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Sero Hanta was under no illusions as he stepped up onto the stage.
He didn’t stand even one hell of a chance against Todoroki.
But then, he knows what it’s like to be the underdog. And that’s not going to stop him from giving it his all!
What does stop him though, is a wave of ice and overwhelmingly freezing cold, pinning him to the absolute glacier manifested by the classmate across from him with barely a single press of one foot against the ground.
In truth, he’s been so very hopelessly outclassed and on live tv no less.
“D-Don’t you,” he manages to say, his teeth clacking together so hard he’d be shocked if anyone could even understand him. “Don’t you think that was a bit much?”
Todoroki doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look at him, and it hurts, more so even than the biting cold seeping into every single inch of him, the way that he’s not even worth Todoroki’s time to be given a response.
“Sero-kun!” Midnight shouts, her own teeth chattering as she waves her whip with the one arm not frozen by her proximity to the blast. “Can you move?”
“O-Of course not!” Hanta chatters back, trembling and shaking within his skin in a way that tells him he’d be helplessly shivering if only his body could move at all.
A small muted, “ow,” slips out unbidden because fuck but this hurts, and Sero finds himself wishing he could just sink through the floor, wishes he’d never gotten out of bed this morning, wishes he wasn’t as pathetic and weak as he is.
“Sorry,” Todoroki says, stepping closer and lifting his left hand and not sounding remotely sorry at all. “I went overboard.”
If there was any part of Hanta not currently occupied with just how very cold he is, and trapped he is, how very fucking painful it is to have ice biting through his thin nothing of a gym uniform, clinging to his skin and bones to seep into his very blood like he’ll never be warm again, well… well maybe Hanta would have graced Todoroki with an angry, “no shit sherlock,” or something.
As it is, it’s all he can do to try and smile through the ringing chant of “don’t worry about it!” echoing through the entire arena, like he didn’t already feel pathetic and useless enough.
Wow, he sucks so much, was outclassed so very much, that even literal pro heroes who came to scout out interns feel sorry enough for him to try and cheer him up.
How so very pathetic he must look.
“I was angry,” Todoroki adds, his left hand looming closer with a faint shimmer surrounding it as he preemptively heats the air and–
And Hanta can’t help it.
He flinches.
It’s nothing personal really, at least he doesn’t think it is. It’s purely reflexive, his classmate’s hand reaching out to touch him so soon after decimating him so publicly and hanging him out to dry.
And it’s stupid he knows, he’d watched the mock battles during All Might’s first class, he knows that the first thing Todoroki does after securing an icy win is melt everything back down afterward with his left hand radiating heat.
And yet…
And yet…
There’s a part of him that can’t forget the look on Todoroki’s face as he’d attacked, the way his eyes had been almost crazed and consumed with hatred and rage and–
And Todoroki’s eyes might not look like that any more– granted he can’t really see with the way Todoroki’s head is hanging low so that his hair overshadows his eyes. But there’s still a twist to Todoroki's mouth, a displeased set to his shoulders that Hanta would need to be blind to miss.
And well…
His body had reacted to a perceived threat.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Hanta laughs awkwardly, forcing a smile he doesn’t feel as he says through chattering teeth, “Ha sorry about that. Guess I’m a bit jumpy…”
Todoroki doesn’t respond.
In fact Todoroki hasn’t moved since Hanta first flinched back, his left hand still raised and ready and radiating a wave of heat that is almost close enough to touch but not quite.
The parts of the ice close enough begin to melt at the proximity but it’s barely a drop in the bucket considering the massive glacier Hanta is currently jutting out of.
And yet still, Todoroki doesn’t move.
And when Hanta ducks his own head as low as he can from within the confines of his position it’s to see that Todoroki has gone bone pale, his eyes wide and almost unseeing, his breaths visible in the air again– and the sight of them puffing out harsh and quick has confusion shooting through him.
Hanta is the one currently playing human popsicle.
What the fuck does Todoroki have to be fresaked out about?
But as he watches his classmate spiral in real time right before his eyes he can’t help but want to help.
***
Todoroki Shouto had stepped onto that platform with a goal.
Show the old man just how far he could go with his mother’s quirk alone.
Show his bastard of a father that he was nothing like him.
And yet…
And yet…
Sero is in pain, it’s clear to anyone with eyes to see.
And Shouto did that.
Shouto was angry at his father and he took that anger out on someone else, someone that had nothing to do with it, someone that didn’t deserve it.
And he didn’t even need to use his fire to hurt someone for no reason.
Turns out, he’s more like his old man than he’d ever wanted to admit.
The sight of Sero, his classmate, a boy his very own age, flinching back at the sight of Shouto’s hand looming towards him, fearful of Shouto in a way that Shouto himself has only ever felt about Endeavor…
It makes him feel sick.
Makes his heart clench and then race in his chest.
Makes his breath come short and his vision go blurry and his knees go weak and–
“H-Hey.”
It’s soft and not unkind and Shouto gasps at the realization that Sero is now looking at him with obvious concern.
“Are you okay?”
The question has a pang of an unnamable emotion hitting him and Shouto almost wants to laugh, to scoff, to sneer.
He is fine! He is not the one trapped in ice for– oh god how long has it been? So stupid so selfish, even at the USJ he’d been mindful not to freeze the villains too badly and yet with his own classmate in what should have been a minor competition he'd suddenly had no qualms with overkill?
What if Sero is hurt? What if his quirk is damaged? Tape requires a structural integrity to the formula and surely the cold can’t be good for it and–
Shouto lurches forward on unsteady feet almost in a panic, his left palm slapping against the ice like if he can just crank the heat up fast enough he can erase the fact that this had ever happened, that he’d ever done such a terrible thing, that he would ever do something like–
He catches a glimpse of his reflection in the shining ice walls before him and it’s all red hair and blue eye and sparks of flame leaping across his face as he tries to melt Sero out before too much damage can set in and…
And…
He really is exactly like his father.
Exactly like his mother had said.
Unsightly.
Unbearable to look at.
He should just give up and accept the fact that he’ll never be any more than–
Sero falls forward, free of the ice at last, practically crashing into Shouto’s arms and it’s less of an embrace and more of a heapless collapse as the two of them go crashing to the ground in a sudden tangle of cold and hot limbs.
It’s more touch than Shouto can ever remember getting and yet Sero doesn’t pull away.
“I’m really sorry,” Shouto struggles to say, his voice coming out trembling and low like it thinks he can hide his shame if only he speaks the words quietly enough.
Sero hugs him tighter and though a part of Shouto knows it’s just so the other boy can warm up and leech even more heat off of Shouto, he finds that he doesn’t want the embrace to end.
“I know.” Sero says, his hair glittering with icicle dust and his eyes gazing at Shouto like he can see right through him. “Now breathe.”
The world still feels too heavy, the realization that merely avoiding half of his quirk is not enough, it’s in his actions and how he treats others that he can truly be someone different than Endeavor’s masterpiece.
But for now, with the quiet acceptance and hopeful olive branch of the boy he had just humiliated, Todoroki Shouto pushes it all down and breathes.