Chapter 1

Midoriya wears honey chapstick. He wears honey chapstick and then he worries his bottom lip between his teeth—pink clamped nervously between white—and then he reapplies.

And Shouto watches, because he’s good at watching. Talking and joking don’t come so easily to him as it seemingly does to the rest of the class, but observing—he’s been doing it his whole life.

Shouto wonders where he got the chapstick from. Did his mother buy it for him, or perhaps Uraraka or Iida? Did he go and get it himself? It’s unimportant, he knows, but he still wonders. He wonders a lot about Midoriya.

Shouto is not used to being this curious. He’s not used to noticing little things, like what kind of chapstick someone wears. He’s not used to… whatever this is—whatever feeling tangles like vines growing in his ribcage, tickling at his lungs and at his heart.

But Midoriya’s uncapping his chapstick again, and Shouto hears the pop from his desk a few rows back. He swallows thickly, watching with some sort of intent as Midoriya lifts the tube up towards his mouth.

Then Yaoyorozu is snapping in Shouto’s face, her voice edging exasperated. “Todoroki-san,” she says, leaning out of her desk in order to reach over to Shouto.

Shouto blinks at her. “Yes?”

“Oh, good,” she sighs of relief and leans back into her seat. “I thought you were completely out of it. I’ve been trying to get your attention for at least a minute. Did you sleep well last night?”

Shouto blinks again, directing his gaze down to his desk. There’s a pencil mark on the surface, so he rubs at it with his finger. It smudges, leaving grey on both his fingertip and the desk.

Class is yet to start, and many classmates are just arriving, sliding into their seats amidst comfortable conversation with their friends.

“Sorry,” Shouto finally replies. “What do you need?”

“Do you have the English notes from yesterday?” she inquires, drumming her fingers on her desk before her. “Kaminari-san was borrowing mine last night, but he lost them.”

Shouto’s tongue clicks against the roof of his mouth. “Yeah, I have them. Give me a second.”

He leans down and rummages through his bag for his English notebook to hand over to Yaoyorozu, but when he sits back up, there’s a familiar presence leaning over his desk.

“Midoriya,” he says as a greeting, ignoring the way his breath hitches ever-so-slightly at the sight. “Good morning.”

Midoriya’s lips shine with freshly applied chapstick, and Shouto really shouldn’t notice that. He clears his throat and turns away to hand Yaoyorozu his notebook.

“Good morning!” Midoriya chirps back when he again has Shouto’s attention, his palms pressing to the surface of Shouto’s desk. The skin on his hands and arms is mangled and gnarled with scars, but Shouto doesn’t stare. He does, however, have an urge to cover up Midoriya’s hands with his own, experimentally, just to see what Midoriya’s face would do. What his hands would do.

The urge passes, unsatisfied, as Midoriya opens his mouth to speak, but the bell rings and cuts him off before he can begin.

“I’ll talk to you at lunch,” Midoriya settles on, scurrying back over to his desk.

Shouto’s eyes follow him as he slips into his desk, back pressing against the chair and hands reaching into his backpack to pull out a notebook. He twirls a pen in his fingers, and then sticks the end of the pen into his mouth. Shouto thinks about the honey chapstick that will stick residually to the pen when Midoriya pulls it away.