Shoto Todoroki never expected his life to feel warm.

He was used to sharp edges—scorching heat and brittle frost, rules and routines. UA’s structured environment suited him, and even when his classmates pulled him into their loud chaos, he always felt slightly out of place, as though he were watching from the edge of the frame.

Then came him.

His boyfriend was nothing like the Pro Hero track. Nothing like Endeavor’s vision. He wore secondhand jackets with mismatched buttons and painted nails chipped from doing tattoos in his friends’ kitchens. He’d transferred to an art school in Tokyo a year ago, and Shoto had met him on a random weekend when Yaoyorozu convinced the class to visit a student gallery. The boy had been sketching a stranger’s dog in a notebook covered in stickers, earbuds in, tongue poking from his lip in concentration.

He’d looked up when Shoto passed and said, “You’ve got great bone structure. Mind if I draw you next?”

That had been the beginning of everything.

Now, months later, Shoto found himself leaning against the passenger door of a beat-up van with stars painted on the ceiling. His boyfriend was driving them to a coastal town neither of them had been to before. It was spring break, and Shoto had promised Aizawa he’d stay out of trouble. Technically, that promise still held.

The window was down, wind whipping Shoto’s two-toned hair across his face. Music he’d never heard before played from the stereo—something dreamy and full of synth. His boyfriend was singing along, tapping the steering wheel in rhythm, rings clinking against the plastic.

Shoto watched him out of the corner of his eye, chest tightening with a feeling he didn’t yet know how to name. It was new. All of it was. This was his first relationship. His first time letting someone this close. And his boyfriend made it all feel like less of a risk.

They stayed in a tiny Airbnb above a used bookstore, made spaghetti at midnight, and slow-danced in their socks on the uneven wooden floor. In the mornings, they went for walks—his boyfriend pointing out architecture he liked, Shoto quietly listening and occasionally reaching for his hand.

Back in Musutafu, when school was in session, things didn’t feel any less real. His boyfriend would come by the dorm gates with a Tupperware of something spicy and homemade, a new sketch for his next tattoo, or a thrifted hoodie he “thought might match shoto’s eyes.” They cooked together on weekends in the shared kitchen, making everyone else groan with how domestic they were.

Sometimes Shoto felt like he was holding two lives—hero student and... this. But his boyfriend never asked him to choose. Instead, he added color to the edges of Shoto’s black-and-white world. He listened when Shoto talked about his past, about the weight of expectations and family legacy. And he never treated him like something broken.