Chapter Text
“What if I worked at a zoo,” said Shouto. “And I worked with penguins. And I got to see penguins every day.”
Between Shouto’s desire to linger at each exhibit and Bakugou’s determination to show Shouto every animal on his “fight list” (which included kangaroos and emus but not ostriches, out of respect for their audacity), it had taken them three hours to get through the zoo. They were walking to the subway now. The sun had just started setting.
Bakugou was walking with his hands in his pockets. He answered Shouto with, “Yeah, I guess.”
“Or I could go to Antarctica. I could see penguins there. I wouldn’t even be cold. I could just walk around in a t-shirt and shorts and look at penguins. They don’t let you touch or feed them. That’s not allowed. And you have to keep a minimum distance of five meters for wildlife preservation. But you can look. Did you see the pamphlet I picked up?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I never even thought about other jobs before. I mean, maybe when I was little. I don’t remember. Do you think I’d be good at a job like that?”
“Get your biology grade up,” said Bakugou. “You ain’t doin’ shit with that C you got.”
“Why do penguins have to be science? Penguins should be art.”
Bakugou laughed. “You better be real glad they ain’t, Picasso. I’ve seen your stick people.”
They got on the subway and sat down next to each other. Shouto’s body buzzed with leftover excitement. It was pleasant in a way he wanted to savor. So he let it flow a little freer than he usually did, let himself rock back and forth in his seat. Bakugou’s hand touched Shouto’s knee, and Shouto went still for a moment before he realized that the touch wasn’t meant to restrain. He wasn’t even looking at Shouto.
He hoped Bakugou was okay. He wasn’t usually this quiet. Shouto did his best to mirror Bakugou’s mood by staying silent and refocusing his energy into his fingers. Still, the energy was hard to keep there, hard to keep limited to fiddling with the hem of his shirt.
When they got back to Bakugou’s house, they went straight upstairs. As soon as they entered Bakugou’s bedroom, Shouto pulled off his shirt and pressed the button to loosen his binder. He exhaled as the pain in his ribs eased. “God, I cannot fucking wait until I get top surgery.”
Bakugou closed the door. “Don’t you gotta be on hormones for a while before that?”
“They like you to be, I think. For best results.” Shouto grabbed the hem of his binder and pulled it up over his head. “D’you have a shirt I can borrow?”
“You ever gonna stop getting naked in front of me every goddamn chance you get?”
Shouto grunted as he struggled to finish pulling off the binder. He’d gotten the angle wrong when he first pulled up, and that tended to throw off the entire process. “Shirt?”
Shouto heard Bakugou open and close a drawer. After a moment, Bakugou sighed. “Fuckin’—” Shouto felt Bakugou lend a couple hard tugs to Shouto’s binder, finally pulling it all the way off him. He handed it over along with a soft workout t-shirt. “There.”
“Thanks.” Shouto tossed the binder over by the rest of his stuff and slipped the shirt on. “Do you have homework?”
“No,” said Bakugou. “Do you?”
“Not that I want to work on. Do you want to watch something?”
Bakugou narrowed his eyes. “Hah?”
“Like a…” Was that a strange thing to ask? Deku had suggested it, but Deku wasn’t exactly the standard for normal. “Like a movie or something. Whatever you want.”
Bakugou frowned, glanced at the door. “Guess we could go downstairs ’n watch some… shit.”
“We can stay up here. Watch on your laptop.”
Bakugou looked his desk, then at his bed. His face scrunched a little, like he’d just imagined something distasteful.
“Jesus, we don’t have to,” said Shouto. “I was just—”
“S’fine,” Bakugou said. He grabbed his laptop from his desk and tossed it on the mattress. “You can pick.”
Shouto climbed on the bed. “Are you sure?”
“I’ll probably fall asleep anyway.” He sat beside Shouto and opened the laptop. “Put on one of your penguin documentaries or whatever the fuck you watch.”
“Will you stay awake if we watch Red’s Ocean?”
Bakugou groaned.
“Please,” said Shouto. “I want to watch it with you. We can start where you left off.”
“If it gets boring—”
“It won’t.”
“I’m just sayin’. No promises.”
They started with the second episode, where Bakugou had stopped when he tried to watch it on his own. During the theme, Bakugou’s elbow nudged his arm. “What is it?” Bakugou asked.
“What’s what?” asked Shouto.
“What’s wrong?”
“What are you talking about?”
Bakugou motioned. “You’re tappin’ your chest.”
Oh, he hadn’t realized. He put his hand down. “I’m fine. Just got excited.”
An incredulous smile grew on Bakugou’s face. “Ain’t you already watched this a couple hundred times? You might be as bad as Izuku was with those fuckin’ Golden Age All Might video clips.”
“Well, I’m—I meant about watching it with you,” said Shouto. “For why I got excited. Also, are you…? Are you going to be really super annoyed if I pause it sometimes to tell you things about the actors and historical background and cinematography and stuff?”
Bakugou stared at him, lips parted. Then he gave his head a quick shake and refocused on the laptop screen. “Uh… yeah, do whatever. I don’t care.”
He’d expected an emphatic rejection. “Are you being sarcastic?”
“No. Do what you want.”
Shouto leaned forward, trying to get a better look at Bakugou’s face. “You’re not mad?”
“Why the fuck would I be mad?”
“I don’t know,” said Shouto. “People used to ask me about things I liked and then got annoyed when I talked about it too much.”
“That’s their fault for askin’ you a question without being prepared for a weird fuckin’ answer. I don’t ask if I can use your pencil without fully expecting you to say some shit like ‘Sure, do you want the pencil that killed my secret eleventh sibling or the one I used to dig my way out of a Russian prison?’”
Shouto laughed. “Yeah, that… it’s a habit. I said stuff like that to scare people away from trying to be my friend.”
Bakugou huffed, shook his head. “You wanted to be my friend so fuckin’ bad.”
“Because you just make fun of everybody to their face,” said Shouto. “You don’t talk about them behind their back. And you were nice to me.”
Bakugou looked at him, eyebrows shooting up. “I was nice to you?”
“Yes. Sometimes.”
“Your standards are so goddamn low that someone would have to dig into the Earth’s mantle get under ’em.”
“You’re higher than my standards,” said Shouto. “Not when you brush your teeth. That’s unsettling to watch. But all the other times.” The last note of the Red’s Ocean theme played, and Shouto grabbed Bakugou’s hand. “Shut up. Sorry. Shut up. You have to be quiet for the second episode so I can pay attention. But you can hold my hand. Shut the fuck up.”
Bakugou snorted, but he stayed quiet as the episode started. His hand stayed still—not squeezing, but not moving away.
During a commercial break, Shouto put the laptop on his lap and moved closer to Bakugou. After a moment, Bakugou mirrored the action, so the sides of their bodies were flush against each other. The proximity felt nice. Shouto moved the laptop so it was sitting atop both their laps.
It was like last night again, with Bakugou’s nearness existing alongside his rigidity. It reminded Shouto of how he himself reacted to hugs—action-figure stiff, afraid to move in case something went wrong.
“You okay?” Shouto asked.
Shouto felt Bakugou exhale. Was he trying to relax? What was making him anxious? Shouto squeezed Bakugou’s hand, and when he didn’t respond, Shouto grabbed Bakugou’s wrist and shook his hand in the air. Bakugou looked at him questioningly..
“Are you anxious?” Shouto asked. He accidentally made Bakugou’s hand whack his face. “Sorry. Stop hitting yourself. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” said Bakugou.
Shouto wrapped his arms around Bakugou and squeezed him. His shirt was warm with his body heat. “Are you tired of me?” Shouto asked. He wanted to make Bakugou laugh.
“Just about,” muttered Bakugou. He was leaning away from Shouto—no, more like folding in the direction that Shouto was pushing his weight—and he was grinning a little.
Shouto put his chin on Bakugou’s shoulder. He let it rest there for a moment, feeling his breathing sync with Bakugou’s, before he pulled away. “What do you think?” asked Shouto. “Should we kiss it out?”
Shouto expected an elbow in the side, a derisive snort, maybe a Shut the fuck up.
That was not what happened.
What happened was this:
Bakugou looked at him, lips parted.
His gaze dipped a couple inches.
Then he leaned forward and kissed Shouto.
Shouto felt it more in the rest of his body than on his lips—the sour burst of adrenaline, the discomfort of metaphysical static electricity transferring from one soft surface to another, the constriction of the diaphragm, the heart-clenching oh.
Bakugou’s lips moved in a way Shouto didn’t understand. Fingers brushed the back of his neck, shifted gently up into his hairline—nothing that could’ve been even remotely labeled as holding his head in place. Just a touch, and barely that.
The hand moved forward, fingers dragging lightly along the side of Shouto’s neck until they lifted entirely. There was the quiet, wet tsk of their lips separating, and then he could see Bakugou’s face again—still close enough that Shouto could feel Bakugou’s breath on his chin.
It took a moment for Bakugou’s eyes to lift from Shouto’s mouth. Another moment for his gaze to finish searching, for the drunkenness to drain from his expression, for his face to blanche and his eyes to widen in what Shouto recognized as terror.
Bakugou’s lips barely moved when he spoke. “You were joking.”
Shouto hesitated. He gave a small, stiff nod.
Bakugou stared at him for another several seconds. Then he pulled back. As he looked away, he whispered, only the consonants audible— “Shit.”
Shouto touched his chin, his lips. The skin along his cheeks and arms was still tingling with adrenaline.
“I don’t—” Bakugou’s eyes flitted to the door. He shifted like he was about to get up, but then he stopped. Touched his face. His eyes darted around the room, panicked. “Fuck. Fuck.”
“It’s okay,” said Shouto. The words were hard to get out—his chest felt tight, like something had just hit him very hard in the chest.
Bakugou shook his head, his eyes still going anywhere and everywhere but Shouto. His hand moved along the mattress like he was looking for something. “No, that wasn’t—I don’t know why I fuckin’—god, fuck this shit. I ain’t even like that, I don’t—”
“It’s okay.”
Bakugou swung his legs out of bed. “Fuck this. Fuck this.”
Shouto reached out and grabbed the back of Bakugou’s shirt. “Bakugou. Where are you going?”
He pulled away. “I’m—”
“You don’t have anywhere to go. Neither do I. You’re just going to end up coming back here.”
“Will you shut the fuck—” His voice rose, then broke. He wiped his hands on his gym shorts, dug his fingers into the area beneath his knees. His breaths were quickly turning audible. “I don’t know why I did that. I just fucked everything up.”
Anxiety swarmed Shouto’s chest. What did Bakugou mean? Fucked everything up? “I’m—I won’t tell anybody,” said Shouto. “Is that what you—? What do you mean?”
“You don’t even got anywhere else to go if you don’t wanna be around me. You’re stuck here. And you got—fuckin’ hell, I’m an asshole. You got assaulted not that long ago, and I just—” He raked a hand through his hair and then down around his neck, leaving diagonal white streaks where his nails scraped his skin. His shoulders rose and fell in time with his heavy breaths. “I just—”
“Bakugou, I’m okay.” He wasn’t sure if it was true, but he could sort himself out later. He moved—quickly—to Bakugou’s side, and when Bakugou angled his torso away, Shouto touched Bakugou’s shoulder. “You don’t need to be upset, or—it’s okay.”
Bakugou refused to look at him. “No, ’cause I’m sayin’—you don’t fuckin’ get it, I’m sayin’ I ain’t like that, I can’t be like that, I can’t—”
“Why? Why can’t you?”
“’Cause I ain’t like you. You and Izuku and—and Kirishima and people like that, you—I don’t fuckin’ get it, how you can just—you got people laughin’ at you behind your back. I don’t tell you, but I hear it, I see it. People sayin’ you’re fuckin’ crazy, you got mental and sexual confusion and perversion issues, how maybe you’re strong physically but that that don’t make up for being weak in the head, that there ain’t nothin’ that makes up for the kind of weakness you got. You could beat ’em to a bloody pulp and they’d still call you weak, ’cause once they know that shit about you, they got you. They won. And I ain’t like you, I can’t just—” Bakugou pressed the heels of his palms into his temples, his chest heaving. “It gets in my fuckin’ head—”
“I know.”
“I’m already the weakest out of me and you and Izuku. I can’t afford to have a goddamn homosexual label hangin’ over my head. I ain’t even—!” He made a strangled noise, threw his head back to look up at the ceiling. “I don’t know what the fuck’s wrong with me. It ain’t even like I’m just thinkin’ about dicks and abs and all the shit gay guys are s’posed to think about all the time. I thought it—I thought it was just somethin’ weird with Izuku. I did the same fuckin’ shit with him when we were eight.”
“You kissed him?”
Bakugou’s lips smacked. He looked at Shouto—just with his eyes, without turning his head. Waiting for a judgment.
Shouto realized: Deku had started mentioning a kiss back at the sports festival when he was trying to coerce Bakugou into sitting down with his classmates at lunch. So we were eight, and I was in his bedroom…
Bakugou returned his eyes to the ceiling. “I’d already started treating him like shit at that point. He still worshipped the ground I walked on for some reason. Fucked up that I let it happen.”
“You were a kid,” said Shouto. “You were little.”
“No, I shoulda known better.” Bakugou shook his head. “I thought—after he disappeared—I thought that was it. That he’d just had some sort of special ability to fuck with my head, and that it was over, and that I wouldn’t have to think about it again except to feel like shit about it. But then—” He dragged his hand down his face. Shook his head again. “What’s your whole fucking deal, anyway?”
Shouto hesitated. “Are…? What are you asking?”
“Just—” Bakugou paused, interrupted by his own heavy breathing. He tugged at the front of his shirt and leaned forward, elbows on his thighs. He closed his eyes, and his face scrunched. Mouthed, fuck. “Give—give a minute, I think I’m—god, why am I even telling you all this shit, you’re gonna think I’m—” His voice caught on something, and he tugged harder on the front of his shirt. “Should be able to figure this out on my own. You’re the one who ought to be—I don’t know why I keep—”
Shouto put his hand on the small of Bakugou’s back. Bakugou fell silent as he heaved breaths, hunched over so Shouto couldn’t see his face. But he knew what it looked like even without seeing it: flushed face, an open mouth, and wide eyes that looked at the carpet without seeing it.
Shouto felt sick.
Eventually, Bakugou’s breathing started to slow. He sat up, the whites of his eyes turned pinkish.
Then he got up and left the room.
“Bakugou,” Shouto said.
Across the hall, the bathroom door slammed shut. He heard the shower turn on.
Ah. Goddammit. Shouto really did not want to be alone with his thoughts right now. He got under the blanket and pulled it tight around him.
He hadn’t hated the kiss. He didn’t think he had. But if the kisses in the romance movies he’d watched with Fuyumi—swelling music, swinging camera lenses, fireworks in the background—were any indication, how Shouto had felt during this kiss was not how he was supposed to feel. You were supposed to get caught up in feelings, in love or lust or whatever it was. It was supposed to be the next big step in building intimacy.
Why hadn’t it felt like that for him? Cuddling just now had felt intimate. Washing Bakugou’s rain boots together had felt intimate. Kissing had felt… not that. It was just kind of… wet and… there. A strange sensory exchange.
Eventually, the shower shut off. It took a good five minutes after that for Bakugou to come back to the room. He avoided eye contact with Shouto as he crawled under the covers and turned his back to Shouto. Shouto waited until he’d gotten settled to tap his shoulder.
“What,” Bakugou mumbled.
“Are you okay?”
Bakugou grumbled something.
“I can’t hear you,” said Shouto.
Bakugou turned his head a little. “M’fine. Go to sleep.”
“It’s seven p.m.”
Bakugou rolled onto his stomach and buried his face in his pillow.
As much as Shouto was inclined to let it go, he knew that the following days would be awkward if they didn’t talk now. He sat up. “Can we talk?”
Nothing.
Shouto released a slow breath. “You know I care about you a lot.”
Bakugou didn’t look at him.
“Bakugou,” said Shouto. “You know that, right?”
Bakugou grunted.
“I just… I think I have something wrong with me,” said Shouto. “I don’t think I can fall in love. Not like you can. I’ve tried, and it doesn’t happen for me. I wish it did. But I don’t think it ever will.”
Bakugou lifted his head from the pillow a little. “Never fucking said I was in love with you.”
“Okay,” said Shouto.
“Don’t just assume that shit. I ain’t—”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m just telling you that it’s—whatever it is, it’s okay. I know I tease you about it a lot, but it’s not a thing to be ashamed of. I’m sorry if I made you feel like it was. I won’t make fun of you anymore.”
Bakugou put his head back down on the pillow. He said nothing.
“I’m sorry,” Shouto said. “Probably that doesn’t make you feel better. You have to tell me what to—I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to hurt you worse.”
Bakugou raised his head, blinking angrily. “Fucker.”
“What?”
“I said fucker.” Bakugou pushed himself up on his elbow. “I’m hurting you.”
Shouto said again— “What?”
“I’m the one who dragged us out to that apartment where Deku killed that guy,” said Bakugou. “You had to watch that happen while you were tryin’ to keep me from seein’ it. You had to live with that.”
Pressure built behind Shouto’s eyes. He said, “I don’t blame you for that.”
Bakugou poked his own chest, almost banging it. “Well, I do. I do.” He spat the words. “And then I was fuckin’—I told you at the sports festival that you were a freak, I told you to get away from me, and then you went home and tried to kill yourself. You can’t tell me you still would’ve done that if I hadn’t said that to you. You cannot fucking tell me that. And you know what, I don’t give a shit if you don’t love me back. I hope you don’t. Because I don’t fuckin’ deserve that.”
Something in Shouto’s chest hurt. He stared at Bakugou, and he thought, you don’t even know, you don’t even fucking know, until tears blurred his vision.
Bakugou’s expression sobered. He sat up. “Oi.”
“You don’t understand,” said Shouto. “I want to want it. I want to make you happy. Just—something’s wrong with—I’d do anything for you. If you want, I can try to—I can say the words. I can do the things. I’ll do whatever you want. I don’t know if I can feel what you want me to, but I can pretend until—I can—”
“IcyHot,” Bakugou said, sitting up. He reached for Shouto’s arm.
And there was a memory, reaching Shouto’s nervous system before his brain could even register that something was wrong. He flinched back first, felt the harsh wave of emotion second—and then he recognized the touch as Bakugou’s.
Bakugou had the same look Aizawa had had on that day when he and Shouto were alone in his office, when Aizawa got up to turn on the air conditioning and Shouto panicked. Bakugou must’ve seen a tiny, cropped version of the same trauma replaying in Shouto’s face, because he dropped his hand.
“God,” said Bakugou. He almost sounded awed. “You’re… fucked up.”
Shouto’s emotions were still running high. He knew that Lady Hypna was not controlling them now, but… wasn’t she? Wasn’t it her fault that Shouto couldn’t love the way he wanted to, the way he was supposed to?
That had been Fuyumi’s theory, anyway—that he was like this because of Hypna. Sometimes he hoped it was true, because it meant that the way he loved might someday heal and become normal.
But he knew that Hypna was not the reason that he loved the way he did. He’d been like this his whole life, even before the assault. It just was. It always would be.
“I’m sorry,” said Shouto.
“I ain’t mad,” Bakugou said. “Fuckin’… weirded out by what you just said, though. What’re you cryin’ for?”
“You’re hurting. It makes me hurt.”
Bakugou looked away, rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Fuckin’ hell,” he muttered. “Just… you know I ain’t gonna make you do shit you don’t wanna. I ain’t like that.”
“I don’t mind.” There was a deficiency here, and it was because of Shouto. He wanted to compensate for it. Shouto already had too many deficiencies, and that wasn’t fair to Bakugou. Shouto needed to compensate for it. “If it makes you feel better.”
“You should mind. It should make you fuckin’ furious if someone tries to use you like that. I don’t give a shit how sad or pitiful or teenage-horny they are. It ain’t your goddamn responsibility to make them feel better by making yourself miserable. I like…” Bakugou nodded his head to the side like he was waiting out a twinge of pain, or maybe just cringing through something massively uncomfortable. “I like being around you because you stand up to people. Like tellin’ your dad to fuck off. So it ain’t gonna make me happy for you to just do whatever I want you to.”
Shouto wiped his nose.
“Oi. You hearin’ me?”
Shouto nodded.
Bakugou continued. “You gotta tell me to fuck off if you want me to. I’m tryin’ to get better at interacting with you ’cause I know you got triggers ’n shit, but I can’t read your damn mind.”
“I don’t want you to do that,” said Shouto. “I don’t want you to stop being my friend.”
“Tell me,” said Bakugou. “Right now. Just say ‘fuck off.’”
Shouto swallowed. “Fuck off.”
“Cut out that mumblin’ shit. Look at me and say it.”
Shouto forced himself to meet Bakugou’s eyes. “Fuck off.”
“Okay,” said Bakugou. “We still friends?”
Shouto studied Bakugou’s face, trying to find the answer hidden there. Bakugou only raised his eyebrows.
“Yes…?” said Shouto.
“Yes. Was that so fuckin’ hard?”
“It was fine,” said Shouto.
“You gonna be able to say it again if you need to?”
“I think so.” Shouto hesitated. “I’m sorry. I think the… I think the kiss did trigger me a little.”
“Yeah, no shit.” The bed shuddered as Bakugou adjusted his position so that he was sitting side-by-side to Shouto again. “I’m sorry.”
It was strange to hear Bakugou say those words in that order. “It’s okay.”
“I really thought you wanted to. I really fuckin’ did. But I ain’t ever been friends with someone like you. I thought I knew how you worked, because you ’n Izuku, you’re similar in some ways. In your brains. I thought you worked the same way as him. And you were kinda actin’ like he would last night and today.”
“Last night?” asked Shouto.
Bakugou gave him a look.
Shouto racked his brain. Last night… oh, last night, when they were on the couch together? “When you got mad at me?”
“Hah?” said Bakugou.
“Last night when you were gaming. You got mad at me and I didn’t know why.”
Bakugou’s expression shifted toward confusion. “Were you not doin’ that on purpose?”
“Doing what?”
“Fuckin’—” He waved his hands. “Y’know.”
“No?”
Bakugou motioned with his hands some more, and when Shouto didn’t respond affirmatively, he said in a defeated tone, “—flirting.”
Shouto let out a startled laugh. He leaned one shoulder against the headboard, shook his head. “Bakugou.”
“Fuck you. You don’t get to—you can’t—” Bakugou pointed a finger at Shouto, as if it could finish talking for him. It took a second for Bakugou to restart. “There’s no way you didn’t know what you were doin’. No fuckin’ way. You ain’t that stupid.”
“Bakugou,” said Shouto. He gently took Bakugou’s hand between both of his. “I am that stupid.”
Bakugou dropped his head against the headboard and groaned.
“I’m sorry,” Shouto said again. He wasn’t sure what Bakugou wanted. “Do you…? Would you feel more comfortable if we told people we were dating?”
“Told fuckin’ who?” said Bakugou. “My parents? Those losers at school? I ain’t tellin’ them shit. And you just said that you don’t fuckin’ want it.”
“I want to be close to you. I don’t care what we call it.”
Bakugou’s face scrunched as he looked up at the ceiling. It took him a long moment to speak. “I don’t think we’re normal friends. Just… right now, even without the… I don’t think it’s normal.”
“In a bad way?”
“I don’t know. It’s just… in-between. Or somethin’. Not even in-between, really, it’s just… outside of everything that…” He sucked his teeth. “I don’t know.”
“It’s different.”
Bakugou looked at Shouto, blinking like he was waiting for Shouto’s words to finish translating. Then he lowered his head into his hands and gave a muffled, “What the fuck.”
“What?” Shouto asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve been putting off thinking about this for a fuckin’ decade. I don’t fucking know.” He rubbed his face, scrubbed his palms over his eyes. “Just give me a goddamn minute.”
Shouto put an arm tentatively around Bakugou’s shoulders. Carefully and almost spasmodically, like someone lowering themself into a tub of ice water, Bakugou accepted the invitation to lean toward Shouto. It took a few seconds for his back to connect with Shouto’s chest, shoulder blades stiff and awkward, and a few more for the tension to bleed out.
“It gets in my head, too,” Shouto said. “The things people say about me. I’m not immune.”
Bakugou still seemed caught up in the process of figuring out how to sit in relation to Shouto. He slid down a few inches so that the back of his head rested against Shouto’s shoulder. He made a face—something displeased or uncomfortable, the nuances of which were lost on Shouto—but he didn’t move from the position. Just gave an unsteady exhale.
“Do you—” Bakugou paused, then started over. “Does it always feel like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re doin’ something shameful.”
Shouto thought about how he’d felt the first time he went into public with short hair and boys’ clothes—how frightening it had been, how terrified he’d been by the possibility of someone calling him out, how ashamed he’d been of not being like the other students. And he thought about how things had changed since then. He was comfortable being called Shouto now. Maybe the shame wasn’t gone, but with every day that passed, it felt a little bit smaller.
“I think… not always,” said Shouto. “I think this has to count for something.”