Izuku, in all honesty, cannot remember a single event of the evening past the villain attack.
Before then, everything had been great. His playlist perfectly arranged for two of his best friends, one of which was almost certainly proposing to the other. He hadn't fumbled any notes, which, honestly, wasn't a huge feat. But still! The night felt great!
And then he heard the glass, and everything from that moment to now has been a blur.
He traces Shouto's living room with his eyes while Ochaco and Tenya chat with Shouto about the villain. There's a grand piano in the corner now – Izuku's been sort of itching to play it – and the television, much too big for Izuku's liking but almost a bit small for the tall walls of Shouto's living room, is playing some sit com in the background of their conversation. Izuku's mostly been focusing on that as Tenya and Ochaco talk legal repercussions of using their Quirks now that their provisional licenses from high school have expired, but Shouto's assuring them that he'll figure something out with All Might.
The bobby pins holding his wig down dig further into Izuku's scalp as he lets his head fall into the back of the couch. He's exhausted, mentally spent for the evening and perhaps the rest of the weekend. He really wants to curl up, right here, and go to bed for the rest of ever. Somehow, he doesn't doubt that Shouto would let him.
A blanket is draped over his shoulders and it pulls him out of his trance. And Shouto hovers over him, a gentle frown on his lips. "You looked cold," he says, short and quiet. Izuku looks up at him, then shifts his gaze past him to find that Ochaco and Tenya watch him with matching concern on their faces.
"Thank you," he murmurs, returns his gaze to Shouto. Izuku tugs the blanket better around himself, lets it come further up his neck and crosses it over his chest. Tentatively, Ochaco and Tenya return to their conversation, and so Izuku prepares his mind to drift once more.
It's been wandering. Drifting through the past little while, now. He can hear the glass shattering in his head, can feel Shouto's body wrap around his with the protection of a bodyguard. He can see Shouto's ice extending out in front of them, in slow motion, and then it's as if his senses stop there; they halt, like a photo. He can still see the ice, can still feel Shouto pressing against him, but all sound has stopped, and even in his peripheral the people who most certainly should be fleeing the scene are all frozen in place. And his body seizes up, like his limbs have shut off, and the next thing he hears is Shouto saying his name – the name that rolls off his tongue so beautifully it should be illegal. And then he blanks again, his limbs seizing up again, and Shouto calls out that the show is over and he and Ochaco and Tenya usher his minimally-functioning legs from the building.
He thinks he might drift off in the car ride; maybe he just dissociates. He can't be sure, but what he can be sure of is that Shouto carries him into the apartment building – the back entrance, reserved for the pro heroes that live here. And now he's here, right where Shouto placed him when they returned to the apartment.
Izuku's eyes settle on the grand piano in the corner of the room, again, while he thinks. He almost feels guilty about it; he knows Rhapsoda is both Ochaco's and Tenya's favorite, and he'd strategically placed it around the center of his set for them. He opens his mouth, but his brain lags; he's still trying to drag himself back into the present, to catch up with the conversation happening around him before he interrupts. He manages to catch them when Ochaco takes a breath, his eyes half-lidded and settling directly on Shouto. "Can I play it?" he asks, realizes only a moment later that maybe Shouto won't know what he's talking about, as Izuku's been ogling the piano since they arrived and he assumes Shouto hasn't. "The piano," he clarifies, his cheeks tinging pink with a bit of embarrassment.
Shouto hesitates for a moment, stares at Izuku – or perhaps right through him, honestly – then nods his head once. "Of course," he murmurs, rises from the couch and walks with Izuku over to the piano. Izuku wants to tell him that he can walk, now, but it feels nice for Shouto to offer Izuku the crook of his arm, to help him over to the piano bench, where Izuku whispers a word of thanks and falls into the bench.
Izuku becomes increasingly aware that the conversation from Ochaco and Tenya has stopped, and not only does Shouto watch him at his spot at the edge of the piano, Ochaco and Tenya's eyes train on him as well. He has the urge to remind them that he isn't Loverman right now, but he reaches up after a moment and realizes the wig is still on and it dawns on him that maybe he is, maybe he can't turn Loverman off without removing the damn thing.
"Shouto," he murmurs, looks back up at the man. Shouto straightens; he'd let his elbow fall to the surface of the piano, relaxed, but the second Izuku calls for him he's at attention. It only makes Izuku more uncomfortable in this wig, the way he looks like he's preparing for duty, like some soldier bringing his hand up in salute. "C-can you, ah? Help?" he gestures to the wig. He's still having a bit of trouble articulating his thoughts, but Shouto seems more than capable of understanding him.
Shouto crosses over to him, stands behind him on the bench while Izuku lazily plucks at bobby pins. He sets them next to him on the bench, and Shouto delicately combs his fingers through as well, plucking the ones Izuku's fingers accidentally graze past. "I always feel weird playing in a wig outside of gigs," he explains in a hushed tone, quiet enough to be lost under the sit com playing across the room. Tenya and Ochaco hesitantly redraw their own bubble, disappearing under soft murmurs to each other as their bodies curl into one another.
The wig comes off a moment later, and Izuku gently removes the wig cap attempting to hold his unruly green hair in place. He sets both the wig and the cap next to him on the bench, carefully shakes out his curls and makes a soft noise of satisfaction. "That's always the best part of the night," he says through a gentle smile, arches his neck so he can look up at Shouto standing just above him. And what little confidence Loverman (or rather, the wig) had blessed him with is now gone, left in the wind as his cheeks turn red. And Shouto smiles back to him, not just the quirk of lips Izuku's learned to read as a smile but a full, genuine smile, one that feels so warm.
Briefly, Izuku wonders if Tenya and Ochaco feel it too, or if Shouto and Izuku are submerged in a little bubble of their own.
The moment pops audibly when Shouto clears his throat, moves back towards the large sectional. Once he resettles, his gaze meets Izuku's body again; Izuku isn't looking, but he can feel it, the pinprick of a pair of eyes on him. Where the bench is positioned, he has to turn his head nearly a hundred eighty degrees to be able to see Shouto; it takes a bit less effort to see Ochaco and Tenya. Their bubble has expanded to include Shouto, it seems, the way their voices hush and speak amongst each other like he's drifting away, drifting like he has been most of the night.
But he just plays.
It sounds kind of nothing like Loverman, Izuku muses. When he sits down to play in his home, it mostly consists of running and rerunning chords, playing his favorite songs he's composed. But now he doesn't even bother with that; he just lets his fingers wander. He's been told he's good with freestyle, but that's a downright understatement compared to now, he thinks. His fingers kiss the keys, over and over and over, some delicate and some harsh and some slow and some fast. They linger, like warmth. Like dazed eyes cracking open after a first kiss, after that first blissful time two people unite into one.
They chase that bliss in full-piano scales, fast and deliberate and so sloppy but so perfectly so. He doesn't notice the conversation halt again, he doesn't notice the eyes resettling on him. He's busy playing out a story of the love he's never had, never enjoyed for himself, only hoped for and seen in the hundreds of stupid fucking rom-com movies he'd been forced to sit down and watch with his mother on the nights that Tenya and Ochaco were spending time with their class at U.A. When he had no friends within his own general studies course, because none of them liked Izuku; none of them liked the unintentional suck-ups to Professor Cementoss, who Izuku asked on their first day about strangely specific pro hero events, not as a method of getting an 'A' in the class – he could do that on his own just fine – but because he wanted to learn.
His fingertips turn bitter. They crash into the keys harder than before, louder sounds chasing each other up in the air until they reach the ceiling in a spiral. They fight each other when they mingle up there, in a noise that's normally grating on the ears – piano has never been quite the instrument for such a heavily echoing room – but it's as if the notes know what Izuku's been through, and the way they touch each other sounds nearly exactly how Izuku feels. And how he feels, well, he's unable to express it any other way than this. It's as if his feelings sink to his fingertips and when they touch the piano they sing, proclaim as boldly as they can just how desperate Izuku is to be loved, to be wanted as more than just a man in a wig that can play classical knockoff pieces like no other.
Mr. Loverman may be him, but he's a side of him that is so unrealistically shallow that Izuku has the urge to kill him off entirely.
His fingers halt on the keys, and Izuku only notices because he can hear his breathing, ragged and filthy like he's just run the steps of Shouto's apartment building. Ochaco and Tenya have since risen from the couch, and they dance in each other's arms, their swaying unaffected by the lack of music, it seems. And Shouto's eyes are still on him, boring into him. Like they know everything he's been through, like they hear the sad, pitiful, loveless Izuku begging to be held, to be cherished as more than the celebrity front he's created for himself. You dug your grave, now lay in it, a helpful voice supplies in the back of Izuku's mind, and he feels himself receding into it, his fingers touching the piano keys with the intent to finally, finally play Rhapsoda for his friends.
But something stops him. Something loud, ricocheting off his skull like a tennis ball in an empty room. Izuku can't quite make out what the voice says, but it's jarring, and he rests his forehead on the piano, lightly enough that though the keys sink under the pressure, they don't play a sound. He's tired, he feels mentally fatigued past the point of good mental health. He half-considers asking Shouto to spend the night here, but Ochaco and Tenya's vehicle is still parked at his apartment complex, and he knows that they'll be leaving before too long – all of them – to part for the evening. And he'll be alone in the small, empty apartment that feels much larger when it's just him, and he can feel his limbs seizing up on him again, can hear the glass shattering again like it's the window of his large bedroom.
He just wants to be alright.
When Izuku wakes up in a bedroom larger than his own, with a bed with sheets a dark gray unlike his own light pink ones, and with sunlight hitting him from a completely different angle than he's used to, he can't say he's surprised. The night before comes back to him in chunks while he forces himself from the bed. As he's padding around, searching for something to change into, he remembers pulling his head off the keys of the piano and strumming Rhapsoda from memory, much more delicately this time. His fingers stutter and hold certain notes, breeze right past others. As he finds a neat stack of clothing on the ottoman near the edge of the room, along with a towel and a little shower caddy with products to shower with, he remembers Shouto finally putting an end to Izuku's playing somewhere shortly after that. He remembers Shouto cupping his cheek, just for a moment, to wipe away a stray tear that Izuku certainly doesn't remember allowing to roll down his face. And as he grabs those various items in his hands and heads for the guest bathroom connected to the bedroom, he remembers clambering into Shouto's car again that night, hesitating while Ochaco and Tenya get out to return to their own vehicle. He remembers Shouto offering up a guest bedroom, tentatively, and Izuku taking him up on the offer in a hushed tone.
The bathroom is huge. Along the left wall is a long counter with a double sink, and between the two sinks are several hand towels, a soap dispenser, and a little red flower. There's a soaker tub that's nearly the size of a queen mattress, and a huge walk-in shower with a waterfall spout from the ceiling. A large window near the tub is covered by a decently thick curtain, but still mid-morning sunlight peers through it, alights the pristine slate tile below him. He expects the floor to be cold when he removes his socks, but it's warm, and he hesitates less when peels away the rest of his clothes – he's still in his suit from the night before – and sets them in a decently messy pile on the counter next to the hand towels.
There's a little bench at the edge of the shower, as well as a towel rack. Izuku sets his things down there, takes the shower caddy with him into the shower and turns on the water. It feels cold at first, blissfully so, but as it warms Izuku doesn't shy away as much. He stands directly under the water, lets it deflect off him and roll onto the tile. It feels so incredibly nice, and even though Izuku's shower at his own apartment is similar, somehow here it just feels so much more relaxing.
He's unsure of how long he takes in the shower, but by the time he returns to the guest bedroom in the clothes Shouto's laid out for him and grabs for his phone plugged into a charger by the bed (he most certainly doesn't remember plugging it in), he finds that it's nearing eleven in the morning. He knows, based on the calendar app he and Shouto share, that Shouto has morning patrol this morning, and a pit settles in his stomach thinking that he must be intruding. But, then, if Shouto had really wanted him gone, Izuku hopes he'd have come in and woken him up before leaving for work.
Izuku pads down the semi-spiraling staircase into the living room. The curtains are drawn wide in here, and the mid-morning sun spills into the living area, washes it in a pale yellow glow. It looks smaller, somehow, in this lighting; Izuku's used to the view of this room at night, when the shadows expand the room by stretching corners just out of the chandelier's reach of light. Now, seeing all of it, he finds that those corners don't extend as far as they seem to at night, and gingerly he runs his hand over the edge of the sectional as he walks past the room into the large kitchen.
He's immensely surprised to find Shouto there, sitting at the island with a small (but decently expensive) laptop and a mug of coffee to his side. He looks up expectantly as Izuku's gentle footsteps patter into the room, stopping where the kitchen linoleum meets the hardwood of the living space.
"Good morning," Shouto says casually, like Izuku isn't wearing his clothes, like they aren't dripping off him. Like waking up in the same apartment is a normality. Which, as much as Izuku would like it to be, he's fairly certain it isn't, and he shouldn't get used to this. But the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafts into him just then, and he exhales with the most delicate of hums.
"Good morning," he murmurs back, finds that his voice is still a bit raspy from sleep. "I thought you had to work this morning?"
"Mostly just running reports," Shouto replies, twists his laptop around and shows off his screen as if to prove it. "I called All Might this morning. He seems to think you require my presence more than the office does, today."
Izuku feels a blush tinging at his cheeks, and he's not unused to the feeling but it's still a tad embarrassing. He steps further into the kitchen, leans his elbows on the island across from Shouto casually. Shouto turns his laptop screen back around and peers over the report, rubs his temple a bit. "How are you with villain stats?" he asks after a moment, looks up over the laptop screen expectantly, and Izuku feels put on the spot.
"What—what kinds?" Izuku asks, because he's taken a few general villain statistic courses in college, but they've never been his strong suit; he's much better with hero stats and predicting which heroes will rank where over the course of the year. He rubs at his eye, trying to free the last remnants of sleep from it, finds that his limbs still seem to drag with the mental fatigue of the night before.
"Do you want a coffee?" Shouto replies, ignores Izuku's question outright and rises from the island. He crosses the room to the fancy coffee machine, which has a coffee pot already waiting and being kept warm. He pours Izuku a mug before Izuku can confirm that he's dying for a coffee, and the mug is in his hands as he finally opens his mouth to give an affirmative. "Creamer's in the fridge, help yourself," Shouto adds as he resumes his position at the island.
"Thank you," Izuku hums, hovers his way to the refrigerator and cracks it open. He finds about a dozen different creamer flavors inside, idly wonders just how often Shouto drinks coffee to have this much, picks the first one he sees and decides he's going to drink that one. He returns to the island a few moments later, with a spoon hanging from his mug as he stirs his drink lazily.
"Using this month's data, All Might wants me to figure out redistributions," Shouto explains, turning the laptop so both of them are able to see. He shows off a relatively detailed bar chart, with each bar representing one of the districts that a Symbols of Peace Agency branch is located. Tokyo, their current district, is by far the topper on the chart, but other districts creep up the list.
"All Might wants to split the top ten up, huh?" Izuku murmurs vaguely, leaning over a bit more to look at the report. He sips his coffee, then sets the mug out of reach; the last thing he needs is to spill his coffee all over Shouto's fancy laptop the first time he spends the night. "Mind if I take a closer look?" he asks, gesturing for the laptop.
"Be my guest," Shouto hums, tilting it further in Izuku's direction.
Even with his still semi-sleepy mind, Izuku bends over at the island and skims over the report. "The problem is," he begins matter-of-factly, "you're not accounting for the custody times of these villains, the levels of offense or anything. And how many arrests are typical for a single day? Because those numbers can equate to how many employees you need, and it's always good to have an arsenal of top twenty-five heroes," Izuku rambles, continues to talk about the extraneous variables not mentioned in the reports, all while Shouto ogles him. Finally, after he concludes his thoughts, he realizes he's just explained this all as if he's a statistics major by any means – in fact, he's a college dropout – and he bows his head, stammers an apology. "S-sorry, those are just my initial thoughts," he tries to excuse himself.
Shouto, in response, whistles. "Wow," he murmurs, and Izuku looks up to find Shouto's chewing on the eraser of the mechanical pencil in his hand. It's distracting. "I think you've thought about this more than half the damn heroes with the agency," he says finally, looking back up at Izuku. His eyes are wide, contemplative in a different way than Izuku's seen them before, at least in person. Like when he analyzes his opponents in news clips Izuku sees on television sometimes.
Izuku flushes under the praise, rubs his neck and grabs for his coffee again. "I mean, once you start to think about it, there are plenty of extraneous variables that get swept under the rug for the sake of a clean and simple report," he murmurs sheepishly. "It's like charging a serial killer and a tax evader with the same sentence."
Shouto hums, mulls this thought over, then finishes his coffee in one last gulp and pushes himself so abruptly from the counter that the barstool grates uncomfortably on the fancy linoleum tiles. "Come on," Shouto nods, leaves the kitchen and heads for the living room. And Izuku is told to follow, so he does, leaving his mug of half-finished coffee on the counter to cool.
Shouto's making a beeline for the piano when Izuku ventures back into the living area. He notices his wig and bobby pins sitting on the coffee table by the sectional, and he's about to apologize for leaving them out the night before when Shouto sits, unceremoniously, at the piano bench. He draws back the cover on the keys, then pats the bench next to him, watches Izuku expectantly. And Izuku can't disobey Shouto – he'd probably follow Shouto off a bridge, should Shouto choose to jump and wish for Izuku to jump with him – so he does, he sits next to him, and their thighs brush in the close proximity.
Shouto's fingers splay on the keys. They're more hesitant, less familiar with the feel of pianos, and Izuku splays his own fingers an octave away from his. Shouto wordlessly strums a C chord, and Izuku follows suit, and Shouto moves to D, and again Izuku follows his lead.
They make it until Shouto's right hand is where Izuku's left hand started, when Shouto speaks. "I played piano for a few years," he offers as a sort of explanation. "I'm nowhere near your level, but I know some."
Izuku hums, considers this for a moment. "You know more than most, I think," he says finally, and Shouto looks up at him. Izuku takes it as a sign to continue speaking. "Chords are the building blocks of entire songs, you know," he says, drops his voice to a murmur as they're so close, they're so close. "Most of my songs start with a broken chord," he adds, plays a broken A minor chord to emphasize his point. "Like, Midnight on the Moon. I start that one with this chord, it's just broken up between octaves." He strums B major next – full of black keys and fun to quirk his hands around. "And this one's at the beginning of Vibrato."
Shouto nods, like he's actually retaining this information. Izuku can't help but wonder if he actually cares about music theory, or if he's just being polite. He smiles sheepishly, brings his hands off the keys and settles them in his lap shyly. "I mean, ah, it's kind of a lot more than that. Obviously."
Shouto huffs a laugh, and Izuku feels some of his nerves melt away. "Can you show me?" he asks, his voice soft, like he's considering whether he should say it at all. And Izuku's eyes, which had wandered back to the keys, meet Shouto's again – those wide, imploring eyes, asking – no, begging for Izuku to play. And Izuku can only smile wider, his confidence reduced to a mere pebble in the presence of this strong, capable hero in front of him asking him to play for him and him alone. But still, he splays his fingers back over those keys, those new piano keys, ever so carefully.
And he plays.
It brings back more of the memories of last night, the little bits of him playing while Shouto and Ochaco and Tenya whispered to each other at the sectional. He feels wisps of the conversation wafting back at him now, like they've been clinging to the air in the living room since the night before. He hears Shouto, not whispering, but in a perfectly calm, steady voice, say, "I think he got hit with some Quirk."
And he hears Ochaco and Tenya agreeing, and Tenya mentioning how Izuku had been in contact with one of the employees when he stepped away to use the bathroom just before his performance.
He pulls back rather abruptly, and the clouds that have been following him, dragging his limbs uselessly around him, fully dissipate now. He looks to Shouto, confused and a little angry that he could be so easily manipulated – and even in the presence of three of the strongest people he knows. And he doesn't blame them, no; he blames himself for leaving without one of them to watch him, because he does remember shaking the hand of one of the employees who'd come up to him after he came out of the restroom, and he finds that after that is when he starts to lose recollection of anything aside from big events from the night before. And Shouto quirks a brow at him, asks the silent question of what's wrong, so Izuku answers.
"I was hit with a Quirk," he says, more of a statement than a question, because the memory of Shouto proposing it seems too real to be his imagination.
Shouto exhales, quiet, and rests his hands in his lap. He looks down at them, likely considering what to say, if Izuku's learned that facial expression at all. Finally he speaks, still looking at his hands as he does. "That's what I think. I can't be sure, though. Might have just been trauma."
"I've been feeling fuzzy since then," Izuku replies, vaguely gestures by wiggling his fingers. "Like, everything's been lagging."
"I don't want you performing there again."
When Izuku meets Shouto's gaze, he's met with the stern, tight-lipped frown he sees on Shouto just after he's finished fighting a villain and is being bombarded by media. He's met with the furrowed brow and heavy gaze of a weathered hero living inside a twenty-five year-old's body. He's met with Shouto, the number four pro hero, but not Shouto, his friend. Izuku opens his mouth and closes it again, huffs a short breath from his nose then nods. He knows Shouto has a point, and he hates seeing Shouto like this, but it's genuinely undeniable how well they pay. With Izuku's last check from there alone, he paid his entire rent and had a decent amount of money left over to cover a new lavender bowtie.
"Izuku," Shouto speaks again, sees that Izuku doesn't have a response for him aside from a short head-nod, "they're crafty. If they can manage to sneak around three U.A. students," he intakes a sharp breath, "if they can get past me, it's…dangerous."
Izuku nods again, lets his eyes drift back to his hands in his lap. But Shouto isn't having that, and he cups Izuku's jaw, so delicate and yet so stern that Izuku has to actively fight the urge to melt into a puddle right then and there. And Izuku's forced to make eye contact when Shouto opens his mouth again. "Do you agree?" he asks, and it's not what Izuku is expecting; if it were Katsuki, he'd have not taken 'no' for an answer. Izuku doesn't play gigs at quite a number of bars and lounges, now, because Katsuki hasn't liked the 'feel' of them. If it were Katsuki, he wouldn't be holding Izuku like this in the first place; he'd be cornering Izuku somewhere that he couldn't escape. Which, Izuku admits, doesn't get less scary over time.
But this is Shouto, this is pro hero-mode Shouto, holding his jaw like he could either heal all Izuku's wounds or end his entire life with one swift movement. And Izuku can't really think much beyond that, so when Shouto's fingers tighten minutely then drop from his face altogether, all he can do is watch them fall, listen to the hush of the apology that tumbles awkwardly from Shouto's lips. And friend-mode Shouto is back. Friend-mode Shouto, that most certainly doesn't think of Izuku the way Izuku thinks of him – as a friend. He bites back his bitterness with a smile.
"I agree," he murmurs, remembering the question that prompted all this. "You know what's best for me, I think, Shouto."
And before Izuku can turn back, face the piano in front of them, and strum away like he's not affected in the slightest by the handprint burning into his cheek from Shouto's delicate fingers, those same fingers are cupping his jaw again, and Shouto's lips meet his own.