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Izuku covers his face with his pillow in a painfully failed attempt to block out all of the blissful moans and squeaking mattress springs. If there’s anything he never wanted to experience, it’s this: his neighbors unabashedly fucking in the next room over while he lay stiffly awake on the couch. Not even his neighbors, either, which somehow makes it ten times worse.
(How Kirishima and Kacchan—his blissfully unaware, snoozing hosts—were sleeping through this, he couldn't fathom, but at least it isn't them—Izuku couldn't live through that.)
Logically speaking, though, Izuku should’ve expected something like this to happen. Staying over at Kacchan’s, even if it’s only for a couple of days, was bound to bring some type of inconvenience to all his existing ones. He just didn’t expect the inconvenience to start rolling in on the very first night—or day, considering it was well into the a.m. by now.
With an exasperated sigh, Izuku turns and flops onto his back, taking a moment to calculate how long it would take to suffocate himself with his pillow. Being back in Musutafu after a ridiculously long three year period of perfecting One for All and studying Hero culture outside of Japan in the States should not be as stressful as it is proving to be.
The original plan would’ve had Izuku moving into the extra room in Ochako and Asui’s condo and settling in for a week before he made his official Japanese debut as a Pro Hero, but leave it to him to somehow get the short end of the stick.
“How’d I even end up like this?” he mutters, voice muffled against his All Might pillowcase.
Oh, yeah—Izuku’s flight ended up being canceled entirely, meaning he had to settle for last-minute plane tickets to Japan a full week earlier than he intended. This ultimately resulted in him having to beg (for an equally desperate and whopping 39-minute phone call) Kacchan to let him crash at his place until Ochako and Asui returned from their extended mission in Fukuoka.
A particularly loud moan pulls Izuku from his thoughts. He winces—Did they plan on stopping anytime soon?
Exhaustion still seeps into his bones from being cramped on a plane for fourteen hours (and then an extra hour in the Lyft from Tokyo to Musutafu), but it’s only noon in New York and his bodily clock has yet to adjust to the new timezone. He didn’t even bother changing when he got to Kacchan’s, too reluctant to unpack just to repeat the process in two days. He pulls his pillow off of his face to glance down at his now crumpled Suneater t-shirt.
“Sounds like they’re done, finally,” he sighs, turning again to lie on his side. He lets his eyes fall shut, slowly relaxing into the cushions of the loveseat. His feet hang off the arm of the couch—bless the belated growth-spurt he had these past few years—and the leather sticks to his skin, but other than that, it’s comfortable enough.
“Right there—”
Green eyes split open. Izuku tucks his pillow underneath his arm and stands up.
.
The walk down the unfamiliar condo corridors barely registers in Izuku’s brain, eyes too busy adjusting to the glow of the track lights to pay attention to where he’s going. He passes the front desk at least twice (odd considering he doesn’t remember taking the elevator to the first floor) if the weird look the receptionist gives him is anything to go by, but ultimately ends up stumbling through the partitioned door of the laundry room and into the empty weight room.
“Why is the laundry room right next to the weight room?” he questions out loud, eyebrows pinched together as he switches the lights on.
He doesn’t bother trying to make sense of the architectural decisions the condo owners made; the persistent hum of the washing machinery beats moans any day. He instead eyes the bench press—his feet would definitely hang off of that, but his only other option is the treadmill and the walking belt taunts him with back pains for at least a week.
“You know, the weight room is technically closed after twelve,” a voice that strangely isn’t his own, and is somehow familiar, catches Izuku in the middle of deciding which side of the bench he should put his pillow on.
He all but jumps out of his skin.
“People tend to sleep in their rooms rather than on the bench press, anyway,” the voice continues—Is it getting closer?—in a tone that sounds like it could pass as teasing to anyone other than the speaker himself.
Izuku resists the urge to squeeze his eyes shut, already preparing to sink into a fit of apologies as he turns towards the stranger. “I’m sorry—My friend is letting me sleep over in his room but his neighbor's having really loud obnoxious sex and I just got off this ridiculously long flight and then my Lyft driver vaped the whole ride from Tokyo so my head hurts—It kinda smelled like pineapples but—but, the point is I really need somewhere quiet to—”
The words die on his lips, and the stranger, who really isn’t a stranger at all, at least has the decency to look a bit taken aback himself.
“Sh-Shouto?”
(Briefly having lost all brain-to-mouth motor functions for a moment, Izuku has half the mind to berate himself for letting his first name slip—It’s been too long, hasn’t it? Is still allowed to call him that?)
Formalities and over-thinking aside, he drinks in the sight of his high school crush with parted lips because shit, the past three years have treated Shouto well.
Of course, Izuku kept himself updated with most of his classmates' Hero careers after he moved to the States, Shouto included, but nothing compares to seeing him in person—Even if his brain is too energy-deprived to fully appreciate how stupidly gorgeous Shouto looks in a white tee and pajama pants, illuminated solely by the washed-out light of the laundry room.
In the morning, when he’s awake enough to be embarrassed, he’ll blame his shamelessness on the jet lag.
“Izuku?” And good god, he forgot how wonderful his name sounded coming from Shouto’s mouth.
“How wonderful what sounded from what?”
Blanching, Izuku stammers a reply, “N-Nothing! Uhm—Hey? Hi. Hi... Shouto. What are you doing here?”
Shouto blinks. “Laundry.”
Obviously, dumbass! Why else would he be in the laundry room? To sniff the fabric softeners?
A pause. “You’re doing your laundry at one in the morning? Shouldn’t you be, like… asleep?”
“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” he shoots back and, well, maybe Izuku walked right into that one. A nervous hand tangles in the curls at the back of his neck.
“Well, that’s where the whole…”
“Ah, yes—the ‘really loud obnoxious sex’? Let me guess. Bakugou's neighbor?”
Izuku groans and presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. “I don’t understand how the walls can be so thin!”
It might just be the sleep deprivation getting to him, but it almost sounded like Shouto chuckled at that.
“I see these treacherous walls have pushed you into taking desperate measures,” Shouto continues, amused as he gestures towards where Izuku’s pillow lies on the headrest of the bench.
Defensively, he yanks the pillow underneath his arm again, soon finding himself leaning against the doorframe of the laundry room.
“It was either this or risk dislocating a vertebra on the treadmill,” Izuku huffs, throwing a dirty glare at the walking belt.
Shouto makes a show of assessing Izuku—all slow and considering, like he could easily pick him apart with one careful look—and snorts.
(And if Izuku found himself violently launched back to high school with the way his heart lurched beneath the slow drag of Shouto’s gaze then, well, that was between him and God.)
“Well, I can’t say I would put an injury like that past you.” It’s probably just his imagination seeing the way Shouto’s lips quirk in amusement but hell, bless the level of creativity his mind can conjure.
A robotic jingle signals the halt of the dryer while simultaneously cutting through the words Izuku was on the verge of saying. When Shouto turns to address the machinery, Izuku notes how his hair is just long enough to tie up at the back of his head, like Kirishima’s back during their first year. His mouth feels a bit dry upon acknowledgment.
“What are you doing back in Musutafu, anyway? Vacation or something?” he asks, and Izuku pretends to not carefully gauge the way his body bends when he reaches over the dryer.
“Oh—I, uhm.. I’m coming back permanently, actually! I was supposed to be returning next week but my flight got mixed up and I had to catch an earlier one where this little kid kept drooling on my shoulder but..” Izuku lets his words taper off awkwardly. “Sorry, I, uh— I’m rambling, aren’t I?”
He finds Shouto staring with a look he can’t quite define and wills away the bit of anxiety curling in his stomach; God, why did he talk so much?
Shouto’s voice is oddly soft—rushed, arguably flustered like he didn’t realize he was staring the way he was—when he speaks again. “I don’t mind.”
He begins shoving clothes into a basket with more vigor Izuku would deem necessary, ears tinged with color.
“Here, let me help you,” Izuku insists, setting his pillow aside to help gather the clothes out of the dryer.
They smell thickly of Shouto, something like pine and cinnamon—Christmas, vaguely—and Izuku would be lying if he said the scent isn’t pleasingly familiar. Shouto stills momentarily when their hands brush, and even though he’s back to yanking clothes out in seconds—Izuku still spots flushed cheeks poorly hidden behind split hair.
They work quietly until the last piece of clothing is dropped in the basket, the whirl of the washer beside them being the only sound filling the relative silence.
“Would—Do you… Do you want some help carrying this all to your room?” Izuku asks as Shouto scoops the basket up—and really, he doesn’t know why. He’s tired and wants to get back to making a bed out of work-out equipment (or the floor, for all he cares), but at the same time, he’d do anything to be in Shouto’s presence a little longer. It’s been three years, damnit; he’s allowed to have missed him.
Shouto considers him with unreadable eyes, only nodding towards the second basket of clothes after a small eternity of washer whirl-filled silence.
Izuku happily gathers the basket into his arms, pillow on top. Shouto begins to lead them out, pausing at the door. He watches him drag his tongue over his bottom lip (a habit Izuku was well acquainted with) with embarrassing focus.
“Tell me... about your flight.”
Izuku smiles, nods. “You won’t believe what I had to deal with at security.”
.
Conversation carries between them with ease as they maneuver their way through quiet halls, three years of absurdly minimum communication deemed irrelevant between hushed laughter and kind eyes.
Izuku ends up learning a lot about the past couple of years he was gone after giving the rundown of his own experiences—for example: the reason so many Heros resided in the condo (excessive financial support in the security department, courtesy of many Hero agencies), the way in which Shouto’s unhealthy obsession with cold soba hasn’t lessened in the slightest, the budding romance between many high school classmates, and much more sandwiched within drowsy comments.
They’re on the elevator again (for the fourth time, actually, but Izuku doesn’t have a problem with blaming the frequency in which they seemed to ‘accidentally’ end up on the wrong floor on the sleep deprivation), arms still wound around baskets of clothes as they rise to yet another floor (whether or not this will finally be the right floor, he can’t say), when Izuku notices.
“Hey… you’re taller than me,” he announces, voice laced with pure, unadulterated accusation—like it was a punishable crime, because hell: it certainly felt like one.
Standing right beside Shouto, shoulder just an inch shy of brushing up against the sleeve of his t-shirt, the otherwise subtle difference in height is glaringly noticeable. Mismatch eyebrows drawn together, Shouto dips his head into a slow, concerned nod.
“Yes, for a long time now.”
Izuku turns to fully face the taller of the two, bubbling with half-hearted frustration.
“This is completely unfair. I had to wait nearly eighteen years, slaving over milk and arguably falsely advertised vegetables rich in calcium, mind you, to finally hit a significant growth spurt and you’re still this much taller than me! You don’t have to do more than—“
Izuku‘s words falter gracelessly mid-sentence as his mind catches up to his mouth.
Shouto didn’t have to do more than tilt his head and he’d be pressing his lips against the tip of Izuku’s nose.
“More than?” Shouto prompts, voice on the edge of mocking.
Heat rushes to Izuku’s face with alarming speed. He whips forward—away from Shouto and his little ominous smirk—with enough force to nearly send his pillow toppling over the edge of the basket.
Izuku continues with consistent gracelessness. “N-Nothing. Don’t mind it. Must be genetics or something, huh?”
His words crumble into nervous laughter and the elevator doors part—Izuku is halfway convinced the universe is offering him a physical exit to that conversation before it charges downhill, which he graciously accepts.
Consequently, before the elevator can strangle Izuku with his own ridiculously apparent feelings, he rushes out—only pausing when it occurs to him he doesn’t know where to go. Shouto is soon beside him, and although his eyes linger with that something Izuku couldn’t quite define, he seems relatively unbothered and content in leading him down the halls.
“Do you have a roommate?” Izuku finds himself asking when Shouto slows to a stop in front of room 115.
Shouto sets his basket down and pats his pockets—Izuku pretends like the way he scrunches up his nose when he comes up empty-handed isn’t that endearing. Really.
“No, I didn’t see the point in having one when I could afford everything on my own,” he explains offhandedly, more focused on the little key-shaped shard of ice he’s conjuring in his right hand.
Izuku feels his jaw absolutely slacken when that same key-shaped shard of ice successfully unlocks the door—How did he manage to create something so meticulous so effortlessly? Izuku guesses practiced efficiency played a significant part, but even so—the elegance, the facile curl of his fingers—Shouto really has improved since high school, and it was kinda hot how he just—
“Izuku? You’re muttering—”
Shouto’s voice successfully jolts Izuku from his endless tangent, and he realizes now that he’s still standing in the doorframe while Shouto’s already ventured into his home.
“Sorry!”
After hip-checking the door shut, Izuku follows Shouto through his dimly lit home; Everything is simple, clearly culturally influenced, and frighteningly clean—save the mountains of paperwork on the couch and coffee table. Fitting.
When he finally sets his basket down—on the bamboo carpet of Shouto’s bedroom, of course—Izuku feels tension in his forearms from holding it for so long (Shouto must feel it too, if the way he rolls his shoulders back is anything to go by and wow, if that’s not a sight). He can’t find it in himself to really mind it, though, not when he got to be with Shouto longer at the expense of it.
Two-toned eyes meet his from across the room, and within their silence lies a ‘goodnight’ Izuku is reluctant to exchange. He inhales slowly, loathing the walk of shame he was going to have to make back to the weight room; hell, he was already determining which dumbbell he was going to knock himself out with so he didn’t have to stay up all night—all morning—thinking about how soft Shouto’s hands were when they flitted against his in the laundry room. He exhales.
“I better get going—”
“Do you want to stay tonight—”
A beat of silence.
Swallowing, Izuku asks eloquently, “Wh—Do I what?”
Izuku watches the way Shouto’s cheeks fill with color, the way he pulls his bottom lip in between his teeth but doesn’t look away—maintains eye-contact unwaveringly—and is fully convinced his brain just short-circuited.
“Do you want to stay?” he repeats quietly.
When Izuku doesn’t reply, too busy scraping up his last bit of rational thought, Shouto continues with clumsy (frustratingly cute, endearingly clumsy) words, finally looking down at his hands.
“Because I know you’re not going back to Bakugou’s… but the weight room really is technically closed after twelve and getting caught by security—”
“Yeah,” Izuku finally manages, breathless, “Yeah, I’d like that.”
(Shouto’s lips turn into what’s almost a smile, just barely, at the edges, and at this point, Izuku doesn’t care if it’s a trick of the lights or not because the way his heart absolutely hammers in his chest is real.)
“Okay,” he says, “I’d say you can take the couch but there’s a bunch of paperwork everywhere,” Shouto’s voice trails off and Izuku can tell he’s thinking by the way his eyebrows furrow.
Eyeing the singular bed in potentially Shouto’s entire home, Izuku sucks in a breath. He’s read enough Mount. Lady x Kamui Woods fanfiction to know how this goes. They’re going to be forced into sharing Shouto’s bed because Shouto is kind and wouldn’t let Izuku sleep uncomfortably, but that absolutely can not happen because Izuku will blow a fuse in such close proximity with the very object of his high school (and current, much to his personal demise) attraction.
He knows what he has to do. “I’ll take the floor, then.”
“Great, I have an extra futon somewhere.”
“No, seriously, Shouto. I’ll take the fl—Wait, what?”
Izuku watches Shouto roll out a futon on the bamboo carpet and swallows around the lump of unjustified disappointment in his throat.
.
Shouto’s traditional Japanese low platform bed and all its tatami mat foundation, futon mattress paired glory sits a mocking two feet away from him. Izuku pouts from where he is on the floor, tucked beneath the comforter with his face pressed into his All Might pillowcase.
Now, logically speaking, he has no reason to be pouting. Sleeping on the floor is much safer than sleeping beside Shouto, but he can’t help but wish.
“Hey, Izuku?” Shouto’s hushed voice fills in the quietness.
“What’s up?”
“Do you remember when we were in high school—” Oh, god, “—and you would sneak into my room through the window all the time?”
The room is dark with all the lights off, but if he squints, Izuku can make out the shape of Shouto’s body facing him. Moonlight filters in from the slants of the blinds, cascading over his body in strips of the sky. Izuku had lost count of the times he and Shouto lied on the floor a long time ago, shoulder to shoulder, venting and talking about everything and anything until sleep finally forced them unconscious back in highschool.
Izuku finds himself snorting at the memory. “Yeah, I do—I remember the first time I snuck in, you froze my hands on the windowsill and I was stuck hanging on the side of the building for, like, five minutes!”
“Can you blame me? A strange person was trying to climb into my room in the middle of the night.”
A defensive gasp slips past Izuku’s lips as he shifts his body to fully face Shouto’s. “Are you calling me strange?”
“Anyone who scales a building in order to sneak into someone’s room, on an entire floor above their own at that, unannounced and past curfew, is a bit strange.”
He pouts. “Okay, maybe I was a little strange.”
Shouto laughs quietly into his hand and Izuku falls a little in love with the sound. He wishes he could see the way his eyes squeeze shut, the way his lips curve into a smile, but the moonlight can only do so much.
“Hey, Izuku?”
“Hm?”
“I’m glad you’re back home.”
It might be the jet lag, but Izuku swears there was an unsaid I missed you somewhere in those words.
“Me, too.”
.
The antithesis of temperature Izuku finds himself waking up to is both equally confusing and strangely comforting. Bleary eyes blink into focus, zeroing in on a head of red and white hair tickling his chin. Shouto really is a walking juxtaposition in every sense of the word, all the way down to his actual body temperature.
Wait, Shouto?
Anxiety swells in the pit of Izuku’s stomach like a taut water balloon waiting to burst. It takes every ounce of concentrated self-control Izuku has not to immediately fling himself off of the futon—the futon approximately two feet away from the alarmingly unoccupied low platform bed—and into the small trash bin beside Shouto’s desk, or who knows, the sun.
Because Shouto is, in fact, not on his bed anymore.
He’s on the floor, one leg tangled in Izuku’s comforter and the other hooked over Izuku’s waist, nosing—a very cold nose, Izuku notes—into the warmth of his neck. A hand is knotted into the collar of Izuku’s shirt, and the steady rise and fall of Shouto’s chest against his own is otherworldly. How he managed to migrate such a distance in his sleep is bewildering in itself, but Izuku doesn’t want to let his mind wander to any other possibilities.
(Like Shouto waking up in the middle of the night and finding comfort in his embrace, or something stupid and surreal like that.)
Izuku wants to panic. Hell, he’s about one more breath of Christmas and laundry detergent from panicking, but the weight of Shouto on top of him feels so good—He swallows, tearing his eyes away from Shouto’s face, his unguarded, gorgeous face and—
Izuku stares at the popcorn ceiling before he does something stupid (like fall in love again) and weighs his options. Detaching Shouto from where he’s curled around his body seems like the right thing to do, but with the way Shouto had thoroughly glued himself to Izuku, it didn’t seem possible without waking him up. Waking Shouto up could bring a lot of potential problems to the table.
(But staying there and indulging in Shouto’s probably unintentional affection—in the way his lips keep brushing against Izuku’s throat—that just can’t be fair, right?)
Izuku risks a glance at Shouto and shit, he is so gone for this man.
If three continuous years of pathetic pining didn’t make it abundantly transparent already, looking at Shouto now—all sleep-disheveled hair, seconds away from drooling on Izuku’s shoulder—with fondness just pouring out of him, did.
He shuts his eyes and decides feeling bad about Shouto unknowingly nuzzling further into his arms is a problem for future Izuku.
.
The second time Izuku wakes up, he is greeted with substantially less limbs wound around him and is thus substantially less satisfied.
His bones creak and pop with the age of an old man when he sits up, fists rubbing the sleepiness from his eyes. The only reason Izuku isn’t convinced his earlier experience wasn’t a complete figment of his drowse-induced imagination lied within Shouto’s scent lingering in the comforter and the definite patch drool drying on the sleeve of his shirt.
Unless he’s imagining that, too—but Izuku doesn’t bother thinking too hard about that, instead deciding to commit himself to folding up the borrowed futon before his mind could wander too far.
He finds the bathroom first, glaring at the mess of green curls that refuse to settle before digging around for a spare toothbrush. While inside, he notes how very Shouto everything is—the hairbrush on the corner of the sink with strands of white and red tangled between bristles, the half-used tube of sunscreen that he’s sure is used more so for Shouto’s right side (he mentioned once how considerably and strangely prone to sunburn it is), the very clear lack of a hairdryer because of the nonexistent need for one.
He pads hesitantly into the hall afterward, where the scent of… something wafts through the rest of Shouto’s home, and that something is definitely burning.
With a new sense of urgency, Izuku dashes down the hall—his socks slip more times than he would care to admit—and follows his nose into the kitchen, where the sound of pots clanking and oil sizzling join in heightening his panic.
And there, scraping the charred remains of—of whatever was burning in a pan into the trash can, was Shouto.
“Shouto?” Izuku starts from where he’s braced against the wall, eyebrows raised quizzically.
Startled, a head of messy hair pops up and drops the entire pan in the trash.
“Shit—”
The laughter that bubbles past Izuku’s lips is insuppressible, spilling past the scarred hand he slaps over his mouth to muffle it with. Shouto shoots a half-hearted glare that isn’t all that scary with the way his face flushes with color.
“Shut up,” Shouto grits, chucking the spatula he’d been gripping into the sink. There’s flour and what looks strangely close to a piece of an eggshell in his hair.
“Wha—What were you trying to make?” Izuku manages through huffs of laughter, walking closer to eye the contents of the trash can (which is helpless, considering the remnants of whatever meal Shouto was trying to make were completely unidentifiable).
“...Pancakes.”
Izuku’s eyebrows jump to his hairline.
“Pancakes?”
He’s known for a long time that Shouto cannot cook to save his life. Specifically since his second year of high school during Spring break, where Shouto made a bold attempt at making his own cold soba—It ended horrifically, and that was when Izuku discovered his best friend literally had never cooked for himself, ever, simply because it was never deemed necessary. As expected from the son of the Number One hero.
Izuku is fairly shocked to see Shouto’s culinary skill has made little improvement, but at the same time—is he really all that shocked?
“Why pancakes?” Izuku continues when the taller of the two makes no effort to reply, “That’s more of a Western breakfast, huh? I’d assume you’d attempt something you’re more accustomed to, like miso or something?”
Shouto crosses his arms over his chest and honest-to-god pouts at the trash can. Izuku feels his heart stutter in his chest at the sight.
“Since you’ve been living in the States for a while until now I thought... I’d make you something you’re familiar with,” he mutters, pointedly avoiding Izuku’s gaze.
And Izuku—Well, if his heart was stuttering before, it has completely stopped now. He eyes the mess of ingredients strewn across the kitchen island, the broken eggs and flour and spilled milk, and considers proposing for a genuine five seconds before gathering all of his self-control.
He marches over to where Shouto’s phone is propped up against a bottle of Canola oil on one of the counters, wiping off the flour smeared across the screen, and reads through the brief instructions pulled up on Wikihow.
“What are you doing?” He hears Shouto’s voice come close from behind him, and soon his cold side is pressed up against Izuku’s shoulder.
“We’re making pancakes.”
.
The second batch of pancakes ends up being a massive success compared to the first, being significantly less charred this time around. It helps that Izuku—after having had Inko spoon-feed him the Ways of Cooking™ from a young age and being significantly more experienced with Western-style breakfasts—is much more proficient in the kitchen, and has also made pancakes before.
(Although not from scratch, which explains all the flour in his hair and the first round of particularly unsweet pancakes.)
Izuku leans back in the barstool he’s seated in at the island, watching fondly as Shouto whisks around the kitchen in search for the syrup. He looks cute like this, snatching up utensils and syrup while dodging the mess they made earlier.
Shouto finally takes his seat across from Izuku and slides the bottle over, to which he happily takes and douses his stack of pancakes. Shouto watches and scrunches up his nose like he did the other night—or morning, who cares—and even though Izuku is aware of the visual judgment, he still finds it endearing.
He takes the first bite and hums in satisfaction.
“Shouto, oh my gosh—taste this.”
Shouto slices a very precise square of his pancake with his fork, because of course he does, and takes a bite. No syrup for him, but from the way his shoulders slump and his eyes close, Shouto enjoys the meal just as much as Izuku does.
“I don’t know how the hell we managed to do this, but it worked out somehow,” he says, baffled, already moving on to his next bite.
Izuku finds himself getting caught up in the motion—Shouto is so goddamn pretty it should be a crime. He has flour in his hair and pancake batter on his nose and really, he just shouldn’t look so—so adorable, but he does, and Izuku is suffering in all the best ways.
Shouto must feel the eyes on him because he looks up curiously around a mouthful of pancakes, prompting Izuku to clumsily resume eating his own before the syrup makes it soggy.
For a moment, the sound of forks hitting glass plates is all that can be heard, and shy, shared glances are all that is exchanged.
After scooping up the last bite, Izuku flashes a grin.
“That,” he starts, feeling delightfully full, “was awesome.”
“I’m glad you enj—Wait.” Shouto’s eyebrows draw in with sudden concern, and Izuku stills when he leans over, arm outstretched.
A cold hand, his right one, brushes over his bottom lip and the gesture has him burning—ironically—during the entire four seconds it’s there.
Izuku is so caught up in the casualness of the action, the ease, that he barely registers the reason Shouto did what he did until he’s sitting back, hand coming away a bit more syrupy than before.
And when Shouto sucks the syrup off of his finger, he only dies a little bit inside. This entire morning has either just been a fifteen-year-old Izuku’s cheesy dream or some sick, divine being is seriously testing Izuku’s self-control.
Silence stretches between them for a beat, another beat, and then—
“I—“ Shouto doesn’t even let Izuku say an entire coherent sentence, already standing with too much force to be fluid.
“You had syrup on your face.”
A second of silence, pink flushed over pale skin, Izuku still processing the latest events.
“I’ll go wash these,” he says quickly, like the weight of his actions have finally dawned on him, and Shouto snatches both of their plates and makes a beeline for the sink.
Izuku follows after him eventually, slowly, like if he moves too fast Shouto will run away. Soon he’s beside Shouto at the sink, offering a kind smile even though the taller of the two refuses to look in his direction.
“Need some help?”
“No—“ Shouto begins, but Izuku pays no mind; he takes the dish he just washed and rinses it in the other side of the sink.
They fall into a little routine after that—Shouto washes, Izuku rinses, elbow-to-elbow with the sound of water and dishes filling comfortable silence. Occasionally, Izuku bumps his hip against Shouto’s, and Shouto, absolutely scandalized, bumps him back with significantly more force. They flick water and soap at each other, giggle behind slippery fingers, and everything is so excruciatingly domestic and amazing.
Izuku could do this for the rest of his life, he thinks; something about Shouto being at his side makes everything feel fulfilling in ways it wasn’t back in the States, or ever, for that matter.
(He wishes, just for a second, that he realized his feelings sooner, so maybe he’d have confessed to Shouto already—and maybe this could have been a rest-of-his-life kind of domestic, amazing thing.)
After Izuku puts the last dish on the drying rack, he leans against the sink and watches Shouto dry off his hands with a hand-towel.
Not that it’s anything new, or the first time he’s thought this in the past twenty-four hours, but Shouto is gorgeous. His hair is tied up albeit uselessly, two-toned fly-aways easily slipping out of his hair tie, and his lips are curved into one of those barely-there smiles, the one that reaches his eyes more than anything—it's absolutely breathtaking. He is absolutely breathtaking.
“What’re you staring at?” Shouto asks, perfectly groomed eyebrow—the red one—arched in his direction.
Izuku looks at his feet.
“You, obviously,” he mutters under his breath, and then resists the urge to actually slap himself when he hears the words that were supposed to be confined in the safety of his overactive brain out loud because shit, now Shouto’s looking at him like he’s—well, he doesn’t know what exactly, but it’s enough to make him panic because he had to have heard that—
“What did you just say?”
“I—Uh, I said—“ Think, think, think, “Nothing! Don’t worry about it, I was just—ah—mumbling again, you know how I am!”
“Are you sure—”
“Positive,” he says quickly, too quickly. Shouto looks something like confused, which is relieving because maybe all of that was enough to convince him he was imagining things.
Desperate to change the subject, Izuku clears his throat a little awkwardly, hand scratching at the nonexistent itch on the back of his neck.
“Thanks for letting me stay here last night, by the way,” he says genuinely, allowing a smile—still lingering with nervousness—to claim his face in a (struggling) attempt at reassurance, “and for breakfast. Burnt pancakes and all. You’re a real lifesaver, you know?”
Shouto’s cheeks seem to become increasingly pinker with his stammered words, and there’s no sleep deprivation for Izuku to blame it being a hallucination on; as a direct result, it takes all of Izuku’s carefully, carefully maintained self-control not to kiss him completely stupid right there. He really ought to get out of here before he does something that he’ll hate himself for later.
“Anyway, I—I should probably get going, huh? Don’t want Kacchan worrying, which he probably won’t but—yeah, thanks for letting me, uh, crash—“
Izuku has already pushed himself off the sink, wiping his damp hands off on his pants, and is stumbling for the front door while on the lookout for his shoes—did he even wear shoes?—when a hand (a warm one, his left one) closes around his wrist.
“Wait, Izuku—“
He sucks in a breath, stills, facing Shouto and the three years of unresolved highschool feelings that were becoming very difficult to keep trampled with the rest of the things Izuku can’t bring himself to confront.
“...Yeah?”
Shouto searches his face, and what he’s looking for Izuku can’t say, but he feels a little lightheaded under his gaze.
“Do you really have to go?”
His chest tightens.
“I should probably get going, though, shouldn’t I? I don’t—I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”
Shouto looks down, but the grip on his wrist does little to lessen. Slowly, hesitantly, he inches closer, and the proximity doesn’t help with Izuku’s internal emotional battle.
“You won’t,” Shouto starts, and his eyes are on his again—storm clouds and summer skies, demanding Izuku’s every bit of attention—a breath away when he continues, “You won’t overstay your welcome.”
And then, just like the other night—or morning—whatever plane of existence he was on when he ran into Shouto and consequently unmasked years worth of suppressed adoration—he continues, “I don’t mind.”
Rushed, a little flustered, uncharacteristically soft. Izuku thinks he might as well be dreaming, or tripping on acid, or was somehow launched into an alternate reality because this—this is unreal—
He swallows, hard, and sees the moment Shouto falters; his gaze flits away, his hand loosens, his shoulders stiffen—
“Unless you—I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m saying. You can go, if you need to, I’ll just—I’ll—“
There’s a muted pause when Izuku slips his hand into the one still limply wound around his wrist, when he intertwines too-warm fingers within his own. He bites his lip, watches Shouto’s eyes follow the motion, and squeezes.
“Shouto?”
“Izuku,” he says, soft, anxious, hopeful, “Izuku—please tell me you want to kiss me right now as much as I want to kiss you.”
Talk about understatement of the century.
Hesitance absolutely shattering, Izuku pulls Shouto into his chest; he tilts his chin upwards, feels Shouto’s hands around his jaw, featherlight like he’s afraid his touch will break him, feels him drawing him in, and then—and then, the world doesn’t stop, but it might as well have.
Shouto’s lips are soft where they part against Izuku’s. They are tentative and gentle and everything Izuku could ever want them to be. He kisses Izuku slowly, clumsily, impossibly tender, and Izuku is half afraid his knees will give in at the touch, at the very thought that this is real.
Izuku pulls away to murmur against his mouth, heart clenching at the way Shouto chases his lips.
“I have wanted to do this,” he breathes, catching the wisps of steam that billow from Shouto’s nose (like some kind of dragon, he thinks offhandedly), “for years.”
The press of Shouto’s mouth recolliding against his is all heat, irregular and hot in only a way he can be. Izuku tastes the caution melt away like ice, replaced by mutual, burning want and eager hands pulling him close and close and closer. Izuku’s back comes in contact with the front door with a soft thump and he allows himself the satisfaction of tangling his fingers into soft hair, red and white, pinfeathers (and maybe a bit of flour) against his palms.
(Izuku is only a little overwhelmed—his hands tremble and his heartbeat explodes in his ears but it’s perfect because Shouto is surrounding him in every way and he wouldn’t have it any different.)
When Shouto pulls away, his teeth nip against Izuku’s bottom lip and he presses his forehead against his, eyes still shut and chest just short of heaving. Izuku stares up at him, notes the pink tinge to his usually pale skin, and cannot for the life of him bite down his smile.
“You said,” Shouto begins, hushed and a little hoarse, “you’ve wanted to—to do that, for years?”
Izuku fumbles for words, lets his hands slide down onto Shouto’s shoulders and tighten around the collar of his shirt.
“Well—Y-Yeah? A little bit?” he answers pathetically, eyes flitting across his face—Shouto could easily forgo the whole Hero thing and become a model if he wanted to.
“What does that mean?”
Izuku takes a sharp breath, but his mouth remains stretched into a smile.
“Graduation day,” he says quietly, “That was when I realized why my heart always seemed to malfunction when you were around.”
Shouto’s eyes are open now, fond and kind in a way that makes Izuku’s chest squeeze, but he doesn’t speak. Izuku takes that as a sign to continue.
“I know I’ve probably liked you for a lot longer than that—since first year at least, but—but when I saw you up there, a step away from finally being a hero, it all kinda clicked into place,” he explains, “and—and in that moment, it took everything in me not to jump back on that stage and risk it all. Running into you again, after all this time, has just made my feelings and how stupidly unrelenting they are more clear.”
(Whenever Izuku let his mind wander, he often imagined what would happen if he ever confessed to Shouto—some instances were significantly more ridiculous than the rest, others more embarrassingly realistic, but in the end: he never expected it to actually happen. Yet here he is.)
“So, Shouto, what this means is—What I’m saying is I like you, have for a long time now, and I’ve wanted to kiss you for even longer.”
Izuku catches the telltale quirk of a smile at the edge of Shouto’s lips.
“Sorry for making you wait so long,” Shouto all but whispers, “but if it makes you feel any better, I think I’ve waited for this moment just as long as you have.”
His heart swells. He would wait years if he had to, as long as the outcome was this.
“If this means I won’t have to wait anymore, I’ll accept your apology.”
Izuku grins into the kiss Shouto presses against his mouth.
(When Kacchan does end up tracking Izuku down, he mutters something about ‘pining idiots finally getting their shit together’.)