#ko22

He replies with a silent shrug of his shoulders without even looking up from whatever it is he’s putting away.

Ignoring the sinking feeling in your gut, you indulge your denial and shake the handle anyways. That’s when you hear a ‘clink’ noise on the other side of the door, followed by the sound of the doorknob rolling away. Now the panic sets in as you face the reality that you are for sure stuck in the gym storage room with none other than Kageyama Tobio.

Not that it’s a problem per se… conversely, is it really that good though? The best way to describe your relationship with him is… strange? You’ve seen him go from angrily drinking milk and struggling his ‘king of the court’ title in both of your first year at Karasuno High, to now mostly happily drinking milk and being a great team player. You’ve always thought he was cute. How couldn’t you, with his shiny raven hair that stills falls over his eyes in the same way that it did when you met him in middle school, his deep blue eyes that sparkle every time volleyball is even alluded to, and the way his body has nicely filled out to the perfect tone over the years— okay maybe he’s a little more than just cute.

And maybe you’ve had a bit of a crush on him since middle school; if five years is a bit. In middle school, you were in the same class for first and third year, and at Karasuno you were recruited to be a second manager-in-training for the team. You don’t exactly know when it started but you constantly question if you have actual feelings for him or if it’s a simple attraction when you can only count the non-volleyball-related conversations you’ve had on your hands. However, you do feel that the both of you have this mutual respect for each other. That, and he’s eternally grateful for you being a much nicer tutor than Tsukishima.

So, long story short: strange relationship.

And you’re locked in a room together. Frantically, and irrationally, your eyes dart around the room in search of something you could use to bust the door down, until the rational part of your brain reminds you that damaging school property is bad. Your eyes finally settle on Kageyama who hasn’t even looked up yet.

Feeling your gaze on him, he finally meets your eyes with his own royal blue hues. His cheeks instantly redden, and you assume this is because he realizes the door won’t open. “We’re stuck,” is all you can manage to get out.

He points to the phone in your hands and you shake your head. “No signal. What about yours?”

Mimicking you, he shakes his head and answers, “I left it in my bag for practice.”

⭒ ⭒ ⭒ ⭒ ⭒

After about fifteen minutes of yelling and banging on the door, ten minutes of scouring every centimeter of this cemented bunker of a room, and five minutes of lying on the floor and dramatically sighing at even intervals before Kageyama nudges you and offers you a hand to help you up.

Averting your eyes downwards, you feel a slight heat spreading across your cheeks as you take his hand with a mumbled ‘thanks’. He lets go and your palm feels cold. When you finally do look up you see him beckoning you towards a pile of mats where you plop down beside him.

“I-I figured we’d might as well be comfortable if we’re going to be here for a while,” Kageyama says as he lays back with his arms tucked under his head.

You let yourself lean backwards onto your elbows as you reply with a quiet nod of your head. It’s hard to give a vocal reply when you’re filled with teenage hormones and the bottom of his shirt has ridden up. You can’t help but mentally reaffirm your earlier thoughts of him having filled out well. The most difficult thing is to not stare.

You can practically hear Tanaka-senpai and Nishinoya-senpai teasing the crap out of you for this. Your upperclassmen (including those graduated) knew all too well about your crush— in fact pretty much the whole team caught on except the subject of your affections himself.

“So, what do you do besides volleyball and failing math?” you ask him and he raises a curious eyebrow. “Like you said, we’re probably going to be stuck here for a while— might as well get to know each other.”

⭒ ⭒ ⭒ ⭒ ⭒

You tell him funny stories about your childhood, the shenanigans you and your neighborhood friends would get up to; the frogs you tried to catch and mishaps on the playground. He opens up to you about his grandfather, his older sister, and recounts his introduction to his passion. Volleyball was love at first sight for him, before he even knew what it was. You didn’t think you’d ever be able to relate to Kageyama so much.

“It all makes complete sense now,” you state, eyes focused on the ceiling.

“What?”

You hear him shift, turning his head to look at you and you mirror his actions, turning on your side to face him— when did you get this close? Refusing to allow this shock to turn you into a mumbling fool, you try to keep a steady tone.

“You.”

The two of you share a moment of intense silence when he cuts it short by quickly turning away, accidentally bonking your head in the process. Instead of feeling rejected and dejected like you thought you would, you instead feel hopeful. You let out a giggle at his increasingly reddening cheeks.

“S-Sorry a-about that—” he stammers out a string of apologies as you rub the barely sore spot on your forehead.

“You’re lucky you’re cute.”

⭒ ⭒ ⭒ ⭒ ⭒

⭒~ BONUS ~⭒

Here’s a lil’ bonus hc for when the team finds them~

Tanaka: *unintelligible screaming*

Nishinoya: *jumping up and down*

Hinata: *mouth hanging wide open with no words coming out*

Tsukki: *hand over mouth, chuckling smugly*

Normally, you might be more thankful that your enemy-turned-close-friend is being so protective of you in spite of his usually aloof nature, but right now you feel suffocated— both figuratively and literally. It was also a little embarrassing. Did he not think you could handle yourself? Not only was his behavior strange, but he was smothering you in a way he never had before and after the umpteenth time of him protectively ushering you behind him with one arm, you’d had enough.

“Shouto, enough!” you whisper-yell into his ear, not wanting to involve the whole team into it. “It was a mouse!”

“We still have to be careful,” he says simply, which only infuriates you more. But now isn’t the right time to hash it out, so you decide to wait until it is.

That right time never does come as everything after that unfolds at Mach 5: finding the hideout, the heroes taking over, and next thing you know, you’re absentmindedly clinging to Todoroki while watching the showdown between All Might and One For All on the big screen.

Now in the aftermath of it all, you realize that you were probably crushing his left hand and your quirk is causing you to overheat. Your grip loosens and in comes the dizziness. Todoroki notices you clutching your head and asks you once again if you’re okay. When you give an unclear nod-slash-shake, his hand tightens around yours as he leads you away from the crowd and into an alleyway.

“Shouto, w-we need to— B-Bakugou—”

“It’s okay, the others are escorting him back—”

“W-We shouldn’t b-be here— we’ll get caught—”

“Don’t worry about any of that,” he tells you, placing hands on your shoulders in an attempt to help you steady yourself. “It’s okay, just breathe, and tell me what’s—”

“I-It’s too hot…” you manage to mutter out, but still feel like if you lift your head too high, you might pass out as though you were the one to experience the United States of Smash.

He’s quick to act silently, bringing up his right hand to the back of your neck. Feeling his activated quirk brings you instant relief.

“It’s okay, you can go,” he urges you to release your built up heat, and you do so.

You slowly start to release all the thermal energy you’ve absorbed with Todoroki’s hand keeping you grounded. Ironically enough, the emission process leaves your heart feeling warm.

You finally let your eyes meet his letting him know you’re good and you suddenly remember tonight’s events.

“Todoroki…”

“I told you to call me Shouto,” he reminds you, recalling when the two of you called a truce, and he asked you to call him Shouto to mark your new friendship.

“Shouto,” you begin with heat once again rising to your cheeks at the use of his first name. What happened tonight?”

“Well, we went to rescue Bakugou, and—”

“I’m not talking about that,” you stop him and he raises his eyebrows. Was he that oblivious in his own out-of-character behavior? “I’m talking about you being embarrassingly overprotective!” You can’t contain yourself anymore. “Do you not trust me to handle myself or contribute like everyone else? Look, I know I’m not as smart as Momo or as strong as—”

“That’s not it.” His hand that was still on your neck keeping you cool tenses up.

“Then… why?”

“I didn’t want what happened to Bakugou to happen to you too.”

You shake your head in response because the answer still doesn’t fully explain.

“And after those creeps—”

“You’ve never been like this before, Shouto,” you cut him off, looking him dead in the eye in a way that lets him know to cut the shit. “Tell me the truth.”

“Because I love you,” he breathes out so quietly, you think you might have misheard, before he starts speaking increasingly louder. “When Bakugou got taken, I wasn’t anywhere near you— a-and if anything happens to you I-I wouldn’t know what to do with myself!”

His explanation leaves you breathless.

“Did you just say…”

Of course you’re attracted to him, but you had never allowed yourself to think of him as a romantic prospect because, well… he’s Todoroki Shouto, the half-hot-half-cold prodigal son of the number two hero and one of the most hopeful prospects of UA, and you’re… you’re just you. Despite being promised that you had incredible potential, you barely got in and could barely keep up with the rest of your class in the first semester. What good was incredible potential if you had such poor control over such a volatile quirk? Sure, Midoriya struggled too, but his unbelievable intelligence was at a level you couldn’t get close to.

“Did you just say that you love me?”

He nods silently.

So he really— wait. Although you’ve grown to ‘speak Shouto’ as your friends put it, you can’t bring yourself to understand whether he’s telling you that he loves you in the sense that he cares about you a lot because you’re close friends, or if he loves you as in, in love with you.

You can feel the heat start to emit from yourself once again as you settle on what is probably the most risky and irrational way to confirm his feelings. Pushing yourself up onto the tips of your toes, you don’t break eye contact with him until your eyes close when your lips meet his. Keeping it short, you pull away with your face burning in humiliation and refuse to meet his eyes again.

That is until his icy hand slides to the side of your face and he uses his thumb to nudge your head upwards where an irresistible magnetic force brings you to face his heterochromatic eyes.

“Does this mean you love me too?” Shouto asks you, looking calm despite his voice betraying him.

“Yes, Shouto, I love you too.”

🔥 BONUS ❄️

You and Shouto jog back to catch up to you friends, hand in hand, your left holding his right. The two of you are greeted by four open jaws and double the amount of eyes staring at your linked hands.