bees and bread have done so much for our society

Chapters: 5/20

Fandom: Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga)

Word Count (so far): 140k+

Relationships:

🌠 Bakugō Katsuki/Todoroki Shōto 🎇

🍣 Todoroki Shōto & Todoroki Siblings 🍱

🧨 Bakugō Katsuki & Todoroki Shōto ☄️

🏝 Class 1-A & Todoroki Shōto 🧊

Summary:

Now that Shouto knows his older brother isn’t locked-up in some cell waiting for a Hero to save him—a Hero he’d had a hand in inspiring to aspire, a Hero who held out a hand to inspire him in return—it’s a relief. Shouto doesn’t have to be the kind of Hero who would reassure Touya that it wasn’t too late to dream, to be. (Not anymore, not really.)

Because Touya chooses to be Dabi, and Shouto has a choice.

But, then, there’s that familiar glare coming from behind him again and Shouto can’t help but feel he isn’t making choices that’ll change a thing. So, instead, Shouto makes a choice that might change something.

He asks the glare’s owner, “Why are you still here?”

Silence. (Krakkles.)

“Don’t wanna owe you anything,” says Bakugou Katsuki in what Shouto’s come to know as typical Bakugou Katsuki-fashion.

Where there is ice, there is anger. He knows this. He’s had to know this. He checks his Quirk to register what it is he feels at any given opportunity, and anger tends to draw out crooked and craning shinks when it isn’t drawing out Quirk evolution. His anger is cold and self-inflicted. He does not blame Katsuki for this, and he will not hate him for what he isn’t guilty of causing.

“I don’t care about that.” Shouto stares at his own ice and doesn’t need a memory to feel enough anger to hold it steady. “Go.”

A snort. “Too late. No use runnin’ now. No damn way your ice fixed the real problem.” He feels a boot crunch ice more than he hears it. “More water where that came from, so the pressure you put there’s gettin’ ready to blow. That happens, the water’ll spew out from the cracks in the walls an’ fly out like water jets with debris inside. Everything’s collapsin’ whether we like it or not.”

Shouto fights a grin as well as he fights turning to face Katsuki and his rejection. “Of course, I also predicted that would happen.”

“Shaddup.”

“But you stayed behind.”

There’s a pause where Shouto expects Katsuki to yell, to demand he do better or he won’t get to at all. Instead, Shouto hears another boot crunch on ice and a shaky swallow somewhere to his left. Then, there’s a trembling hand encased in a comically huge gauntlet shaped like a grenade trying to hold his. It kinda... taps at the fingers there. Shouto only knows this because he feels vibrations and hears what sounds like ice clanking against the metal.

Shouto tells himself he’ll only look down to confirm as to appear as if he has feeling in the fingertips, like anyone else would. Instead, he looks down and Katsuki’s gloved hand freezes as if stuck there—suspended midair, no longer uncertain—by unseen ice.

The hand yanks back. Shouto stares at its retreat, and feels.