Chapter Text
A steady trickle of sweat makes its way down the valley cutting through the thick cords of muscle in Shouto’s back. Its movements are as sluggish as his own, lazily twisting and dancing and shimmying past the grooved indentations in his back before disappearing into the waistband of his shorts. The heat is making his shirt stick to the contours of his torso in a rather flattering fashion, he’s glad to note. He flings a hand up to shield his eyes from the dizzying glare of the August sun, breaking into a steady jog to get back to the safety of the locker rooms.
The hallways are ringing with peals of laughter, Kirishima’s raucous guffawing and Sero’s strangely breathless wheezes the most prominent among them. The rays of the afternoon sun filter in through the windows lining the corridor, its dull white tiles squeaking stupidly beneath his shoes as he strolls along leisurely. Shouto tips his head back, swallowing down the remnants of the energy drink Jirou had begrudgingly thrown at him on his way out, brushing away his surprised gratitude with a you’re lucky I’m dating your best friend, you asshole. Shouto chuckles when he thinks of Jirou’s reddened ears and closely knitted eyebrows as she had practically kicked him out the door. Momo truly struck gold with this one.
Shouto pushes against the eternally creaking doorway, barely stopping his stride as he shoulders his way in. The heavy stench of sweat and grime, interspersed with the distinctly fruity smell of Ojiro’s body wash that was taken as public property wafts towards his sticky form in a cloudy embrace. He wrinkles his nose in response, flicking the clasp of the bottle shut with an annoyingly loud pop that never failed to make their captain glare menacingly at him. Sure enough, Iida’s neck snaps ramrod straight in a second, mouth pulling into a displeased line as Shouto shrugs bashfully. It could have been intimidating, but the heat has made his glasses fog up. If anything, Iida constantly pushing his sliding spectacles up the bridge of his nose is hopelessly endearing, and Shouto smiles to himself as he makes his way to his locker.
“For fuck’s sake,” he hears Bakugou’s furious admonitions from the adjacent row as he wrenches open the door of his locker. The bag he had hurriedly stuffed inside before rushing off to practice tumbles painfully onto his sore feet. He shoots Tokoyami a grimace in response to his chuckle before stooping down to loop his fingers through the handle. “It isn’t that big of a deal.”
“If it isn’t that big of a deal, then how do you explain the twenty nine calls I’ve received from your mom since last night?” An unfamiliar voice counters sharply, greeted by a chorus of mutters. Shouto swears he hears Kaminari call out a loud go nail him, hero!
“What’s going on?” Shouto questions, perplexed, turning to shut his locker firmly before grabbing the ends of his shirt and peeling it off and over his head in one swift motion. The stench of his own sweat nearly makes him gag, and he tries not to wince when a particularly sticky patch sticks to his cheek on its way off.
Tokoyami shrugs. “Just a friend of Bakugou’s.” He glances up from his phone long enough to take in Shouto’s confused expression. The blue light from the screen reflects sharply in his pitch black irises. “Oh, you know, from the whole incident last night and stuff.”
Shouto nods. “Ah, that.”
It was fun, he can’t deny that. It had been a wildly spontaneous decision for the team to head out for Kirishima’s birthday, one that stemmed and grew and roared from a mild suggestion by Sero. They had even dragged an unwilling and scandalously spluttering Iida along, but a few traitors obviously had managed to worm their way into the ranks. Apparently, Tokoyami had a long due assignment he absolutely had to submit the very next day, Ojiro had a date with that bubbly girl from Environment Studies—Hagakure, Shouto thinks, and the others popped up with wildly different reasons for being unable to come along. Either way, Shouto and the others had gone bowling—because nothing managed to spur Bakugou Katsuki into an enraged competition more than Sero being able to get effortless strike after strike—screamed their lungs out at a karaoke, ate piping hot bowls of noodles from suspicious roadside stalls that were spicy enough to make their eyes water, and then gotten absolutely hammered at a bar (everyone except Iida and Shouto, of course—the former scrunching up his nose distastefully at alcohol, and the latter being the self appointed designated driver for the evening).
Now, it so happened that it had got very distracting to drive four extremely drunk college boys and one orderly chaperone back to their dorms while the others had been screaming in his ear. Shouto had clenched his jaw hard enough to shatter a few teeth the entire way, hands gripping the steering wheel and nearly snapping it clean off while he tried to ignore Sero and Kaminari’s howling rendition of Little Mix’s Wasabi while Iida snapped sharply at them to stay quiet. It was only when they had been speeding down the highway when Shouto had risked a glance in the rearview mirror, and dear lord—he felt like the image of Bakugou practically straddling Kirishima while they devoured each other’s faces, and the other two screaming lick me up, I’m sweet and salty, mix it up and down my body would be burned into the back of his eyes for eternity. He had instantly swiveled around in his seat to roar stop making out in my car, you horny fuckers before Iida had let out a rather shrill screech and twisted the steering wheel to the opposite side to avoid a head-on collision.
As it was, they did avoid being turned into bug juice splattered rather disgustingly along the front of the massive lorry, but the car wasn’t that lucky. Shouto and Iida had immediately sprung out to check if it would be able to make the journey back, but the once gorgeous beast had merely choked and spluttered out disturbing billows of smoke, almost as if wheezing out its last breaths. What pissed him off the most, in fact, had been the fact that Sero and Kaminari had simply moved on to the next paragraph, screeching the same lines over and over like a broken record. Bakugou—that annoying bastard—had merely pulled his face away long enough to flip him off before diving back in towards his boyfriend.
It hadn’t been that difficult to hitch a ride back—it was merely a ten minute journey and the driver had been incredibly kind, if not overly inquisitive—but word spread quickly. By morning, reporters had been swarming the painfully indented Porsche registered under the name of Todoroki Enji, and it had barely been nine in the morning before his phone had buzzed with an incoming call. Shouto hadn’t even felt mildly remorseful before lazily sliding a thumb across to decline it.
To his credit, he had replied to the slew of text messages and ignored phone calls two hours later with a single text message.
Next time, I want the steel grey one.
It was fun, riling his father up over and over again. Shouto didn’t care about how insensitively bratty and frigid his response was. He knew the man had only been trying to contact him to worm out of him little details about the incident. Who brought you back? Did anyone see? Did you tell your name? Of fucking course he had told his name, why wouldn’t he? He had practically shouted it out, yes, yes, I’m Todoroki Shouto, I’m the one who crashed the car, look how my father will let me off the hook in seconds. Let the world see how Todoroki Enji—the god of business tycoons, leading runner in the governor’s electoral race and grade A asshole—tried to buy his way to his son’s good books.
Next to him, Tokoyami laughs darkly. “You should be lucky you guys made it out alive. It could have been worse.”
Shouto speaks louder, trying to be heard over Bakugou’s answering shout of then don’t fucking pick up the phone, you moron. “Yeah, well, I saw Bakugou sitting in Kirishima’s lap. I think a part of my soul just shriveled away and died.”
Tokoyami lets out a sympathetic noise from the back of his throat, neck dropping again as he goes back to scrolling through his phone. Shouto grabs his towel and a change of clothes, tugging off the sweatbands fitted snugly against his wrists.
“Maybe if you got your head out of your ass long enough to stop being an insensitive prick and a coward would you answer your own mother’s calls, Kacchan,” Shouto hears the new voice scream back in retaliation, and the answering cacophony of whooping and hollering that rises up from the din reverberates inside Shouto’s skull. Tokoyami quirks an eyebrow at him, clearly impressed by the newcomer.
“Did you tell her I was driving while it happened?” Bakugou demands, his voice loud and enraged as it bounces off the walls.
“What? No, of course I didn’t—”
“Then how the fuck does she know I was there when it—”
“Apparently, the driver gave a vague description of what you guys looked like, and frankly, your head of hay isn’t really forgettable enough to—”
“How did she immediately connect me to that vague shitty description then—”
“Oh my God, you absolute fucking idiot!” The person mouthing Bakugou off screams and the explosion of noise that follows almost drowns out his furious growls. Shouto can’t fight the grin off his face as he swings the towel over one shoulder and makes his way to the showers.
The stalls are empty, and the entire team is huddled around Bakugou and his friend in the center. He rolls his eyes, hanging the towel up on the peg and sliding the curtains with a loud screech that goes unnoticed. The water hits the tight muscles in his back, and Shouto lets out a groan of relief, sinking forward with his forehead and arm braced against the tiled wall.
He’s just grabbing the shampoo bottle with slippery fingers when he tunes back into the conversation. He works up a thick lather, humming under his breath, when the next words suddenly hit him in the face with the force of a speeding truck.
“—Todoroki Shouto’s friends, and you think she wouldn’t know if—”
What? What? Why was he being brought into the conversation? (Okay, of course he would be, but he wasn’t ready for Feisty and Furious to go off on him as well.)
He tilted his body towards the sounds, discreetly twisting the shower knob to a bare drizzle of water against his skin, trying to listen in on the conversation.
“Yeah, he’s just—”
“Jesus, Kacchan, I’m already late for my next class, I don’t have the time presently to sit through your emotionally constipated life. Just call your mom, okay? Let her know you haven’t lost your memory or something.” There’s a pause, and his voice is searingly cheerful when he continues. “Love the hair, Kirishima. I’ll drop by after dinner, then.”
“Hey,” Bakugou snaps, and Shouto rolls his eyes chidingly from his safe haven inside the showers. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Katsuki!” Kirishima scolds instantly, although his voice is practically dripping with sugar. Shouto doesn’t even have to look to know the vomit-inducing heart eyes he’s giving his boyfriend. “Don’t be mean.”
“Whatever.” He hears Bakugou grunt.
“I really should go now, I’m running so late.” There’s a barely concealed hint of urgency in the boy’s voice. “I’ll see you people later.” Shuffling, and shifting. Silence.
“Hey, Kacchan?” He calls in an overly sweet voice, and it seems like the entire room is holding its breath at the tentative pause, teetering on the brink of oblivion. “Suck it, baby.”
The eruption of hoots and cheers is so loud that Shouto actually flinches, taking a step back as if it would protect him from the barrage of noises perforating his eardrums. He hears his team absolutely lose their shit, some of them cackling in unrestrained amusement while others clap thunderously with the occasional wolf whistle. Shouto clearly makes out Kaminari’s astounded scream of oh my god while Sero dissolves into his disturbing wheezy laughter.
Bakugou roars in response, yelling out a guttural get back here Deku, and the answering laugh is pleasant and breezy, gentle enough to feel like it washes over Shouto’s drenched form and leaves him warm and crisp, soaking in sunlight while cool drafts of wind tussle his hair. He feels a smile tugging at his own lips as the door to the locker room slams shut in retaliation and Bakugou lets loose some choice barbed curses.
Shouto chuckles. Huh, get back here, indeed.