Chapter Text
Izuku casts an extra long glance around his room before hefting his backpack over his shoulder. Not for any real reason in particular, mind you—the only thing happening today is the session, and he’s stopping home before then, anyway—except for the part where he’s grown to dread leaving in the morning. For a good while before this year, he hadn’t minded it, since it was a shot to catch up with Mom, chat about nothing in particular before they both left to face the real world. The downside then was Dad being away so much, that Izuku rarely got to see him before dark on any given day.
The latter of these problems persists, though in a different direction now. Izuku understands, of course, and doesn’t begrudge Dad having a job that pulls him away from home. What he does begrudge is that it means there’s no shield he can duck behind when he leaves for school now. Same soup, different spoon, and all that.
It’s not like he would even know about his new side hustle as Izuku’s personal barrier between himself and his mother, because Dad bought the lie he and Kacchan fed them about some social studies project leading to an extended sleepover that Mitsuki forgot to tell him about. It helps that Dad isn’t around enough to know what constitutes ‘normal,’ so he has next to no idea that Mitsuki would sooner die than forget to pass along crucial information on the whereabouts of her friend’s kid. Mom, obviously, is around enough for that, and there’s no question in Izuku’s mind that she didn’t believe it, but he was strategic in choosing when to peddle his story. Namely, when both of them were in the room, and Izuku was able to yank the conversation toward how the most recent session at the time went down, what with Todoroki joining the fray.
That was a good few weeks ago now, and Mom still has yet to call him out on it. Probably waiting for the guilt to eat away at him, that he might confess on his own time. No, thank you, he’d rather overthink everything every morning so he can dawdle longer in his room instead of having to interact with her for more than five seconds.
He slides his phone out of his pocket to check the time. There’s no real reason he can’t just leave the second he’s up, but he doesn’t want to suddenly be twenty minutes early and have nothing to do but wait for first hour to start. Yeah, that’s basically what he’s doing now, but there’s a different sense of boredom that comes with waiting at your destination versus waiting to leave for your destination. He could also wake up later, but that makes too much sense.
Finally, he resigns himself to the routine he’s well since grown used to, and closes his bedroom door behind him before heading toward the stairs. The house has always been quiet in the mornings, since Mom’s the type to absorb the silence before dealing with the havoc and noise of a normal day, but it’s been feeling cold as of late. Not just because it’s February (though that doesn’t help), but a sort of cold that burrows under his skin and drifts along his veins. To beat a dead horse, Izuku can wear a T-shirt under a hoodie under a coat and still feel like he’s freezing, only to start sweating as soon as he steps outside. He’s not a fan of it.
He keeps his pace slow when he reaches the bottom landing, making a mental note of the quiet bustling from the kitchen. The weak splutter of their busted keurig (you have to lift the pod thing and keep filling water until it stops draining, then brew, then sponge up the two cup’s worth of leakage) is the loudest, though there’s also the distinct tapping of fingers on a phone. Mom says she keeps her nails short because she hates the clack clack that comes from those fancy acrylics on the screen. Dad thinks it’s because she’s never had the patience to let them get that long. Izuku’s theory is that it would be infinitely harder to type on a keyboard, but Dad isn’t wrong, meaning there’s no way of testing Izuku’s opinion.
He plasters on his best ‘I’m a high schooler running on four hours of sleep and sixteen hours of homework and if you even look at me the wrong way I’ll have a breakdown right here, right now’ face and ducks into the kitchen, making a beeline for the pantry. He can feel Mom’s eyes on him, though she says nothing as he grabs a pop-tart from the box and shuts the door. She also keeps quiet when he tugs open the fridge and grabs his lunchbox.
Just before he gets out of the kitchen, he hears Mom say, “Have a good day at school, sweetie.”
“Mhm,” he manages, wishing he’d had the foresight to cram the pop-tart in his mouth as an excuse for not stretching out the conversation. She doesn’t add anything, though, so he figures he’s probably in the clear.
He locks the front door behind him with a sigh.
It’s an effective strategy, mind you. Plenty of teens go days with less conversation, so he’s already well above par, right? Problem being that he doesn’t particularly care about par. He misses hanging out with his mom in the morning, however dorky that might sound. He misses ignoring her suggestion of a water over a can of pop, and he misses pretending not to notice when she slides an extra slice of toast on his plate when he’s not looking, and he misses just sitting there for a few minutes before they both have to leave. It doesn’t help that he wants all of this in the face of irritation at this want, because it’s not his fault that every shoulder in the house is at a sub-zero temperature.
Like, a little bit his fault, okay, but not enough to justify it. Not enough that he has any reason to want his mom back, when she’s right fucking there for him to go and talk to. That’s the trouble with having a halfway decent mom. She’s always been so solid about letting him come to her on his own time, when he’s good and ready, and she’s never tried to force him into talking if he didn’t want to. This, though, is the longest it’s ever lasted, and every day he wakes up wondering if that’s the day one of them breaks. Of course, he’s his mother’s son, so obviously he won’t be breaking first. To that end, she’s her son’s mother, and there’s no shot she breaks first, either.
Maybe Dad’ll come home and smash the whole thing to pieces. That’d be nice.
As he picks his way down the sidewalk and places most of his focus on not slipping on ice and dying (which, objectively, is a more effective use of his brain power than recursive musing), a slamming door reminds him of the other reason he can’t just bounce the second he’s ready to leave.
He doesn’t have to slow his pace too much, since he was already only just crawling along, but his step size does decrease as he waits for Kacchan to catch up to him. The house with the chihuahua is polite enough to shovel a little walkway through the snow, and Izuku waits there for his friend. Kacchan keeps at his own pace and takes off down the sidewalk without so much as a morning greeting, which Izuku is well used to by now. Their walks to school broadly happen in silence, unless there’s something particularly pressing—there rarely is. For some reason, Izuku decides that his own discomfort at the quiet is justification enough.
“You’re still hosting tonight, right?”
Kacchan’s shoulders stiffen the barest touch, but he doesn’t look over to turn the full force of his ire on Izuku. “Yeah.”
“Cool, cool. Just wanted to make sure I didn’t need to pull together a ride.”
Kacchan doesn’t point out that Izuku could just ask his mom, which Izuku is glad for. They haven’t really brought up that impromptu sleepover situation since it happened, and he still isn’t super clear on whether Kacchan is actively pissed about it or just wants to pretend it never happened in the first place.
“How’d the rest of the social studies answers go?” Kacchan asks instead. This throws Izuku for a couple reasons. One, because he didn’t expect Kacchan to remember him having trouble with that in the first place, and two, because he sort of figured that was the end of the conversation there. Kacchan isn’t usually the one to keep the train chugging if he can help it. Not unless he wants something, that is.
“Um. Pretty okay, I guess?” Izuku digs around in his brain, trying to figure out the end goal here before Kacchan has to spoonfeed it to him. Things usually work out better when he can do that. The only thing immediately jumping to mind is the game, since that’s the only other topic to have left his mouth this morning. Problem being, ‘Hey, is something up, and does it have to do with the game we play, and also what is it’ isn’t exactly the smooth segue Izuku might like to think it is.
Kacchan isn’t the patient type. This works both in and against Izuku’s favor. “I was thinking about my character.”
“I mean, yeah, you used to be pretty—”
“Piss off, Deku.” Izuku holds up his hands defensively. “In the game.” Hands down.
“Of course. Definitely what I meant. I wasn’t talking about you you, obviously—”
“Deku.” Hands back up. “I was thinking about changing the name. Have it have to do with the backstory, or how we straight brained Chapped Lips Guy, I don’t really care, but changing the name.”
“Legally? Or like a nickname?”
“Because I’m sure you’ve incorporated legal names into your fantasy setting.”
“Because I would definitely on-purpose name a character ‘Deku.’”
“A punching bag, maybe.”
“Maybe. So, what was the name you were thinking about? Because if it’s Lemon Man, I know some people you might owe royalties.”
Kacchan doesn’t even need to say his name this time for Izuku’s hands to go up.
“So, the name?”
“Ground Zero.”
“Oh.” It’s not an ‘oh’ of disappointment, god no, but more one of acknowledgement. Like, confirmation that Izuku heard it outwardly, but inwardly, his mind is sprinting in every direction possible. First, absorbing the name itself—it makes sense, because Kacchan wouldn’t change a name for no reason, and it sticks with the explosion theme, which is good. Literally the point directly above or beneath an exploding nuclear bomb, which you’ve got to love.
The more exciting half comes from Izuku’s creative train of thought, the one that runs parallel to the rabbit hole one. Parallel in the sense that, like, it reaches the points it has to, but it takes every possible detour on the way. Kacchan gave a couple solid launch points—draw something out of his backstory, or else use the situation in the castle as a base, and wouldn’t that be something? Maybe having the whole party get knighted or something by the king, which would introduce tension for Todoroki’s character, provided he’s cool with it. It’d definitely make character Deku’s job harder, since being publicly recognized for A Good Deed would make sneaking around and getting rumors under the counter considerably more difficult. Hell, maybe the king would grace the whole party with flower crowns to top it off. That would be a sight to see. He can almost imagine Lord Explosion Murder biting it to shreds. He hates me, he hates me not. He hates me, he hates me not.
For those keeping track at home, it has been entirely too long since Izuku responded with something south of obvious enthusiasm to Lord—Ground—Kacchan’s suggestion, fuck.
“I like it,” his mouth finally says. “Lot of thoughts, sorry.”
“I’m used to it.” A brisk wind rushes between them, sending Izuku wobbling on his feet as he tries to determine whether Kacchan is ‘apathetic’ used-to-it or ‘I’m going to slit your throat’ used-to-it. It’s mostly a joking curiosity, since he hasn’t felt genuine murderous intent from Kacchan in a good while now. Not since before that whole treehouse deal, at least. He almost has half a mind to bring it up again, manage a real, sincere word of gratitude for Kacchan sticking his neck out like that, but the moment is carried away on another burst of wind.
“I figured it would make more sense if the impetus came from my backstory,” Kacchan continues. Izuku’s pretty sure ‘impetus’ isn’t the word he’s looking for, but not knowing the alternative off the top of his head, he doesn’t correct him. “I don’t really care either way, but just so you can start dealing with that, I guess.”
“Sure, sure. Did you, uh, did you want that to go in tonight, or—?”
“Whenever.” Kacchan shrugs and jams his hands in his pockets. “Anyway.”
“Anyway,” Izuku agrees. He’s glad for it when Kacchan doesn’t push it further, doesn’t try to force a conversation where there isn’t one. Kacchan isn’t really the type to do that in the first place. Maybe Izuku just has a good eye for picking friends.
The rest of the walk to school is a staticky kind of quiet, the buzz dialed way up with the humming inside Izuku’s head. He has half a mind to wonder if Kacchan’s idea wasn’t made with a specific intent—they’ve been walking together for a good few weeks now, it’s not like he couldn’t’ve brought it up sooner. Then again, there’s no rules against having a conveniently timed idea.
The other half of his mind is, obviously, focused on spinning threads around the plot fodder Kacchan just fed him.
They arrive well before the usual morning crowds, which is becoming normal for the pair. Izuku knows this for himself to be because he can’t stand being in that house any longer than normal. For Kacchan, well, he honestly has no clue why the guy’s so adamant about leaving early. Maybe he took that Sansweet joke from way back when a little too seriously. Hopefully not—talk about embarrassing, huh? The only explanation that has any standing ground whatsoever is one that flitted through Izuku’s mind a good while ago, that Kacchan waits at the window to see him leaving so he can meet him. As usual, he dismisses the thought as quickly as it comes. Even if it turned out to be true, Kacchan would have his neck for thinking it in the first place.
Izuku is usually a fast walker, but not so much these days. He instead slows down when they get through the front doors. Kacchan doesn’t, speeding up to grab the door and hold it for him. He then ends up holding it for another kid who practically runs to make it through the opening without being an inconvenience. Izuku stops just inside to wait for his friend, getting a good look at the straggler in the process.
“Hey, Midoriya!”
“Hey, Togata,” he replies, raising a bewildered hand as the senior books it down the hall. He hadn’t thought the guy knew he existed, let alone kept his name around enough to pull it out at a moment’s notice. Go figure. Kacchan breezes past him, leaving Izuku to sprint through the remaining parts of recovering from the surprise to catch up with him.
They hit Izuku’s locker first, Izuku slinging his backpack inside and picking through it for his physics binder and precalc notebook. That’ll carry him through second and third, while first and fourth don’t require anything in particular. As an afterthought, he grabs his scratch notebook, too—a throwaway that doesn’t really have anything too significant. Good for quick bursts of inspiration, roughing out ideas in tech, bored doodles that don’t clutter his designated class notebooks.
Though it’s out of the way from the home ec room, they hit Kacchan’s locker next. He’s impossibly efficient compared to Izuku, ruthlessly so, and in no time at all, they’re both shuffling off to first hour. It’s Kan, but it’s down by the caf, instead of his usual standard classroom, which is a nice change of pace. Change of scenery, maybe, if you want to be technical about it. Izuku takes his usual spot, and Kacchan drops his stuff off at his own seat before hopping onto the stool beside him. Technically, Todoroki is Izuku’s table partner, but he’s not the ‘arriving early’ type. Not this early, at least.
Izuku pulls out his phone and flips between a few apps, not really seeing anything that flashes on the screen. He ends up pocketing it once more, instead opening his scratch notebook to a blank page and scribbling a few tornadoes. Slowly, they turn into more concrete doodles, outlining cartoonish pipe bombs and Mario bob-ombs that waddle across the top line. When the circles grow crooked and uneven, he switches to roughing out a sort-of signature for Ground Zero. Boredom ushers the lettering along, chasing it down with jagged ice shards and puffs of flame. He adds a little dragon spitting out one of the smaller bursts. Next comes an ocean of squares on squares, boxes for the sake of boxes because he doesn’t want to just sit here and be bored.
Todoroki appears at his elbow before Izuku can move on to a different shape. He spends a solid few seconds just staring wordlessly at the paper, until Izuku decides to break the silence.
“Hi.”
“Hello.”
Well, that worked great. “Need something?”
“There’s somebody in my seat.” Todoroki gestures at Kacchan, who keeps his gaze down and looks for all the world like he doesn’t know what an inconvenience he’s being.
“Sounds like a rough life.”
“I’m inconsolable.” Hopping up to sit on the table, Todoroki taps the edge of Izuku’s notebook.
“People cook food on this, y’know,” Kacchan says.
“We cook food on this,” Todoroki replies. “It’s only a problem if you eat it.” He drags his finger over to where Izuku had been testing out signatures. “What’s Ground Zero?”
Izuku pulls his lower lip between his teeth, not totally clear on whether that’s meant to be public information just yet. He dares a sideways glance at Kacchan, whose eyes are still glued to his phone. Not an obvious ‘no,’ but not a ‘yes,’ either.
“It’s a character in the campaign,” Izuku finally says. Not technically a lie, not technically a death sentence.
“Makes sense. And the other stuff?”
“Doodles.” He fights the urge to cover it with his arm—not like Todoroki hasn’t seen the rest of them already. “Passing time.”
“Sure. Hey, speaking of the game, that’s at whose house?”
“Kacchan’s.”
“And he’s across the street from you, right?”
“Very cool that you just know our proximity off the top of your head like that.”
“I like to think so.”
“I’m being sarcastic.”
“I thought you were Japanese?” Todoroki waves it off with far too much enthusiasm, as if fending off a literal swarm of flies. “Anyway, I think I might come over and bother you after school, if that’s alright. So I can just be there already for the game.”
Izuku has precisely zero snappy remarks for this, and frantically scrapes the bottom of his mental barrel to find a valid excuse to keep that from happening. “I don’t know, it’s really not that convenient. Plus, your dad’s coming by either way to pick you up after, right? So it’s not like—”
“My entire purpose of being is to make his life difficult.”
“And mine is to make yours difficult,” Kacchan chips in. “Deku’s gonna be busy this afternoon. I’m making him cram precalc. No distractions.”
“I could just wander his house and look at his things.”
“I’m vetoing it.”
“You don’t live there.” Todoroki hesitates, looking at Izuku. “Does he?”
Izuku shrugs and starts in on a small army of ducks. “I dunno. Do you?”
“Might as well.” Bakugou leans over and squishes the ducks under the sleeve of his flannel. “It’s a no. See you at seven.”
Todoroki shrugs and turns back to watch Izuku roughing out a king duck, with a scepter and everything. “Can you make it evil?”
“Who’s to say it isn’t already?” Still, Izuku draws an angry ‘v’ over its eyes, then adds a speech bubble reading, ‘Fall in line, or just fall.’ At Todoroki’s continued urging, he gives it a fur-lined cape.
He further embellishes the page as the room slowly fills with students, most of them looking half-dead as they slump into their seats and pull out their phones. Internally, he muses over why Kacchan was so quick to step in over Todoroki’s suggestion. Kacchan isn’t exactly the protective type, much less is he the type to muscle in on two people making after-school plans. Maybe some of the panic Izuku was trying to mask slipped through. It’s definitely not the precalc thing—Kacchan hadn’t even mentioned math today, much less threatened to introduce Izuku’s nose to the hypothetical grindstone.
He appreciates the tale anyway. Unless it was just a threat Kacchan forgot to make, which Izuku would appreciate significantly less. Either way, it sounds like the idea of Todoroki coming over is completely out the window, and that in itself is a relief. Absurd as it might be, Izuku almost feels like the guy would pick up on the frigid air the moment he walked through the door, and that is not something he wants to explain. He’s not even sure it could be explained.
Todoroki is an incredibly effective bullshitter, however intentional it may or may not be. He occupies the entirety of Izuku’s attention right up until the late bell rings, and even a little bit after when Kacchan finally slouches off and Todoroki claims his own seat. Not strictly because he keeps peppering Izuku with nonsense to draw (though he does), but more because he doesn’t really grasp the concept of personal space. It was less of an issue during the games, since Izuku’s focus was occupied by running the damn thing, but here, it’s front and center. Extremely conducive to being successful in home ec.
Izuku pours the remaining five percent of his attention into doing the actual classwork, supplemented by Todoroki not giving a single, solitary shit about the effect he’s having on the poor guy. Two and a half eternities later, time takes its mercy on him and allows the minute hand of the clock to tick over. The bell rings.
“Okay, see you at Kacchan’s tonight,” Izuku rushes out, scooping up his books and bolting for the door. He chooses to pretend he has no idea why his face feels warmer than normal as he scurries toward the science hall. It’s an absolute blind rush for his seat in Majima’s classroom.
Belatedly, his mind remembers to process the other people around him, who probably (hopefully) can’t read the absolute panic on his face. It’s not an unfair expression for him to have. Not with the way Todoroki was existing right there next to him for a whole hour, bumping against Izuku’s shoulder like it was nothing. And it has been nothing, for the entire semester! It’s been a heaping helping of nothing, which does not put Izuku remotely at ease. He’s been this rattled at the top of second hour every day, and he doubts there isn’t someone who’s caught on yet.
“Midoriya, hey!”
He glances up and finally notices Kaminari waving both arms over his head. He waves back, but doesn’t actually move the ten feet to bother him up close. In large part because he’s pretty sure his expression could be seen from space, but in smaller part because Hatsume’s right next to him, chatting away about something that involves lots of hand gestures and the occasional shoulder punch. Kaminari was probably just saying hi. Hi-at-school friends, right? Except for the part where Kaminari voluntarily subjects himself to Izuku’s shenanigans for plural hours every other week. He always seems to forget about that.
“No, come on,” Kaminari whisper-shouts. He switches to flapping his hand, something between a get-over-here gesture and shaking his fingers back awake after sitting on them too long.
Izuku shrugs it off and motions at his own notebooks, mouthing nonsense. He figures it’s convincing enough of a ‘Hey, I’ve got, y’know, stuff, but maybe later,’ because Kaminari huffs and turns around to pester Hatsume instead. Writing it off as said and done, he pulls out his phone to dick around for the remaining seven minutes of passing time.
Said dicking around is quickly interrupted by Hatsume’s face, hovering three inches from his nose.
“Hi?”
“C’mon,” she says. Her breath smells like stale Lucky Charms marshmallows. “Kaminari’s boring, let me bother you!”
Izuku leans a safe distance back from her to peer around at Kaminari for an explanation. He receives none, just a shrug and another get-over-here gesture, this time in the form of a head jerk. Like that’s remotely helpful. Left with no real choice but to be hydraulically pressed into a puddle by Hatsume, he scoots his chair back from the desk and inches over to their table.
“She’s always like this,” Kaminari reassures him as he leans against the front of the desk. “Just hold your breath when she says so, try not to look too close, and you’ll be fine.”
Off to a great start, but okay. “I feel very reassured by that,” Izuku says.
“I knew you would.” Kaminari flips the notebook around for him to get a better look, explaining, “This is what she’s working on now. It’s supposed to take a bunch of your choices and spit out a list of ideas, and build a story off that for you.”
“Like a dating app?”
“I don’t know what kind of weird apps you’re on,” Hatsume says, “but if you want to be derivative, sure. Mouth shut.”
Izuku snaps his mouth shut fast enough to make his teeth hurt, and remembering Kaminari’s warning, he shuts his eyes, too.
“Nope, keep those open, but good to know you’re a quick study. Could come in handy later.” She wags an accusatory finger at Kaminari, the other hand going to the notebook and flipping back a couple pages. “Kaminari, you’ve been holding out on me!”
“I like to keep my friends in one piece.”
“But you could make an exception for this one, right?”
“He could not—” Izuku goes to protest, immediately being met with a smack to the arm.
“Mouth shut. Come to think of it, eyes, too. Good call.”
Seeing no real way out but through, Izuku closes his eyes again. In about three seconds, he finds himself impossibly bored, and lets his mind wander. The first thing it comes across is wondering if he might see Todoroki at lunch—the guy’s always seemed pretty elusive unless he wanted to be found, and Izuku doesn’t really know how to force that prerequisite into evaluating as true. He could probably just invite the guy to sit with him against the fence, since he seemed pretty cool with everyone at the sessions. He doubts Iida and Uraraka on their own would throw him off too much.
Growing increasingly aware of his distaste for this train of thought (or his distaste for being unable to control this train of thought), he forces a sigh through his nose. He pushes aside his (substantial yet healthy) fear of the repercussions and opens his eyes to figure out what the move is. “Well?”
Hatsume and Kaminari both break into wide smiles, neither of them seeming to be doing much of anything. At least they didn’t sprint out of the room and leave a message on the whiteboard that there was an apocalypse and he was the only survivor, despite the school being packed with a good couple thousand students running around.
“Nothing,” Hatsume says.
“What’d you need me for?”
“Goofs and gaffs.”
Izuku frowns at Kaminari.
“I wanted to know how long you’d stand there like that,” Hatsume explains.
“Medusa would have more patience than that,” Kaminari adds, because that’s incredibly relevant to the conversation. “You’d be stone right now if she were here.”
“She could probably cut me to ribbons with a sword, instead of wasting her time.”
“Or use her snake hair,” Hatsume says. “Besides, dude, you’re one to talk. You only lasted eight seconds.”
“Eight and a half.”
“We round down here.”
“Don’t you round up from point five and over?”
“Not the way I do it.”
“So, what, you round up from point four and under, is that it?”
“I feel like she was pretty clear about rounding down, period.”
“Thank you, Midoriya.”
“Suck up.”
“More like I’m trying to keep my skin on my body.”
“She wouldn’t skin you.”
“She might.”
“It’s true, I might. Not the way it’s going, though. Keep up the good work, I might let you keep your teeth.”
“I have literally no idea how to respond to that.”
“It be like that.”
“That’s—what? No, that’s not remotely relevant, nor is that how it is.”
“How it be.”
“Do you think you’re funny? Do you see the rest of the room laughing?”
“Har har har,” the kid at the table behind them chimes in. Izuku blinks, having forgotten that anyone else existed, much less was aware of their screwing around. “Sorry.”
“No, you’re good.” Kaminari waves them off, swiveling in his seat to give them a high five. They hesitate before meeting it, and he continues, “Auditions to join in the tomfoolery are always open, if you’re ever interested.”
“I just thought she was fighting a losing battle, is all. Thanks, though.”
“I was not—”
“I don’t remember ever auditioning,” Izuku says. “Am I allowed to participate in the continued tomfoolery?”
Kaminari cocks his head to the side and frowns. “You were in by default, man, that’s how friend shit works.”
“What’s the difference between friend shit and a friendship?”
“One doesn’t need an indeterminate article, and the other is allowed to be said in polite company.”
“Polite company’s boring.”
“Your face is boring.”
“My face is a delight.”
“To have in class, maybe.”
“Wait, actually, you do have a face, though.”
Izuku leans away from Kaminari slightly, that he can’t get a better look at the face Izuku no doubt has. “Why is it always you saying I have a face? Maybe you just have face eyes.”
“Don’t try to get me off topic, what’s up?”
Hatsume, for her part, pulls back from the torment for a moment by busying herself with her notebook. She could probably toss in some opinion or another, but Izuku appreciates that she seems to recognize it’s not the shatter-proof subject Kaminari thinks it is.
“Nothing’s up.”
“Cool, so then you won’t mind telling me.”
“Am I a bad friend if I say I would mind?”
Kaminari shrugs. “Not necessarily. If it’s life-threatening or world-changing, though, and it turns out you would’ve been better off telling me, then I’m gonna be mad at you and enter my intolerable arc.”
“Another one?” Kaminari gives him a look, but doesn’t press it further. Izuku frowns to himself. Is it life-threatening or world-changing? No. Does he sort of want to tell him anyway? Yeah. Damn him, but yeah. “Okay, so it’s not nothing. I dunno. Just—there’s a guy I like, and I saw him earlier.”
“Oh, that definitely matches your face.” Nodding, Kaminari draws a circle in the air to encompass the face in question. “Okay, yeah, that explains it. Thanks. Much obligate.”
“Much obliged.”
“That’s not a real word.”
“But you were fully prepared to use ‘obligate’ in its place?”
“I’m fully prepared for everything at any moment. Attacks can come from any direction.”
“What?”
“What?”
“Do we get to know who he is?” Hatsume asks.
“Who, obligate?”
Izuku gives Kaminari a different face to mull over, this one accompanied by a particular hand gesture. Before either of them can come to their own conclusion on the matter (or wonder if there might be more than one reason for a recurring second-hour face), the bell rings to begin class. He offers little more than a shrug before heading back to his own desk.
Lucky for him, there’s no such face-scrutinizers in third hour. The closest equivalent is Kacchan, since he’s really the only one of them that knows what Izuku’s normal face looks like, but it’s not as if he’d bother to look close enough to notice the difference. Well, no—he definitely looks a little too long at Izuku when he walks into Aizawa’s classroom, but he doesn’t say anything about it, and that’s the important part. It means Izuku is free to spend the period letting his thoughts wander. It’s not incredibly healthy, but it’s a rare thing that they drift back to his deal with Mom, which he takes as a win.
Asui and Tokoyami both wave to him when he passes their desks, though, so that’s nice. Tokoyami even lingers by the door when Izuku sticks around to ask Aizawa about why something factored how it did (it was a basic a cubed minus b cubed expansion), and they walk to tech together. It’s not a conversational walk, but it’s nice to have a buddy. They bump shoulders as they pass through the auditorium doors before separating for their respective spots.
Izuku finds his normal place in the third row of seats. Now over a month into the semester, the theater kids took over the stage proper, relegating the tech kids to the cushy flip-down chairs. A rough life, truly. Kirishima throws himself into the next seat over a couple minutes later, fiddling with a roll of blue tape around his wrist.
“Hey!”
“Hi.” Izuku glances around them, taking note of everyone filing in. Most of the groups have already claimed a cluster of chairs by now—the threads are out in the hall as usual, the trucks camp in front of stage right, the logs hog the far back at stage left with a claim to the box for lighting—but the broader scope kids tend to clump up around where Izuku sat. Kirishima ought to be over at stage right, but Izuku had bribed him to be his right-hand man with a drawing of a giraffe while they hammered out the rotating stage issue. Ha. Hammered out. Izuku smiles to himself at the pun.
It’s a small list of kids that occupies ‘broader scope’ land, with Ojiro as the headliner. The man of the hour sits in the row in front of Izuku and Kirishima, leaning over the backrest and waiting for their attention.
“Hola,” Kirishima opens. Ojiro nods at him, then turns his head to Izuku, who takes a good few seconds to feel the two pairs of eyes on him.
“Oh. Hi.”
Content with the acquired focus, Ojiro pulls out his phone and taps a couple things. “You two’re still on the rotating stage?”
“Moving from conceptualizing to building,” Kirishima confirms. Ojiro was technically asking Izuku, but that’s how their partnership’s been shaking out the last couple days, anyway—Izuku got promoted from runner to Actually Being Important, and he roped in Kirishima to be the Giving Orders Guy. This also translates to Kirishima being the voice between the two of them, which works better all around.
“Got anyone you need to pull in for it?”
Kirishima looks at Izuku for this, apparently not having the answer off the top of his head. At least it’s not actual delegating. Izuku can handle Ojiro.
“We might grab the leads, just for weight and size stuff, but not yet. Maybe keep the trucks on standby, depending.”
“Got it.” Ojiro taps the top of the backrest before pushing up to his feet and going off to bother the trucks.
“So, like, what are we actually doing?” Kirishima asks.
“You answered the question.”
“Doesn’t mean I know what I said.”
Izuku flips through his scratch notebook to the relevant page, from when they’d pretty much finalized the design. It really didn’t take that long—more like the both of them kept getting pulled in every direction to help other groups, Izuku especially, and they only this week got to sit down and work it out. He figures it might be possible to rip the plans from a professional production for a similar idea, but those’re probably meant to be semi-permanent, and also not done on a public high school’s budget.
“There’s basically three main things we have to worry about,” he says. “I liked your thing with doing a semicircle to cut down on supplies, but we’ll need to figure out how much of the stage we can take up. It needs to be removable, which we can probably achieve with the fan blade idea. The motor would probably run over budget, but if we put it on wheels and a track, we could probably have some stagehands push it around. Last up is the budget, which we’ve installed workarounds for, anyway. Wanna start with measuring out the size of it?”
“That was four things,” Kirishima points out as they both stand and scoot toward the aisle. Izuku hadn’t noticed the late bell going off, but it must’ve done, given how the auditorium is filling up. Kirishima takes his job as Izuku’s right-hand man very seriously by rushing ahead of him and clearing a space at the center of the stage.
“It doesn’t have to be huge,” Izuku notes as Kirishima smooths down a piece of blue tape. He tears off another piece from the roll around his wrist to finish out the ‘X,’ then digs in his pockets for a measuring tape. “You continually astound me with how much stuff you have.”
“Gotta keep it somewhere.”
“Not remotely what I said, but sure.” Izuku crouches beside the ‘X’ and takes one end of the tape measure, holding it in place as Kirishima runs the other end across the stage, dodging other kids on the way. Then, once he’s sure Kirishima has the number noted down, he glances around and grabs the nearest friendly-looking kid onstage. Togata, perfect. “Hey, do me a favor and stand on this tape, please?” Togata shrugs and moves to the indicated spot with a thumbs-up, looking on as Izuku casts his gaze around the other students.
There.
“Hado, hey!”
She turns at the sound of her name, already smiling despite the small bubble of panic in Izuku’s chest. They aren’t friends, per se, but she seems nice enough to tolerate Izuku for the time being. “Yeah, what’s up?”
Izuku leads her to Kirishima, who’s laying down another blue ‘X.’ “Just stand here for me, please?”
“No problem.” She shuffles around until her heels are dead center in the spot, then waves at Togata. Kirishima follows Izuku off the stage and a couple rows out, where they turn to get a better look at the setup.
“Does it look a little far to you?” Kirishima asks. He holds out his thumbs and index fingers as if to frame a picture, capturing the two landmark students between them. “That’s kinda big, I think.”
“It could definitely be smaller,” Izuku agrees, his voice muffled by how he buries his mouth in his fist. “Especially since it’s really just the closet we need for the transition. What d’you think, maybe shrink it a third, see how it looks?”
“Sounds good to me. Go scoot them in, I’ll move the tape.” Then, noticing the look of distaste from Izuku, he amends, “Actually, I’ll move them, you move the tape?”
“Better.” They spend a good few minutes more adjusting the tape markings and the two students, trying to figure out what a reasonable amount of stage looks like. Once they’re more or less satisfied with the distance, Izuku nods and circles the most recent measurement on Kirishima’s paper. “Okay, cool! D’you wanna go disperse them?”
“You guys’re free to go!” Kirishima hollers. “Thanks!” They both flash him a double thumbs-up before grouping over at stage left with a couple other kids.
“That was way more efficient than I was thinking. Nice work.” As they go to sit at the nearest chairs, the roll of tape slips off Kirishima’s wrist and bounces down the aisle before bumping to a stop at the stage. “Oh, hold on.”
“You don’t have to—” Without letting him get out any more of a protest, Izuku darts after the fallen roll, scooping it up and tossing it in the air a few times on his way back.
“There you go.” He takes a seat two in from the aisle, only noticing the empty space after a few seconds. He glances up at Kirishima, who’s just staring down at him with a semi-unreadable expression. ‘Semi’ in the sense that Izuku’s pretty sure he could work it out if he needed to, but he’s had more than enough of face-reading for the day, regardless of whether he has to be on the giving or the receiving end of it. “Wipe that look off your face, dude.”
This seems to jerk Kirishima back into the appropriate dimension, and he sits down. “Thanks for grabbing that. Practice from being the runner, huh?”
“What? No?” Izuku fights down a laugh, figuring that that wouldn’t exactly make Kirishima feel good. “I grabbed it because we’re friends, duh. Anyway, what kind of wood were we thinking? We can definitely use contact paper to make it look nicer, so appearance isn’t an issue. Definitely a matter of where price meets stability.”
Kirishima quickly recovers from whatever his deal was in favor of agreeing with Izuku on just about all of it. That’s fair, since Izuku hadn’t really recruited him as an idea guy, but he’d still like to hear a different opinion. “Hey, what’s up?” So much for leaving face-reading out of the equation.
“Forensics,” Kirishima says with a shrug. Not what Izuku had expected, but alright.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, it’s getting kinda tough. Guess I’m just distracted. So, sorry, we were talking about the intersection of this and that?”
“Price and stability, but we’ll get back to that. What’s up with forensics? You have Aizawa, right? He can be really—uh, just really, I guess. I’ve got him for math, but he’s not, like, rooting against you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“It wasn’t before.”
“Whoops.”
“Well, hey, got any tips for him, if you’re so experienced with the guy?”
“I mean. I know nothing about forensics except that story about killing a man with an icepick so any fingerprints melt off, so no? But for Aizawa, he usually doesn’t care about stuff like cheating on the homework as long as you actually learn the material, if that helps.”
Picking only the most relevant parts to respond to, Kirishima asks, “Where would I even cheat?”
“Well, who’s in the class with you? Maybe they could help you out. Tutor you or something.” Much easier said than done, Izuku is well aware. “I dunno, I bullied Kacchan into helping me with math, and that’s been working pretty well.”
“You bullied Bakugou.”
“Well, sure. I’m god, remember?”
“I keep forgetting.”
“It’s the hubris.”
“Must be.”
They muse away the remainder of the period, dipping into unrelated chatter between adjustments to their estimates on supplies. More than once, a kid stops by to bother one of them—Kirishima to help the trucks, Izuku to clarify confusion between logs and threads, people who just feel like goofing off for a minute—and before long, the bell is ringing for them to hit lunch. Izuku bids Kirishima farewell (until they see each other again for fifth hour), and heads for his locker to swap out his things for his packed lunch.
He’d made it last night when Mom wasn’t in the kitchen, which is super convenient in terms of limiting morning interactions, but it also means that he’s resigned to eating cold peanut butter and banana sandwiches. To spice it up lately, he’s been using toaster waffles instead of bread, and while it definitely shouldn’t be called healthy, it tastes interesting—though that might be the literal spoonful of sugar he dusted over both halves.
He meets Iida and Uraraka at their usual spot along the fence. Cold though it is, they’re a stubborn few that would sooner freeze than eat inside. Uraraka was a defector once or twice, but especially now that Ashido and them have started joining their clump, it’s a rare thing. The whole situation feels impossibly odd to Izuku, since he’s not exactly accustomed to having a whole cluster crowding around him on purpose (the sessions notwithstanding, obviously). He pretends to accept it as normal, not wanting to scare off the newcomers, but that act can only stretch so far.
In fact, it stretches about as far as seeing two entire new people ambling over.
“Hey!” Uraraka calls, waving over Kaminari and Shinsou. Izuku doesn’t bother trying to keep the surprise off his face, knowing it’d be a futile effort, anyway. He instead focuses on trying to absorb a single word from them about their inexplicable presence out here.
“We made a bet,” Shinsou explains as he and Kaminari make themselves comfortable on the grass. “Depended on how high a grade Kaminari got on this thing in classics. Kaminari won, so we’re doing food out here today.”
“I told you you’d win!” Ashido leans over for a high five with Kaminari, shaking her hand out after from the resounding smack.
“What was the bet?” Yaoyorozu asks.
“If it was that you’d get a bad grade,” Iida says, “I’m going to be extremely disappointed in you.”
“It was if it was odd or even,” Kaminari says. “Got a seventy-nine.”
“Oh, nice!”
“Did you go with odds in case you got a sixty-nine?” Jirou asks.
“Is that even a question?” Uraraka asks.
“Sixty-nine is always a win condition,” Izuku agrees. He hadn’t really planned to say anything, still trying to grapple with the sudden expansion of the group, but it seems to go over well. At least, it earns a smile from everyone but Shinsou, who just rolls his eyes.
“Hey, Midoriya,” he says instead, “do you want this bag of chips?”
Izuku blinks at the sudden turn, looking on as Shinsou draws a crumpled bag of potato chips out of seemingly nowhere. “Uh. Sure?”
“They’re stale,” Shinsou explains. He passes them over and moves right on to something else that apparently draws Uchida’s interest. Izuku occupies himself with prying the bag open. Stale chips are always a plus, but especially when he needs a distraction.
Like, okay. Obviously he has to be doing something right to have this many people crowding around him voluntarily, right? And they can’t just be here for Uraraka and Iida, because this is pretty indisputably his spot, and he’s been using it all year, so that’s another pro. They might be here out of boredom, or irritation with someone else, but even then, they still chose to be near Izuku (or, perhaps to a greater extent, their other friends, but still). Still! That definitely counts for something. Plural somethings, even.
The rest of lunch passes with a similar success rate in the realm of ‘Izuku being a functioning human,’ but he comes out the other side relatively better for it. At least, he feels pretty upbeat about it, and Kaminari even walks with him to his locker to grab his stuff for the second half of the day (which is really just his social studies and his english notebook, plus the obligatory scratch notebook) before they head to fifth hour. Kayama nods at them as they pass her desk, deep in idle chatter that they only interrupt to smile back.
“Oh, hey!” Kaminari exclaims. “Hagakure, I thought you were out sick again!”
“I came back for the second half,” Hagakure explains, her voice a practiced quiet even as her eyes crinkle up with the smile hidden behind her mask. She waves back at Izuku, who hops up to sit on her desk. “Doctor appointment this morning.”
“That’s right, wasn’t your throat bothering you Monday?” Izuku says.
“Yeah, ’s why I was out yesterday. Today was the follow-up, you know how it is.”
“Are you feeling better, at least?”
“Better as I can be!” Hagakure gives him a thumbs-up, her hands covered by light blue gloves. Local legend says her mom makes her wear those to fight off germs, but to hear Hagakure tell it, it’s so her hands don’t dry out from washing them so often. “Did I miss too much the last couple days?”
“Just the homework,” Kaminari says. “Sorry, I usually collect everything at the end of the day, but I’ve got your math, at least.”
“That’s fine, thanks. I can get the french and english from Ashido in bio, at least.”
Kaminari and Hagakure fill the rest of passing time with a game of catch-up, whatever hadn’t been pertinent enough to discuss during the hand-off of missed notes and homework before now. Izuku tosses in his own opinion here and there, but he’s well aware that he and Hagakure aren’t as close as Hagakure and Kaminari. Something about family friends, but he never really thought to ask, and it seems weird to bring it up now.
He finds himself a more active participant in the conversation when he talks to Uraraka before sixth hour, mostly because it’s just the two of them involved.
“So, hey,” she says as he slides in behind his desk, “I don’t know if this needs an apology, but still. Like, sorry it’s been getting kinda crowded at lunch lately. I know you’re used to having your space.”
“No, I don’t mind at all.” Then, noticing the doubt on her face, he insists, “Seriously, it’s fine. It’s actually kind of nice to’ve expanded the group, y’know? Like, it’s definitely weird, and I’m definitely gonna take a hot minute to get used to it, but I’m not mad about it or anything.”
“Well, good, because there’s a non-zero chance that there’s nothing I could do to make them go away if you wanted that.”
“And if it turned out I did mind?”
“Then I’d just have to tell you to suck it up, buttercup.”
“Aren’t buttercups yellow?”
“Maybe I mean buttercup as in the green powerpuff girl.”
“Promise?” Izuku cracks a grin at that, and at the image that follows as he adds, “So you’d be Blossom, of course, which leaves Iida as Bubbles.”
“That doesn’t sound quite right. Maybe he could be the professor?”
“You’re right, that makes more sense. Anyway, I can’t blame them all for swarming us. I am the perfect specimen humanity has to offer, after all.”
Uraraka rolls her eyes, but there’s a laugh fighting to come out from beneath it. “Well, I’m glad to know one of the Dekus is growing a spine.”
“Character Deku and I have a timeshare on the spine. He gets it when he feels like turning his skin purple.”
At this, Uraraka raises a dubious eyebrow. “Canonically?”
A laugh-snort gets caught in Izuku’s throat, reducing him to the sounds of a mouth-foaming pig. Between his attempts at recovering his composure, he manages to get out, “Yeah, canonically.” Even if not for the nonsense they toss back and forth, he likes having a distraction from all the thoughts raging in his head. It almost feels intentional today, like everybody’s making a concerted effort to keep him talking. He’d usually write it off as being friendly (which is a fair assumption, since that’s what friends do), were it not for Ashido joining in on it during seventh hour, without the direct peer pressure of everyone else at lunch.
She’d rolled her chair over beside his with about ten minutes left to go in class, having already finished her own work well ahead of schedule. Majima enlisted her to help people falling behind, and she’d chosen target number one with next to no hesitation.
“I’m just better at pen-and-paper art,” Izuku sighs, clicking his mouse listlessly around on the screen. “That doesn’t transfer to—to, I don’t know, to whatever this is.”
“So stop thinking of it like art,” Ashido suggests. “And select the lasso tool, the paintbrush isn’t doing you any favors.”
“This class is literally digital media, what else am I supposed to think of it like?”
“Like media, hello? Where in the title is ‘art,’ exactly?”
“It’s implied.”
“I’ll imply your butt.”
“I can’t tell if it’s physically possible for me to take that seriously as a threat.”
“Maybe you should pay more attention in school, huh?”
“I don’t think that’s the sort of thing I’m supposed to be learning. What kind of classes are you taking, that that comes up?”
“Fun ones.” Ashido purses her lips as Izuku tries his hand again at the lasso tool. “Click the dropdown and use the magnet one.”
“Why would you not tell me that sooner?”
“Because it’s funny to watch you struggle, duh.”
“Really feeling the love.”
“Shit, I was trying to make you feel the hate. I’ll practice, don’t worry. Anyway, if you end up flunking out because you couldn’t get photoshop under wraps, you can always keep a side hustle as an artist, right? Get super rich after you die?”
“Yeah, but I’d have to die first.”
“I’m sure we could work something out.”
“I’ve got a pretty long list of nemeses, you’d have to wait your turn for a while.”
Ashido slaps his arm hard enough to earn a noise from him, but not so hard that it draws Majima’s attention to where she’s very much not doing what he assigned her to do. “Then why’d you make it sound like dying was such an ordeal?”
“Since when is dying not an ordeal?”
“Fair play, fair play. Look, just—move over, let me do it.” Then, with a quick look to make sure that Majima isn’t about to notice the sort-of plagiarism (consenting though it may be), she nudges Izuku’s chair aside and grabs the mouse. In no time at all, she has his screen looking enough like hers to be passable, while also not so much like hers that Majima might call them out on it. Tip top work.
“Thanks, but how does that help me learn?”
“Learning isn’t the point.”
“Again, I have to wonder what classes—”
“Again, fun ones. Anyway, this class doesn’t have a final, so just make sure I’m around for the last project, and you’re golden.” She jabs him in the chest, using the force to push herself away. “Just don’t piss me off, or I might screw you over on purpose.”
“Versus screwing me over on accident, which is unavoidable?”
“I’m glad you’re so good at keeping up with non-digital things. Otherwise, you’d be totally hopeless.”
“Good to know I’m not totally helpless, then.”
“Not yet, anyway.”
Apparently satisfied with her work, Ashido moves down a spot to harass the next kid over about how much they suck at basic computer fluency. Izuku turns back to his own screen and opens a new draft to try to replicate what she did. He doesn’t get very far, but he’s at least farther than before by the time the last bell of the day rings.
He’s slow to get to his locker, having no real desire to rush things along. Mom’s at work, sure, but then he’ll have to sit in the empty house, alone, for hours, and that’s not a whole lot better than sitting in there on a different floor than here. It’s a little better, sure, but not significantly so. It’s infinitely easier to just drag his feet and be a nuisance to the people shoving past him.
Unfortunately, velocity equals distance over time or something, which means that Izuku inevitably arrives at his locker, and begins the intentionally slowed process of packing his bag. Between notebooks and folders, he glances about himself, only realizing after the fact that he’s checking for whether Todoroki is hanging around. Doesn’t seem to be. The only person not rushing past or digging in their own locker is—
“Oh, Kacchan, hey!” He doesn’t bother waving him over as he returns to trying to zip his overstuffed backpack shut, knowing Kacchan will group up with him when he’s good and ready. Or, as the case seems to be, knowing Kacchan will stand there until Izuku is finished. As Izuku tries to yank the straps of his backpack over the bunches in his coat, Kacchan turns on his heel and leads the way to his own locker. Izuku follows in silence.
He still finds himself looking over his shoulder to make sure Todoroki isn’t creeping along behind them, but logically, he figures they’re probably safe. Well, not safe, but, like—like, Izuku can overthink about something other than an unnecessarily pretty boy standing unnecessarily close to him. If nothing else, he knows Todoroki and Kacchan have the same seventh hour, so if they were having a surprise tagalong, Kacchan would probably be the first to know about it. Bar that, Todoroki was probably just kidding around. Seven hours is probably too long a span to spend mulling over a dead horse.
Kacchan doesn’t make any idle chat as they leave the school and head for home, to which Izuku has no protest. It’s not like a whole world of shit could’ve happened in the two hours since social studies ended. Still, he notices Kacchan’s pace being slower than usual, and he’s not one to leave a curiosity unanswered if he can help it.
“You good?”
“You gotta get over yourself, Deku.”
“That’s a perfectly valid response to my question,” Izuku doesn’t say, because he values his life. Instead, he says, “What.”
“I think ‘get over yourself’ is pretty clear.”
“Okay, sure. Done and done. There, things are great, thanks for the advice. Your turn.”
“So you and your mom talked about your little treehouse tantrum, and the social studies slumber party lie?”
Izuku aims for the least volatile part of the sentence he can. “Feeling the alliterations today, huh?”
“Look,” Kacchan says, his voice aggressive without being actually pissed off (at least not audibly so). “I’m down to keep helping you with whatever school shit if you need it, but that’s on hiatus until after you square shit up with your mom. It’s awkward, and it’s bumming people out, and it’s definitely been going on for too long.”
“Oh.” Izuku tries not to be too obvious in the way he deflates. “I didn’t realize it was getting to other people.”
“Well, it hasn’t yet,” Kacchan grouches, “but it’s gonna, and I’m not gonna cover your ass when it does. Text me once you’ve dealt with it if you need anything, leave me alone if you don’t. Either way, see you for the game tonight, if you can stay above water that long.” With that, he splits off to cross the street, leaving Izuku staring blankly into the distance in front of the chihuahua house. He’d probably stand there numb until the cows came home, were it not for the chihuahua in question barking and startling him into motion.
He arrives at his house to find the driveway empty. Not surprising in either direction—Mom’s never been home this early, and Dad’s been pretty wrapped up with whatever stuff his job involves lately. It’s a rare sight to see either of them home before dinner, let alone both of them.
The now-standard cold of the house is all that greets him as he sets up in the living room. It’s easy enough to lose himself in the humdrum of homework, starting with the simple stuff and working his way down to math. To his relief, there’s not a whole lot in math that really stumps him, so he’s probably safe from needing Kacchan’s help tonight. Just after he sighs in relief at this, he realizes that it’s probably not awesome that that’s why he viewed ‘not struggling’ as a positive. At the same time, he doesn’t super feel like confronting that, either.
Entirely too soon, he hears the familiar honk of a locking car in the driveway, and has to fight every impulse jumping through his muscles to pack his shit and book it to his room. If it’s happening, it’s happening tonight. Kacchan’s parting words cemented that, though they were propelled by everyone else banding together to occupy Izuku’s attention all day. After finding out that Kacchan pulled everyone together to come over two sessions ago, he wouldn’t put it past him to pull a similar stunt with this.
“Hi, sweetie,” Mom says as she bustles through the door, dropping her keys off on the little row of hook hangers. “I’m sure you’ve guessed, but Dad’ll be out late tonight. We’re on our own for food.” She plants her hands on the back of the couch and leans over to kiss the top of Izuku’s head. “I’m thinking takeout. Lai Thai?”
“I’ll start ordering it,” Izuku agrees. He loves that place—they’re super generous with their servings, usually to the point that leftovers last a good couple days if you stretch them out. “Your usual?”
“My usual.”
The conversation ends itself there, as Mom continues to the kitchen to do some paper shuffling and Izuku resumes his homework after finishing up the takeout order. It’s as normal as it could be, given that Izuku doesn’t usually let himself get caught in the open like this. He’d more been hoping that she’d pry open the wound—vault, whatever—but apparently not. Progress, though. They’ve exchanged fewer words for less.
He flicks on the television and switches over to a rerun marathon of Jeopardy to make the house feel a little less empty while he waits out the delivery guy. Though it hadn’t been his intent, Mom comes in partway through and sits at the opposite end of the couch, thumbing idly through her phone over the commercial breaks.
Okay, so it’s on Izuku to initiate. Fine. “I don’t remember this one, so it’s a level playing field to balance out my sheer genius.”
“Alright, mister confidence.” Mom sets her phone down in her lap and leans forward, like she might better see the answers before they get read off. “You’re on.”
“You can keep your distraction, I’m already at a disadvantage from doing homework.” It’s supposed to be fishing for a ‘Put the homework down and focus on the game,’ but he knows that isn’t coming. Schrödinger’s assumption, because before she can reply in either direction, the doorbell rings.
“I’ll get it.” She’s on her feet and at the door, grabbing her purse on the way, before Izuku can beat her to the punch like a respectable kid. She takes a detour through the kitchen on her way back to grab a couple forks—neither of them can stand the cheap plastic ones that come with the food. She positions herself in the same spot at the far end of the couch. Not to get space, Izuku tells himself, but because that’s just Her Spot, of course she’s gonna sit there.
Still, for his own peace of mind (and a more physical barrier), he opens another notebook and spreads it out between them. The rate of correct answers drops off from the both of them as they turn their attention to their food. Neither of them get the double jeopardy in that round, either. Unknown to both halves of the couch, each end is batting a thousand at a game neither knows the other is playing.
Finally, during the commercial break right before final jeopardy, Izuku forces himself to grab the remote and pause the show. No time like the present. Except maybe never.
“Can we talk?” Already off to a terrible start, because two of the words don’t make it out, and he has to repeat himself, and the nature of repeating yourself tends to make your words sound harsher the second time, so that’s not super great, and—
“What’s up?”
He looks over at her, trying to make the feeling of ‘C’mon, like, you know what’s up’ come across with just his expression. She looks back with pleasant uncertainty, locking them into an unwitting staring contest. In a moment that will no doubt go down in the Midoriya history books, Mom breaks first.
“I still just don’t get what you’re so upset about lately, and you won’t talk to me—”
“I stopped talking when you stopped listening.” And the terrible start only gets better.
“I never stopped listening—”
“Yet you never heard a word either, did you?” He puts all of his effort into not sounding like a petulant child, which leaves very little left over for trying not to sound like a complete and utter dick. “Just because you say you listen—”
“I don’t even know what I did, hon.”
“You know exactly what you did!” Matters are not helped in the least by Mom keeping her calm in the face of Izuku’s rapidly increasing anger. Maybe she just hasn’t been letting it build up like him. “That you act like it’s this great big mystery just makes it worse, can’t you see that?”
“Help me see it, please.”
He wants to blow up. He really, really wants to be like all those fantasy characters and throw a real tantrum, show the cushions of the couch the old what-for, let loose and wreck shop. At the same time, there’s an impossible sadness at knowing that she doesn’t even know what she did wrong. Isn’t it a mom’s job to know that sort of thing?
“Izuku, please.”
That soft tone, edged with hurt, does not help at all. “Just—it really upset me when you threw out those notebooks. They meant a lot to me.”
“They were just notebooks, Izuku.” Bye, soft and hurt tone. “Nothing from school or anything. They were barely doodles, and a few scraps of story ideas, sure, but most of them were water damaged, if not plain collecting dust on a shelf—”
“It doesn’t matter if they were just apple cores, Mom. They mattered to me, and you have no right to throw them away without asking—”
“You never even look at them—”
“It doesn’t matter if I straight-up forgot they existed, they were mine! Those mattered to me, I cared about them, and you just threw them in the garbage like they were nothing!”
“They were just scribbles, Izuku.”
“I get that you don’t care about my art and games and stuff, and I gave up on trying to make you get it, but—”
“You can always make more, sweetie—”
“Not those!” Full-blown petulant child mode now, slamming his fists against the couch cushion and screwing his face up tight in a knot and everything. “I would’ve thrown them out when I was good and ready and done with them. It doesn’t matter if there was nothing in there I cared about, it doesn’t even matter if I actively hated what I put in there! You shouldn’t have tossed them. All else equal, it’s not fair—” Izuku cuts himself off with that, because when you loop back to complaining about what’s fair, it becomes immediately obvious who the child is in the argument. “It sucks that you did that.” There, he can admit defeat, and they can move on.
“They were of no use to you, Izuku.” Never mind. “Maybe if they’d been school books that you’d needed old notes out of—”
“Because everything’s about school, right, I forgot. Can never have anything that’s just for me, because I want it, and that makes it wrong, sure, got it. My bad.”
“Your future doesn’t—”
“What does my future have to do with anything!” There it is, that’s the explosion he was gunning for from the start. “This is just fun, this is a hobby for me, I’m not gonna turn into some starving artist type because I think it’s a more beautiful life, or whatever it was Dad thought!”
“Hisashi has nothing to do with—”
“I’m allowed to like things for the sake of liking them, and I’m allowed to assume my mom of all people would get that! Because, hey, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been happy lately, surprise! That’s basically only because of Dad’s game, my game, the one you’re so convinced is a waste of time over me doing school stuff! Sorry I found something I care about that isn’t dusty old books! Or, wait, that’s right, you don’t want me looking at those, either. I forgot.” He stops there, though there’s plenty more he could say, because that’s far more uninterrupted talking than he’s used to doing without a game in progress around it. Plus, honestly, he’d’ve thought she’d stop him sooner. He didn’t ration out enough fuel to carry him through much more of that.
She works her mouth back and forth, her brows tightly knit as she mulls over his small tirade. Finally, she seems to reach some sort of conclusion. “Of course I want you to be happy, Izuku, you’re my whole world.”
“Yeah, well—” Izuku fumes for a minute, the wind gone from his sails despite the clouds still overhead. It’s not remotely close to an apology. It’s not even an acknowledgement of wrongdoing. Despite this, and his certainty that he’s not remotely in the wrong here, he finds himself caught between being really pissed off and being really fucking bummed about how much he misses being normal with his mom. “Well, you have a really weird way of showing it, and I wish you’d stop.”
A beat, then— “I’m sorry.”
Izuku can almost hear something cracking at that, buried deep down in his chest, because isn’t that all he wanted to hear? A simple admission of guilt? He doesn’t know what to do with it now that he has it.
Apparently seeing that he isn’t going to throw her words back at her, she continues, “I just want the best for you, and it’s hard for me when your path there is different than mine. That’s an excuse, and I’m sorry for that, too, but you have to work with me here.”
“You’re the mom, aren’t you? It’s your job to work with me.”
“I’m trying my best, every single day. You realize that, don’t you?”
Izuku just grumbles and grouches under his breath.
“A little louder?”
A huff. “Yeah. Yeah, I get it. I do. I’m not sorry, though.”
“And I don’t expect you to be, but I’m glad we finally talked about it.” Mom angles herself over the pile of notebooks between them, pulling Izuku into an awkward hug. As far as he’s concerned, it’s the best one he’s ever had.
Unsure how to resolve the tension, he says, “There was no social studies project.”
Mom pulls away and wipes at her eyes, managing the ghost of a laugh. “I knew that, honey.”
“Okay, cool.”
“And I am still mad about you disappearing on me without a word, however justified it might’ve seemed at the time.”
“That’s fair.” Izuku clears his throat and digs the heels of his palms into his eyes, exhaling with the force of all the winds that had previously been shoving him along. His skin practically tingles from the sensation. “Okay. Okay. Anyway, classic television shows, right?”
“Remind me of the category?” Mom asks as he grabs the remote and skips through the rest of the commercials.
“Government.”
“Oh, man, that was never my strong suit.”
“So it’s your fault I’m like this.” This earns him a nose exhale, the highest honor in comedy.
“And the clue,” Alex says from the television. “‘Features’ at the website of this agency include ‘Protection,’ ‘Investigations,’ and ‘Know Your Money.’ Thirty seconds, players. Good luck!”
“Well, crap.” Mom slouches back against the couch. “I have no clue.”
“Yeah, you do, he just said it.” Izuku motions at the screen to clarify who, exactly, just said it. Not knowing the answer himself, Izuku whistles along with the music. Alex does his usual deal of moving up the ranks for the answers, but none of the contestants get it right.
“That makes me feel a little better, at least,” Mom says.
“The secret service?” Izuku repeats after the answer is revealed. “Who would’ve known that?”
“Alex Trebek.”
“Alex Trebek gets to know the answer beforehand so he can riff about it.”
“So he has a leg up!”
“He has his whole body up!” He shakes his head as the credits roll at the side of the screen, the next episode’s opening sequence taking up the majority of the screen.
“So,” Mom says as Johnny Gilbert’s voice introduces the next batch of contestants, “you’re playing your game tonight, right?” Her voice is careful, like she’s all too aware of accidentally setting Izuku off on another round. It’s a reasonable precaution.
“Yeah, it’s supposed to be over at Kacchan’s.” Izuku clicks his phone awake to check the time. “Speaking of, I should probably head out soon. I know he gets annoyed when he’s alone with certain people, and Iida’s usually pretty early, so.”
“You could host it here. If you want.”
“Why would I do that?” It’s not supposed to sound harsh, but he doesn’t know what combination of words would soften it.
“It’s not too big of a relocation for your friends, and I don’t—I get that this game is important to you. Don’t make that face, just because I don’t get why doesn’t mean I can’t see what it means to you. Anyway, maybe if you held it here, I could try to get a better idea of its significance by watching you guys play. You haven’t played here since, gosh, was it October?”
“We do a rotating system, so no one’s stuck hosting all the time.” Izuku knows this isn’t the part Mom had wanted a response to, but it was the easier part for him to answer. He can feel the threads between them struggling to repair themselves, though, and he doesn’t want to break that progress, because he doesn’t think he could bear starting over from scratch. “It’s—as long as you get that that’s sort of a weird request, then yeah, I can move it here.” Mom smiles at him as he pulls out his phone to text the group chat.
“I’ll handle the food if you handle your school stuff. We don’t want your friends thinking we’re a bunch of slobs, right?”
“I can get the food—” Izuku goes to protest, but she’s already grabbing the leftovers and sealing them up for a brief hibernation in the fridge. Well, at least that’s tomorrow’s dinner set.
have you accepted our lord and savior todoroki, 6:53p
Izuku
hey guys, slight change of plans - meet at my house instead
Kacchan
That’s fine, I didn’t need to be informed when my own house was involved in the question
Iida
Uraraka and I are en route!
Shinsou
i have kaminari
Kirishima
HITOSHIFUCKINGSHINSOU.jpg
i got ashido
Ashido
i am being held in this car against my will
Uraraka
:face_with_raised_eyebrow: canonically?
Izuku
what is it with you and that joke today?
Uraraka
Saw it on a show, thought it was funny, stole it
Todoroki
I’m running late but I’m bringing an apology bag of doritos to make up for it
Kaminari
flavor???
Todoroki
Cool ranch
Kacchan
The royal bitch lives
Ashido
:party_popper: :party_popper: :party_popper:
Izuku puts his phone back down and sets about cleaning up his school stuff. Before too long, there’s a knock at the door, followed by Iida and Uraraka letting themselves in. Kacchan follows in their tracks, a scowl on his face. His eyes go straight to Izuku, an obvious question there that needn’t be voiced. Izuku glances to the kitchen and back, then nods. The scowl is still there, but it looks a little less enthusiastic now. If he didn’t have that nagging sense of self-preservation, Izuku might suspect there was a hint of a smile hiding under there somewhere at a job well done.
The trio moves to take up their usual spots on the floor in front of the couch, making a decent ruckus with only the three of them. The level of noise only grows with the arrival of Shinsou and Kaminari, then Ashido and Kirishima. Todoroki brings up the rear at two minutes past seven, holding up two—count ’em, two—party size bags of doritos. One cool ranch, and one original. His offering is met with raucous applause.
“Okay,” Izuku says, picking his way between splayed legs and hands to his normal spot, “so you’re all in the throne room, and the king seems to be pretty intent on a conversation. Everything seems fine, for the moment.” He takes a quick look at his screen, where he’s got a reference chart of particular information, namely the passive perceptions for each party member. Yep, they all think it looks fine. “Do we want to do any shenanigans before I get into it?”
“I’m saving my best shenanigans for harassing the king,” Kaminari says. “I’m gonna ruin his whole day.”
“We killed a man in his throne room,” Ashido points out. “I think his day’s already pretty shot.”
Izuku glances at the door to the kitchen, where Mom wears a bewildered smile. When their eyes meet, she just shakes her head and waves him back to his friends. He turns around to absorb their rambling. Iida and Kaminari are deep in the logistics of exactly how far they could bother a king before it became treason, Ashido is bothering Shinsou about whether his character would rent out mind control on a sort of lease plan, and Uraraka is leaning across Kacchan to swipe a handful of doritos from Todoroki, who makes a valiant effort to keep Kirishima from taking all of them. Noticing Izuku’s eyes on them, Kacchan raises an eyebrow.
“What’s your deal, Deku?”
Izuku just grins and shakes his head, splaying his hands out over the floor in front of him. This draws the attention of everyone else, such that a hush drops just in time for him to grin and say, “Roll initiative.”