A/N: Based in what he says to Mineta in the videogame. Please be gentle, this is my first original fic.
As soon as he arrived home, Shoto went straight to the bathroom.
Even after showering in the UA's locker room, his skin felt weird, kind of tingling, maybe sweating, but he wasn't really sure. Also, he was kind of dizzy, and his heart pounded hard in his chest. He couldn't understand why. All Might's lesson hadn't been anything special, maybe because the finals were still some time away, just some physical exercises and mock fights, with minimal quirk usage, between the students. He had been paired with Ashido. She was on the bottom of the class when it came to grades, but was quite agile and, because of that, she became a tough opponent for him in close quarters. In his memory, their fight was a blur of punches, kicks and dodging, but he could clearly remember the moment it ended.
"Wow! I didn't see that last kick coming! As expected from the handsome ice prince of our class!"
Shoto blinked, surprised. His chest tightened and his throat tensed. He managed a smile and hoped that he didn't look as surprised as he felt.
He washed his face. Ashido had called handsome that same face he was touching with his fingers. No one had called him that, at least to his face, since his mother…
He didn't know how to take it. Maybe that was why he was feeling weird. He knew he shouldn't. His pink classmate was often quite bold and always spoke her mind. He blushed remembering that one time she had shouted how jealous she was of Yaoyorozu's breasts. Yes, she didn't fear speaking her mind, which also made her a bad liar. When she said something, she meant it. Shoto may have been quite quiet, but he always paid attention to his surroundings, and his classmates were no exception. The thing was, just because he knew things about them, didn't mean he knew how to interact properly with them. He still felt awkward, despite Midoriya's help since the Sport Festival.
Grabbing the sink, he lifted his head. He was now looking at himself, that same face that apparently was attractive and princely. His skin lacked the most extreme forms of acne some of his peers may have, but he could still make some blackheads here and there. He knew by memory the shape of his neck and chin, even though they had changed and become sharper in the last years. His cheeks were still rounded, but he could make some stubble near his jawline, he had missed it while shaving. His nose was alright, he guessed, it was straight and without bumps.
His hair was really eye-catching, half white and half red, none of which were very common. It was often the first thing people noticed about him, even in a crowd. Specially in a crowd. The only other person he knew had two-coloured hair was Fuyumi (and Kaminari, he realised later), but the red strands in her hair weren't as much as a shock to the eyes as his. To him, it was a constant reminder of what he was supposed to be. The perfect, balanced product of the damned union of his parents. Half fire, half ice. It took him that one match against Midoriya to begin to accept that as a part of himself, that he was his own person, no matter what the nucleic acid molecules inside him said.
Then, he looked at the part of his face he dreaded the most. Not his eyes, really. They were slanted, but his irises stood out well. It was amazing how little people noticed they were different colours. Maybe it was because the both of them were light. (Maybe because their attention was somewhere else). Fuyumi once told him she realised they were different when he was four. "They were both blue when you were a baby, and they changed so slowly I didn't notice. Apparently, I just kept staring at you." He believed her. It took his classmates two weeks to notice, and it was just because Kaminari had been putting special dedication to his doodles that day. He could still hear all the surprised shouts ringing in his ears, and the not-so-subtle way their eyebrows knit when they looked at him in the eye for more time than what was necessary. His eyebrows were a colour each, and were thinner than most guys, but they were there. His eyelashes were all black and looked exactly like his sister's. All the things before, he could believe that, statistically, someone could find attractive. But, as soon as someone looked at him there, their expression changed. They couldn't hide their… discomfort? (fear? Disgust?) over his scar. It was his most prominent facial feature, and it would always attract attention, never positive, always either pity or repulsion.
He both did and didn't remember the incident very well. The frame of the door leading to the kitchen, his mother's trembling voice, the whistle of the kettle and pain, pain, so much pain. It was a miracle that both his eye and eyebrow were still functional. It was a miracle they were still there, but he supposed that somewhat they had been heat-resistant when his young skin had not. Actually, his skin had resisted quite well. Natsuo had later told him that the hospital staff had been surprised by the fact that he still had skin left after more than five seconds of boiling water. The severity of his scald was of three seconds of water at sixty degrees.
Of the healing process, he remembered the long gauzes being taken on and off, the long healing sessions, where they put funny smelling liquids and cream with more gauzes, that the nurse held with tweezers. The skin on the border of the burn itched so much, and went from his scalp, burned by the steam, to his jaw, neck and chest, that had received cooler, no, less hot, droplets of water. The rest, just hurt, really hurt. His skin had swollen, formed boils and tightened. Even the smallest facial movement, like pursing his lips to drink a sip of water, had been excruciating. Maybe he could be able to better handle that same pain now that he had grown up (and gotten more beaten up), but, together with the hurt of the betrayal and practical loss of his mother, it was the worse than what his child mind had ever imagined.
Scarred skin wasn't pretty. His was a weird purplish red, with more brown patches here and there. It was irregular and bumpy, and shone a weird way when light hit it. It was tight and uncomfortable. He remembered it being bigger in the past, but what really happened was that his face grew, but the burn didn't. Sometimes, it still hurt. By sometimes, he meant when he put ice over it, but he would never admit it.
Who would want a guy with such a large burn on his face?
His reflection stared back at him, with as many answers as he himself had.
A/N: Writting based on real-life experience of issues with body image, friend's perceptions of their own scars, and talks with burn patients. Oh, also that one friend of mine that has heterochromia and no one noticed (it took me 10 years).