Chapter Text
You’d been alone inside Shouto Todoroki’s apartment when the villain attacked.
In your defense, you were supposed to be there. Twice a week, for three hours apiece, you turned up to clean the place, dusting, remaking his bed, and scrubbing down the modern kitchen surfaces that you were fairly certain were going unused in the first place.
You weren’t actually supposed to know who owned the high rise, but the personal effects he kept around hardly made any secret of it--a few simply framed photographs of him with his siblings and his friends at school dotted the shelves in the living room, crates of fan mail were often delivered to his door during your shifts, and you’d seen his hero costume dumped in a hamper on more than one occasion.
You’d been excited to find this out at first, as you were just as much a hero fan as the next girl--particularly heroes who were as handsome and infinitely memeable as Todoroki--but you’d tamped down on your enthusiasm in order to keep things professional. It would kind of suck to be a celebrity and find out that some rando fan let themselves into your apartment on the regular and could help themselves to your stuff if they really wanted to.
You had almost considered asking your manager for reassignment when you’d first figured out just whose apartment you were cleaning, in order to keep things purely professional, but Todoroki’s schedule worked well with your own class schedule, and the money didn’t hurt either. The tips either he or his manager left for you were pretty hefty, and it was nice to treat yourself to groceries that weren’t ramen. He was keeping you in fresh vegetables and a Netflix subscription, so in the end you didn’t ask for reassignment--you were a college student, not a saint.
In retrospect, though, maybe you should have. Because one afternoon in late September, the large wall of windows that looked out into the city shattered with violent force, and a huge figure landed in the living room, glass crunching underneath their heavy boots.
You’d just barely managed to catch sight of a wicked looking scar twisting half of the villain’s face before you’d thrown yourself behind the kitchen island you’d been wiping down, landing heavily on your shoulder. That hadn’t saved you, though. You’d been hauled out across the scattered glass, the shards scraping through your clothes to tear at your back and elbows, and looked up into the face of the furious-looking man.
You hadn’t had time to scream, or beg for your life, or whatever other insanely embarrassing thing you might have done, before a fist connected with the base of your skull, and you were falling into darkness, the man’s features and the clean lines of the apartment around you slipping into black.
Now, you awoke in the dark, a musty scent like dust and slow decay pressing into your nose like a heavy rag. Your eyes flickered open, but the world seemed just as dark as behind your eyelids. In the dim, you could just barely make out cement floors studded with dirt and debris, and gaping cutouts in the wall across from you, pitch black with shadow. They were rectangular in shape, and huge--truck ports, maybe? Were you in a warehouse?
You made to move, but something tugged at your wrists, and you realized with a growing sense of horror that your arms were bound behind your back with rough rope, looped through slats in the chair you’d awoken in. Your head whipped up, and the back of your neck screamed in protest, sore from what had likely been hours of you lolling unconscious.
The thin, wavering sound of something like a radio static filtered from somewhere over your shoulder, and you could just make out low tones of a radio broadcaster: “Pro hero Shouto Todoroki’s apartment was broken into early this afternoon...the perpetrator of the crime is still at large…”
That’s right--Todoroki’s apartment. Your heartbeat instantly kicked into high gear. Where were you? Why were you here? Who was that man in Todoroki’s apartment? Had he taken you here? But why?
A boot crunched in the dirt behind you and you stiffened.
“Awake now?” a voice spat, laced with pure malice. The tone sent shivers down your spine.
The pair of boots crunched towards you, rounding the edge of your chair until you could look up into the face of the villain from before, the man with the horrible scar. It twisted and warped the skin over half of his face, the flesh melted into itself like he’d been held down against a hot stove. An equally horrible grin cut into the harsh line of his mouth.
“Who are you? Where am I? Why am I here?” you demanded. Your voice came out high and quavery, and you could have cringed at how absolutely terrified you sounded.
He raised an eyebrow like you’d just asked the dumbest series of questions he’d ever heard.
“Oh, I think you know why you’re here,” he sneered. His eyes were dark, almost black in the gloom of the warehouse.
A twisting wave of frustration washed over you. No you didn’t know why you were here. You’d been wiping down a fucking counter one minute and the next you’d woken up in some creepy warehouse with no idea of where in the world you might be.
“I don’t,” you said, frustrated. “Please, I don’t have any money. Whatever you want, I can’t get it to you.”
He stared down at you impassively, the radio static crackling in the background. “I don’t want money, you fucking brat. I want revenge.”
You stared at him. Revenge? You’d never even met this guy before, what the hell could you have possibly done to him that he would need revenge on you? The extent of your crimes against anyone, as far as you knew, only included arguing with people on twitter and once--drunk at a bar--peeing in the men’s room before you realized it wasn’t the ladies’ toilet. Gender was a social construct, anyway. It wasn’t that bad.
Your blank look seemed to irritate him, and he placed a booted foot on yours, deliberately grinding his heel down on your toes until you felt your bones creak. You bit down on a yelp.
“Don’t play stupid, you little shit. I know he’ll come for you.”
What? Who would come for you?
The radio signal seemed to catch again, and the newscaster’s stately voice reported from over your shoulder. “--Hero Commission received a message from the villain that they are holding Todoroki’s secret lover hostage. We’ve received comment from a PR representative at the Todoroki agency--”
Your stomach dropped in horror as you considered the smug expression that twisted the villain’s face. Oh no.
No.
No way.
Did he think you….?
Dread coiled into a hard pit in your gut. Oh, you were so absolutely fucked. Shouto Todoroki had never so much as heard of you, nevermind invited you into his bed. As far as you could tell, he had no current lover, as his apartment had only ever evidenced the single occupant.
He’d been linked in the media to a couple models and an actress, but it seemed unclear if that was any more than speculation. In the year you’d worked at the cleaning service, there’d never been anything like an extra toothbrush or an abandoned pair of underwear to give away another person’s presence, though you had sometimes seen evidence of his friends; things like a forgotten All Might sweatshirt that clearly belonged to notorious fan boy and current number one hero Deku, or a neatly prepared container of soup you’d seen in the fridge once with a note that read eat this you fucking fuck and if you get me sick I’ll kill you that you strongly suspected came from the foul-mouthed hero Ground Zero.
So unless those were to be taken as signs of a blossoming romance, there was nothing that strongly hinted at the presence of a lover.
You were frankly flabbergasted that this villain had assumed, just because you’d been alone in his apartment at the time, that you of all people could have been that to him.
And you were even more concerned now, as there was absolutely no way Shouto Todoroki was going to come haring in to save someone who did not exist.
What was the villain going to do when he realized that no one was coming for you? Or worse, when he realized you were no one to anyone, and your presence would hardly be missed? Was it better to try and clear up the misunderstanding now? What would he do when the dots connected?
The villain smirked, mistaking your horror. “That’s right, brat. He was supposed to be there, but you'll do just as well. He’ll come for you, and when he does, I’m going to do to him exactly what he did to me.” He gestured to the scarred side of his face and you winced.
So it hadn’t been a hot stove.
“I think you have it wrong,” you said a little desperately. “I’m not--I don’t even know Todoroki. I’m a cleaning lady.”
He rolled his eyes. “Nice try. I’ll just let you walk free then, shall I?”
Your fingers dug into the rope behind your back. “Um, ideally, yes.”
He bit out a harsh laugh, that horrible smile cutting into his features again, and knelt down in front of you. He was close, too close, and you could smell something sour on his breath.
“I’ve just had a better idea,” he said, leaning into you. “What if I do to his precious lover what he did to me? Your face can be the last thing I let him see before I kill him.”
Your stomach turned and you forced yourself as far back in your chair as you could get. Oh fuck. “No, please, you have to listen!” Your voice was growing higher as you spoke. “I don’t know him. I’m his fucking cleaning service. You can call them and ask--just ask!”
The villain didn’t listen, digging around in the inner pocket of his jacket for something. “No skin off my nose if you are or aren’t. But I think we both know you aren’t.”
You could feel your heart climb into your throat as he pulled out a lighter and a small, metal can that smelled sharply of gasoline. Lighter fluid? You started struggling wildly in your bonds, feet straining against the floor to push your chair back from him.
He let out another laugh, uncapping the fluid. The acrid smell sharpened, burning in your nose. The radio let out another burst of static in the background, a high whine that set your teeth even more on edge.
“I’ll let you pick the side, brat,” the villain said, smiling.
“I pick neither,” you managed around the lump in your throat. Your eyes were locked on the can of lighter fluid, like you could will it away from you with the sheer force of your panic alone.
The villain scowled. “Be difficult then,” he said, and moved to pour it over you anyway. You felt the first splash of fluid on your cheek and closed your eyes. That acrid smell got stronger, and the villain let out an excited breath.
Then the wall blew out.
A wall of freezing air rushed over you and the can of fluid dropped from the villain’s grasp, spilling sloppily down your clothes, before clattering to the floor. The villain swore and whirled, grabbing a fistful of your hair and wrenching your head back. You peeked open an eye.
A huge slab of ice had blown open the side of the building, and the silhouette of a man was outlined against the evening sky. It was hard to make out his features in the dim light, but that mop of red and white hair was so distinctive, you would know it anywhere.
A shivery frisson of relief went down your spine at the sight of a familiar figure, but confusion mounted in the back of your brain.
What the hell was Shouto Todoroki doing here?
There was a flinty noise and then a small flame flickered in the corner of your eye. You stiffened--the lighter was still in the villain’s hand, and you were entirely covered in lighter fluid.
“So nice to see you again, Todoroki. Any last words to your little girlfriend?” the villain spat. His gaze was fixed unblinkingly on Todoroki.
You strained against your bonds and his tight grip on your hair. “I’m not his girlfriend! Todoroki, tell him.”
You could barely see his features but you thought you caught Todoroki’s eyes darting over you curiously, like he was trying to figure out who in the world you were and why anyone would mistake you for a love interest of his. Your eyes met briefly. Then the fingers on his right hand pressed forward just the slightest bit, and a huge cascade of ice like an avalanche was rushing you. You closed your eyes, ready to be impaled.
There was a grunt and the villain’s hand was ripped out of your hair, taking a fistful with it. A sudden, suffocating silence pressed down on you, and an icy burn stung at your lungs when you inhaled.
You blinked your eyes open, only to come face to face with a wall of ice mere inches from your nose. Cold pressed in on you everywhere, biting at you through your clothes--it seemed Todoroki had formed some kind of protective shell over you as he forced the villain off of you. You exhaled and sank back in the chair with shaky relief.
More crackling echoed from outside your cocoon, muffled through the thick slabs of ice, and a bright jet of orange light lit up the crystals around you. You tracked the sound and the movements nervously. There was a moment when a body slammed into the ice behind you, cracking it a little, and you tensed, but then whichever of them it was rolled off and was gone within moments.
Over the course of a few minutes, the sounds of their battle and the flickers of light started to fade off into the distance, and you wondered if Todoroki was trying to lead the villain away, or if the villain was leading him somewhere he had planned for. Your fingers found the bindings at your wrists again, and you scrabbled desperately at them with your nails.
If the villain came back for you, you needed to be disconnected from this chair and out of the ice prison ASAP.
You had just managed to work your chair backwards and get a good angle against the rough ice, starting to work up a friction between your bonds and the ice when muted footsteps approached and a hole began to melt in the side of the ice wall. Your eyes snapped to attention and you leaned as far away as you could get.
It was Todoroki who stepped through, however, lifting an arm to melt away more of the ice over you. He looked a little mussed from combat but otherwise unharmed, and in good shape to get you out of here. You breathed a heavy sigh of relief, muttering, “Oh, thank god.”
He fixed you with a weird look, leaning over you when he’d melted enough of the ice to get to your bonds. A hot hand at your wrists burned ropes off of you easily enough, Todoroki careful not to singe you with his flames.
An uncomfortable silence settled between the two of you as you pulled your arms back to yourself, shaking them out.
“Uh, thank you,” you said, watching nervously as those distinctive two-toned eyes flicked over you.
He helped pull you to your feet, and gestured you towards the hole he had blown in the side of the warehouse.
“This way--there’s an ambulance to check you over,” he said evenly. His voice was low and smooth, even deeper in person than you’d heard it on TV. His whole presence seemed a lot sharper, larger even, than was communicated via the media.
You followed his broad back out into the evening air, noting that you were on a somewhat crowded street, likely somewhere still within city limits. Several rows of similar warehouses lined the streets, and an ambulance and several police vehicles had pulled up onto the sidewalk closest to you.
An EMT ran over to you, helping you over to the ambulance and immediately setting to the task of checking you over. She asked you a series of questions including your name, what year it was, the prime minister’s name, and a slew of probing queries about your injuries. She concluded a concussion seemed unlikely, but produced an ice packet for your head where the villain had struck you, and cleaned your wrists where the rope had cut into them, smoothing on aloe and wrapping them up in gauzy bandages.
While she worked, you watched Todoroki as he spoke in quiet tones off to the side with a group of policemen. Eventually, however, the conversation seemed to die out, and he came padding back over to stand in front of you with his arms crossed over his chest. You tried not to focus on the swell of his biceps through the fabric of his hero costume.
“What you did was very stupid,” he said, his eyes narrowing.
That tore your attention away from his arms, and you paused, staring up at him in confusion. Did all civilians get a lecture like this fresh off of being kidnapped?
“Excuse me?” was all that escaped you.
That grey and blue gaze raked over you. “You’re lucky I was able to rescue you. You risked your own life and invaded my privacy while you were at it.”
A mixture of confusion, exhaustion, and anger welled up inside of you. You had just been fucking kidnapped and he was lecturing you like a toddler who’d gotten into a box of crayons while her parents’ backs were turned.
“You think I fucking wanted to be kidnapped?” you demanded, sliding off of the back of the ambulance to take an angry step towards him. “You think I wanted any of this to happen?”
He held his ground, hardly threatened by someone who barely brushed his chin and had needed his rescuing only minutes before. You gritted your teeth.
“You are not welcome in my apartment,” he said firmly, something like suppressed anger flickering in his own gaze.
Your temper flared even hotter than his flames. You clenched your fist, the words bubbling up before you could even think to stop them. “Great. Clean it yourself then, you huge fucking asshole, if you don’t want someone else there.”
His eyes widened the slightest bit, but you weren’t done.
“I get kidnapped because some crazy douche wanted to settle a score with you, and you dare yell at me for doing my job? Because what, it’s shameful for you to be accused of having a secret lover and now you have to do PR? Grow the fuck up. That’s your fucking job.”
You turned on your heel, setting a beeline for the police officers where they had turned to watch you, mouths gaping.
“Do I have to give a statement right now or can I come into the station in the morning?” you demanded of the nearest officer.
“We recommend you give your statement as soon as possible, but you can delay until tomorrow if you’re, uh, in emotional distress,” the officer said, staring at you.
“Oh I am,” you intoned loudly. “But not as much emotional distress, apparently, as someone who's been mildly inconvenienced by a media narrative. You'd better check on him, he's the real fucking victim here. And I’ll see you in the morning instead.”
You stalked off towards the street, hardly caring where you were headed or how you would get home from here. You would figure it out and find your way, and it was better than standing around and being berated by some asshole hero who thought himself so wildly inconvenienced by saving you.
“And Todoroki, you can go fuck yourself,” you threw over your shoulder as you disappeared into the dusky maze of city streets.
And he could.
You hoped that was the last you’d ever see or hear of Shouto Todoroki.