To be completely honest, Shouto has always felt something missing. Not something or someone in his life, like his mother, or a real father, but something that he could feel was supposed to be a part of him.
He finds that something when he's eight years old and trashing his old man's office in a fit of anger while he's away at work. It's in a drawer of the big desk, one that seemed to beg at Shouto to open it whenever he was in the room, or even passing by in the hall. It could have been fate, or intuition rooted in instinct, but it was probably just the big, fancy lock.
Since he's eight, frustrated, angry, and crying, he frosts over that lock and bangs on it with the empty trash can whose contents are scattered all over the floor to open it instead of looking for the key. After a couple solid hits, the front splinters and the wood caves in. Shouto's actually kind of expecting guns like in the hidden closet compartment, but all there is is a thick, smooth bundled coat. Something about it makes his tears and breaths slow. Maybe it's the faint air of salt under the layer of dust.
He pulls it out gently, shaking it out to rid it of the dust and splinters. The coat looks to be in his size, which is weird but exciting. It's grey with uneven black spots splattered down the outside. It's not cloth or fur, more like leather but… not. It's smoother. Something about it is cold, though – the kind of cold that reminds Shouto of wet rags on feverish foreheads. It's welcome and calming, and it feels kind of like home. Like this wasn't Endeavor's, like Endeavor was never meant to have it.
It kind of feels like his mom.
Shouto tucks it under his arm and runs out of the office to show Fuyumi.
Natsuo's too busy to care, anyways, as he's hunched over his thick school books through his open bedroom door. All of them keep their doors open when Endeavor's not home. When Shouto reaches Fuyumi's room, he raps on the wall to announce his presence. She looks up from her phone on her futon. "Fuyumi, what's this?" He asks, holding up the coat. She sits up and pulls out her earbuds, eyes wide.
"Whoa, where'd you get that?" She says.
"You recognize it?" Shouto asks hopefully.
"Yeah," she falters. "But where'd you get it?"
Shouto feels like grinning despite himself. "Father's desk."
Fuyumi looks like she does not. "That's Mom's," she says quietly. That makes Shouto frown. "That's the coat she always wore when she went to swim in the ocean."
"No, it's not," he says. "It wouldn't fit her."
Fuyumi looks like she's about to argue, but Shouto puts his arms through the sleeves. It's a little loose, just like he likes all his clothes.
"I think it's mine."
Fuyumi's face is screwed up a little, like she's trying to convince herself that he hadn't said that. She shakes her head and sighs. "You can't just bust into Endeavor's stuff and claim it as yours."
He looks at his feet and tugs at the lapels. "It kinda feels like mine, though." He mumbles.
There's a rustling sound from Fuyumi's direction, so Shouto raises his eyes to see her getting up. "Either way, you can't just walk around in that." She puts her hand on his shoulder, and Shouto flinches with her quickly following in response. She shakes her head and takes a breath. "I'll help you hide it, yeah?" She walks past him and starts down the hall to his room.
"Wait, really?"
After his coat's hidden, Shouto goes back to the office and rechecks the drawer. He gets on his hands and knees so he won't block the light from the ceiling, and sure enough, there's another bundle shoved further back. There isn't a handle on the drawer anymore after the trash can, so he needs to reach his entire arm in there to get ahold of it. He gets a couple deep scratches on the underside of his arm for his trouble, but he'll survive because he's survived much worse. He tugs the coat out and shakes it as he had the first one, and held up, it's very apparent that it's made for an adult. It's just like his, but bigger, and instead of just reminding him of his mother, it smells strongly of better times long passed.
Shouto thinks this is what Fuyumi was talking about when she mentioned that Mom had one.
He only realizes he's smiling when it drops off his face at the sound of the front door opening.
Running on the high of swiftly-instilled panic, Shouto runs as fast as he ever has back to his room to stuff Mom's coat in his closet. He puts it in the corner and covers it with a stack of sheets, unlike his, which hangs innocently and invisibly on a hanger under his biggest winter jacket.
When Endeavor finds his office, Shouto's night takes a solid turn for the worse.
A couple days later, when Shouto can limp without whimpering, he goes to Fuyumi's room after dark. She usually stays up late doing stuff on her phone. He doesn't knock on the wood, because that's too loud, and instead slides the door open a couple centimeters. "Fuyumi." He stage whispers. She jolts.
"What are you doing?" She stage whispers back just as intensely. He takes that as a 'come in', and shuts the door behind him.
"That coat was mine," he says first because he was right and Fuyumi, as wise older sister, is nearly never wrong and this is a monumentous occasion to be celebrated. "Because I found Mom's too."
"Oh yeah, I heard there was two. The second one was hers? I need to warn you about vandalizing Endeavor's stuff more often." She says, looking at him closely. "On that note, how are you doing?"
"Fine. Do you have a big box I can use?" He replies. He can walk, at least, and that's all he needs tonight.
"Why do you need a big box?" Fuyumi gives him a sideways look.
"I'm gonna hide the coats outside so Father won't find them." He says. They both know how pissed off he'd been to find them missing from his ruined office. Surprisingly enough, he cared more about those missing coats more than his trashed home office. When he was yelling and coming dangerously close to breaking Shouto's leg the night he came home to the wreckage, they were all he mentioned. Maybe they're expensive.
Fuyumi would probably ask why he was going so far for a pair of coats right about now if she knew just how far outside he's planning to hide them. "Okay, uhh…" She looks around her room. "Maybe Natsuo will have an extra in his room from packing?"
"Thanks, Fuyumi," Shouto says, and limps back out of the room as quietly as he can.
"Don't wake him up, though!" Fuyumi stage-whispers after him. It's equally likely that she's referring to Father or Natsuo. Natsuo doesn't take well to being waked up.
Shouto's whimpering again by the time he reaches the beach. The coats in the cardboard box are heavier than he thought, and that extra weight added to his leg on top of the sheer distance from Father's rich neighborhood to the more casual area around the dirty seafront are taking their toll. He sets down the box near the railing of the staircase that leads straight into the trash heaps and sits down heavily.
When Fuyumi had helped him clean up his leg, she had described Mom's beach to him. Fuyumi described it how Mom would every time she came back home smelling of freedom and fresh salt to her when she was little, and then told him how it was today. Somehow, the heaps are bigger than he visualized. There are microwaves, fridges, cigarettes, soda and tea cans, and over ten cars in his line of sight alone. The mounds stretch off into the distance on both sides.
It's really sad to look at. He wishes he could see it how his mom did all those years ago.
He leans back on his hands and a single car drives by on the road behind him. The moon reflects on the surface of the water, all the way out near the horizon, and he has the weirdest longing to try and walk the distance just to see if he can touch the silver reflection on the waves. Maybe pick a couple shards up and bring them back home to keep in his room to remind him that the rest of the world still exists when his limbs throb and everything hurts and it feels like there's nothing else.
Instead of that, a dog barks at him from a house down the street and helps him remember what he came to do. He grits his teeth and stands up, retrieving the box. He's determined to find a good hiding place for it among the black mass of things tossed aside and forgotten.
Not two days later, Endeavor tears up the house looking for where Shouto had hid the coats. When he comes up empty-handed, he rages over to his private school to thinly threaten the teachers and searche his locker and classroom.
The rest of the night is painful when he gets back empty-handed. It's a little funny how far he'd go to get back two speckled grey coats that never belonged to him.
Shouto checks the beach every day after school to see that the box is there and untouched, and to revel in the safety and calm that comes with lingering near the ocean.
Six years later, Shouto breaks a few ribs. There isn't anything special involved in the training session that causes it, just good old Endeavor being dramatic and loud and full of disappointment and blame and valid threats. Shouto's checkup on the box is weekly at this point, and misses his usual day because he's confined to bed rest by his well-meaning sister. Boy, is it a mistake to listen to her just this once.
The second she releases him, he goes straight to the beach. The hiding spot for the box, the trunk of a partially crushed brown van, is empty. He doesn't break down and cry right there – he would love to, but he's probably forgotten how – but instead sits on the staircase next to a little flower peeking through a crack in the concrete. He breathes, and tries to reason with himself. Give himself a single reason he shouldn't believe that Endeavor had finally found them after all these years of not mentioning them once.
The top contenders are that A) the only reason Endeavor would come out to these lower-income neighborhoods was if his career depended on it, and B) the coats were hidden in an unmarked cardboard box in the back of a wrecked van in the middle of a literal trash biome.
Makes sense – Endeavor would never willingly put himself in an environment so full of his peers.
For all that convinces him this wasn't Endeavor's doing, it doesn't help him get any closer to finding out where the hell the box went.
It takes a pretty sad amount of time of him visually dissecting the trash heaps around the van for him to realize that oh, a big chunk of the trash has disappeared.
So instead of raccoons savagely dragging off his box and tearing it and its contents to shreds, he has the mental image of charity workers stealing his clothes. He has to admit that trying to clean this beach is a heroic aspiration, but Shouto doubts they'd be able to pull it off. He wishes them luck, though. I'll be nice to see this beach clean for himself.
But stealing his box? Just plain rude.
He'll come back daily again to see if he can catch them and maybe ask them where they put the trash.
The next day, instead of running into a troop of old ladies in matching shirts like he half expected, he sees a singular, skeletal man that he's wary to assume the age of. His wild hair is bright yellow, and though he's at least seven feet tall, he's all skin and bones, like a malnourished teenager who went through a particularly intense growth spurt.
"Hey!" He calls out to him, because he's facing away from him, walking down the staircase, and he's polite like that. Even when he's running to catch up. The man turns, and the sight of his eyes nearly has Shouto go into cardiac arrest. They're thoroughly shadowed, even though the afternoon light isn't sharp enough to excuse them. They look uncannily similar to All Might's. It's a good thing he shakes reason into himself before he goes under for real. He then notices that the dude doesn't have eyebrows, and nearly trips on his face. "Are you one of the people who're cleaning the beach?"
The man could blink and he wouldn't be able to tell, but there's a little movement around his eyes. He might be squinting at him. "Yes, I suppose you could say that."
Shouto comes to a stop at the top of the stairs, and breathing hurts, his chest hurts so he brings his hand up to make sure his bandages are still there under his clothes, not like it helps any. That was an unnecessarily cryptic answer and he doesn't like it. "Could you help me find something I kept on this beach? I think you moved it. It was an unmar–" The man holds up his hand to stop him, and his hand is big, so Shouto backs up a bit.
"I'm not the one you should be asking for help," the man smiles sheepishly, and he rubs the back of his neck. "I don't move the trash. My student does. He should be around here somewhere." He cranes his long neck to peer over the peaks of the heaps and pats his own head. "His hair is green. Very fluffy. Should be easy to spot."
"Thanks, I guess," Shouto says, and passes him down the stairs with a generous berth.
That man really is tall.
"Hey!" Shouto calls for the second time today when he spots the fluffy green hair the man had told him to look for. The person it belongs to looks up from where he's very carefully rolling what looks like a tractor tire across the sand towards the stairs, and locks eyes with him.
The guy looks to be his age, and while being nearly as skinny as the man at the stairs, he's very short. His eyes are big and green and his face and what Shouto can see of his arms are smattered with freckles. He looks like a nice guy, but his eyes are wide and he looks almost intimidated seeing a new person in this wreck of a place, at least to him.
"The corn sta– the man at the stairs said you could help me find something important to me that I keep here," Shouto says, watching as the other guy stumbles over a two-by-four with a couple nails sticking out of it. Shouto remembers when he turned over that piece. There are more nails on the other side.
The green guy doesn't speak for a moment, looking between him, his tire, and the stairs. It hits Shouto too late how weird he must seem to keep something important to him in the biggest unofficial dump he's ever seen. The guy still somehow takes pity on him. He shoves his tire over into a nearby mound and wipes his hands on his shorts. Huh, he has some freckles on his legs, too. "I – uh – hello? W-where was your thing?"
"It was in the back of that van, right over there," Shouto points, "it's an unmarked cardboard box about this big," he gestures, "and had two coats in it. They're kind of like leather but not, and have spots." Wow, he's moving his arms too much for his chest. He needs to calm down.
A flicker of recognition crosses the dude's freckled face. "Oh, they were bundled up, right?"
"Yes," Shouto, instead of being reassured by the fact that this guy knew about the coats, had his level of anxiety jacked up a few more notches, which made no sense. "Where are they?"
The guy seems to pick up on his apprehension, and grins a little, all teeth. "It's okay, I put the interesting things I find in a special area." He steps around the tire and makes his way past Shouto. "It's next to the stairs. Follow me."
His heart's like a jackrabbit. I walked right past the coats? He thinks, at least initially, until the guy keeps going, waving at the cornstalk of a man gleefully and walking along the retaining wall.
"Oh, uh–what's your name?" The guy asks after jumping down from a slightly smooshed washing machine.
"Todoroki Shouto. You?" Shouto follows.
"Midoriya Izuku." He says. He looks over his shoulder at Shouto, visibly noting his hair and scar. The line of his shoulders is a little tense, so he's still nervous, but he seems to be calmed by the fact that Shouto's higher strung than him at the moment. The bastard. Shouto can't really blame him. "So, how's it being the son of a pro hero?"
Shouto doesn't care about Endeavor right now. He's lost something that feels like part of his soul and he thinks he might get it back, but something can always go wrong. "It fucking sucks." He seethes.
Midoriya lets out a slightly confused bark of a laugh. "Alright. Um. Your Uber has arrived." He gestures at the space carved out of the trash next to the wall, sheltered from prying eyes. There are forks off what looks like a forklift leaning against the retaining wall with barbed wire chain link fence and a ratty brown tarp hanging off it to create a roof. Under all that is a small collection of knickknacks including an ornate coffee table that might or might not mean to have three legs, a complete set of cat-themed teacups(somewhat chipped), a microwave in decent condition, a trumpet, a bowl for coins and another for jewelry, and Shouto's box, among other things he's too stressed to identify.
Shouto dives for his box and wrestles it open with one hand, because the other is on side trying to keep his ribs steady. Both coats are neatly folded next to each other. They're the same size now, but Shouto can still somehow tell which is his. He grabs it without hesitation and clutches it to his chest, where something underneath his skin blooms warmly. He frowns for a moment and hopes it isn't blood, but it doesn't really matter. Something else inside him he didn't know was out of correction slots back into place. His emotions are skewed at the moment, so that very well might be a rib or destiny. He just breathes.
It takes a while for him to remember Midoriya's there, but when he does, he doesn't remember if he should care that a total stranger saw him break down clutching an expensive article of clothing. He stands up with his coat and bows to him deeply. "I'm sorry for wasting your time with this, but thank you for helping me and not burning our coats." Shouto frowns at his own words. What?
Midoriya seems very confused by this, too. "Why would I burn your coats?"
Shouto works his mouth for a moment, then looks at his mother's coat still in the box. "I don't know? It seems bad."
"O…kay. Well, thanks for the thanks? I guess?"
Shouto puts his coat back in the box, and lifts it up. "That – that works," he says, and he leaves.
He doesn't know where to put the coats, and instead of asking Fuyumi to keep it at her school like he should have, he simply pushes it to the back of the closet like a fool.
Almost ten months later, Shouto sees Midoriya walk in his new classroom at UA. He blinks when he first sees him, frozen in the door like a deer on the road or a villain being ambushed by the police when they expected a hero. His eyes are trained on the ruckus happening near the center of the room, featuring Rule Guy and Fireworks aggressively introducing themselves. From what Shouto's read in books, it's living up to the public school tales, so he doesn't see why Midoriya's surprised. Does UA count as a public school?
Soon, Midoriya gets mobbed by Rule Guy, then Friendly Girl, then Aizawa, then class starts. Shouto doesn't get a chance to talk to him, but he's not really sure why he wants to or what he'd say. Maybe, 'Hey, you're the guy that accidentally stole me and my mother's special coats. Funny seeing you again.' So he doesn't try, and just glances over at him every couple minutes during the quirk apprehension test to see how he's doing. He's definitely a lot more buff than he was ten months ago, and since Shouto has only been back to the beach at night after the first and only meeting, he vaguely wonders if he got all that from cleaning the shores. He had witnessed it in varying levels of clean as the time wore on, and then, not long ago, he got to see his mother's alleged favourite haunt in all of its natural splendor without a speck of metal or plastic in sight. There was no way that Midoriya did all that by himself, so the cornstalk had to have recruited more students to do community work. Or maybe his quirk helped. That could also be the case.
It sure wasn't helping now, though.
Oh, wait, never mind.
Midoriya approaches him, more like runs at him, when he's leaving the classroom to go back to his house. "Hey!" He says, like Shouto had ten months ago. "You're the dude with the sealskin coats! Funny seeing you again."
I guess I shouldn't have worried. He thinks.
"That's what they are?" He says, blinking.
"Yeah? At least, I thought so…" Midoriya suddenly looks very unsure of himself, and he scratches the back of his neck like the cornstalk had, and Shouto needs to shake his head to dispel his confusion about why he remembers that. He doesn't even remember the last time he ate. He notes that Midoriya's broken finger is bandaged to its neighbor.
"No, I just didn't know. Thank you." Shouto specifies.
Midoriya brings down his hand slowly, then shakes his head and walks around Shouto to presumably get his stuff from the classroom. "Alright. See you tomorrow, Todoroki!"
It's in the middle of an English review with Present Mic when he feels the strangest thing. It's like someone's trying to pick him up by the scruff of his neck like a cat her kitten, but their fingers ruthlessly plunge beneath his skin and seize his spine and it burns. He suddenly has trouble breathing, and his head falls on his desk without him telling it to. It feels like his spine is on fire, so he builds up ice on his skin under his uniform to counter it. He tries to pick up his pencil but his hand won't listen to anything his brain says. It just fumbles on his desktop, crumpling his notes. It takes a moment for him to realize he can't hear anything, and he thinks his legs twitch. Are his eyes open? Which way is up? What's that gross taste in my throat–
He snaps back to reality in time to swallow his bile back down. It's gross. His eyes are slightly wet, a reasonable pain response to… all of that. He sits up carefully, but it seems that there aren't any aftereffects from whatever the hell that was, and nothing flares up in pain besides the regular array of bruises from the previous night's training. He raises both of his hands to the nape of his neck to check if his spine's still under his skin, just in case. It is. When he raises his eyes to the front of the room, he sees Present Mic looking at him with concern out of the corner of his eye as he keeps his lesson running smoothly. Shouto nods at him, and melts the ice on his back.
A touch on his shoulder has him flinching so hard his knees bang into the underside of his desk. Shouto meets Yaoyorozu's wide eyes with ones of his own, suddenly self-conscious. He looks the other way to see Midoriya's worried eyes trained on him, too. He doesn't know what to communicate to them outside a nod that means nothing, like he had to Mic.
What the fuck was that?
It's when Shouto gets back to the house and he finds the scorched floor where the box used to be in his closet that he decides that he should have given the box to Fuyumi.
Hindsight's 20/20, as always.
(Endeavor smiles at him in training that night. Shouto doesn't even try to win against him, and doesn't say a word.)
The sports festival comes and goes, and Shouto goes to visit his mother, because this has honestly been long overdue. He doesn't even feel bad that it took his new friend pretty much punching the shit out of him to get him to go; he just accepts the fact that he should have done this a while ago, and saving himself the mental trouble of angsting over it, just goes and does.
He makes sure to bring flowers, though.
When he asks Mom about the coats he knows are theirs, a certain sort of shadow comes over her face. He almost backs off the subject, this first reconnection is heavy enough as it is, with all the apologies and years yet to catch up on – but she wants to talk about it, as she earnestly makes clear.
She starts off with an unexpected opener, but a very appropriate one, as Shouto soon learns.
Have you ever heard of the Sea Rescue Hero: Selkie?
He says yes, and she explains.
A selkie is a magical creature that is born a seal, but can shed its skin to become human out of water. They need their skin to become a seal again. If their skin is stolen, part of their soul rests with the thief. If their skin is destroyed with fire, then they can never return to the ocean and are forever stuck a human.
And that's what Shouto and his mother are.
And what his sister and brothers were.
(Shouto doesn't linger on the plural brothers. He has other things to worry about.)
Since the others were… failures, in Endeavor's perspective, he took it upon himself to burn their sealskins to ashes as soon as their quirks manifested.
Mom tells him this with a voice that makes it sound like their lost skins were her fault. Her eyes are clouded as she remembers, and tells him how since the skins, even while separate, are still the skins of the selkies, they share the pain. He holds her hand as he relives the time his siblings spent feeling every inch of their bodies burn.
It's terrible. It's terrible, because evskinsery memory is painful to hear and painful to tell but it needs to be shared. He can tell from the desperation in her eyes how she's had no one to talk to about any of this for a long time.
And that makes it okay.
So Shouto holds her hand.
After Shouto's packed his phone charger and his clothes, he goes to Endeavor's home office. He knows the he's home right now, but he isn't afraid to confront him for this. He doesn't bother to make his footsteps light, and strolls down the halls of Endeavor's manor with confidence for the first time ever, tugging his suitcase behind him.
There aren't fancy locks on any of Endeavor's drawers in his office, but Shouto checks them just in case. He sifts through the closet, too, and all the secret compartments he can remember exists. There's nothing. After a quick double check, he spins his suitcase on its wheels and scores another first for life: actively seeking out Endeavor.
He finds him watching the news in his bedroom, strangely enough. What's not strange is his ever-ready fight stance and the tank top and sweatpants he wears to train Shouto in. For being the new number one, he's not much different besides his freshly re-drained anger management skills.
"Hey," Shouto says, like he's said to nicer people. "Where are the sealskins?"
Endeavor trains his glare on him like he's a paper maché project he's been working on for a good few hours, but his teacher just tore a hole in it and is laughing at him for it. "And why would I tell you that?"
"Because I'll be needing mine in the dorms to perform my best in training," he says, because it would be in bad taste to say because they aren't yours, they were never yours, you have no right to have them, give them back. He doesn't mention Mom's. That one should be self-explanatory, even to a hard-headed idiot like the number one hero.
"You've done just fine without it." Endeavor growls. The air pops as he sets his facial hair on fire, and it illuminates the room. And so has she, is left unsaid. Shouto wants to stab him with an icicle.
"No, I haven't. Without it, I've lost the Sports Festival," In your eyes, "beaten Stain, and made friends with All Might's favourite student."
All failures, to you.
Endeavor stands up and walks over to the TV and the hope chest it's sitting on. He picks up the TV without regard for its cords and sets it on the floor, still running the news. They're still replaying footage from All Might's 'fall'. Endeavor must be going crazy if he thinks sitting in his dark room watching his self-proclaimed rival win his final fight is a productive use of his time as the new number one, but then again, maybe watching it makes him feel better about himself.
He opens the hope chest, and Shouto takes a moment to appreciate it less for looking so much like a coffin. Then Endeavor pulls out both Shouto and Rei's sealskins in one hand, clutched tightly. Shouto's shoulders throb. He almost can't believe that Endeavor's just handing them over – has All Might's fall really given him such a successful reality check? There's no way.
Shouto vaguely registers scorch marks on his sealskin, reaches out an arm to take them both – and gets swiftly punched in the face. He falls on the floor, and feels his face as he looks back up at Endeavor's intimidating figure. He's on fire, like always, but puffing himself up like this and holding bits of two people's souls in the clutches of one hand makes him look like a villain. He certainly has the lighting for it, with the glow of his flames reflecting off the walls and ceiling. He stares down Shouto for a good five seconds, before scoffing and throwing the skins down on top of him.
Maybe reality has yet to set in for him.
He puts the TV back on top of the chest and sits back on the bed, eyes focused on the plastic news anchor. It's clear that Shouto is unwelcome.
He's happy to leave.
Jirou and Yaoyorozu get together after the Cultural Festival. It's a surprise to absolutely no one, save for a few who're just plain in denial. Iida expresses his gratitude that they're a respectable pair and that he trusts that they will set good expectations for what relationships between classmates in the hero course should be like.
Shouto's not as grateful, because he and Midoriya are essentially third-wheeling on what might as well be their first date: the weekly grocery run to restock the 1-A Heights Alliance black hole of a kitchen.
They go to Target.
The whole way there, Shouto half expects Yaoyorozu and Jirou to break off to hang out at a café or something while him and Midoriya do the actual shopping, or at least hold each other's hand or kiss once or twice, but they don't. They're the same classmates hanging out that they have been since the year started, just… a lot more familiar with each other. Jirou keeps chanting about double dates, which makes Yaoyorozu laugh and Midoriya blush to the roots of his hair but just makes Shouto confused, because he thought that was a term for cheating and as far as he knows, no one's cheating on anybody.
Yaoyorozu and Shouto do the most serious shopping, passing the list back and forth between them and looking for the best prices while Midoriya and Jirou do some sort of hand game by the cart involving hitting the back of each other's hands with their knuckles. Somehow, they're both enjoying it, even though Shouto can hear the whaps all the way on the other end of the aisle. When Shouto takes too long looking through all the popsicle options in the frozen food section, Yaoyorozu goes closer to them and supplies her own hand game, one where two people interlock their thumbs and try and stab each other with their pointer finger. It gets very obnoxious, but they're not in danger of running into anybody because everyone in their right mind is currently avoiding the aisle with rowdy teenagers in it that they swear they've seen somewhere before. Shouto just can't remember if Kaminari likes the ice cream cones with nuts on them, or if that's Kouda. There's also a couple entries on the list that he can't read thanks to their atrocious handwriting. Dammit, Ashido.
He doesn't notice right away when everything on the other end of the aisle goes silent for a moment. He hears a loud, "Oh my god, I'm sorry, are you o–" and looks up to see Midoriya marching towards him with a strangely blank look on his face. Shouto turns to meet him, to ask What's wrong, but he speaks up before he can.
"My quirk was passed d–" Is all Midoriya gets out before he slaps his own hands over his mouth, forcibly holding it closed with the most terrified look Shouto's seen on his face to date. His mouth sounds like a laggy YouTube video in a time loop or something, because it keeps trying to say something again but stops when it realizes no one can hear it.
Shouto furrows his brows at his friend, wondering if he's okay, and what was that about his quirk? Midoriya still looks panicked. Then he looks over Midoriya's shoulder.
Jirou's yelling fiercely at some greasy kid holding up their hands in front of themselves placatingly, but with a smirk on their face. Yaoyorozu's helping up some kid from the ground who's wearing wacky goggles and readjusting them obsessively. Jirou stomps her foot and says something, raising her earphone jack offensively, and the kid shrugs and turns around to walk off, sauntering. Jirou relaxes a bit but is visibly breathing hard.
Shouto looks over at Midoriya, hand still clamped over his lips, and tentatively puts his hand on his shoulder. He doesn't know how he'll react, but he looks okay with it, and even a little reassured if Shouto wanted to go that far. He walks them towards Yaoyorozu and Jirou, very confused.
"What just happened?" He asks when he's in normal speaking range. It doesn't seem like he can ask Midoriya.
Jirou shoots a dirty look over her shoulder. She grits, "Some bastard thought it'd fly to bully someone in the middle of a Target, in front of three combat-trained hero students, and act innocent about it."
Shouto scrunches his nose, because what the hell? That's a bit of a death wish.
Yaoyorozu helps the kid that got pushed over brush themself off. The kid looks like they're sweating profusely. "I'm so sorry," they say, "I didn't see him there and I forgot to fix my goggles before opening my eyes, I'm so sorry–"
"You have nothing to be sorry for. Look, he's okay!" Yaoyorozu says quietly.
"No, he's not," the kid sobs. They sound like they're in junior high. "I do have something to apologize for. It's – it's my quirk."
Yaoyorozu and Jirou look confused, but Midoriya just looks curious. Shouto waits for the kid to explain themself.
"If I make eye contact with somebody, they're forcibly compelled to reveal their biggest secret to the person they trust the most." They sound apologetic and hopeless and like they're reading off a script that's been handed to them. "It won't stop until the secret's spilled to the person."
Jirou puts her hands on her hips and huhs while Yaoyorozu rubs the kid's back and tells them that it wasn't their fault, they didn't try and do that to Midoriya. "Well, that sucks," Jirou says, looking between Shouto and the afflicted. He's still making the laggy noises.
Shouto looks at him. He didn't expect to be the person Midoriya trusted the most, and by the looks of his beet-red face, he didn't, either. Shouto clears his throat. "So, what should we–?" Midoriya points at the far wall. Shouto's at loss. "You want to go outside for this?" Midoriya shakes his head, and stands on his tip-toes to look over the shelves better and point more accurately. "The–the bathroom?" Shouto's even more confused by this. Midoriya holds up three fingers, and that very much concerns him. "Number three? You're going to throw up?!" Midoriya shuts his eyes and facepalms, and Shouto looks to Jirou for help. "Does that mean he's gonna throw up?"
She raises her hands in surrender. "I have no clue, buddy. Midoriya, why don't you just lead him to wherever you're trying to go?"
Midoriya's eyes open. He slowly looks at Jirou, then points his only available finger gun at her. He then grabs Shouto's wrist and drags him out of the aisle.
Unbeknownst to them, the junior high student calls out a second too late for them to wait up. They always have earplugs on their person to offer should this type of situation arise, but Midoriya runs off too fast with Shouto in tow. "Oh, shit." They say.
It turns out that Midoriya wanted to go to the third bathroom. The family bathroom. It smells tentatively clean in there, like cleaning supplies and Windex but it's still a public bathroom so you can never be absolutely sure how clean it is.
Midoriya closes the door behind them, and unleashes his mouth.
"My quirk was passed down to me by All Might. Its real name is One For All, and it's a merged giving and stockpiling quirk that's passed down from mentor to successor, gaining strength with each holder." Midoriya looks pained to be say that, and like the kid, he sounds like he's reading off a script.
There's a long few beats of silence. Even though Shouto tried to block the words out and not listen, he still got most of that. Midoriya works his mouth and rubs at his jaw, as if checking if the quirk was done controlling him. It is.
"Well," he says, "I could explain that better." He moves the hand that rubbed his jaw to scratch the back of his neck. "I'll need to tell All Might, too… damn." He grins up at Shouto. "I could have told that to worse people, though."
It's clear in Midoriya's eyes that he's waiting for a reaction to judge the situation by. He's out of luck, because Shouto doesn't have one. Instead, what comes out is: "So, you really aren't All Might's son?"
"Dude," Midoriya laughs breathily, and the sound is beautiful, "I was literally just under the influence of a truth quirk. If All Might was my dad, that would've been a lot shorter and sweeter. You know, a big old 'All Might's my dad'! And that's it."
Going by your tone of voice, you wish he was, though. He thinks. Shouto hums, readjusting the facts he keeps sorted in his brain. "So, it's kind of only fair that I tell you my biggest secret, after that."
"What?" Midoriya's pupils blow wide, and his arms flap about wildly like the first day of school. "No, Todoroki, you don't need to do that. I was–"
"I want to do it, don't worry." Shouto says. Midoriya's already privy to bits of it already, not that he knows that. "But it'd be best if we went to the beach for it."
"Why Dagobah Beach?" Midoriya asks.
"That's what it's called?" Shouto blinks. He never realized he didn't know the name of his mother's beach. He swims there every weekend after visiting his mother at the hospital, and has since he moved to the dorms, but somehow he never learned its name?
Midoriya shakes his head, smiling as he reaches back and grabs a paper towel that he unlocks the door and turns the knob with. "You need to pay attention more, Todoroki. It's literally on the sign next to the staircase."
"There's a sign?" Shouto asks as he walks through the door Midoriya holds for him. He tosses the paper towel in the trash and follows him out.
"You didn't know there's a sign?"
"We might be talking about different staircases," Shouto points out. They head towards the freezer aisles.
Midoriya laughs. "Okay, I am definitely showing you the sign."
"But what if you show me it, and it's not there?"
"Then you're just being petty." Midoriya shoves him.
Jirou's waiting for them, and she's alone.
"So, fun fact, gays," Shouto's pretty sure she meant to say guys, but whatever, "the kid had earplugs and forgot to give them to you. Sorry for making you run off early. I hope it wasn't too bad?"
Shouto shrugs. Midoriya checks him, then shrugs too. "It's not as big of a deal as it could have been." He says.
Shouto holds up a finger. "I still have a couple questions, though. Don't let me forget."
"Yeah, let's save it for after yours."
"Whoa, whoa, let's tone down the third wheeling here!" Jirou protests. Midoriya and Shouto look back to her, Midoriya blushing as he does and Shouto mildly sheepish. "Yao-momo's with the cart and buying the kid some ice cream 'cause they still feel bad. Todoroki, do you still have the list?"
"Oh." Shouto feels his pocket. "Yeah."
"Gimmie," she holds her hand out. Shouto drops the folded piece of paper in her palm, and she turns around. "You two lovebirds have a fun time doing whatever you do, but meet me and Yao-momo out front at three! We'll finish the important stuff."
Shouto is vaguely confused. Yaoyorozu and Jirou are the lovebirds, not Midoriya and him. They were dating, and they weren't. While he's debating Jirou's terrible speech mistakes, Midoriya's pulling out his phone.
"Think two hours is enough time for your secret?" Midoriya asks, holding out his lockscreen for Shouto to see the time. Instead, he looks at the background photo. It's a picture of Iida, Tsuyu, Uraraka, himself, and Shinsou sitting in a line on one side of a library table, everyone unwittingly hunched over the table more than the person before them so everyone's visible. Shinsou, on the end, is straight up passed out on his book. He actually likes the picture, because it's funny, even though he's in it.
"Yeah, plenty," he assures him.
"So, Midoriya, you've heard of the Sea Rescue Hero: Selkie, right?"