Pairing: Todoroki Shouto x Gender Neutral Reader
Rating: Teen+
Tags: Reader-Insert, Stalking, Kidnapping, Attempted Kidnapping, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Psychological Torture (There is a plot for a character to get kidnapped and assaulted, but it doesn't actually happen), Sex Toys, Happy Ending
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A late night meal delivery to Pro Hero Shouto goes terribly wrong, leaving you trapped in a room together with no obvious means of escape.
You find yourself holding out hope not just for a rescue, but also for Shouto to somehow stay oblivious to the massive crush you've had on him for months now.
With the outlook for you future growing increasingly hazy, one thing becomes pointedly clear:
You can't keep things bottled up forever.
---
"It's true we don't know what might happen to us," Shouto admitted, his mismatched eyes locked onto yours; intense and mesmerizing. "But we'll face it together, okay?"
"Okay," you swallowed thickly. "But I think you definitely pulled the short straw as far as teammates go."
"Really?" Shouto asked, his eyes shining as he stared at you. "I don't think I could have chosen anyone better if I tried."
---
Continue reading below or follow the link to Ao3!
Society is built on a series of white lies, little untruths we tell ourselves to make life seem more bearable. Things like how good will always prevail over evil, that hard work equates to success, and that your Quirk didn't dictate the direction your life took.
You had some increasingly strong suspicions about those first two platitudes, but the fact that you had a teleportation Quirk and had only ever been hired for courier work left you feeling very certain that the last one was absolute bullshit.
Last month your boss had commemorated your third year of employment at Über Munch, a meal delivery service for Heroes, with a mesh bag half-full of dollar store candy and a keychain with the company logo on it in lieu of something you would actually appreciate.
Like a raise. Or a day off once and a while.
So you were feeling pretty unenthusiastic about work these days now that you knew how little your effort was actually valued by the suits down at the corporate office. You had never been this tempted to quit before and knew it would likely be a smart move to start sending out resumes and have something else lined up for when you eventually snapped, but it was hard to actually put forth the effort when you didn't totally hate your job most days.
Your Quirk, Revisit, allows you to instantaneously travel to anywhere you've walked before. It made some aspects of your job easier, like quickly delivering meals directly to Hero agencies in the major metropolitan area; but it didn't make it effortless. Some orders were just more difficult to fulfill than others.
A call from Fat Gum always requires multiple trips from a handful of different restaurants to fulfill, a task that left you winded and lightheaded from both the quantity of food you had to carry and overusing your Quirk. But he always tipped generously, which was more than you could say for other Heroes. Accepting an order from Vine would guarantee that you would end up dumped on the edge of some overgrown forest with a bag of vegetable samosas in one hand and a compass in the other, rewarded for all your trouble with an evangelical comic tract once you'd actually managed to track her down.
But then there were the clients you didn't mind getting calls from. Mt. Lady never ordered meals, she just wanted someone to drop off a bottle of her favorite bargain brand rosé on her days off so she could focus on relaxing. She'd answer the door in an old pair of sweatpants with a clay mask pasted thickly across her face, a rom-com blaring in the background as she accepted her delivery. It was a charmingly domestic view of a woman most often seen splashed across the covers of beauty magazines.
And then there was your favorite client of all, Todoroki Shouto. Every Tuesday and Thursday the same request would ping across the screen of your work phone: cold soba with extra ginger to be delivered to his agency precisely at eight thirty, which was when he took a break from his nightly paperwork. You'd started to become friendly over the course of your routine interactions, sharing courteous greetings and anecdotes from your respective work weeks. Shouto's stories were always more engaging than yours, but he was polite enough to laugh and offer commiseration at the appropriate points as he unpacked his dinner.
You tried to appreciate Shoto's companionship without interpreting his gentle smiles and welcoming demeanor as anything other than what they were; a show of kindness from a good man. But every time Shouto gifted you with a glimpse of his pearly whites you couldn't stop the sudden hitching of your breath, mind racing with snippets of impossible dreams you couldn't help but crave.
It was easy to let yourself imagine being with him; waking up in a tangle of limbs as early morning light streamed across your bedspread from between the too-wide gaps in your blinds. Knowing your breath was sour from sleeping but kissing him anyway, too needy for his attention to wait until after you'd brushed your teeth.
But you know life isn't like it is in the fairy tales. Princes don't marry peasants and pedigree Heroes don't end up with minimum wage service workers. You'd keep on delivering Shouto's noodles twice a week until inevitably, a year or two down the road, the tabloids would be saturated with news of his engagement to some super model or socialite. That was what was expected; what he deserved.
But you could, and would, fantasize about what could have been if things were just a little bit different. If you were richer or more successful. If you hadn't been too scared to take the entrance exams for placement at a Hero School. If you existed in the same social stratosphere as each other.
They were nice, those little flights of fancy you allowed yourself; the small sprinkles of sweetness that made the bitter taste of reality more palatable. You made time for one more brief daydream; a vision of gentle sighs and entwined fingers, before you dug your phone out of your pocket. Thumb swiping across the screen, you bring up your work app and see a new notification light up your screen: a request for cold soba with extra ginger.
With a weary sigh, you clutched your phone to your chest, screwed your eyes shut, and disappeared in a shower of sparks.
You'd become a regular feature around Shouto's agency, recognized on sight by the security guards and night cleaning crew. So the sudden appearance of a new receptionist next to the doors to Shouto's office was a jarring change in an otherwise predictable delivery routine. A sharp looking woman had replaced his usual assistant, the round-faced and rounder-bellied Mrs. Yamori; a devastatingly friendly and heavily pregnant woman with a heteromorphic gecko Quirk.
Customer service smile firmly in place, you approached the desk, checking the gleaming name plaque set in front of her.
"Hello, Ms. Yokubou!" You greeted cheerily, startling the receptionist who had been focused on sorting through a small pile of mail. "Did Mrs. Yamori go on maternity leave already?"
"How am I supposed to know?" The woman snapped, carefully placing a small box at the top of the stack. "I'm here to help Shouto, not spread office gossip."
"Right," you coughed nervously in the face of her hostility. "Well, I have his dinner. So I'll just go ahead and knock."
"Dinner?" She hissed, swiveling her chair to face the monitor on the left side of the desk. "There isn't any mention of dinner on his schedule and I certainly didn't call you."
"I don't know what to tell you. I deliver Mr. Todoroki's dinner every Tuesday and Thursday at this time," you sighed, pleasant demeanor slipping as this conversation eroded what little was left of your patience after a long day.
"Well, not today you don't," Yokubou sniffed, waving you away with a dismissive hand. "Shouto is simply too busy this evening. You may go."
"Listen, even if I wanted to go, Über Munch guarantees delivery to Heroes. That's sort of their entire business plan."
"I told you that your services won't be necessary!" Yokubou screeched, reaching her hand towards the receiver on her desk. "Don't make me call security!"
"Would you, actually? They know me down there and it seems like getting a third party involved might help speed things up a bit."
Yokubou's brow twisted as she pulled the desk phone up to her ear, but whatever sort of retort she had poised on the tip of her tongue evaporated the moment Shouto's office door opened and he stuck his head out curiously.
"Shouto!" She crooned, rolling her shoulders back to push her chest further out, the top buttons on her fitted blouse struggling under the added pressure. "I'm so sorry to have disturbed you! But I have everything under control and-"
"There you are," Shouto sighed in relief as his gaze landed on you, pointedly ignoring the antics of his receptionist. "I was starting to get worried."
"Sorry I'm late," you said, holding the bag out for him to take. "This is normally the part where I would apologize for your food getting cold, but it was already cold to start with, so I'm just going to skip that bit."
Shouto accepted his dinner with an amused huff, fingers brushing yours as the bag changed hands.
"Would you like to come in?" Shouto asked, pushing the door to his office open wider. "I need some help on today's crossword puzzle. There's a lot of pop culture questions that I don't know the answers to."
"You can't, Shouto! Not tonight! You're far too busy!" His receptionist said, shooting to a standing position and grabbing the pile of mail into her arms. "There's something important here that needs your immediate attention."
"Is there, now?" Shouto hummed thoughtfully, shifting the bag with his soba into the crook of his arm so he could accept the towering stack of mail.
"And I'm sure you need privacy to open classified mail," Yokubou insisted, squeezing herself into the space between you and Shouto.
"It'll be fine," Shouto assured her with a tight smile. "I'll just save all the top secret letters until I'm alone."
"But-!"
"That will be all for today, Ms. Yokubou," Shouto dismissed, reaching around her to place a palm between your shoulder blades and guide you into his office.
"No! You don't understand!" Yokubou wailed, clawing at the stack of mail Shouto held securely to his chest, trying to pry the missives away from him.
"I understand that it has been a very long day and you must be exhausted. Go home and rest and we'll talk about your lack of professionalism first thing in the morning," Shouto said sternly, shutting the door quickly behind him and engaging the lock with one swift motion. He ignored the pounding knocks that shook the door in its frame and the repeated frantic cries of 'Shouto!' as he made his way across the room, depositing the contents of his arms down onto his desk before collapsing into his office chair with a bone weary sigh.
"Well she sure is…something," you offer diplomatically.
"Fired is what she is," Shouto laughed dryly, scrubbing his hands furiously across his face. "That woman has been an absolute menace since day one. I tried to give her a chance to settle in, but it's beyond obvious that this job isn't a good fit for her."
"She only started on what? Friday?"
"Saturday," Shouto corrected, prying the lid off of his dinner and happily sniffing the ginger-covered noodles. "And since then she's thrown away all my fanmail, canceled a joint interview I had with Creati, and she keeps finding excuses to barge into my office. I've had to start locking my door."
"Yikes," you said, wincing in sympathy and a fair amount of second hand embarrassment. "How long is Mrs. Yamori supposed to be gone?"
"Too long," Shouto groaned, pulling out a set of disposable chopsticks and snapping them neatly in half. "Do you think I could convince her to come back to work early if I hire her baby too?"
"I'm fairly certain that's illegal. Child labor and all that," you laughed, pulling one of the guest chairs up to the front of Shouto's desk and spinning the abandoned crossword around to glance at the clue columns. "Plus, babies cry a lot. It would probably be pretty disruptive."
"It couldn't be worse than my current situation," Shouto grumbled, the faint sounds of Yokubou's wailing still audible in the background.
"I suppose the dental coverage for a baby would be pretty cheap," you muse, penciling in the answer for number thirty-two down. "They don't have any teeth."
"I wonder what's in that mail pile that had Ms. Yokubou so wound up," you pondered, tapping the pencil eraser against your cheek thoughtfully.
"Good question," Shouto said, using the cheap paper napkin to dab primly at his lips even though you were fairly certain he didn't get a single particle of food on his face with how carefully he ate. "I thought she had slipped a confession letter into the stack, but all that's here is official mail and a couple of packages."
"Maybe one of those then?"
"Maybe," Shouto mused, separating out the parcels in question. "But I am expecting some deliveries. My Mother's birthday is coming up and I'm having her gifts shipped here so she doesn't stumble upon them when she visits my apartment."
"I guess the only way to know for sure is to open them," you say, tossing your pencil down in defeat and refocusing your attention onto Shouto as he picked up an envelope mailer and ripped open the tab. Reaching into the envelope, Shouto pulled out a small paperback novel.
"It's the next volume in her favorite book series," he explained, setting the book aside with a smile. "I pulled some strings and got her an advanced copy."
"The ladies in her book club are going to be so jealous!"
"I know," Shouto grinned fiendishly in delight, the mischievous glint in his eye making your stomach muscles clench wickedly.
"And uh, what's in the last box?" You ask, trying to focus on anything other than your misplaced desire for the man in front of you.
"Let's see, shall we?" Shouto said, slicing open the packing tape with a large set of shears from his desk drawer. Carefully reaching in through the layers of tissue paper, Shouto pulls out a long glass bottle. It's overly ornate, with pink tinted glass and gilded edges, the sort of thing your grandmother would have proudly displayed on her vanity while smacking your small hand away for trying to touch it without permission.
"It's lovely," you say, only half-lying as you watched the golden tassel tied around the middle sway back and forth. "What's it for?"
"Perfume, I think?" Shouto guessed, face scrunched up as he examined the bottle closely. "I ordered the type Fuyumi told me to, but I don't remember it looking like this on the webpage?"
"Maybe it's a limited edition?" You suggest. "Or they noticed who was ordering and upgraded you to the deluxe version with like, extra ambergris or something?"
"I hope not. That would throw the fragrance completely off balance," Shouto winced, viscerally imagining the perfume you described. "Better check and make sure this isn't the deluxe edition."
And with those words, Shouto grasped the stopper on the bottle and pulled; a plume of thick yellow smoke billowing out from the mouth of the bottle. Gasping in surprise, you accidentally inhaled the spreading vapor; skin prickling painfully as you lost control of your limbs and tumbled to the floor. The last thing you saw before your vision blurred and unconsciousness claimed you was Shouto reaching out across the floor towards your prone body; shirt pulled over his nose and mouth in an effort to filter out the unknown gas.
Untold minutes passed before the smoke finally dissipated. And when it did, there was no trace of you or Shouto left. Just a shiny pink bottle with it's stopper wedged firmly in place, glimmering cheerily in the warm light of Shouto's office.
You woke up suddenly, contorted into an uncomfortable position on the floor with your clothes clinging to your clammy skin. Head pounding and stomach churning, you take in a deep breath and then promptly regret it as you inhale a lung-full of incredibly potent incense smoke.
"Ugh," you coughed, nose twitching as you got hit by another low-hanging cloud of patchouli. With one last sputter you shifted your focus to examine the room around you. The walls were an eye watering bright pink and every horizontal surface, from the tables to the numerous book shelves mounted to the walls, were stuffed full of flickering candles and arrangements of waxy-petaled lilies.
"Are you okay?" Shouto asked, voice calling out from behind the other side of the circular bed frame you were laying next to.
"I dunno'," you mumble, pausing to let out a tiny belch that seemed to help settle your stomach. "I think so?"
"Good," Shouto stated, voice still commanding despite its breathy quality. "Can you walk?"
"Let me try," you said as you went to roll over onto your side, only to discover that your body wasn't responding the way it should; your limbs dragging and heavy. Panic flooded your body, blood thrumming hotly in your ears as you once again tried, and failed, to roll. Exerting more concentrated effort than you ever had before in your life, you managed to slowly rock over onto your shoulder; body now facing towards the bed.
Whatever gratification you felt from your accomplishment was quickly forgotten as you realized that your heaving gasps of exhaustion were slowly pushing you off balance, sending you toppling face first into the shiny wooden bedframe. Your forehead landed with a dull thunk; the shock of the impact intensified by the headache throbbing sharply behind your eyes.
"Ouch," you hissed through your teeth, sucking up the pain as best you could. "Moving appears to be beyond me at the moment."
"That's okay," Shouto said, his voice dropping a decibel or two into a more comforting timbre. "Wait there. I'll come to you."
The one good thing about your fall was that it positioned your head closer to the foot of the bed, so you could watch as Shouto grasped handfuls of the carpet in his fists, pulling himself slowly into view with great heaving breaths. His strength finally gave out an arms length away from you, his fingers creeping along the floor until they collided with yours.
Tears prickled in the corners of your eyes, the embarrassing result of too many big feelings fighting against each other to be felt first- sadness and frustration and fear and utter relief when Shouto's fingers curled around your own.
"You don't need to cry," Shouto soothed, his thumb rubbing small circles into the back of your hand.
"I don't think I can stop," you sobbed, sucking in huge lungfuls of the incense-spiked air.
"That's okay, too."
"Yeah?"
"Mmhmm," Shouto hummed. "I'm told that crying can be very therapeutic. Do you feel any better?"
"No," you snorted, trying to downplay the telltale blubber of mucus collecting in the back of your throat.
"Do you need to cry some more then?"
You nodded as emphatically as you could with the feeble muscles in your neck, and then opened your mouth and let out a piercing wail; tears streaming down your face and soaking quickly into the plush carpet fibers.
"Can you use your Quirk?" You sniffed, tears dried and tacky on your skin. You'd tried to wipe them away but only managed to poke yourself in the eye instead. "Because mine isn't working."
"No," Shouto growled in frustration, eyes narrowed at his hands as though they had personally betrayed him. "I'm hoping we'll regain control of them once our bodies recover."
"If we recover," you mutter dismally, shifting your gaze reluctantly towards Shouto when you felt him squeeze your hand tightly to gain your attention.
"It's true we don't know what might happen to us," Shouto admitted, his mismatched eyes locked onto yours; intense and mesmerizing. "But we'll face it together, okay?"
"Okay," you swallowed thickly. "But I think you definitely pulled the short straw as far as teammates go."
"Really?" Shouto asked, his eyes shining as he stared at you. "I don't think I could have chosen anyone better if I tried."
At Shouto's insistence, you began doing little exercises in an attempt to kick start your muscles back into working order. You started small, with toe curls and rotating your arms in little circles. Everything was slightly numb and hard to control, a little like how your cheeks felt after you had a cavity filled at the dentist.
"I'm scared, Shouto," you whispered as you lifted your forearm a paltry couple inches off of the floor. Shouto had already graduated to doing floppy bicep curls, but that was the difference in athletic ability between a Pro Hero and someone who's preferred marathon experience involved popcorn and a handful of movies. "Where do you think we are?"
"I don't know," he grunted from exertion, sweat beading at his temples. "But I have a couple of theories about how we got here."
"What're you thinking?"
"It's obviously some sort of Quirk at work," he gasped. "You're a Teleporter, right? Could it be something like that, do you think?"
"No. It's not teleportation," you groaned, arms collapsing limply onto the floor as you burned through the last of your energy. "I'm in an online chat group with a bunch of other Teleporters and we all have the same basic experience. And this is not it."
"Really?" Shouto said, pausing in his exercises to join your brief respite. "That's fascinating."
"Yeah. I guess rearranging all your atoms is a complex enough process there's just one way it works correctly."
Shouto huffed, staring up at your reflections in the large mirror that covered the entire ceiling. "What's it like? Teleporting, I mean?"
"I- it's sort of hard to explain," you say, wrinkling up your nose in thought. "So, like, imagine if people were made entirely out of sand."
"That sounds awful," Shouto grimaced. "Can you imagine what it would feel like if your tongue was made out of sand? Everything would taste gritty."
"It isn't literal," you huff. "You can imagine anything small. Rocks, sugar-"
"Rice," Shouto interrupted, nodding resolutely.
"Yeah, sure. Rice. Imagine people are made out of rice. Teleporting is like, if every single one of those grains just scattered," you try to wave your hand around for emphasis but only succeed in making it flop on the ground like a dying fish. "But they aren't lost. I know where every single last one is, no matter how far away it wandered. And I can just pull them all back together again, wherever I choose."
"And it doesn't make you feel like all your muscles have atrophied?"
"No, not at all," you say, letting your head loll from side to side in an exaggerated shake. "I'm just- letting myself fall apart. I'm like ice when it starts to melt; shifting and warm."
"Oh," Shouto said, a sudden ring of clarity in his tone. "That's a nice feeling."
"Yeah, it is."
Eventually, you and Shouto progressed to being able to move around on the carpet. Shouto had worked himself up into a crawling position while you had adopted the much less elegant solution of wiggling around like a worm. You could tell by his puffed up cheeks and pointedly averted stare that he was barely holding back laughing at your expense.
"Don't you dare laugh at me," you warned him, butt stuck up in the air as you wiggled your shoulders from side to side to achieve forward momentum.
"I'm- I'm not," Shouto lied, wheezing with every inch he crawled towards a distant dresser.
"Please," you scoffed. "I went to middle school. I know what it looks like to be laughed at. You could at least have the decency to do it to my face."
"Right, sorry," Shouto apologized, turning his head to look at you and promptly losing all composure; crashing to the ground as his laughter wracked his body and threw him off balance. He landed hard on his shoulder, still too uncoordinated to break his fall well.
"Ow!" He snorted out between guffaws, body shaking as he rubbed at his shoulder with limp fingers. "That- that hurt."
"Serves you right," you mutter peevishly, pushing your derriere further into the air to power your next creep forward. "I'm going to beat you to the dresser. That'll teach you to laugh at me."
"No," Shouto gasped, stumbling back onto his hands and feet. "I'm gonna- gonna get there first."
"Oh yeah?" You countered, summoning up your go-to school yard taunt like the paragon of maturity you were.
"Yeah," he shot back, the call of competition doing a lot to sober his demeanor as he rocked on his hands and took a shaky shuffle forward.
"Hey, Shouto!" You called, waiting until he was looking at you before you wiggled your butt from side-to-side as much as you could without toppling over. Shouto, not anticipating your underhanded maneuver, collapsed face first into the shag rug, the long fibers muffling his delirious cackling.
"Cheater!" He cried out.
"Winner!" You laughed, sliding forward onto your belly and making a good headway towards the dresser, steadfastly ignoring Shouto's calls for a do-over.
Shouto had predictably rallied and beaten you to the dresser like the finely tuned muscle machine he was, but you were proud to say you had given him a run for his money. The two of you now sat propped up against the dresser, bodies slumped against each other for an additional layer of support. You'd passed a fair bit of time by guessing how many flowers were crammed into each vase and then counting to see who came the closest.
"Aaaaaand that's another round to me!" You proclaimed, nudging Shouto sharply. with your elbow when you heard him grumble discontentedly.
Todoroki Shouto, it turned out, was a very sore loser.
"One more time," he pouted, looking around the room for another cluster of lilies to tabulate. "Best fourteen out of twenty-seven."
"Yeah, I can agree to that. Because I've already won fourteen times," you reminded him smugly.
"This game is silly," Shouto grumbled, managing to cross his arms across his chest petulantly on the second try. "I don't want to play anymore."
"Fine by me," you yawned, only slapping yourself in the face a little as you tried to cover your mouth. "I'm getting tired anyway."
"Go ahead and sleep," Shouto said, nudging your shoulder with his own until your head slid down into the cradle of his neck. It was wildly uncomfortable and far too intimate for your level of acquaintance, but you'd sooner eat your shirt than complain about it. "I'll take first watch."
"Watch for what?" You grumble, already well on your way to being unconscious. "There aren't even any doors."
"Or windows," Shouto added with a frustrated sigh as he dropped his head down onto yours, smushing your cheek into the hard edge of his clavicle.
"Righ'," you mumble as your eyelids droop shut. "No win'ows."
"And I suppose if anyone was going to come in and kill us, they would have done that while we were lying defenseless on the floor."
Your eyes shoot open, all traces of exhaustion banished as you pry yourself away from Shouto and scramble into a more upright position.
"What's wrong?" He asked with genuine concern. "I thought you were tired?"
"I was, until someone started talking about us being killed," you laughed dryly, eyes darting around the room suspiciously, cataloging all the places a person could be laying in wait. There weren't a lot, but the privacy screen next to the chaise lounge was looking a little too sinister for your liking.
"No, I specifically said that we likely wouldn't be murdered."
"Yeah, but you still mentioned the killing part! And now I can't stop thinking about it!" You babbled anxiously, trying to calm your rabbit-fast heartbeat with a couple of deep breaths. "This is probably the closest I've ever been to being murdered before, so a little bit of panic feels justified!"
"There is a strong correlation between kidnapping and murder," Shouto nodded.
"Do you- do you think that's comforting?" You screech, hysteria ratcheting up another few notches.
"I- no?" Shouto said, voice pitching high in uncertainty. "But it is statistically significant!"
With a pitiful whine, you drop your head down into your mostly stable hands, doing your best to hold back another round of water works. Shouto, at a loss about what to say, drops his hand onto your back.
"There, there," he says, rubbing his palm slowly down your spine
"Now this- this is comforting," you sigh, arching your spine against his trailing hand.
"I'm glad," Shouto smiled. "This is how I pet stray cats, too. It's good to finally get some feedback on my technique."
"Now that we're back on our feet-," Shouto began, watching anxiously as you stumbled and were forced to grab onto a floor lamp for support. "-mostly, anyway. I think it would be a good idea for us to look around the room more thoroughly."
"Sounds good," you say, glancing at the lamp cord and wondering how far you explore while keeping your makeshift crutch plugged in. "Is there anything in particular we're looking for?"
"I'm not sure," Shouto said, setting his sights on the dresser drawers. "We know so little about our current situation that any information at all would be helpful."
"Right," you said, still unsure about what exactly to do, but not wanting to hinder Shouto's progress any further. You decided to inspect behind the privacy screen that had made you uneasy earlier. It was a tall thing that stretched far over your head, white wicker edges nearly scraping the mirrored ceiling.
"Finding anything interesting," you panted over your shoulder as you took another baby step towards the screen, dragging your support lamp along with you.
"No!" Shouto yelped, slamming the top drawer he'd been staring into shut. "I mean, yes. There are things. But they aren't important. They're uh-," he paused to cough uneasily into a loose fist. "They're- intimacy supplies."
"Ah, sex toys," you nod, turning back to face your destination and give Shouto what little privacy you could to work through his embarrassment. "Say no more."
"I- yes. Thank you."
"But that opens up an entirely new realm of possible explanations," you grunt, tired but excited by your continued progress across the room. "Like, did we get knocked out by the gas from that bottle and dropped into a love hotel or something? As a joke?"
"A love hotel?" Shouto screeched.
"Yeah. They're normally all schmaltzy and themed like this," you explain, gesturing vaguely to the abundance of bright pink decor. "Normally that theme isn't Barbie Escape Room, but I'm not here to kink shame."
"I think you maybe should have taken on the dresser inspection. I'm completely out of my element here," Shouto lamented, holding up a large paddle for you to see. "I can't even begin to imagine why there's a cutting board in here."
"Oh, that's not-"
"Actually," Shouto interrupted, holding up a hand to halt your explanation. "I don't think I want to know."
Shouto continues to rifle through the drawers, utterly befuddled and horrified in equal turns when you finally reach your destination.
"Alright," you said, mustering up the courage to peer behind the screen. "Let's see what's going on behind here."
You push the right side of the screen back slowly with your still weak arms, panels buckling at the hinges as it folded itself up like an accordion.
"Any murderers tucked away back there," Shouto teases, weighing a comically large steel buttplug in his hand.
"Not a murderer, no," your voice trembling with mounting horror as you step out of the way, allowing Shouto to see around you for the first time. The wall behind the screen was full of pictures of Shouto, hundreds of them pieced together into a collage of obsession. Magazine covers, promo pictures, and selfies from Shouto's official social media accounts were all present in the mashup; but far more distressing were the inclusions of what had to be candid shots of the Hero.
Blurry and over processed snapshots of Shouto shirtless that had been taken through his apartment window, spoon hanging from his mouth as he ate a cup of yogurt.
A far away street shot with him and a friend- you couldn't tell who it was exactly because they had been scribbled over with a pen so many times they had worn a hole in the paper; the bright pink of the walls visible through the missing space where a person should be.
Classified photographs detailing the injuries sustained in the line of duty that had been copied from official Commission files; terrible, gruesome things of Shouto bruised and bloodied and at his most vulnerable.
"You have a stalker, Shouto," you whispered.
"Oh," Shouto said numbly, the butt plug falling from between his fingers and hitting the top of the dresser with a loud thud. "Then this isn't a love hotel then," he paused and swallowed thickly, eyes glazed with an emotion you couldn't recognize as he stared at the wall behind you. "This is supposed to be my prison."
Things had only gotten worse from there. Now that you realized the purpose of the room, you were unable to unearth all sorts of hidden features that made your skin crawl. Hooks carved into the delicate filigree on the bed frame that were obviously made for handcuffs, a box of truffles with tiny syringe marks poked into the bottom, and a set of menacingly sharp sewing scissors tucked away in the bedside table drawer.
Your stomach was churning painfully, but you couldn't tell if it was from hunger or fear.
Not really knowing what else to do, you fumbled over towards the bed and collapsed onto it, nearly sliding off the slick satin duvet cover. A frantic scramble had kept you from dropping onto the floor, but it was a near thing. You watched as Shouto slid down onto the ground, a blank look on his face as he positioned his hands by his ears and began doing crunches.
"Are you- are you okay?" You ask from your sprawled out position on the bed. You'd tried to make eye contact with him through the mirror ceiling, but his gaze remained stubbornly averted to a blank spot on the wall you couldn't understand his interest in.
"I'm fine," he grunted through clenched teeth, forcing his shoulders up off the floor.
"You don't have to be."
"Yes I do!" Shouto bellowed, startling you as he threw himself down onto the floor, hands fisting in his hair in frustration. "You're trapped in here because of me! It's my responsibility to get you out safely and I can't do it if I'm like this!" He said, waving a hand down at his sluggish body.
"None of this is your fault," you assure Shouto, sliding to the edge of the bed and peering down towards him. "You're just as much a victim here as I am."
"You shouldn't even be a victim in the first place."
"Yeah, me being here obviously wasn't what your stalker had planned," you said, suppressing a shudder as you stared briefly at the collage of photos before reaching down and taking Shouto's hand into your own. "But I'm glad. I'm glad that it's me here with you, instead of- instead of them."
"I'm glad it's you, too," Shouto whispered, squeezing your hand tightly. "And not just because you don't have any plans to torture me."
"Being trapped in a room with me is torture enough," you joke, lazily swinging your interlocked hands back and forth in the air. "There's no need to overdo it."
There are faint memories of some long ago humanities class echoing in the back of your brain; something about needing to have your basic needs met before you're able to consider any other, arguably more important, matters. So while you understood that you were likely waist-deep in mortal peril and should be very worried about your long term health and wellbeing, you were far more concerned about the fact that you really had to pee.
Like, right now.
"Hey, Shouto?" You clear your throat nervously, not entirely sure how to broach the subject of bodily fluids with the top-ranked Hero laying on the bed next to you. "I, uh- have something I need to say. But it's sort of embarrassing?"
"Oh?" Shouto asked curiously, turning his head to face you, your noses nearly brushing. "What is it?"
"Well, I just- I know that a lot is happening right now, and I don't want to burden you anymore than I already am, but I just don't think I can hold it in any longer."
"Tell me," Shouto whispered breathlessly, his eyes wide as he watched you nibble on your lower lip nervously.
"I-"
"Yes?" He said imploringly, face inching closer to yours.
"I really need to pee!" You cry out loudly, sending Shouto reeling back from the force of your sudden screech.
"Oh- uh," he stammers. "That's, hmm."
"God," you whine, covering your face with your hands. "This is so embarrassing!"
"There's no need to be embarrassed," Shouto rushed to assure you, grasping your wrists gently to pull them away from your face. "I'm sorry, I should have reacted better."
"It's fine," you mutter sheepishly as you peer up at him from under your lashes. "It's gross and uncomfortable and I shouldn't have just blurted it out like that."
"No, it's not that- I was just caught a bit off guard. I thought you were going to say something different," Shouto admits with a wistful sigh.
"Like what? That I need to poop?"
"No," he snorts, pushing himself to the edge of the bed and standing with relative ease. "Don't worry about it right now. Let's just focus on finding a place for you to relieve yourself."
"I'd suggest just picking a corner like animals do, but that doesn't seem like a viable option in a round room."
"We'll just have to get creative then, won't we?" Shouto smiled, lifting up one of the largest vases of lilies and flipping it upside down; water and flowers spilling onto the floor at his feet in a soggy clump.
Shouto had originally set up your makeshift chamber pot behind the creepy stalker screen to give you some semblance of privacy, which was incredibly thoughtful of him. But the idea of peeing in front of one Shouto was hard enough, there was no way you could ever possibly bring yourself to pee in front of hundreds of little Shoutos pasted onto the wall. So the two of you combined your minimal strength together and managed to pull one side of the tall dresser away from the wall, creating a triangular little hidey-hole you hurriedly wedged yourself into.
"Don't look!" You called out over your shoulder, already pulling your zipper down before he could spin around fully.
"I won't," Shouto promised, staring dutifully across the room. With nothing more engaging to stare at, you join him in spectating the wall you were squeezed against. The pink paint had some sort of iridescent sparkles mixed into it that caught every flickering candle flame and created a hazy sort of glow that did nothing to help alleviate the headache you'd been nursing since you first woke up. The effect wasn't any less assaulting up close, so you were in the process of averting your eyes when the light behind you suddenly shifted; Shouto's dark shadow passing over you and catching on some strange divots on the otherwise smooth surface of the wall.
Hesitantly, you raise your hand and run your fingers across the wall, watching the route your fingertips take as they follow the nearly invisible grooves.
"Letters!" You gasp in excitement. "Shouto! There are letters on the wall!"
"Where?" Shouto demands, appearing over your shoulder in a flash, heedless of the fact that you were still mid-piss.
"Ahhh! No peeking! NO PEEKING!"
"Sorry! I'm so sorry!"
After you had emerged from your commode and dunked your hands into a bowl full of lily water to cleanse them, you and Shouto set about moving the dresser further from the wall to accommodate both your bodies as you squinted thoughtfully at the letters.
"They're really hard to make out through the shimmery paint," you grumble, waving a candle around to see if a different light position would make it any easier to read.
It didn't.
"I think that's the point," Shouto hummed thoughtfully. "They used paint and a dresser to hide the message, so they really didn't want us to discover what's written here."
You both stared at the shimmery wall for a moment longer before inspiration suddenly struck.
"I have an idea," you said, wobbling away to the other side of the room on stiff legs and returning moments later, the box of drugged chocolates tucked underneath your arm.
"Take one," you instructed Shouto as you pulled the lid off the box; selecting a dark chocolate truffle for yourself.
"I know things seem bad, but poisoning ourselves isn't the answer. Yet," Shouto added grimly, staring down into the box with a deep frown.
"I'm not gonna- ugh! Just watch!" You huff, placing your truffle onto the wall and smearing it over the letters with firm strokes. The chocolate transferred easily onto the wall, leaving brown streaks across the pink paint but skipping over the recessed grooves of the letters.
"Clever," Shouto smirked proudly, a sight that you stared at for longer than was strictly appropriate; permanently etching every last detail of this moment into your memory.
Chocolates in hand, you and Shouto began scribbling across the wall like two poorly supervised toddlers, the message slowly coming into focus as the number of truffles in the box quickly dwindled. The message was much larger than you had originally anticipated and you were a bit worried that you were going to run out of chocolates before the message was fully revealed. But in the end you were left with half a truffle and a bit of doggerel poetry outlined in cocoa:
A love confession you must tell,
If you wish to break the bottle's spell.
Sweet nothings alone just will not do,
You're trapped until your words are true.
"Well, I don't know what I was expecting but it certainly wasn't rhyming couplets," you admit, rubbing your sticky hands onto a nearby tufted throw pillow.
"The bottle," Shouto stated confidently, following your lead and wiping his hands on a decorative curtain. "The one I opened in my office earlier. The poem leads me to believe that we're inside of it."
"I- I suppose that makes sense," you admit, thinking back on the bottle you'd briefly seen. "You opening that bottle is the last thing I remember before waking up here."
"Removing the stopper must have been the trigger for the Quirk that trapped us to activate."
"That's why Ms. Yokubou was so insistent about getting into your office! She knew about the bottle!" You gasped, spinning to face Shouto. He didn't look too surprised by the revelation.
"She knew what the bottle did and likely intended to be here in your place," he nodded somberly. "Ms. Yokubou is definitely the most likely suspect."
"Really?" You scoff incredulously. "'The most likely suspect?' It's blatantly obvious that she's the one behind all of this."
"I took an oath to uphold the presumption of innocence. Ms. Yokubou isn't guilty unless she's proven so in a court of law," Shouto insisted with a sour look on his face, his morals at war with what he knew was true.
"Well, I didn't take an oath," you informed him proudly, puffing out your chest and resting your hands on your hips. "So I'm free to say that she's a creepy, rotten, low-down, guilty, bitch."
"Yes, you certainly can say that," Shouto grinned brilliantly. You tried to return a smile with similar intensity, but considering how rough you looked in the ceiling mirror after a full day of work and captivity you're positive it's no match for Shouto's natural radiance. But from the small sparkle you saw appear in the corner of his eye, it seemed that Shouto appreciated your efforts just the same.
"Are your hands starting to tingle?" You ask worriedly, staring down at the sharply prickling skin on your fingers.
"We need to wash the remaining chocolate off. Now," Shouto ordered, shoving the vase you had rinsed your hands off earlier into your lap; dunking his hands into the water after yours.
"I wonder what was in those truffles," you mutter in concern as Shouto's fingers worked defly over your skin, doing his best to scrub the chocolate residue off with firm strokes. You tried to return the favor, poking at the back of his hand with your clumsy digits, but it was growing increasingly difficult to will your fingers to bend.
"Likely just a tranquilizer," Shouto assured you, pulling one of your hands out of the water to check on how clean it was before lowering it back into the vase with a frown. "Whoever put me in here-"
"Ms. Yokubou," you filled in.
"-seems to have wanted me docile, not dead."
You tried to focus on the muted feeling of Shouto's hand on yours instead of the red hot anger roiling in your belly. It was a testament to the strength of your ire that you barely registered Shouto's gentle caresses.
Shouto had taken it upon himself to push the dresser out of the way so you could more clearly see the poem on the wall from a more comfortable position on the bed. The dresser had tipped in the process, drawers falling open and spilling their contents out across the ground; shiny new dental tools and lacy-edged corsets mixing together in a heap on the carpet. You had thought it had been an accident at first, Shouto simply underestimating his returning strength, but then you had seen the malicious glee spread thickly across his face and understood it had been a calculated act of wanton destruction. He dropped down onto the bed beside you, glaring at the mess he had made on the floor.
"Oops," he said unapologetically, kicking the pile of lingerie with a sneer. In a show of solidarity, you swept your arm across one of the bedside tables, sending an oil diffuser and a copy of the Kama Sutra crashing to the floor.
"Oh nooo," you said flatly, swiping at a teetering wine glass that escaped your first attack. "Clumsy me!"
Shouto's smile was a forced thing, too-fast and insincere compared to his normal grins. You watched as his shoulders slumped, head hanging down towards his chest as he ran his hands through his hair in frustration.
"I hate it here," he admits after a long moment of quiet. "I can't stop thinking about what could- what would have been happening to me. And I- I just-"
His foot jostled one of the hooked dental probes laying on the carpet, both your and Shouto's eyes locked onto it as it skittered across the floor and hit the baseboard with a tinny clang.
"We need to get out of here," you swallow thickly, hand blindly reaching out for Shouto's across the bed. He squeezed your fingers too tightly, your joints aching in protest; but you didn't tell him to stop.
"So, if we're interpreting this poem correctly then Ms. Yokubou-"
"The unconfirmed suspect," Shouto corrected.
"-the suspect intended keep you trapped in here and torture you until you were convinced you loved them."
"That seems to be the case, yes."
"That's so fucking awful, Shouto."
He didn't respond, staring thoughtfully at the words on the wall with a furrowed brow instead.
"Ms. Yoku- I mean, whoever did this obviously has some sort of feelings for you, but not really? They want you, but not the actual you," you ranted, the bubble of rage you had kept pushed down inside had finally built up enough pressure that it was spilling out against your will as you stomped around the room. You took a special sort of pleasure in grinding the discarded lilies down into mush with every lap you took.
"They don't care about what you think or- or feel, they just care that they get what they want, even if it destroys you. I just- I don't understand? How can they believe that they love you when they're so willing to hurt you?" you whispered brokenly, furious and devastated on Shouto's behalf.
"And I know that is an emotionally charged situation for you, but could you please say something?" You beg, sagging down onto the bed beside him, exhausted from your outburst. "If you don't, I'm pretty sure I'm just going to keep talking until I drive us both crazy. Which, admittedly, doesn't seem like it would be a very long trip at this point-"
"It can't be that simple," Shouto suddenly blurts out, putting an end to your rambling.
"What's not simple? Driving you crazy? Because I have some high school teachers with stories you wouldn't believe."
"No, not that," Shouto said, waving a hand dismissively. "I'm talking about the poem."
"What about it?" you asked, squinting at the rhyme inquisitively.
"It says that only a true love confession will break the bottle's spell and, presumably, set us free."
"Yeah, and that's sort of a huge issue? A forced love confession is just coercion," you explain. "You can't create genuine affection like that."
"Exactly," Shouto agreed, "And that would be a problem if the kidnapper was the one stuck in here with me. But instead, by some incredible stroke of luck or karma or kismet; I'm in here with you."
Between your persistent headache, bone-deep exhaustion, and the thick fog of panic blanketing your mind there was no possible way that you were interpreting Shouto's words correctly.
"What do you mean?" you said, swallowing thickly as you braced your heart for the let down you knew was coming; the walking back of his words, the incredulous laughter once he realized what he was mistakenly insinuating.
"I had a plan for this," Shouto sighed, a melancholy sort of sound. "There was supposed to be dinner. And music. And flowers. Not lilies, though," he rushed to assure you.
"Thank goodness. I don't think I ever want to see another lily again for as long as I live."
"Same here," he laughed dryly. "But we would have had a good evening together. Better than this one, at least. And at the end of the night I would take your hand in mine, just like this," Shouto said, cradling your hand between both of his. "And I'd finally tell you what I've been too scared to tell you for weeks now."
"Which is what?" you whisper breathlessly, precariously hanging on his every word by your fingertips; moments away from slipping and plummeting down into something- some feeling that couldn't possibly be real. You weren't that lucky. You weren't that anything, really.
"I'd tell you the truth," Shouto promised, his eyes shining with a soft sincerity that made your chest ache with longing. "That I am totally, irrevocably, head-over-heels in love with you."
You opened your mouth to respond- how exactly, you weren't entirely sure. Cheer, maybe? Cry? Ask him if he was serious? But the actual sound that came out was a prolonged scream as every muscle in your body twisted and burned.
And then, all you saw was darkness.
You woke up suddenly, contorted into an uncomfortable position on the floor again. But there was one immediately noticeable difference between waking up in the bottle and now, and that was the fact that your limbs were hopelessly tangled up with Shouto's; the two of you twisted together like a fleshy pretzel.
"We have to stop meeting like this," Shouto smiles down at where your head is pillowed on his chest, his heart thumping quickly beneath your ear.
"Nope, not allowed," you mumble in complaint, trying to push yourself off of his chest. You weren't able to make much protest with how loudly your muscles were protesting, so you just settled back down and tried to ignore how your heart skipped a beat when you felt his arm squeeze you tightly into his side. "I'm the funny one here. You're not allowed to have better one-liners than me."
"Apologies," Shouto said, your body rocking gently along with the quiet laughter that shook his chest. "I did have a bit of time to think of it though. It's taken you a little while to come around."
"You didn't move me?"
"No? Why would I?" Shouto asked, tilting his head to the side easily; obviously less inhibited by the soreness of his muscles than you were.
"Well, we're out of the bottle now so I thought…" you trailed off uneasily, unsure of what words you could put together to push this conversation along. It wasn't like you really wanted to talk about what happened; to pop the bubble of happiness that was filled to almost bursting inside of your chest. But you knew that the longer you drew it out the harder it would be to face reality; to acknowledge that Shouto discovered a loophole, a convenient lie he could believe just enough to free you both from that bottle.
Maybe he just loved you like a friend? Or worse, like a sister? Maybe that kind of affection was enough to have met the nebulous requirements for the Quirk to deactivate? The poem didn't have any footnotes that you could see, so maybe it wasn't quite as strict as you and Shouto had theorized. Maybe you could have gotten away with professing your love of Rock and Roll or sleeping in on the weekend?
You wish you would have experimented a bit more inside of the bottle and maybe saved yourself the devastating experience you were currently thrust into: staring literal heartbreak in the face as you gazed helplessly up at Todoroki Shouto.
"Thought what?" Shouto asked, the edges of his sweet grin slowly dipping down into the start of a frown.
"Well, we're out of the bottle now. So I don't expect- I won't hold you to anything you said. I know it was to just get us out. So, uh- thank you for that. But you don't have to keep pretending. It's okay," you assure him with a watery smile. You'd never been particularly skilled at lying and were even worse at it when you were emotional, and right now you were feeling very emotional.
But instead of looking relieved like you had expected him to be, Shouto looked positively exasperated; his face creased into a deep scowl.
"You don't believe that I have feelings for you?"
"Well, I mean, not like you said- not romantically," you explain, panicking internally as his expression grew even more displeased. "Just- like a friend?"
"I see," Shouto huffed. You could practically feel yourself withering under the intensity of his disappointed stare. "Is that how you see me? As just a friend?"
"I mean, we are friends, right?" You laugh nervously, growing increasingly concerned that this conversation might just torpedo your entire relationship into smithereens.
"Yes, of course. Very good ones I think," Shouto said, his hand coming up to cradle the side of your jaw gently to keep your attention firmly on him. "But is that all we are?"
"I wasn't aware there was any other option," you whisper honestly, your gaze jumping between each of his eyes, trying to see if one color was less intimidating than the other. But both gray and green burned with a deep intensity you couldn't fully comprehend.
"Really?" Shouto deadpanned. "I've been inviting you to stay with me in my office alone, after hours, for months now, and you didn't take that as a hint that I was interested in you?"
"I just thought you wanted some company while you ate," you admit quietly, still staring at Shouto much like a deer caught in a set of headlights. "And that you were like, really bad at crossword puzzles."
Shouto groaned miserably, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back onto the floor with a loud thunk.
"I didn't want just anyone's company," he sighed. "I wanted yours, specifically."
"Oh," you replied, stunned. "Then why didn't you, you know? Ask me out? Let me know that you were interested?"
"I thought about taking a more direct approach," Shouto says, staring up at the ceiling despondently. "But my friends told me it was inappropriate to ask someone out while they're working."
"That's true," you conceded. "So what was your plan then, exactly?"
"I was trying to make you relaxed enough in my presence where you would feel comfortable asking me out,"
Shouto said, shifting uncomfortably at your incredulous expression.
"You could have waited one thousand years and I still wouldn't have been able to muster up enough courage to ask you out," you laugh dryly. "But even if your plan had worked, I still signed an employee code of conduct when I started working at Über Munch. I'm not allowed to flirt with customers."
Shouto hummed thoughtfully, tightening his arm around you once more. "I guess maybe it's a good thing we got stuck in that bottle together then, huh?"
"Too soon," you chastised him immediately, eyes wide as you shook your head quickly from side-to-side.
"Right. Of course. Sorry."
Once you were able to move without crying in pain, you and Shouto had reluctantly pried your bodies apart and started acting like responsible adults. Shouto did his official Hero thing and reported your bungled kidnapping attempt to the police while you called in to work.
You'd ended up needing to use one of the Personal Victim Leave days you'd been accruing, which was fine. This was the exact sort of scenario you were supposed to use them for, but you still felt a little bitter because you had been hoping to cash all of them out at the end of the year to pay for holiday gifts for your family.
The next few hours were a blur of commotion as you were interrogated by so many detectives you were pretty sure they had to be bussing them in from the surrounding precincts just to have the opportunity to interview Shouto. But the attempted kidnapping of a high-profile hero was likely a large enough case to elevate someone's career into the big leagues, so you couldn't fault them for their efforts; as self serving as they likely were.
Eventually, you and Shouto had been escorted out of his office so they could start photographing the crime scene; officers delivering you down to a line of ambulances waiting to take you to the hospital for an After Quirk Exposure check-up. All you really wanted to do was go home and sleep for a week, but everyone had a story about some second cousin's friend who skipped the routine examinations and ended up turning inside out or something hours later.
Most of those stories were probably urban legends or some sort of Hero Commission propaganda, but either way they made you just wary enough to agree to climb onto the gurney and accept a juice box and pack of cookies from the paramedic without raising a fuss.
You and Shouto were separated at the hospital, the attending physicians swiveling your gurneys off into separate wings. Shouto was whisked away to the private Hero section of the hospital while you were shuffled into the ER with the rest of the civilians, shoved into a curtained off nook and left to your own devices with a small cup of ice water and a dwindling phone battery.
It was a testament to your exhaustion that you were able to fall asleep even with the cacophony of sounds from the ER filtering in behind your privacy curtain, waking only when the nurses arrived to wheel you around the hospital for one screening or another.
You were on your way back from your third exam, some sort of organ scanning thing you had never bothered to learn the name of, when you noticed that the nurse had pushed you past the corridor that led back to your shrouded nook in the emergency department and towards the elevators.
"Am I going for another test?" You asked in confusion, watching as she swiped her key card across a scanner mounted next to the elevator control panel, selecting one of the numerous unmarked buttons after the scanner accepted her ID with a high-pitched beep.
"No, you're all done for now. We're just waiting for final results to come in," the nurse explained, pushing you out of the elevator doors the moment they opened far enough. "It's been requested that you be moved into a room for security reasons."
"I don't understand. Am I in danger-," your query was cut off as you were pushed into your new hospital room where Shouto was awaiting your arrival, neatly tucked into his own hospital bed. You could tell from the overcrowded cluster of monitoring equipment that they had shoved his bed closer to the far wall to make room for your gurney to be positioned next to his.
"Ah, there you are," Shouto smiled in relief as the nurse engaged the locks on your bed wheels. "Thank you so much for your assistance, Nurse Yamamoto."
The nurse blushed tomato red under Shouto's direct attention, doing her best to hide her burning cheeks behind her clipboard.
"It- ah, it was nothing. Just um, ring the buzzer if you need anything and I'll be back to check on you in an hour?" She stammered nervously, the end of her sentence pitching up into a questioning tone.
"That sounds perfect. Thank you again," Shouto beamed, flashing his teeth in a wide grin that stunned the poor dear so severely she attempted to exit the room by pushing on a door that had to be pulled to open. You grimaced internally in sympathy for her, knowing full well that she would replay that fumbled exit over in her mind every night before she fell asleep.
Once the nurse was safely down the hallway, the squeak of her rubber soled shoes far enough away that you knew she wouldn't overhear, you spun to Shouto with a disbelieving look carved deeply into your face.
"Did you just charm a nurse into letting us be roomies?"
"Please. I didn't just charm a nurse," Shouto scoffed, crossing his arms defensively across his chest. "I also lied a little."
"I can't believe you're this big of a menace," you laugh, flopping back as far as the stiff hospital pillows would allow. "Your PR team must be incredible."
"They better be, for how much I pay them."
You hummed in acknowledgement, looking around his room with a critical eye, noting the immaculate condition of all of the decor and medical equipment, as well as the humongous TV mounted on the wall opposite you; a muted nature documentary flashing across the screen. A large bouquet of blue and yellow flowers were laid next to Shouto's bedside, as well as a carafe of some hot beverage; likely coffee based on the small mountain of tiny creamer tubs stacked up next to it.
"So there's no actual security risk then?" You mumble quietly, fiddling with the edge of your thin knit blanket, doing your best to swallow down the worried lump in your throat. "No sign of Ms. Yokubou or anything?"
"Nothing yet, I'm afraid," Shouto admitted, his face pinching tight with guilt as he examined your anxiously twisting hands. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to worry you unnecessarily."
"It's alright. I've just never been someone's potential target before. It's got me feeling sort of jumpy."
"Understandably," Shouto was quick to assure you. "I guess I'm so accustomed to this sort of thing I didn't really stop to think of how scary it might seem to someone less used to it."
Shouto averted his gaze to the TV for a few moments, flipping to the programming guide channel to allow you the illusion of privacy to collect yourself while you discreetly dabbed the tears pricking the corner of your eyes with the edge of your top sheet.
"So, uh- what was your motivation for moving me in with you then?" You ask, trying to set the conversation back on track after your emotional derailment. "Did you already miss being stuck in a room with me that much?"
"Not quite," Shouto huffed in amusement. "I came to the realization that this was the first time that you and I were both off the clock in the same building. I thought it would be a shame to not make the most of this opportunity to legally fraternize."
"I'm…not sure I'm entirely following your line of thought here," you say, brow furrowed. "You want to what, exactly? Have a date in the hospital?"
"That was my intention, yes," Shouto admitted, rubbing at the back of his neck bashfully. "But hearing you say it out loud makes me realize how silly it sounds."
"No!" You say quickly, shooting up stalk straight in bed, startling you both with the ferocity of your cry. "It's not silly at all! It's kind of sweet, actually. That you can't wait to spend time with me."
"It's just- things are going to get really busy for the both of us now that we're tangled up in a criminal investigation. And I'm not sure when we'll eventually get the chance to be together again,"
"You're right. We should make the best of the time we have together," you nod, rolling onto your side to face Shouto more directly. "And I can say with full confidence that this is the nicest place you've ever taken me. There's a bathroom here and everything!"
"There is!" Shouto laughed excitedly, reaching over to pull the flowers at his bedside into his arms. "And I got these for you, too."
"Really? They're beautiful, thank you," You beam, tugging the collection of blue blossoms into your arms, running a finger softly across a fuzzy green leaf. You notice a card tucked in amongst the blooms and pull it with a quick tug; snorting in amusement at the cartoon stork carrying a blue-bundled baby printed on the front.
"Ughhhhh," Shouto groaned when you showed him the card, scrubbing a hand down his face in frustration. "I asked the gift shop for any bouquet without pink flowers or lillies and this is what they sent. Give it to me and I'll throw it away."
"No!" You cry, pressing the card against your chest away from Shouto's wiggling fingers. "It's mine now, you gave it to me. I'm going to scrapbook it."
"Please don't," he begged, leaning over the rail of his bed to make a closer swipe at the card.
"Or maybe I'll laminate it. Keep it in my wallet for good luck," you muse with a hum. "Would you sign it for me? That would really increase its sentimental value."
"You want my autograph?" Shouto asked, arm paused mid-grab as he stared at you searchingly- for what, you weren't entirely sure.
"No. I want you to sign the card you gave me," you clarify, pulling the card away from your chest and sliding it into his hand. "That's just good manners."
Shouto pulled his hand back, eyes softer than they were just a moment ago as he opened up the side table drawer and pulled out a hospital issue pen.
"You're right. I apologize for my oversight," he said, quickly scrawling on the inside of the card with a speed born from years of practice. You snatched the card back from him as soon as he held it out, excited to see the message he wrote.
'Congratulations, it's a boy!
(The boy is me)
Love, Shouto'
"I'm definitely laminating this," you whisper to yourself, cheeks aching from the force of your smile as you tuck the card safely back into the bouquet and clutch it to your chest protectively.
"So, what else do you have planned for our date?"
Dinner was up next, not because you were necessarily very hungry with the swarm of nervous butterflies you had fluttering around in your stomach; but because a member of the kitchen staff had let themselves into your room to take your meal requests.
"You know, I sort of thought by how much fancier the Hero rooms are that you guys would get better food too," you say, spooning another mouthful of the thin vegetable broth into your mouth.
"All the hospital food comes from the same kitchen. The meals for Heroes aren't any better in quality, but we are permitted to have as much as we want," Shouto explained, prying the lid off of a pudding cup and giving it a tentative sniff. You decide to follow his lead and shift your focus to your dessert, a parfait that was mostly yogurt with a bit of granola sprinkled on top.
"This is actually turning out to be a pretty good date," you say when the TV starts showing a commercial for a local refrigerator repair service.
"You think so?"
"I do," you assure him. "We've even hit two of the major date features you mentioned before. We're having dinner together and you got me flowers. The only thing missing is the music."
"I can fix that," Shouto says as he reaches for the TV remote and punches in the code for a music channel. A music video starts playing; starring a man with bright green skin wearing sunglasses on the beach, flanked by a line of women in bikinis.
"Girl, I think your Quirk must be Twerkin', because your booty really knows how to work it-," The man sang, slapping the right buttcheek of the dancer closest to him.
"So romantic," you sigh, holding a hand to your chest dramatically.
"I'm changing the channel," Shouto grimaced as the camera panned away from the singer and zoomed in on the background dancer's wobbling butts.
"You can't! 'Twerkin' Quirk' is officially our song now, Shouto!" You laugh in delight, soaking in his misery like sunbeams on the first warm day of Spring.
"Everytime I think something else couldn't possibly go wrong, it does," Shouto lamented, a pained look on his face as they began spraying the bikini dancers with champagne while they gyrated next to a sports car with spinning neon rims.
"It sure does seem that way," you agree, fishing out the lone blueberry from the bottom of your parfait. "I'm probably going to have to reevaluate my opinion of this date now."
"Has it finally sunk low enough to earn the 'Worst Date Ever' award?" He sulked, flinging the remote down onto the end of his bed irritability.
"It's definitely cinched the nomination for 'Most Memorable'," you tell him with a smirk, putting your dessert cup down so you could reach across the space between your beds to offer him your hand. The feel of his hand in yours was already a familiar thing; your fingers at home twined together. "But I don't think any date could be bad, so long as you're with me."
"I think you're giving me too much credit, but I'll take it," Shouto grunts softly, deflating down into his pillows to watch the finale of the music video.
"I'll let you take as much credit as you want so long as you take me on another date."
"Agreed," Shouto replied instantly. "And I promise, it'll be better than this."
"I don't think you'll ever be able to top this," you laugh brightly, heart thumping happily as you bury your nose into your flowers and watch as the singer on screen smears oil across his chest while a confetti cannon fires behind him.
"But I can't wait to see you try."
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