Shouto is a regular occurrence in the bar. 

He sneaks out more than Natsuo and has memorized the address. He gets along well with most of the people, actually all of them―they're surprisingly understanding―namely Dabi. Natsuo gets along well with him, too, so it's not really a surprise. What is a surprise, though, is finding the leader of the IPS putting burn ointment on his hands at two in the morning―not that Shouto could say anything. 

He's stayed awake staring at the ceiling aching over burns, too.

Izuku has a mumbling habit, and Shouto doesn't mind. It's better than the ringing silence of fear that always seems to surround his house―Endeavor was always just around the corner―no matter why. The Todoroki children were the best at playing hide and seek; when Mom was still around she made the game fun, she promised mochi if nobody got caught at the end of the day. Now they always play hide and seak with Endeavor, and losing is inevitable, the consequences are harsh and there is no winning. Shouto does not like the game anymore. Todoroki doesn't like to think about the bubbling around his eye. So he'll just focus on Izuku, who is too enthralled in his own ramblings to notice he's here.

"Hey, Izuku?"

The freckled boy goes straight as a rod, his breathe catches in his lungs and his hands start to twitch, the burn ointment falls to the countertop with a muted thud. There is a choke in his voice and a tightening in his limbs prepared to defend himself from something. Terror and apologies sit on his shoulders and Shouto wants to know why. He wants to know why this boy has a burnt ear and why his left side is more sensitive than his right.

Todoroki Shouto knows the signs that he is showing, that's pure fear, and Izuku seems to feel it a little too often to be suitable. He wants to know why he doesn't tell anyone.

"What happened to your ear?"

"It's— been like this for, forever― see I, uh."

"Don't lie to me. If you don't want to tell me, don't tell me, but don't lie." Shouto interjects.

"N-no it— it really h-has― I-I've always had this," Izuku says, and Shouto wonders if everyone with a combustion quirk only hurts hurts hurts, "―I guess I was g-given it a-a really long time a-ago. It, uh, a-always has been a bit, uhm, m-messed up. O-one of my.. classmates," His voice scratches the word out like it's wrong; like he's used to saying something else. It leaves something bitter in Shouto's throat. Something like bile and vinegar - he doesn't think about it. Today was a better day, the tea kettle whistles quietly. Shouto does not want to feel like a ghost today. He ignores it. "had a heat-based quirk and them―they―uh, didn't know how to control it properly and well we were playing Heroes versus Villains one day and- and they used it on me―and this happened―by accident of course!"

Shouto thinks back to the first battle trial, how Ochako―they're friends now, he's never known what friends are, but they don't use last names at the bar―and Bakugou fought. There was a massive blast and then the villain team won. Only four brave individuals from their class went up and befriended him. Ochako doesn't like him, he made her wear a cast for three days. Shouto doesn't get why she's so angry, he's gotten casts for weeks and didn't complain at all.

He wants to ask if Izuku knows Bakugou. He wants to know why he's so scared of everything, why he tries to make sure nobody is angry (Shouto knows that when people are angry they get violent, he has enough baggage for a lifetime or two.)

"That sounds like―no, never mind."

He doesn't really want to know. He doesn't want to think about how there are monsters in the making under his nose. 

(Decay is an extension of life, he told Tomura once, so you must not be killing them at all, you just keep them from living.)

Shigaraki Tomura is a boy made of uneven glass, like someone broke a mirror and tried to glue it back together, but they did it wrong. He's functional, but you can still see the cracks, scars over the years. Like where ice thawed and frosted over again. He's a man in summer, and everyone knows that summers are only for children. Little things with pigtails and half eaten mocha on the stovetop. Summers are for fathers with mothers, summers are for good people. 

Tomura is a murderer. Tomura is a bad, bad person. Good little boys don't kill their families, good little boys don't wear their father for most of their lives, good little boys don't do what Tomura does. Tomura is not good, not at all and maybe. Maybe  it's okay. For a little while, maybe it'll be okay, that he isn't there at all. 

"Hey, Tomuchan?"

There's a fuzzy noise everywhere but he can hear the world crashing, still. There's a girl there. Her name is Himiko. There's a girl here, and she wanted to kill him yesterday.

"Yeah." He says, throat all scratched up. "Was's'up?"

"Do you think monsters can ever win? "

"Maybe they don't," he says. "maybe we won't win, 'cuz we're wrong, but ―" he says, breaking out all his fake-fake-Dabi energy into the world. "―at least. At least we can be hot while we do it."

She scruncyes her whole face up into another one, and it looks like him, him, him but scratched up and bleeding and broken.

"You really are pretty, Tomuchan. All red, after my own heart."

"Hmn." There's a blurr in his eyes, like he's underwater. "Do you wanna―" he breaks a little, vulnerable as he is. "come home with me?"

She doesn't say anything, just giggles and giggles and giggles. Like he's told the best joke the world has ever seen.

It's dark here, dark and dim and dreary inside this monster he's created of himself. Tomura isn't a good person, not really, Izuku'd be really disappointed when he heard. Tomura did a bad thing, a very bad thing. He promised that he wouldn't kill anyone ever again but―

That little boy he―he reminded Tomura of his sister when he'd killed him.

Sorry. She looked sorry, and he was a sorry sight, and Tomura would like to apologize for that. It made him cry, he saw. He heard. There was a hitch there, bumping up up up. Fear spilling from his mouth like he's in Tomura's skin.

Tomura wonders if anyone else would feel guilty about it.

Himiko wouldn't.











Time passes, slow. 

("Yo Midoriya, what's number three?"

"Uh―I six under a radiant to the third."

"Thanks man."

"You're―uh welcome.")

People find out there's a brain behind his eyes.

"Hi," there's the girl from the street corner in the bar now. She shakes hands with Dabi and Shouto and Ochako. "my name is Toga Himiko, call me Miko-chan."

(Dreams phase by so fast, Izuku us scared he slept through another year again, hazing by.)

(Tomura gets him a cake. It's his birthday.)

(It's funny how easily he can fall into pattern, how much he likes this sinking in his chest, the comfortable ache. People like him.)

(He writes to his mother.)

( I have friends. )

Winter is gone, then. Time spins away like an hourglass broken all over the floor, sand catching gold in the light, glass shining like a small universe that he cut his hands on trying to clear.

He feels his teeth rot in his head as the sun  rises brighter than it ever has. Yellow yellow yellow all over his skin, splots of brown freckles take him over because he's outside all day, there are jobs now that tourists are coming again.

He works with people he's never met before carrying in boxes and boxes, blisters eat his hands. He's cracking up everywhere from the heat but he's used to it.

He hasn't been hungry in weeks he just―

Aches.

But Tomura is there with his gameboy after cleaning up messes from the bar, Himiko has muscle, carrying boxes of alcohol and trays of drinks to the people willing to sit far away enough. They can eat now, Dabi says, and his staples look more sterile even when the skin under his nails is black from his job. Nobody asks what he does. It's better like that, easier, almost. To hope for the best.

They eat now.

Nobody steals a wallet for food, they don't dumpster dive like they used to. Izuku is smattered in freckles. Izuku is smattered in blisters. Izuku is full, Izuku is happy, Izuku is a child―but not. He's too old for forest hunts and tripping over broken bottles in the woods, looking for buried treasure under dead roots and suspicious leaf piles.

Izuku is too old to be a child, too young to be so old.

Izuku is―he's a mess.

Too many people, too many things he never got to be. He wonders if his mother can forgive him for that. Losing that naive, stupid, beautiful child in his chest.

Maybe he isn't that. Maybe he'll never be but―he can hope, can't he?