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pitviperofdoom · 7 years

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BNHA: Discombobulate, 3/?

Summary: After a battle with a villain goes terribly wrong, all Shouto wants is a cheap, quiet place to lie low and recover from a handful of difficult lifestyle changes. Instead, he ends up throwing his lot in with a former schoolmate with a peculiar job, a unique set of skills, and a troublesome aversion to minding his own damned business.

(Sherlock Holmes AU)

AO3

There were many things that Shouto knew to brace himself for during his “sabbatical”. Weathering questions from fellow heroes. Being recognized by fans in public. Hearing media updates as news sources recycled the story ad nauseum and got details wrong. Deleting the endless amount of missed calls, text messages, and voicemails from Endeavor or any of Endeavor’s subordinates. Even, possibly, curious questions from whoever happened to be sharing living space with him.

The latter, at least, proved not to be a problem. Midoriya was not only discreet, if the lack of curious fans and enthusiasts knocking on the door in the ensuing days were any indication, but was also tight-lipped around Shouto himself, at least where his situation was concerned. Midoriya did talk. Shouto would even go so far as to call him chatty. On the first day alone, after offering to accompany Shouto to his temporary hotel room to pick up the rest of his things, Midoriya had dragged him into a conversation about chess strategy, of all things. From there the topic had shifted organically to physics, then the current climate in heroics, and then the role of the mainstream media. If there was one thing that Shouto learned from the trip, it was that Midoriya Izuku was keenly interested in heroics. He could talk up a storm about it, from battle strategy to quirk application theory to the relationship between pro heroes and police. And yet, not once did he question Shouto about his own background. Shouto didn’t offer any information, in the moments that he could get a word in edgewise, and Midoriya never asked him for it. Shouto had been bracing himself for questions, considering that Midoriya seemed to have some kind of perception-enhancing quirk, but none came.

So, in spite of the rocky start, his roommate was tolerable. They had agreed on two weeks for Shouto’s trial run, but if Shouto were honest with himself, his mind was made up three days in. But that raised an entirely new problem for him, one that he had not been prepared for: boredom.

His release from the hospital, followed by his unceremonious departure from his father’s agency—and his father’s house—had left him with a sense of urgency that had occupied his every waking moment. As long as he was awake, he was wondering what to do next, trying to come up with a proper plan, trying to decide between blowing money on a hotel room (even a cheap one) or finding an alternative.

Well, now his alternative was found and implemented. He had a place to sleep and keep his few belongings, and a place to sit down and realize that he had no idea what to do next. The media thought his “break” from hero work was a temporary one; and why wouldn’t they, when his father’s people were making it quite clear that they thought so, too? As far as the world was concerned, he would be back to work in a few weeks.

And he wanted to be; more than anything in the world, he wanted to be. He would have loved nothing more. The work was all he wanted. It was all he had ever known to want. But he couldn’t fight villains with an injured leg. And even without that… he couldn’t go back.

Well, he could. If he went crawling back to his father, head bowed, begging forgiveness, he knew that Endeavor would accept him back. He knew his father would erase his resignation from the agency’s records—if he’d ever even bothered to put it down in the first place. Endeavor was a confident man; if he had any doubts that Shouto would come back with his tail between his legs, then Shouto would be very surprised.

That was all the more reason why he absolutely couldn’t go back.

So for now, Shouto was left with an ever-present pain in his left knee, and no idea what he was supposed to do from here.

With few other options, he alternated between shutting himself in his room to research other agencies and openings, searching for any more options for himself, and venturing out to explore the neighborhood or socialize if he could manage it. Iida’s company was tolerable, if a bit awkward. Uraraka was easy to talk to now that she, too, thought that his situation was temporary. Yaoyorozu, on the occasion that he saw her, was quiet about his situation, but didn’t pry. And as for Midoriya…

Tolerable he might be, but as the days of the first week passed, Shouto gained little more insight on exactly what sort of “consultant” his new roommate was supposed to be.

Midoriya did, as he had warned, receive multiple visitors. More than once, Shouto wandered out of his room, only to find Midoriya conducting some kind of business in the living room and perform a quick about-face turn to avoid being spotted. His roommate always met with either one or two people at a time, and they spent each meeting conversing in low tones or bent over some folder or cardboard box. It was all very quiet and secretive, and Shouto gained a strong impression that his very presence would be disruptive to it.

Whatever “it” was.

It certainly didn’t help that Shouto had yet to work out the exact nature of Midoriya’s quirk. As of yet, he had a few possibilities mentally sorted out, among them telepathy, empathy, precognition, postcognition, psychometry, or just general quirk-enhanced instincts. Midoriya never offered up an explanation, but continued to rattle Shouto from time to time by casually plucking, as if from thin air, some little bit of knowledge that he had no business knowing. Anything from what and where Shouto had eaten for lunch with Yaoyorozu (Shouto was fairly sure Yaoyorozu hadn’t simply told him), to the fact that he’d spent Wednesday morning buying flowers (to visit his mother, though if Midoriya had somehow divined that, he didn’t mention it).

At one point, in a moment of vague whimsy, Shouto wondered if he’d accidentally ended up sharing an apartment with some kind of criminal. Not likely, of course; if straitlaced Iida thought highly of him, then Midoriya could be nothing less than a moral paragon. Still, considering that his first impression of Midoriya was to see him strolling out of a basement spattered in what closely resembled blood, he could hardly be blamed for letting it cross his mind.

He did not wonder for long. Not five days into living with Midoriya Izuku, Shouto wandered out to the kitchen around six in the morning (because old habits were harder to kill than cockroaches) to put on hot water for tea. After yawning over the kettle, he turned around, happened to wander out into the living room, and nearly tripped over his former homeroom teacher.

Somehow, he managed to catch his balance with his cane, and not do so by accidentally jamming it into Aizawa Shouta’s ribcage. After a bit of clumsy, uncoordinated stumbling—the product of a bad leg, not enough practice with a cane, and the fact that he’d just woken up—he managed to retreat back toward the kitchen, all without disturbing the man currently fast asleep on the living room floor.

A sudden wave of self-consciousness flooded him, and he ducked back into the kitchen to tend to the kettle. A few minutes later, Midoriya—bright-eyed, wide awake, unreasonably cheerful Midoriya—wandered out, stretching his arms back to pop his shoulders.

“Morning,” he said, loudly enough to make Shouto twitch. “Don’t worry about Eraser,” he went on, as if reading Shouto’s mind—and maybe that was what he was doing, since Shouto hadn’t gotten around to asking about the particulars of his quirk. “He sleeps like a rock. You’d have to beat him over the head with a live cat to wake him up.”

“Oh,” Shouto answered lamely, as Midoriya set his phone on the counter and went to the fridge. Shouto poured himself a mug of hot water and set about preparing tea. “What’s… what’s he doing here?”

“Project,” Midoriya answered, digging through the fridge for leftovers. “He stops by from time to time. He’s a pretty frequent, uh, client I guess? I’ve never really decided what to call it when I work with people.”

“You work with Aizawa-sensei?” Shouto couldn’t help but ask.

Midoriya grinned at him as he popped a takeout box into the microwave. “Our styles match up pretty well. Plus he’s one of the best among the older crowd when it comes to putting up with me.”

“I see.” Shouto didn’t see. He hadn’t realized that Midoriya’s work, whatever it was, led him to collaborate with pro heroes. But in that case, what was he? He didn’t seem to be in support. Management, perhaps? But management didn’t often hire independent contractors, not when proper hero management required knowing and working closely with the heroes themselves. It wasn’t the sort of work that lent well to hiring temporary outside consultants.

“Anyway, he might wake up once I put on some coffee,” Midoriya went on. “Do you want any, or are you good with just tea?”

“I don’t like coffee,” Shouto said.

“Fair enough.” Midoriya leaned against the counter and started the coffee maker. Shouto wrinkled his nose as the smell filled the kitchen, but didn’t comment. To each his own, and all that.

“So… how long have you known Aizawa-sensei?” This wasn’t prying, was it? He hoped it wasn’t.

It must not have been, because Midoriya answered him quite readily. “A few years now,” he said. “I did go to UA.”

“Not Heroics, though.” Shouto said. “Gen Ed, right?”

There was a pause before Midoriya answered. “Yeah,” he said. Shouto glanced up from his tea, puzzled. He could have sworn he heard a chill in Midoriya’s tone.

“So when did you get the chance—”

“It wasn’t chance,” Midoriya cut him off. His tone was light, but he was looking at the coffee machine instead of at Shouto. “I approached him. Needed his help with… a project. He was nice enough to help me out.”

Shouto stared at him from across the kitchen, and let the stony silence speak for him. He certainly didn’t need a perception quirk to see through that one.

His roommate continued to look everywhere except for at him. His coffee finished, he picked up the mug and swished it around with the spoon to cool it. “No I am not a liar, thank you very much.”

“Aizawa-sensei,” Shouto said flatly. “‘Nice’.”

“Okay so I worded that badly,” Midoriya snorted. “It took some convincing, but he came around.”

“To what, exactly?” His tea was finally satisfactory, so Shouto took a sip and pressed his luck. “What did he help you with?”

He could almost hear the gears turning as Midoriya sipped his coffee and considered his answer. Finally, his roommate lowered the mug. “I asked him to teach me how to fight.”

Shouto gaped. Midoriya continued to not look at him.

“And he agreed?” was the first thing Shouto could think to say.

Finally Midoriya looked up at him with a serene little smile. “I can be convincing when I want to be,” he said, whatever that was supposed to mean.

Shouta continued to stare at him incredulously. Moral paragon, he reminded himself. Iida likes him. He can’t be anything less.

It certainly didn’t help that, taken a certain way, Midoriya’s little non-answer could be construed as—

“I didn’t blackmail him,” Midoriya said, before Shouto had quite finished the thought, which put one point under the “telepathy” box.

“I never accused you of—”

“You were going to suggest it,” Midoriya said primly, which could have supported telepathy or precognition.

“Why?” Shouto asked. “Why ask him?”

“Because he was the best person to help me,” Midoriya replied. “You can find teachers and clubs and trainers anywhere, just crack open a phone book, but… they weren’t what I was looking for. I needed him, so… I talked him around.”

“That’s hard to believe,” Shouto said bluntly.

“He’s a stubborn jerk, I’ll give you that,” Midoriya snorted. “Anyway. How goes the job search?”

Shouto inhaled a sip of tea instead of swallowing it, and nearly dropped his mug coughing. His spine went taut, and his grip on the mug tightened until the joints in his fingers creaked.

“You okay?” Midoriya asked him with a smile. His eyes flickered downward, and the grin vanished.

“I don’t know what you mean by job search,” Shouto said, his voice icily calm. “Considering that I told you, repeatedly, that I’m here on temporary leave from work, and that I’m not comfortable discussing it beyond that.”

Alarm flashed across Midoriya’s eyes. “I’m—”

“And the fact that you would think otherwise,” Shouto went on, “makes me seriously wonder how genuine your promise of privacy was.”

“I’m sorry,” Midoriya broke in. He cradled his mug in both hands, cringing in embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I just—I forgot. I didn’t mean to offend you.” His eyes lowered again briefly, and Shouto glanced down, following his gaze. His mug was in his right hand; the tea in it was now frozen solid, and the ceramic white with a layer of frost.

Truthfully, Shouto wasn’t certain why he was so upset about it. From a practical standpoint, his own reaction didn’t make sense. Midoriya wasn’t wrong by any means, nor had he phrased his question unkindly. And Shouto was hardly ashamed of it—well, mostly, anyway. His departure had been voluntary. He wasn’t sorry he’d left.

But…

The fact that Midoriya knew at all, after Shouto had been doing his absolute damnedest to keep his situation to himself, was… unsettling. Enough to set Shouto’s teeth grinding.

It felt, more than anything, like an intrusion.

“I just,” Midoriya said suddenly, and Shouto was ashamed to admit that he twitched at his roommate’s voice. Midoriya fell silent again for a few moments more. “E-excuse me,” he said at length, putting down his mug. “I have to check something, need to look up—in my… I’ll be out in a bit. Don’t worry about Aizawa, he’ll wake up when he wakes up. And he has a key.” Without another word, he hurried out of the kitchen and into the living room. Moments later, he came back with a messy folder tucked under his arm and swept back into the hallway. The last Shouto heard was the sound of Midoriya shutting his bedroom door.

Shouto heaved a sigh, pressing the heel of his hand against his forehead. He probably could have handled that better. Maybe it wasn’t fair of him, closing off like that after he’d spent the previous five minutes questioning Midoriya. But his roommate had been ready and willing with his answers. Midoriya’s question, as casual as it might have been, had nonetheless dragged Shouto back to the white lie that he was trying very hard to maintain.

Not that he wasn’t proud of himself for leaving. He’d been wanting to leave from the moment he set foot in his father’s agency.

But it was still his business. His problem. The last thing he wanted was some nosy something-or-other with a perception quirk peeking in on his affairs.

Shouto looked up, eyes clearing, and realized that not only had Midoriya left his coffee sitting on the counter, he had also left food uneaten in the microwave. With another sigh, he left his frozen mug by the sink and limped across the kitchen to retrieve the now-cold coffee. With a grunt of discomfort, he moved on to the microwave to grab the takeout box. Wishing for three hands so that at least he could use his cane to take some of the weight, Shouto put both in the fridge and turned around to go deal with his mug.

In doing so, he ended up facing the entrance to the kitchen, staring his former homeroom teacher in the face.

A full eight seconds passed, quiet and serene, as Shouto simply stared at Aizawa and Aizawa stared back, half-asleep.

“Um,” Shouto said finally.

“Not even gonna ask.” Aizawa swallowed a yawn and moved around him to the coffee pot.

Resigned, Shouto gave up any lingering hopes he had of dodging Aizawa, and turned to defrost and reheat his tea instead.

“Good job on that villain in Ruusan,” Aizawa remarked. “Looked like a hell of a fight.”

Shouto glanced down at his leg. “I handled it.”

“Mm.” The refrigerator door opened, and Aizawa rummaged through it.

Shouto turned to look at him, perplexed. Aizawa stayed the night regularly, had a key, and was apparently comfortable with casually going through Midoriya’s fridge; in spite of his own insistence on privacy, Shouto’s curiosity was piqued.

Before he could think to ask questions, Aizawa beat him to the punch. “How’re you holding up?”

His last exchange with Midoriya had left him defensive, and “I thought you weren’t going to ask,” slipped out before Shouto could stop it.

Aizawa glanced at him with one eyebrow raised. “I’m not gonna ask what you’re doing here. You’re obviously not here on business.” Reaching into the fridge, he pulled out a carton of cream and shut the door. “Doesn’t mean I’m not gonna ask after the well-being of a former student.”

“I’m fine,” Shouto said.

“Of course you are.” Aizawa poured cream into his coffee and added a few spoonfuls of sugar. “But how’re you holding up?”

“I’m holding up fine,” Shouto said, painfully aware of how petulant he must have sounded. He was glad that Aizawa had his back to him; Aizawa was far harder to mislead than Uraraka or Iida. “I just… need some peace and quiet,” he said. At least it was an excuse that he was used to. “Can’t heal up all the way with reporters breathing down my neck.”

“Right.” Shouto tried to read Aizawa’s tone, but his former teacher was as flat as ever. It was impossible to tell whether or not Aizawa accepted it. “Should’ve gone underground. Easier to avoid the vultures if they don’t know you’re there.”

“Never was a chance of that,” Shouto pointed out. “They’ve known I was there since the day I was born.”

“Well, if you wanted to buck them, then you’re certainly in the right place,” Aizawa remarked. “This place might as well be a media dead zone.”

Shouto glanced up at him. “How do you mean?”

“Considering the kind of traffic that goes through this one apartment, you’d think reporters would be battering the door down.” Aizawa’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “And yet, here we both are. At least Midoriya knows how to keep the press from sniffing this place out.”

“Does it have to do with his quirk?” Shouto asked.

Aizawa paused with the mug halfway to his mouth and met Shouto’s eyes blankly. “Huh?”

“Just wondering,” Shouto said. “Does he see them coming, or what? Do you know?”

For a moment Aizawa simply stared at him over the rim of his coffee mug, blinking slow and unhurried like a cat. Finally, when Shouto was starting to wonder if he’d said something wrong, Aizawa’s head dipped, and he took a drink.

“How much do you actually know about him?” Aizawa asked.

“Not that much,” Shouto admitted, leaning back against the counter to take the weight off his leg. “He talks a lot, but he doesn’t say things about himself very often. I know he does consulting work, but I don’t know its exact nature. And I can tell his quirk has something to do with heightened perception. Beyond that, not much. Uraraka introduced us, and he’s on good terms with Iida, so I figured he’s trustworthy.”

Aizawa snorted. “You forgot the part where he’s a pain in the ass.”

“Mm.” Shouto kept his face neutral. “Then why’d you teach him how to fight?”

“He told you that, did he?” Aizawa poured himself more coffee. “You were in my class three years, Todoroki. Pain in the ass he might be, but I don’t do anything that isn’t worth my time.”

It was almost a compliment, Shouto realized. It was a compliment, by Aizawa’s standards.

“And by the way,” Aizawa added. “Don’t know if you know this, or how long you’ve been here, but if you haven’t figured it out by now, I’ll tell you: you can unclench.”

“I can… what?”

“Whatever you’re trying to get out of being here, you might as well relax in the meantime,” Aizawa told him. “This place is… safe.”

“From what, exactly?” Shouto asked.

Aizawa gave an leisurely shrug. “Nothing exactly. It’s just safe in general. Press won’t touch you. Villains can’t find it. Neither the press nor villains even know to look for it.”

It was… incredibly comforting, actually, to hear that from Aizawa.

“You’re not a client,” Aizawa went on.

“A client of Midoriya’s? No, I’m not.” Shouto shifted his weight again, wondering how that was relevant. “I’m just…” He mentally dithered a moment longer, before finally easing up on his caution. “Honestly, I’ll just be here to help him pay the rent.”

This time Aizawa did look up, only to stare at him with an unreadable expression.

Shouto tapped his left leg with his cane, gingerly so as not to jar his knee. “Recuperating.” The lie was getting shorter and shorter every time he told it.

Aizawa stared at him dubiously. “Don’t know how the hell you can get any ‘recuperating’ done if you’re sharing space with Midoriya.”

“We keep to ourselves,” Shouto said.

“Ah. Explains why you don’t know much about—”

Someone rapped on the door.

With a sigh, Shouto pushed off from the counter and leaned on his cane to go answer it, but a moment later the door opened and heavy footsteps came hurrying in. Before Shouto had time to weigh the pros and cons of retreating to his room and hiding from more of Midoriya’s visitors, yet another distressingly familiar face appeared around the corner.

Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi looked at least as surprised to see Shouto as Shouto was to see him. “Oh!” He blinked, stopping short. His eyes flickered back and forth between Shouto and Aizawa, and then beyond them as if searching for something. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Nothing important,” Aizawa replied. “Coffee?”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” Naomasa sighed. His tie was askew, and he seemed out of breath. “Is Midoriya here?”

“He’s—” Shouto began, before he heard the door down the hall slam open. Midoriya came darting out, almost running into the wall in his haste.

“I’m here! I’m here, what is it, Naomasa?”

Naomasa straightened up at the sight of him. “You told me before to let you know if we found that substance at the scene of a crime.”

Midoriya’s eyes lit up. “I remember, I was there.”

“Well, we found it,” Naomasa informed him. “Tamakawa’s holding off the crime scene team for now so you can get a look, but…”

“Yes!” Midoriya fistpumped. “Fantastic. Let me get my coat—wait.” He hesitated, frowning at Naomasa. Shouto saw his eyes narrow, and surreptitiously leaned out for a better view of his face. There was that look again—that sharp, considering look that Shouto had once seen directed at himself. “Something’s different about this one. There’s been a change… you think this one might not be connected?”

Slowly, Naomasa nodded. “It’s not clear yet what it will do for the case we’re building.”

Midoriya’s eyes shone with keen interest. “What’s changed?”

Naomasa looked grim. “This one has a body.”

#my hero academia #boku no hero academia #bnha sh au #fanfiction #tales from the pit

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