Chapter Text
So…Izuku was in a pickle.
A “man I seriously, seriously hope that I’m on psychedelics or mushrooms; cause if not, I’m about to have a freaking breakdown” type of pickle.
What was the dealio, right, what exactly was eating up Izuku Midoriya, a 25 year old psychologically struggling college by day, a financially struggling retail worker from noon to night, then back to a mentally struggling adult staring at the TV at 1AM wondering if he should dump his far-fetched dreams and just do porn instead…okay Izuku was totally just avoiding the current circumstance cause ignoring stuff worked pretty well for most of his life—okay he was dead.
He couldn’t tell you how or why. Izuku just wanted to get some deodorant and maybe some cheese puffs then strip down to his boxers and binge through True Blood again just to stare in awe of Eric Northman with that lion mane of golden locks and those —crap, off-track; sorry looking at his own dead body on the floor sort of rattled up the only viable synapses in his brain.
But, yea, he was looking pretty uh, fucked.
His stomach felt like it was migrating closer and closer to his ass. Dots blinked in and out of his vision. Every part of his body coiled up, cornered, afraid to breathe if he could.
A crowd had gathered, being nosy and speaking in hush tones as they stared.
Izuku could stand here and die a second death from sheer embarrassment, or he could do something about this right?
No benevolent light pierced through the roof of the Target and the floor beneath him hadn’t buckled and splintered off to reveal the hot, boiling heat of Hellfire. So like, he could just go back right—just step on in. Plus a fact was sinking into it, the longer he was lying there, the faster he was decaying, the longer his brain was starving for oxygen.
He walked to his body, tried to not crack under the idea that was watching himself die—dark curls eerily limp as though his soul leaving it stripped it of color and life, his freckles looking so stark and dark as his skin tone dulled, green eyes hollow like someone just grab a scoop and remove the light of humanity in them. They looked like glossy marbles.
Maybe Izuku had some time to puke real quick.
Did…ghosts—wait, was he a ghost? Spirit? Soul?
He fisted his hair. “Shut up, just do it, okay? Do it.” He swung his arms back and forth and forced a breath through his mouth. “Just. Step. In. Simple, right? Like here I go. Right now.” His body did a half jerk but his legs wouldn’t go through with it. Again, swung his arm and built up momentum, praying his nerves to be like steel and not a limp noodle. “I’m going. Totally gonna do this. Yup. I’m not having a mental breakdown right now. No, sir!”
“Hey, get yo goofy ass here.”
Izuku stopped, deep in twenty different emotions and realities. “Sorry?”
“You heard me,” a guy said.
Izuku ran his eyes over the crowd, trying to see who was actually seeing him and not you know, dead him on the floor.
One did see him, dead at him you could say. Maybe you would appreciate the irony in that more than he did.
Hair blonde, not yellow, not dusty with brown or red—straight up golden. Eyes like the flakey, cracked rust on winter ravaged car, consuming away the steel. Fit and toned based on how conformed his white button shirt followed up his biceps. Unbuttoned though to the last button with a ribbed white tank top underneath, black blown out khakis, shiny black shoes. Tatted here and there; he had his sleeves rolled up and hid the collage one and the story of the other.
Dude shuffled through the crowd; not figuratively, this guy moved through them like he was made of smoke. Put a big ass ball of fear in his gut cause he looked like—did you know that obsidian can cut even at a microscopic level, that if u shattered it with a great force even the tiny shards of it could still slice you up—that what this dude was. Obsidian. And that Izuku wasn’t any definition of a coward, he got into several fights in high school defending the little guy and granted, most of those fight he got his ass was handed to him...but a fight was a fight, no matter the outcome. The score was one if you were curious. But those beatings took a certain type of strength and courage to meet, to be tough even in the face of really dismal odds.
So Izuku didn’t know the word ‘retreat’ and, apparently, the concept of ‘self-preservation’ either but he knew this dude was bad news. If he was a cook in the kitchen, and you sent back the steak cause it was lacking seasoning, then he’d, without question, spit in your food.
Izuku backed up, a huge ball of fear pinballing in his intestines, ricocheting off his inside building one mother of a wave of puke in his guts. Kind of felt really lopsided that the guy was unfairly good looking too. He hoped he didn’t puke too.
He showed his palms the same way one did to calm an unknown dog who could chew your nuts off. “Uh, I don’t know who you are,” his voice rattled worse than a toddler hyped up on three cans of pop, “but uh, I’m having a day.”
The guy rolled his eyes, “Everyone has that day with me.”
Okay…Izuku didn’t get what he meant but this guy could see him so…no judgement.
“Um, are you, like, dead? Like me?”
He snorted. “I get you ain’t bright—“
Izuku made a face. “Excuse me—“
He cut him off, “But here’s the gist of it, you’re dead and I’m here to reap. Now I got a lot of shit to do. Everyone’s dying, so let’s haul ass.”
Izuku snapped his arms close to his body. “You’re death?”
Death rubbed his face. “Did I stutter—yes, yes. I’m death. And you’re dead, so there.”
“No…” Izuku whispered more to himself than to Death. “I was just here. Just let me go back in. I’m pretty sure this is some mistake.”
Death sighed, dug through the pockets of his dark pants, and whipped out a tablet no larger than your standard cell phone, and beeped on a few buttons. The device was clunky and brassy, the sound it made brought up the memory of old arcade games, an unsophisticated sound. “Deku Midoriya,” he read off the screen.
“Izuku,” he corrected, not thinking. He went stiff as a cat sighting a shadow in the dark.
Death lifted his eyes off the tablet, eyes filled with venom. “Izuku,” he repeated with a tone warning Izuku to tread very, very lightly cause the next occurrence might not be so civil. Death rattled off his day of birth, his address of the overpriced three bedroom apartment he shared with two other roommates that Izuku was slightly convinced push drugs on the side, his social, the last time Izuku took a dump, the last time Izuku picked his nose, the last time he jerked off.
Death smirked, eyes lifted off the tablet with no disguise to blanket that teeth grinding shade of superiority. “That was at 2:44 AM.”
“I—, “he clamped his mouth shut, so hot with embarrassment he could feel his skin becoming iron hot red from it.
Whelp; starting to get that conflicting sensation of wanting to empty his guts and bowels at the same time.
Okay, breathe.
Clearly, this was a fever dream brought on by weed and the three cups of espresso he downed in the last 24 hours.
Izuku reasoned to himself, “I’m dreaming,” he repeated, tone saturated in a fake calm. “This is a dream.”
Death groaned, “For fuck’s sake.”
He clenched his eyes shut. “Nope. Shut up, dream.”
“Hey.”
Veins lined over Izuku’s clenched fists, strained with tension.
Death shouted, “Asswipe.”
Izuku looked, stuck still in this literal nightmare, on display like a caught animal, pretty dead, and harassed by a dude-bro who was Death allegedly. Death, he, or whatever it was came off as the guy who stole your lunch money, jammed you in the school locker, slapped a ‘kick me’ sign on your back as you went through the halls. He didn’t know much about death, life—something he was still struggling to figure out for himself—, or anything that supposedly went on after the bell tolled but there had to be a system.
Who, or what, would with their infinite wisdom —cause if he was gonna dare that a greater, omnipotent being existed and made each call for every birth given and death taken—would make this tatted meathead ‘Death’? He was no expert but he theorized a being with the burden of passing out death cards would have something called sympathy and patience.
Izuku challenged, not so scared of dude-bro. “How do I even know you’re who you say you are? What if you’re the devil?”
Dude-bro worked his jaw like he was tonguing at a stubborn kernel wedged deep in his teeth, restraining what had to be an obvious f-bomb on his tongue. “Bro if I was the Devil, you think I be here picking up your goofy looking ass? No,” he said. Izuku scrunched his face, figuring he might not be The Devil but he was certainly a clown. “I’d be surrounded by hot evil ass. Now, me, the grim reaper, is taking your ass to BNA.”
BNA?
Hmm… Sounded like a place to put Izuku’s soul for eternity with erupting volcanoes while dragons soared a red sky and lava lakes with nothing but thin skin and jutting bones and powered only by evil and screams.
He would politely take a pass on a first class trip to Hell.
Sounded cool in theory, but how did you run from something when your body was out of commission?
His eyes bounced off the linoleum white floor, the mannequins posed awkwardly in two pieces, the Target employees peeking at his dead body before their manager barked at them to get back to work, the two security guards blocking off the crowd of onlookers, his body looking deader and paler as the seconds ticked by as though something popped a straw through his skin and slowly drank his life force.
His body, he remembered, dude-bro couldn’t escort Izuku anywhere if he was back inside it.
Izuku’s palms sweated; so did his ass crack but that was a bit of an overshare he figured.
Gotta be fast.
Dude-bro looked fitted and any moments he did make were unearthly, like someone crazy glued the bottom of his shoes to a Roomba. Moving weightless and untethered. A run or a fight wouldn’t pan out in his odds so returning himself back and beyond the realm of his guy’s jurisdiction should do the trick.
Izuku slowly, keeping his face neutral as possible, turned his one foot.
Dude-bro glared. Mind you Izuku had no illusion of skill when it came to being covert. “You gonna keep being a pass in my ass?” He jerked his thumb back. “Fucking get moving, man.”
“Everyone move back!” Two EMTs burst from the crowd, melted through Dude-bro like a projection and then through Izuku— which made him feel gross and invaded like someone read his Pornhub watch history—and knelt next to Izuku’s body. “Please, we need some space. Back up.”
His whole body, tight as a bowstring, sagged with relief.
Death didn’t look concerned.
The EMTs crouched over his body and snapped on a pair of latex gloves and rambled medical jargon too fast for Izuku to pick up.
Izuku took the distraction to put himself next to one of the EMTs, Erick, he read from the gold plated nametag. Erick pressed two fingers to the inner side of his wrist. “No pulse,” he said to his partner.
“Starting chest compression,” the other EMT announced.
Erick checked, cursed, “No pulse.”
“Starting again.”
“No pulse.”
Now Izuku had his body anchored solidly to the ground but his mind, oh boy, it was performing cartwheels, spinning him into a state drowsiness, giving him the whiplash of his lifetime. Despite his new superpower of moving through things, Izuku didn’t move. Sure, he wanted to but his limbs were weighed by the words.
No pulse.
They sighed.
Erick lifted his watch.
“Time of death—“
Izuku lurched, the sound his heart made in his ear was like a marching band drumming across the field, and clumsily aligned himself as straight as he could. He shut his eyes so tight, waiting for the shift back to living but…
“4:44 P.M. Get the stretcher.”
Izuku sat up, “Wait, I’m still here. I’m not dead.”
Izuku couldn’t even begin to simplify the feeling of the wheels of a stretcher rolling, his expired dead carried up and through him, the metal snap of the stretcher, the whiteness of the sheet tossed over him. A faceless body.
Fuck.
Dude-bro sunk his eyes into him like hooks and floated over on his death Roomba. “Get it, now? I’ve been pretty chill about it, but now cut the shit. We’re —“
-x-
Izuku saw his community park. All the uneven cracked pavement, the congested intersection, the road littered with potholes the city dragged to fill until the hole sunk a foot deeper and more people started calling, the trees shading the kids screaming across the playground where the metal grew hot under the glare of the sun. Two dogs nosed their way to the base of a tree, roots emerging from the dirt, and pissed on it then sniffed to check it was their piss and not some other dog. A black Impala hit his brakes at the red light, windows down, a joint in his mouth and the stereo blaring Bee Gee’s Stayin’ Alive.
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive,
Stayin’ alive,
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive.
Life goin’ nowhere,
Somebody help me, yea.
What?
He whipped his head around, looking for dude-bro.
No discounted Calvin Klein looking model who acted like an ass.
See, a dream. What did he tell you, and you actually thought that Izuku literally thought he was a dead guy and about to meet his dickhole marker.
See, you’re gullible.
Izuku laughed, dusted off his jeans, stood and generally felt fantastic. Man, no more weed for him. Patting his front pocket so he could call someone for a ride, he found nothing.
He cursed, “Crap, please don’t say I lost my phone. Damnit.”
His focus shifted on giggles, saw two girls who made his mouth dry and his pits sweaty—they looked sweet. Kind of out of Izuku’s league but their smiles were gentle.
Izuku walked in front of them, started to bashfully say, “Sorry to bother you two, but could I—“, except the girls kept laughing, go right through him, none the wiser.
…So, wasn’t a dream, apparently.
Wow, this day couldn’t get any worse.
“You mother fucker!”
Izuku flinched. “Listen, I, uh, I, look I don’t wanna be dead. Just lemme talk to your manager…Or like, whoever, God, ummm Jesus?”
Dude-bro had a vein pulsing up his thick neck; major anger issues, like court mandated anger management classed. “My fucking manager? The fuck, you think you can ‘Karen’ your way out of this?”
“I would just like to-“
Dude-bro moved, fisting flying , spit spewing, eyes submerged thick in a sea of rage but Izuku was gone before his next step fell.
-x-
Izuku startled back, hearing a girl scream right in his ear except that scream wasn’t a girl but his own scream. So he felt a tiny bit emasculated but how else did you react when you were inside the tiger’s den at Lincoln Park Zoo. The tiger’s honey eyes watched him from where it lounged its long striped body, seeing him or that was the impression Izuku had cause those round eyes tracked the movement of his arms with the calm thought if it should invest in a chase. It stood, claws sinking into the dry dirt as it stretched out its relaxed muscles.
“Mommy, mommy,” a girl squealed on top of her father’s shoulder, one hand pulled on his thinning hair and the other gripped around an dissolving cone worth the same amount as two boxes of cones you’d get at the local grocery store. “The kitty is getting up.”
“I see, sweetie,” her mom answered as she chugged down a sports bottle, except the color was amber.
Izuku whispered. “Hi, kitty. Uh, I have a kitty too but mine is smaller so, don’t eat me.”
The tiger’s height amassed to that of a Great Dane so, reasonably, Izuku wanted to shit himself as it nosed at him. It whined, deep, swiping its large paws through his body.
Oh, yea, he was dead.
Couldn’t be mauled by a tiger; was it wrong to be disappointed or happy?
“There you are, motherfucker,” Dude-bro leaned on the iron fence barricading the enclosure, two people standing in him like an unfixed glitch in a video game.
“Not you, again.”
“Me? You fucking cumstain—“
-x-
It must be a ghost thing, the blipping in and out of places. Wasn’t quite sure how he was doing it, only that he wanted out and far from Dude-bro. He didn’t have much of a plan other than to literally ghost around until he got his head on straight, or till Dude-bro tired out.
What then though?
The carpet muffled his step, well, if he had any tangible connection to the world then, yea; it looked as though the carpet was as old as the architecture of the Harold Washington Library. Stiff to the touch and vacuumed every end of the night. Book spines lined the shelved wrapped in that protective plastic sleeve. He knew the sound of it crinkled in his hands. A few had signs of wear and usage even with the protective layer, the edges bent and folded.
Izuku reached for a random book on the shelf and his fingers slipped through it.
Didn’t spirts or whatever move things in the movies, full on possess people and Izuku couldn’t manage to grab one little book off the shelf? Not even a twitch.
Frustrated, he threw a punch at the books.
Dude-bro phased from the shelves like the scene ripped straight out of Terminator 2, face the Oxford definition of ‘rage’, rusty eyes so hot it should burn through Izuku and all the books like butter, jaw clenched hard as his teeth grinded. Despite the description and the obvious poor anger management Dude-bro had, he still looked picturesque as ever.
“If you go ghost on me one more—“
Izuku ghosted.
Whoops.
-x-
The city laid under his two feet, well, that was the view on the top floor of the Hancock building at least. The glassed pressed on his forehead as he mindlessly watched the traffic and pointed out to himself, aloud as though anyone could hear him, the number of Ferraris in the street. Fifteen. Wasn’t sure how or why he ended up here of all places, but you couldn’t beat the view. Sun a soft orange in a dusty rose sky and the dark navy waves shimmering under the light.
He felt big up here.
Higher.
Everything in his life became so small in this room.
He breathed like it was the first real breath he had in a long time. Closed his eyes.
Snapped them opened wide.
McNeal.
The paramedics were from McNeal hospital and so was his body. As long as he still had a physical body to could to then he could still come back. Pull an classic ‘Meredith Grey dies, but actually the ratings were too good to kill her this early so the networks had to keep upping the stakes and put some fake drama or people will get bored’ move. His body still had to be viable, right; he should’ve looked for a time when he first dropped dead till now.
How long till his brain suffocated and rotted the last brain cells left?
Five, ten minutes? Izuku could memorize which season of The Walking Dead were dull and worth skipping over, but god forbid he remembered anything practical like cleaning the litter box every day, bringing back the books he’d loaned out from the public library, the dang DVD he’d rented from RedBox that sat in his DVD player still.
“I’m getting real sick of this shit,” Dude-bro said, madder than a bull in a pen. “Get your bitch ass over here, fucker.”
“Look, I gotta go,” he told him; don’t ask why, guessed Izuku still had his manners drilled into him since his birth. His mother would give him a lecture of a lifetime if he ever as step a toe out of politeness.
Dude-bro inhaled. “Wait.”
Izuku ran his eyes up and down Dude-bro, not likely to trust him as he was to a rattlesnake, but Dude-bro made no run after him. “Uh, okay.”
“Will you go if I take you to my boss?”
Izuku asked, “God?”
Dude-bro pressed his lips in a sneer. “No, dumbass, my boss. The fuck, you think you’re that special to talk to God? With your dumb ass.”
“Well, how am I supposed to know—Yes. I will only go under those terms.”
“Okay, fine.”
Izuku repeated, “Okay, fine?”
“You a fucking parrot? Yea, fine, prick.”
His neck felt stiff from the whiplash of those entity. “So, just to clarify, you are taking me to see your boss?”
Dude-bro grinded his teeth so hard he would be having a future with dentures if he wasn’t careful. “Yes.”
“And not like a, ‘oh yea, I’m taking you to my boss, wink, wink, but a aha, you’re going to Hell with me’ kind of thing?”
“Deku, you’re gonna have my fist so far up your ass if you don’t cut the bullshit.”
Izuku motioned calmly as one did with a tested, injured animal as to soothe away the stressed energy. “I was just clarifying—“
Dude-bro brought out his device, flipped it open, and brought up a panel of transparent copper, dense enough to have mass in the room but its material so thin Izuku could see the fuzzy people moving on the other side of it, totally blind.
Izuku pointed, “That’s, uh, what’s that?”
If they were in an old Looney Tunes cartoon, Dude-bro would be Daffy Duck, stomping his duck feet in poorly managed anger as he nasally slurred a string of PG friendly curses. Dude-bro wasn’t as intimidating with the image of Daffy Duck slapped over him.
He stopped himself from exploding in frustration from Izuku’s never ending list of questions. “A door, the hell does it look like?”
Was a door still a door if it had no knob or walls cocooning it?
Izuku pulled on his fingers, needing to soothe his anxiety in this situation. Did the rule of ‘don’t hop into stranger’s van’ apply to doors that lead to another dimension? “I think we should pinky promise, just to have something legally binding.”
“Here’s this, if there’s a tiny ass shot we’re wrong and you can jump right back in, then you’re killing the small window to come back.”
Izuku scratched his head, “Then why couldn’t I get inside?”
“I’m not gonna waste my time explaining shit about how my job runs when you’re gonna move on.” The sun washed Dude-bro in a soft orange glow along his spine as he heading for the door. “So you in or out?”