk could not only pass the entrance exam, but also get into the top 5 point ranking of all applicants, was insane.
It was never said aloud, but they all expected him to flunk out of the hero course within a week.
And then he kept on winning. Every challenge sent his way was met with steely determination and a swift, calculating brain.
If you asked most of the other students when their opinion of the green-haired boy had shifted to a more positive light, they probably would have said when he had forfeited his nearly-guaranteed win in the sports festival to help Todoroki push past his trauma.
While that certainly was an admirable moment of his, Tooru's answer goes back even further. When the League had infiltrated the USJ and attacked 1-A in the hopes of drawing out All-Might, Midoriya had sprung into action without a second thought. With Tsuyu and Mineta at his side, he was able to escape the trap the villains had set for them, gather the other students and lead them all to a safe area while All-Might dealt with the terrifying Nomu.
Whereas most of everyone else was scared shitless, notable exceptions like Bakugo nonwithstanding, Midoriya was cool and collected as he analysed their opponent's abilities. It was this display that had cemented Tooru's belief that he would one day become one of the greats.
She knows for sure that if Midoriya hadn't been present at the facility that day, not all of their class would have survived.
Even looking past his multitudes of heroic deeds, he was just a lovely person to be around. He was always willing to help people out, even when they believed they didn't need it. He reacted to others' problems with a level of empathy comparable to a saint, though the wide-eyed confusion on his face any time that kindness was offered to him broke her heart. She had never received confirmation, but she could guess that growing up Quirkless had not exactly been nice for him.
His almost encyclopedic level of knowledge surrounding heroes and quirks made him an expert on optimising people's output with their own. It took him a while to open up to the class with his written theories on their powers, but when he eventually did, it was like the dam that held his thoughts back had burst. She still remembers when he spent a whole weekend with her in the gym based on a hunch he had from when she accidentally touched Aoyama's laser. She had come out of it learning that, with a little bit of focus, she could make other things she touched invisible as well, which was the coolest fucking thing she'd ever done. So yeah, she had a bit of a soft spot for Midoriya.
All of that along with a realisation of 'Oh shit, he's actually really cute' had turned her admiration of him into a full-blown crush.
He made her feel powerful, like nothing could ever break her as long as she had his support. He made her feel worthy of every bit of attention and praise he showered her in, even when it seemed like too much.
He made her feel seen. And boy, what a rush that feeling was.
Her other classmates, bless their hearts, could never seem to get eye-contact right when they addressed her. They would give it a good try, and she appreciated it, but they'd always be just a little off the mark, or they'd end up looking through her at whatever happened to be behind. Except for Midoriya. Without fail, every time they talked he would look her dead in the eyes, like she wasn't invisible at all. It also never failed to set her heartrate up ten paces, causing a rosy red she was glad he couldn't see to spread all over her face.
After the first few times of this phenomenon occuring and she was sure it wasn't a fluke on his part, she'd straight up asked him how the hell he was doing it. He'd explained with a stuttery disposition that he would just mentally picture a face where her head was and tried to follow along with it. Part of her was deadly curious to know what kind of face he pictured her having (definitely not because she wanted to know whether he saw her as pretty), but she knew that line of questioning might turn him catatonic based on his previous interactions with girls, so she let it go.
Of course, while his efforts diminished that feeling of isolation she had felt so often before, that didn't mean it didn't rear its ugly head from time to time. And now was one of those times.
That day in class had been focused around 1-A's new hero costumes. The students were given the opportunity to upgrade their gear, designs, the full works to match their new fighting styles or adapt to new techniques that had been learned since they started at UA. While most of the class had received minor changes to their outfits, with a few outliers giving their costume a larger overhaul, Tooru had nothing to change about hers. The skintight spandex that was fine-tuned to work with her invisibility hadn't needed to be altered in the slightest, and it was bugging her. It felt like she was being overlooked again.
It was a stupid thought, it's not like she was the only one in class who didn't change anything. Kaminari and Kirishima in particular were adamant on keeping their original designs because they had become attached to them. But that didn't stop the knawing feeling that was steadily growing inside her.
She had returned back to the dorm feeling more down than usual, and would have just gone straight to bed had she not bumped into Midoriya as she was turning a corner.
"Ah!"
"Oof!"
They both stumbled back a little, Tooru rubbing the part of her head that had collided with his.
"S-Sorry, Hagakure-san! I wasn't looking where I was going!"
"It's fine, dude." She tried to reassure him, but her heart just wasn't in it today.
Midoriya must've noticed the off-tone in her voice, because his face morphed into a concerned look.
"Are you feeling okay, Hagakure-san?"
"Yep. Fine." She tersely replied. Part of her cringed at addressing her friend in such a way, but the rest of her just wanted to get back to her room and sleep.
"Are you sure..? I might not be able to help, but I'm always willing to listen." Midoriya offered.
She internally sighed. Great, now she'd set off 'Worry-Doriya' mode, there was no way she'd be able to get past now without spilling the beans.
Resigning herself to her fate, she gestured as best she could over to one of the couches in the common room and they both walked over to sit down on it.
For the next minute, she stared directly in front of her, trying to figure out how best to lay out her problem to him. He must've figured that she wasn't willing to start off the conversation, so he took the lead.
"So, um, what's on your mind..?"
She huffed a quiet laugh at that. Midoriya might be very emotionally intelligent, but he definitely wasn't the best at broaching subjects. Not that it mattered much, because his next question was right on the money.
"Does it have something to do with the costume stuff today?"
Tooru sighed. "Ding ding ding. Got it in one, you earned the grand prize.."
He looks contemplative at that response, finger on his chin as he starts theorising.
"Are you upset that you didn't make any changes? I'm sure we could get Aizawa-sensei to redo your part if we just explain ourselves."
Another sigh. "It's not that, Midoriya. It's just.. everyone else gets to make intricate designs that fit who they are and what they do. They can look at themselves and say 'This is the kind of hero I want to be.' Meanwhile, I don't even know if the colour of my gloves matches my hair.." She trails off for a moment before continuing.
"It's always been like that, for as long as I can remember. Everyone is so sure of themselves, of who they are. But how can I be when I don't even know what I look like? And before you say it, I know that appearance doesn't determine who someone is, but god, it's hard to believe that when you don't even have a proper photo on your ID."
The next part is spoken no louder than a whisper.
"I just wish I could see myself.."
Midoriya's eyes widen at that. She can see him starting to shape a response to her rant, but she really doesn't have the energy to deal with it. She interrupts him before he has a chance to speak.
"Midoriya, I really appreciate your concern. But it is what it is. I can't see myself, and that'll never change. I'm just in a mood today, it'll pass. I'll probably be hunky dory after a good nights rest." She tries to inject some levity into the last sentence, but it rings hollow.
She gets up from the couch and pats him on the shoulder. "Don't worry about it too much, man. I'll see you tomorrow."
She makes her way out of the room and up the stairs, completely missing the way his gaze lingers on her retreating form.
Something strange was going on with Midoriya. The day after the conversation they'd had about her feelings towards her quirk, he had shown up to class looking tired beyond belief. Ochako had fussed over him, worried that he wasn't getting enough sleep, but he waved off her concerns with a fatigued "got somethin' to do..." and eventually she had no choice but to relent.
A few other classmates made passing comments about his tired state, but he either shrugged them off with a short reply or ignored them entirely. Tooru had wanted to chime in and see if she could get an answer out of him, but held back the impulse as she didn't really know how to navigate conversations with a sleepy Midoriya. All she could do was hope it was a temporary affliction.
Two weeks passed and nothing had changed about his demeanour. It became routine to walk into class and find him slumped over his desk, trying to catch a few winks of sleep before Aizawa inevitably woke him up with his entrance. During class exercises he was mostly fine, if not a bit languid, but outside of that anyone who tried to talk to him would probably have better luck conversing with a brick wall.
Odder yet, it seemed like when he wasn't required for something he straight up vanished. She had asked everyone in class about it and all of them had only seen him during school hours, but he was at least coming and going from the dorm, so it wasn't like he was going missing or anything. He was just highly focused on something in his room. His friends had apparently tried to coax him out a few times, but in all those cases he was either refusing to budge or straight up wasn't in his room at all, having left the dorm to do whatever it was that had stolen his attention. Tooru herself hadn't seen him outside of his school uniform in weeks, save for one specific instance.
One Sunday, she had woken up early to find Midoriya at the dining room table, shoveling cereal into his mouth whilst he perused a bunch of papers filled with formulas Tooru couldn't even begin to read. She was about to attempt to get his attention, but by then he had finished his breakfast and made his way back up the stairs with his head still stuck in those papers. He didn't even notice she was in the room, which stung a little.
It also basically confirmed to her that something was definitely wrong. Midoriya never ignored her. One time he had been bench pressing in the school gym and almost ended up crushing himself when he tried to greet her as she walked in, the only thing stopping it being his spotter, Shoji, catching the barbell in time.
The thing is, what exactly was distracting him so much lately that he was forgetting to even sleep?
She resolved to find out herself. Later that afternoon, she knocked on the door to his room, determined to get some answers. No-one came to open the door. She tried again, knocking a little harder this time in case he just hadn't heard her. Still no answer. She huffed a sigh and was just about to try a third time before she heard a voice to her right.
"Hagakure-kun? What are you doing here?"
Tooru turned to find one Iida Tenya looking at her like he was half leaning towards lecturing her for hanging around the boys' rooms and half genuinely curious about her reason for being there. She didn't want to give him a reason to follow through with the former option, so she quickly answered his question.
"I was looking for Midoriya, but I can't seem to find him." She put her hands on her hips to display her frustration. "Do you know where he might be, Iida?"
Iida pondered for a moment before answering. "I do not know for sure where he is, but it's likely that he's working in the laboratory with Hatsume-san."
Bingo! That must be it. Of course he was working in the lab, he practically lived there. Midoriya had once told her that he started learning years ago how to construct machines and gear so that he would have an extra edge in fights. She could relate, as it was a similar reasoning for her interest in cracking cybersecurity systems back in middle school. Knowing how to hack electronics was a useful skill for a stealth hero after all.
With how pragmatically minded he was, it was no surprise that most of Midoriya's free time not used for training or hanging out with their friends was instead spent in UA's Support Course lab tinkering with Hatsume Mei. He'd apparently made some pretty cool stuff in there during their time at school, like a pair of boots that enhanced the height of his jump and a charge gauge designed specifically for Kaminari so that he could keep track of his voltage. With a quick thanks to Iida, she made her way out of the dorms and headed towards the Support Department.
"Blank Slate? Haven't seen him."
Hatsume's unbothered response to her question probably shouldn't have shocked her.
"Oh, I just thought 'cause he's been shuffling around by himself lately, it might've been because of something in here?" Tooru questioned.
"Ohhhhh yeah, I remember Grav Girl talking about it. Somethin' like he's been way too tired recently, right?"
"Yeah, that's it."
"Sorry, Clear Eye. No clue what that's about. Whenever he does stuff in here, he never overworks himself. Hell, he even makes me take lunch breaks every now and then, no matter how many times I tell him that babies wait for no-one!" Hatsume complains, rolling her eyes at Midoriya's apparent hovering.
"Right..well thanks anyway."
"No prob. If you need anything fixed up, lemme know."
Tooru didn't really want to argue over the fact that anything Hatsume fixed was probably more likely to blow up, so she just quietly made her way out of the lab room.
Well, that was one mystery solved. Whatever he was up to, it wasn't anything to do with the support lab.
That begged the question though, what the hell was Midoriya doing?
She didn't know it at the time, but soon enough she'd get her answer.
The following Friday evening, a few members of 1-A found themselves spread all over the dorm lounge, taking the chance to unwind before the weekend. Some were choosing to engage in conversation with one another like herself and Mina, others deciding to quietly entertain themselves like Momo, who had situated herself on the couch with one hand holding the light novel she was currently reading and the other running through Kyouka's hair. The punk girl was laying down horizontally next to her girlfriend with her head leaning up against Momo's side, eyes shut while peacefully listening to whatever playlist she had loaded up on her phone.
On another couch, Ochako and Tsuyu had a weird combination of the two approaches going on, with Ochako latching onto the frog girl in a koala hug, having conked out entirely from their training earlier. Tsuyu was half returning the embrace, half chatting with Koda about random animal topics like hibernation habits and such.
Kaminari and Sero, on the other hand, were sat on the floor duking it out in some fighting game the yellow-haired boy had brought from his last trip back to his parents' house. The two are clearly very into it, and their volume would definitely be raised if not for the other people in the room, keeping it down out of respect for their classmates (and perhaps out of fear of Kyouka in Kaminari's case).
"YYYYEEEEEEEEEEESSSS!!!"
The common room is stunned into silence by a sudden yell of excitement from above, dampened only slightly by the floors between them.
The quiet spell is broken a moment later by Kaminari snorting out a laugh. "Damn, what do you think's got Midoriya all riled up? New All-Might figure go on sale?"
That breaks the tense atmosphere and a few others in the room, including her, chuckle along.
At least, it does until they all hear a fast-paced repetition of thundering footsteps, slowly gaining volume as they descend closer to the lounge.
Not a second later, Midoriya bursts the door to the stairway open, looking absolutely terrible if one were to be objective. His hair and clothes were all ruffled beyond belief, like he hadn't thought to change in days. His eyes were sagging with dark heavy bags visible under, and he was breathing heavily like he had just run a marathon which, if Tooru was correct in remembering how many floors up his room was, probably wasn't an inaccurate assessment.
Despite all this, his face bore a wild grin as he leaned against the door panting, trying to recuperate his lost oxygen. His eyes lock on to the first person he notices, that being Mina who had unfortunately chosen the wrong time to head to the kitchen and grab another drink. He rushes up to her, at least having the wherewithal to maintain a socially acceptable level of distance between them, and starts speaking so frantically that he's tripping over his own words.
"Ashido-san! Do you know where I can find-" His eyes dart over to Tooru's exact location, reminding her again of his bizarre aptitude at detecting her. "-Hagakure-san!"
He bounds up to her like an excited puppy. Thankfully he stops just short of the same distance he had kept with Mina, if he were any closer Tooru thinks she'd combust.
"Heyyy, Midoriya. You..doing okay there? You look a little tired."
"Huh? Oh, yeah yeah I'm fine, great actually." He still has that large grin on his face, and she could feel the corners of her mouth involuntarily lifting to match it. "Okay, so you know how light works by reflecting off of objects until they reach your eyes?"
Caught off guard by the sudden shift in topic, she can only respond with a wary "..yeah?"
If he notices the caution in her tone, he doesn't let it stop him as he barrels on ahead with his train of thought.
"Right, so I was thinking about how you're able to make other things invisible by touching them and the mechanics behind that really confused me. So I did some research and found out that typically people with mutant-type invisibility quirks are that way because the light that would bounce off anyone else's body gets refracted instead. Only the way the light gets refracted doesn't stay consistent second-to-second, it changes. So I had to try and work out howexactlyyourquirkdeterminesthewaythelightrefracts..."
"Uh, Midoriya?"
"...soafterIfoundoutwhattherefractionlineforyourquirkisIwasabletoworkthatinformationintoacounterequationthatwould..."
"Midoriya."
"...ofcoursethenIhadtotryandfindawaytoputthoselensesintoausableformatso-"
"Midoriya!" Her gripping his shoulders was the final push he needed to break out of his mutter cycle.
"O-Oh, s-sorry, I got a little carried away." He clears his throat and continues. "The point is, try these on." He lifts his hand up to her and opens up his palm.
It's then she notices what he's had bunched up in there the entire time he's been here. A pair of slim, rectangular glasses contained in a black frame with lenses that seem a bit too thick to be exactly normal.
"These?" She takes the glasses from his outstretched hand and unfolds them. A firm nod is all she gets as a response. She kinda wishes she had been able to interpret his earlier muttering so she knew what she was getting into. 'Well', she thinks, 'it's not like anything could go wrong from a pair of glasses.' At least they wouldn't blow up, unlike if a certain other inventor had made them.
Rotating them around to face outwards properly, she lifts the frames up to hook them behind her ears. She doesn't know what she was expecting to happen when she put them on, but 'nothing' wasn't it.
"Well?" Midoriya asks, "Do they work?"
"I dunno, man. I don't even know what I'm supposed to be seeing." She throws her arms forward in exasperation.
And two pale ones appear in her field of vision.
She stares at the limbs extended ahead of her. Those weren't hers, were they? She gives one of her arms an experimental shake, and the corresponding one in front of her follows suit.
She almost breaks a leg sprinting over to the waist-length mirror they have set up near the front door of the dorm. By this point, their friends have dropped all pretence of acting like they weren't paying attention to them.
She stops in front of the mirror, preparing to see the floating pile of clothes she's always seen.
And comes face to face with a girl.
The girl has messy chartereuse hair leading down to her shoulders, tapering off in waves. Her bushy eyelashes are similarly coloured, protruding out from her sockets as if to frame her irises, irises composed of multiple shades ranging from teal to yellow to blue, layered on top of one another like a model of the Earth's core. She can tell that the eyes are large and innocent even through the glasses still nestled on her face.
Instead of empty space, her clothes are filled out by an athletic body of lightly-coloured skin, her muscles littered with scars acquired from various hero excercises and other..less planned excursions. The scars tell tales of heroic endeavours, of the sacrifices they represent. They tell of a person who would do whatever it takes to save a life, even at the cost of their own body. That's the kind of person this girl in the mirror is.
It's only when Tooru raises one of her hands to touch her face, and the girl matches it exactly, that she realises what she's looking at.
It's her.
"Uh, should I take that as a yes?" Midoriya's meek voice coming from Tooru's side breaks her out of her spell, and she addresses him, not once taking her eyes off the reflection.
"Midoriya..what is this?"
"Oh well, since the way your quirk refracts light off your body changes based on which direction you look at it, all I had to do was work out how exactly it calculated the refraction line and create some glasses to counteract it. The frames bend the curve of the lenses based on where they're facing and sends the refracted light back into your retinas."
That..sounded patently like bullshit to Tooru, but she was too occupied with her appearance to give it much thought.
"Wait, what's going on?" Kaminari calls from across the room, having finally realised that something significant had occured.
"I..I can see myself." Tooru responded in a shaky voice, ignoring the soft gasps that echoed from her classmates around the room. The implications of this were huge; if she could see herself, then she could finally give herself the kind of makeover she'd longed for her entire life, having missed out in previous sleepovers years ago since 'there was no point' according to her friends at the time.
She wouldn't have to guess where the strands fell when cutting her own hair now. She wouldn't have to wonder what she looked like anymore. That was perhaps the biggest relief she felt out of all this. This wasn't a maybe, not a half-baked theory based on her mother's genetics, she now had concrete proof of what she actually looked like. And maybe she was a little biased, but she thought she looked pretty cute.
"Hagakure-san? Are you okay?"
Midoriya's question brings her back to reality again and she belatedly realises she's started crying. The fact that she could look at the mirror and see her own tears for once only made her cry harder.
"Y-yeah.. just a little overwhelmed.."
Predictably, Midoriya starts panicking at that, offering boundless apologies for his supposed transgression and while Tooru usually finds this behaviour of his endearing, all she wants to do now is grab and hug him for even thinking he needs to apologise for this. She restrains herself though, offering verbal support instead of physical.
"Midoriya, it's okay! These are happy tears, I promise." He calms down a bit at that, and she projects a mental thanks towards their classmates for not crowding around and letting them have this moment, she thinks he might have had a panic attack if the others chimed in.
"Happy..then, you like it?" He looks so hopeful as he murmurs the words that she's almost distracted from the absurdity of that question. Almost.
"Like i- Midoriya, this is the best thing anyone has ever done for me."
He looks suitably embarrassed at that, and tries to redirect the conversation while avoiding eye-contact with her.
"A-anyway, I'm glad the glasses work. That actually confirms another thought I had." He gains a burst of courage and returns his gaze back to hers. "I think that you're able to toggle your invisibility all by yourself."
Her breath hitches.
"Theoretically, since your quirk is capable of manual light manipulation, you should be able to control the way your body refracts light so that you could remove your invisibility, more along the lines of a cloaking quirk." He rests a finger on his chin, pondering the thought.
"I can turn it off myself..?" She asks in a small voice.
"Theoretically." He stresses. "There's no guarantee that it'll work exactly like that, the science behind invisibility quirks isn't exactly a highly researched topic, after all. But I reckon it's worth a try. And if anyone can do it, it's you, Hagakure-san." He finishes the statement off with a blinding smile in her direction, making her heart flutter in the process.
"Midoriya... I- I don't know what to say.." For once, she finds herself as the one tripping over words, but she willed herself to push past it. She needed to know something. "Why did you..do all this?"
"I just- I didn't like how sad you seemed back then." He sheepishly replies, rubbing his upper arm with his other hand.
"Back then? What do you mean 'back then'?"
"You, um, said that one time we talked that you wished you could see yourself."
Wait, they'd had that conversation over a month ago now. Was this why he'd forgone any idea of sleep recently? Making glasses just so she would be able to see herself? She was gobsmacked. He did all this work, put in all that research, just to make her happy? Her heart was jackhammering in her chest by this point, desperately telling her to show this wonderful, sweet, caring boy just how much this means to her.
Tooru slides the glasses off of her face and slots them onto his instead. She wanted him to see what she was about to do.
Midoriya looks confused at the action, but before he could voice a question, she cups his face and plants her lips on his cheek in a delicate kiss.
She keeps them there for a few seconds before slowly separating from him, a small smacking noise punctuating the motion. She leaves her hands on his face as she takes in the results of her impromptu smooch. His mouth was dropped open, eyes bulging out of their sockets, with cheeks painted cherry red. Not that hers were doing much better. She could feel the telltale burning across her face and the thought that only he could see it right now made her almost dizzy with delight.
Mustering up the remainder of her courage, she gives him the warmest smile she's ever worn in her life and speaks in a soft tone.
"Thank you, Izuku."
Izuku, to his credit, does not immediately pass out like she half expects him to. Instead his jaw snaps shut, gulping in a large breath of air like it was his last.
"I-It's no t-trouble, H-Hagakure-san." As he says that, his eyes shuffle back directly onto hers and if him being able to do that before in a matter of seconds got her heart racing, it was nothing compared to how intoxicating it felt to have his gaze lock with hers instantly.
A muffled squealing from across the room reminds her that they are not, in fact, having a private moment and are instead displaying this intimacy in full blast of their classmates in the common room.
The burning on her face raises to an inferno and she quickly lets go of him, backing away to locate the source of the noise. She finds Mina watching them with her hands cupped to her face, not able to contain the bright smile that she has plastered on.
Mina looks absolutely giddy at the progress she's just witnessed, and Tooru knows it's only a matter of time before she's interrogated for every juicy detail. Making a split-second decision, she grabs Izuku by the hand and sprints towards the stairway with him in tow. Thankfully, he catches on quick and matches her pace as they charge up the stairs towards their bedrooms.
After they make it to the hallway where her room resides, they take a moment together to breathe and make sure they don't pass out from lack of oxygen. Tooru is halfway to regaining a normal bloodflow before she realises one of her hands feels oddly warm. Trailing her line of sight down where her arm would be, she realises with a start that, in their panic, she hadn't let go of Izuku's hand the entire way up here and was still locking his fingers between hers in a tight grasp.
Blushing wildly, she quickly lets go and glances up to check Izuku's reaction to her manhandling. He's staring wide-eyed at her through the glasses, though his eyes aren't connected with hers for once. Instead, they appear to be looking at her cheeks, as if he can tell that she's- That's right! He can see her blushing right now!
Feeling extremely embarrassed all of a sudden, she turns away from him and hides her face in her hands to keep him from looking at the scarlet tone it's covered with. She tries to say a proper goodbye to him, but it comes out as more of a strangled squeak.
"OkaythankyouforeverythingIzukuI'llseeyoutomorrowBYEEEEEEE!" She moves for the door handle to her room, but is stopped in her tracks by a single word.
"W-wait!"
She stays there frozen, not entirely sure what to do now. This whole situation has got her feeling off-kilter, and she waits with bated breath for what Izuku plans to say next. Slowly, she turns around and looks at him. He's similarly frozen in place, like he wasn't expecting to stop her either.
He jolts like he'd just been shocked, and presses his hands up against his face. She could hear a low "come on, Izuku, you can do this." being muttered into his palms.
He slowly lowers his arms, and carefully makes his way towards her as if trying to avoid startling a small animal. His eyes make direct contact with hers again, but her heartbeat is already pounding too hard for it to raise any further. His irises seem to ask an unspoken question, and she's already agreeing before she even knows what it could be. She trusts him with her life, her heart, her soul.
He quickly moves in and presses a chaste peck onto her cheek, which causes her to let out an audible gasp. He doesn't give her time to think, already moving back and avoiding eye-contact with her at all costs. He takes the glasses off and hands them over to her.
"H-here, you'll n-need them way m-more than I-I do."
She numbly takes the glasses off his hands, her eyes never leaving his face. She thinks that might be the end of it, but before she can say anything in response, he continues.
"G-good night, T-Tooru-san."
And with that, he immediately sprints off back towards the stairway, footsteps booming as he presumably makes his way back up to his own room.
Tooru stands there for what feels like a century, before robotically making her way inside her room as if she were on autopilot.
As the door clicks shut, the realisation of what just happened flashes through her mind, and she races over to the bed to muffle her screams of happiness into her pillow.