Work Text:
Shouto’s dreams are built from ice.
They always are - always formless, jagged, blindingly bright and violently clear. Tonight, though, it is different. As his father’s fist comes down in its slow, graceless arc, as his mother’s broken, exhausted sobs reach a crescendo, Shouto’s fear is muffled, somehow.
Lesser.
Like he is aware that somewhere out there, there is something greater to fear.
His father is still moving towards him; his mother is still crying. Shouto braces himself for impact on instinct, because he knows what comes next. Ice and fire, inside his skin.
And then, right before the pain explodes in his cheek, his phone buzzes.
Oh, Shouto thinks.
Oh, right.
This is the something greater.
Shouto blinks.
He stands in an alleyway, streaked with grime and soot and blood. Panic tugs at his fingertips, sinks talons into his chest. Stain’s breath is hot on his cheek, his knife freezing cold inside his arm, but the alleyway is empty. Shouto is alone.
“Todoroki-kun,” someone whispers.
He spins.
Midoriya sits slumped, his back pressed against the wall, his eyes half-lidded and his mouth oozing blood. There are lacerations covering his cheeks, the line of his throat, his arms underneath the torn sleeves of his costume.
Midoriya says, again, “Todoroki-kun.”
There is a knife inside his chest.
His eyes slide shut.
Shouto takes a breath that feels like a sucker punch. Feels like a tragedy. Feels like a knife inside his own chest.
“No,” he whispers, “No, no, no, no, Midoriya - Deku - please, please, don’t-”
Midoriya stays motionless, but his voice echoes inside Shouto’s head.
“Todoroki-kun,” he says, insistent. “Todoroki-kun. Todoroki-kun!”
Shouto’s sits bolt upright in bed, breathing like he’s been training for hours, clutching at his chest with his good hand and trying to reassemble the treads of thoughts that are tangled hopelessly in his brain.
A hand touches Shouto’s shoulder, hesitantly, and he jerks away, hands balling into painful fists, jaw gritting down into a painful line.
Midoriya reels back, lifting his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“It’s okay,” he says. His eyes are wide and frightened, and maybe a little bit sad. Midoriya’s eyes have always contained the cosmos. The entire array of human emotion, the spectrum of the human experience, contained in one fifteen-year-old’s face. Shouto wonders if he ever aches with the weight of it.
“It’s okay,” Midoriya says. “It’s just me.”
Shouto nods and tries to force his shoulders to relax, but it seems like they’re trembling. And then he takes a breath, and it sits shaky in his mouth, and he realizes that they’re trembling because he’s crying.
Mortification blooms crimson inside his chest, but Midoriya doesn’t look uncomfortable or disgusted. He sits down gingerly on the side of Shouto’s bed and reaches up, slow and careful, giving Shouto plenty of time to dodge away.
His thumb catches the tear tracks and wipes them away.
“This is what my mom does when I have a nightmare,” Midoriya says, with an almost-smile. Like he’s confiding in Shouto. “She also makes me hot cocoa, but I don’t know if they’d let me leave the room to get you any.”
Shouto shakes his head. “It’s nothing,” he says, maybe a little more sharply than he intended. “I’m fine.”
Midoriya doesn’t look offended or hurt. He says, very matter-of-factly, “You were saying my name.”
Shouto wishes to God his quirk somehow allowed him to curl up on himself and disappear at will.
“The fight,” he admits, dropping his face into his hands and hoping his cheeks aren’t as red as they feel. “It-”
“You don’t need to explain,” Midoriya says, sounding baffled. And then he is peeling Shouto’s hands away from his face, taking them in his own. Lifting them to his mouth. Pressing a kiss to Shouto’s fingers.
Shouto’s brain shorts out.
He thinks he might say, “Oh,” but he isn’t really one-hundred-percent sure. Of anything. At all. He isn’t positive he remembers his own name.
“That’s another good trick to get rid of nightmares,” Midoriya says, his breath warm against Shouto’s hands, and all Shouto can seem to think is, How can Midoriya touch me without flinching?
Midoriya doesn’t break the contact. And the day Shouto pulls away from Midoriya Izuku’s touch voluntarily will also be the day they bury him in his grave. So their hands stay linked between them, like a lifeline, or a promise.
“You saved me, you know,” Midoriya says, quietly. Then he laughs. Breathy. The sound is incredibly distracting. “You were pretty cool, Todoroki-kun. You’re a really amazing hero.”
“You’re a really amazing hero, too,” Shouto answers, automatically.
Midoriya nods, surprisingly firmly. His face set, his expression determined. Something warm and familiar heats inside Shouto’s chest, affection blooming like spring through his veins.
“I’m getting there,” Midoriya says.
Shouto smiles a little bit, just the smallest curve to his lips, and it makes Midoriya beam, sudden and spun-glass-noontime-golden, like all he wants in life is to see Shouto smile.
Shouto blinks and sees Midoriya dead. The smile wiped off his face. Blood crusted in his ridiculous, incredibly endearing hair. Those infinity eyes closed.
“I was afraid,” he hears himself confess.
“So was I-” Midoriya begins, but Shouto shakes his head.
“I was so, so afraid. Of losing you.”
“Oh,” Midoriya murmurs. His eyes are still wide, but they are not frightened anymore. They’re something else.
Their palms slide together, Midoriya’s hands burning hot against Shouto’s. Shouto can feel the scars along his palms, his knuckles, the slight imperfections where the bones have broken again, and again, and again.
“You didn’t lose me,” Midoriya says.
He is stronger than ice and fire. He is stronger than anything Shouto has ever seen, and it is blinding, and it is brilliant.
“Midoriya-”
Midoriya drops his hands, squishes Shouto’s face between his palms. Makes sure Shouto is staring him straight into the eyes before he announces, “I’m not going anywhere.”
And then, as if to prove a point, he scoots Shouto to the side and clambers under the covers, flopping down onto the pillow and tugging the blankets up to his chin. “Not. Going. Anywhere,” he repeats, looking incredibly silly and endearing with the comforter pulled up to his face.
Shouto stares at him.
“Lay down,” Midoriya insists, reaching up to tug him gently down. Shouto lets him, lets Midoriya nestle himself against Shouto’s shoulder. Their legs bump and then tangle, warm warm warm against the ice in Shouto’s blood.
Midoriya’s fingers touch Shouto’s wrist. Shouto buries his nose in Midoriya’s hair.
That night, Shouto dreams of fire.