Smile | Suicidal Todoroki x Kaminari

12 | Fear

This story is not intended to promote or encourage actions/behaviors such as suicide, self-harm, abuse, violence, purging, or eating disorders.

Shoto Todoroki
•⊱—≬—⊰•

Cold. Clack. Clatter. Black. Segments. Chains. Chains? Punctured, serpentine vertebrae. Coiling. Skin squeezing. Bones popping beneath. Organs twisting. Livid thunder pulsating. Strangled breaths. Trepidation. A cocktail of an acerbic, unidentified fear. Swish. Clatter. Hiss. Disproportionate. Distorted. Dismantled. A mirage of shadow. A void of light. Struggling. Squirming, clattering, hissing. Skin burning. Bones crunching beneath. Organs tearing. Silence. Mephitic fear in the blood, glazing the eyes, on the tongue. Silence. Strangling silence.

Todoroki shook his head to abate the memories savaging his mind as he approached his home. He attempted to swallow the salty, pungent bitterness of apprehension that had coagulated around the back of his tongue, but although the predominant mass had evanesced, the grains and hairs of a salty residue remained. Upon furtively sliding open the door to slip inside his house, Todoroki glanced around and silently pried his feet from his shoes. Another pang of fear pulsed through his being as he crept towards his room, but a familiar voice sank its fangs into his shoulders.

The austere voice hissed, "Shoto."

Todoroki fixed his eyes on the hazy floor that crawled with wroth, throbbing particles. "Yes?"

"Let's go. You know the drill," Endeavor sighed as the faint patter of footsteps amplified into an irate tramp of bestial clomps.

Todoroki bit his lip as he slid his bag to the floor and dragged himself onto the scale resting beside the door, and as he did, Endeavor murmured, "I expect that you gained weight this time."

I definitely lost more weight, Todoroki thought as his body lightly trembled. But it was bound to happen... I know this, but the only thing I see in the mirror is layers of fat across my body. I hate it.... I hate how fat I am. No matter what I do, I just can't seem to have the thinness that torments and tantalizes my mind. He watched as the flickering, taunting numbers on the scale slowed until the soft, piercing ring of the scale solidified his weight. One hundred...and twelve pounds. I honestly feel good about seeing it, but E—

"Shoto!" Endeavor snarled while sieving the numbers on the scale. "This is unacceptable! All you've done for the past two months is lose weight! It seems my threats aren't enough. You should be at least twenty-five pounds heavier! Why have you lost thirteen pounds in one week?" His eyes were boiling, but Todoroki didn't need to look his father in the eyes to feel it.

Because I'm fat, Todoroki internally mused. Because I hate my body. Because I...

"I...I don't know," Todoroki replied as his skin seemed to plunge from being hot and sticky to cold and clammy.

Swack!

Endeavor had struck his son's cheek. "Tell me the truth. Now, Shoto," he viciously demanded.

"I-I—"

"Stop stuttering."

How? Todoroki pondered while berating himself for stuttering at all. It just happens... I can't just...stop something I can hardly control. It makes me more self-conscious about it, yes, but it somehow makes me more prone to doing exactly what you don't want. It's not that easy. Or maybe it is, and I'm just overcomplicating it all again.

It felt as though Todoroki's head had been wrapped up snug in a noose as tears formed in his empty, fear-saturated eyes. "I don't want to eat..." A noxious wave of bitter numbness flooded across his tongue.