Suicidal Todoroki x Midoriya | What it Means to Love

41 | Cold Blood Boils

Shoto Todoroki

It feels as if the world is staring me down as I shatter the ginger buzz of the convivial store bustle. Ignore it, Shoto, I command myself ruthlessly. Incinerate your thoughts and drown what remains. Perish unnecessary emotions. Without allowing myself to hesitate, I rush immediately towards the back of the store. I remember...everything you told me.

"Izuku is just the cutest," Toga giggles, unearthing roaring ire from within me. "That's why it'll hurt him and you the most when I take your form. Ahah! I'd take that bubbly Ochaco's form, but then I wouldn't be able to completely make him mine. And when I'm done, he'll be just like you—lying helplessly on the dirty floor! Oh, my heart races just thinking about him! Sweet, sweet Izuku..."

She deftly wedges her foot down into my stomach. I scrunch my right eye down as she twists her foot around the depression in my abdomen. "I'm always thinking about Izuku. Mmm, why does his heart beat for an intimidatingly tall, horribly cruel and cold, disgustingly apathetic male like you? Is he only gay for you? Izuku... Izuku! Ah! His name tastes so good! His blood must taste even better." Her tongue slides messily across her lips as her infatuated yellow eyes twinkle.

As if a multiplicity of syringes are injecting a volatile, torturous chemical into my body, I flinch at the burning jabs wriggling through my head. Why...am I so weak? Why can I not protect the one I love? Why...am I never enough? The noxious fluid crawling deviously through my flesh leisurely peels away my consciousness. I want to be enough, yet I always fall apart so easily. Mayhaps you refuse to state such unadulterated facts. Tell me why you want me to exist, Izuku. You once seemed to be extraordinarily likened to berating me for my 'unheroic demeanor.' It was as if you wanted to covertly create as much distance between us as possible. Now I seem only to harrow you.

"Izuku isn't as quiet as you," she continues, wrapping her warm fingers around my left arm. "His voice is the sweetest sound I've heard! Since he loves you, I just want to hurt you. I can't wait to see him covered in blood and gasping for breath." Forming a nasty sneer, she twirls the knife in her left hand around so the tip of the blade is angled down at me. "Mm! You've already given me plenty of blood, but I'm going to taste it for myself. If Izuku's tasted your blood, then I—"

Don't...look at me. "Never once has he tasted my blood," I pant, staring at my inauspicious fate as Toga pushes up my coat sleeve to slice into my arm with her knife. "He will never be yours—blood is quite the appalling sight to him." I am so very weak, but it was never my wish to be caught in such a detestable lie.

Toga smiles sweetly with the innocent fangs of a devil. "Hah... You know, if you hate yourself this much, why don't you join us? You'd be perfect for Dabi, Shoto." She presses her whetted knife against my wrist. "Since you're the son of Endeavor, Shigaraki wouldn't be too happy about that! But we can fix that. As long as I get to see Izuku more often, I'll get you into the League. Mm! What do you say? Aww, you're losing consciousness so quickly!"

Wasting not a fractured fraction of a second, Toga blissfully puckers her lips and digs the knife into my skin, pulling the blade up to my elbow as scarlet rivers soon spring from the line of a deep red. Then, with unyielding vigor, she places her lips across the long laceration on my arm and slides her mouth across the length of it. Her saliva solidifying along the skin and hair follicles of my arm is less than appealing.

For a few seconds, the lights diminish, and the instant they flicker back to life, I stare at myself, who's wearing a sickening grin with small smears of my own blood brushing the edges of his lips. I cannot discern whether I'm currently falling from the ledge of reality, or sinking into the delusion of my unconsciousness.