Disclamer: Everything you can recognize is from Horikoshi's mind.
I came back and we are reaching the climax of the story.
I hope you enjoy this chapter!
As a TW: He we are actually starting with some depression and sadness, just saying.
Midoriya sat on the mattress, giving his back to Todoroki. He didn't have the strength to speak to him looking into his eyes. He believed that by putting up that barrier he would hurt less with what his friend would tell him. From where he was he could hear Todoroki taking a deep breath and throw the air back as hard as he could; he knew he was trying to calm down but it was starting to make him freak out.
"How do I tell him, without sounding desperate, that I really liked it?" He hid his face between his arms as he rested his elbows over his legs. "I want to kiss him again." He couldn't see his friend without remembering the feelings that had surfaced in him. "Earth, please, swallow me and spit me out on Jupiter."
"What do I do? It would be very disrespectful if I left him here without saying something." Midoriya was beginning to panic because of his thoughts; he couldn't make up his mind. "I'd like to kiss him again." He wanted to stay in the same room as him but a voice in his mind told him to get out of there as quickly as possible. "How do I explain that I don't want it to be the last time I taste his lips?"
Midoriya took out his phone and wrote a message to his mentor to tell him that he won't be training in the morning. He knew All Might will worry but he had the whole day off and could practice at any other time of the day. He looked at the reflection of the ceiling on the screen and had an idea: he moved the phone until he could see Todoroki. He was a bit surprised by his position; it looked like he was crying.
He placed the device on the table, between the empty glass and the perfectly folded towel, while he got up and took a deep breath. Midoriya quickly turned his body in the direction of his friend, confirming what he thought he saw earlier. He didn't think about it when he ran to the desk and put an arm around his shoulders.
He felt Todoroki jump from the contact and push him away, moving back with the chair. "At what point did I get to his side?" He saw his friend turn his face away, thinking that perhaps he was trying to hide his confused or nervous expression. He heard Todoroki clearing his throat as he placed his hands over his legs and squeezed his thighs, taking in all the air that fitted in his lungs.
Todoroki kicked off his feet to turn the chair, moving a little closer, and faced Midoriya. It wasn't long before he stared into his green eyes. The lump in Midoriya's throat grew larger and the butterflies that fluttered in his stomach gathered strength.
Midoriya understood that what he felt was a more personal and intense version of the sensation he had when he incited his friend to use his fire quirk during the festival. That day he learned two things about Todoroki: he had an enormous strength and self-control, and that he would even hurt himself to convince him.
"It's better if I go," Midoriya managed to tell him. He thought it would be better for them if he just walks away, they would have time to process what had happened that night.
Todoroki widened his eyes. Midoriya stood in the middle of the room, waiting for any kind of reaction from his friend, hoping he would at least agree or refuse what he said; he wanted Todoroki to give him a sign.
He couldn't take it anymore and, grabbing the phone from the table, he said goodbye to Todoroki with a nod. He turned the knob and pulled the door. Midoriya left the room without saying anything else, aware that he left Todoroki deep in his thoughts of him.
He went to his room almost on his tiptoes, contrasting with the speed with which he got there that night. He skimmed down the stairs, barely touching the railing, unconsciously searching for the softness of Todoroki's skin in the varnished wood.
Midoriya entered his room without turning on the lights; the darkness was perfect for the fight that raged inside him. He didn't move away from the door, placed his hands and forehead against the column beside him; he just wanted to control the rhythm of his breathing. His heart was pounding in his chest and he felt tears forming in his eyes.
"What was this all about?" He turned his body, pressing his back against the door and slowly began to slide until he reached the ground. "When did these feelings bloom?" He bent his legs close to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. "Why does it have to be him?" He lowered his head until he hid his face over them. "I don't want to feel like this," he murmured.
He began trembling more intensely. "What did I do?" He moved his hands down to his shins and wrapped his fingers around his ankles to push his legs closer to him. "All this is very strange." He let out a sigh suppressing the groan stuck in his throat. "Why, Todoroki?" He drew his hands up to his chest, crumpling his shirt between his fingers. The salty taste of his tears made him remember more intensely the sweetness of his friend's lips. "Why do you have to make me like this?"
He couldn't control it anymore. Midoriya started sobbing, making his crying sound even more painful. "You drive me crazy..." He didn't know when he ended up lying on the floor, hugging himself, wetting the floor with his tears. "...but I can't be with you." He had a hand over his mouth trying to keep his sorrow from being heard so loud. "You turned my life upside down..." His eyes were already starting to sting beyond what was bearable. "…but we can't be together."
He stayed in the same position for a long time and blocked from his mind the request of his body to move; he hardly had the strength to breathe. The ground was quite hard and uncomfortable. "I deserve it." The thought implanted itself in his mind like a seed about to germinate and plunged him deeper into his sorrows. "It is my punishment for letting me go." A high pitched voice in his head told him that it was enough, that he was hurting himself more by being like this. But the other voice was against that and it seemed as if he was pushing him off a cliff. "I don't learn."
A group of colored rays pierced his body making him react as he opened his eyes suddenly, startled. Midoriya tried to find in the shadows the energy he needed to keep going. He straightened himself up with his arms and leaned his back against the wall next to the door.
He looked back down at his hands; he could hardly see them but felt them entwined over his thighs. He took in all the air that his lungs allowed him to and raised his right arm a little while holding his breath, trying to detail the wounds on the back of his hand, turned his wrist and exhaled loudly forming a fist in the air.
The light of the day began to illuminate his room and he looked up at the sky with one idea in mind. "I have to do my best to understand this feeling." The clouds still didn't let him see the sun and made the landscape almost completely white. He hoped that it was a sign that his day would be as trouble-free as the sky that morning.
He left the room realizing the silence that reigned in the environment. "No one should be awake at this time." He went down the stairs slowly and reached the first floor, which, as expected, was empty but he heard weak noises coming from the kitchen, so he went there.
The closer he got, the more defined the smell coming from the partially open door was. "Who was trying to wake us all up?" He pushed the door, and suddenly the scent grew stronger. Midoriya was foolish for thinking that he wasn't very hungry. "Who could resist eating some freshly baked piece of cake?"
Sato walked by, balancing a stack of empty dished with his hands and placed them over the counter, next to the cake. He greeted him as he approached and asked him about what he was doing; he was surprised to learn that he was not able to sleep either. "But it won't be for the same reason as me... For sure not."
He grabbed the plate Sato handed him and ate the cake, congratulating him on being such a good pastry chef. "Sure, he's been practicing all his life to improve his quirk." The cake whetted his appetite and he decided to go see if there was anything in the pantry that he could prepare.
He enter in the next room, where the refrigerator and the cupboard were, his amazement was greater when he opened the wooden doors and realized that the pantry was almost empty, he looked among the remaining products and almost had a heart attack when he realized that the only thing he could do for lunch was soba. "Me and my luck, ugh."
He went to the stove, lit it, and placed a pot of water over it. Looked through the fridge for some vegetables while waiting for the water to boil, washed them and slowly sliced them. When he turned to look at the pot he realized that some of the water had evaporated and that he would need to add a little more to cook the noodles that were left in the bag.
He put what he had chopped to the side of the pot and went back to the pantry to get the little bottles of soy sauce and mirin. He thought about grabbing the bowls at once but chose not to, preventing them from falling and breaking. He left the sauces next to the vegetables and returned to the closet where the plates were, from where he took out four bowls. "I think there could be five but I'll see when they're ready."
He placed them on a tray while he wondered if he had forgotten any other ingredient. "The water, by All Might, I forgot about it again." He took the tray and was about to use his quirk to get there faster, and he would have if it wasn't for his fear of breaking the dishes.
"Hmm... this is great," someone whispered just as Midoriya came running to the stove.
"Hello!" he replied without realizing who was hiding under the hood of the sweatshirt.
Midoriya placed the tray dangerously close to the corner of the table and quickly dipped the noodles in the water, releasing the breath that he had begun to hold at some point.
"Did you prepare this?" Todoroki asked, placing his plate on the table in front of him.
Midoriya let out a cry when he recognized the voice and moved his arms quickly to cover his mouth with his hands. He wasn't able to avoid it. The crack of the dishes breaking from the impact stressed him even more and he immediately heard a gasp from his friend when he realized what had happened.
"Why did it have to be him?" Midoriya thought, bending down to pick up the tray and the large pieces that were left from the bowls. He took the opportunity to hide behind the table that separated them; although the strategy didn't last very long.
He soon had Todoroki in front of him. He had circled the isle revealing his characteristic bicolored hair and he moved a little closer to him, watching him with doubt plastered all over his face. Midoriya stood up nervously pressing the tray against his chest; he could feel his cheeks turning red.
Midoriya immediately saw Todoroki covering the floor with ice, now it was him who saw his friend without understanding what he was doing.
"It's easier to move an ice cube than to go around picking up tiny pieces of pottery," Todoroki said, standing in front of him.
He put a hand to his forehead for not having thought about it before and, as he always did when Todoroki surprised him, unconsciously curled his lips in a smile. "At good time I realize this," thought, sarcastically.
Todoroki didn't seem to believe his eyes. He pushed the cube to leave some free space for Midoriya so that he could continue with what he was doing. He saw his friend out of the corner of his eye as he heated the cube, melting the ice in an instant and deforming the ceramic until only an, easy to separate from the ground, paste has formed.
Midoriya was still standing at the side of the isle; still hugging the tray. "He said the cake was very good." He turned his face to where the dished were and saw one of them empty. He felt ashamed because Todoroki now thought that he prepared it. "Why are these things always happening to me?"
He set the empty tray aside and grabbed the pot to remove it from the heat, the cooking time had passed and the noodles were beginning to fall apart and blend into each other. He was able to save enough to prepare two dishes. "I'm going to eat one now and leave the other here, so whoever want it can..." He felt the presence of Todoroki next to him interrupting his thoughts.
Midoriya would have caused another disaster had it not been for the bowl that he was holding in his hands was only a few millimeters above the table. "But who gave me such bad luck?" He took two pairs of sticks out of the drawer and placed one couple over each bowl, feeling the steam emanating from them. He pushed one of the bowls to the other end of the table. "He loves soba." Midoriya, nervously, motioned for Todoroki to come closer.
"Why did we only ended up with two bowls?" Midoriya took a couple of steps to the chair on the other side of the isle and sat down. He didn't want to look up from his plate but he still was able to see his friend standing in the same place.
The expression on Todoroki's face showed that he was not expecting him to cook something, and if he was honest, it wouldn't have occurred to him to prepare something for him after the night they had had. "It seems to me that he wasn't affected at all." Todoroki walked to the place that his friend had indicated on the table and waited a moment for Midoriya to lift his face from the bowl, but gave up shortly after grabbing the chopsticks.
Midoriya watched him take some noodles and put them in his mouth, making him open his eyes as wide as he could. "I overcooked them for a long time, of course he was going to notice." Todoroki repeated the action and continued with the surprise drawn on his face as he shook his head gently and looked up until he saw Midoriya's green eyes watching him bewildered.
"They are very good," Todoroki said smiling; he knew he couldn't refuse a plate of soba anyway.
"Seriously?" Midoriya looked nervous and bit his lip helplessly. "I overcooked them a bit, sorry."
"It's no big deal." Todoroki placed the chopsticks over the bowl without looking away from him. "I don't know if you knew but I like them better this way."
"Seriously?" He repeated the same question; he was really surprised at this point. "In the end, it wasn't that bad that I overcooked them."
"They were always like this when I was younger so I got used to it," he replied with a shrug. "Now I prefer to eat them this way…" He seemed to be trying to get the word right. "Nostalgia, I guess."
"Todoroki," It's better to tell him at once, "the cake you tried before..."
"It was really good, I didn't know you baked cakes too," he whispered before putting a mouthful of noodles back in his mouth.
"I just didn't do it," he confessed, making his friend choke with the food.
He watched Todoroki gasping for air as he tried not to keep coughing. "So what I thought at first was correct, he actually believed it was mine." Midoriya watched as the expression on his friend's face grew darker, the corners of his lips curved down and he narrowed his eyes looking directly at him
"Why did you let me believe you did it?" He said with the most pained tone he had ever heard from him.
"I don't know…" Midoriya put a hand on the back of his neck and began to blush. "I didn't affirm it, I didn't think... I just didn't deny it."
"Midoriya…" Todoroki sighed, saddening his gaze. "It is not okay to fool people. Do you do that very often?"
"No... Todoroki, no!" Midoriya exclaimed, waving his arms in front of him, almost knocking his bowl over to the ground. "It was not my intention, I didn't want to..." he saw how his friend began to laugh.
"What happened? Shouldn't I be upset? What was so funny to you?" Midoriya just was entirely shocked.
"Sato?" Todoroki asked covering his mouth with his hands, watching as his friend nodded. "I figured it out."
Todoroki had not stopped laughing as Midoriya raised an eyebrow and tilted his head more to the side with each passing second.
"Why are you laughing this much?" Midoriya asked, puzzled. "Could it be that you never believed me and just played along?"
"I thought it was fun to pretend that you broke my heart…" He laughed again, "but I couldn't continue acting, sorry."
"Todoroki…" Now it was Midoriya who was narrowing his eyes. "What were you thinking?" He couldn't explain why it made him feel so bad that he did that to him.
"I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to bother you but I was amused by it," he whispered, pressing his lips to form a fine line.
"See you later," Midoriya muttered, rising from his seat and heading towards the door.
Woohoo! hehehe.
Well, I don't know if you can tell but I was kind of enjoying making both characters sad, whoops.
We officially are half-way though the story.
Thank you A LOT for reading, I hope you are enjoying it.
If you saw any mistake or something wasn't understandable, don't hesitate to let me know in the comment section down below...