A fic here! After such a long while. This fic is based on an OVA titled "This Boy, Can Fight Aliens" (and the general idea of Shouto and Izuku making stories/theories about Izuku's past. Supposed to be). The title of this fic is from Radical Face's song, Welcome Home Son.
It's unbeta'd, so I apologize in advance for any grammatical mistakes you might encounter.
Disclaimer: My Hero Academia belongs to Horikoshi Kouhei.
"Maybe you were a star."
Shouto remembers the Stardust, and the thought tumbles out of his mouth before he's able to rethink it, and then he feels silly and embarrassed but it's too late to take it back.
In the dim darkness of the blanket, pulled up to cover their heads, Izuku's eyes are twin moons, clear and honest and attentive, and they crinkle as he laughs softly, his breath ghosting Shouto's chin down to his neck.
"I didn't know you're a romantic, Todoroki-kun."
"It's from a book." He defends, and Izuku's laughter intensifies. "It's about a young man who went to search for a shooting star, and found a woman in its place."
Izuku's laugh quiets at that but the smile lingers in his eyes. He snuggles closer to him and it's warm, a bit too warm, and outside it's a humid summer night, but this space under the blanket is their world for the moment, so Shouto ignores the heat and scoots closer still, relishing the half-hearted distance between them.
Izuku's breath is light on his collarbones, breeze among the grass under the starburst sky, and he smells of the meadow outside.
"Tell me about it."
/
The war with the aliens has been going for two years and a bit more, the wailing of sirens and the loud pelting of anti-alien bullets becoming an everyday noise as common as the droning of cars and the chattering of people, when the boy comes.
He comes with the speed and suddenness of a shooting star; flattening an alien the shape of a refrigerator and 20 times as big like it was merely a soda can, and doesn't stop until what's left is a thick mist of dust.
"Are you okay?" The boy says when he turns to him, eyes glimmering silver pane in the blue darkness.
"Who are you?" He shoots back at the same time, sharp, almost regretting the coldness when the words leave his mouth; this boy is still his savior.
The answer takes a moment, and then two too long, the boy's face crumpling and his eyes dipping.
It is another moment too long, and like a star diminishing in the wake of dawn, he says,
"I don't know."
/
"Izuku."
He says when asked of his name, and nothing else. Not a family name, not a city where he lives, not the name of a mother or a best friend who might be looking for him.
He smiles despite it all, the too-many blanks of his memory, but they're aware of the crumple on its edge, a faint trembling that betrays the fear and uncertainty inside.
Yagi-san is gentle and understanding and demands nothing more than what he can give, and Shouto watches as the tense line along Izuku's spines and shoulders fold and crumble, watches as relief softens the edge of his smiles into something more genuine, less forced.
(He's thankful for Yagi-san, because he doesn't think he's capable of that degree of unconditional tenderness)
They fit another futon into Shouto's already cramped room and he gives Izuku several of his shirts and pants. The shirts hang on his figure and the pants pool on his feet – Izuku is shorter than he is – but the boy insists that they're fine, and that they don't need to buy him new ones.
Yagi-san thinks Izuku doesn't want to trouble them. But Shouto thinks that it's not that, no. Having things to call your own means staying, means merging into whatever group and relationship this can be called and becoming a part of it, and while he never minded – he welcomed it, even, all too eagerly – Izuku might have someone waiting for him, a home to go back to, and he can understand his unwillingness to give it up just yet.
/
Izuku is otherworldly, almost in the same way as the aliens.
Shouto has worked on this job ever since the start of the invasion and he's seen how ineffective anti-alien weaponry is against the extra-terrestrial beings – a relentless shower of bullets and an aim to the one weak spot are what can destroy one alien – yet it takes Izuku one or two blows to demolish an alien into dust.
His hit are powerful, to be fair, and it still puzzles Shouto how one so small can harbor such inhuman strength, no matter how toned and well-built his body is.
It's unfortunate that Izuku doesn't know any more than he does.
/
He doesn't break bones as easily as ordinary people do, but he bruises just as easily. His knuckles are red and then blue and then black by the end of the third day, and he limps everyday after an attack.
Something sad and haunted mars Yagi-san's expression at the sight of him as he presses ice packs gently on the bruises and wraps them thick with bandage, spidery fingers achingly careful, despite Izuku's frantic reassurance that they look worse than they actually are, and seeing the both of them, he's taken back to all those years in his childhood; Mother superimposed on Yagi-san's wiry and slumped figure and him on Izuku's blue-black painted limbs, one inconsolably grieving and the other unavoidably helplessly battered.
It makes his stomach churn and anger rise like bile in his throat, because no one should ever have to look like that like Mother and no one no child no one as young as he is no one who frets about others even when his knuckles are swollen with blue black purple should ever have to experience that.
/
"I'll take the rear." He says on the next attack, both of them squinting at the horde of gray and blue and green that is the enemies and tensing in anticipation, in battle stance.
Izuku turns halfway to look at him, eyes widen in question. "Huh?"
"Don't worry about the rear. Just focus on the front line." He gives him a moment long glance, applying pressure on his gaze and on his words. "Don't take them all by yourself."
He doesn't get the time to elaborate, isn't sure how, before the rush and heat of battle is upon them, so he lets his actions explain what his words can't.
They didn't have the chance to do a joint training or the sort, so their cooperation is sloppy and clumsy, and Shouto almost regrets ever suggesting it in the first place, but somehow it works – he's thankful for academy year's team practice and begrudgingly for Father's early beatings – and at the end of it Izuku's smile is less of a grimace, and he doesn't quite limp, and it's still so far from relieving him from the bruises but maybe, maybe it's a start.
/
He finds Izuku at the kitchen one midnight, folded on the chair and seemingly shrinks in the baggy shirt, staring out the window into the similar blue-black night when he first came.
He looks like a child, small and dreaming and lost, so maybe that's why Shouto doesn't leave.
Izuku shifts when he approaches, and when he looks up at him there's still remnants of morning haze in his eyes.
"Can't sleep?" Shouto says quietly, and watches as the mist clears and Izuku's mind is reeled back to the present, back to lit his eyes.
"Yeah." He smiles sheepishly, small, and Shouto wants him to stop smiling, this once, because it's okay to not feel fine and show it.
(Because this is not his house and Yagi-san is not Father and Izuku is not him).
But he says instead, "Nightmare?"
Izuku seems mildly surprised, and it smudges the edge of his smile, a small achievement. "Yeah. How- Oh, it must be obvious, huh."
"Me too." He fills the electric kettle. "Do you want some tea?"
Izuku hesitates only for a second. "Yes, please."
He puts honey in both of their tea honey makes everything better, Yagi-san said once, and it's true and Izuku's eyes lit like the first star when he tastes it.
Shouto looks at his tea, watching the liquid stir and lap against the ceramic like ocean tides, and contemplates before saying, carefully.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
It takes a moment, and then two, and then Izuku exhales, blowing steam of the tea into his face. "I'm… not sure how to start."
Shouto remembers his first midnight spent on the kitchen chair just like this, the nightmare sticky on his mind, and his embarrassment when Yagi-san walked in and found him, and then how it dissolved as both of them sat there and the older man started telling him about his own nightmares, not chiding and not patronizing, just telling, sharing – of too-close gunshots and deafening explosions and ash on his tongue, of his comrade's blood on his palms and the same comrade's death replayed over and over and twisted each time, until his uniform melted over to reveal rotting flesh and his glazed eyes turned hateful.
He didn't know why the older man had told him that, but it had made him feel lighter, somehow, his own nightmare ebbing into the obscured corner of his mind, to know and relate to someone else's demons.
"Mine was about my father." That's not exactly the truth – it's still too personal, too close to the heart to share – but right now Izuku doesn't need a sob story, he needs a propeller to begin. "And for your information, he's a giant asshole."
Izuku chokes on air when he laughs, quietly but a tiny bit genuinely amused, and Shouto thinks it's yet another small achievement.
"I- I was floating, in my dream," he says when his laughter has ceased, "but I was floating on nothing; nothing was around me, only infinite blackness. It's like being in space but there were no stars or planets or space rocks, nothing. There was nothing for me to grasp, and when I tried to call someone my voice wouldn't come out. It's-" He sucks a breath. "It's terrifying."
Shouto knows that there's always fear, or anxiety, and thousands of other negative feelings, underlying a bad dream – knows from how the punch to the gut turned into fingers around his throat and how Father stared at him with Mother's eyes – so he knows the unsaid distress slotted between the lines of Izuku's story.
"You'll remember."
Izuku swivels his head to look at him and the vulnerability in his wide eyes twists Shouto's inside into a nervous knot. He treads carefully because he's not good with words and worse with consolation, and comforting words are hollow when not picked and spoken with care.
"You'll remember eventually. And even if you don't, I'm sure there are people looking for you. Your parents, your friends, your siblings maybe. They just need time to find you, and you just need time to remember."
He wants to tell him that it's going to be okay, that he's going to be okay, but the words taste wrong and shallow on his tongue so he sips his tea and washes them down.
"Okay."
Izuku's voice trembles but at least he doesn't smile.
/
"You might be a competitive boxer."
It comes into his mind one night and he tells it to the darkness of the room, to the boy next to him who he knows is still awake and staring at the night outside through the sun-eaten curtain.
There's a light intake of breath, then with a faint amusement, "Todoroki-kun, where is this coming from?"
"You're toned. And muscular. And you use your fists most of the time." It's not really a smart conclusion, and he's aware that it would sound silly to Izuku who's shown that he's not only powerful but also frighteningly observant and impressively clever – he's taken to analyzing the aliens and their patterns of attack, greatly increasing their efficiency in the fight – but it's night and dark and they're bone-deep tired, and it's always easier to talk when you've survived one long and arduous day together.
"That kind of makes sense." But Izuku doesn't laugh, and the amusement in his voice morphs into thoughtfulness. "I'm not as well-built as a competitive boxer should be, though."
"Maybe you're still training to be one."
It's starting to sound kind of far-fetched, but instead of shooting the idea down, Izuku rolls onto his side and looks at him with twinkling curiosity. "Do you think we should check boxing clubs and gyms?"
Shouto contemplates for a moment. "Let's ask Yagi-san first tomorrow."
(Yagi-san earnestly wants to help, but checking each gym and boxing club in the country is no small feat and requiring skills and connections none of them have, so the theory is discarded.
Izuku doesn't look particularly dejected, though. Quite the opposite, he twinkles with a renewed, eager hope).
/
There are kinder days, sometimes, when the attack is brief and happens early and they have the entire day for themselves.
In days like that, they make an adventure of their own in the kitchen, trying out recipes from distant countries and baking foreign sweets, Indian curry and Vietnamese spring rolls and Dutch butter cake and Swedish meatballs.
Izuku integrates into their dynamic faster than Shouto did back then, and it feels like they've been doing this all their lives and they'll be doing this until forever; Yagi-san doing everything from stirring the batter to watching the oven with more enthusiasm and vigor than necessary, never forgetting to remind them to be careful; Izuku laughing and adeptly cutting vegetables and smearing his own face with flour when he wipes his nose; and him forgetting himself in a smile that clings and not shying away from the stove and the bubbling pot and the screaming kettle and tucking his name his identity his past somewhere else at least until the moment is over.
In days like that, Izuku doesn't seem to mind forgetting, doesn't seem to mind not remembering, and Yagi-san seems more alive and well than ever, and there's a selfish thought taking roots in the back of his mind that it would be so much better if they stay like this forever.
/
"You know how to cook."
"Your point is?"
"There are a few scenarios that can lead to that." He looks at the dark ceiling like it holds the list to those. "One of them is you've been living by yourself, but that's common for people your age. So we should narrow the conditions down to more specific ones. You know a pretty extensive range of home-cooked meal, so let's just say that you've been helping in the kitchen for quite a long time."
Izuku hums. "Like since I was a kid. Maybe I've been helping my mom in the kitchen. That means either I was a really good boy," Shouto feigns a scoff. Izuku breaks into a grin next to him. "Or I have many siblings who required a ton of food, so I ended up helping. Or I'm an only child who spent more time in the house than playing outside, thus me helping in the kitchen, and maybe I got along pretty well with my mom too."
He sighs. "Even narrowed down, it's still too many and too common of conditions."
"At least we know one thing."
"And what's that?"
"You're not some pampered young master from a rich family."
Izuku promptly throws a pillow at him, laughing.
/
Sometimes he sits on the roof and looks up at the stars and wishes for the aliens to keep coming, because what he has here, this little patchwork family, he wants to last, wants to keep forever.
But then he remembers the demolished houses and buckled telephone poles and his colleagues' weary faces and Izuku's bruises, and he's ashamed of ever wishing that.
/
He's granted a day off to attend his sister's engagement.
Fuyumi is glowing, in that tentative, soft way of hers, all amplified with her pink kimono, the rosy and white camellia spilling down her sleeve. His chest twists and tugs at the sight, and his breath catches when she smiles to her to-be-groom and his family across the table. Iida seems close to tears himself.
(Father is there too, but he doesn't look at him or speak to him, concentrating on the candle in Fuyumi's eyes and the ringing of her laughter instead. Today is her special day and he would endure everything just to make sure it goes as perfect as it can be).
"How have you been?" Iida asks after the meal, conversational, as they amble through the hallway for the garden, Fuyumi and Tensei flanked by both pair of parents in front of them.
"I'm doing fine." He turns his head momentarily to regard the other man. "How about you?"
"The family business is a challenging task to learn," Iida's hand makes a chopping gesture, "but nii-san has been very patient with me. I'm also relieved to know that I've been learning well."
Shouto suppresses a smile. "You just didn't give yourself enough credits."
"A-Absolutely not! You just regarded me too highly, Todoroki-kun!" Iida stammers, flustered. "And how about your job? I do hope that things have been easier for you."
"They have, actually." A waft of breeze and smell of leaves greet them as they step out into the garden in the back of the restaurant. "Someone with the power to defeat the aliens easily came to my post."
"The power to defeat the aliens?" Iida arches his brows. "Do you mean with their bare hands?"
Shouto nods.
"That's… bizarre, although admittedly heartening." A frown crinkles Iida's forehead. "Did they say how they get the power?"
"No." They stop under a willow tree, the branches stooping low enough to brush the top of their heads. "He's lost his memories. He doesn't remember how he got the power, much less who he is."
"That's awful." The sympathy is so earnest on Iida's face, and Shouto fleetingly thinks that Izuku would get along well with him, both of them always genuinely caring. "Does he know his name, at least?"
But he doesn't get the chance to answer because Father calls then, his voice as heavy as it is demanding, and he doesn't want to but this is Fuyumi's special day and he wouldn't forgive himself if he puts that sad and troubled crease between her brows in any way, so he excuses himself apologetically and goes to face Todoroki Enji.
/
"Since I might not be a competitive boxer, what do you think I'm doing for a living?"
Izuku is flopped side down on his stomach on the futon, reading Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, but he's put the book down and seems to ponder the question seriously.
Shouto, his back propped against a bookshelf, his feet stretched out in front of him, Dicken's Oliver Twist on his lap, raises his eyes and unwittingly catches sight of Izuku's ankle, poking out under the new-and-now-fitting pants with an ice pack resting on it.
Yet another sprained ankle, he frowns. Izuku catches what he's looking at and frowns back at him.
"Todoroki-kun," He warns. Don't start, his narrowed eyes say.
"A doctor, or a therapist." Shouto relents, contemplating. "Something that would allow you to interact directly with people."
"Then a teacher is possible too," Izuku agrees, "or a nurse. Or maybe a policeman or a detective." He rolls onto his back, wincing when his sprained ankle ends up sandwiching the ice pack, and stares at the pale afternoon ceiling. It's hot even with the electric fan and sweat sticks his hair to his face. "But who's to say that I'm not an artist or a writer? And I might have a part-time job in a daycare or in a senior house."
"You do seem like a dreamer." Shouto can picture it, Izuku with paint staining his hands and spattered across his cheeks, accentuating his freckles, facing a canvas in a sun washed room; or bent over a drawing tablet with his eyes on the screen, that concentrated frown creasing his forehead. "And you might work part-time in a coffee shop where you buy your coffee every morning,"
"Because I never got enough sleep to work on my painting or my story." Izuku's tone picks up in an almost enthusiastic crescendo. "And I might have a girl best friend who lends me her foundation to hide the dark bags under my eyes everytime I visit my parents."
Since when they've stopped trying to figure out Izuku's past and end up creating a story instead, he doesn't know, but there's too much mirth in Izuku's face that tells him he's enjoying this, he doesn't mind, so Shouto shuts the more serious part of his brain and lets himself be dragged into it.
/
Izuku likes katsudon.
The three of them figure it out when Yagi-san asks him what he'd like for dinner and he tells the same answer for three days straight.
It's a miniscule achievement, but it's something compared to everything they have so far, and they add it to the list of what they know about Izuku and celebrate – with more katsudon.
/
"What do you think my mom is like?"
Izuku's question rings and resonates in the night air before dissolving among the stars, and Shouto wonders about the abruptness but then remembers that he's just finished Nobody's Boy.
He ponders, trying to give shape to the blurry silhouette in his mind that's supposed to be Izuku's mother. Long hair, soft curve of chin and smooth cheeks, the dip at the corner of her eyes, glittering of gems in her December eyes – but it's not fondness it's not affection, it's-
His breath catches and he exhales a bit too loudly, a bit too rushed, and Izuku turns to look with that faint crease on his brows that speaks of worry.
"Todoroki-kun?"
"It's nothing."
The image doesn't fade easily, but he turns to face Izuku and takes in everything on his face – the still lingering baby fat how old is he really, maybe he's younger than him, the expressive eyebrows, the constellations on his cheeks and across his nose, the dark hair that's washed green under the sun, and his forest eyes – and places it on the silhouette, extending and smoothening the hair and maybe widening the eyes.
"W-What?" Izuku inches away, not so much undeterred as flustered.
Shouto hums. "Maybe she looks like you."
Izuku pauses, digests it, and then chuckles abashedly. "You mean I look like her. Okay, but what's the base- never mind, we never really had one. So she also has green eyes and… round face, I guess?"
"Yeah." Shouto swerves his gaze back to the endless stretching of stars above them and feels Izuku relaxes back next to him. "And she worries about you a lot."
"Why?" Izuku's voice is tinted with a frown. "I don't think I'm a troublemaker that would grant that."
"No, but you injured yourself a lot."
"I don't-"
"You do." Shouto cuts him drily. "And you don't seem to have any self-restraint in doing so. So I conjecture that you're used to it." He pictures the similar worried frown between the eyebrows and the gnawing of lower lip the slight, almost invisible trembling of her chin, the stiffness of jaw that signs of the closing of teeth, bearing the grief in silence until the tension snapped like an elastic band and lashed out like a whip.
He feels rather than sees Izuku shooting a betrayed look at him and it tempts a smile out of him, unbidden, the image retracts and recedes into the corner of his mind.
"Okay, if we go along with your conjecture," He huffs almost petulantly. "She's always worried about me. I think I can picture her, a bit." He pauses thoughtfully. "She's… short. And plump, I think. She- If I often worried her, then she was pretty stressed."
The end of his words teeters on the edge of a cliff, but he soldiers on. "And because of that, she ate much. She's more likely a housewife, then. I don't think a working woman will have the time to stress eating."
"That's generalizing, but that would match your cooking ability and your help in the kitchen," Shouto agrees, "if we want to ignore the other possibilities."
"Oh, we won't ignore them." Izuku stretches his legs down the slant of the roof, voice springy. "We'll make a story out of each of them."
And that's what they do for the rest of the night, stretched out on the roof and looking up at the stars, telling their stories to the constellation until Yagi-san, on his way to the late night restroom and hearing their voices, calls them down.
/
Sometimes they are not in the kitchen. Sometimes, like tonight, he wakes up, violently, to find Izuku sitting on his own futon, legs crossed, head angled up toward the moon.
Summer is pulling away but the cicadas dawdle still, their singing filling the night. Shouto concentrates on his breathing and on the soft rustling of Izuku's sheet when he turns around, willing the scene to retract from his mind even as the vividness of the fingers and the scalding water cling.
Izuku waits until his breath even out, patient and silent and undemanding.
Shouto runs a hand across his face, across the roughness of the scar, and sighs. "Sorry."
"Don't be." He feels Izuku inching closer but halting halfway, settling down on the tiny space between their futons instead. "Do you want me to get you anything? Water? Tea?"
He shakes his head. "I'll be fine. Thanks."
They're quiet for a long time, listening only to the chorus of cicadas and their own breathing, the half-hearted distance between them an enough comfort, Shouto convinces himself.
(It's pathetic; he's woken up to nightmares like this alone countless times before, but now he's yearning for someone for Izuku to slid closer and maybe to touch him, though how, he doesn't remember)
"…Do you want to talk about it?"
Shouto almost automatically shakes his head, the 'no' already on the tip his tongue, but tonight he reconsiders, for an unknown reason maybe because they've added another bullet point in Izuku's list, of a mother who worries and frets and doesn't know how to tie a tie and smiles wide even when the tears stutter and spill from her eyes.
Izuku waits for what seems like a long time, before saying, softly. "I dreamed about my mom, I think."
Shouto raises his head a bit, letting his hand fall from his face.
"I don't- remember her face in the dream, but she was the one forgetting about me. I followed her everywhere but she didn't pay me any attention, like I was just a passerby." Izuku huffs an aborted chuckle through his nose. "It's honestly more terrifying than the floating in space dream."
Maybe his mother has forgotten about him too, a decade and more spent in the hospital room without anything about him, no photograph or letter or a wilted flower he might've picked for her before it all. Fuyumi and Natsu visit her regularly, he knows, but he and Touya don't, for a reason both similar and different. They never told him anything about her and he never asked, neither side has any courage to.
"Mine was about my mother too."
Izuku lifts his eyes. Shouto lowers his.
"She's in the hospital. She and I… we don't-" Saying them not getting along isn't quite right; their relationship has long since been stranded in the category of complicated and undefined. She might have loved him once, in the time before, but he doesn't know if she still does now.
"Her marriage with my father wasn't a happy one." If Izuku is puzzled by his sudden swerve of topic, he doesn't say anything. "My father wanted to create a legacy, one of sons who will rise through the rank and claim the highest position in military. He married my mother because she's his superior's daughter, and he forced her to bear him children only for that reason."
Sometimes he thinks what Mother would be if she didn't wed into a marriage that bent and broke her; maybe a nurse, or a teacher like Fuyumi, or maybe just a regular housewife like Izuku's mother but happier, with two children who made her angry and made her laugh and a salaryman husband with a broad chest but gentle eyes who took them out on weekends.
"At first he set my eldest brother for that, beating him in the name of training since he was little, but he ran away when I was about five or six, so he moved on to me."
Touya often seems guilty, beneath his chilly drawl, something caring underneath the not-giving-a-fuck attitude, but Shouto doesn't hate him, never did. His eldest brother took the brunt of Father's obsession just as much as he did.
"My mother tried to protect us, but she was powerless against my father. He'd hit her sometime when she tried to stop him. It drove her over the edge, I think, the stress and her hatred of him. It didn't help that I looked like Father. I walked in one day when she was boiling water in the kitchen, and she threw it on my face."
There's a sharp intake of breath, but Shouto marches on, refusing to linger because it's not so much about the boiling water as the twist of her face and the glitter in her eyes and the unmistakable contempt in her voice "Unsightly."
"She's been in the hospital ever since, in the mental ward. My sister said she's been getting better, and she might be discharged soon."
"You don't visit her." The question mark is suspended somewhere in the air of the room, in the uncertainty of Izuku's tone.
"I don't." He realizes he's been clenching his fists and he tries to uncurl them, one finger at a time. "I'm not sure she wants to see me."
"Of course she does." Izuku sounds so sure, bewildered that Shouto would think otherwise. "She-" he swallows and seems to struggle for words, "She doesn't hate you, Todoroki-kun."
"You don't know that." Izuku opens his mouth again but Shouto cuts him off like knife, just as sharp. "And I don't know if I hate her."
Because what else the reason of his nightmares would be, if not that? His mother with her fingers around his throat and Father with his leer but with Mother's eyes, gray and glimmering gemstones bright, and her voice mixing with his, the disapproval and the hate. Imagining his mother like that, merging his mother with his father like that, what else would the cause be if not hate?
Izuku falls silent abruptly at that, and Shouto braces himself for judgment, for disdain.
But somehow, they never came.
Izuku's voice holds no verdict, no scorn, but is steady and full of surety when he says, "No, you don't, Todoroki-kun."
Shouto lifts his eyes to look at him, wide-eyed, the wry reply is smoldered and vaporized from his tongue. In the dim darkness of the room, Izuku's face seems to glow, the determined set of his jaw, the sad but resolute pressing of his lips, his unyielding eyes.
"You don't hate her."
"What-" His throat is suddenly dry, as if it's burned along with the words. "What's the base of you saying that?"
"It's true that I've only known you for about a month, but I can tell hate from sadness." Izuku's eyes ripple like a stone-thrown pond. "Believe me, Todoroki-kun. I had this friend who treated me badly but I didn't hate him, I just- I was just sad that he was like that to me. That's why I know you don't hate your mother; you don't sound or look like you hate her. You just seem sad."
This time he leans forward, closes the distance between them, and pulls Shouto into a hug, his arms solid around his shoulders and his heart beating like a second heart against his chest.
"You don't hate her, and I know she doesn't hate you." He tells him firmly, like he's trying to secure them tight into his bones.
Something dislodges in him at that, yielding into the honest conviction, and it shouldn't be that easy for him to give in, but just like how Izuku holds on to the stories they imagine and weave on their own about him, he clutches onto Izuku's words like a lifeline as he sags into his warmth.
/
When the morning dawns bright and clear the next day, what Izuku said the night before resurfaces and brings to light a realization.
"You said you had a friend who treated you badly."
Izuku, his shirt halfway through his head, blinks at him. "Yeah, he was my neighbor and we used to play together a lot when-" His eyes widen. "…Oh."
Shouto reaches for the notebook with Izuku's list, clicks the pen, and draws a bullet point.
/
Izuku says his father is never around.
"Like Cinderella?" Shouto says, keeping his tone flat and holding down a smile.
Izuku snorts and kicks his leg. Yagi-san laughs heartily. They have their breakfast on the porch today, bathed by the morning sun and hanging their feet over the edge. Autumn is settling in and the air has cooled down, pleasant against their cheeks and exposed forearms.
"He's… working overseas. He sends us money every month, I think."
"Does he visit you, though?" Yagi-san turns to look at him, his face relaxed but attentive.
Izuku reaches for another slice of toast (with peanut butter and chocolate spread) and bites slowly into it. "…No, not often. Only once a year, as far as I remember."
Yagi-san frowns empathically. "That's very seldom. But perhaps he's very busy."
"I guess." Izuku doesn't sound particularly sad, or bitter. He sounds like he's used to it, living only with his mother (and probably siblings) and having his father just as a shadow. "It's okay, though. It's much better than what some other father is like."
He gives Shouto a fleeting uncertain glance is it too far?
Shouto sips on his tea and makes sure his small smile show it's not, and thank you.
Yagi-san goes inside and comes back out with Izuku's list on his hand, sits down, and jots the new memory into it.
"That's another bullet point." He smiles.
/
(What would happen if the entire book is filled, he wonders, when Izuku's past stops being a quiz and starts existing. Would he still want to sit down with them like this, strangers tied together only by circumstances?)
/
It's easy to forget that Izuku is human in the battlefield, easy to forget that he bruises and sprains his limbs and can be broken the way every other person can.
It is easy to forget until it is not, when one attack drags on for too long and he seems to run out of breath and his reaction starts to lag, not so visible except to one who has fought with him everyday for the last month.
One gigantic alien sweeps its too-long arm towards him and Izuku is late to realize until it's already too close, is too late to dodge, and Shouto doesn't as much thinking as remembering the bruised knuckles and the frantic reassurement and Yagi-san's pained frown, before throwing every bit of his weight against him and hoping in that split second that it's enough to get him out of harm's way.
There's no blood and he's quite sure his limbs are intact, but his entire body bursts electric with pain and he chokes on air because breathing is like detonating a field of landmine in his chest.
Izuku is screaming and he can't make out the words but he can feel the familiar force that whips the wind away and the thudding of solids against the ground, and that means Izuku is okay is unharmed and he really should get up and finish his job,
but then there are hands on his shoulders, firm and gentle and desperate, and Izuku is speaking with a steady voice that cracks and falls in the end, insisting for him to stay down and not moving.
He sounds so close to crying, and Shouto has never heard him crumble and break like that that he wants nothing more than to comfort him but it hurts to breathe and more to form words, and when he finally does they're lost in the flurry of Yagi-san's arrival.
/
"You scared me, my boy."
Sitting on the hospital chair with the light spilling in behind him, Yagi-san seems to buckle under the worry, his gaunt cheeks and sunken eyes made more prominent by the shadows they cast. He looks like Mother did, and the knowledge that he causes this is lead in Shouto's chest.
"Sorry."
Yagi-san shakes his head. "Don't apologize, my boy. I want to worry; I should worry."
He's lived with Yagi-san for two years, and he knows with his heart and his flesh and his mind that the older man cares for him the way his father doesn't and never will, but hearing it in his words still makes his chest tug and flutter at the same time.
"I'm still sorry."
A semblance of a smile ghosts over Yagi-san's face. "If you say so."
"Is Izuku…"
"He's alright, and unharmed. He has calmed down, but he's been very distressed."
The guilt must be showing on his face, because Yagi-san's shadow smile solidifies into something wry but gently knowing.
"Please don't scare us like that again, okay?"
/
(What would it be like after the alien invasion ends, he wonders, when they go back to their respective lives and Yagi-san no longer has any reason to talk to him or worry about him or spending time with him).
/
(He wonders and he dreads).
/
When he's finally released from the hospital, Izuku hugs him.
He doesn't say anything, his arms around him stiff and hesitant – afraid to aggravate what might remain of the broken ribs and punctured lungs – and Shouto has never hugged someone for too long, so he isn't sure if he's doing it right, but his arms find their way naturally around Izuku and just like that, they melt and relax against each other.
"Maybe you were a superhero," he says into Izuku's hair, knowing it's silly and blaming the hospital TVbut saying it anyway, "like Captain America. A superhero who's outside of his time."
And Izuku laughs and laughs and laughs until he's crying, and Yagi-san seems understandably confused, and Shouto breathes out a chuckleand settles himself home.
/
"I sometimes forget that you've been fighting long before I did." Izuku says apologetically, after Shouto tells him with no small degree of frustration that he should stop trying to shield him from the aliens, he's fully recovered and he doesn't appreciate being treated like a fractured bowl and it messes their already good teamwork.
"I have." He replies pointedly, wiping the sweat clinging onto his chin. The weather is cool in the coming of autumn and he welcomes the breeze with a quiet eagerness. "And you shouldn't feel responsible or guilty for what happened. It's not your fault."
Izuku opens his mouth to argue but Shouto gives him a look that borders on a glare and he relents.
"I agreed to be part of this so no more people would get hurt," he says as they walk back, a pensive shadow dimming his expression, "but I guess it's kind of impossible, huh."
"You can't keep everyone from getting hurt, even if you're a superhero." Shouto points out, willing the curiosityrearing up in him to lay down and wait. "If you can protect civilians, that's already good enough."
"I know. But," A dragonfly startles as they wad through the reeds it's resting on and takes off abruptly into the air, cutting across their faces. "When you got injured for me, I felt like I don't want that to ever happen again; I want to protect everyone, be it civilians, or soldiers like you. I want to spare them the pain if I can. That's why I do this."
He isn't looking at him, but Shouto can feel the desperate determination, the desperate want, and admiration swells in his chest; but a part of him is also strangely relieved to hear the selfishness in that conviction, how tiny though it is, because that means he's still human, that he is not someone or something that came from a place Shouto can't reach.
"That's quite egoistic."
Izuku chuckles abashedly. "I guess it is."
The cabin bobs into view in the distance, and Shouto unshackles his curiosityand asks, "What do you mean when you said you 'agreed to be part in this'?"
"I-" Izuku slowly, slowly halts to a stop. "I agreed- They came to the headquarter, talking about… about a way to defeat the aliens, but they needed volunteers. To test it."
Shouto stops next to him, reining his concern and his urge to reach out and touch him, to moor him back to the moment, because Izuku seems somewhere far away, his gaze focusing on a place that's not here and his forehead furrowed deep in effort.
"So I volunteered. My mom, she didn't show it but I knew she cried-" His voice breaks. "But I still went and done it." He squeezes his eyes closed and exhales a shuddering breath.
They stand there for what feels like a long moment, and when Izuku eventually opens his eyes again, his expression is drawn and pinched. The frustration is thick in his tone when he speaks again. "I- I can't remember what else… after that- why- just a little bit more and I might-"
He starts when Shouto closes his hand around his arm, even though he does it as gently as he can.
"Izuku, it's okay."
Izuku looks at him and Shouto longs to smoothen the frustration and the dismay marring his face with his thumb. "One step at a time, remember?"
He still looks unsatisfied, but he lets Shouto tug him back to the cabin, the afternoon dimming into evening around them.
/
People with mysterious powers start appearing in another posts. All young men and some women, each with different power but same effect: destroying the aliens.
The same as Izuku.
The only difference is, they have their memories; know their names and their families and where they came from.
"It was military's top secret operation." Yagi-san tells them at dinner, his face somber. "A scientist came up with the idea and proposed it to the military. Then they gathered the best scientists from all over the country and volunteers from military and police force." To be test subjects, he doesn't say, doesn't need to. Shouto unclenches his fingers from the bowl, one at a time.
Izuku looks apprehensive, but not afraid or haunted. "They must have the volunteers' data. If we can look through it," He shifts his gaze uncertainly to the older man.
Yagi-san smiles, not wide but with hope. "I've contacted my old colleagues. It wouldn't be easy to gain permission for access, and it will take some time, but we will do our best." He places a warm, bony hand on Izuku's shoulder. "You'll be able to go home soon, my boy."
Izuku smiles too, then, wobbly, and nods, and Shouto wants to believe that he's happy for him, but the sinking of his heart is too heavy to ignore.
/
(It's going to end soon, he knows, this little patchwork family he's dared to call his).
/
They don't have to wait long.
Iida texts him one night, and when they've worked past the usual how are yous and how is your brother and how is your job, his words make Shouto's heart plummet and lift at the same time.
[Iida]
I'm sorry that this is out of the blue, but the conversation we had at our siblings' engagement came to my mind just recently.
Did you mention having someone with a power to defeat the aliens at your place? And that person has lost his memories?
[Shouto]
Yes
What about it?
[Iida]
Actually, a good friend of mine has been missing since this June.
He's been taking part in a classified military activity since last year, but the contact from him has been diminishing since the beginning of this year until it stopped entirely around May.
His mother has tried repeatedly to contact the concerned department, but was only given the reassurance that he was fine but was in no condition to make any kind of contact.
It is terribly worrying.
[Shouto]
Did she try asking the police?
Or file a missing person report?
He doesn't actually need to ask; the time of disappearance and the circumstances leading to it match Izuku's arrival and the memory he watched coming to him that afternoon.
But his heart is so loud and he can't tell anymore if it's from the excitement of finally finding the thread leading to Izuku's identity or from the gnawing and wringing anticipation of he's leaving.
[Iida]
She did, but they would not approve it. It is honestly infuriating.
Then those people with superpower appeared.
And I remembered what you told me.
It's just a hunch, but I feel the need to ask you.
Is this the person you mentioned?
-image attached-
"Todoroki-kun,"
Izuku is on the door, hair still dripping water and soaking the shoulders of his shirt. He says something about the bath, but the words are garbled in Shouto's ears, like his brain is trying to tend to his thundering heart and translating sensory inputs both at once, and failing.
He inhales, focusing on how his lungs expand, and exhales slowly, squeezing the breath out in a barely restrained shudder.
[Iida]
His name is Midoriya Izuku.
"What's wrong?"
Izuku, no, Midoriya crouches down in front of him, the corner of his brows creasing slightly in concern, and Shouto buries the dread the selfishness he's leaving and mounds dirt on top of it.
"Midoriya Izuku."
Midoriya looks confused for a moment, before slowly, like dawn spilling on the dusky meadow, comprehension seeps into his face.
Shouto manages a small, small smile, hating how it trembles on the edge.
[Shouto]
He's here
/
Midoriya's mother looks exactly like him, from the shade of their hair down to their wobbly smiles.
She comes with Iida the day after, wringing her hands and brimming with anticipation and anxiety but most of all, hope that's heartbreaking to watch.
When she sees Midoriya, all the suppressed emotions and accumulation of tears spill and break out of her like river stream ransacking the dam, and she pulls him into her arms, crying and sobbing his name.
Midoriya cries with her, in the same way, unabashed and unhesitant, and Shouto watches and envies them a little for that untainted candidness.
Inko-san hugs Yagi-san after that, surprising the older man, and then she does the same to him.
"Thank you," She whispers, her voice a gravel road and her words watery. "Thank you so much, thank you, thank you, thank you."
She smells faintly of vanilla and curry and she is so very warm, the kind of warmth that clogs his throat and tugs on his chest, and he doesn't think he deserves it, both the hug and the gratitude; but when she pulls away she's smiling every bit like Midoriya and the thought bows under its radiance.
/
Midoriya stays for another two weeks – Inko-san cried again but she'd let him, bowed by her son's unyielding plea – until an official call from the military headquarter comes.
The military is planning to launch an attack on the aliens, finally, after two years weathering the assault, now that they have the force who can stand on par with the enemy, and every one of those who bear the power will be in the frontlines.
"You volunteered for this and they paid you back by hiding the truth from you and your mother. And now you so willingly obey their orders without so much as a protest." Shouto seethes the night before Midoriya leaves, his words smoldering with anger and frustration stewing in him, as he watches Midoriya fold his shirts and cram them into a backpack.
"Because I didn't do this for them." Midoriya replies without pause, without hesitation. "I do this for my mom, for Tenya-kun and Ochako, for Yagi-san," he halts then, before looking at him, his gaze unshaken. "and for you, Todoroki-kun."
Shouto's breath catches and dies with the words in his throat, but before he can come up with a response, Midoriya ducks his head back to stuffing his backpack.
(He should be exasperated, but it's hard to when the constellation on Midoriya's cheeks look surprisingly good against the blush of dawn).
/
He and Yagi-san sits at the porch the night of the mission. Out here in the countryside, they can't so much as glimpse the launching of the shuttles, but he can at least pretend.
"I think it's about time." Yagi-san remarks, his voice an anvil rippling the thick blue-blackness of the night, solidity in the slithering of breeze. He reaches over, hesitating for a second before grasping Shouto's shoulder and pulls him against his side.
It surprises him, the intimacy and sudden abolishment of boundaries – because a hand on his shoulders and a warm palm on his back are all the touches the older man has ever given him – but he remembers that Midoriya is as dear to Yagi-san as he is to him, and maybe this is how Yagi-san comforts himself: by comforting others.
So Shouto settles against him, as relaxed as he can, and they continue watching the stars in silence.
/
Sometimes in their last days in the cabin, he itches to grab the list and fit their three-months habit back into his life, but it's already crumbling, he knows, this simple rhythmic life and this patchwork family, this safe corner of the world he's settled himself into.
/
(But maybe,
it doesn't have to end).
/
Midoriya is standing in front of his apartment when he comes back from the convenient store. When he spots Shouto, his face lit up immediately and he smiles wide, albeit unsure.
"Todoroki-kun!"
Shouto blinks once, twice, while his brain processes the fact that Midoriya is there in front of his apartment with the same starburst eyes and dimpling smile.
"Midoriya."
He doesn't mean it to be so brusque and premature, and scrambles to mend the mistake when Midoriya's smile dim. "Hello. What are you- How do you find my place?"
"I asked Yagi-san." He seems sheepish. "I hope I'm not intruding. I meant to tell you first but I feel awkward if the first thing I said to you after two months is 'can I come to your place?' So…" He trails off as pink seeps into his cheeks.
The blush and the suspended words somehow make Shouto flustered too, so he busies himself with his key and the door's lock and tries to cease the ramming of his heart against his ribs.
He beckons Midoriya to come in and tells him to sit down while he fills the electric kettle with water and spoons tea leaves into a pot.
"You seem well." He says when they're seated on the small, hard couch, side by side, their knees almost touching another half-hearted distance.
"I'm doing fine." Midoriya grins. "I'm back to work and my memories are coming back everyday. I don't remember things like the names of my classmates in the academy yet, but I remember all of the important things, like my mom's favorite flowers and Ochako's favorite mix of coffee and what makes Kacchan angry."
Shouto bites back a smile. "That's good."
It's always easier to smile around Midoriya and to mean it. His positivity had been contagious back in the alien-fighting days, and his presence is a warm nostalgia now, humming with the memory of that summer-washed days.
"Yeah." Midoriya nods before his expression dims soberly. "I'm sorry I haven't been contacting you, even though I have your numbers."
"It's okay." It hasn't been, but Midoriya doesn't need to know.
"It's not." Midoriya rubs his thumb against the mug. "I-… It's just my silly thought, but texting or calling you would feel- it wouldn't be enough. I mean, we're not like old high school friends who can just suddenly exchange texts casually; we've been fighting together with our lives, and… so… I wanted our reunion to be in person, not through a cellphone."
He's receding to a storm of mumble halfway through the sentence, but Shouto can hear every word clearly, as though all of his sensory nerves are attuned to catch Midoriya's words.
"So you wanted to see me."
Midoriya nods, and his face is pink again. "I hope I'm not bothering you."
There's a small hesitation holding him back, honesty is ever so foreign and difficult, but he tugs the words free.
"I wanted to see you too, Midoriya."
Midoriya turns to look at him, eyes wide with surprise before they lit up with something relieved and hopeful and glad, the kind of soft and bright joy after a summer rain. It liberates the chuckle pressed deep inside Shouto's chest, and in a burst of sudden courage he leans forward and touches his forehead against Midoriya's.
Midoriya laughs too, then, shuddering and soft, nuzzling his nose briefly with his. "We missed each other that much, huh?"
"Yeah," Shouto murmurs, the chuckle still vibrating against his ribcages, "we just had no idea."
.
(Because it's not the same, even though he's able to visit and meet with Yagi-san after the mission.
His patchwork of a family has been enough with Yagi-san, yes, but it is only whole with Izuku).
.
"Stop it with the 'Midoriya,'" Midoriya says when they are quiet and content again, pressed flush against each other after a long catching up conversation, "and call me Izuku."
Just like before, he doesn't say.
But Shouto understands, nonetheless.
"Okay," he gives him another smile, small and soft and fond and everything that's still unnamed and undiscovered but maybe only for now. "Izuku."
Thank you for reading!