Chapter Text
Izuku and Kacchan don’t usually agree on a lot.
Some people would be shocked to hear this statement, perhaps saying that this was an inevitable conclusion to come to and that obviously they wouldn’t agree. But in fact, the actual shocking part of the statement was the word “usually”, implying that once in a blue moon on issues that really mattered to both of them, they could and would agree.
Finding out Todoroki Shouto has no regard for his own well-being is one of them.
It starts off, like many things that are plot relevant tend to start, with Stain.
Izuku will blame his adrenaline for the way he doesn’t notice at first even though he knows it’s no excuse, but the fact is that somehow he truly doesn’t notice even though nowadays he always has one eye on Todoroki at all times . He stands next to Todoroki who has that impassive look on his face as he readies his ice and he’s standing up straight and breathing quietly and his face is smooth so everything is fine but then Izuku makes the mistake of looking down and sees-
“Todoroki-kun! You’re bleeding!”
And sees blood pouring down Todoroki’s arm and dripping down on the ground with steady drops of crimson until there’s a small pile under him and embedded in his arm are two actual real life knives.
Now, Izuku has never had the misfortune of actually being stabbed before in his entire life but he’s pretty sure being impaled with a serrated weapon that’s still inside of you should hurt at least a little.
But Todoroki looks down with that emotionless look on his face and says, “Ah,” like he’s terribly inconvenienced and rips the knives out of his arm.
Izuku yelps like he’s the one who has just been impaled causing Todoroki to send him an impatient look. “We need to make sure he can’t hurt Iida and Native,” he says, voice perfectly level and expression serious. “Do you have any ideas?”
The words do their job of reminding Izuku that oh yeah, there’s a serial killer who has strategically and meticulously taken down dozens of pro heroes while they are only first year hero students who have barely been to school for a handful of months and therefore they are massively under qualified to be dealing with this situation and so he strategically decides to put the whole Todoroki got stabbed but didn’t even flinch thing out of his mind to deal with later.
Somehow, they make it out of there alive.
Later, when they're all at the hospital getting treated while listening to Iida apologize a concerning amount, Todoroki interrupts him by bowing down to both of them in turn and saying that he will be heading home now and that he wishes them a speedy recovery.
“You can’t possibly be healed already!” Iida-kun protests and it looks like he would be gesticulating choppily with his arms if he had any that were currently uninjured. There’s a guilty expression on his face when he looks down at the bandages wrapped around Todoroki’s forearm, his face twisting and eyebrows furrowing, and it’s a good thing Todoroki cuts him off because Izuku can tell Iida is gearing up for another spiel of forgiveness and atonement.
“My father requested that I join him for the remainder of my work study,” Todoroki responds, shrugging on a jacket over his shirt and not even wincing as he flexes his injured arm. Were stab wounds really that easy to heal? Izuku didn’t think so and neither is he particularly eager to find out through personal experience. “I’ll be taking my leave now. I hope you both recover soon.”
Iida-kun looks like he wants to protest and Izuku himself has half a mind to force Todoroki back into the hospital bed but if his father has already cleared him for active duty then he must be feeling fine, right? Endeavor wouldn’t force his injured son to work while nursing a wounded arm, would he?
No, of course not.
What kind of father would do that?
Izuku bites his lip and tries not to panic.
Katsuki gets clued in when an entire building falls down on Todoroki, which, fucking fine, it’s not exactly unusual in their line of education, but then the half and half bastard fucking gets up and starts fucking fighting again.
“The fuck are you doing?” He asks incredulously, his hands wavering a little. He quickly fixes his stance before he can accidently misfire and blow up another damn mailbox. Which, fuck you, but hasn’t happened in ten years.
“There’s a villian Bakugou,” Todoroki answers slowly, like he’s a fucking kid who can’t understand basic fucking Japanese. Somehow, he looks perfectly put together despite the fact that he had been buried under rubble two minutes ago, his hair perfectly parted and his pale milky skin unmarked.
How the fuck was that even fair?
Katsuki growls, directing his annoyance towards blasting a chunk of concrete before it can crush them. “I can fucking see that, why the fuck are you here?”
Todoroki looks confused, glancing around like the answer will pop up from the ground as he casually tosses a ball of fire, not even looking towards the villain. “Am I not supposed to be here?”
“A building just fucking fell on you!” Katsuki yells, ducking down to avoid the projectile that the villain flings their way. “Sit the fuck down!”
There’s a sudden surge of ice and Todoroki turns to him like he’s going to retort but then the two bit villain extra throws another damn rock and where the fuck was he getting all these? And then Katsuki is too distracted to think about stupid candy cane bastards with dumb pretty boy hair because he’s too busy kicking ass.
The villain is fucking stupid so of course they make it out of there alive.
Later, when they’re standing in front of Aizawa and explaining how their trip to get milk ended with them taking down a stupid villain who tried to destroy half of the business district with his stupid rock throwing quirk, Katsuki waits for Halfie to mention the fact that he had been in the building when it had collapsed because, and he may be wrong about this but the problem is he’s never wrong, but that seemed like a pretty big fucking detail to mention.
But Todoroki just keeps droning on and on about how he and Bakugou “wanted to wait for assistance but the villain was endangering civilians so we took the initiative to stop him before he could do further damage and I understand that you may disapprove of this, Sensei, but I would like to kindly inform you with all due respect that I stand by my decision and I’m sure Bakugou does as well.”
And then Katsuki is growling, “Don’t fucking speak on my behalf, Candycane.” And Aizawa is rubbing at his temples like he hasn’t slept in fifty fucking years and groaning, “Just get out. Both of you.” And then both of them are turning around and heading back to the dorms and they don’t even have the fucking milk they left the dorms to get.
Katsuki kicks a rock and then he’s so annoyed that he kicks Todoroki but the stupid agile fucker dodges and so he tries to kick him again but Halfie also dodges again while looking at him with mild annoyance and saying, “Stop that.”
“Go the fuck to Recovery Girl,” Katsuki retorts, trying to kick him again.
“But I’m not hurt,” Todoroki dances away, hands still in his pockets.
Stupid princely looking pretty ass motherfucker.
He studies Todoroki and the idiot does look fine but the problem is that he doesn’t trust that stupid Halfie as far as he can throw him.
Katsuki ignores the fact that he’s fucking ripped so hypothetically if he ever did have to throw Todoroki he could actually toss him pretty damn far and fuck anyone who says that fact has a direct correlation to how much he trusts the candycane.
Thinking back, that was a stupid and inaccurate analogy and considering he’s in his own head, he doesn’t mind admitting that he could’ve used some other saying to convey how much he doesn’t trust Todoroki.
In fucking conclusion, long story short, he doesn’t trust him.
At all.
“How the fuck can a whole fucking building fall on you and you’re still fine?”
Todoroki shrugs, walking unimpaired and in a straight line without any limbs trembling or skin paling so he must be fine, right?
“I’ve got my fucking eye on you,” Katsuki squints but Todoroki isn’t even looking at him anymore.
Stupid bastard.
Katsuki and Deku finally flip to the same page after Aizawa assigns some stupid ass training exercise on disaster rescue “due to previous license exams having a disaster rescue test and also because you problem children tend to have a fight first-think later approach to crisis aversion. Hopefully this exercise will knock some sense into you.”
Blah blah, what-fucking-ever.
He finds the fucking dummy and saves the hell out of that damn thing like the winner he is.
That stupid half and half bastard tries to stay behind but Katsuki won’t owe any damn extra anything so he stays behind too and then for some damn reason Deku shows up and acts like the damn nuisance he is and that’s a whole ‘nother production.
When they make it up to the surface, Aizawa drolly congratulates them on the successful completion of the training like he didn’t just endorse fucking child endangerment and almost kill them under a collapsed building. That’s fucking UA for you.
As they begin to change out of their costumes in the locker rooms back to campus, the dumb goth bird fucker comes up to Todoroki and bows, “Todoroki-kun, I would just like to apologize yet again for the way Dark Shadow attacked you. I’m ashamed of the way I lost control and I ask that you please forgive me.”
“It’s fine,” Todoroki replies nonchalantly, expertly ignoring the way Deku starts sputtering, “ Dark Shadow attacked you?”
Tokoyami lowers his head in shame. “Yes. I was unable to control Dark Shadow and he managed to throw Todoroki into a wall. I’m so sorry, Todoroki-kun.”
Todoroki shrugs it off but Katsuki has a little trouble wrapping his head around that fact that Halfie was apparently thrown into a wall by a fucking demon from fucking hell.
“What the fuck, bird face?” Katsuki sputters, before turning to look at the candy cane bastard. “Are you fucking okay?”
Todoroki opens his locker and pulls out an extra t-shirt. “I’m fine,” he says casually. “I think my back might be scratched up a little bit from the friction but I’m otherwise well.”
He pulls of his uniform jacket so he can change and then Deku is yelling behind him and fucking screeching their fucking ears off. God, did that nerd ever shut up? “Oh my god, Todoroki-kun! Your back is covered in blood!”
Katsuki rolls his eyes because that nerd is so fucking dramatic for the sake of all that is unholy, but then he’s looking at Todoroki and his eyes bug out of his head because holy fucking piece of shit slathered on a fucking whole grain wheat cracker but his back is covered in blood.
“What the fuck?” He blurts and for some fucking absurd reason he turns to look at Deku who has a similar expression of horror on his face. “ What the fuck?”
“Tis but a scratch,” Todoroki says solemnly, pulling off his shirt and revealing that his entire back is covered in a nasty looking road rash and what the actual fuck but were those pieces of gravel stuck in the wound? Jesus Christ-
“Don’t fucking quote fucking Monty fucking Python to me, you fucking fucker! You whole fucking back has been fucking flayed!”
“You said fuck an alarming amount of times in that sentence alone,” Todoroki notes with an impressed tilt to his head. “I think it was seven times but I may be wrong because I wasn’t exactly counting.”
The devil bird is screaming behind them like a fucking banshee, screaming and crying and groveling for forgiveness like Todoroki was it’s god and it was being sent to entire damnation into hell. Tokoyami looked even guiltier than his quirk, muttering about the “impending darkness that overtook my senses and caused you such severe levels of injury, please I beg your forgiveness-”
“Todoroki-kun,” Deku’s lip wobbles and Katsuki has exactly 1/6th of a second to dodge what he knows is coming but he’s admittedly kind of distracted with the whole Todoroki’s back is bleeding issue that he doesn’t move in time and so he’s drenched in salty water as Deku cries his fucking eyes out like he can single-handedly solve California’s ten year drought. “You- you… how- you-”
“Spit it out, Midoriya,” Todoroki says impatiently, pulling on a new shirt smoothly with his face perfectly emotionless like the skin from his whole fucking back hasn’t literally just been flayed. Holy fuck.
Katsuki doesn’t even have the mental capacity to laugh at Halfie dissing the nerd because he may genuinely be in shock. Like actually. He turns to look at Deku, who turns to look at him and then they’re looking at each other like two long lost lovers reuniting at sea but they’re not fucking lovers, they’re rivals, and they’re also not at fucking sea because right now, there’s bigger fish to fry and how’s that for an ocean similie?
Somehow, Katsuki thinks that him and Deku have developed a mind reading quirk over night because he’s one hundred percent, irrevocably and undeniably certain that at that moment in time, they’re thinking the exact same thing:
“ Holy shit but Todoroki’s back muscles are fucking ripped.”
They both look away with their faces red and the embarrassment is enough to jolt Katsuki back to his damn senses and his face is twisting and bile is rising in his throat and his stomach churns because did he actually for real get hit with a mind reading quirk with fucking Deku of all people?!
He glares at Deku and thinks with all his might, “ You’re a fucking loser, you shitty damn nerd! Die!” But Midoriya just tilts his head in confusion and doesn’t reply so thank god it was just a temporary fluke because he doesn’t think he can deal with the whole mess that is Todoroki on top of having his mind connected to fucking Deku.
“Todoroki-kun, why didn’t you tell anyone you were hurt?” Deku asks gently with those wide eyes like he’s coaxing a bunny from under a couch but there’s just one slight tiny minuscule easily ignored problem: Todoroki isn’t fucking there anymore. Where the fuck did he go?
They both turn just in time to see the door to the locker room swing shut.
For the second time that day, Katsuki and Deku look at each other, two miracles in one day all because of one Todoroki Shouto who had caused mayhem and unrest and then slipped away unassumingly in the midst of the chaos he had created.
Behind them, Dark Shadow screeches.
As Shouto begins stripping his uniform so he can change into a clean shirt, he has the sudden thought, “I really want to have some soba right now.”
The voice inside of his head that loves to cause chaos whispers, “What’s stopping you?”
He pauses.
What is stopping him?
Humming, Shouto pulls on his shirt and closes his locker, thinking, “ Hm, good point.”
While Bakugou and Midoriya are busy staring at each other like two cats about to have a smack down and communicating solely with their eyebrows, Shouto takes the chance to slip out of the locker room and head to the gates.
He hopes the restaurant he likes has green onions this time.
They don’t let it slide a fourth time.
Somehow, he and Kacchan had decided to put aside their differences and mutually agreed to keep an eye on Todoroki-kun because they were frankly very concerned about his nonchalant behavior regarding his own health and well-being, even though Kacchan hadn’t directly said that out loud. In fact, his exact words had been, “Fuck off, you damn shitty nerd and leave me the hell alone! I don’t need your help to make sure that stupid Icyhot bastard doesn’t kill himself one of these days!” but in Kacchan-speak, it basically meant the same thing. Izuku likes to think he’s quite adept at it after all these years.
It’s a little while later that they’re sparring in the training hall and practicing their hand to hand combat while training their quirks for short range attacks.
Izuku is not ashamed to admit that he’s a little disappointed when Kacchan and Todoroki get to pair up and he ends up sparring against Satou. Although it is a pretty good match up for his quirk considering Satou is very adept at hand to hand and his increased strength makes him a straightforward fighter who can take advantage of his temporarily augmented physical might to punch his way through obstacles and enemies and if Izuku can just stay on the defensive for a few minutes until Satou starts getting tired then he can take advantage of that weakness to retaliate and deal the final blow-
“Doesn't that fucking hurt?" Izuku freezes when he hears Kacchan’s voice, rough and incredulous, and turns to see Todoroki standing there looking confused.
“What?" He tilts his head adorably like a cute cat, his bangs falling into his eyes. “Doesn’t what hurt?”
"Halfie, your whole fucking arm is swollen!” Kacchan stalks forward and grabs Todoroki’s left arm, prodding and turning it to check the damage. Throughout it all, Todoroki doesn’t even flinch or blink and if Izuku isn’t wrong then it kinda looks like he’s actually enjoying it-
"Oh? I didn't notice,” Todoroki barely glances down at his arm, which Izuku can see now is red and getting more swollen as the minutes pass. He must’ve landed on it wrong when evading one of Kacchan’s attacks.
Kacchan scowls at Todoroki, his arm still cradled gently between them. It looks awfully romantic. Izuku tries his best not to feel jealous even though it doesn’t really work. "What the fuck, that looks fucking awful. What the fuck do you mean you didn't notice?!”
Todoroki simply shrugs. “It’s fine. It’ll heal on its own.”
“The fuck?! No!”
Izuku abandons Satou to bound up to Todoroki-kun’s side. Now that he’s closer, he can see the slight bump under the reddened arm that indicates a broken arm. After the year he’s had, he sort of considers himself an expert on fractured limbs. He puts his hand on his shoulder to steady him because in his experience broken limbs hurt and any minute now Todoroki will start swaying and maybe passing out but the minutes pass and he’s just standing there looking fine. “Your arm is broken, Todoroki-kun. You need an X-ray and a cast!”
“But you already know it’s broken,” Todoroki says, leaning into Izuku’s side and sinking into the warmth. His cheeks start flushing because Todoroki-Kun is so close and this is not the time to be thinking these things but his mind can’t stop wondering about what other things they could do that would put them this close to each other…. “Why do we need to do an X-ray if you already know? It’ll just heal on its own. ”
Izuku is so pumped up on the euphoria of being so close to Todoroki that he has to do a double take when he actually registers his words because there was no way?? That he actually just asked that??
“ The fuck?” Kacchan demands and his voice is cracking like it used to in middle school which Izuku was bullied into promising he would never ever speak about or bring up again but it doesn’t mean he can’t make fun of him in the privacy of his own head so he takes a minute to laugh internally and think, “Hah, puberty!”
Across the training grounds, Aizawa Sensei hears the commotion and walks over to them, hands in his pocket and deep set exhaustion present in every line of his face. He raises an eyebrow when he comes close enough to see Todoroki’s swollen arm. “You alright, kid?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Todoroki replies calmly, like a lying liar who currently doesn’t have a broken arm.
“Okay, go sleep it off-”
Kacchan pushes Todoroki aside and Izuku winces because Todoroki-kun has a broken arm and pushing and shoving the injured individual was definitely not a part of proper patient care protocol! And then Kacchan is yelling right in front of Sensei's face which makes Izuku cringe even harder. Kacchan was so embarrassing sometimes. “His arm’s fucking broken! I heard the fucking crack, Sensei!”
“It’ll be fine in a week, Bakugou,” Todoroki says, rolling his eyes. “Don’t be dramatic.”
“ Dramatic ? The fuck?!”
Aizawa sensei is looking between the three of them with his face all twisted up like he’s regretting every decision he has ever made that led him to this exact moment in time. He sighs for a full two minutes and then rubs at his temples like he can’t deal with this any longer. "Todoroki, go get your stuff. We’re going to the hospital."
"But Sensei, I’m fi—”
" Not a word from you. Get your stuff.”
Todoroki looks back at them mournfully like he’s begging for help and Kacchan and Izuku look at each other and shake their heads because they have an unspoken agreement to stop Todoroki-Kun from endangering his life and sleeping off a broken arm is definitely included within those parameters so sorry, Todoroki-kun, we love you and also maybe kinda definitely have a crush on you but you’re on your own.
Aizawa leads Todoroki-kun away like he’s being taken away for execution and he and Kacchan just watch and let it happen.
It’s for Todoroki’s own good.
Aizawa has never regretted his life actions more.
‘Be a UA course teacher, Shouta,” they said. “ You’ll help the next generation of heroes, Shouta.”
Well, fuck them.
He’s never wanted to retire more.
Clenching his hand around the steering wheel, Aizawa sneaks a glance at problem child number three, sitting there unassumingly and staring at the Hello Kitty seat belt cover that Hizashi had gifted him for his birthday four years ago. He doesn’t look like he’s nursing a broken arm, just sitting there with a bored look on his face like he’s making a grocery list in his head and not like he just said ten minutes ago that his broken arm will heal on its own.
Aizawa wonders how it’s possible that Todoroki has never broken a bone before because that’s the only explanation for why the kid wouldn’t know the proper course of action when it came to an injury of the sort. But it’s still odd because Todoroki was the only hero course student who had requested extra classes in first aid and he had passed his paramedics exams with flying colors and there’s no way they skipped over the unit on fractures and breaks.
Did the kid hit his head? Is that why he was forgetting things? He’d need to make sure they’d check for that too. “I thought you would’ve learned how to deal with fractures in your first aid course,” Aizawa says, just to assess whether the kid has a concussion. He probably should have down that sooner but to be fair, he looked completely fine so Aizawa hadn’t really expected him to be hiding a head injury.
“We did,” Todoroki replies, flicking a finger on the hula dancer bobble head on the dashboard and watching as it wiggles in response. “But isn’t that for treating civilians and other patients?”
Huh?
“Yes, Todoroki,” Aizawa says slowly, his grip on the steering wheel tightening until his knuckles are white. “That is for treating patients with broken arms. Which you currently are .”
“Sensei,” Todoroki states seriously, sitting up straight. Aizawa prepares himself for a big revelation, wondering what the kid would have to say that could possibly explain away this odd behavior. “Why do you have fuzzy dice?”
He should’ve fucking quit when he had the chance . Fifteen years he’s been driving this car and not one soul had the guts to question his choice of accessories.
“I have a question for you, kid,” Aizawa grunts. “ How the fuck did you not know your arm was broken?”
“I never said it’s not broken, though? Just that I don’t need to go to a hospital…”
"Kid, if you're hurt, then you need to tell someone. I can't have you in unnecessary pain when you can just as easily go and get it treated.”
"But I’m not in pain, Sensei,” Todoroki replies and what the fuck was that supposed to mean.
His arm was broken.
“Your arm is broken,” Aizawa reiterated slowly, just so they’re both on the same page. “You don't feel that?"
Todoroki shrugs. “A bit, but not too much."
Aizawa chances a glance away from the road to check on him and even though he’s sitting up straight and his face shows no signs of pain, he looks a slight bit paler than this morning, a sign that his body is definitely reacting to some kind of injury even if he can’t feel it.
He leans over and pops open the glove box, rummaging around one handedly and pulling out a snickers. “Eat that. You need to get your blood sugar up.”
Todoroki takes it and Aizawa does his best not to react when the kid whispers, “ Dad van.”
He’s not exactly wrong.
They get to the hospital with no further incidents or heart attacks, which is a win in Aizawa’s books, and then they’re sitting in the sitting room waiting for Todoroki’s name to be called.
X-ray’s are taken and then Aizawa is being pulled aside by the doctor to discuss the results while Todoroki has a cast fitted. He doesn’t know what exactly there is to discuss because the arm is either broken or not but he follows along regardless as he’s led into a dim room with the prints clipped up onto a light board.
“Mr. Aizawa,” the doctor starts and he resists the urge to make a face. “The results of the X-ray have come back and it has come to our attention that your student seems to have a worrying amount of multiple old fractures, many of which have been left untreated and healed wrong.”
Aizawa jolts, not expecting the doctor to say that. He had thought they would confirm it was broken and that was that. He turns to look at the X-ray and finds that if he looks closely, there are faint cracks and parts of the bone that are denser than the bone around it.
“I must ask whether this has occurred at UA because I’d like to remind you that you are required by law to report these incidents.”
Aizawa’s face slowly falls because he’s thinking back now and there’s no way all of these had occurred in the two years that Todoroki has been attending. He turns to the doctor and tells him, “No, it’s not from UA,” and the man replies that some of these fractures were apparently years old, going as far back as nine or ten years.
They look at each other for a long few minutes because they both know where this is leading.
"We can do a full x-ray, if you want,” the doctor says gently. “Because I don't think these are only on his arm."
"Yes... Yes, do a full x-ray.”
"I'll call in Todoroki for a full X-ray checkup, and then we can discuss further courses of action by looking at the results later."
Later, when they’re both looking at the prints, the doctor whispers, ”We’re going to have to report this,” and Aizawa closes his eyes and lets out a shaky exhale.
It all makes sense now.
The way Todoroki had seemed unconcerned, saying he would sleep it off and that it would heal on its own. It wasn’t because he had never broken a bone like he had thought but because he had broken so many that at that point it must have seemed inconsequential. Apparently they found out after some digging that Todoroki had no hospital records before the age of fifteen when he started UA. His father quite literally never brought him in for treatment.
“I’ll get in contact with social services and start a case,” Aizawa says grimly. “I need to have a talk with Todoroki.”
And they both knew then that this was far from the end.