Archive of Our Own

“I can’t confirm or deny a diagnosis from another professional without assessing you myself,” Hound Dog says, trying to force his office door closed on Izuku’s foot. 

He gamely keeps his oxford trapped between the door and the wall, gritting his teeth as his eyes water. “Just tell me, do you think it makes sense? Should I get another doctor?”

Hound Dog gives him a searching look. Then, “Listen. You’re asking me to be honest with you, but I don’t think you can handle it.”

“I can handle it,” he insists.

“Midoriya, when you started high school you were the most textbook case of autism I ever met.”

Izuku’s stomach drops. 

Hound Dog sighs. “I told you.”

“I’ll go get a second opinion,” he says robotically. 

“Thought that was me.”

“Third opinion. Thank you, Inui-sensei.”

“You gotta remove your foot from the door, Midoriya.”

He retracts his leg. Hound Dog’s door slams shut.

Halfway through the workday leaves Izuku staring at his messy blackboard with glazed eyes. Historical dates and obnoxious arrows connecting concepts blur worse with each slow blink. 

His phone buzzes. 

His head perks up. It quickly lowers when he sees Uraraka’s name. 

Right. Uraraka. 

She’s been messaging him again, ever since he got the suit. Little stuff like How’s it going? that gradually turned into Can we get coffee? 

Honestly, it’s been pretty unfortunate. Izuku hates to say that—he would never admit it to anyone else—but Uraraka’s re-insertion into his world has felt oddly forced. She doesn’t fit the life he’s made. Maybe she would have once, had they not drifted apart after graduation, but now it’s like two strangers staring at each other from across the table.

They’re a boy and a girl, though—well, a man and a woman. Who are not quite friends anymore, but are meeting up and talking despite that. Perhaps the estrangement is natural? It’s just very awkward talking to Uraraka. Or maybe it’s just awkward talking to everyone, given Izuku’s—

No. No, that’s a bunch of bullshit. He’s fine. He’s normal. And Uraraka Ochako is talking to him again now that he has a super suit and she wants to get coffee with him. His not-close-friend, Uraraka Ochako. A woman. Getting coffee with him. Former-child-hero-cum-middling-history-teacher Midoriya Izuku. A man.

So…they’re dating? Right? 

Like Izuku said—unfortunate. He would prefer not to be dating Uraraka, but that’s just how these things go. 

Uraraka Ochako

Hi Deku-kun! Would you like to get coffee this afternoon?

His eyes narrow, sweeping over the text again. If only he could have prevented all of this; he had no idea that the coffee invitations were a hidden message. Very stupid in retrospect. All coffee meet-ups between men and women are dates; he learned this from movies and manga and studying his peers in college. Which is how he knows that they are, unfortunately, dating. 

Is he emotionally prepared for a coffee date with Uraraka Ochako right now? Hound Dog had just slammed the door on Izuku’s hope for an easy differential diagnosis. He has a very limited break and will need time to go over a list of other potential experts who can dispel this obviously false label that has been thrust onto him. 

He can’t possibly tell Uraraka any of this. She’s going through a lot and their relationship is tentative and new and…and…

It’s just so much to throw onto another person. Doesn’t feel fair. 

They haven’t even held hands! How can he tell her that he’s been diagnosed with…with…?

With… With… Fuckin’ spit it out, nerd. It has a name.

The Kacchan that lives exclusively in Izuku’s head is always so mean. Obviously it has a name, Fantasy Kacchan. But it might not even be true. Probably isn’t. Izuku’s never heard of this kind of stuff, outside of stilted half-conversations he’s overheard between his parents when he was a child. They never used language like autism, though. 

So no. It’s not appropriate to tell Uraraka about any of this. 

He opens his phone and sends off an apologetic Work’s pretty crazy, sorry! before swiping through to the top of his contacts.

Me

Hi Kacchan.

Kacchan is focused on the wrong things. “Why do you care so much about a stupid diagnosis? You’re the same loser you were before.”

“I’m not autism!” Izuku snaps.

“It’s autistic,” Kacchan replies, pointing his chopsticks at him. “And if multiple psychs say you are, then you probably fuckin’ are. Why’s it matter, though? Who gives a shit what kind of label some quack doctor slaps on you?”

Izuku sulks into his chair, swinging his legs back and forth. He half-heartedly shoves more salmon into his mouth. Kacchan’s bento is, as ever, delicious. Still, it’s ashen on his disappointed tongue. “I don’t know,” he says, after another moment of pensively staring at his scuffed desk.

“There’s nothing wrong with being autistic,” Kacchan says. He eats delicately, revealing flashes of his pink tongue with each bite. Izuku’s eyes stick on it, the usual misery swelling in his chest at the sight. Pretty, he thinks absently.

“It’s literally a disorder,” he mumbles. “A developmental disorder.”

Kacchan rolls his eyes. “That just means that you had delayed development while you grew up, and that it affects some stuff about you today. Which is true. You did.”

“I did not.”

Kacchan fixes him with a flat stare. Izuku wilts under it. “You didn’t start talking until you were three. And once you started, you never shut up. You used to talk to yourself constantly. Which is an autism thing. It’s called monologuing.”

“Monologuing,” Izuku echoes.

“Yeah. Because you’re a verbal autistic. All your thoughts leak outta your big mouth.” Kacchan lifts his free arm at the elbow and lets the hand lang limply, fingers curling. “And you do this all the time. This is an autism thing.”

“My arms? I— No, I don’t do that! Whatever that is.”

“You shake them when you get excited,” Kacchan continues, waggling the arm. It looks very, very silly. 

“I don’t do that.”

“You also have special interests. You’re obsessed with heroes, especially All Might. And…” Kacchan drops his arm, eyes darting away. “And me. I guess.”

“I don’t know if I’d say obsessed,” Izuku says, face hot. “I— W-well, All Might is the best. And Kacchan is the coolest of the cool, the best hero out there today. So. So it makes sense to be interested! I care about you a lot, Kacchan. You’re my…my, um. I mean, you’re my osananajimi. Of course you’re important.” The most important. Everything. 

Kacchan has always been an encapsulation of everything.

“It’s normal to be interested in things,” Kacchan agrees. “But you’ll marathon All Might documentaries after a bad day. It’s one of the only things that calms you down.”

Izuku’s brow scrunches.

“It’s called self-regulating behavior.” Kacchan is throwing many mouthfuls at him today. “We all got ’em. Just for other people, it’s stuff like taking a bubble bath or rubbing one out. Instead, you cling to your interests to regulate your nervous system. Like I said, they’re special to you; you’re super locked in to them. You could talk about heroes for hours and never lose steam. Normal people don’t do shit like that, Izuku. Not the way that you do.”

Kacchan’s bento is growing cold in Izuku’s lap. He dutifully scoops another chunk of salmon into his mouth.

“All of this is in one ear and out the other. Fuckin’ hell.”

“N-no, Kacchan, I just. I. I guess you’re saying a lot? And I’m, um. I’m a little confused. How you…know so much…”

“How do I know so much? I know you, dipshit.” 

“And that’s related to knowing things about autism because…?”

Kacchan’s eyes bore into him. “Take a wild fucking guess.”

A wild guess. Izuku isn’t feeling especially creative, right now; he’d prefer Kacchan would just be straight with him. “I’d prefer you were straight,” he admits.

A snort escapes Kacchan. “Nothing straight about me.”

Izuku frowns. “No, you’re usually very direct.”

Kacchan leans over, plucking some seaweed from Izuku’s bento. He laps at his chopsticks after swallowing, his tongue laving the thin wood. Izuku’s eyes stick to it like flies to tape. “You’re too literal,” Kacchan says between licks. 

“Hhh,” he retorts. 

Kacchan draws his tongue back into his mouth, sitting up. “Also an autism trait.”

Izuku slumps in his chair, lower lip jutting. “Kacchan.”

“You didn’t need a psych to tell you that you got autism,” Kacchan says. “I could’ve told you that.”

“W-well, if you know so much about me, do you want to weigh in on the other stuff?”

Kacchan bares his teeth. He says something, but Izuku finds himself preoccupied with the existence of Kacchan’s tongue. A writhing muscle in his head. It’s probably wet. And slimy. Izuku’s is, anyways. He never knows how to hold it in the hollow between his teeth. A fat, blind worm that lashes against the roof of his mouth and shapes sounds without his consent.

“Oi. You listening?”

“No,” he confesses. He was too busy thinking about both of their tongues.

Kacchan pinches the bridge of his perfect nose. “Why do I fuckin’ bother.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize; listen.”

Izuku nods sharply.

“And eat,” Kacchan adds. “Your food’s getting cold.”

“Oh!” He grabs his chopsticks, fingers shuddering slightly. There will soon be a time in his life where he will have lacked fine motor control longer than he had possessed it. My body is rotting in real time, he thinks and the thought does not upset him. If it were undeserved, perhaps then it would.

“You’re not listening,” Kacchan says.

Izuku winces. “S-sorry. I have trouble focusing on two things at once.”

“Autism,” Kacchan says and Izuku wishes he still wasn’t listening. 

“Why does Kacchan know so much about autism, anyways?” Izuku grumbles, lying in his horribly uncomfortable bed, curling his arms around his ratty blanket that he still can’t sleep without at twenty-five. Pretty embarrassing. It’s one of the reasons he hasn’t had Uraraka over yet—among other things. 

(Unfortunate.)

“That’s such a weird coincidence that he knows all of this…” Ugh. Izuku clicks to his nightly All Might playlist. It’s the same four videos every night; he cycles through them at least five or six times before falling asleep, usually. If it’s a really hard night, he turns on the Best of All Might Compilation [Complete] and recites the video while it plays, word for word. 

As the playlist starts, Izuku settles against his mess of pillows, All Might’s laughter washing over him as his mind continues to turn. Kacchan has often been doting throughout their adulthood, but in recent years he has been especially doting. Concerningly so. Bentos, rides, random visits, dropping everything in his undoubtedly busy life to make space for Izuku. It makes Izuku feel bad, honestly; he abuses it too much. Kacchan always picks up when he calls or texts him. Always. 

Izuku does the same, but still. No rides—he doesn’t have a car—but bentos, visits, always making sure to respond as soon as possible. That’s different, though; Kacchan only demands reasonable things. Izuku, on the other hand, can only ever seem to place burdens onto Kacchan. He’s excessively needy. Sometimes, when he sends Kacchan a text, all he can imagine is Kacchan seeing the message and thinking this guy again?

A deeply unkind thought. And unrealistic. Kacchan has grown into a steadfast man as the years have progressed, his shoulders broad and sure in their set. Handsome, yes, but also sturdy. He knows himself, or as well as anyone can know oneself at twenty-five. It’s hardly any time at all, yet still more than a quarter of an average life. Perhaps an even larger share for his kind, considering how easily their lives could come to a halt during a mission. Lying in the mud with—

All Might smiles widely at the interviewer on the phone. Izuku’s face unconsciously mirrors the expression. It is not a manifestation of joy so much as an involuntary chorus. 

What Izuku means is this: Kacchan responds to Izuku’s calls because he wants to. And this bothers Izuku because he isn’t sure why Kacchan has continued to hang out with him and he’s terrified to ask because he’s sure that Kacchan will be honest with him about the reason. It can’t be a bad reason, Izuku knows, but it is nonetheless utterly alien. Unfamiliar. Unfathomable. He’s already dealing with enough unknowns and uncertainties, especially with recent events. One more might send him over.

Look. He really should be upfront with Kacchan about all of these doubts. It’s just… Izuku isn’t fun. He hasn’t been fun to be around for a while, now, and frankly he isn’t sure if he’s ever been fun. This scares him. All he’s ever wanted is to be a comforting presence, but instead he worries all he does is bring people down. And with everything Kacchan has sacrificed for him—continues to sacrifice for him—he can’t help but feel like a leech. Still, Kacchan is good. He’s so good. If Izuku asks him, surely he’ll receive a reasonable answer, the only reasonable answer he’ll have heard in weeks, what with all the bullshit coming out since their mission in Hosu. And beyond that, he owes Kacchan honesty. 

His phone brightens, rattling in his hand as CALL INCOMING - HERO COMMISSION PRESIDENT covers his screen. 

Izuku drops it on the sheets, startled. He slaps a hand against his ear, yelping at the noise, which just makes everything worse of course. Why did he do that? 

Forget that— Pick up the phone, idiot! 

“Heyyy Midoriya. Is this a bad time?” The lazy voice of Hawks is grainy, compressed through his phone. 

“U-um,” Izuku says. His eyes dart to his alarm clock, which stares back with the red eyes of 22:34. 

“Okay, great. So, the Commission got your results and we were wondering if you could come in to discuss the psych assessment and next steps.”

“Uh.”

“Of course, we’d like to do this as soon as possible. Does tomorrow work?”

“I have work,” Izuku manages.

“Sure, sure. When’s your lunch break?”

“I— At noon?”

“Great, how about 12:15 then?”

“It takes me twenty minutes to take the train to you,” Izuku says. His nape has grown tacky with sweat. 

“Oh, we can get you a company car. No worries.”

He does not want a company car. 

“Now I just want to get it out of the way that you’re not in trouble, Midoriya.”

“Hard to imagine I’m not in trouble,” he mumbles. 

“Okay, okay, you got me. I was saying that to make sure you’re not a flight risk. Let me try another method: if you don’t show up to this conversation, you’ll be in even more trouble. How’s that sound?”

“Awful,” he replies, alarmed. “Look, Hawks, I’m really sorry about the situation last month, but there were no casualties and—”

“We’ll discuss it tomorrow, Midoriya. Seriously, this is not a reprimand so much as a wellness check.” A wellness check is a reprimand. That is the same thing. “Not trying to rile you up, just want to get this squared away, same as I’m sure you do. So long as we follow protocol, we’ll have this all behind us soon enough.”

Izuku’s fingers creak over his phone. “O-okay.”

“Don’t sweat it. We’ll sort it out. Anyways, see you soon! Bye.”

“By—” The line dies. He pulls his phone away from his ear in a trance. 

His lunch break tomorrow will be spent talking to Takami Keigo about a bullshit psych assessment. Great.

In a moment of weakness, he considers texting Kacchan. Can you believe what just happened to me? Kacchan would respond immediately, of course, his sleep schedule be damned. And Izuku would tell him about the phone call. And Kacchan would probably send back eight to ten middle finger emojis. It would make Izuku laugh. Then he would text back something silly like You’re my best friend in the whole world, Kacchan. Please don’t ever die.

The moment passes, though. Izuku overcomes it. Instead, he returns to his playlist, tries to let the routine and familiar sounds wash over him like warm ocean waves lapping at the shore. See? That’s a calming image. The ocean. A vast, dark, impossibly wide swath of water that—even flying at mach speeds—takes quite a long time to traverse.

A shudder quakes up Izuku’s spine. 

He exits his playlist and glumly thumbs over to the Best of All Might Compilation [Complete].

Hawks points at one of two obnoxiously plush chairs across from the Commissioner’s desk. “Take a seat, Midoriya.”

Izuku shuffles to the indicated spot and slowly sinks into the upholstery. 

They stare at one another in silence. Hawks arches his brow after a few seconds. Then he arches his other brow. Then he huffs softly, folding his fingers in front of him. “Midoriya. You know why you’re here, so I’ll skip the preamble. That alright?”

“Sure,” Izuku says. He has no idea why he’s here. Well— He has an idea. A dread. 

“Your psych eval,” Hawks says.

Izuku cringes into the chair. Maybe, if he’s lucky, it’ll swallow him. 

“You get why we’ve got to discuss the result of that, right?”

“I don’t know what you’ve heard,” Izuku says, only slightly shaky, “but there’s no way that the evaluation c-came to valid conclusions.”

Hawks gives him an indiscernible look. Most looks are not discernible, so that’s to be expected. Only Kacchan is an open book, even if Izuku often doesn’t want to read him these days. 

“I was diagnosed with— With some things,” Izuku continues, “that I would not consider valid. And I don’t know what they’ve told you, but I believe it’s likely overblown or entirely inaccurate.”

“Midoriya,” Hawks says, “I literally have all of the paperwork right in front of me.” He taps a stack on his desk. “And I have your incident report from the rescue mission on August eighth. As well as reports from witnesses.”

“That’s—” Izuku’s brain stutters. Stalls. Restarts. “I believe that situation has been mischaracterized.”

“Your own incident report.”

“I believe I had a concussion when I wrote my report.” He does not remember writing his report. He does not know what his report says. “I would like to resubmit a narrative of the events—”

“Don’t bother.” Hawks leans back in his chair. “Your report literally just says ‘nothing of note.’ Which is such an outrageous degree of horseshit that, I won’t lie, Midoriya, I’m a little offended.”

Izuku doesn’t say anything. He isn’t sure what the correct dialogue option is, here. 

Gaming reference? Really? Who are you, Sh—

“Midoriya.”

He opens his eyes. He doesn’t remember closing his eyes. He swallows. Smoothes out all his insides with the act, muscles unclenching until he’s liquid. 

“Hyperarousal,” Hawks says.

“Wh-what?” Izuku chokes.

“It’s on your psych eval. Hyperarousal.” Hawks leans forward, elbows pressing into his desk. “What happened on the eighth, that was a hyperarousal response on the job, Midoriya.”

“Oh my gosh, please stop saying h-hyperarousal.”

“It’s a technical term, I don’t really see the problem.”

Izuku’s face is hot. “It’s a problem when you keep saying it like that!”

“Hyperarousal is a state of overactive vigilance,” Hawks says, picking up a pencil and flipping it between his fingers. “Which you are in constantly. And have been. As evidenced by the eighth, where your state of hyperarousal caused you to act irrationally.”

“It was a rescue mission!” he snaps. “It makes sense to be on alert.”

“Did you catch the part where I said you acted irrationally?”

“Did you catch the part where there were no casualties?”

“Midoriya,” Hawks says, “you were in the hospital for three weeks.”

“Okay? I don’t— No one was harmed. I had a lapse in judgment that resulted in no notable issues, which I corrected—”

“No notable issues on your report. Bakugou, who saved your life, had plenty to say.”

Izuku’s pulse hiccups. 

“I won’t belabor the details here.” Hawks makes a show of riffling through another stack of papers. “He didn’t throw you under the bus or anything, in case you were wondering. Probably did what he could to save you, I’m sure.”

“I wouldn’t ever assume Kacchan tried to throw me under the bus,” Izuku mutters. 

“Oh. Good. Then maybe I can be a little more upfront: he says you were hallucinating.”

Izuku covers his face.

“Okay, based on that reaction, I’m going to guess he was right. Cool.”

“Are we done?” His voice is muffled by his palms.

“Unfortunately not. Your psych assessment came back with post-traumatic stress disorder. Do you know what that is, Midoriya?”

His body is hollow. He is as light as air. All the wet, nasty bits have been sucked out of him and he is a balloon now. Empty as any sinless creature. An angel, maybe.

No. No, he’s certainly no angel.

You’re spitting nonsense again, the Kacchan in his head says. Fantasy Kacchan. Worse— Self-pitying nonsense. Pull it together.

Izuku straightens his spine. He sinks deeper into the chair.

Hawks hums. “Nasty thing to have. My heart goes out to you. That is where the hyperarousal comes from, though.” Izuku grimaces. “I questioned her about the hallucinations because I hate to think you’ve got psychosis, but she said hallucinations are a possible side effect of PTSD, especially in combat veterans. Quite the fun fact! Maybe the smell or something set you off? Hard to say. It was a building collapse, not combat, so… Hm.” Hawks taps the recovered pencil idly against his mouth in thought. “I’m sure the autism compounds the response.”

“I don’t have autism,” Izuku says.

Hawks blinks, sitting up. “Are you for real, right now?”

“Or PTSD,” he adds. “I don’t have autism or PTSD. What happened that day was a bad situation and I— Yes, I behaved irrationally at the time. But that was one moment, which is bad, of course, but shouldn’t warrant me a whole list of diagnoses due to one freak accident.”

“Right,” Hawks says. “That’s true. Which is why we had you do the psych assessment, to figure out if it was just a single moment or a pattern of behavior.”

Izuku opens his mouth. He closes it.

“So here’s the thing, Midoriya. Can I be candid?” He points his pencil at him. “Great. So: you exhibited symptoms to the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist noted those symptoms and wrote up a diagnosis based on her handy little manual of diagnostic criteria. Call it whatever you want to call it; I don’t really give a shit. We can’t have you hallucinating on the job. That’s the beginning and end of it.”

“I— I won’t. I promise.”

“That isn’t something you can promise.”

Izuku swallows thickly. His brain turns furiously, angling for a way out. It runs into dead end after dead end. His dream, so far from his grasp, then snatched despite it, then ripped away, then shoved back in his hands, now in danger of disintegrating once more. He’s dizzy with the whiplash. 

Hawks checks his phone. 

Izuku shifts, the chair trying to swallow his shoulders. “I don’t think that, um. I. I would like a second opinion, with a more fair psychiatrist. Please.”

“If you want a second opinion, you’re welcome to try for that,” Hawks says. “Hard to imagine it’ll come back any different.”

Izuku’s jaw creaks. 

“Just expedite it if you can. I’ve got the board breathing down my neck for a decision regarding your license.” Hawks starts typing furiously on his computer.

Izuku sits there, turning his words over in his head until they are shapeless pulp. 

Hawks glances at him. “You can go now, Midoriya.” He says this like he is pointing out something obvious. It was not obvious.

Izuku stands on fawn legs, gripping at the edge of the chair as he sidles away. “O-okay. Um. Bye.”

“Mmhm. Bye, Midoriya. Talk soon.”

Unfortunately.

Izuku ekes out a crooked smile as he makes his way to the door.

The class bell rang four minutes ago, but it’s ringing still in Izuku’s head. No real reason why; certain sounds do that, sometimes. They slice up his spine like a fillet knife, from tail to nape, then back again. Brr-rr-rr-rring. Screaming into him, urging him to scream back.

He does not. He studies the ceiling and lies with the sound and he takes his fifteen minutes, wringing them out like a wet washcloth. School is out, but that does not mean work is over. 

The door clicks. “What are you doing on the floor?”

“Hi, Aizawa-sensei,” he says.

“There are better ways to take a nap.” Aizawa’s face floats into frame, obscuring his view of the ceiling. “I have a few extra sleeping bags.”

“I’m not napping,” Izuku says.

“You look like hell.”

“Ah. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just get better.”

“I’m trying to improve my personal grooming—"

“I meant your life. Get better.”

“I’m fine, though?” he mumbles. 

“You’re fine,” Aizawa says.

“Yeah.”

A shoe nudges against his shoulder. He rolls with it.

“Has it ever occurred to you,” Aizawa says, “that you self-sabotage?”

Izuku stares at the ceiling, head aching against the hard floor of the classroom. “No.”

“I figured. You have negative self-awareness. I wouldn’t be shocked if you didn’t even know your own favorite color.”

“I know my favorite color,” he replies. The ceiling is bland and untouched. “…It’s blue.”

Aizawa doesn’t say anything. 

Blue is the most popular favorite color. Izuku read that in a Fun Facts article from a popsci website, once. It makes sense that he, an ordinary man, would have ordinary preferences.

“I try very hard to be normal,” he admits. “Does everyone try this hard?”

“No.”

Right. Because Izuku is bad at it. He didn’t try hard enough as a child. There is something indefinable in him that renders him subtly unadaptable to the mantle of normal life that others shrug on with no issue. 

“I’m sick of seeing you like this, kid,” Aizawa says.

“I’m twenty-five.”

“Adulthood is more than age.”

“I don’t think I’m very childish,” Izuku mumbles.

“You’re not very anything. I guess that’s what you’re going for, though, isn’t it?”

I want to disappear, yes. He does not say this. “I’m lots of things. Everybody is.”

“Of course.” Aizawa doesn’t sound convinced. Izuku isn’t sure if he’s ever heard Aizawa sound convinced by anything, though. “I heard you were causing a stink with Inui, earlier.”

His ears warm. “Just a misunderstanding.”

“Sounds like you’re in trouble. What did you do?”

“Why do you think I did anything?” escapes him, irritated. “I do the right thing wherever I can. I didn’t do anything. Nothing wrong, anyways. Everybody else is making a big deal out of something small.”

“You do try to do the right thing,” Aizawa acknowledges. “Whatever you think is the right thing.”

Izuku’s eyes narrow. The ceiling fades to widescreen. “Don’t condescend to me. I really do try to do the right thing.”

“You’re kind. You’re also bullheaded.”

“Are you just here to taunt me?”

“I’m telling you honest truths that you’re unwilling to process.”

“Process,” Izuku echoes. He’s heard that word thrown around a lot lately. Process this and process that and a lot of failed to process whatever. There’s nothing to process. What they want him to process is over; it’s dead.

He’s dead.

The door clicks open. A girl pokes her head in—Sozoku Youko, from his Ethics in Heroics class. Her eyes sweep across the room before finding Izuku on the floor.

“Deku-sensei!” she cheers. “You’re late for History Club!”

Uraraka Ochako

Hi Deku-kun! Do you want to get coffee this evening?

Izuku’s eyes swim. He stumbles up the stairs of his apartment building, staring at the text. Uraraka’s cheery profile picture smiles up at him. Uraraka. A friend he hasn’t spoken to in so long, newly in his life. She wants to get coffee, a thing that boys and girls do when they like each other. Izuku has consulted the social scripts. He knows his lines. He knows what all of this means. 

What if I told you everything? he thinks, oxford sliding off of the next step. He almost falls. He wishes he would fall. Eat absolute shit on the concrete. Chip his tooth, break his body further. Something in him cries out for destruction; it always has. 

Not real destruction, a voice curls in the back of his skull. His own voice. Not his own voice, actually, but it’s a construct of his own mind. Therefore, his own voice. No, you’re only interested in self-decay like a total loser. 

I’m not, Izuku argues with the thoughts of his own mind. His own. No one else, no one that has any voice anymore. I’m not a loser. I’m not that person. I grew from that. The way a flower sprouts from cracked concrete. Except I was also the concrete. Plain, unremarkable, ugly. 

Quirkless. Worse than unremarkable—disabled. A term for an anomaly that results in an absence of function. Even the most mundane quirk affords someone an identity above quirkless. Oh, I have a quirk, but it’s not very useful is a far cry from I have no quirk. Izuku, unnotable in a way that is, perversely, notable. Or he was. Is again. For a time, he had something. Borrowed, never his, but something. Something amazing and horrifying and bigger than himself. 

For one year of his life, Midoriya Izuku lived his dream. And it was awful.

To be on the ground again, insignificant, regular, is a gift. One he doesn’t deserve at all. That year of his life, a black spot. To fade into anonymity afterwards is a mercy. 

So many gifts. A life full of blessings. People who love him, phone calls with All Might, Kacchan smiling at him. These are real and regular occurrences. Izuku lives in the aftermath of his wreckage and he is glad to do so. It is ordinary. He is ordinary. In lockstep. Following all the lines until they eventually end. Because to want any more than that is to spit in the face of the undeserved peace he occupies.

But the suit.

A sticking point. Izuku left behind everything from those days before the war, or had tried to do so. Shed his tail like a skink and scurried under a rock to live out the rest of his quiet life. No more big hopes, no more begging for something more than this.

The suit is a gift. A gift he didn’t ask for, but one he received nonetheless. 

His childhood dream given form. 

He’s a man now. A man who committed horrible acts, who wanted horrible things. Who tried to pick up the pieces and cobble together a life out of them. But here he is, worried about his hero license. Here he is, fists crooked with broken bones but still strong enough to kill. He has work tomorrow. He has to schedule a second psych assessment. He has a mechanical suit that approximates something he never owned but he did lose. It’s not what he envisioned for himself as a child, but in some ways it’s beyond his wildest hopes. The future of a traumatized, quirkless, autism murderer who still, despite every good thing, gets called a hero.

Yeah. Living the dream. 

Izuku collapses in his genkan, pressing his forehead into the floor. He gasps in time with each ragged beat of his heart, waiting for the earth to still.

“And then it’s like, process what? But before I could even ask Aizawa-sensei, I had to go to club. It’s like. I don’t need that when I’m already dealing with that…that whole thing with Hawks.”

Kacchan grunts. He slings his arm across the back of the couch. Izuku rests his head against the meat of Kacchan’s forearm, something settling in him at the contact. Kacchan’s skin is familiar, grounding. Part of him wants to rub his head against the turn of Kacchan’s elbow but that’s probably weird. He’s never seen someone do something like that, not even in the movies. Therefore, weird. Not normal. 

Truly, Kacchan is a saint for putting up with him. He doesn’t even pull away when Izuku presses the back of his skull harder against his arm. If other people saw how secretly kind he is, they’d think twice about the ‘bad boy’ reputation he’s been receiving lately. 

Kacchan is Izuku’s rock. His foundation he clings to when the world feels too unstable for him to stand. And in return Izuku… Well, he isn’t really sure what he gives Kacchan in return. Guilt, a familiar emotion, settles in his chest at the recognition. 

His fingers spasm in his lap. “I’m sorry, Kacchan, all I do is complain lately.”

“’S fine.” Kacchan takes a swig from his lukewarm seltzer. All Might Power Hour Eight plays on the television, background noise that both had memorized way back in the tender years of their shared youth.

Izuku numbly watches his throat bob as he swallows, the harsh light of the movie arcing across his larynx. 

Kacchan used to drink beer. He stopped when Izuku was still in college, after he told Izuku to quit getting drunk every weekend. Now neither of them drinks. Izuku can’t help but feel like he took that from Kacchan. Like all he does is take and take, down to the root.

The dam bursts at this thought. His eyes swell, hot and itchy with disgust. Despicable.

“The hell is wrong?” Kacchan’s pinched brow turns to him. He did that. Made Kacchan frown. Truly, such an awful person. 

“I’m trying to be a good person,” Izuku says thickly. He sniffles, wiping his nose on the bony turn of his wrist. “I want to be good.”

Kacchan lets out a soft sigh. His shoulder bumps into Izuku’s, offering feeble warmth. “I know.” The words are heavy. It isn’t reassurance. Kacchan sounds like he’s confirming some grim reality. 

“Why don’t you sound happy?” Izuku croaks. “Why don’t you ever sound happy when you’re with me, Kacchan?”

Kacchan’s hand presses against Izuku’s spine. Solid. It doesn’t flinch from his muffled sobs. “How the fuck do you expect me to sound happy right now, Izuku?” he asks lowly. He doesn’t sound mean. Kacchan rarely sounds mean, these days. Another thing taken. “You’re miserable.”

“I make you miserable.” He gasps, pressing his hands to his eyes. “I make you miserable, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t—” Kacchan lets out a sharp breath. “Shit, Izuku, stop talking like this.”

I thought we’d be on each other’s heels forever.

Izuku chokes back a sob. “I’m sorry I’m so— Kacchan, I’m so sorry.”

“Stop,” Kacchan says, strained. “Stop fuckin’ apologizing.”

“I can’t stop,” he says. “Sor— Y’know. I can’t stop.”

Kacchan rubs his face. Suddenly he looks tired. Izuku did that. “Fuck, Izuku, you’re better than this.”

“I’m obviously not,” he says. “Like— I’m acting this way, after all. I’m not better or worse than what I am.”

“No,” Kacchan says with absolute authority. “You are better. I’ve seen it. I know you are.”

Izuku wipes his face. “Well, I haven’t.”

“‘Cause you’re blind as shit.” Kacchan sounds bitter. “You’re totally blind when it comes to yourself, dipshit. You— Fuck, you piss me off so bad.”

He cringes. 

“Not like that,” Kacchan stresses. “I’m mad for you, not at you. I… It fucks me up, wondering how you got this way. Wondering if you’ve always been this way. Wondering what…” His voice creaks. “What hand I had in making you like this.”

Izuku frowns, tears drying in his confusion. “Kacchan, you play absolutely no role in my misery or my faults. You’re the brightest part of my life.”

“You have no idea how fucked up that is,” Kacchan says. “For a decade of our lives, I treated you like shi—”

“Kacchan, don’t.” He straightens his spine. “Kacchan, I know we haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, but you are the best person I have ever known. Neither of us is perfect, I get that. But I am with you. Always. As long as you’ll have me.”

“I wish you could hear yourself,” Kacchan says.

“What?”

“Same. Alright? It’s all the same. What you just said. From me to you.”

That’s messed up, Izuku wants to say, but he can’t. Words clump on his tongue. He’s never understood it, how sometimes every thought leaks from his lips and other times when he most wants a voice it flees. The door of his throat is only ever wide open or slammed shut. No in-between. A muttering freak or an unreadable face. 

“You gotta stop doing this,” Kacchan murmurs. “It’s fuckin’ stupid. I wouldn’t hang out with you if I didn’t want to, okay? You know me, don’t you?”

I do, I do. I wish I knew you even better, though. I wish I knew every single thing about you. 

“What?”

A million things he wants to say to Kacchan. A million more he wants to keep to himself. It’s true, Kacchan does what he likes, but he also is a good person. And good people don’t always recognize when they are being used. 

“Can you hug me?” leaves Izuku, the syllables cottony. He feels weak. That isn’t the worst part; Izuku is used to weakness. He also feels selfish, though, and that is almost intolerable. 

Almost.

“Sure,” Kacchan says like it’s easy. His voice is steady. Solid. Kacchan is so amazing.

That just sends another sob through Izuku. A fundamental reality that brings him to his knees sometimes. Kacchan is amazing. Kacchan is so amazing.

Kacchan’s arms are thick and strong around him. His palms are deadly weapons, cradling Izuku’s upper back and his head, fingers digging into his matted hair. Izuku tangles his own fingers in the front of Kacchan’s shirt, twisting it up and stretching out the fabric. Awful. Awful person. Selfish. So, so selfish.

You make me selfish, he thinks. You make me selfish, Kacchan, and I can’t let you go free. What does that say about me? What a rotten friend I am. 

His body twitches. Involuntary spasm. Starts in his limbs and shivers into his spine. A rhythm sluggishly pulses in his skull, forces him to sway in time with the beat. He isn’t sure why he starts rocking back and forth. He only knows it helps and that it probably shouldn’t help, that it probably would look off-putting if anyone were to see it. He only knows that if he stops rocking, he might die.

Kacchan rocks with him. 

Hound Dog just looks at him. People do that a lot, Izuku notes. Just look at him, he means. Hawks did it too. As did Aizawa. And the psychiatrist. Kacchan, especially. Though Kacchan’s gaze is different, carries a heavier weight. Something soft and warm and haunted. 

Hound Dog looks at Izuku like he’s a problem. 

Which— Okay, to be fair to Hound Dog, Izuku is a problem. Of some sort. Or he was. He’s solved now, thankfully. 

Just look around. It’s over. So obviously over. And that means everything is right with the world.

They’re not even in the epilogue anymore. The cameraman has gone home. They are alone.

Izuku is finally alone.

“Is it weird that I kind of welcomed being haunted?” escapes him, fingers digging into the slacks covering his thighs. 

Hound Dog’s expression does not shift. “What?”

“The— Sorry, I just thought about the vestiges. Um, of, ah. Of All Might’s quirk. One For All. Like, ha, my head is so empty now. It’s been years, so I should really be used to it, but sometimes it hits me. How, ah.” Izuku’s smile creaks. “How hollow I feel.”

Hound Dog lowers his head toward his notebook, pen flying across the page.

“I mean literally,” Izuku clarifies. “Literally hollow. In my skull. Since the vestiges are gone.” He raps his knuckles on the side of his head. It hurts. He does it again. It still hurts.

Hound Dog is back to problem staring. 

“Anyways, do you think you can write that letter for me, clearing me of any mental health issues?”

Hound Dog returns to his notebook. These have been his two modes for the past thirty minutes. “No.”

Izuku sits up. “What do you mean, no? How did I fail?”

“You didn’t fail anything, Midoriya. This isn’t that kind of test.”

“Inui-sensei, please—”

“You spent the first fifteen minutes talking to me about nothing but Bakugou Katsuki,” Hound Dog says. 

Izuku blinks. “What does Kacchan have to do with this?”

“It’s not the subject, but the length and intensity, coupled with a disregard for your audience’s disinterest.” He flips through his notebook. “You would have kept speaking even if I’d left the room, Midoriya. You frequently engage in monologuing, isn’t that correct?”

“Ah…monologuing?” Kacchan had mentioned monologuing. 

“You talk to yourself.” Hound Dog points his pen at him. “As a teen, you verbalized most of your thoughts. You have a better handle on it as an adult, but this is a trait you’ve had throughout your life. Tell me, do you enjoy discussing a breadth of topics?”

Izuku tilts his head, brow furrowing in confusion. “A…breadth of topics?”

“If we were to talk about Bakugou or All Might or quirks or the history of heroics,” Hound Dog says, “I think it’s fair to say you’d find those topics interesting?”

“I… Sure. Yes.”

“But let’s say we start talking about the weather. Or how my day was. Are those interesting to you?”

Izuku stares at him, considering what the right answer could possibly be.

“There is no right answer, Midoriya, just answer honestly. Which would you rather talk about: All Might or the nightly news?”

“…Either is fine,” Izuku answers uncertainly. 

Hound Dog groans, pinching the bridge of his snout. “What was it that you were saying about Bakugou, earlier? That his…explosive control is better?”

“Oh, in his right arm, yeah. The blast radii are a lot more equidistant than they were even six months ago, which is significant improvement. I keep trying to ask him what’s changed but he just shoves me away—”

“Do you think I care about that?”

Izuku’s jaw clicks. “Do I think you… What?”

“Why would I care about Bakugou’s blast radius?”

Silence stretches between them, puzzlement weighing heavy in Izuku’s breast. “Because Kacchan’s…really…cool?”

Hound Dog’s pen scratches into his notebook. It’s aggressive.

Izuku shifts. “What are you writing?”

“Noting your lack of theory of mind.” He snaps the notebook closed. “Midoriya, this is a waste of both of our time.”

“Wh-what?” he stammers.

“Listen. We’re both adults, here. I’m trying not to condescend to you.”

“O-okay. Thank you.”

“You’re clearly trying to repress your own natural tendencies out of some sort of guilt or obligation. That doesn’t make them disappear, Midoriya; it often doesn’t even make them smaller. Everything comes out eventually. You’re a pressure cooker without a release valve. That’s how you ended up in that situation in Hosu.”

“No one got hurt in Hosu,” Izuku says. “I don’t even— I barely talked to you about Hosu.”

“I can read between the lines. Your ‘lapse in judgment’ nearly got you killed. You were in the hospital for— Midoriya, like I said. A waste of our times. You’re not approaching this with an open mindset. You’re not looking to heal.”

“What is there to ‘heal’?”

Hound Dog sighs. “You’re carrying a heavy fucking burden.”

“There’s nothing,” Izuku replies. There is nothing.

“You know that’s not true,” Hound Dog says.

“It’s over.” It is. All of it is over. 

“It’s not over. You’re not even at the starting line.” Hound Dog readjusts in his chair. “Until you commit yourself to processing things properly, there’s nothing anyone can say to get through to you.”

That word again. Processing. Everyone wants him to process. He’s chewed on the events of his life enough that they’re a pulpy mess in his mouth. There’s nothing left. 

“Please tell Hawks I’m of sound mind,” Izuku says.

“I’m going to give him my professional assessment, as you asked.” Hound Dog gestures with his notebook. “Do you need me to see you out?”

Izuku stands. “No. I’m good, thanks.” He heads to the door with leaden feet. Feels his pulse in his throat. 

Part of him wants to argue more, doesn’t want to roll over and accept an insufficient judgment. The rest of him intellectually recognizes that arguing only seems to prove these so-called professionals’ points. If he says anything, that confirms that there’s something. It’s not true, but in their minds that’s how it seems.

There’s nothing, though. So Izuku keeps his mouth shut and he leaves. 

When the door clicks behind him, he stares blankly at the empty stretch of hallway on either side of him. He closes his eyes and breathes.

The staff room couch is the softest presence in all of UA. Plush and giving and—most important of all—nonjudgmental. If Izuku were forced to marry a couch and he got to choose which couch, he would choose this couch. Unquestionably.

The upholstery could swallow him and he probably wouldn’t mind. 

“Midoriya-kun. A pleasure to see you.” Nedzu. Fantastic.

He restrains a groan. 

“School let out thirty minutes ago, you know. You’re not supervising a club today to my knowledge.”

“I’m just waiting until my meeting with Hawks,” he says, voice muffled by the cushion.

“Right, that’s rather soon,” Nedzu says. Oh, so he knows. Why would he know that?

Whatever. Nedzu has his ways of getting information. Izuku’s never understood any of it, but that’s just how it is. He tries not to outwardly question these things.

“How did you meeting with Inui-kun go?”

End me, Izuku thinks. A pointless plea. It is already the end. He is well past the end. 

“Mm. Not well, I presume? That’s a shame.”

“It went fine,” Izuku tells the couch.

“You’ve been struggling ever since you took down Shigaraki.”

Izuku’s head snaps up. “I don’t get to feel bad about that.” He hates how his bones sharpen at the mention of Shigaraki. “He’s the one who’s…” He swallows thickly, phlegm gumming to his throat. “I killed him. I’m not the victim, here.”

“He needed to be stopped,” Nedzu says.

“He was groomed!” bursts from Izuku. He’s standing. He doesn’t remember standing. So much of the body is automatic these days. The phantom of a man bears heavy on Izuku’s shoulders. The person he once was, the person he’s becoming. A boy who became a man who may have swapped out his childish ways for a suit and tie, but bears the same scars plainly on his skin. 

Nedzu studies him. “Care to expand on that?”

“I— No,” Izuku says, strained. “That’s his story. Which he can’t tell because he’s dead.”

“Regardless of our circumstances or experiences, we can always make a choice to not harm others,” Nedzu says. “He could have reversed his course.”

Izuku scoffs, looking to the ceiling. His eyes sting. He blinks. “You’re completely ignoring the societal and interpersonal context of his life. Maybe? But sometimes there’s an exit and it’s nearly impossible to access. S-sometimes there’s an exit and we can’t even see it.”

Silence. The hum of the refrigerator.

“No one ever reached out to him,” Izuku says dully. “No one. Not once.”

“You did.”

“I killed him.”

“You reached out, though. You tried.”

“I failed.”

Silence. All there is. The crush of nothing. 

Nothing. 

Nothing.

Nedzu cocks his head, nose twitching. His beady eyes glitter, opaque. Everyone is opaque to Izuku, including himself. 

“Are you manipulating me?” Izuku finds himself asking. 

Nedzu neatly folds his paws in front of him. “Why would you ask that?”

“I don’t know,” Izuku says tiredly. “I don’t know. I can’t read people. And you’re smart and people say you can be manipulative. I guess all smart people are. I don’t know.”

“Hm.” Nedzu pauses, thinking. “Yes, Midoriya-kun.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I was manipulating you.”

“Oh.” Izuku blinks. “Oh. Okay. Uh.”

“You can’t keep going on like this. You know that?”

“I— Don’t,” he answers, unsteady. “No.”

“No,” Nedzu echoes. “No, you don’t know it. I’m not the one to get through to you, either.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Where are you confused?”

“You’re always so cryptic!” Izuku spits. “Not just you, either— Everyone! Everyone is always talking in…in riddles and codes and giving these ‘meaningful’ looks and talking around me like I’m some kind of i-idiot child or something! It drives me crazy. I feel so confused all the time and sometimes I’m too ignorant of whatever all of you are trying to say that I can’t even know enough to be confused. I…” He stumbles. “I don’t really know where I was going with that. Um. Sorry.”

Nedzu’s eyes gleam. They’re shinier, at least. Surface-level observation. Eyes are supposed to indicate information about a person’s thoughts. To Izuku, they are only ever just eyes.

“Sorry,” he echoes himself. Canyon of his throat, echo of an echo. He has a set of stock phrases he knows are safe and he clings to them, repeats them ad nauseam like a neurotic mockingbird. Sorry. Sorry. Hello hi how are you? I’m fine, thank you for asking. Excuse me, do you know when the next train is? Thank you. Thank you so much. Sorry. Sorry. Excuse me. Sorry.

“What are you sorry for?” Nedzu asks.

“I don’t know,” Izuku says, empty. Nothing. A hollow bowl. Everything surface-level. “I just say things hoping they smooth out social interactions.”

Nedzu hums. “They usually do. Unfortunately, I know you too well for that.”

“How would you even know me?” He’s exhausted. 

“You might not know yourself, but other people see you just fine.”

“Other—? What are you even saying? Of course I know myself.”

Nedzu cocks his head. “Okay, let me try to be upfront for you, Midoriya-kun: You’re obviously scared of knowing yourself.”

Izuku feels the muscles of his face scrunch. His jaw throbs. 

“See, this is what I meant. I’m not the one to get through to you. Honestly, I don’t think even Bakugou-kun could. This is something you have to learn for yourself.”

“Kacchan? What would Kacchan have to do with this?”

Nedzu just looks at him. People love to do that. Just looking. They all know he doesn’t understand their language and still they use it anyways. “I told you. I’m not getting through to you.”

“Okay, well, I know myself, thanks.” Izuku folds his arms. His suit jacket pinches in the shoulders, too tight. The sleeves are too long, grazing his palms. The vacant center of his body pants, gaping, with a hungry mouth. “My name is Midoriya Izuku and I’m from Musutafu. I’m twenty-five years old, I work as a—”

“I’m talking about more than superficial details.” Nedzu picks an invisible piece of lint off of his tie. “I’m talking about hopes and dreams, likes and dislikes. The things you went through and how they’ve shaped you. I confess that I find most of these topics rather trite, but in your case, your avoidance of everything is obvious and destructive.”

The embers of irritation smoke in Izuku’s chest. “You know what we all went through. You know what I did. I’m not avoiding anything about myself; I think about it every single day of my life.”

“Sure,” Nedzu says. “You can admit to your perceived sins. I’ll give you that. But when are you going to start treating the remainder of your time alive as a life rather than a life sentence?”

Izuku stalks past him, blood in his skull. His body moves on its own, jerky, like a marionette. A fumbling child controls the strings. 

“I told you.” Nedzu’s voice follows him out of the break room. “Midoriya-kun, you’re not going to get better until you process—”

Izuku slams the door behind him.

When something dies, you bury it.

The Commission President’s desk seems larger than ever. Izuku wonders if Hawks had it swapped out recently just to fuck with him specifically. He immediately discards this thought because it is insane. 

Still, he stares pensively at the desk. He hates to think that his own memory of it is faulty; Izuku prides himself on the reliability of his observations. 

“Midoriya.” Hawks makes a show of sorting through his papers. “Long time no see.”

“Hi,” he says dully. 

“So, that second eval? You had that?”

“Yes.”

“Mm. Inui, right?”

“Yes.”

Hawks nods, glancing at his computer. “He sent his concurrence about ten, eleven minutes ago.”

Izuku blinks. “Wh-what? But I just saw him today?”

“Yeah. Well, I shot him a message, asked for an initial professional opinion. He says you’re super screwed up in the head. Autism with associated sensory processing disorder and PTSD and, uh.” Hawks squints at his monitor. “Anxiety disorder, unspecified at this time.”

Izuku groans loudly, fisting his hair.

“Look, Midoriya. We tried things your way. I gotta be real with you, though. I cannot have you on the field until we address your diagnosis and review the episode you had. Because that’s a public safety hazard and a personal safety hazard wrapped in one.” Hawks clears his throat. “You’re benched. Indefinitely.”

Izuku’s head whips up, fingers ripping stray curls from his skull. “What?”

“You’re opposed to treatment. We can’t just let you continue to work.”

“But I was working!”

“And that was evidently a risk. Look. Even beyond the whole PTSD hallucination deal, Midoriya, you’ve got autism. The way you respond to stimuli is just not conducive to heroics at this scale, particularly the kinds of rescue missions you had been deployed to previously.”

“Stimuli? I don’t respond any differently than—”

Hawks claps his hands.

Izuku flinches. His chair skids on the floor with the force of his spasm.

“That kind of stuff,” Hawks says. “PTSD is one thing. Autism is another thing. PTSD and autism? Midoriya. You’re one bad noise away from a breakdown.”

That isn’t true. It simply isn’t true. Demonstrably. All of the hard times Izuku has endured throughout his life, the physical and mental strain he has undergone in the service of others. Everything he sacrificed for a dream and everything else he sacrificed when he threw the dream away. 

Even if Izuku had autism—which he doesn’t—he is so much more than that. Has proven that, he feels, many times over.

“It’s a developmental disability,” Hawks says. The words sting. Slice through the skin where Izuku is thinnest. “The autism, I mean. No shame in that. It’s how you were born.”

How he was born. 

“Just not exactly conducive for hero work, unfortunately, given your limitations.”

His limitations. 

“Not trying to be a dick,” Hawks says. “Just stating facts.”

Facts.

“I’m not saying it’s all off the table, either, but if you’re not open to treatment, well. You have to be realistic.”

Realistic.

Izuku’s knuckles creak. He can hear his blood in his temple, thump-thump-thumping like a palm against a door. 

You have to be realistic.

Building. It’s not just anger. Something else, too. Something wilder, crazier. Animal.

“On account of concerns regarding your diagnosis—”

“Could an autism person do this?” He grabs the ends of Hawks’s ridiculous desk and heaves, upending it in a flurry of papers and groaning wood. Adrenaline lights his veins with a sweet high as he flips the wretched thing, muscles biting and releasing. 

Hawks gapes at him, gesturing at the mess. 

“Th-thought not,” Izuku says. The stutter ruins the effect, sadly. He isn’t totally sure what effect he’s going for. Or why he did that. His body just moved, continues to move. He stumbles back, oxfords sliding over loose paper.

“Midoriya, what the fuck?”

“I’m completely mentally sound,” he replies, giving a thumbs up. Then he turns and walks out of the Hero Commission president’s office.

A few analysts stare at him as he passes, mouths hanging agape. They must have heard the rumble of the desk getting overturned. 

“I’m not autism!” Izuku greets them loudly. He keeps walking. Passes more people who are looking at him. Everyone is always looking at him. Eyes. Eyes he’s supposed to meet, eyes he’s supposed to stare into and smile. “Absolutely not autism! I don’t have autism!” He kicks off the paper stuck to his shoe. “Psych evals are bullshit, anyways. They can’t know a diagnosis just because they talked to you in a locked room for three hours. Obviously nothing is wrong with me! Nothing has ever been wrong with me!” He thumps his chest. “I mean, look at me! There’s clearly nothing going on inside of me, so how could there be anything wrong? There’s nothing in here!”

A gaggle of accountants peek out of their office, faces pale. Izuku flashes them a wide grin. Midoriya Izuku is a character that always smiles. He sports a freckled face and messy green hair. He has large, wet eyes that are as empty as the sky. 

“There’s nothing,” he repeats, chipper enough to not sound entirely pathetic. “There’s… There’s nothing.”

Nothing.

Nothing.

No—

When you bury something, it forms roots. 

It’s the dust. In retrospect, yes. The dust. At the time, though, all Izuku knows is this: the Hosu Hotel has been cleared of all occupants, according to radio communications. Except there’s a little boy. A little boy Izuku can see through the dense fog of cement and plaster particles, dark-haired, wide-eyed. They must have missed him when doing their final sweep. 

Blood in his nose. A torrent of blood shoved into every orifice of his body; he is glutting himself on blood. Blood. Blood.

“You act like I died of natural causes,” the boy says. “Like some kind of sickness wiped me out instead of your hand.”

“I had to,” Izuku chokes, cries, screams. “I had to, I had to, because he ate you, same as he tried to eat the First, you understand, I saw you understand, we defeated him together, we—!”

“You killed me.”

Izuku whimpers, grit between his teeth.

“Don’t act like it was a mercy,” the boy says, “or consensual, either. And stop waving my corpse around like a puppet, making it say these zombie words you’ve come up with. I don’t talk like this.”

“I can’t help it.” His voice is the raw call of an animal. 

The truth is this: there was no hallucination. It was all imagination, phantom images projected from a guilty mind. Playing pretend with the deceased.

It was just dust.

Kacchan grabs him. Gloved hand catching on the metal joint of a shoulder, a throat screaming words. What the fuck are you doing? The boy watches this. The boy is always watching this. Izuku stumbling, twisting out of Kacchan’s hold. 

“I have to save him,” he says, mouth full of so much blood. His temple flutters with his living pulse. Blood and blood and blood.

Who? Kacchan asks.

“The kid! The kid, Kacchan, there’s a…a kid in there, a—”

Kacchan curses. He presses his receiver. Recovering Deku. He reports a minor still in the building; we’ll do a last second sweep to—

“Tenko-kun,” Izuku calls. He opens his arms. The ceiling rumbles. A support beam to his left crumbles with a deafening growl. More dust. Stinging his eyes and lungs and the pulsing thud of his damp temple. “Come here, Tenko-kun, please, come with us, we’ll save you!”

Kacchan freezes.

The boy rolls his eyes. “You sound crazy. You’re freaking your boyfriend out.”

The dust is thicker now. It’s hard to see the boy, but he’s there. Izuku knows he’s there. They missed him. They failed. This time, though, this time they can do it right. Izuku can save him. He knows he can. 

Kacchan’s arm snaps around Izuku’s waist when he tries to move forward. 

He frowns in confusion, slapping his hand on the gauntlet. “Kacchan, lemme go, I gotta get him before the building collapses.” His voice is ragged to his own ears, words slurred. 

“Izuku,” Kacchan says. 

“Look, Kacchan, you see him? He’s not far, so if we—”

“Izuku.” His voice shakes slightly. “Izuku, there’s nobody here.”

Izuku blinks. His lashes burn with dust. He licks around his mouth, blood and blood. “What?”

The boy shakes his head, lips a thin line. 

“He’s…right there…”

Kacchan’s arm drags him back two steps. 

Izuku digs his feet into the ground, gritting his teeth. “H-hey, Kacchan, wait!”

“Recovering Deku. False alarm. Mistaken situation. Leaving site now. Over and out.”

“No! No, Kacchan, no!”

Kacchan pulls him back. Izuku yells, thrashing against his body. He slams his elbow into Kacchan’s chest, forcing a pained grunt. “Izuku, calm the fuck down! You’re seein’ shit!”

You are seeing shit, the boy agrees. I’m not real, moron.

“You’re real,” Izuku says. “No, no, you’re real, you’re real, Tenko-kun, grab my hand, just take my hand, please—”

Kacchan’s fists spark before detonating. 

It’s loud. Bright. Hot. Izuku squeezes his eyes shut out of reflex, curls in on himself. 

Kacchan immediately takes advantage, grabbing him again.

Every second after that is a tangled mess of coppery taste and ringing pain. Blood. More blood. His eardrums are wet. His body spasms, a dying thing. Tenko is in there. He failed last time but he can do it now, he can do it, so much dust but he doesn’t care, he’ll lose his arms and more to save that little boy. 

A gloved hand smacks his face.

He chokes on fresh air. Gasps and hacks. Blood on his lips, blood in his mouth. Tenko’s.

Kacchan’s shivering form materializing before him. “Grab me. You broke your ribs. You have a punctured lung, you stupid sonovabitch. You’re choking on your own blood. We’re almost to the EMTs.”

Izuku grabs him automatically. “Tenko’ssss in there, K’chan.”

“Come on. Keep moving, c’mon, four steps. Come on, Izuku, yeah. Come on.”

The world wobbles under his boot. It is dematerializing. Decaying. “I’m evil,” he confesses to Kacchan, gums hot with blood. So much blood. “Left’im beh’nd…”

A loud noise pierces his bones. He lets out a sharp cry of pain, stumbling against Kacchan. Oh, it hurts so bad. Loud noise. So loud and it keeps repeating. Bright lights, too. Strobes of sharp color. People. There’s people. Why people? A lot of everything all at once. 

“You’re good,” Kacchan hisses fiercely. He grabs Izuku’s face, angling it toward him as they hobble together, a single animal. His glove is scratchy against Izuku’s tacky cheek. Forces his gaze to his face, forces his eyes away from the snarling lights. “You’re good, Izuku. Shit, too good. I’ve always hated this about it. You never learn. It fucking sucks.”

“I want people to be happy,” Izuku gasps. “Oh, it’ssss. S-so loud, Kacchan, s’too loud. Want happy, though, I— I want— I want you to be happy, Kacchan, Tenko, everyb’dy. But ’s all the same, everything’s all the same, same hurting, same awful, same… I didn’t fix anything, jus’ killed a lil boy, jus’…”

“He was a man,” Kacchan says. “Fuck— You were the kid.”

“A lil boy,” Izuku insists. His head lolls. “Hhhh the noises’re s’loud, too loud, K’chan, hurts.”

“I can’t stop them. Just try to hang on a little longer.”

“’S too loud, hurts.”

“I know. Hold on to me. Hold on.”

Kacchan drags him around like a dog by its scruff, his arm a leash, his fingers a collar. People speak all around them, people open their mouths and say things. Izuku cannot understand them; he is a foreigner. His only link to humanity is Kacchan’s hand. 

Hold on. Hold on. Izuku can’t grab onto anything. Can only flex in Kacchan’s grip, held. In the heat of battle, he is a marriage of strength and strategy. Here, he is only body. The noises are loud and senseless. They stab their talons into his worthless pulp of brain over and over. The only mercy is Kacchan’s hand. The only thing he understands is Kacchan’s hand. 

“No.” Kacchan’s voice cuts through the cacophony. “Yeah, no. No, he’s— Look, just get him checked out, okay? I’m not gonna…”

Something touches Izuku. It’s not Kacchan’s hand. It’s something else. 

His throat is raw and bloody. Blood. Blood. 

Gloved palms slap against the sides of his head, slide to cup his ears. Izuku’s vision echoes and echoes again, ripples like rain striking a puddle. Kacchan is there, brow furrowed, eyes red. His mouth moves, but his hands obscure his meaning. All Izuku can hear is agony. And the rough texture of Kacchan’s gloves, shielding him from the worst of it. 

Kacchan has a beautiful mouth, but his tongue frightens Izuku. Wet and thick and darting between his teeth. But his hands, they hold him. They cradle his worthless skull like they are trying to protect him. 

“—do you consent? I repeat, do you consent to—”

Kacchan barks something. His lips form yes. He clasps his hands harder against Izuku’s head when he squirms, quiets the world just that little bit more. Tomura looms over his shoulder, watching Izuku with the gaze of a dead man.

Izuku’s vision triples, triples again. A kaleidoscope. Kacchan holds him. He is the only thing tethering Izuku to the ground. Kacchan is the only anchor Izuku has ever had. Tomura watches. He is always watching. The dead man, the dead boy. It’s all dust, now. Nothing but dust.

Kacchan presses his hands harder around Izuku’s head, harder still, as though he could crush the cacophony ringing in Izuku’s skull. They grind into him until his twitching limbs slow, then cease. 

“—a lot of blood, so fucking stay awake or I swear I’ll kill you, Iz—”

The sound pops into static. Izuku’s head lolls in Kacchan’s grip. His cheeks are numb and buzzing. Kacchan’s got him, though. Kacchan’s keeping the sound out. His eyes are heavy. 

Kacchan’s lips keep moving, but Izuku can’t hear him anymore. All he can hear is the fevered pull of his own blood and the scratchy shifting of Kacchan’s gloves and his own wet, ragged breath. He blinks slowly. Slower. Kacchan’s face is stop motion. Open, shut. Open, shut. He looks good even like this, terrified out of his mind. Kacchan is scared for some reason. It might not seem that way to other people, though; Kacchan scared often looks similar to Kacchan angry. 

Even when Kacchan is scared, he’s still protecting Izuku from all the bad noises. Why are you scared, Kacchan? he tries to ask, but his mouth is full of blood. He tries for a smile, instead. How can I help, Kacchan? Lemme help you, please. Don’t be scared. It’s okay. It’ll be okay.

Tomura cocks his head. Izuku’s smile wanes. Kacchan’s lips keep moving, unheard. The dead man hanging over him says nothing. Buzzing swells in Izuku’s wet chest, gulping down every sense, his vision gray and dim. And still, the eyes on him. Alive and dead. Izuku’s ultimate victims hang over him while he chokes on blood and vomit, deaf at last.

Sometimes, all you can really feel is silence.

The world feels so distant from twenty stories up. Not that Izuku is looking at much of the world. His eyes are skyward now. Not many clouds out today and they aren’t even the kind that can make cool shapes. Just wispy cirrus variety. He immediately feels terrible for devaluing cirrus clouds. It’s not their fault they’re cirrus clouds. Cirrus clouds aren’t any worse than cumulus clouds; they’re just different. That’s okay. It’s okay to be different. Really.

His phone buzzes. He glances at it only to wilt. Uraraka again. 

“You gonna answer that?”

Izuku shakes his head. He leans back until his spine rests solidly against the cement roof. The sky crawls overhead, cirrus clouds like clumps of fuzzy mold. Neutral statement. Nothing wrong with fuzzy mold, either. “Oh, no. It’s just Uraraka-san.” Uraraka, his girlfriend(?). Right.

Shinsou doesn’t reply. Or maybe he does. Sometimes Izuku gets so caught up in his own head that he becomes a horrible narcissist and hurts everyone around him. 

Uraraka. Uraraka Ochako, blowing up his phone. Coffee dates. One million coffee dates. Eight years of silence and suddenly she wants to reconnect. Nothing changed. Not with Izuku, anyways. He’s solidly been himself the whole time. An ordinary man, with no notable features to set him apart from anyone. Normal and functional. 

Well. One thing changed.

“She only started talking to me after I got the suit,” he says blankly. “I don’t get that.”

Shinsou leans over him, framing one half of the sky. His brow pinches. 

“Like— We barely talked since high school. All Might hands me the suit and ever since, she’s asking to meet up. We got coffee once and—this is awful, but I really regret it. Because ever since then, she’s been texting me all the time, asking to get coffee again.”

“Okay,” Shinsou says slowly.

Izuku supposes, when he lays it all out like that, it’s not such a mystery after all. With the suit, he’s worth talking to again. That’s the beginning and end of it. 

“I’m worried I’m dating her,” he says. “And I. This is really awful, but I don’t want to date Uraraka-san.”

Shinsou chokes. 

“I should just be upfront, I know,” he continues. “I know that, but being upfront is situational and I’m bad at knowing those situations where it’s appropriate, so I end up saying something offensive and hurting people. I don’t want to hurt her, but I also don’t want to date her. And it’s all mixed up in my head because maybe this is good, even if I don’t want it? Like it is a good thing to date Uraraka-san. It’s quiet and normal and expected, which is what I should want. I need to be…to be realistic. But at the same time…”

It hangs in the air above him, heavier than the clouds. His silly, stupid wants. All the things never meant for him, that he snatched for a time like Prometheus grasping fire. He is lucky that this is his ending—it is something regular, rather than mythic. He is very lucky. He should feel…

“I…” Izuku hesitates. “I think I have emotional problems, Shinsou-kun.”

Shinsou snorts. 

He frowns. “I’m serious.”

“Sure you are.”

“I am! Because I should be happy, right? Everything ended well and I’m in decent health and I have a job and I’m living a life. That’s good.”

“I don’t think there’s a ‘should’ about being happy.”

“Of course there is,” Izuku says. “You should be happy about good things and unhappy about bad things. There was death and disenfranchisement in the old generation—that’s something to be unhappy about—but we can get it right with the next generation—something to be happy about. Ah ha…”

Shinsou looks at him like he’s speaking nonsense. Izuku can read that expression; he’s seen that one a lot throughout his life.

“I mean.” He loses certainty. “Right?”

Shinsou just shakes his head. “I think you lost the plot.”

“I think the author of this lost the plot,” he replies.

“What the hell do you mean by that? God?”

He rolls onto his side. “Sure? I guess?”

You are making no fucking sense, Shinsou’s face says. You are being weird.

“Maybe it’s just that…I dunno. I feel like my life started as a less complicated thing. A narrative that was, ah, pretty basic? Zero to hero.” But then Izuku killed a guy. Or— No, it’s before that. All of it. The world around him, the dreck he was oblivious toward. Stain’s tongue burning against his cut. Spinner’s eyes boring into him.

Shinsou doesn’t say anything.

“There’s something so grim about thinking about the future generation getting it right when we’re still here.” Izuku knots his fingers together. “As if we aren’t giving them the same uncomplicated dreams, shielded from the pain of others in worse situations. As if we aren’t ignoring the people that are still here, the people we fail when we focus on getting it right next time. To tell someone new to the system ‘you can be a hero’ and pointing at another group of people the system failed and saying, ‘to be a hero, you fight them.’ And it’s the commodification on top of it that makes it especially problematic! Like heroism is an extension of both consumerism and state-sanctioned violence—”

“Midoriya, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Do you ever wonder if God figured out he was writing something kinda fucked up and tried to pivot, but he’s not a good enough writer to do that, so instead of pulling a Watchmen, he just kinda sat in his own mess like a crying baby?”

Shinsou stares at him like he’s lost his mind. Which might be accurate. Everyone around him seems to think so. Hawks. Hound Dog. Aizawa. Nedzu. That stupid psychiatrist. The universe.

“And now the story’s over,” Izuku says weakly. 

“If the story’s over,” Shinsou says, “then we wouldn’t be here. What the hell are you talking about. Seriously.”

“Well, whoever has the story now must be trying to have a dialogue with the original story. Probably. —That sounds kinda one-sided and self-important. Ah, what a crazy concept…”

Shinsou shakes his head. He pulls out his phone, typing rapidly.

Izuku sits up. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m texting Bakugou. You’re clearly losing it.”

“What? No! Don’t do that!” He lunges for the phone, but Shinsou is quicker. 

“I sent it,” he informs him.

Izuku lets out a weak groan, falling onto his back. His spine twinges in protest. “I think the person who’s handling the story right now is not very good at his job.”

“How do you know it’s a ‘he’?”

“I didn’t. But he’s dictating every word I’m saying.”

“Okay, yeah, you’ve officially lost it.”

“I wish you hadn’t texted Kacchan.”

“And I wish you weren’t a self-hating freak who’d rather come up with some insane conspiracy theory than deal with his own emotions, but here we are.”

“You didn’t have to be here.” Izuku pauses. “Um, thanks by the way.”

“You call me,” Shinsou says, “in the middle of the day when you should be on patrol and I should be sleeping. ‘Please meet me on the roof of my apartment.’ Of course I fucking showed up. Who knows what you were planning to do? But no. You’re lying on your back describing delusions to me like they’re philosophy.”

“We’re in a story about superheroes who go to high school,” Izuku says. 

“We are not in a story,” Shinsou stresses.

“No, we definitely are. Even if no higher power wrote it. Everything is a story.”

“Sure. But you mean it literally.”

“Well— I mean, yeah. I do.” 

Shinsou rubs his face. 

“Superheroes are inherently kind of ridiculous,” Izuku says. “So writing sincerely about them produces a weird sort of vulnerability, because you have to not only suspend disbelief but also suspend judgment. So it follows that writing a superhero story is actually kind of honest in a way. There’s a certain level of honesty that stupidity produces, anyways. And writing a story about a story about superheroes is even stupider, so… I just mean, it’s pretty embarrassing to write speculative fiction based on another person’s story in general, right?”

“Whose story is it even at that point?”

Izuku shrugs helplessly. “Well the original concept belongs to the original author, so…”

“God,” Shinsou says flatly. “Right.”

“It’d be even more cringe-inducing to put that kind of derivative fiction online,” Izuku continues. “B-because that means you’re hoping for a reaction, right? Praise for writing fiction based on someone else’s intellectual property.”

“You’re cringe-inducing.”

“It could go even further, start to mimic the steps of real writing. Can you imagine writing a story based on someone else’s work and getting an artist and an editor to collaborate with you on it? Is a team effort better or worse, you think? Posting it online, receiving validation for writing fiction with characters you’re basically just playing dolls with.”

“This is not going to get you out of grabbing coffee with Uraraka.”

“Maybe it’s deeper than that, though. B-because we all tell stories. Even if no one hears them, we still tell stories—even stories about other stories. I can’t help but feel it’s a human impulse to be moved by art.”

“Bakugou will be here to pick you up at any minute.”

“Still, I’d rather stories like that be private,” Izuku decides. “I wrote tons of All Might Adopts You fanfiction as a kid and I never posted any of it online. That’s purer, in my opinion.”

Shinsou stops. “You what?”

“It’s called RPF. You ever heard of RPF? Anyways, it’s only in-universe RPF because we’re in a story based on a story about people who go to superhero high school.”

“Go back. You wrote fanfiction about All Might adopting you.”

“I was a freak back then,” Izuku says dismissively. “I’m normal now. Anyways, if we were in a fanfiction, it’s kind of pointless to speculate, isn’t it? Because, as I said, all the words are being dictated by a separate power. Not a god or anything. God is someone different. The original author, in this scenario. No, the other power is like, um.”

“An angel?”

“No… I’m thinking, hm.” Izuku snaps his fingers. “A bog witch.”

The door squeals on its hinges somewhere behind his head. He twists, finding an upside down view of Kacchan’s civilian sneakers and slim-fit jeans that hug his thighs gorgeously. 

“Hi Kacchan,” Izuku says. “How do you feel about the idea of us being thoughtforms in a superhero comic?”

“He’s found religion,” Shinsou says blandly.

Kacchan’s eyes sweep between them. After a moment, he steps forward, grunting as he bends, offering his hand to Izuku.

Izuku reaches back. Kacchan’s grip is sure, palm molding to Izuku’s, fingers squeezing the meat of his hand. Present. Reassuring, in that sense. Kacchan is very strong, but he could also drop Izuku if he chose. He could hurt him. He could tug Izuku up and then shove him off the roof and there is nothing Izuku could do about any of it. In this superhero world, he is utterly powerless. He can’t help anyone, not even himself.

Kacchan hauls him to his feet. He roughly pats Izuku’s shoulder as he steers him toward the stairwell.

“Writing a story is actually really complicated,” Izuku mumbles into his arms. His kitchen table is cool under his skin. “There’s all these— You have to construct thoughts, right? But thought isn’t enough. In order for a story to form, thought has to take a voice. That necessitates language. But language is more than a vehicle for thought; it’s also a container. It constrains meaning, filtering it only through its own bounds.”

“Are you drunk?”

“No. —What I mean is that we can only express ourselves using words and images and sounds, at the end of the day. A way to externalize an idea. And sometimes our thoughts are bigger than what any of those modes of communication can afford. So with a story, it’s like. Ah. Let’s say I have this great idea for a story about a boy. Well— Maybe I started it as a story about a man. But then my editors and the publishers said that nobody in the reading demographic will want to buy a story about a man, so it has to be a boy. So then I make it a boy. An ordinary boy. But then the editors and publishers say that no one wants to read about an ordinary boy, that you have to make him special. So I make him special. I give him something that makes him special for one year, but I get to take it back at the end. Then everyone is happy. The publishers and editors and the author, I mean, not like. Not like— Um. Anyways. At its core, the idea is pretty simple. But in order for that idea to become a story, specifics need to be added. Language. Imagery. Piece after piece.”

Kacchan slides a bowl in front of him. Katsudon with the onions sliced extra thin. 

“Sometimes I worry that my author hates me,” Izuku confesses, voice hushed. “That maybe he sees something reflected in me and he doesn’t like it very much.”

“Are you seriously getting parasocial with the theoretical author of your life?”

His face burns. “…Yeah.”

Kacchan snorts, sitting opposite of him. He’s as beautiful as ever. Hair gorgeously tousled, eyes sharp, skin smooth minus the lit sparkler of a scar arcing across his right cheek. “You’re ridiculous.” There’s no malice behind the statement. 

“Maybe,” Izuku admits, throat dry.

“Well what about me?” Kacchan asks, picking up his chopsticks. He is a sculpture in motion. “What’s your author think about me?”

“He loves you.”

Kacchan holds his food in the air for a moment, eyes unmoving from his bowl. Izuku watches his silvery lashes slowly blink. Then he completes the motion, bringing his cutlet to his lips and slipping it inside, chewing. 

“You’re… You’ve got to be his favorite,” Izuku continues. His voice is rough. He hadn’t even thought through his response to Kacchan’s question, but it is undoubtedly true. Fundamental.

“Yeah?” Kacchan says, unreadable. “Well he’s sure put me through some shit.” 

“Yeah. I really hate him for that.”

Kacchan snorts. His eyes lift to the ceiling, glossier. “Go fistfight God then, why don’t you.”

“I’m starting to seriously consider it,” Izuku admits.

Kacchan doesn’t seem to have a retort for that. When Izuku peeks up at him, he finds a considering look. 

“Yeah,” Kacchan says after a long moment. His teeth peek through the inscrutable divot of his lips. “Give it your best shot.”

It’s a dream. 

Izuku knows it’s a dream because he’s naked in an amorphous void. He’s never naked in amorphous voids when he’s awake. 

Also, a man is here. The man is no longer alive, so it would be very strange if this were real. Dead men only talk to Izuku in his dreams or when he’s choking on dust.

The void solidifies. Voids do not solidify in the real world. The void becomes mud and debris. The void becomes That Place. 

Izuku’s bare knees press into the dirt. He swallows thickly. It’s a dream. His body feels immaterial and real at the same time. He clenches his hands. They are there. He has hands, here. It is a dream. 

The man steps closer. He wears a suit and neat black oxfords, the leather buffed to a shine. This is a dream because in reality the man is dead. The man is no longer real. Maybe he was never real. Maybe none of them were ever real.

Izuku has hands and forearms and elbows in the dream. This is a dream. He twitches his dream fingers. Waits for them to dissolve. They hold their dream shape. 

“What was it that you called me?”

He blinks. His vision doubles, triples. It is a dream, but he blinks like he blinks when he is awake. He presses his trembling palms into his naked thighs, stares at the ground just past his legs. The mud and the bits of shit and those shoes. And blood. A card. A bloody card—

“Never mind that, I suppose. Though you’re one to talk.”

Blood. Blood. None of this is real, it’s a dream—the real world isn’t real, either, a fiction, a neuron misfired, mist and dust and nothing, nothing, but the card—

“I can hear your brain turning. So loud for such little thoughts. Maybe none of us were ever real? Are you a child? Your sensibilities around philosophy are painfully facile. If it were a story as you so desperately wish, that would imply there were greater meanings assigned to our roles. To what happened.”

He has to get the card. He can’t see it anymore, color sloughing from the world. His arms are terrifyingly heavy. Concrete. Statue.

“You can make me a metaphor,” the man says. “Wrap it up in some narrative veneer, call me a symbol of abuse or illness or general decay, but we can never say for certain why I was written the way I was in your little ‘story.’ For all you know, I was literal. What then?”

The card. It’s fuzzy in this dream, but it sparkles. Izuku tries to grab it. He cannot reach it. His fingers simultaneously grasp and fail to move.

“Then again,” the man says, “your ultimate opinion on me was literal, wasn’t it?”

His fingers. He tries to move his fingers. He needs to move his fingers. They’re there, aren’t they? They’re still there, he must still have them.

“How about my opinion of you? Would you like to hear it?”

Izuku squeezes his hands. Not his hands. His hands.

“I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but I feel compelled to say it regardless. That’s how these things go in writing, you see. Me, stating the narrative parallel so plainly that even the most obtuse reader recognizes the author’s intent.”

Izuku’s story. Not his story. His story.

The man leans down. His voice is quiet, conspiratorial with a wry humor. “Midoriya Izuku, I think you are a very lonely man.”

Midoriya Izuku agrees to meet Uraraka Ochako for coffee, Saturday morning. He wears his work suit because none of his casual clothes are date clothes. And this is a date. He thinks. 

A suit is probably for the best anyways because it puts him into his work mindset. A work mindset is conducive to performing unpleasant tasks. Last time, when he got coffee with Uraraka, he didn’t understand the assignment. He wore shorts and a comfortable t-shirt and Uraraka’s lips had done a funny little twitch when she first saw him, but she never said anything about it.

Suit is better. In a sense, it’s armor. More skin protection and he is At Work when he wears it. He feels amazingly banal on his commute to the coffeeshop. He even brought his backpack to complete the illusion, though it’s full of random stuff instead of his lesson plans. Random stuff like his favorite issue of his favorite manga and his pen bag and a spare notebook and his stupid blanket he sleeps with, balled up in the main pocket. He isn’t totally sure why he felt compelled to stuff all of that inside; it could have been empty and achieved the same effect, probably. Just felt safer like this. 

It’s not weird. Probably. Hopefully. 

When he gets to the coffeeshop, he slips inside and does not jolt at the little bell on the door. His spine is straight and his head is level and his arms are at his sides. He has arrived exactly on time. His suit is pressed, his oxfords are tied so tightly that his ankles twinge, and he actually combed his hair today with minimal gagging. He is ready to be normal.

He surveys the room as he readjusts one of his backpack straps, thumb tapping four times against the canvas. Then he forces the hand back down. It takes another sweep to spot Uraraka. She’s in a booth by the window with…Asui?

Why is Asui here?

Not a date, pattern recognition informs him. Relief lowers his shoulders. You can’t have a date with three people. Unless you’re in a ‘throuple.’ I don’t think I’m in a ‘throuple.’

“What are you saying, Midoriya-chan?” Asui asks with her usual bland tone. 

Izuku blinks. He’d approached their table without thought. “Um, nothing.”

“Did you order?”

“Order what?”

Asui points at her iced coffee. “Your coffee, Midoriya-chan.”

Sweat beads at his temples. Asui watches him. Uraraka sits very still beside her, her hands folded tightly in front of her on the table. “Oh! No, sorry. I’ll. Go do that. Um.” He plucks nervously at his backpack straps, turning.

Great, he really messed that up. Of course, get coffee first. Though maybe he didn’t mess up that badly? Because it makes sense to greet people first, also. He isn’t sure. Ah, but he didn’t actually say hello or anything. How awkward.

“How can I help you?” the barista says.

He hadn’t read the menu. Shit. “U-um.” His voice warbles. More sweat pricks his underarms. His nape itches. He feels like a slug. He needs to order coffee. He doesn’t know what he wants. He doesn’t know. He didn’t plan this part out. He should have read the menu. He didn’t read the menu, though, so he doesn’t know what they have. He has forgotten all forms of coffee.

The barista is staring at him. She is wearing a small, polite smile. Her eyes are faraway. 

I am making a service employee miserable, he thinks, sweltering in his stupid suit. “Could I please have an iced americano?”

Americano? He hates americanos. Too bitter. Kacchan likes americanos. Kacchan always orders either an americano or a cappuccino. Ninety-percent of the time, it’s americano. Izuku usually gets… He gets…

He isn’t sure. He forgot. Kacchan usually orders for him, anyways. But it’s sweet, often with toppings. Not an americano.

The barista tells him the price.

He hands over crumpled bills, gnawing at the inside of his cheek. Kacchan’s order. He remembers Kacchan’s order, but not his own. Maybe that’s not so strange. Kacchan’s order is simple and it suits him. Very adult and very cool.

Izuku takes his change and shuffles to the side, fumbling with his wallet. I got your drink, he thinks about texting Kacchan. Because it is a little funny, he supposes. I know your favorite coffee, but I don’t know my own. You have a good favorite coffee. Do you think it could become mine?

He sneaks a glance at Asui and Uraraka’s booth. They’re sitting in silence. Asui is looking at Uraraka. Uraraka is staring straight ahead. Weird. He fiddles with his backpack straps again, swallowing. 

His drink arrives quickly. Much more quickly than he’s used to getting his order. The power of Kacchan’s americano. He takes it and shuffles back to his friends (they’re his friends, he has friends), taking off his backpack and sliding into the booth opposite of Asui and Uraraka. “So, uh,” he starts. Takes a sip from the americano. It tastes like dirt and water. He suppresses a gag. 

“Hi,” Asui says. 

How does Kacchan drink these?

“Hi,” Uraraka says. “How have you been, Deku-kun?”

Izuku rubs his tongue against the roof of his mouth. His eyes water. “Good,” he chokes out. “Um. Yeah, I’ve been great. How are you guys?”

“Fine,” Uraraka says.

Silence.

Izuku takes another sip from his americano. Yup. Still tastes horrible. 

“You’ve been really busy lately, haven’t you?” Uraraka says.

He stiffens. His eyes waver on the table. “Um. Yes. Yeah.”

“Well, I’m glad we could finally find time to meet up.” When he manages to lift his gaze, he finds Uraraka wearing a thin smile. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you for a few weeks. I have a question—”

Asui nudges Uraraka’s arm. “Lead into it.”

“I thought I was leading into it.”

Asui shakes her head. 

“Is something wrong?” Izuku asks. 

“No,” Uraraka says quickly.

“You look tired, Midoriya-chan,” Asui says.

He sits up, readjusting his suit jacket. His chest is slick with sweat. “Nope! Um. I’m not. Well. I’ve been busy, yes, but uh. I’m completely fine. Had some, uh. Administrative stuff going on lately, w-with, um. Y’know, with the Commission. —Nothing bad! So.”

“Right, you’re a hero again!” Uraraka’s smile grows fuller. “How is that treating you, Deku-kun?”

Izuku swallows thickly. “Great,” he says. It’s disturbing how easily the lie slips out. He feels even slimier. A slug mouth for a slug body. “Thank you guys so much for everything you did to get me the suit.”

“It was mostly Bakugou-chan,” Asui says at the same time as Uraraka says, “Of course, Deku-kun.”

Awkward.

Izuku decides just to smile. That’s usually what he does when he doesn’t know what to say. The two sips of americano he had are making a frantic dash for his bladder. He shifts, folding his hands on the table, fingers creaking. 

Uraraka drinks her coffee. “Weather’s really nice, huh?”

“It’s eight degrees out,” he replies. Why are they talking about the weather? The weather is not interesting.

“Oh. Um, yes, but it’s sunny.”

“Yeah.”

They drift back into silence. Izuku drinks his americano. Kacchan’s americano. How the hell does Kacchan drink these so casually? He’s so effortlessly cool; it amazes Izuku as much as it inspires envy. 

“Have you been up to anything lately?” Uraraka asks.

“Um, just work.” He swallows more americano. It’s starting to equalize into a general malaise in his mouth. Almost tolerable. “What about you?”

“Work,” she replies.

Cool.

“Th-that’s great. Um, I saw you were working a rescue in Kamino recently. That was really amazing, Uraraka-san. You looked great out there.”

She opens her mouth. Closes it. Then she says, “Thanks.” And nothing more.

Alright.

They sit there. Izuku drinks more. His stomach sloshes with it. He probably should have eaten breakfast, but he’d been too nervous. Maybe the coffeeshop has food. Kacchan likes to get a plain croissant when he goes out, though very occasionally he’ll get one with strawberries and cream. Always with the americano, though, which is a nice juxtaposition, Izuku finds. The delicate with the strong. But yeah. Croissant with americano. That’s what Kacchan likes. Izuku doesn’t remember what he likes.

Asui stares at Izuku. Her lips are a flat line.

“I don’t normally drink these,” leaves his mouth. “Usually Kacchan does.”

“Oh,” Uraraka says.

“Um, yeah, uh.” He fiddles with the straw. “Ha, I usually drink…uh, something else.” Something stupid, probably. “But yeah, Kacchan is always drinking these when we go out. He’s so cool, right? No sweetener or milk. I think that’s so, uh, ah I already said cool, ha ha, but it’s cool.”

Conversation dies again. Alright then.

Izuku’s stomach squirms. He swallows more americano. That does not help. He shifts, refusing to grimace at the way that his belt digs into his waist. Suits are uncomfortable, so it’s to be expected. 

And still, no one says anything.

His nerves climb with the silence, scratching at the underside of his skin as he looks between Asui’s bland face and Uraraka’s unfocused eyes. Sweat itches at his nape, his back, his arms, his upper lip. He doesn’t twitch. Holds his body still. It continues to build. His foot tries to tap. He gamely tenses his leg, halting any antics. 

He’s trying to be normal. This coffee meet-up (can’t be a date unless they’re a throuple) is not normal, though. Izuku has a hard enough time being normal in normal circumstances; he is utterly incompetent at maintaining normalcy in the midst of abnormality. 

“May I please go to the bathroom?”

They both give him weird looks. “Yes,” Asui says. “You don’t need to ask for permission to use the bathroom, Midoriya-chan.”

“R-right.” His ears burn. “Sorry, was just a force of habit. Uh, from school, y’know. I’ll, um. Yeah, I’ll just go to the bathroom now, then, thanks.”

They watch him stand. He swings his backpack over his shoulder as he turns. Their eyes follow him as he shuffles into the bathroom and out of view. 

As he slides the lock into place in the stall, he leans against the door, squeezing his eyes shut. He pulls his backpack around to his front and hugs it as hard as he can against his chest, holding in a groan.

The hell are you doing, hiding in the bathroom?

“Now is not the time, Fantasy Kacchan,” he whispers sharply.

When is it ever, nerd?

“…Fair point.”

The imagined voice fizzles, thankfully. Not that Izuku is actually thankful. He feels horribly alone in this cramped space. His skin is drawn tight over his body, tacky with sweat. He blinks, lashes clumping. The toilet wavers below him. Right, he came in here to pee, not to have a stupid emotional breakdown.

With a sigh, he sets down the backpack and unzips his slacks. “It’s probably weird to pee in the stall instead of the urinal,” he murmurs, lifting the toilet lid. “I get so nervous peeing at the urinals, though. Kacchan calls it being ‘piss shy,’ but I think it’s just being ‘piss stupid.’ Everybody else does it. It should be easy.”

Everything should be easy.

He morosely urinates into the toilet while he considers this unfortunate fact. His mind drifts back to Asui and Uraraka. What is going on out there? They’re both just…just looking at him. Well, sometimes Asui is looking at Uraraka, but otherwise, yeah. Just looking. Eyes. Izuku’s never been amazing with eyes. Faces in general. A disparate collection of features. Eyes, mouth, nose, ears, that little divot between eyebrows that wrinkles or raises. 

When he tries to imagine a face, he sees Kacchan’s. That’s to be expected; Izuku has intentionally committed Kacchan’s face to memory. Red eyes, a narrow nose, ears that poke out a little at the top, the permanent furrow between his blond eyebrows that would form a wrinkle someday if he didn’t have the same glycerin-smooth skin as his mother. Thin lips that often split to reveal bared teeth, the points of his canines. 

Izuku zips himself back up and grabs his backpack, flushing the toilet. He unlatches the stall and shuffles to the sink, washing his hands. He counts as he does. He was taught a specific way to wash his hands as a child and he’s done it the same way ever since. He considers doing it twice for good measure. That’s stalling, though. He’s spent long enough in here, avoiding Uraraka and Asui.

They’re right where he left them. He hesitates a few meters away, his feet dragging to a stop. They’re talking to each other, which is a marked improvement from the stilted silence they’d all suffered under while Izuku had been present. 

Asui’s bland tone is instantly recognizable. “After seeing him, no. I don’t think so.”

Uraraka balls and unballs her straw wrapper. “How can you tell?”

“I know what Midoriya-chan looks like when he’s in love.”

Uraraka groans, fisting her hair. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. He said I looked…”

“He’s like that with everybody.”

Izuku’s heart sinks. He was so caught up in his own mess that he forgot his role in this situation. It might not be a date, but he is still the Boyfriend. (He thinks.)

“Hi, Midoriya-chan,” Asui says loudly. 

He startles, stepping away from the wall. “Oh, hi! Um. I just got back. Just this second. I wasn’t…”

Asui’s eyes are flat. 

Izuku deeply regrets ever getting coffee with Uraraka Ochako. As selfish as it is, he wishes he’d never accepted her first invitation all those weeks ago. He wishes he hadn’t accepted this invitation, either. 

Uraraka stands.

Asui jerks, looking up at her. 

“Deku-kun, would you go on a walk with me?”

“Sure?” he replies. “Ah, Asui-san—”

“Call me Tsuyu,” she says.

“Just us,” Uraraka says.

Izuku’s heart flinches. He sucks in a breath as discreetly as possible. “O-okay.”

“Ochako-chan,” Asui says.

“Can you move out of the booth?” she asks.

Asui looks between Uraraka and Izuku. Her jaw jumps under her skin. Slowly, she scoots out of the booth, allowing Uraraka to get past. “You’re leaving your coffees behind.”

“Oh!” Izuku rocks on his heels. He hisses under his breath at the mistake, forcing his body to still. Stupid. “Uh, yeah, let me take that. Maybe I could give the rest to Kacchan—”

A hand grabs him roughly around his bicep, yanking him toward the door. He squawks, stumbling after Uraraka. Asui watches them depart, unblinking.

“U-Uraraka-san,” Izuku manages once they’re outside. The autumn air stings his freshly-shaven face. Kacchan was right—he should really moisturize regularly. “I’m sorry, but what is this about?”

“I have something to tell you,” she says, still walking. Her stride is long and insistent. 

“Could you let me go…? S-sorry, not trying to be rude, but—”

She lets him go. Izuku wobbles, finding his balance. He plants his shoes solidly on the sidewalk. It’s a thinner trail. They’re beside the river. There’s a park just on the other side. Despite his unease, it is pretty out here. Less stifling than the coffeeshop, certainly. He rarely comes to this part of the city, so sometimes he forgets that there are nice little spots. Kacchan always bugs him to go out more, that life isn’t just work and second work. Maybe he’s right.

“Okay,” Uraraka says. She doesn’t seem to be speaking to him. She keeps walking. “Okay. Okay…”

Izuku trails after her. “Uraraka-san?”

“Sorry about that,” she says. She adjusts the strap of her purse on her shoulder. “I’m just. Pretty nervous. And Tsuyu-chan wasn’t helping.”

“Oh,” he says. He catches up to her. “I’m sorry you’re nervous, Uraraka-san. Is it anything I can help with?”

“Yes, actually.” She taps her fingers against her hip one by one, skipping the thumb. “I’m just trying to figure out the right way to say it…”

Izuku can relate to that. 

“Well, it’s just. I had a dream,” Uraraka says slowly. 

“A dream,” he echoes. The word tastes strange on his tongue. It always has.

“It was about Himiko.”

His steps stutter. Uraraka stops beside him. The river burbles below them, uncaring of the ice prickling under Izuku’s skin. 

“She— She said she wanted me to be happy,” Uraraka says. She picks at the edge of her sleeve.

“That’s. Um.” Good? He doesn’t know what the right answer is. Good? Bad? He never has dreams like that. All his dreams are of dead men or dead boys. Usually they have red eyes. Sometimes the red eyes turn into a different dead boy, choking under Izuku. Why were you so slow, Deku?

“That it’s time to move on,” Uraraka says. “That dream I had… Himiko, she loved you, you know.”

Izuku feels something in his face twitch. He cannot control it. “Ah. Yeah, that was…a big surprise. I’m sorry that things ended how they did.” He wants to kick himself—what a callous way of putting it. Toga is dead. His fault. All of it is his fault. 

Uraraka nods. Her eyes are foggy, like she isn’t really looking at him. Izuku is sympathetic; he often isn’t actually looking at people when he has his eyes on them either. “And she… She loved me.” Uraraka’s voice is thick, like she’s going to cry. 

Izuku’s heart softens. He takes her trembling hand, holding it between both of his. It’s soft, softer than his, the pads at the tips of her fingers squishy. “Uraraka-san…”

She looks down at their hands in a daze. “Right,” she says faintly. “Right.” She swallows. Composes herself. “Deku-kun. I. I wanted to ask you something. Tsuyu-chan thinks it’s a bad idea, but I can’t contain my feelings any longer.”

He holds her hand, offering a crooked smile. Her pain aches into him, makes him dewy-eyed. She needs support. She needs a friend. He wants to be that. He always does. It is his most fundamental desire to be the hand that reaches out. “Whatever you feel is real,” he says gently. “We can face it together.”

Uraraka closes her eyes. Takes a breath. Then she opens them, her brown irises clear and determined. “Deku-kun, will you go out with me?”

…

“Hah?” escapes him, air from a balloon. 

“It just makes sense,” she says. She looks at their hands, then back at him. She clasps her other hand outside of his. “Look at us, right now!”

The collar of Izuku’s button-down is translucent with sweat. He is frozen. 

“We would be so good together. Truthfully, I…” Her voice falters, then returns. “I always had a crush on you in high school.”

“What?”

She shakes her head, smiling ruefully. “You’re so dense, Deku-kun.”

The places where their skin touches feel tacky and unpleasant. Izuku wants to shrink away from her. His brain is click-click-clicking, working furiously to translate this situation into a language he understands. “Wait— Wait, would be… Are you… Uraraka-san, are we not already…?”

“I’d like you to be my boyfriend, Deku-kun.”

So they weren’t before. So it wasn’t that. So he could have… Doesn’t have to…

Relief pools through his veins. He exhales shakily. Oh thank fuck. 

He will have to reject her. Shit. 

“U-um. I mean.”

She smiles encouragingly. 

“I. Really value our friendship, Uraraka-san.”

Her smile falls. 

Izuku feels despicable. Just awful. But he is ultimately selfish. He has limits to his kindness and that is why he is terrible. Well. It’s one reason. Take your pick on the rest.

“No,” she says.

He blinks. “No?”

“No.” She shakes her head, her hair swinging against her cheeks. “You don’t understand. We need to be together, Deku-kun. I get that you’re scared, but I’m not backing down.”

“Backing down from what?” he asks. He truly is confused. Uraraka asked him out (they weren’t dating! hooray!) and he said that wimpy line he learned from a dozen movies and now they’re supposed to awkwardly move on. That’s how it works. 

“Our relationship.” She lifts her chin.

“I thought we didn’t have a relationship? Since you just asked out me out, right?”

“We should, though.”

“Uh?”

“She would have wanted us to be together,” Uraraka says. 

“Toga-san?” escapes Izuku, baffled. 

“Yes.” Her eyes are bright, wet, resolute. 

“You want to get together b-because, because Toga-san—”

“We were her favorite people,” Uraraka says. “I can think of no better way to honor her memory.”

Her memory. 

“She’s gone, though,” Izuku says. 

Uraraka flinches from his words. He doesn’t understand why. He only said the truth. The dead are dead and the living are living. 

“I don’t understand, I’m sorry. I thought people, um. People got together because they love each other. Or for financial reasons. Or because one of them got the other pregnant. Not because of…”

A dead girl.

A dead girl who loved Uraraka Ochako and died in her arms.

“We’re good together, Deku-kun,” she says hotly. “Besides, looking back on it, I can tell that you had a crush on me.”

“A crush?” he squeaks. He isn’t sure if that’s entirely accurate. Not necessarily inaccurate either, it’s just. He had a lot on his mind, even before the war. And then there was the war. And everything after. A graying of everything. Nothing terrible, no. He got much better than he had any right to receive. But a crush on Uraraka Ochako. He can’t really confirm that. He certainly hasn’t in recent history; he hasn’t spoken to her since…

“High school,” she says.

“High school? Uraraka-san, I’m sorry, but that was years ago.”

“And? A lot of things have stayed from that time,” she says. “Does the memory of Hi—those who died mean nothing to you?”

“Of course not,” Izuku says shakily. “Of course not. They mean everything to me. I think about it every day. But Uraraka-san, this idea you have, this dream about Toga-san. I don’t think that—”

She grabs the front of his suit and lurches forward. 

Their foreheads clack, dazing Izuku as he skids. Then it’s wet. 

Very wet. 

On his mouth. 

Soft and wet and moving. 

Against. His mouth.

It reminds him of salmon sashimi, only warm and a little rougher. The way his mother tried to feed it to him when he kept his mouth closed, the soft body squishing against his mouth. He puked, that day. All over the table.

Izuku realizes that it is Uraraka Ochako’s tongue. Her open mouth. On him. An open mouth on his mouth, trying to get his mouth to open up. 

She’s kissing him.

His body twitches. Every shudder and flinch he’s held in snaps in this moment, his muscles tensing and unraveling in his right arm, fingers tightening, thumb slotted over his fingers, elbow winding back. 

Releasing.

Uraraka stumbles with a cry, palm flying to her face. 

Izuku gasps. His face is wet. It’s on his lips, under his nose, his chin. He shivers, wiping roughly at his skin. It’s sticky, now. It feels gross. He feels so fucking gross. Uraraka Ochako just put her mouth on him. She just kissed him. With full tongue. 

Uraraka Ochako just kissed Izuku without his permission. 

Uraraka Ochako just kissed Izuku because she thought a dead girl would want her to.

“You— Are very messed up,” leaves him, startled.

Uraraka clutches at her swelling face.

“I mean— Shit, this looks so bad. I just punched you in the face, but Uraraka-san, I don’t know why you’d try to kiss me without asking first? And then you said all of that about…about Toga-san and it’s just. Eurgh, wow, that’s really, really sad and just sounds kinda extremely deranged? Like— I’m so sorry, that sounds so mean, but it sounds like you have something to work through and I can’t be the vector that you use to…to heal, you know? Like I’m my own person too, with my…my own t-t-trauma, or whatever you want to call it, and I just can’t take that on for you, it doesn’t sound healthy for either of us. Even All Might could only hold up a skyscraper for seven hours when he was at his peak! Everyone has limitations.”

Her eyes are wide and wet. Looking at her has always felt a little too uncomfortably like looking into a mirror. A much prettier reflection greets him, but a reflection all the same. —Not to imply that Uraraka is an extension of Izuku without her own interiority (he has some degree of theory of mind despite what Hound Dog says, thank you very much) but that they… They just.

They look so similar. He means it literally. 

Izuku means a lot of things literally. All the time. 

He sees himself reflected in her eyes. Sees her reflected in his eyes in the reflection. “Oh my gosh,” he breathes. “We’re narrative foils.”

“Wh-what?” Uraraka says. Her voice is thin.

“We’re narrative foils. As in, our characters reflect one another.” He taps his head. “We’re totally distinct people, of course, with lots of differences, but narratively speaking—”

“Deku-kun.”

Izuku stops. Feels aggrieved by the swelling mass of her cheek. What the hell is wrong with him? He punched his friend! 

She took his first kiss.

Such a thing never meant anything to him; he never cared about kissing or relationships. Truthfully, the concept of kissing has always skeeved him out a little. But in this moment, it stings. He touches his lips, feels the damp memory of her on them. Feels a strange, gaping sense of grief. It felt awful and he hated it and he would have preferred to have learned this fact with someone else. 

A hand tangling into his hair, palm warm and solid. Breath against his face. That’s fine. Just another weird thing about you. We don’t gotta kiss. I don’t give a shit, nerd. ’S bad hygiene, anyways.

His eyes burn as tears bubble past his lids. “Oh,” escapes him, choked up. “Oh, you took my first kiss and I didn’t want you to. Oh, this sucks.”

Uraraka is blurry in his vision. A mosaic. “Deku-kun.”

“I’m sorry, Uraraka-san. I’m sorry that I did that. I never kissed anybody before and I really hated it. My body just moved on its own.”

The Uraraka blob moves. Something soft presses into his hand. A handkerchief. He lifts it to his face, sniffling. It smells like petals and lotion. He blows his nose into it.

“I’m sorry I punched you in the face,” he cries. “I’m really sorry.”

“Deku-kun, I’m sorry.”

He wipes his eyes on the snotty handkerchief. Uraraka comes back into focus, cheek red, lower lip wobbling. 

“I was so caught up in what I could do for Himiko, I didn’t think about…” She swallows. “You’re different than I remember.”

“Huh?”

“Just. In my head, you were different. But seeing you again, I realize that this is just how you are. You’re really awkward and weird.”

He cringes.

She grimaces. “Not like— Sorry, I wasn’t trying to insult you. I just mean, in my head I was so focused on this idea I had of you, I think. And this idea I had of how I could give Himiko peace. But… The real you is a lot uglier than the you in my head.” She stops, eyes wide. “Not an insult! You’re just. Complicated and real. A person. And I wasn’t thinking of you like a person. That’s why I. Why I’m apologizing.”

He wipes his nose again. 

“You’re right. You’re your own person. I shouldn’t…use you like that. I hadn’t thought of it in those terms, not really.” Her eyes are off to the side. Her body language is small. Izuku doesn’t know what it means, but he knows it means something. She’s communicating with more than her words. “I knew that before, I think. But time and… Everything happened and I forgot. And I. I started seeing you as a sort of ideal you never were. Even though I should have known better, I— I did know better.” She blinks slowly, eyes foggy. “I wasn’t being kind to you. I’m sorry.”

Character regression. Ah. Atypical in most tightly written fiction, but their story is clearly not one of the classics.

“You need help, Uraraka-san,” Izuku says. Softens his voice, tries to express his concern and worry. Hopefully he even half-succeeds. “And I want to support you however I can. As your friend, though. Because I think what you probably need right now is a friend, not a…um. A b-boyfriend.”

She gives a short nod. Something feels wrong about the motion, but Izuku is illiterate. Izuku is stupid.

“I was diagnosed with autism,” escapes him.

Uraraka looks at him again. 

“Sorry, I, uh. Don’t know why I said that… Well, I guess it’s ‘cause I was holding it in because I felt like it was inappropriate to tell you a bunch of stuff because I was afraid that we might have been dating, but now that I know that we’re not dating I feel like I can talk to you as a friend again but also it’s been a long time and we are not as close anymore and also you’re going through this huge thing and we had this tense moment and I just punched you so I definitely shouldn’t have said that even if I feel like that former blockage to my honesty is removed, so—”

“Deku-kun,” she says. He stops. “You’re a very kind person.”

He cocks his head. “Ah?”

She gives him a weak smile. “I think I’d like to be friends again. But I need some time to figure myself out. And…I guess you do too.”

“Oh, um. Yeah, I guess. I don’t really feel like I have much going on…”

“That’s what I felt, too.”

Right. Narrative parallels and all that. Themes and such.

He gives a short nod. “I’ll be honest, um, I don’t really know how to end this interaction, but I think we need some space? Or something.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Probably.”

“Right, well, uh.” He hands her back her handkerchief. She pinches it, holding it away from her. Izuku bows, wiping his damp palms on his slacks in the process. “Thank you for getting coffee with me, Uraraka-san. I’m happy to be your friend. Let’s stay in touch.”

When he lifts his head, he finds her giving him an odd expression. “You really don’t need to smooth over this. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“They’re just stock phrases I use,” he answers. “I’m trying to end the conversation.”

“…Right,” she says.

“Goodbye, Uraraka-san. I mean it, though; we should stay in touch. Um. Maybe after a bit of time. But I care about you and I want you in my life. You’re a dear friend—”

“I get it, Deku-kun,” she says, not unkindly. “Goodbye.”

He nods. Syllables clump against the backs of his teeth. He holds them in. Goodbye should be sufficient. He’s out of approved words. All used up. He wipes his mouth on the back of his wrist and turns away, walking. Left foot, then right, then repeat. Uraraka grows smaller behind him. Presumably. He doesn’t look. He just walks. Thinks about how hard it is to end things. Thinks about how the right words are never intuitive. Thinks about how much he hated the feel of her mouth. Thinks about Toga Himiko. Thinks about…about Shigaraki Tomura. Shimura Tenko. Thinks about dust. Thinks about Kacchan’s fingers in his hair. Thinks about Kacchan’s body over his, how it cradled him. Thinks about how those hands are the safest thing in this terrifying world.

Thinks about how he has no idea how to end this scene.

Cut to black or something, he thinks. A line break.

Yeah. Just add a line break here.

He finds himself in front of his mother’s door. This is not strange, though it’s hardly common. Izuku hates to bother his mother—he hates to bother anybody. Kacchan’s on-duty, though, so he has to foist his selfish woes onto somebody. He can’t help it.

The door is familiar, off-white, scuffed on the bottom corner from years of shoes catching it before it closes. It has history. The large part of him—the evil part of him—wishes he’d just called Kacchan. Kacchan understands him. That’s precisely the problem, though. Kacchan understands him too well, understands him on a level he’s not comfortable being understood. 

What is there to even say? I got coffee with Uraraka-san. She wants to date me because a dead girl asked her to in a dream. She kissed me. 

She took my first kiss, Kacchan.

It feels too large to say. And maybe too silly. Izuku is twenty-five. He should have had his first kiss at least thirty years ago. Things like that don’t really matter, and he hated the experience regardless of the circumstances. And yet it hurts to think about. And it hurts so much worse to think about telling Kacchan.

Kacchan would probably make fun of him over the strange sensitivity. Or no. No, he wouldn’t. The truth is, Izuku knows what Kacchan would say. He knows the look Kacchan would get in his eyes. That wet, angry cast they gain when Kacchan gets upset for him. He sees it far more often than he’d like. 

Part of him worries—hopes, selfishly—that Kacchan would also be hurt.

Hurt! Izuku wants Kacchan to feel hurt that Uraraka kissed him. Hurt in his stead, perhaps, or… No, it’s something else, something knotted in the center of Izuku’s chest, something he’s never dared to name because all the names for whatever this is all feel superfluous. Because all the names for whatever this is are short and facile and have expectations around them. 

Because Izuku’s emotions never line up neatly with any definition. 

Anyways, he feels deeply unkind when he thinks about telling Kacchan. He feels selfish and strange and mournful and grossly hopeful. So he does not tell Kacchan. This familiar door, with all its associated quiet miseries, is safer. Same lock, same key, same creak of the hinges as he nudges it open. 

“I hope I’m not intruding,” Izuku says, toeing off his shoes in the genkan. It’s familiar, yet changed. The same entryway, but from a different height. “Um, I figured it’s been a while since I’ve been over! And I texted you, but you didn’t respond. Though your shoes are here.” 

Several pairs of shoes are jumbled together in the entrance. Izuku recognizes his own old pair in the mess. They’re hard to miss. His chest aches at the sight. 

“So, ah, good afternoon, Okaasan! I stopped by the shop on my way over and grabbed you some of those wagashi you like. Very, um, pretty, y’know, seasonal…” He shoves his feet into his house slippers, in the same spot as they’ve always been. He keeps waiting for her to move them, but she never does. “It’s a nice day outside, isn’t it? I had such a nice walk through the neighborhood. It’s starting to get colder, but I like how the wind feels. And I sweat less! Though I sweat a lot today. Sweating is so annoying. Aizawa-sensei always tells me to cut my hair in the summer because it’s bothering me, but I can’t get my hair cut because, ah…” He doesn’t like how it feels. Which is stupid. He’s stupid. “Anyways, Kacchan says it’s fine as it is, even if he says I need to brush it better. But Ashido-san says not to brush curly hair? Sorry, I’m rambling, haha, I guess I do that, uh. All the time, really, but especially when I’m nervous. I dunno, what do you think, Okaasan?” 

No reply. Not that Izuku gives her any time to provide one. His mouth keeps going. Going and going, that stupid thing. 

“Sorry, um, yeah, haha. I had a kind of crazy day off, actually. N-not that I just want to talk about me or my problems! But it was very strange and, um. I dunno, maybe it’d be nice to take my mind off of it for a little bit? I thought about calling Kacchan, but it felt a little. Ah, it’s hard to say. Anyways, you know Uraraka-san? She went to high school with me. We sort of drifted apart, but she started texting me recently… And we, ah, we met up. For coffee. With Asui-san. Or Tsuyu-san, sorry, she prefers that people call her Tsuyu, though that’s a bit intimate, isn’t it? I don’t really call people by their first names. It’s hard to tell when any of that stuff progresses, y’know? Relationships. I try to err on the side of politeness just in case. Kacchan says it’s because I have… Actually, that’s a. Another thing, um. I wasn’t going to bring it up with you, but I guess it’s coming out now? And I’m sorry about that, because I try to keep this kind of stuff, ah, away from anybody. I don’t want to cause you any more grief than I already do.”

The hallway is narrow and silent. Izuku’s steps are uneven, sliding along the wood floor. The box of wagashi teeters in his grip. His palm is sweaty, pressing against the wall. His nape itches. His mouth feels rancid. 

“Actually— Yeah. It’s not worth discussing. But, um. I might have a little more free time. Because, uh, um, do you remember that time I was in the hospital? I mean the recent time. Or— The second-most recent time. Yeah. Back in August.” His steps pad, house slippers slapping against his heels. The space opens into the living room. It is not that long—only a few steps—yet this walk feels endless. “They had me go in for a, er, a psych eval for that. Which is silly! I was fine. I promise. It’s nothing to be worried about, but, uh, there might have some consequences? To that. By which I mean—” He stops.

His mother stares at him from the living room low table. All Might stares with her.

Wait— All Might?

Izuku yelps, covering his face with his arms. The wagashi clatters to the floor. “All Might, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize you were here!”

“I-it’s fine, my boy! I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“I’m sorry, Izuku,” his mother says. “I meant to say something, but you were still talking.”

“No, that’s— That’s my fault, Okaasan, I am so sorry.”

“Izuku, please,” she says. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything—”

“No, I’m sorry because I just kept prattling—”

“There’s no need for apologies.” All Might holds up his hands. “What was it that you were saying, Midoriya-shounen? Something about a psych eval?”

Izuku’s body locks up. It stiffens in parts, like drying mud. 

“Oh, Izuku,” his mother says, voice aching. 

“That’s, uh. The psychiatrists—I mean, I had an initial evaluation and then I insisted on a second opinion because I doubted the validity of the first—don’t have the full picture. So I don’t. I don’t think they’re right. So. Uh.”

“Well, they suspended your license,” All Might says.

Izuku’s teeth click shut. 

His mother’s eyes grow very wide.

“H-how… Where did you hear that?” he manages.

All Might gives him a sheepish grimace, rubbing at his shoulder. “I happen to be on some Hero Commission administrative memo lists.”

Izuku’s mouth works stupidly. No sound escapes. Where before he had a million useless words, here he has nothing. His throat is a faucet that only knows flood or drought. 

“How long did you know about this?” his mother asks All Might.

“Ah. Maybe an hour or so…”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“I figured your son was the more appropriate bearer of that news. Uh.” All Might shoots Izuku a helpless look. “You did get your license suspended. Did you know that?”

“I…” He licks his lips. “There’s just been a misunderstanding.”

“What kind of misunderstanding?” His mother’s words are soft. Always so soft. Wet eyes and a quiet, tremulous voice. When she blinks, Izuku blinks. He feels his lashes clump with the motion. “Izuku?”

Suspended. It continues to ring in his head. Izuku’s broken rules before, plenty of times. But always in the name of a nobler cause. There is no nobler cause here. He got a diagnosis twice and then he flipped the Hero Commission president’s table on him. 

“I— I might have autism.” Izuku’s voice cracks. “And post-traumatic stress disorder.”

She stares at him. 

His arms flop against his sides. “That’s what. What the psychiatrists said.”

The room is silent. Not actually silent, but the kind of quiet that people call ‘silent.’ To Izuku, it’s loud. The high whine of the refrigerator, the hiss of the heat pump, the shift of All Might’s socked feet against the floor. Each sound crackles in his ears, insists on itself. 

He bends, the insides of his slacks scraping his knees, the seams digging into the bulge of his thighs. He picks up the box of wagashi. They’re all jumbled now, no longer lined up neatly. They had looked so pretty before, but he wrecked it. They were right and now they’re wrong. His eyes sting. 

Is he seriously crying over wagashi?

A touch to his shoulder jolts him, his elbow instinctively rising in self-defense. It stops just short of his mother’s chest. He blinks, glancing at her hand. It’s hard to feel through his suit jacket, but he feels it still. She reaches out. Pressure tugs on the wagashi; it floats from his fingers into hers. “That was very nice of you, Izuku,” she says. “Thank you for the gift.”

He stares dumbly at her, squatting on her floor while she kneels beside him. “I… I always try to be nice,” leaves him. Which is a weird thing to say. It follows none of the dialogue trees he’s painstakingly constructed. 

Her eyes quirk. “I know you do.”

Izuku’s knees thud against the floor. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sor—”

“No more apologies,” All Might says. “Please.”

Izuku swallows thickly. “Right. Sor— Right.”

“What happened in August?” he then asks gently. “I remember you were hospitalized for a time. It had been very severe.” Izuku catches the pinch between his mother’s eyes at All Might’s words. “But it wasn’t the only time this has happened to you. Was there something specific that caused them to evaluate you?”

“Kacchan,” Izuku says. 

His mother cocks her head. “What?”

“Kacchan, he told them. That’s why they know.”

“Know what?”

He doesn’t want to explain this. There’s very little to say and what there is to say will only cause her further grief. Hasn’t he given her enough of that for a lifetime?

“Izuku,” she says, fingers squeezing his shoulder through the barrier of his suit, “please.”

“I saw Shimura Tenko in the dust,” leaves him. “In a. A building we had evacuated, I saw him. After I was injured by some debris, he, uh, appeared to me. I tried to save him. So, uh. Yeah, I guess it was some kind of hallucination. Apparently PTSD can cause that. And then Kacchan dragged me out. But I was still being stupid, and all the noises of the first responders caused me to enter some kind of, I dunno, crazy state. I was being stupid.”

Silence again. Or what people consider silence. Normal people. Good people.

“Nobody got hurt, though,” he says quickly. “Nobody died.”

“Izuku,” his mother says. Oh no, she’s all choked up. Now he’s going to get choked up.

“It was fine,” he insists. “It was fine. Everything turned out fine.”

“You got hurt,” she says. “You were in surgery for six hours! Your— The doctor told me you had a punctured lung.” Her throat hitches. “That you were drowning in your own blood.”

He aches at her tone. Feels absolutely despicable. In this moment, he wishes—selfishly—that he’d died saving Tenko. That a more deserving person got to live. That Izuku didn’t have to worry about disappointing another person ever again.

“What?” His mother’s eyes are sharp.

Izuku numbly feels for his lips. Open. Shit.

“Izuku.” The anger in her quickly fizzles, doused by tears. “Oh, Izuku. Oh, don’t say such things to your mother. I’m the reason you’re like this,” she sobs. “It’s me. It’s my fault.”

“What?” His head lifts, alarmed. “Okaasan, no! No, it’s not. None of this is your fault at all. It’s all me—”

“I raised you. Of course it’s my fau—”

“No more taking fault,” All Might says.

“Oh.” Izuku startles. “Sorr—”

“No sorries.”

“…Right.” He clears his throat. “Right. I don’t want to blame anyone for any of this. What happened to me or… Or the autism thing. Or the PTSD or… Or any of the ways that I’m defective. Okaasan, I never want you to feel like it’s your fault I was born this way.”

“Izuku,” she says dumbly.

“I’m— If I really am autism and have stuff like, ah, like trauma, it’s not on you. I just want to stress that. Just like being quir—” His voice stumbles. “Quirkless. It’s not your fault that I’m disabled. Sometimes this stuff just happens. It’s not on you or Otousan. I am worried about it, I won’t lie; I’m scared that I could lose my job because I’m so worthless at it already. I mean, I got suspended, so. I already lost my shot at heroics despite everyone’s kindness and generosity, all because of my own stupidity, so it only follows that I’ll lose my teaching position. If I have autism on top of the quirklessness, then it only makes sense that nobody would want to hire me. I don’t blame them, either. You know how in nature, the weak don’t survive? It’s kind of like that—”

His mother grabs his face. He stops speaking. 

“Izuku,” she chokes, petting his hair back from his forehead. Her eyes are bright with tears. “Please stop saying things like that about my baby.”

He blinks. “Who’s your baby?”

“You.”

His brow furrows. “I’m twenty-five?”

His mom shakes her head. “You’ll never stop being my baby, Izuku.”

A large hand settles on his shoulder. He jumps, finding All Might kneeling beside them. “My boy,” he says, voice heavy, “I have to agree with your mother. It breaks my heart to hear you talk about yourself in this way.”

“I’m just saying stuff that’s true?”

“You’re not,” he says. And, well. If All Might says it, it’s probably got some backing. 

His mom keeps stroking his hair. It feels nice. She used to do it a lot when he as a kid. When they’d sit on the couch together at night, he’d grab her hand and put it on his head and snuggle against her hip. He feels bad about that now. She was probably tired after a long day of work and he still bugged her. 

He wouldn’t hug her if she wore certain textured shirts, would be glued to her when she wore others. She never chided him for it. At night, as exhausted as she surely was, she just held him and pet his head. If he squirmed too much, she’d just readjust him until he settled. On bad days, she’d watch the same All Might shows with him even though they’d both seen them so many times. When he got nervous on the train, she’d sing the All Might Power Hour theme song with him under their breaths for the whole trip, be it ten minutes or twenty-five. She probably hated all of that, yet she did it. He doesn’t understand. He must have been such a burden.

“You were not a burden,” his mom says thickly. He must have said all that out loud. Or half of it, at least. He does that. He doesn’t know why he does that. “You have never been a burden, Izuku.”

His arms are curled against his chest. He doesn’t remember doing that. He does it all the time, though, it’s true. Kacchan was right. 

“Okaasan,” he says dumbly, “I have au…autism.”

“I know,” she says. “I know that now. I don’t know what that means, exactly, but I am not ashamed of you at all. You have overcome so much in your life. At times, yes, I still can’t help but wish you’d listened to me better, growing up. But Izuku, you are a wonderful young man. I am incredibly proud of you. This autism thing, it’s another part of you.”

“I lost my hero license. I’m not a good teacher. Uraraka-san kissed me and I punched her.”

“You are so much more than your careers,” his mom says. “So much more than any of that. Izuku, I care about you regardless of— What? You what?”

“I, uh. I punched Uraraka-san,” he says weakly. “She kissed me and it startled me and also it felt gross, so I. My body just. I’m not really sure.”

She stares at him, brow furrowed in a little divot above her open mouth. 

“One thing at a time,” All Might says, strained. 

“Right,” Izuku’s mother says slowly. 

“It was my first kiss.”

“One thing at a time,” All Might repeats, weaker. 

“Oh, Izuku.” His mom returns to petting back his hair. She shakes her head. “Talk to me, okay? Tell me about these things, so they don’t all build up into one big thing. You should have told me.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he chokes out. “But I did. I do. All the time.”

“I’m your mother, Izuku.” They’re both crying again. Always crying. “I care about you. More than anything in this world. I want to know how you’re doing. That means the bad stuff, too.”

“But I’m hurting you—”

“You’re hurting,” she stresses. “Give me a chance to try to help you, please. I can’t stand the thought of you suffering alone. Izuku, please. Talk to me.”

“She’s right,” All Might says. “When you can’t carry the load alone, the rest of us want to step in to help you. The sooner you finally learn this lesson, the better, Midoriya-shounen. You taught me that.”

Izuku can’t bother people but by not bothering them, he bothers them. It makes no sense to him, and yet it must be true despite the failure of logic. How come everyone else seems to be on the same page about these things, but Izuku never is? It’s not fair. None of it feels even remotely fair. 

“It’s not,” All Might says. “You’re right. It’s not fair. You’ve struggled so much. And I’m sorry about that. I wasn’t always the mentor you needed, I know that.”

“N-no, All Might,” he manages. “No, you tried your best. And. And I made my choices. That’s how I’m here. I just. I…”

“You’ll come out of this stronger,” All Might says. “I’ll talk to Hawks. We’ll figure this out.”

“I don’t deserve that,” he chokes out. “I— No, I did a bad thing. ’S my fault.”

“No, Izuku,” his mom says. “You didn’t—”

Izuku tucks his face against her shoulder. “I flipped his table.”

She sucks in a breath. Holds it. “One thing at a time.”

“...Right,” All Might says.

Izuku feels strangely lonely. Left out. He feels exiled from the whole club of humanity, like they all speak some language or are in on some big joke and he’s apart from it. It’s Kacchan shoving him off the swings again, smiling while the other boys hit Izuku, how they all laughed. It was funny, but it wasn’t funny to Izuku. While the years have brought change and the tenor of the joke has shifted, the punchline has not. 

Kacchan sees it too, he knows. It’s obvious in the wet cast of his eyes, how his face grows pale sometimes. Kacchan sees the joke and he sees the butt of it. Kacchan sees all sorts of shit when he sees Izuku. When Izuku sees Kacchan, though, he just sees Kacchan. 

All the parts of a face, a thick throat, wide shoulders, strong arms and hands and back. Smooth skin and a rough voice. When Izuku sees Kacchan, he sees everything he knows about Kacchan and he sees all the weird ways he wants to touch Kacchan that don’t make any sense in any context. Rubbing his head against him. Lying under his body. Chewing on his stupidly chewable elbow. Pressing his face against Kacchan’s chest and feeling his heart through the skin. Winding their fingers together, breathing in the air expelled from his mouth, but not kissing him. I don’t have a word for how I feel for you because all the words are taken. I don’t feel emotions like the television people do. I don’t feel emotions like the real people in front of me do, either. I’m all wrong. You’re proof that I’m all wrong, Kacchan. And I know you see it. You see it better than anyone.

Izuku sniffles. He feels his lower lip wobble. He pulls away from the hollow of his mother’s shoulder. Still, she holds him closer. “I don’t want to have autism and PTSD,” escapes him, stuffy and plaintive. He sounds childish. “I want to be normal.”

His mom’s face screws up into a pinched, desperate shape. Her fingers tangle in his hair, cradling his skull. “Oh, Izuku.” She sounds lost. “I want you to be happy.”

All Might’s long arm awkwardly curls around his shoulders. “That’s all anyone wants of you,” he says. 

Maybe it’s true. All Might’s saying it, so it very well could be. Or truth-adjacent. But even if it’s all anyone wants of Izuku, there stands an exception.

That feels like the last thing I want, he almost says. He doesn’t. He knows he doesn’t. His lips are closed. I don’t care if I’m happy. I don’t care, I don’t care. I want to be useful. I want to be good. When will I finally be good?

“I like you just the way you are,” his mom says against the crown of his head. Her voice is muffled and wet and soft, but it cuts him all the same. “Just the way you are, Izuku. Everyone who knows you likes you just how you are. I wish you could see it.”

You’re totally blind. 

Maybe Kacchan’s right. Maybe his mom, too. All Might. But still, if Izuku can’t see it, how can he be expected to respond to whatever this is? 

“Just the way you are,” she repeats thickly, petting his hair. It feels nice. It’s probably embarrassing. She doesn’t mind, though. All Might doesn’t say anything mean about it, either. Just tugs both of them closer.

Izuku sniffles, burrowing deeper into their arms. They’re all different heights. It’s awkward. His mom and All Might hug very tightly, though, just how he likes it, so that makes it perfect. He likes it when people close to him touch him. His mom, All Might, Kacchan. He’s selfish like that. Touch is the most direct communication he knows. 

A lot of touch is horrible. Punches and kicks, low blows that knock the wind from him. Uraraka’s mouth, a wet, taking thing. Sometimes touch that is good suddenly turns intolerable. Shirts that start the day soft and somehow end the day with the consistency of sandpaper. Kacchan rubbing his shoulder, a glad thing until suddenly Izuku randomly wants to tear his skin off. 

Here, though, feels right. A hug, pressure around his body, the scent and feel of his mother and All Might. Weird things to notice, probably. It’s weird to talk about how people smell or how tightly they hug. Probably about as weird as noting the cotton textures of their shirts. It doesn’t feel weird to Izuku, though; it feels as natural as anything. 

He lets it stay that way.

Air through his hair, his fingers, the crevices of a multi-billion-yen suit that makes Izuku feel like all his childhood fantasies came alive. It’s called an accessibility aid. This is a shameful thing. Izuku is a shameful thing. Yet so high in the air—just like he always dreamt—he’s above it. 

When he was a child, he fantasized of manifesting a quirk and pursuing the path of a pro hero. As he grew older, the hopes for a quirk died, but the dream remained. To be a steadying presence. To be a hand reaching out. I’m here.

I like you just the way you are. In the moment, it had stung to hear. He supposes it’s much as a promise as a threat. His mother. She’s put up with so much and yet she insists she was glad to, that she wants to continue to hold him up where she can. 

Izuku isn’t perfect. Far from it. He’s weird and stubborn and selfish and occasionally petty. He has autism. And yet, incomprehensibly, he is loved. He’d left his mother’s apartment in a haze. Felt like his bones were trembling branches fashioned into a boy, more puppet than person. Climbed the stairs to his apartment, shed his uncomfortable clothes like an overfed snake shucking its molt, and slid into his bed with his backpack clasped between his arms.

He doesn’t remember how long he was like that. Everything was kind of dim and fuzzy. He watched his videos. Wrapped his blankets as tight as they would go around his body and blocked out the light with a pillow over his head. The sun was still out when he rose from his little cocoon, not even close to setting. He tugged on his most comfortable clothes and he shuffled into his bathroom and he rinsed his mouth in mouthwash four times. Then he sat on his couch with a packet of rice crackers and ate each of them slowly, one-by-one, and sipped water. 

Then he grabbed his mech suit and he went flying.

This all feels thoughtless in retrospect, but that’s only because Izuku doesn’t remember what precise calculations his hollow head had been performing at the time. Everything had felt very necessary and he trusts that it was. 

I want you to be happy. 

He tried. For the first in a very long time, he tried. And it led him here, cheeks wind burnt and aching with the stretch of his lips. His eyes sting with tears he doesn’t bother brushing away. He’s so high up—he’s flying—and that is magical. Not of his own power, but the result is the same. He’s soaring through the sky, as natural as a bird.

A bang tears through the air. Izuku glances back to find a blond bullet ricocheting toward him. 

“You idiot!” Kacchan yells, voice whipped away by the wind. “You can’t just take your suit out for a joy ride! There’s fucking laws and shit!”

“It’s not a quirk!” he replies, adrenaline singing through his bones as he whirls through the air. 

“No but you’re a flying vehicle, dumbass! This is unauthorized airspace!”

“Yes! I can fly, Kacchan! Isn’t that amazing?”

Kacchan opens his mouth. The pink of his tongue, the white of his teeth. His eyes are red and bright, skin smooth and clear. His pale hair ruffles against the side of his head, buffeted by the air. He is a very handsome man. This is not the first time Izuku has recognized Kacchan’s beauty and it will not be the last. 

He wants to touch Kacchan. Aches with it. This is not a new feeling; it is worn into the marrow of his body. An invisible instinct, as basic as breathing. The impulse has never sought explanation or justification. Izuku’s never applied a word to it, never felt any was adequate. 

But Kacchan is very beautiful and heartbreakingly touchable and wonderfully pissed off in this moment, yes. 

“Land your tin can ass before I make you!”

“I never thought I’d fly,” he says, his voice swallowed by the wind. Still, Kacchan’s face shifts as though he heard him. He couldn’t have possibly. 

“Land!” Kacchan barks. His explosive radii are a lot more consistent. So impressive.

—Yep, he just singed the tip of Izuku’s hair. Alright.

“Kacchan, knock it off!” Izuku pats out the smoldering with a scowl. 

“Then land, you bastard!”

“Where?”

“Some fuckass rooftop, just land!”

Izuku’s head whips around. Everything is so far away. “Okay, okay, I’m looking, um—”

“Die!”

“I can’t die and land, Kacchan, I gotta do one or the other!”

Kacchan’s knee slams into his side, sending him barreling down. 

Fifteen seconds later, Izuku finds himself barely catching himself from landing face-first into the top of an apartment building situated above a Lawson’s. He gasps, activating Float’s reverse thrusters. “Kacchan!” he shrieks, rolling onto his knees. “I could have gotten seriously hurt!”

“Serves you right for flying around unauthorized, doing fucking cartwheels in the air!” Kacchan lands heavily on his feet. “Get the fuck up and face me.”

“Are we fighting?” Izuku scrambles, gloves clacking against his suit as he instinctively tries to brush himself off. 

“Oh we’re fighting alright,” Kacchan says darkly. “Hardest fucking battle of my life.”

“Ah? I don’t think sparring on a rooftop is a good idea. Couldn’t we do this at your agency’s gym?”

“It ain’t that kind of fight,” Kacchan says. “Why the fuck were you out there?”

“Uh, I wanted to fly.”

“You wanted to fly.”

Izuku shifts uncomfortably. “Yeah. So I… So I did.”

“That’s not like you,” Kacchan says. “You don’t do shit like that. You usually have another reason. Was there a cat stuck in a tree or what?”

“N-no. No, I. I just.” Izuku swallows. “I did it just for me. For, um, selfish reasons.”

“Selfish reasons.”

“Yes.” He shifts, fingers flexing in his gloves. “To make myself happy,” he clarifies.

Kacchan gives him a weird look.

“I. I wanted to be happy. My mom told me… —That’s why I did it. And I was. So. Mission accomplished?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Kacchan bares his teeth, clapping stray sparks from his palms. “You just took a massive risk doing that. You wanna go flying, sure, whatever. Check the damn airways before you jump out there. Fuck, Izuku, don’t be stupid.”

Izuku shrinks, tapping metal fingers together. “That’s a really good point. I’m sorry, Kacchan. I think I was being stupid. I don’t even have authorization to use this suit, probably. That was incredibly reckless of me—”

“Fuuuck,” Kacchan groans, looking to the sky. “Not this bullshit again. I can’t chew you out without you self-flagellating all over the place. That wasn’t my point!”

Izuku gnaws at the inside of his check, flesh squelching between his molars. 

Kacchan points at him. “You.”

“Me.”

“Making yourself happy is good. I’m not against that. Obviously. But there are better ways to do what you’re doing than acting fucking crazy.”

Izuku stares blankly at him. “I was acting crazy?”

Kacchan rolls his eyes. “Yes. You do this. Act all straight-laced and then suddenly pull some weird bullshit. Come on, you’re smart. Turn your nerd brain on yourself sometime.”

“Oh. Um. Well, I… Uh. You said there’s a better way?”

“Yeah,” Kacchan says flatly. “Get to know yourself. Talk to the people around you. Practice being comfortable in your own skin. Go to fucking therapy.”

“I’m trying, Kacchan. I want to try.” The fact that they’re having this conversation on the roof of a Lawson’s does not escape Izuku. “I want to be better! I want to be better to the people in my life, better to myself! It’s probably going to take some time, though, or something. I don’t know. I don’t know how to ‘know’ myself.”

“That’s good,” Kacchan says, though he sounds more angry than anything. Hot words and a hot face. Kacchan’s face is always hot. For various reasons. —Not the point. “Are you gonna take this seriously or are you just gonna wimp out and half-ass it?”

“I’m not gonna half-ass it,” Izuku snaps. “I don’t half-ass anything, Kacchan. You know that.”

“Yeah? Then you think you can handle a real conversation right now? You and me? You think you got that in you?”

“Of course! I can take you anytime, anywhere, Kacchan. You know that.”

“Fine,” Kacchan says. “What’s your favorite color?”

Izuku blinks. “My favorite color?”

“Yeah. Let’s go basic. Basic as fuck-all. Your favorite color. Tell me.”

“Uh.” He gropes for comprehension. “What?”

“This is a real conversation, Izuku,” Kacchan says. “You say you can have one. I’m throwing you what should be an easy one. Your favorite color. Say it.”

A real conversation. This is a test. Izuku is good at tests. Certain kinds of tests. He’s awful at other kinds, so it’s not a great generalization to make. He was trying to hype himself up, but now he’s just left with doubt. Great. 

“It is taking you way too long to answer this. Come on.”

Izuku’s mind frantically darts through possible responses. There are so many colors he could say. Oh, Kacchan’s looking at him now. He’s run out of time. “Ah, all colors are nice—”

“Are you fucking for real, right now?”

“Yes? Kacchan, I don’t think this conversation makes a lot of sense.”

“You gotta find yourself,” Kacchan says. “You gotta stop running from who you are and face it. This is part of that. All of this shit. You can’t even admit you got a favorite color; how the fuck do you expect to deal with your garbage mental health?”

“Find myself,” Izuku echoes. “I— I’m not having a midlife crisis, Kacchan. I’m only twenty-five.”

“Yeah, maybe you should have a crisis. That’s what I’m saying.”

“Besides,” he says. “I know my favorite color.” Statistically, the most favorite color is blue. “It’s blue.”

“Wrong,” Kacchan bites out. “It’s red.”

Izuku reels back. “Red? That’s not a popular color.”

“Pop— What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I read about the most popular colors,” he explains, “and the most popular favorite color is blue. I think pink was second?”

“That is stupid as fuck.”

“It’s not stupid. It’s statistics, Kacchan.”

“Your favorite colors are red and yellow,” Kacchan says. “They’re ugly as shit together, but you love it.”

“No, I also like blue—”

“Yeah, with red and yellow. Because of All Might. Because you’ve been fucking fixated on All Might and heroes your whole damn life.”

Izuku’s teeth click. 

“You like red and yellow best,” Kacchan says. “Awful combination, but guess what I think about whenever I see it?”

“Fast food–?”

“Izuku.”

“I don’t know, Kacchan,” he snaps. “I don’t know because I’m terrible at that sort of stuff. Predicting what people mean kind of stuff. You know that.”

Kacchan shakes his head, undeterred. “Every time I see red and yellow, I think of you. And that’s not a bad thing.”

Izuku stares at him. Kacchan’s small pupils are framed by his irises like cherry pits. The wind ruffles his blond hair, strands clinging to his forehead and cheek. I think of you. It echoes in Izuku’s head, gropes blindly at the smooth walls of his skull. Kacchan’s face before him. I think of you. I think of you.

“I think of you too,” he admits, voice small. “When I… When I see those colors. Because. Y’know.”

Kacchan’s face does a funny thing. Izuku’s seen it before. He’s not sure if there exists a Kacchan expression he hasn’t borne witness to at some point. “Is that embarrassing to you? Liking red and yellow?”

“I— I guess? Not—” He stops. “Not because of you. Kacchan could never embarrass me. But because it’s not common, I guess. It’s not normal.”

“Fuck normal.”

“That’s easy for you to say; you’re amazing.”

“Sure. I’m also not normal.”

“Okay, but you’re not normal in a good way.”

“Oh, so you’re not normal is a bad way, is that it?”

“Yes,” Izuku says, his patience leaking out with each breath. “Obviously I’m not normal is a bad way, Kacchan. Look me!”

Kacchan shakes his head, jaw tense. “You are fucked up.”

“I know!” he replies, eyes stinging with frustrated tears. “I know, Kacchan, okay? I know. I’m… I have au-tism and this thing called sensory processing disorder and post-traumatic stress and an unspecified anxiety disorder and my nightly routine of watching the same four HeroTube videos on loop is weird and I just learned that I don’t like kissing—which is also weird!—and apparently I don’t even know my own favorite color!”

“None of that is why you’re fucked up, you stupid sack of shit!” Kacchan grabs his shoulders, fingers digging in. “You do know your favorite color, you bastard! You do! You know it’s red! I know it’s red! No, you’re fucked up because you threw out every red thing you owned. And for what?”

The wind rustles them. Kacchan’s eyes are trained on him, twin drops of blood.

“Most people don’t like red,” he whispers.

“You’re not most people,” Kacchan replies. “You’re you.”

He knows. That’s the problem. That’s always been the problem. 

“You act like you have no idea what you’re like,” Kacchan says, stepping closer. “But that’s not true. That’s what I’m telling you. I know you, Izuku. All your annoying shit nerd traits and your… A-and everything amazing about you, too.”

Izuku’s joints gum up at the word amazing from Kacchan’s mouth. About him. 

“Your heart’s too big for your damn body. You gotta stop trying to shrink it down. Why? What’s the point of any of this, huh?”

You, he doesn’t say. You. It has to be you. It all leads back to you eventually.

“You need to give it up,” Kacchan says.

That startles Izuku back to reality. “Give what up?”

“Giving up.”

He frowns.

“Every day, you’re trying to give up. It’s wearing you down. Fuck, Izuku. I can’t stand to see you like this.”

“What do you mean?” he says blankly. 

Kacchan gives him a pained look. “You’re so selfless,” he says. He says this like it is a bad thing, like it is hamartia. “You’re so fucking selfless that it circles back around again and you hurt people. Yourself, me, your friends, your family, everyone who gives a damn about you. When will you get it?”

“When you say it plainly,” he shoots back. “I’m selfless? That’s not true. I’m plenty selfish.” You make me selfish. “All the time. I don’t—”

“You hurt people,” Kacchan repeats, harsher. 

Izuku’s stomach chills. 

Kacchan bares his teeth. “Fucking— Not intentionally. Obviously. But fuck, you hurt yourself, you let yourself get hurt. How does that make the people who love you feel, dipshit?”

“Huh?”

“We don’t like it,” he says. “We— Me, everyone. Your mom. You were just talking about your mom. Obasan doesn’t like it, either. Seeing you like this. It’s killing us.”

Izuku flinches at that. Holds his tongue, feels the weight and pressure of his own denied breath. “My mom likes me just how I am.” It leaves his mouth small. 

Kacchan stops. He blinks, seemingly startled. “Yeah,” he says dumbly. “Well, yeah. She does. We all do.”

“She said that, too.”

“Yeah. Your mom is pretty fucking smart.”

She is. So is Kacchan. Sometimes Izuku is, too, but not always. He’s only smart about a narrow set of subjects. Kacchan is smart and multifaceted, complex. A well-rounded protagonist. Izuku’s mother is an actual angel. Of course they’re both smart.

“I— I hurt my mom,” Izuku says. “Just like I hurt you. But she likes me just how I am and you do, too. And. And I guess I’m just sorry. About that. Because that sounds awful, to like someone like me, who hurts people.”

Kacchan’s face breaks Izuku’s chest. That quiet, soft horror to his eyes. Izuku’s seen it before. Usually he shies away from it. Doesn’t like it when Kacchan gets like that. It means he’s thinking about the past. Conferring blame. Regretting. 

“I’m sorry,” Izuku whispers.

“I know,” Kacchan says. “We just want you to be happy, you know that? We don’t want you to be sorry. We don’t want you feeling like this. We’re hurting because you’re hurting. You hurt yourself, that’s what hurts. But all you give a shit about is how it rebounds back to us, not the source of it all. Which is you. It’s you. I wish you’d listen, but as soon as I start talking about this, it’s like I’m speaking Greek.”

“Greek? Kacchan, you’re speaking in Japanese. I understand you fine.”

“It’s a simile. I’m not talking literally, dipshit.”

Izuku nods slowly. 

“I’m saying that you need to consider yourself,” Kacchan says. “I’m telling you as direct as I can, okay? You need direct; I get that. If you treat everyone like they’re special to you, where does that leave you? When you give your resources to everybody else, that leaves you with nothing. You’re special, too.” Kacchan blinks. He stares somewhere in the middle distance, ears and cheekbones gaining color with alarming speed. “You’re. Really fucking special. Okay?”

“Are you okay, Kacchan? Your face is getting red—”

“This shit’s embarrassing,” he grits out. “Super fucking embarrassing. Mushy bullshit. Don’t talk about my face.”

“Oh. Um. Okay.”

“You gotta be honest about how you feel.” Kacchan’s finger stabs uselessly at the metal chest of Izuku’s suit. “The good and the ugly. And if you feel like nobody can handle it, that’s stupid ’cause you know I can. I can always take you.”

Izuku cringes. “I would never doubt Kacchan’s capacities. It’s not that. I don’t have anything to complain about, is all. I’m very blessed—”

“Bullshit,” Kacchan snarls. “Fucking lying sack of shit, that’s what you are. Dumbass martyr complex with self-esteem buried so far up your own asscheeks it’s never seen the light of the sun.”

“Uh. Okay, I could tell that one wasn’t literal. That’s kinda vulgar imagery, Kacchan…”

“Look at what we did for you!” 

Izuku freezes.

Kacchan gestures. “This fancy fucking suit. Took years to get you. You know that, I know you do. All that effort, all that money. Planning and sacrifice. We did that for you. Because we fucking care about you. You’re wearing the most expensive proof on the planet. Fuck you for shying away from me.”

The ground crunches under Izuku’s boot as he steps back. Wind tugs at his hair. It doesn’t tussle his handsomely like Kacchan’s. Ungrateful snarls in his breast. Underneath it growls something darker, the faintest lick of anger.

Anger. Yeah. He’s…angry. 

“I didn’t ask you do this for me,” Izuku says. His cheeks burn. “I didn’t ask you guys to. To do all that for me. I never would have asked you guys—”

“Of course you wouldn’t!” Kacchan says. “You never ask for shit, Deku.”

“Exactly!” bursts from him. “Why the hell would I ever ask for a crazy expensive suit that mimics a bunch of borrowed quirks I fucking lost that I’ll never get back? Why the hell would I want to remember the ghosts I killed every time I fire this thing up? You could have given me pyrotechnics or ultrasonic capacities or something but instead what I get is everything I gave up thrown back in my fucking face!”

Kacchan stares at him. Izuku finally shut up and all it took was…being extremely ungrateful about this amazing gift he was given.

Fuck.

Why did he say that? Any of that?

“Hey,” Kacchan says, gravelly. “We were just making progress. Don’t spiral on me now.”

“Progress?” 

He nods. 

Izuku opens his mouth. Closes it. “Kacchan, I was just. R-really terrible to you. Ungrateful. B-because you’re right—you all care about me so much. And I’m so moved by the effort you went through to make my dream come true for me.”

“We came together for you because it’s you,” Kacchan says. “We didn’t make it happen for you; you made it happen for you. After everything, it’s the least I could do.”

“Kacchan, you don’t need to atone—”

“I was repaying your kindness,” he says. “It wasn’t fucking guilt. It was reciprocation. Okay? You did so much for everyone. It’s not crazy that it got paid back to you. You earned what you have. Got it?”

“Full circle,” Izuku says faintly. He sways. “Right.” How narratively cohesive. 

Kacchan is kind to him. He doesn’t understand why. He’s never understood.

Full circle.

“Why do you put up with me?” escapes Izuku. A question that’s haunted him for years.

“I don’t ‘put up’ with you,” Kacchan says.

“I just mean— You. You always pick up when I call you.”

Kacchan doesn’t respond immediately. He’s studying him. Thinking. Kacchan has grown so much over the years, even though he looks like the boy Izuku has always known. He’s left Izuku behind. He is always leaving Izuku behind. And yet he’s also always there—every phone call, every car ride, every movie marathon, every shitty crying session, and this, too. Some wild tear through the air, a rooftop altercation fought with words, not fists. Hopefully this is a written kind of story, because if this were a comic book, it’d be really mind numbing.

Yeah. Not exactly exciting content. That’s Izuku’s life. It has been his life for years. Stasis. And yet here Kacchan stands.

“I don’t know why.” Izuku’s voice cracks. “I don’t know why you hang out with me. I don’t know why you…why you would want to.”

This question hurts Kacchan; Izuku immediately reads the pain telegraphed on his face. On one hand, it’s perversely relieving to recognize the emotion. On the other, Izuku feels rotten. He did that.

“You’re right,” Izuku says. “I hurt people. I hurt you. I said all that terrible stuff, just now, and I say and do terrible things all the time. But you still pick up the phone. You’re here, right now. You tell me you want to be with me, but I don’t… I don’t understand.”

Kacchan’s mouth works. No sound escapes. He closes his eyes. He’s counting down from ten; he learned that in therapy. Kacchan’s been in therapy for almost a decade. He takes deep breaths, flexes his fingers.

“Uh, Kacchan—”

“Shut up. I’m processing.”

Processing.

Izuku fidgets, biting at his bottom lip. The wind hisses, colder.

Kacchan opens his eyes. “I want to be with you.”

“Right.”

“You don’t gotta understand it, but you have to respect it. Alright? That’s my own damn choice.”

Izuku swallows thickly. A deeply dissatisfying answer.

Kacchan must see it on his face. “We’ll get to the full answer later, how about that? I don’t want to lose the ground we just made.”

“Ah, the ground?”

“The suit. All that shit you just said. I’m not dropping it. We can talk about why I’m stuck like glue to you later. But right now, I don’t think you’d accept my answer and I want to talk about this.”

Izuku cringes.

“So let’s go back.” Kacchan steps forward, bridges the distance Izuku built. “You got complicated feelings about the suit. Makes sense.”

“It’s— I mean. Okay. Yes, it’s a little complicated.” He lifts his arms toward his chest, the mechanisms whirring as his wrists hang slack. “It was so unexpected and…”

Kacchan doesn’t cut him off. Didn’t even seem mad, really, at Izuku’s horrible outburst before. He wanted to return to the subject. All that effort, all that care he poured into Izuku’s future, and Izuku just spat on it in front of him. “Oi. On topic, nerd. It was unexpected. Yeah, I get that.”

“I— Yeah. I didn’t know about the suit. I built my life as though I’d never work in pro heroics.” He swallows thickly. “I came to terms with it.”

“That’s a load of shit,” Kacchan says. “You did not come to terms with it. At all.”

“Well I tried!” escapes him. “While you were building that suit, I was living my life. I didn’t… I went into teaching because that’s what I thought was available to me. You never consulted me on this, if it was what I wanted, how I wanted it to be if it was.”

Kacchan’s brow twitches. “We didn’t know if it was going to work,” he says. “How would that make you feel, huh? All these years and effort, waiting for this, and then it fucking flops. Waiting for something like this—even if it did turn out good like it has—that’s torment.”

“Maybe I could have worked toward something instead of waiting.” Izuku’s eyes sting. He’s going to cry. Great. Pathetic little crybaby. Nothing about him as ever changed. He will always be in this place. “Maybe I— I don’t know, I don’t…”

Kacchan doesn’t respond. Or— He doesn’t argue. His body moves, arms in the air on either side of Izuku, as if trying to anticipate him toppling. That’s communication. Izuku doesn’t speak the language, though. He wishes he did. He wishes he understood everything about Kacchan always. He wishes he knew Kacchan from the inside.

Can he be blamed? Kacchan is the hero of this story. Kacchan is the beautiful, righteous protagonist who’s gone through fantastic character development to end up here. He’s sacrificed again and again and continues to sacrifice, even now, because that’s what heroes do. Izuku hurts him, hurts him and hurts him and hurts him, and still Kacchan stands before him, arms open like some fucking martyr.

You hurt yourself. Well, look who’s talking. Of course the protagonist has negative self-awareness about his longest standing parasite. Every hero needs a fatal flaw. Hamartia. It’s classical. Kacchan is beautiful and strong and brilliant, a born winner. His hamartia stands before him—a dumpy, breathless side character whose eyes keep burning with fat tears. It only makes Izuku feel more despicable for the envy burning a hole in his stomach, acid he’s known since birth.

He wishes, just once, he could be the hero of a story, too. 

The difference between them cannot be anymore stark. Because for all of Kacchan’s multitude of virtues, this situation brings out the brightest, most secret virtue of all: Kacchan is kind.

Kacchan, the first and best thing he has ever known. His closest friend in all the world. His most cherished person, his vision of triumph. So beautiful, so achingly touchable. 

“I want to win,” Izuku confesses to him. “I want to win too, Kacchan.”

Kacchan’s eyes gain a glossy cast. 

“Once,” Izuku clarifies, softer. “Just once, even, I think I’d be satisfied.”

“You need to want more,” Kacchan says, reaching for one of his limp hands and taking his fingers in his. Izuku can’t feel him through the suit. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to feel him even if they were pressed skin-to-skin, though. Every centimeter of their bodies fused together. 

Izuku wants that. Izuku wants a lot. All the time. 

Most of it has been out of his reach. His future has been nothing more than a dangling carrot for his whole life. A fantasy attainable for other people, but not him. 

People like Kacchan. 

“I’m quirkless,” Izuku says. His voice cracks on the word. “I’m autism. I–”

“Autistic,” Kacchan corrects.

Izuku rolls his eyes. He sniffles. “I’m quirkless and autistic and I have post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“Yeah,” Kacchan says. “And you’re my friend.”

“And I’m Kacchan’s friend.” He squeezes Kacchan’s hand. His voice is squeaky and stuffy and undoubtedly ugly, but Kacchan doesn’t look at him like any of that is a problem. Kacchan looks at him like he’s someone he wants to be around.  “Kacchan’s my friend, too. Kacchan’s— S-so much more than my friend.”

Kacchan’s face does a weird thing. It’s third on Izuku’s list of untranslated Kacchan expressions. He’s seen it before. Where his eyebrows twitch and his lips thin and he jerks away from Izuku. 

Kacchan doesn’t move, this time. 

“What if I’m lost?” leaves Izuku. “You said I need to find myself, but. But I might be lost, Kacchan.”

Kacchan’s eyes soften. He has that slightly helpless sense to him he gets sometimes that Izuku would never dare describe to anyone if somehow asked. He’s documented it, though. Of course he has.

It’s private. Something he can keep. A piece of Kacchan he owns, that owns him in turn. That tender sense that stays gentle despite everything that has happened to them. This, them, past the end, past the epilogue too. The cameraman and his crew have gone home and here they stand on the rooftop of a Lawson’s, Deku and Kacchan left alone on the set in full make-up and uniform, actors who’ve graduated from their roles. 

It’s vulnerable. It’s the only real thing left.

Izuku presses his thumb hard into the underside of his wrist, deactivating the suit. It slithers off of him, leaving him shivering in basketball shorts and his laundry day long-sleeve with the stretched collar. 

“If you’re lost, then I’ll help you,” Kacchan says. “We’ll all help you. You gotta start trying, though. I can’t make this happen for you, Izuku. I can’t go it alone.”

“I know,” he says softly. 

“You talk about being in a story,” Kacchan says. “Crazy as shit, obviously, but that ain’t the only reason it’s bad to think like that.”

“It’s— Well.” Okay, fine. He can’t really say the truth because it probably does sound crazy. Sue him for being enlightened to his fictitious nature. 

“You’re trying to fit into the story you think you’re in.” Kacchan shakes his head. The wind ruffles his hair beautifully. He never looks bad, truly. A miracle. His handsome face and his beating heart. “You’re living it, though. You’re making it.”

That’s only the case if they are living at all. Otherwise, it’s all in service of grander themes. Themes which undoubtedly center on Kacchan, because Kacchan is the hero of—

“You said you’d fist fight God for me. Well, you gotta fist fight Him for yourself, too. For us.”

Us. In Kacchan’s mouth, it’s a sacred word. Izuku wishes when either of them spoke it would always be with ‘we’ and ‘us,’ that speaking for one always encompassed the other. There’s something filthy and desperate in the sentiment, something tender and aching and devoted. You are the first thing I ever knew, he wants to say. You are also the best. How could I ever want anything but you? 

“You gotta do it for you, too,” Kacchan insists. “You gotta want this, Izuku. You’re not finding your way out of the stupid fucking maze of your shitty head until you do.”

Us isn’t just Kacchan. It’s Izuku, too. Both of them, as strange and oppositional as they often are. If Izuku wants ‘us,’ that means he has to want Izuku, too.

“Either way, I’ll be here,” Kacchan says. His voice thickens. It makes Izuku’s throat swell in sympathy. “You should fucking know that by now. I’ll be here, no matter what. You asked me why I keep coming back to you and yeah, it’s because I want to, but it’s also because I can’t live any other way. It’s always been you and it always will be. I’m here for you, same as I know you’re here for me. Because we’re friends. M-more. More than friends.” The words exit unwieldy and indelicate, like sea glass tumbling from his lips. Dulled edges that fail to cut. Bumbling sentiment worn by the rough current of age. Beautiful.

More than friends. Izuku knows what he meant when he said that. It’s the same words echoed back, but he has no idea if it’s a true reflection. 

He wants, though. Midoriya Izuku has always been a person who wants with his teeth and his nails and every muscle fiber. He would build utopia with his own fists if he could. He would drag Kacchan into his arms if he’d let him.

Maybe he would let him. Maybe that would be a start.

Not just a start. Everything.

“Y-you know what’s romantic?” he blurts. “Magnets.”

Kacchan blinks.

“Like. Ah, it’s so overdone, but it’s amazing how we live in a world where objects possess polarity and are attracted to the opposite side, y’know? They’ll defy gravity to cling to one another. It’s close to magic.”

Kacchan’s just looking at him, now. It’s not a bad look. 

“It’s like how we’re at the end of the story, you know? It’s over. The cameraman—God—he’s left us behind. And still, we’re going. We’re talking, aren’t we? And we’re. We’re m-more than friends. Despite it all. We’re here, together. We still find each other, characters without an author.”

It’s a good look. Of course it is. Every look is good on Kacchan.

“That’s… That’s how I feel for Kacchan,” Izuku finishes, breathless. “Like we’re so different, but I’m drawn to everything about him. Always.”

Kacchan recaptures his waving hand, stilling it as he weaves their fingers together. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” That sounded almost a little cool. Just a Yeah? Yeah. It’s kinda cinematic. Ideally, they would leave it at that. But this is Izuku. He can’t. His mouth starts moving again. “I want to be with you for the rest of our lives and move in together and have sex and sleep in the same bed and eat the same food and die together at the exact same second so I don’t have to know what it’s like to live in a world without you.”

He’s tugged closer by the tie of their hands. “Fuck, you always put things in the goofiest way possible,” Kacchan says.

“Ah. Sorry.”

“It’s not a bad thing.” Kacchan swallows. “I. I like it.”

Izuku blinks. “Oh.”

“I like you,” Kacchan says plainly. “I thought you knew that.”

“I think I did. It just has never made sense to me. —Um, I love you. By the way.”

Kacchan rolls his eyes. “I know. You just said.”

“Well, I didn’t say the word.”

“It’s a hard word to say.”

“No? It’s extremely easy to pronounce—”

Kacchan’s face is very close.

Izuku freezes. His heart is large in his chest, trembling like a fawn in the underbrush.

Kacchan doesn’t bridge the gap. He could. It would probably make sense if he did. Hovering like this is a bit awkward.

Izuku slowly shuffles back. Just a little. He can still feel Kacchan’s breath. He likes that, he thinks. Doesn’t understand the distinction even in his own feelings. Only knows it’s there. “I— I don’t like kissing,” he says, flushed. “Uraraka-san tried to kiss me and I punched her.”

Kacchan straightens. “She what?”

“Kacchan, I punched her in the face!”

“Serves her right; she fucking kissed you! Why?”

Izuku’s cringes. “It’s, ah. It’s a long story.”

“Long sto—”

“I’m serious. It’s a long story.” He shakes his head. “That’s not— That’s not the point. I don’t like kissing, that’s what I meant. Why I…”

Kacchan gives him a considering look. “Maybe it was just the wrong person.”

“It wasn’t,” he replies. “It was the kissing. And, um. And the wrong person. But it was definitely also the kissing.”

“Well, the right person won’t try to kiss you, then.”

Izuku’s breath hangs in the hollow of his mouth, a baby bird in the nest. Kacchan leans closer again. Closer, still. He will never be close enough. Izuku needs to feel Kacchan from under the skin. He’s desperate for it.

And yet. And yet.

His brain immediately prods at the feeling, suspicious as it is of every feeling it’s ever taken for granted now. He finds admiration, longing, frustration, arousal, comfort, hunger, and some sweet, soft fondness that seems woven into his very bones. All of this for Kacchan. Always Kacchan. 

“Can I hug you?” Kacchan murmurs, so close, so warm, so charming, so fumbling. 

“Of course, Kacchan,” Izuku answers. 

They don’t slot together perfectly. It isn’t that kind of story. No, they find each other despite it all. Elbows knock, knees, the mismatched bump of their hips, yet Kacchan still winds Izuku into his arms, sure as a fisherman with his line. Not alignment, but insistence. Each point of contact is an affirmation—I am here. We are both here, together. He cradles Izuku in the valleys and ridges of his body, cheek to shoulder, chest to chest. 

Tucked against where Kacchan’s heart beats, Izuku starts to find himself.