Chapter Text
“ Death isn’t something to fear, ” his mother had said when he was little. Izuku was never specifically afraid of death or the idea of passing away. So it felt strange for his mother to tell him this. “ I’m just making sure that you’ll never forget. ” she had answered him when he asked her why she told him that over and over again.
Midoriya Izuku had a weird home life, so to speak. His father, Hisashi, was never home, and his mother never gave a solid reason why he was gone. The most he could get as an answer was ‘work-trip’.
And that ‘work-trip’ had been the longest ‘work-trip’ he’s ever seen. Almost his entire life. Sure, his father had been there here and there, but never for longer than a day. And, yet, for some utter idiotic reason, it never felt like his father didn’t care about them. Whenever he actually was home, he would spend all of that time either with Izuku, or drowning his wife with hugs and kisses
But Izuku was still jealous. Jealous about how Kacchan’s family was perfect, his father being home all the time. Kacchan didn’t have to worry about when he would see his father next and if he would make it to his graduation from school. He just relied on him being there. And he always was.
“ Jealousy is one of the worst feelings a person can have, ” his mother once said to him when he expressed his feelings towards Kacchan’s perfect life. “ Your father is a very busy man. As long as there are people on earth, he has work to do, ” his mother had explained cryptically to him once. And when Izuku had asked what she meant by that, he was met with silence from her.
And so, the years went by, his father came and went and his relationship with Kacchan worsened, even if Izuku himself didn’t want to admit it and their mothers still didn’t give up to ‘improve’ their relationship by making them spend time together. Or, how their mothers liked to call it, ‘spending quality time together’. Because they would ‘surely need each other once they grew up’. If that wasn’t suspicious, he didn’t know what was.
But the most suspicious thing about the whole ordeal was the fact that sometimes when he tried to get one of their attention by touching them, they would just jerk back in fear, before relaxing once again. I was like they would get harmed by the smallest touch.
Not to mention elementary school, when everyone’s quirks manifested. Well, everyone except for himself. Even when his mother reassured him day and day again that he would just have to wait , that he would eventually get one of his own, he was still sceptical because not everyone got their quirks when they were four (or so he heard in a fleeting conversation of his mother and Aunt Mitsuki). As a final word of encouragement to wait, his mother told him that his father got his quirk extremely late, at the age of ten. Which was very late even for late bloomer standards (if you don’t count the people whose quirks just activate under really specific circumstances).
(Spoiler alert: He never did get his quirk.)
At the age of ten, he had given up on getting a quirk. His tenth birthday had been a while ago and there was no hint on when his quirk would show itself. His quirklessness did not go unnoticed either. His classmates were quick to call him by names, push him into lockers, ‘mistake’ his items for trash and straight up assault him.
Sometimes Kacchan would scare them away and sometimes he was all on his own because they both knew that some people wouldn’t keep Kacchan helping him a secret.
For example, there was this one boy that was often bullying him for his quirklessness that came from an influential family and was loved by both the teachers and the students. (Unsurprisingly, he was also Kacchan’s friend.) He could get away with everything he did and Kacchan, even if he wanted to, knew that he could do nothing to stop it - it would just ruin his reputation around school and the one who would suffer the most was most likely going to be Izuku.
On the other hand, there were also those kids that bullied him from time to time that were easily intimidated by Kacchan, so these ones probably wouldn’t repeat their actions and never tell a soul who helped the quirkless boy.
All of this changed when Izuku’s father came back from his latest ‘work-trip’ on the first day of summer break.
Midoriya Izuku woke up to the sound of his phone ringing. Glancing at the clock on his nightstand, he found out that it was way too early to give a shit, so he went back to sleep.
Only to wake up 20 minutes later to his phone ringing again. Grabbing it and wanting this to be over fast, he answered the call.
“What?” he somewhat angrily said to the person at the other end.
“Morning Izuku.” came his father’s voice.
Izuku never sat up so fast in his life. It was no longer too early for a phone call.
“Dad? Why are you calling me at..” Izuku looked at the clock on his phone. “7:43 in the morning?”
“ I just wanted to make sure that you’re the first one to know that I will be coming back to visit during this Summer break. I don’t know the specific date, but I’ll be coming and I have a hunch that will I be staying for a week!”
Izuku froze. A whole week? A whole week! That was seven times more than he usually stayed! Izuku was full on ecstatic when he heard that!
“A whole week?! Are you serious? This is amazing! I’ll have to tell mom!” he yelled in pure happiness and ran out of his room.
“MOM, DID YOU HEAR? DAD IS-” he yelled, knowing that Inko was usually up and making breakfast at this time. But when he ran the stairs down and into the kitchen, he was met with even more happiness.
Sitting at the table, drinking coffee, was his father, Hisashi, with a phone in hand, presumably still in the call with Izuku.
“DAD!” Izuku yelled and dropped his phone. Running straight into Hisashi’s arms, knocking both of them off the chair Hisashi was sitting on.
“Woah, slow down there big boy!” Hisashi answered and laughed while also being a pillow for Izuku. Inko just watched the whole ordeal as she cooked breakfast for both of them.
“You’re going to crush the old man if you continue hugging him any harder,” Inko joked with a
small smile grazing her features, “Are you okay though, dear? You look paler than usual.”
“What have you been feeding him? He weighs at least double of what he did last time I came here,” Hisashi asked as he accepted his fate as Izuku’s personal body pillow. “But yeah, I’m f- ack -ine.”
“That’s mean!” Izuku complained with a pout and tightened his arms around his father’s body.
“I surrender! I surrender!” Hisashi answered to that and put his hands up into the air in a gesture of surrender, “Oh almighty Izuku, please have mercy!”
Both of them giggled while Inko smiled at them fondly and continued to prepare breakfast.
After Izuku stopped hugging Hisashi to death and breakfast was served, all three of them fell into a comfortable silence as all of them ate their breakfasts, some faster than others.
“You’re gonna choke if you eat any faster Izuku!” Inko warned as she watched him eat his cereal bowl empty in four shots. Sadly, this call went to deaf ears as Izuku just fastened his eating speed (or so it seemed).
“Yeah, Izuku. I can’t spend the day with you if you’re 6 feet under!” Hisashi joked, but Inko dropped her smile for a moment, before shaking her head and continuing eating.
That seemed to get Izuku to slow down. “Sorry,” he muttered and looked like a kicked puppy.
His father ruffled his hair at that exclamation, “Don’t worry about it.”
The rest of the breakfast went smoothly, now that Izuku's mouth wasn't a void where he stuffed everything faster than an eye can see. After that, Inko told them to do the dishes while she cleaned the table and fixed stuff around the house due to Hisashi’s sudden and surprise arrival. Him and Izuku fell into a frenzy of a conversation as they worked, Izuku trying to figure out his job with subtle (not) questions.
At one point, Inko came back to the kitchen for needing some soap from a cabinet, only to be met with Hisashi laughing at some joke Izuku had made. Inko just smiled as she watched them, only for that smile to drop for a minute, remembering what Hisashi had to do in the close future. Deciding to worry about that when the time came, she smiled again and enjoyed solely the scene in front of her.
Little did she know that she would have to worry about it a lot sooner than she had originally thought.