Mending Old Wounds

Relaxed

Todoroki POV: 

Midoriya took an apple from the kitchen and I grabbed a bag of grapes and two bottles of water from the refrigerator, before going up to Midoriya's room. When we entered, we placed our bags of books on on his desk and Midoriya set up the game. I sat down on the floor with my back against his bed and opened the bag of grapes and started popping them in my mouth one at a time. Midoriya turned around with two controllers in his hands and the partially eaten apple in his mouth. He handed me one of the controllers as he sat down, using his recently freed hand to take the apple out of his mouth as he bit down on it. He continued to eat it as the opening credits rolled. Some juice from the apple escaped the corner of his mouth and, before I could stop myself, I reached out and swiped my thumb across his chin. He looked at me with a shocked expression, his cheeks immediately turning pink. I jerked my hand away, wiped it on my jeans, and stared at my lap. 

 "Sorry, you had apple juice on your chin," I said lamely. I picked my controller up and started choosing my character, trying to focus on literally anything else. 

 What the hell did you just do? What is wrong with you? 

 "Um, th-thanks Todoroki," he mumbled. "So, is it okay if we start with the Dead Center campaign, and we can just go in order until we get tired or decide to do something else," he asked, a little too enthusiastic. 

"That's fine by me," I shrugged. 

Midoriya chose the right chapter and started the game, it only took a few minutes for the atmosphere in the room to lighten up again. We were actually doing a good job of mowing down all the zombies on expert. 

"Todo, have you been playing this game without me," Midoriya asked when we completed the whole chapter. "You took out more special infected than me, and your general defense score is right blow mine!" 

I rubbed the back of my head, "Yeah, I've been playing this and the Gears of War games with... someone else." I avoided looking at him. 

"Who?" 

I sighed 

"Wait, Gears of War... oooh... Kirishima?" 

"Yeah," I sighed again and looked at Midoriya. 

"You don't have to tiptoe around me, Todo," he said quietly, looking at his controller. "Kiri is one of my closest friends. As jealous as I am... and as much as I want to, I just can't hate him." 

"Mido..." 

"I- I can't ignore him, or Kacchan. I have to do my best to move on, and I'm honestly really happy for them both. As hard as that might be to believe. Kiri is a really great guy...."He just stared at his controller for a while, scrunching his forehead every so often in thought. 

"It's really not that hard to believe."

"What do you mean?" 

Midoriya was giving me an unreadable look, but I continued in spite of that, "I mean, of course you would be happy about them being happy. You never fail to put the happiness of others ahead of your own."

That's one of the reasons I like you.

"That's one of the reasons you're going to be a great hero."

"Thank you, Shoto," he dropped his head so that his hair was hiding the top part of his face, but I could still make out a faint blush.

Ba-dum. My heart thumped.

"You know, I've really had a lot of fun today," he looked back up at me, and smiled. "I mean, we haven't really done that much, but it was all fun, easy, and relaxing, and... I wasn't sad once." He put his controller on the floor, turned his body towards mine, placed a hand on my shoulder, and pulled me into a hug.