Chapter Text
This is… less than ideal.
Shouto stares across the room. It’s tastefully decorated, fit with expertly arranged furniture and finely constructed wooden desks. The accent colors in the art displayed proudly on the walls match the cushions on the chairs in the waiting area exactly. The amount of glass figurines and vases set out seems frankly irresponsible considering the general chaos of their lives. Endeavor is an obscenely rich man running an obscenely profitable hero agency and it shows.
At least this is just the lobby. The chrome and marble found on the upper floors are opulent but admittedly better suited to a building of people with fire quirks.
On the other side of the room, slouched in his seat so that his toes can brush the ground, sits Todoroki Touya. A metal case is clutched close to his chest, his school bag discarded at his feet. His white hair is set in spikes that Shouto still hasn’t gotten used to, but combined with the baby fat clinging to his cheeks and his short stature, the hairstyle makes him look like a kid trying too hard to seem grown up instead of a mature hero in training.
Or maybe Shouto’s just projecting.
The elevator opens and Touya looks up eagerly. His shoulders sink when a woman in a pantsuit steps out. He turns his face back towards his lap, a pout clinging stubbornly to his face before he wipes it away.
Shouto had forgotten that Touya’s work study was supposed to be this week. It was all Touya talked about the last time he came home for the weekend. He begged Shouto for details about working at Endeavor Hero Agency, asking questions he couldn’t bring himself to answer honestly with a level of open enthusiasm that hadn’t been directed at him in almost a decade. Natsuo elbowed him when he stuttered out a generic response, rerouting the conversation so expertly that Touya didn’t even notice.
(Anyone who could look into that deceptively sweet face and talk about holding civilians as they bled out or dealing out a blow with excessive force that makes you a little afraid of yourself has no soul. Even Katsuki, bewildered at Touya’s uncharacteristic lack of aggression towards Shouto, sugar-coated it when asked whether he’d ever exploded someone too hard.)
Thank fuck that Natsuo is so good at handling their brother, because Shouto sure as shit doesn’t know what to do with him. Their interactions are 70% Touya hissing and spitting at him like a street cat and 30% Shouto giving into Touya’s whims because he’s relieved Touya isn’t verbally expressing his disdain for Shouto’s very existence. It’s a good thing that Touya’s too proud to abuse Shouto’s inability to tell him no more often or they’d have a real problem on their hands.
He doesn’t need to consult his father to know the man hasn’t remembered either. Endeavor left the city about an hour ago, called away by suspected League activity, and he hadn’t said anything about Touya coming in when he gave Shouto his marching orders for the day.
Not that Touya needs to know. He’ll be crushed not to work with Endeavor today without the knowledge that he had been forgotten by their father yet again. If Shouto tells him Endeavor got called in, he’ll be upset, but ultimately understanding. He’s heard Endeavor give the ‘for the greater good’ excuse far too many times not to know how well it works. For all the hate Touya shows him, Shouto’s met few people as empathetic.
The building’s double doors open smoothly as a pair of sidekicks return from patrol, chattering aimlessly as they go. Touya perks up and deflates just as quickly, holding his case a little closer to his chest and sinking further down in his chair.
Well, shit. He’s gonna have to take care of that, isn’t he?
Shouto’s been cleaning up Endeavor’s messes for years. He should really be used to it by now, but hey. Never let it be said that Endeavor doesn’t strive to show himself up.
He approaches cautiously, aware that he’s putting himself in the line of fire by intervening. The receptionist, a sharp older woman who’s worked here longer than Shouto’s been alive, makes eye contact with him as he goes, a wincing sympathy on her face. At the same time, Touya catches sight of him and Shouto can see his walls coming up, anger flashing across his features. Ah, there’s the hostility that he’s so accustomed to. He forces his stride not to falter even as those blue eyes narrow viciously.
“Did Dad send you to get me?” Touya asks before Shouto can speak, which is good because Shouto didn’t know what he would have opened with anyway. Touya’s visibly bottling up his anger, squeezing the case holding his hero costume until his knuckles turn white and pressing his lips tightly together as if to prevent more words from escaping unchecked.
If they were at home, he might have threatened to melt Shouto’s head as soon as he saw him, so Shouto’s calling this a win. As it is, smoke sneaks out from under Touya’s collared shirt.
Shouto waves it away. “Yeah,” he lies.
He’s gotten better at it over the years, had to in order to handle the press and keep the peace on the occasions he deigned to diffuse arguments with his father instead of fanning the flames. He’s not particularly inclined to do either of those things, but it’s a good skill to have at times like these.
“ Endeavor is in the field on a co-op.” Shouto had little trouble adjusting to addressing him by his hero name while at work or during interviews, but Shouto rarely calls him ‘Father’ even outside of the agency. He has a feeling he’ll be correcting Touya a lot in the near future.
“When is he expected back?”
Shouto hesitates. Touya, always too smart for his own good, jumps to conclusions.
“They don’t know.” A pause, a moment of consideration. Touya sits back in his chair, face tilted towards the ceiling, expression blank save for the slight scrunch of his eyebrows. “I’m going to have to go back to school, aren’t I?”
It’s the flat tone of dispassionate hurt that makes Shouto speak without thinking. Touya’s irritation at Shouto’s presence, generally a staple of any interaction between them, disappears from his voice as he presumably prevents himself from outwardly reacting. He’s good enough at it to keep his voice steady, but his lower lip gives the slightest of wobbles.
For both their sakes, he pretends not to notice the suspicious sheen that comes over Touya’s eyes.
He can’t stand that Touya is resigned to this, so used to being disappointed that he isn’t surprised to find that he’s been abandoned. Shouto can tell he’s stung, but accustomed to burying his feelings so as not to seem—what, immature because something he wanted desperately was taken away from him so that someone else could be saved? Selfish for being disappointed? Because rocking the boat spells out ‘danger’ in their house, or because he thinks that making sacrifices in the name of heroism (as a child, and again as a trainee that doesn’t even have a provisional license yet) will garner him the sorely needed affection from their father that he’d always craved?
Shouto couldn’t give him what he deserved when he was a kid. He can’t give him what he needs now, either. He’s as unequipped to comfort Touya as he’s ever been, maybe more so now that he’s no longer a child easily distracted by a snack, a hug, and as much attention as Shouto could spare for him.
But he can try, damn it.
“No. I’m taking over as your sponsor until Endeavor returns to the city. The paperwork’s already been filed.”
No such paperwork exists. Shouto isn’t sure where he’d get the proper papers, much less how to get them through the right channels in a timely manner. Reflexively, he glances back at the receptionist. She raises her eyebrow at him, then her chin, and Shouto relaxes, knowing that she’ll cut through whatever red tape there is. He makes a mental note to ask Izuku’s mom what kind of gift basket he should send her.
Touya gapes. Shouto watches him closely as he processes, debating whether his ice or the fire extinguisher on the wall is a better choice if Touya bursts into flame.
He’s surprised when Touya manages to school his expression. Not letting your emotions show is a necessary skill for a hero to have, but Shouto doesn’t know how he feels about his baby brother developing a poker face. Touya’s always been the most expressive of them; it feels unnatural to see relative calm overtake him.
He clearly didn’t expect Shouto to offer up an actual solution to his problem, though. Idly, Shouto wonders when Touya last had an adult take care of something so that he didn’t have to. If nothing else, Shouto hopes he has friends at UA to look after him.
“You’re doing my internship. Not, say, Burnin’.”
“You don’t have to sound so skeptical.”
Touya is absolutely right to be skeptical of him, since he’s pulling this story out of his ass, but really, is it so hard to believe that Endeavor would leave this to him?
“I’m familiar with Endeavor’s training, and my quirk is more similar to yours than any of the other sidekicks.” Shouto, maintaining his own poker face, hopes Touya can’t tell he’s flying by the seat of his pants.
While Shouto would never subject Touya to the things he suffered under Endeavor’s tutelage, he has to admit that the man generally knew what he was doing. There’s a reason that he’s been in the top five for so long. If Shouto can scale back his old training regimens and adapt them to Touya’s quirk, he’ll have a good starting point. Building off of UA’s instruction, helping Touya manage his quirk and offering feedback, is something Endeavor might be more effective at (God knows the man’s expertise is pushing too hard), but the damage it’d do would almost certainly outweigh the benefits.
“You’ve never taken on an intern before.”
Shouto blinks, somewhat surprised Touya paid him enough attention to know that. “I’ve been a sidekick here for five years,” he says. “This is as good a time to start as any.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing.” Touya says mulishly.
“Your other option is to waste your time while your classmates are out there learning.”
It’s a line that would have worked on him at Touya’s age, so he’s gratified to see it has the same effect on him. Of course, their motivations are a bit different, but fifteen year old Shouto wanted to be a hero, too.
Touya’s eyes flash dangerously. “Fine. It’s just until Dad gets back, anyways. He’ll set everything straight.”
“Let’s go, then,” Shouto says. He can’t remember a time when he had Touya’s confidence in him, a time when the word ‘father’ wasn’t a burning tomb in his mind. Not for the first time, he’s torn between hideous jealousy at the thought that Touya firmly believes that their father can—will—fix anything and the dreadful certainty that there will come a day that he stops.
Shouto is adept at tolerating Endeavor. He wouldn’t be able to work for the man if he wasn’t. Drawing a line between Todoroki Enji and Endeavor is field protocol and, at times, the only thing keeping Shouto from attacking the man. Things are simpler on the professional side of the line, less like a bloody wound repeatedly being torn open.
It’s rare that Shouto anticipates an appearance from his father, but today he casts a vague prayer that it will be Enji that returns to the agency, and hopes that it won’t be in vain. For Touya’s sake, if nothing else.