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Shouto was the first in the classroom. He had made sure it was the right one before entering. He couldn’t decide what was better—being here alone with no need to engage in conversation with the others, or not.
Soon, somebody would arrive and maybe he could pull off some conversation, maybe he could give small talk a try, but Shouto knew it wouldn’t go like that. He wouldn’t know what to say so he would barely say anything and then they would write him off as standoffish. A trait that would carry to the rest of the school year.
At least nobody would bother him and he would be able to focus on what was important. He had come to train here, the best high school for heroics. Making friends had never been part of the plan. Not when he needed to be the best.
He would prove to his father that he could get to the top on his own. With his mother’s ice. With his own training and determination.
His classmates would soon realize what his goal here was, they would leave him alone. And it wouldn’t matter at all if his blank face and weak answers were turned against him.
Shouto refused to think about it further. It was something he couldn’t change. Never bothered and the others around him hadn’t too. Nobody had ever stayed around long enough to learn that the bluntness was just that, that the lack of response didn’t make him rude, he simply didn’t know what to say most of the time.
Nobody had looked past that.
And it wouldn’t be any different at Yuuei.
So if he was the oddly cold kid who had arrived half an hour early, so be it. Not like he was going to tell the others his father needed the driver to get him somewhere and had decided that Shouto would be coming with him. Not like Endeavor would care about his school timetable.
But the silence of the class, the luminescent white light, the unfamiliar surroundings—it made him think about things he didn’t want to. An idle mind was the worst. Truly.
Shouto stood up, leaving most of his things at his desk. He didn’t particularly care where he would sit, but it would be a bother lagging the stuff around. He had enough time to go explore the building a little, learn where other classes were, the changing rooms, toilets, the school canteen… No need to waste his time sitting in the classroom.
He got to the door and before he could do anything else, it slid open, a blonde with spiky hair and an annoyed expression stood in the threshold. Shouto gaze fixed on the red of his eyes. Like rubies. Glaring and bright.
With every passing second, the fire in them burned brighter and Shouto belatedly realized that something was expected of him here. Probably.
“Hello…” he said blankly. It nearly came out like a question. He could swear he heard something cracking, like tiny explosions or firecrackers.
The word was all the guy needed, and just like the sound of some light explosion, he exploded too. “What the fuck are you staring at, fucking weird-ass. Get a move on,” he yelled in Shouto’s face.
When Shouto failed to move, the guy scoffed and pushed him out of his way with a hand to Shouto’s shoulder. And Shouto let him, too frozen to do anything. Not that he wasn’t used to people shoving him—a person. Much bigger and much stronger. With even worse words accompanying the shoves.
And that was the whole issue, wasn’t it? This guy, his new classmate, whoever he was. This guy who was now angrily muttering something, putting his things on his selected desk with loud bangs. This guy had said his words.
The first words his soulmate would tell him. It wasn’t that he was a man, it wasn’t even the words themselves. Shouto had known for a long time what they meant. But the fact that he had met him so soon. When he never really wanted to.
He had been blocking the door, Shouto realized that now. Was that enough of a reason to yell? To curse him out and call him names? Because he blocked the door to the classroom?
The guy wasn’t late to the class. He could have said it politely. Or literally in any other way. Whatever situation Shouto had imagined would lead to the line full of swears didn’t prepare him for this.
The blonde didn’t know they were soulmates. He couldn’t have. Shouto’s word was simple, generic. The guy probably heard it several times each day. His only assurance of identifying his soulmate was the soulmate confirming. And Shouto wasn’t about to.
He flinched thinking about the words again, still lingering in the classroom. He needed to leave. To clear his head. Shouto wanted to get some air, but he couldn’t go outside, now without actually being late for the first class. That would be a horrible first impression on his teachers on the first day.
He left the classroom, but didn’t get far. Only to the end of the hall, where tall windows overlooked the well-kept lawn around the UA building.
His parents were soulmates. Shouto had seen what soulmates could do to each other. And he was supposed to want that? No. The soulmate rhetoric was bullshit. Shouto had seen first hand what a soulmate relationship was like and he never wanted to be a part of something like that.
With soulmate words like that, Shouto had always thought it would be easy to hate his soulmate.
He thought that for a while longer.
Only for a while.
.
Todoroki laid there, on his own ice, unconscious, his UA uniform torn. And still he hadn’t used his all. When Katsuki was coming at him with ferocity and speed, all of his quirk and agility thrown into his last move, and the fucking bastard had done nothing to defend himself.
At that point, when Katsuki noticed, it had been too late.
And now he laid there, unmoving.
Katsuki promptly forgot about everything else, his eyes zeroing on Todoroki. The screams of the viewers and spectators in the stands ceased to exist. As if the festival was nothing. As if they weren’t watched by millions of eyes all over the world.
All he could see was Todoroki.
Something in him snapped. He marched forward, shouting things without thinking, all his rage and pent-up… something. He was furious at Todoroki for refusing to fight him head-on. But there was something more. Something Katsuki could never place.
He wanted to fight him. He wanted Todoroki to want that too. To fight him fair and square. To see him as his equal. Katsuki had to prove his worth, prove he wasn’t just some weak extra. He had to prove himself to Todoroki. Prove that his skills were real. Not something he could overlook.
He didn’t understand it. Couldn’t say where it was coming from. It made him feel pathetic and angry. So, so angry.
His anger was a comfort, something he knew, something he didn’t have to analyze. So Katsuki didn’t. He let it consume him. He advanced. He grabbed him by his shirt. He might have even activated his quirk.
And then he felt nothing at all as Midnight put him to sleep.
.
It took him a while, but Shouto quickly learned that just as people tended to assume he was cold and rude because of the way he spoke, others seemed to make assumptions about Bakugou just as fast. He was abrasive and could be mean, but he cared. He wanted to be a hero like all of them here.
So maybe Bakugou wasn’t as bad as the first impression or Shouto’s words indicated. That still didn’t change that they weren’t anything more than classmates. Didn’t change the fact that Bakugou didn’t like him. And most of all, none of it changed his view on soulmates.
He should have known that something was going to give. From the first day at Yuuei, Shouto’s life had been a rollercoaster. He met his soulmate, then their class was attacked, then the festival. Midoriya had forced him to rethink everything about his quirk.
Really, he should have known his long-held opinion on soulmates would come under question sooner or later.
Shouto visited his mother, with so many concerns and questions. It didn’t even occur to him to speak about soulmates, especially not when Endeavor was hers.
But then she said something that made him pause.
“Shouto?” she asked, a little unsure.
“You’re not soulmates?” His voice was calm and collected, yet his mind was anything but.
She smiled ruefully, bowing her head. She watched her fingers, anxiously moving, when she elaborated. “No. It was all a lie, part of his image. It got the idea of a quirk marriage out of everyone’s mind.” Her hand brushed past the words on her wrist. “Nobody’s ever—well, it doesn’t matter. His PR team made it believable, even if our words don’t really match.”
After she pulled her sleeve down, she slightly shook her head, as if to drive away the sad images from the past her mind conjured at that. “It didn’t fool everyone, though. We— clearly, we—” She didn’t finish.
But Shouto knew what she was going to say. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t talked to her in years. Clearly, they weren’t soulmates. They didn’t act anything like what soulmates were supposed to be. Shouto felt stupid for ever believing it.
Her head suddenly shot up, a fresh wave of excitement passing her eyes. She took his hands in hers and looked at him. “Oh, my darling Shouto. You found yours, didn’t you?” She smiled brightly at him. “I’m so happy.”
He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen her so filled with joy. Shouto couldn’t show her his words, couldn’t tell her about his non-existent relationship with Bakugou. Not even a friendship. Not when she was so happy for him.
He couldn’t ruin it for her. And so he listened as his mother finally laughed. Listened as she told him all the things soulmates were supposed to represent. How much they would push each other to be the best versions of themselves. How his soulmate would be his equal, somebody who could match him, who would grow to understand him and cherish him.
No. He couldn’t tell her about Bakugou.
But that conversation stayed in his mind for far longer than he expected.
And slowly, things started to shift.
.
Shouto couldn’t sleep. After everything, there was plenty of material to pick from when it came to his nightmares. Today, it hadn’t been his father or his childhood training, not even any of the League of Villains’ attacks. Nothing with Bakugou. Just a fight with some random villain his mind had conjured up.
At 3 am, Shouto was very much awake, feeling cold as his quirk had acted up as he slept. He didn’t feel like going back to sleep. Not right away.
He slipped his feet into his slippers and silently exited his dorm room. They had been living here for a while so he easily made it to the stairs in the dark. He lit a small flame in his hand to guide his way downstairs to the kitchen.
The light was already on when he got there. Shouto had half a mind to turn around. He didn’t need a snack.
But they had spotted him. “Calm down, Half-and-half,” Bakugou said from where he was sitting on a bar chair, his hands around a mug. “I can hear the gears fucking rolling in your brain.”
Shouto kept walking then, further inside the kitchen. He checked the fridge first, opening it with one hand. But before he could properly take a look, Bakugou was there and was grabbing his hand.
He pulled it from the fridge, and frowning in confusion, Shouto didn’t stop him. He wondered if Bakugou had activated his quirk or if that was just his touch.
Bakugou pulled his hand forward, fingers clasped over Shouto’s wrist. The one where his words were, hidden behind a leather bracelet. It had been designed to withstand incredible heats. It wasn’t actual leather, just mimicked it. He had started wearing it when he figured out he didn’t really want Bakugou to accidentally see it. Not that Bakugou would ever pay attention to something like that.
It was a miracle he had bothered to remember their classmates’ names.
His thumb ran over the band. “It’s you, isn’t it.” It wasn’t a question. He knew. “How long?”
“How long what?” Shouto asked.
The corner of his mouth twitched in irritation. “How long did you know?”
Shouto wondered if lying would be better, but he had never liked doing that. “From the beginning,” he answered simply.
It was the wrong thing to say.
“So what? You fucking decided that—how fucking dare you! You don’t get to decide for me, you shithead.” He dropped Shouto’s hand and grabbed him by the collar of his pajama shirt. “You don’t get to decide for both of us. Goddammit, Todoroki. All these—I didn’t know what the hell was going on, I was feeling—All because of you and you couldn’t be bothered to tell me?”
Bakugou’s eyes flitted from his grey one to the blue, frantic. His hands were fisted in the fabric of his shirt, and he was panting. And so close. Shouto watched him, not saying anything. He didn’t know what. Bakugou didn’t give him much space for an answer, either.
He saw the realization dawn on Bakugou’s face. How close they were, how his knuckles were skimming Shouto’s collarbones. “You—” Bakugou started, but then thought better of it and mashed their mouths together.
It was all very explosive, very much in Bakugou’s fashion. For a first kiss, it was pretty terrible. Their teeth knocked together and Shouto’s elbow painfully hit the door of the fridge.
Shouto smiled into the kiss. It was just so Bakugou.
He let go of Shouto, pulling back, his expression not angry, but oddly open and vulnerable. Shouto’s tiny smile fully dropped as he saw some fear in there too.
But Bakugou wouldn’t let himself be seen as scared. A wall of familiar anger rose up as he backed up, fuming, but somewhat subdued. Maybe it was just the early morning hour.
He muttered something angrily, Shouto couldn’t make it out. Bakugou then quickly left the kitchen, leaving his mug abandoned on the counter. Shouto saw him take the stairs three at a time as Bakugou pretty much fled the room.
If Shouto called him out on it, he would have gotten an explosion in the face.
Shouto didn’t run after him. There were things Bakugou needed to think about. Things Shouto had to think about too. But there was no rush. They were young, pursuing their goals and training to be the best heroes they could be. Whatever this was, the potential, it had time.
He hadn’t told Bakugou right away and Bakugou was angry. Shouto was still figuring out what having a soulmate meant for him. But still, he knew they would be okay.