Tododeku Week 2018

No Phone In the Phone Booth

Summary

It was almost easy to make friends after Midoriya, so it made sense that it would be even easier to lose them. No matter how solid his friends may seem, nothing lasts forever.
Right?

Tododeku Week 2018, day two: Insecurities

"It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then." - Lewis Carroll

A/N

whoops, only 2k today even though i had longer to write,,,, i'll try to make up for it tomorrow! i'll start it right now. (it's only 6:30, about)

-

Shouto is frustrated, and it shows in his training with Endeavor. He uses his fire more, as he has since the sports festival, but it's a little too much more. It almost starts to match the height of his father's flames, and in addition to using his ice to assist him, that made him very tired in the evenings. He sleeps well, and spends a whole morning wondering if it would be morally correct to mentally thank his father, or if he even wants to.

But that's because no one's talking to him, despite having exchanged phone numbers and promises to keep in touch with most of class 1-A before break let out.

True, he wasn't the most conversational student, so he wasn't the one to normally text first. But by now, the sixth day into break, with not a single peep from any of his peers, he had at least one plain 'hello' in everyone's inboxes. He must, because he sent them all in a fit of desperation on the fourth night.

Alas, they're all unread.

So he dodges his father's punches to the best of his ability and wonders where he went wrong.

It was the mall, wasn't it? I turned the invitation down to see my mother, but maybe they don't realize how much visiting her then meant to me. He thinks. They could have taken it as a rejection of friendship. I need to fix this, somehow. But how do I fix it if they aren't responding?

Endeavor lunges forward and grabs him by his shoulders, knocking his skull against Shouto's. He's hard-headed and also on fire, so it hurts very much. He manages to stay standing, but his vision swims.

Why isn't Midoriya responding? He knows how important my mother is to me, but then again... He forms a knife of ice around his fist, and aims for Endeavor's not-on-fire side. He was held hostage by Shigaraki at that shopping mall while I wasn't there.

A couple more blows are exchanged, and Shouto loses again with one of Endeavor's fists pressing down on his solar plexus and the other clamped around his throat. He drops his temperature to lessen the damage of his inevitable neck burns, glaring Endeavor in the eye all the while. He meets it with doubled intensity.

He's released to his room, so he goes to bed without dinner but definitely not without checking his phone five times a minute.

There's nothing.

As he lays in bed wishing the hurt to go away, he wonders if he should go to Midoriya's house to check that he's even alive. But he can be alive without texting Shouto, and if he won't answer his texts, then he probably won't want him showing up at his house.

Shouto clenches his teeth and opens his phone again, staring at his pitiful mass of hellos and good mornings.

Midoriya, please

He sends, and shuts off his phone.

-

The next day, Shouto swears he hears the doorbell when Endeavor roundhouse kicks him into the spare elliptical. His back screams in protest, but he scrabbles for purchase on the machine to pull himself up with. He accidentally grabs one of the pedals at first and fumbles.