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It’s not an immediate realization. If anything, it’s glacially slow.
It starts around the Sports Festival, he thinks, when everything else involving Todoroki starts, with that fateful hallway conversation -- when Izuku broke finger after finger, but Todoroki broke some kind of dam no one else knew was there.
“Here,” his voice is low, but still just loud enough to catch Izuku’s attention and have him glance over.
“Todoroki-kun?” Tsuyu questions, all but melting in her chair with the heat.
“It’s hot,” is all Todoroki says, setting an iceball on the desk with a helpless shrug.
She blinks at him, and Izuku can’t see Todoroki’s face, but he’s confident he’s blinking back.
“Thank you,” she smiles, eyes crinkling before her entire face sags with relief as she picks it up.
“Your neck. It really helps to put it on the back of your neck,” Todoroki explains, putting his own iced hand on his nape in demonstration.
Her face lights up again, and she repeats her gratitude, but Todoroki only offers a quick bow before walking away (retreating, Izuku thinks).
. . .
A strained scream has him, Iida, and Uraraka sprinting down the hall, whipping around the corner to find Kouda backed against the wall with wide eyes.
He’s gesturing wildly towards Todoroki, and, at first, Izuku is terrified that his friend is hurt, but then Todoroki is straightening up, turning around with his hands cupped in front of him.
“It won’t hurt you,” he says it gently, eyes meeting Izuku’s despite his clearly talking to Kouda.
His attention flickers back over to Kouda. “But don’t worry if they scare you. We’re all scared of something,” despite the light tone his words are carried by, there’s still something heavier, darker, lacing them, and Izuku finds himself swallowing.
“Spider,” he lifts his hands ever so slightly.
“Are you going to kill it?” Iida asks, looking around, perhaps for something with which to do just that.
“No, he’s not going to hurt anyone,” Todoroki replies, and turns towards the nearest window.
Izuku rushes over to open it for him, and tries to hide his blush when their arms brush against one another.
. . .
The dorms are a thing.
It takes some getting used to, but largely everyone is settling in about as well as twenty vaguely traumatized teens can.
It started with Mina begging for a class pet, but rapidly grew into just about everyone asking for a class pet -- even Iida has made a very respectful but very detailed binder filled with pros and cons of one.
A solid week goes by, and the hype has died to a murmuring buzz of half-hearted jokes and listless please’s. Most everyone is gathered in the common room, each doing their respective things, when Todoroki comes in. Instead of sitting down at one of the available seats, he stands in front by the TV and awkwardly clears his throat.
Not everyone looks his way, but Izuku rather thinks he might die a little if that were the case.
“I…brought this. Hector. Our class pet,” and he thunks it on the table, only Hector isn’t a cat, or a hamster, or even a goldfish. No, Hector is a spider plant; a partially dead, very droopy spider plant.
“Hector?” Kaminari shouts, zipping up to the coffee table, and that’s what gets everyone’s gazes.
As expected, Todoroki turns a light shade of pink, and Izuku definitely doesn’t think it’s ridiculously cute.
“Yes?” He responds, uncertainty palpable.
“Hector!” Mina pumps her fist. “If we can prove to Aizawa we can keep a plant alive, then we can -- “
All at once, everyone has hopped to their feet, swarming the front and babbling about the possibilities, and who’s taking Hector into custody when, and if spider plants die from loneliness or do they need a mate?
Todoroki has made his escape, or tried to, but Izuku follows him into the hallway.
“That was sweet. What you did,” he smiles gently, wanting to reach out and touch, but not knowing if it’d be welcome.
He earns a shrug and a piercing stare, just a bit up through his lashes as though he’s unsure.
Their classmates’ delighted chatter can be heard even here, but it’s muffled, distant. Like he and Todoroki are isolated, the only ones in the world.
They stand there, mere feet apart and looking at each other, before Izuku finally asks,
“Do you want to study together? You’re much better at English than I am.”
He raises his hand to scratch the back of his head sheepishly, watches Todoroki watch him do so, then hears a soft, “Sure. You’re better at everything else though.”
Todoroki turns before he can see Izuku’s blush, but he’s sure it’s caught on the stammering elevator ride up.
. . .
A picture was forming, a radically different picture from Izuku’s first impressions -- that Todoroki was aloof and maybe a bit arrogant -- but somehow it’s not the big things that really snap it into focus.
About half the class is sitting in the common room, all doing their own thing, but Izuku’s attention keeps being diverted from his essay to Todoroki (that’s been happening more and more, and the way Ochako looks at him when it happens tells him she knows more than he does).
He’s curled up on the end of the couch -- more like in the end of the couch, the way he's nestled into the corner -- and his lips move along silently to words he’s reading. The thought has barely formed that it’s something akin to cute, when very suddenly Todoroki’s face scrunches up and, a beat later, he sneezes.
Or Izuku thinks he does.
It’s tiny and soft and cute -- undeniably so, like a chipmunk or a kitten or the friend he’s rapidly realizing is the softest boy on Earth -- and Izuku makes a strangled noise, like a mouse caught in a vacuum belt. Todoroki glances at him, still looking vaguely dazed by the unexpected sneeze, and raises an eyebrow.
“Er, bless you?” Izuku tries, voice strained.
“Ah, thanks,” he sniffs once, eyes trailing absently over to where Satou is cooing at Hector (a now thriving spider plant with full-on baby spider plants hanging from certain tendrils). He looks back at Izuku, and they share something that he can’t quite name, and then Todoroki is melting into the couch even more with a contented sigh.
Izuku realizes, fully, viscerally, how fucked he is.
. . .
Shouto (because he is now, Shouto, and Izuku is Izuku) keeps doing these Things. And he must have always done them, Izuku only notices now because, lately, he notices everything to do with Shouto.
They’re walking into the kitchen one morning (they’d met each other in the hallway, totally by chance and not because Izuku has adjusted his schedule to match Shouto’s where possible), and Shouto is so busy looking at him that he accidentally walks into a chair.
“Oh, sorry,” he murmurs down at it as he pushes it in, and Izuku just.
Well, he just.
He uses the excuse of needing the bathroom and hides in there, does a few breathing exercises and splashes his face with water and tries not to actually combust on the spot.
When he gets back, Todoroki is holding his coffee mug in both hands, cradling it towards his chest. And, seeing him standing there, in a hoodie with sleeves too long and pants too long and hair falling into his eyes, the sunlight from the window haloing him, Izuku knows for a fact he is in love.
. . .
“I’m in love,” he states flatly, and when Ochako just looks at him with those knowing eyes that she’s been piercing him with, he flops back on his bed and whines, “I’m in love! Why didn’t you tell me I was in love?”
“I knew you’d figure it out,” she pats his knee patronizingly, but her smile is nothing but affection.
“How long?”
“I’ve known since Stain, but I think it started around the Sports Festival.”
When everything else started with Shouto, he thinks.
“If it makes you feel better, I know he likes you too.”
A mildly hysterical giggle bubbles out of him.
. . .
In the end, it’s the sneeze that does him in.
They’re walking back to the dorms from class, and the gentle breeze tussles Shouto’s hair so wonderfully, mixing the red and white strands together.
And then his nose wrinkes and he sneezes, does this tiny shake of his head as if to reorient himself and Izuku just blurts,
“Cute!”
He can’t help himself. The word has been following him doggedly, cropping up whenever Shouto does and even when he doesn’t, a pervasive presence that he can’t quite mind.
“What?” Shouto stops walking, is looking at him with a slightly cocked head.
Izuku stops walking then, brain catching up to his words, and he feels his face sear with heat.
“I, um, you -- “ He tightens his fists and inhales sharply, remembering Ochako’s words. He could take a chance; it could go badly and they could never be friends again.
But here, framed in this moment of time, private but open -- sunny and breezy and perfect but just like any other day -- Izuku realizes he doesn’t want to be just friends.
“You’re really cute, Shouto-kun,” he says it firmly other than the slight warble on “really”.
Shouto blinks, once, twice. Then he smiles, and it’s a shy smile, private, directed at Izuku like he’s the only one who could ever bring it out.
“You too.”
. . .
After that, after they go from individuals to a pair, Shouto smiles more. But there are nights when it’s just the two of them, lying in bed or repotting one of Hector’s kids (there’s currently five spider plants, each name progressively weirder) or quizzing each other on math formulas, where the world just stops and Shouto looks at him. His eyes are lazily hooded but crinkled at the edges, the corners of his mouth are barely twitched upwards, and it’s less of a smile and more of a content, happy expression.
And, in those moments, all Izuku can think is how happy he is to have been wrong about Shouto when they'd first met.