happy birthday izzi

Todoroki knocks at Kirishima's door at exactly 5:00pm on their first Saturday after the end of their world.

There's faint bags under his eyes, but his skin is free of bandages and burns. There's a thin cut on the back of his hand that has healed over enough to look like a cat scratch, and his bruises have faded enough to look like shadows. He holds an entire armful of hair dye, bleach, and little plastic bowls and combs.

He looks Kirishima right in the eyes, and says, with his characteristically calm and serious tone, "Kirishima, teach me the ways of hair dye."

Obviously, Kirishima takes a moment to assess the situation. Despite the bags under his eyes, there's a pull on his cheek and lips. He's standing up straight, almost on the toes of his feet instead of the heels, and all of these little cues in body language point towards Todoroki being excited, nervous, but content at the same time.

No coercion or peer pressure then. Todoroki has gathered hair dying materials and knocked on Kirishima's door of his own free will.

He wonders when he started to read Todoroki so well. Maybe it was between training sessions and group projects and mock rescues. Maybe it was when Todoroki started to use his flames and started to be more open with his emotions.

He hoped that all of the recent news and events won't cause him to clamp up now. He saw Dabi's confession video on the newscasts. He's seen the comparisons between the criminal and the little middle school boy with sad looking eyes. He's seen the twitter arguments, discourse threads, and Todoroki's name being torn between both.

Todoroki, who stands before him now. With white hair dye and bleach.

"Uh, sure?" Kirishima opens his door and Todoroki marches inside, depositing his collection onto the rug and arranging it neatly into a row.

He swallowed. "Shouldn't we go to the bathroom for this? Unless you want to destroy my carpet."

"I want to make sure I have all of the correct materials and am properly prepared for the situation at hand." Todoroki explains, seriously as always. That's one thing that Kirishima likes most about Todoroki. He puts the same amount of effort into any situation he's faced with, be it a casual conversation or a battle. The deadpan, calm and collected tone that he uses whenever talking to Eri about ducks or facing down several villains twice his size.

"Okay. Makes sense! So manly. So," Kirishima begins, walking around Todoroki to inspect his box of hair dye, bleach, and then his hair. It was clean looking, but touching it revealed a slight layer of natural grime. The red hairs were a completely different texture from the white. The white itself was also not a pure white, like Kirishima expected. It was a very light grey, slightly curly, and soft to the touch. Kirishima wiped his hand on his jorts. "We should probably bleach and dye the entirety of your hair instead of just the red side so you can get a clear color base. You want it all white, right?"

Todoroki nods. "I'm okay with bleaching both sides as long as it turns out white in the end. I am also willing to use spray-in hair dye temporarily if this does not work correctly." He nudges a particular spray can with his foot.

"We won't have to do that," Kirishima smiles. "You may need a bit more bleach on your red side though, just so we can get the texture the same. The bleach may strip away some of your curls, but not enough to make a huge difference."

Todoroki reached up to gently feel his slightly curly hair, and then to his much spikier red strands. A flicker of emotion crossed his eyes, but it was quickly snuffed out before Kirishima could identify it. "That's fine with me."

"Do you have clothing you're okay with ruining forever?"

"Hm," Todoroki hums, looking down at his slacks and button up. "No, I am emotionally attached to all of my garments. Except perhaps my underwear."

"Fair enough," Kirishima opens his dresser to grab one of the first shirts with bleach stains he sees, and tosses it at Todoroki. It hits him in the face, obscuring his left side.

"Wear this, it'll protect your skin. Go down to the bathroom and wash your hair, I'll be down in a minute with your stuff and a hair dryer I have to steal from Shouji."

Todoroki nods, and leaves almost as swiftly as he came in. He does not remove the shirt from his face.

Kirishima lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

One of the unspoken rules of 1-A was the helping of Todoroki becoming more confident within himself and around other people. It was never discussed, never mentioned, only communicated with knowing looks and long glances behind his back. It was the includedence of Todoroki in social outings, showing him movies and TV shows, and laughing at his few jokes. This was all usually instigated by Midoriya, who always was able to read his friend the best. But with Midoriya still asleep...

Heroes save people, and Todoroki needed a delicate type of saving. One that requires friendship, and support. One that Midoriya and Bakugou cannot provide right now.

One that is in jeopardy. One that hinged entirely on Kirishima's actions from the moment Todoroki knocked on his door.

Kirishima gathered up his dyeing materials into a sack and hopes that he's making the right choice.

He helps Todoroki dry his hair until it's fluffy and warm. He's sitting on one of the bathroom stools while Kirishima carefully strings the hair dryer back into the outlet he plugged it into from the hallway. The bathroom is a traditional Japanese bathroom, so there were no outlets in the bathroom itself as the entire room is designed to get wet. There was a permanent layer of dampness on the floors and a step-in bathtub. The several drains on the floor and waterproof tile flooring prevented rot and made cleaning easier. If Kirishima had dropped the hair dryer, he and Todoroki would have gotten electrocuted and died but that's a risk he's willing to take for a comrade in hair dyeing adventures. Japanese style bathrooms had no toilets, and the very thought about pooping in the same room you bathe and shower in seemed very… unsanitary to Kirishima. It's not manly to pee in the shower, after all.

Kirishima grabs some vaseline from his pocket that he stole from Bakugou's shower cubby. He was down to his cargo shorts while Todoroki is in boxers and in Kirishima's old shirt. Super manly. True men have no problem with nudity among comrades, but to protect Todoroki's delicate skin Kirishima elected to have him wear the traditional hair dyeing tee shirt.

"The shirt you are wearing is my family's traditional hair dyeing shirt," Kirishima explains while combing Todoroki's hair into its respective color coded sides. "My mothers both wore that shirt when dyeing their hair, and it was passed to me when I first wished to explore the hair coloring world."

Todoroki touches the hem of the shirt. "I am honored," he says seriously. "To be wearing such an important family garment."

Kirishima laughed, not unkindly. It echoed off the empty bathroom walls.

"So, generally, hair needs to be completely dry before you bleach it. It has something to do with chemistry. Probably." Kirishima started petting a think layer of vaseline along Todoroki's hairline. Todoroki shivered a bit.

"What's this for?"

"Protecting your skin," Kirishima explains. "Bleach can irritate it. Plus, this way when we dye it, it won't color your skin."

Todoroki nodded. Somehow, vaseline got on his nose. "Isn't this Bakugou's, though? Wouldn't he be mad?"

Kirishima's expression hardened. "He can be mad at me when he comes back," he says firmly.

The silence stuck out like a sore thumb as Kirishima tied up Todoroki's hair into two dual aft pigtails. The silence stretches on while they don't mention how Bakugou is being treated for his injuries. They don't talk about the letters they got shoved haphazardly under their doors in the middle of the night. They don't discuss Bakugou angrily stomping around with his own letter clenched in his hands, his blood seeping through his thick bandages and his face going pale. They don't mention the absence of shampoo and soap in one labeled cubby.

They don't discuss the end of the world. But they can both feel it, heavy on their shoulders and their tongues.

Kirishima kneels down on the floor, before popping the cap off of the bleach and developer and eyeballing about 60 grams of each into a bowl. The thick chemical smell makes his eyes water. Todoroki hands him a brush, and Kirishima mixes the two together into one gelatinous blob.

"Wait, is this a paintbrush?" Kirishima asks, holding the brush up to the light. The black bristles had been bleached white.

"Yes?" Todoroki raised an eyebrow. "Momo made it for me."

"Okay." Not even going to question that. Kirishima proceeded to dump a generous amount of mysterious liquid into the bowl. A few of the bristles from the hairbrush broke off and became one with the bleach. They are part of the collective now.

"What is that?"

"God's gift to mankind." Kirishima grins, tossing the bottle at Todoroki. It bounces off of his shoulder and goes carrening across the bathroom, before falling into the empty bathtub. "Coconut oil. It'll protect your hair from damage from the bleach."

"Aren't you allergic to coconuts?"

"Itchy skin is a small price to pay for bomb ass hair."

Kirishima got a generous amount of bleach on the Momo-made hairbrush. He inhaled quietly, before gently coating the right hand side with the bleach. He undoes the ponytail, divides the hair up into sections. Just like how his moms taught him, he makes sure to go down all the way to the roots to the ends of the hair. Todoroki closed his eyes, almost like a cat being petted. It was cute. Kirishima was careful to not let any of the bleach touch Todoroki's skin, especially the scar tissue.

Kirishima's heart tightened when he saw it. It was long rumored that Endeavour gave Todoroki that scar, even before the child abuse allagations came out with Dabi's video. Kirishima's no idiot. He knows exactly why Todoroki wants all white hair. It's not to mimic his brother, it's to erase any trace of his father.

"Hey," he says, pushing Todoroki's head down to get the hair on the back of his neck. "Are you doing okay?"

Todoroki doesn't say anything. Kirishima can't see his face, but he can see how his shoulders tighten and his hands twitch in his lap. Todoroki wanted to say something, but couldn't. Or felt like he shouldn't. It was eating him up from the inside, manifesting in impromptu hair dyeing adventures on an early Saturday night, under the guise of teenage rebellion.

"Do you know why I started to dye my hair?" Kirishima prods. "I went to middle school with Mina. One time, I was walking home. I had just applied to UA, turned in my application to my homeroom teacher and everything. I was feeling great."

Todoroki didn't say anything, and his shoulders stayed just as tense. "And then I turned around. This giant of a man- had to be at least 3 stories tall- was harassing some girls I was classmates with. I had never talked to them. I didn't even know their names. He was leaning over them, asking where some hero agency was. He was wearing nothing but this giant sheet, and although I couldn't see anything I think he was in full view of those girls. No shoes and no clothing otherwise. Some sort of radio around his neck that was blaring a morning talk show. They looked terrified."

Kirishima slowly worked a second coat over Todoroki's hair, and could see his face now. Eyes wide, listening intently. "So I looked around for a hero- anyone- to save them. To shout for help. But there was no one. And I realized that I was the only one that could save them. I was the only one that noticed the danger those girls were in. I willed myself to move, but I couldn't. I was frozen."

Kirishima let out a shaky laugh. "And then Mina rushed around the corner, dove between the girls, and gave some half assed directions to the nearest police station. She was great, with this determined expression on her face. The villain thanked her, and shuffled off. And she fell to her knees, crying. I was still frozen, and I kept asking myself, 'Why didn't I go? Why didn't I move?'"

Todoroki's lips parted. Kirishima quickly continued his story before he could interject an unwanted apology. ""Then Mina fell to the ground, crying. Her friends hauled her off, and the next day I apologized to those girls. I erased UA from my application for high schools. Then, I read this story on the news. Some kid our age had been taken hostage in a villain fight, and his friend, quirkless, ran in to save him. It inspired me. It made me realize that I needed to break down any wall in my way. I needed to stop thinking and save." Kirishima pounded his fist into his palm.

"So I dyed my hair red, and started styling it with horns. Like I'm carrying a bit of Mina's confidence everywhere with me. 'Maybe one day I'll be as brave as her,' I kept thinking. And that's my goal, to become as manly as her."

Todoroki looked enthralled with the story. "You used hair dye as a confidence booster," He said, slowly.

Kirishima awkwardly scratched the back of his neck with his bleach-free hand. That's not really the conclusion he wanted Todoroki to come to, but it'll work for now. "Yeah, basically. It's a reminder that I should never falter again."

Todoroki nodded. Kirishima started a thin layer on his left hand side, just enough to get rid of the slight grey traces. To make his hair as white as snow.

"I guess," Todoroki begins, closing his eyes. "I guess I wanted to cut all ties with him. I was so ready to forgive him. He had been working hard to attone. He said he didn't want forgiveness, but I was willing to give it to him."

"And now?"

"I can't, now. Before, I felt like I knew all of the pieces of the story. But now I realize that I barely knew anything. I didn't know that our father loved him even without the perfect quirk. I didn't know that there was a reason I was kept separate from my siblings. I didn't know that my father used my siblings just as much as he used me. Touya opened up so many old wounds that I didn't know were still festering."

Todoroki fell silent. Kirishima realized quite suddenly that his scarred eye was unseeing. He was blind completely in his blue eye.

"I want to cut all ties with him."

"Because of your brother-"

"He isn't my brother," Todoroki snaps. His eyes hardened. "My brother is dead."

They sit in silence. Kirishima puts the brush down.

"I hate him. I hate him because I know he won't be able to handle Touya. I hate him because it's up to me to deal with him."

"That's not very manly of him," Kirishima mumbles.

"I know," Todoroki nods. "He was trying so hard to atone for his mistakes, but he simply does not have the power to do so. The hero Endeavor may be strong, but Enji Todoroki is weak willed. I cannot give him the benefit of the doubt again. I will not make the same mistake twice."

He touches his scar, carefully. With two fingers. Just how he touched Kirishima's shirt just a few minutes ago. Like it was something precious, and fragile. Kirishima realized quite suddenly that even after a whole year of learning Todoroki's body language and habits, he knows very little about him. He only recently learned he had any siblings at all, and that was only because of Dabi's- Touya's- his brother's -

Todoroki's hair had different textures. Thick, a little wavy on one end and almost spikey on the other. Even with his hair dyed to the same shade, it will still be obvious that his hair was once two-toned. Maybe that was just because Kirishima knew him so well, or maybe he will never get the picture of Todoroki with his natural hair out of his head.

Once it becomes white, however, it will be a perfect dyeing base. It was almost sad that Todoroki wanted to keep it pure white, even though Kirishima understood his reasoning. When Kirishima first bleached his hair, his dark thick locks turned a very surprising shade of orange.

Actually, that may be a funny story to tell. Break the tension. Bring Todoroki back to this bathroom at UA, and not in whatever mindscape he disappeared off to.

"So my hair's naturally black, right?" Kirishima starts. He shoves a plastic shower cap over Todoroki's head. Todoroki looks very surprised at this development. "I first bleached my hair by following the instructions to the T. I knew I had to wait a week between bleaching to prevent damage, so I only made enough for one coat. Then, I washed it off and conditioned it, expecting my hair to be somewhat bleached, maybe grey or something. Since that's how colors worked. I looked up in the mirror, and I'm orange!"

Todoroki smiles softly. Kirishima grins back at him.

"So for a whole week, I was Orange Riot!"

Todoroki's smile grows bigger. "Like a peach?"

Kirishima lets out a roaring laugh. "Yeah, a total peach head. For a whole week! I barely left my room. My moms teased me endlessly. Whenever I do a bleach to fix my roots now, I just do it all at once since my hair is thick enough to not get damaged."

"Is that what you did for me?"

"Oh, I didn't think your hair was thick or dark enough for three coats," Kirishima explains. "I just did two light coats. After half an hour it should be enough to be fully white, actually."

"So, we just leave this in for half an hour?"

"Basically," Kirishima takes the bowl of developer and bleach and takes it over to one of the shower heads, and starts to scrub off the gunk. "Maybe forty-five minutes. We'll take a peak every fifteen or so."

"Let's go back to my room then," Todoroki stands, and puts the stool back under the cubbies. "I want to watch this show Mina told me about."

"Let's do it!" Kirishima fist pumped. Friendship is so manly.

Todoroki ducks his hair under the stream of water running into the shower drain. His fingers dig into the gritty texture of his hair, carding it through to make sure all of the thick, oily chemicals get out. He wears gloves, because Kirishima insisted that his hands are much too fair to deserve such treatment. Todoroki thinks that bleaching his red arm hairs would be worth slight itching, but he takes Kirishima's advice. He is the hair boss, after all.

Kirishima gasps. Todoroki's heart freezes.

"Is it bad?"

"Nonono, not at all!" Kirishima frantically sputters.

"Am I a peach riot."

"Nope!"

Kirishima turns off the shower head and wraps Todoroki's hair in a towel before rubbing aggressively, shaking out the excess water.

"I am emotionally prepared to be peach riot."

Kirishima laughs at that. He removes the towel, before shoving Todoroki in front of the mirror. "Dude, just look!"

Todoroki does. And he gasps, just a little.

He looks so much like his mom that for a moment he thought she was in the bathroom with him, just across the counter top filled with cubbies. The framing of his damp white hair makes his scar look softer, less angry. The bleach had done its job, thanks to Kirishima's expertise. There was no longer such a harsh line between the two quirks in his body, but a softer, blurred line. He looked softer. He was softer.

He reached up to touch the base of his scar. Somehow, without the red hair framing it, it looked almost like a birthmark. Less of a harsh, angry burn scar and more of a memory. He didn't look like a man with a tragic past, he looked like a boy. If he wasn't completely blind in that eye, he would almost believe it was one.

"You look so manly," Kirishima breathes.

"No," Todoroki says with a smile. "I look like my mother. I look womanly."

They admire their handiwork for a few silent moments. His left side was a bit peachy, but it still looked so better than it did before. The strands of hair didn't feel damaged, and the conditioner Kirishima rubbed in smelled of shea butter.

"We should probably still dye your hair completely white anyway. So you don't look like peach riot. We'll do it tomorrow morning. I want to finish that episode we were on."

Todoroki nods. Then, an idea strikes him. His face lights up.

"Do you think Bakugou will recognize me?"

Kirishima grins.

some notes

from what we can see from the manga the bathrooms they use look like traditional japanese bathing rooms designed to occupy more people, which is probably typical of a dorm style living situation. whats cool about this is that the entire bathroom itself is designed to get wet, so you actually shower outside of the bathtub before going into the bath to soak. you have to be CLEAN before getting in the bathtub tho, so bathing in a bathtub is seen more as a relaxing thing then a chore. think like laying on the sofa after a long day.

the restrooms, or the toilet room, are in a separate room and include a sink as well. since this is a communal bathroom i included a mirror and cubbies, but that probably isn't common. for obvious reasons, i'm not going to look up "japanese dormitory bathrooms" on google, so i just used some common sense and some leeway.

its also more common to have a stool or something similar to sit on while you're taking a shower. thats why todoroki is sitting on some random stool. japan also in general doesnt use fixed shower heads, but the type that can detach from the wall. it makes more sense considering the design of the bathroom itself.

also, remember that nudity isnt as huge of a deal in japan but i know it is in the us. so realistically kirishima and todoroki would probably be doing the hair dying process without clothes so they dont stain them, but to keep it somewhat sfw for the english speaking audiences i just used the traditional american hair dye outfit, underwear and an old shirt. obviously, me explain how bathing culture works in japan using underage teenage boys is obviously a no-go. kirishima is wearing no shirt because nudity among men is super manly.

i wanted to use this fic as somewhat educational because a lot of people just getting into anime might be like "why is communal bathing such a common thing in anime?" or "why don't they eat eggs for breakfast?" and other little cultural differences. my number one pet peeve is fics that dont do the bare minimum of google searches to get differences right, and end up writing in a complete western worldview.

please remember to subscribe for ch2, which is coming out in a few days!