Moments Between

Shoto Todoroki

[yahoo! Is anyone reading this junk?]

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Shoto was lazing around in the lavish common room, laying on the couch, engaging and not in the simple mess his classmates have been doing for a while now as they crammed in last minute study lessons. Study lessons about various ways to act on certain situations, about Italian etiquette and language, implemented by Reborn. He felt his phone vibrate and decided to check it out.

It was from his housemate, Endeavor. What does he want now?

[I have met a prospective wife for you to marry when you reach 25. You are slacking off too much I am afraid you will not reach my goal of becoming the  number 1 hero. Me being the current Number 1 notwithstanding. You are to meet up at this place and this time for an Omiai.]

He's still on being Number 1? Tch, what a drag- wait, what was that again? Oh drat, a marriage meeting?! Endeavor has planned an Omiai for him?!

He was too shocked to notice his hold on the phone loosening. The gadget fell on his face, exactly when Ochako had looked to him for god knows what because he wasn't listening. He sat up, catching his phone as it fell this time. His eyes zoned in on Ochako, who was still looking at him, confused, until she somehow felt his distress. She put her pen on her notebook as a bookmark, all ready as all functions came back to Shoto.

He needs advice. He needs help. He doesn't want whatever his father has in store for him. He doens't even know what he wants for in a relationship, or what gender he likes!

He needs advice, he needs help. He has to ask. Izuku, Hitoshi, Tsuna or Chrome are probably the most eligible ones to give him sound advices.

He stood up abruptly, ignoring Ochako's and Iida's attempt to  reach him. "I'm going to my room," is all he said as an excuse and bolted it out of there, straight to Izuku's office.

He knocked on the door. No answer. He tried calling thru phone, and heard his ringtone coming from the inside of the room. He knocked on the door again, this time not waiting for a response after and slowly opened the door.

Izuku was hunched over his desk, a strewn of papers scattered over.

"Izuku," he tried calling out softly as he stepped into the room. When the greenet didn't answer, he peered over, seeing his eyes closed, his breaths even, with a small frown.

Ah, he fell asleep working.

He couldn't ask for an opinion today, then. He looked at the message on his phone again, and decided it was fine. They had it planned in a month, so he has a month to plan what he wants to do until then.

He pocketed his phone and looked at Izuku's sleeping figure. His back and neck and arms would surely hurt by the time he wakes up, and he might catch a cold with the cold breeze coming from the open window just behind the greenet. Shoto closed the windows and gently pried his hands off the pen and gently took the papers from under his arms, stacking it over and placing them on the corner of the table. He tapped his Sky gently, trying to wake him up to get him to his en suite bedroom, but the teen didn't budge, just frowned even deeper and now scowling. His breathing tempo became a bit ragged.

Shoto decided to take it upon himself, and carried the sleeping teen to the bed, putting him in a comfortable position after taking off his shoes. He carded his fingers over his fluffy bush of a hair when Izuku started grunting in his sleep.

Then came the incoherent mutters. Izuku was mumbling something in his sleep, his hold on Shoto's shirt (which he didn't know when he fisted the cloth) tightening. Shoto examined him if he was still sleeping and yes, he was. He's probably having a nightmare, so he continued the soft rubs on his head to soothe him. When tears started to form on the corners of the greenet's eyes, Shoto started softly rubbing circles on his back.

He didn't expect to be grabbed on the arms and turned over. Shoto now has his back on the bed, with Izuku on top of him. Izuku was biting his lips, eyes clouded with tears and drowsiness. The nightmare must have been scary and painful to have Mist-trained Izuku moving in his sleep.

Shoto slowly raised his hands to cup Izuku's face. "It's ok. It's fine," he said softly.

Izuku buried himself into Shoto's chest, fisting his shirt even more, and cried. Shoto hugged him, rubbing circles on his back and his head, whispering sweet nothings to lull him back to sleep.

While doing so, his mind started to wander. What does Endeavor want from him now? He never understood why Shoto never called him Oyaji ever again, since after the sports festival. He shoved it under his basket of Shoto's teenage rebellion, when in reality, Shoto was using it to forget he had a shitty father in him. Though it seems that he's failed the test - the test where he is suppossed to show how quietly and efficiently he would handle the one who so boldly mistreated him, shamefully letting Endeavor see it as some measly phase of adolescence.

But as Shoto got to spend more time with Izuku and Tsuna and the other mafiosi in Namimori, he's learned that forgivenes is easier when you replace expectation with comapssion. Better yet, it becomes easier when you expect nothing from other people because humans have different experiences, has different range of emotions, and another level of perception of themselves, the world, and core beliefs, than you.

Sometimes, you must put your pride and pain aside, and see the person and situation for who and what they are. No, Shoto will not be able to change the person or offense, but he can control the amount of time, energy, and attention he will allow that person to impact. Therefore, forgive and learn the lesson - even if they aren't sorry and they will never learn theirs. At the end of the day, forgiveness isn't about Enji Todoroki, but freeing the child named Shoto Todoroki.

Shoto had been born of chaos and survival; was made to learn to crawl on hot coals and walk on ragged edges since he could remember. He was thrown from the womb and thrown into turbulent seas without a life jacket, and what brave seafeares that would rescue him were drowned. Survival was all he had ever known, and he had wondered, more than once, when he sees a happy family in the park on his walk to wherever Endeavor decided to drag him to, what it was like to just live.

Everything changed with UA. Specifically with the Sports festival, when Izuku (and by extension Tsuna and Bakugo) opened wounds he never wanted to peel the hastily plastered bandeges off of. It was the first time he's ever opened up, for he had been afraid he will not stop pouring. (In the back of his mind he wondered why does he fear becoming a river; what mountain gave him such shame.)

He wished he had done it sooner. It elevated his spirits, lifted his chest he didn't know was heavy with burden. He felt like he could fly with how light he was.

Izuku had become his lighthouse. He came to the greenet with his wounds and he saw his worth, worth his own father never saw, always thought he was lacking. Shoto came to Izuku broken and brittle but Izuku saw Shoto's beauty. He came to him with walls so high he just expected no one would ever dare to climb them, and so he played the part of unfriendliness, but he was told that he only saw mountains that had yet to be moved - and moved them he did.

Shoto felt alone, Izuku invited him in. He had been cold, and he held out his hand like fire - a flame that bound them together. Shoto began to understand that there was nowhere he could go, nowhere he could run to where Izuku's presence would not be made known.

He had been in his deep waters. In his unkown places, in his breathless void. It had been him. All along, it had been Izuku. His family. His Sky, his Home.

Shoto had forgotten the reason he came to see Izuku, but that's fine. His Sky needs comfort, and that's what he will prioritize, for a Cloud can never float without a Sky to drift about.

And he would hope, for hoping is the only thing he can do other than support and defend from an independent standpoint, that Izuku could one day abandon the idea that he is less deserving of life, or of love, than anyone else in this world. It would always take drowning in an ocean before one could learn how to swim, and Izuku has already drowned deep enough. He survived everything he's gone through up to this point. The best day of his life is still yet to come. There are still people he haven't met yet and things he hadn't experienced.

And they, his family, will be with him through every step. This Shoto knew.