Chapter Text
Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz.
Izuku taps pen against paper, biting his lip.
Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz.
Eyebrows drawing together, he reads the sentence again. During their regularly scheduled patrol, Sidekick Team Beta encountered a shoplifter and gave chase, --
Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz.
He sighs, letting his eyes fall shut, then pushes his chair back and stands, following the noise out of his cubicle and down the row toward the window.
Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz.
"Midoriya?"
Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz.
Izuku's eyes sweep over his coworker's cubicle before landing on the source of the noise.
"Hey, Kitamura, sorry to bother you," he says, stepping past the other man. "Could I just..." He reaches over the man's shoulder and shifts the small potted plant to the other side of the desk, where it's not directly above the heating vent. The pounding, angry buzz starts to fade to a quiet, comforting hum. "Okay, that's all, I'll just... go now."
Izuku can practically feel Kitamura's glare on his back as he walks away, and when he slides back into his cubicle, putting the wall between them, it’s with a sigh of relief.
His desk chair is, as usual, incredibly uncomfortable, the knobs of the support rails digging unpleasantly into his back. Closing his eyes, Izuku leans forward, resting his head on his arms. Without the background interference of Kitamura’s violets slowly dehydrating, the office is almost peaceful, the flower’s contentedness smoothing over the susurrating whispers of turning pages and the scratching of pens into white noise.
"Deku?"
Izuku starts, wrenching his head off his desk and blinking rapidly. He hadn’t heard footsteps coming toward his desk or even the ding of the elevator, and yet beside his desk stands his favorite colleague. For a given value of colleague.
"Uraraka?"
She smiles down at him, so wide and genuine that her eyes crinkle with it as her head tilts.
“You fell asleep, huh?” she asks. A hint of worry creeps into her expression. “I thought you’d be expecting me…”
Izuku blinks, and then starts to panic.
"Oh, sorry! I'll get it right away!"
He flips frantically through the papers on his desk, trying to remember what exactly she would be looking for. His panic rises as he realizes that none of the papers on his desk are marked for the Gamma Team, which means he forgot an assignment...
"Deku, relax!" He looks back up to see her looking even more concerned. "I just wanted to ask if you were coming to eat lunch with us?"
"Oh." Izuku glances at the clock, and sure enough, it's ten minutes into his usual lunch break. When did that happen? "Of course," he says, grabbing his lunch from under his desk and following her out of the cubicle. As they climb the stairs, Izuku muses on how lucky he is to have made friends with her.
They'd met by chance; on his first day at the agency, he'd tripped over his own feet right in front of the entrance, and she'd caught him, apologizing for using her quirk on him without asking.
Izuku had screamed.
Of course he’d known the recently debuted sidekick Uravity worked at this agency, but he hadn't expected to meet her at the front door, though he supposed that was silly; how else would she get in, floating through a window? Wait, could she do that? But no, Uravity floated herself as a special move, so it probably had some kind of drawback or limitation.
Uraraka had blinked at the stream of nervous babble pouring involuntarily from his mouth, then smiled and said, "You're really observant, aren't you?"
The brightness of her smile, the honesty of the compliment, the embarrassment of muttering immediately on meeting such a cool hero had overwhelmed him so much that he'd simply stuttered, "I- I guess." He'd followed as if in a dream as she offered to help him find his office, accepting with a vacant smile as she led him through the building and waved at the other heroes they passed.
She’d deposited him on the public relations floor with a smile, and Izuku had stumbled through the quick introduction his boss had given him in a haze, finally finding himself seated in his own cubicle with a stack of press releases to fact-check. He’d taken a deep breath, marked the morning as an isolated miracle but a good omen all the same, and thrown himself into the work with a determined smile.
Needless to say, when Uraraka had shown up later that day with a bright smile and an invitation upstairs for lunch, Izuku had been floored. Six months in, however, he finds it almost natural to step out of the elevator and onto the hero floor.
Or, well, one of the hero floors. Obviously as a hero agency, much of the building was dedicated to the pros and sidekicks that made up the public face of the company. In addition to training rooms, situation rooms, offices, and lockers, the heroes had a floor specifically dedicated for them to just… hang out, which included a stellar cafeteria. It made a certain amount of logical sense, since in addition to patrols, the heroes spent a certain amount of time on-call in case a situation arose for which their quirks were uniquely suited.
(Some agencies made their heroes do their own paperwork during this time, but then again if that were the case everywhere, Izuku and his coworkers would be out of a job.)
“Hurry the hell up already, Deku!” barks a familiar voice.
If Uraraka inviting him to lunch that first day had been a surprise, finding out that she had meant lunch with her team had been a shock. Izuku had, of course, known that she and Kacchan had been partners for years, but it was one thing to see them work together in blurry film clips of battles and entirely another to watch bubbly Uraraka cheerfully shove Kacchan aside to make room for Izuku, stealing a carrot off his homemade plate of curry rice. When Kacchan had simply grumbled and swatted at her hand—without so much as a spark!— Izuku had felt like he was glimpsing another plane of existence.
“Awww, were you waiting for us?” Uraraka asks, plopping into a chair at their table.
“No,” Kacchan growls as he shoves a bento at her, opening his own. About three months ago, Kacchan had finally ended their argument over the health and practicality of her eating cafeteria food every day by packing lunches for the both of them, grumbling a halfhearted excuse that it would put a stop to her stealing his food.
“He was,” confirms Kirishima from his seat beside Kacchan. “Bakugou’s a gentleman, no matter what he talks like.”
Izuku smiles and takes the last seat at the table. “Yeah. I remember as a kid, Kacchan used to—“
“Shut the fuck up, Deku,” Kacchan interrupts, warily eyeing the way the others’ gazes light up with interest. “What took you so long, anyway? Even you aren’t useless enough to get lost between your office and here.”
Izuku blinks. Possibly the weirdest part of all this was how Kacchan treated him. Uraraka and Kirishima were incredible heroes; it made sense that Kacchan treated them with respect. But Izuku was just a paper pusher, someone Kacchan would always have looked down on with a sneer. And yet, from the moment he’d made explosive re-entry into Izuku’s life after almost a decade of absence, Kacchan’s words had lacked their characteristic bite, and when he did insult Izuku, it was becoming increasingly clear that the tone and wording masked genuine friendship, or, in this case, worry.
“Bakugou has a point, dude,” Kirishima says, face going serious. “You’re usually super punctual, but today we had to send out a search party, and honestly you look kinda dead.”
“Thanks,” Izuku responds dryly, and Kacchan snorts while Uraraka chokes.
Kirishima waves a hand. “You know what I mean.”
“He was asleep at his desk!” Uraraka announces after swallowing her huge mouthful of food. Honestly, Izuku has no idea where she puts it all. “He looked pretty cute, actually!”
“Wait, really?”
Izuku raises his eyebrows as Kacchan dissolves into full-blown snickers. “I’m starting to feel kind of offended, Kirishima.”
“What?” the redhead asks, bewildered, before his eyes widen in realization. “No, man, of course you’re cute,” he dismisses, making Izuku blush and Kacchan roll his eyes, “I meant, you actually fell asleep at your desk? That’s so out of character!”
“It really is,” Uraraka agreed. “And he’s kind of right about how you look, too,” she adds with an apologetic grimace.
“What?” Izuku asks. “I can’t look that bad.”
“You look like a raccoon,” Kacchan says—not even mockingly, just flat like he’s stating a fact.
“A ra—“ Izuku frowns, then pokes at his face, feeling the bags under his eyes. He groans, letting his head fall into his arms.
“Dude, are you okay?” Kirishima asks. “Seriously, we’re worried.”
Uraraka chirps agreement, and even Kacchan grunts a vague affirmation. They’re good friends, really, and Izuku is lucky to have them. He turns his head, squinting one eye open and offering them a miserable smile.
“Just now, at my desk, was the most I’ve slept in three days,” he admits.
Kirishima frowns. “Midoriya, it’s noon. You can’t have been asleep for more than, like, three hours.”
“Two,” Izuku sighs.
“Are you trying to kill yourself?” Kacchan asks, far more dramatically than some missed sleep calls for, really. Izuku remembers the way he’d refuse to go out with his friends (sycophants, really) in middle school because they were planning on staying out late. Some things never change.
“It’s not like I’m doing it on purpose,” he defends himself. “It’s my neighbor.”
Though usually it would probably be disturbing, in Izuku’s sleep deprived state he finds it hilarious how fast their expressions change from friendly concern to protective rage.
“Is he bothering you?” Uraraka asks. “You have to tell us if someone’s bothering you, so we can smash their faces in.” Kirishima nods in agreement.
Kacchan growls. “I told you that place wasn’t fucking safe, Deku. Why—“
“You know why, Kacchan,” Izuku snaps, and they all go quiet.
Izuku’s apartment is a bit of a sensitive subject in their group. It really is pretty awful, with odd-looking water and suspicious stains in the carpets. The lights in the hallways flicker and the elevator has broken down with Izuku in it often enough that he’s started to take the six flights of stairs instead. The area around the building is terrible, too, with one of the highest crime rates in the city. One day when Uraraka finally got him to give her his address so she could visit, he and Kacchan had gotten in a fight right there in the cafeteria.
It’s what I can afford in this city, Kacchan, Izuku had yelled finally. It’s like you always said, not everyone can be a fucking pro hero.
“Seriously, though,” Kirishima breaks the awkward silence. “If you need help, just ask.”
Izuku smiles thinly. “I’m fine. Or well, it’s not the kind of thing you guys can help with. It’s just something with my quirk.”
Uraraka blinks. “Isn’t your quirk that you can talk to plants?”
“I can’t talk to them,” Izuku corrects. “At least, not in a way they can understand. If my quirk let me do that I might not be so useless,” he grumbles.
Kacchan opens his mouth, looking uncomfortable, then swallows. “So you can hear them, same difference. What’s the problem?”
Izuku sighs. “The person who lives downstairs from me—I told you someone new moved in, right?”
Kirishima frowns, then nods. “Yeah, you were telling us how you don’t know how they got all their stuff brought up because the elevator was broken that day.”
“Yeah, that one,” Izuku confirms. “Part of the reason I was confused is because they have so many plants, and those pots are heavy.”
“I guess you’d know,” Uraraka says, with the casualness of someone who hasn’t had to deal with things being heavy since she was a toddler. “So having that many plants nearby makes it too loud for you to sleep?”
“Not usually,” Izuku explains. “Actually it was nice for the first couple of days. They were soothing. But he hasn’t watered them since he moved in.”
“That was two weeks ago,” Kacchan feels the need to point out.
“Exactly,” Izuku says. “They’re constantly wailing like they’re being tortured, it’s awful.”
“That sounds awful,” Uraraka says. “Maybe you should talk to whoever lives there?”
Izuku scoffs, blinking so that his eyes will stop itching. “Sure. What am I supposed to say? Hi, I live upstairs from you and my quirk turns your plants’ stress hormones into the howls of the damned, please let me water them?”
“The howls of the damned?” Kirishima asks, clearly suppressing laughter.
“Yes,” Izuku growls, lifting his head to glare.
“Why wouldn’t you just tell him to water his own fucking plants?” Kacchan asks.
Izuku sighs. “No one who owns that many plants would just forget to water for two weeks,” he points out. “They’re probably away on a business trip or something.”
“If they cared as much as you think, wouldn’t they have gotten someone to do it while they were gone?” Kacchan challenges.
“Probably, but it’s more likely that that person forgot since they aren’t their plants,” Izuku responds. “Or they just took the money and flaked on purpose, I guess. It is a lot of plants to water.”
“Well, now I almost feel bad,” Kirishima says. “They’re going to come back and all their plants will be dead.”
Uraraka tilts her head. “Maybe you should just… water them.”
“What,” Izuku asks, laughing, “do you mean I should break in?”
Then he takes in the way Uraraka’s expression is a little too sincere.
“No,” he begins. “Uraraka, no way am I—“
Before Izuku can explain exactly why breaking into his neighbor’s apartment is a terrible, terrible idea, Kacchan interrupts with a furious exclamation. Izuku twists, following his eyes up to one of the screens lining the wall, specifically the one running the hero watch channel. Scanning the byline, Izuku takes a sharp breath.
Ice hero Shouto fights and captures hero killer Himiko Toga….
The visual switches from a mugshot of a maniacally grinning blond girl to a handsome man with white hair and one grey eye showing, the other half of his body covered in thick ice. He’s surrounded by reporters, answering their questions with no discernible change in expression. He doesn’t look like someone who just came out of a fight with one of the most infamous murderers of their day; there isn’t a scratch on him, and the frost crawling up his uniform really only adds to his ethereal appearance.
“That kill-stealing half-and-half bastard! ” Kacchan explodes—literally, making a black mark on the table. Izuku flinches hard enough that he almost falls off the bench, reminded of the days when Kacchan would do the same to his desk.
This isn’t then, though, and so when Kacchan looks at the table with irritation, surveying the mess he’s made of their lunches, the frustration is tinged with genuine regret.
“Fucking shit,” he says, stomping off towards the napkin dispensers.
“Sorry about him,” Uraraka says after a moment. “It’s just… we’ve been on the Toga case for months, now, and it’s gotten a bit… personal.”
“Also,” Kirishima continues, “this is like the fifth case Todoroki’s stolen from us in two months.”
“He’s not really stealing them, though,” Izuku points out, glancing up at the screen where a picture of Todoroki Shouto in civilian dress is being displayed next to a graph of his resolution rates. (The networks avoid showing him in his costume as much as possible, probably because it makes him look like a plumber.)
“What do you mean?” Uraraka asks as Kacchan returns and starts to clean up the mess. “He keeps nabbing villains that we’ve been investigating.”
“And the rankings gala is next weekend,” Kirishima points out. “He’s an independent pro already, he’s probably trying to get a good ranking.”
“Yeah,” Izuku agrees, watching Kacchan swat away Kirishima’s hands when he reaches out to help. “But if you look at the videos of the incidents, and his interviews, it’s not like he’s stealing your information or anything. He just kind of… runs into them while on patrol. Along with about a million smaller villains.”
“Are you saying he’s just really unlucky?” Uraraka asks, sounding incredulous.
“No, I mean, look at when he makes all the arrests,” Izuku explains. “There’s no pattern in the times of day. It’s like he’s always patrolling.”
“So basically,” Kacchan says, gathering up the dirty napkins, “half-and-half’s going to burn himself out trying to out-arrest a bunch of old guys with dozens of sidekicks, and I’m going to laugh.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Izuku says, a little surprised that Kacchan’s accepting his interpretation so easily. Kacchan snorts and goes to throw away all the trash, and Izuku sighs wearily at his back. Since they were sitting across from each other, Izuku’s food took the brunt of the explosive force along with Kacchan’s. He’d barely even started eating.
Biting his lip, he stands, mentally reviewing his budget for the week. Cafeteria food is expensive, but if Izuku doesn’t eat he’s not going to get anything done this afternoon, and he’s already wasted most of the morning sleeping.
“Sit the fuck down, Deku,” Kacchan growls at him, returning once again. “I’m not letting you eat ramen for a week again.” And he strides off in the direction of food.
“See?” Kirishima asks, smirking at the dumbfounded look on Izuku’s face. “A gentleman.”
***
“How was lunch, Midoriya?”
Izuku jerks to a halt before entering his cubicle, then turns to face his jovially smiling boss.
“It was fine, Mr. Ito.”
“I hope it cheered you up,” the man replies. At Izuku’s befuddled expression, he adds, “Kitamura mentioned that you seemed… irritable, this morning.”
Izuku closes his eyes, then opens them quickly when he feels as though he could fall asleep standing up. Be professional, he reminds himself.
“I’m sorry,” he begins. “My quirk--”
“Yes, I understand,” Ito says hurriedly. As the head of a public relations department, Izuku muses, he must be intimately familiar with the kind of public backlash hero agencies get for accusations of quirk-discrimination, even tenuous ones. “Still,” he continues, “it would be to your benefit to be more civil in the future.”
“Of course, sir,” Izuku replies, straightening his shoulders at the mild reprimand-- about as stern as Ito usually gets, he’s learned.
It seems like today is an exception, though, as his boss crosses his arms uncomfortably before he continues.
“Look, Midoriya, you have to try harder to fit in here,” he says quietly. “The rest of the department, they’re friends-- we have traditions, we go out to karaoke. We eat lunch together.”
Izuku frowns. He’s never been invited to these karaoke nights, or told about the traditions. Though to be fair, he’s also only accepted their invitation to lunch a few times.
“Now I’m not asking you to stop eating lunch with the sidekicks!” Ito says hurriedly. “But… with that, and episodes like this morning, the others tend to feel like you think you’re too good for us.”
Izuku wishes.
And that's probably the problem here, he realizes. His coworkers aren’t bad people, and they do respectable work. It’s just… not what he wants.
“I know I’m no better than anyone,” Izuku replies. “I don’t mean to give the impression that I think that. It’s just… Uraraka and the others, they’re my friends.”
“Sure, of course,” Ito responds, and Izuku fights the urge to bristle at the casual dismissal in his tone. “But I think the guys would appreciate it if you made an effort to show a little more team spirit.”
“Of course,” Izuku sighs, suddenly realizing where this is going. “I’ll go through the inbox now.”
“Wonderful!” Ito exclaims, posture relaxing. If there’s something Izuku has learned about the man over the last six months, it’s that he hates confrontation. Now he can walk away from this feeling like he’d given some good advice and Izuku had thought of this extraordinarily mind-numbing way of taking it on his own.
As he makes his way back to his desk, Ito stops and turns back suddenly. “Oh, and Midoriya?”
“Yes, sir?”
“We’re going out to karaoke at the bar on block 15,” he says. “This Friday. You should come.”
Izuku can feel his face moving into a fixed smile. Ito grins back before returning to his desk, and Izuku lets his expression drop.
This is good. He should be happy.
Maybe it’s just that he’s so exhausted, he theorizes as he settles back down at his desk. In fact, clearing out the public relations inbox is probably the perfect type of task to do in his current state-- the completely mindless kind.
The PR email is the only non-classified way to get in contact with the heroes and sidekicks at the agency. Naturally, it’s pretty much eternally clogged with fanmail, appearance requests, solicitations from ‘hot new support startups’...
Izuku clicks through each email, practically feeling his soul dribbling out his ears. There’s technically a guide for what he should do with each type of request, but Izuku’s done this enough that he rarely needs it anymore.
The third week he was here, he’d become the go-to person for clearing the emails after getting into an argument with Kitamura, who’d joked that he always just deleted the fan mail rather than forwarding on to the intended recipient. Izuku had thought back to the endless messages he’d sent to All Might and other heroes as a child, and figured the least he could do now that he’d grown up to work at a real, amazing hero agency was to make sure that dreamers like he’d been actually got through to their heroes.
It’s been months since then, and the pangs of nostalgia Izuku feels when he skims the gushing emails have soured. Any replies to these emails have to go back through PR, both to make sure that they’re acceptable for public release and because the heroes’ work email addresses are supposed to be kept confidential. Izuku hasn’t seen many.
(Uraraka, Kirishima, and-- surprisingly-- Kacchan are pretty good about it, though. Even if most of Kacchan’s responses have to be edited. Heavily.)
It’s all very disheartening, but Izuku still hates the job less than all of his coworkers, who seem to think all these people are hopelessly naive. Izuku has tried not to be obvious about how much of a hero fanboy he is-- used to be?-- but he sometimes feels like they’re the ones who think they’re better than him.
Izuku blinks as he moves on to the next email. The sender address is a string of seemingly random numbers attached to the domain “freetempemail.jp”. The subject line reads “Warning,” and there’s an attachment.
He quickly checks that the computer’s security icon is active. Mailing a virus to the company’s public address wouldn’t be exceptionally clever, as the PR computer banks are completely separate from the ones where the heroes do their work and keep all the classified information. But just in case, the security should keep his computer from crashing, which would be inconvenient. He opens it gingerly, expecting bright graphics that encourage him to click on some kind of mysterious shortened link.
Instead, he’s greeted with a paragraph of simple, black-on-white text. As he starts reading, he feels his mind start to creak back into motion-- and then he stops, starting over from the beginning.
Hello, clueless underling. Do me a favor and forward this to your boss? Not your slightly-less-clueless middle manager, though at least that’ll be a step up the chain. This email is for Mr. Number One Hero himself.
And probably don’t watch the video. The old man won’t want his true nature to be revealed to a random entry-level email sorter. He’d also be very pissed if you did something stupid like delete this. If I get no response, I will go public.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
This… this is a threat, Izuku realizes. Not necessarily a physical one, or a credible one, but someone out there thinks they have a secret so damning it will ruin the world’s number one hero, and they seem to be trying to use it for blackmail.
And there’s a video. Evidence? Demands?
Izuku’s mouse hovers over the attachment icon. It is so incredibly tempting-- and clicking it will get him incredibly fired. Even if the video is nonsense, Izuku is emphatically not at a level where he’s privy to classified information like this, and watching it will not exactly mark him as trustworthy. The company almost certainly has the ability to monitor whether an attachment is opened.
Izuku sighs. This isn’t his dream job, but it’s a stepping stone on the path. It has to be. One probably-fake secret isn’t worth it.
He sighs and reaches into his desk drawer. He’s not sure the guide had a section on how to handle attempted blackmail, but he’ll find something.
***
Four and a half hours later, Izuku shivers as he steps off the freezing street into the almost-as-cold entryway of his apartment building. For a moment, he eyes the twisted metal grate covering the elevator. His legs feel almost numb, and he can’t imagine climbing the stairs. But he’s starting to think that extreme temperatures make the old mechanism act up more, and if there’s one thing he’s less excited about than six flights of stairs, it’s the thought of being stuck in the elevator and being forced to call the fire department. Again.
Feeling vaguely like his soul is leaving his body, Izuku shoulders the stairwell door open. As he climbs, he listens to the sound of his footsteps echoing, a headache starting to build. On the second floor, Ms. Yuko’s annuals give off waves of content slumber, and Izuku sighs. In winter, the world around him gets infinitely more peaceful as most of the plants shed their leaves and go into hibernation, or whatever the equivalent is called for plants.
Key word: most.
As Izuku reaches the third floor, a familiar sensation intrudes on his thoughts. Like nails scraping on chalkboard, the voices of his downstairs neighbor’s plants shriek through his mind. Higher pitched notes like a wailing child penetrate first, the desperation of delicate young climbing vines crying out for water. By the time he’s on the fourth floor, the more somber groans of hardy succulents can be heard; these are new within the last couple of days, since the desert plants had been the most resistant to the lack of watering.
The worst by far, though, is a low insistent throbbing, more like the sensation of standing next to a gigantic bass-heavy speaker than to any noise a human could make. It ripples through Izuku with each pulse, making him feel like his bones are going to vibrate out of his skin.
He hadn’t had the words to explain it to his friends, but this is the real reason he thinks that it must not be his neighbor who’d lapsed in watering their plants. No one would buy a bonsai tree that sounded so ancient, so expensive, so powerful, and then just… forget to water it.
As he has every day for the last week, Izuku overpowers the complaints of his aching legs and takes the last flight of stairs at a run, the throbbing fading slightly with every step he climbs. When he’s reached the door to his floor, the thrumming has reached almost tolerable levels, and not for the first time he considers simply curling up and going to sleep right here in the stairwell. But the last few days of news reports for this area flash through his mind, and so he clenches his jaw and shoves through the doorway.
Every step towards Izuku’s apartment— or, more accurately, toward the one directly beneath it—is a struggle. An ill-timed shriek from the money plant in his neighbor’s entryway nearly makes Izuku drop his keys, and when he finally can shove the door shut behind him, he leans back against it, letting his head thump against it in the nebulous hope that it will knock the quirk right out of him, at least for a few days.
Fortunately or unfortunately, that’s not how quirks work, so Izuku sucks in one more fortifying breath and forces himself back into motion. Placing his lunch bag on the table, he turns and opens the fridge with a frown.
Eggs, the remains of a few vegetables, the edge of a loaf of bread...
He’s nowhere near Kacchan’s level, of course, but Izuku’s just a little bit proud of his ability to pull together edible meals out of his meager salary. It took a number of mishaps over his first year out of the dorms in university, but by now he has a sort of rhythm when it comes to cooking. As he bustles around the kitchen, he remembers how it was back then, studying what felt like twenty-four seven, calling home and telling his mom he was great and it not even feeling like a lie because he was going somewhere, even if he was half-killing himself to do it.
This is better, Izuku thinks. He works at a hero agency; it’s practically his dream come true. He has a stable job, friends, time off. He’s content.
Suddenly, as he’s turning away from the stove to transfer everything to a plate, he realizes that his feet are actually falling into a rhythm… with the thrumming agony of the tree downstairs.
Izuku sets down the plate with a little too much force, failing to contain his frustration. Biting his lip, he pours himself a glass of water with shaking hands, trying to wash down the choking feeling rising up his throat.
Stop it, he thinks, blinking away tears. There’s nothing to be done, so just… stop.
But his quirk was never to make anything listen, and so the tree goes on mournfully, and Izuku pushes himself through the meal with hands still shaking.
When he’s finished, he deposits the plate in the sink, resolving to wash it later, and looks longingly at his bed. But right where it sits, in the corner by the window, is the spot in his apartment closest to the tree—his neighbor must sleep with it at his bedside.
So instead, he sits down at his desk and boots up his laptop. He’d bought it used before starting college, and it’s practically ancient at this point, but since he no longer has to use it for work it’s not such a big deal when it spontaneously crashes. Almost mechanically, he navigates to YouTube, reaching into the drawer for a blank sheet of paper while the page loads and scrawling a title across the top.
Shouto vs. Hero Killer Toga
Sure enough, when he types the keywords into the search bar, several videos pop up. It’s not the same as being at the fight himself, of course, but he’s still grateful for the hero-chasers who actually bother to record what they’re seeing, something he’d never thought to do as a kid.
Hitting play on the first result, Izuku settles in and starts scribbling.
***
A few hours later, Izuku looks at the time with a start. From videos of the day’s fight, he’d moved through several of Shouto’s old fights, trying to track how his style has been evolving over time. It’s actually quite difficult because of the speed with which the icy hero tends to solve incidents, but the sheer volume of encounters Shouto engages makes up for it a little.
Reaching up to the shelf above his desk, Izuku pulls down one of his thick white binders, the one labeled P-T. He flips past the section on Prince Charming with an amused smile, pauses affectionately on the divider dedicated to Red Riot, and finally reaches his notes on Shouto.
Izuku is once again struck by how thick the stack is. Ever since their graduation three years ago, that UA class had been extraordinarily driven— they’d had a student go on to nearly all of the most prestigious agencies. A few of them, like Creati and Headphone Jack, had gone into independent partnerships and were far more successful than most rookie pros.
But the most remarkable rise had undoubtedly been Shouto’s. Placing in the final four in all three of his sports festivals, he’d assuredly had offers from every hero agency in the city, and rumors abounded that a few agencies were willing to make him full partner rather than a sidekick. And of course, there was his father, who’d made no secret of his pride in his son’s accomplishments.
And yet, Shouto had surprised everyone by going completely independent immediately. It was an extraordinarily risky move, but within a few months, he’d established the fifth-highest incident resolution rate of any first-year independent hero, beating out pros with over a decade of experience on him.
He’s incredible—and he’s going to get killed. Izuku bites his lip as he flips through the incident reports. He’d told his friends earlier that Shouto was overworking himself, but that isn’t even the worst part; the hero does sometimes take breaks after stretches of intense activity, and while that sort of time management isn’t exactly standard in the hero community, it could work given a little more fine- tuning. No, Shouto’s problem is more than that: as Izuku had told his friends, Shouto doesn’t steal information, nor does he seem to do any research or even spend significant periods of time liaising with the police. He seems to simply run into situations without a solid plan, often nearly blind, with faith that his quirk and training will keep him safe. It’s worked so far, but if he keeps on like this, he’s going to jump headfirst into deep water and find himself drowning.
Izuku leans back, feeling heavy. There’s really nothing he could do with this information—even if he could somehow talk to Shouto, there would be no reason for him to listen to a random civilian. Izuku just has to hope that someone, one of Shouto’s friends or colleagues, will pull him away from this.
As he acknowledges his own helplessness, exhaustion seems to wash over him like a gentle rain. All he wants to do, he thinks, putting away his binder, is to curl up, shed all his leaves, and sleep until spring.
Wait. Shed all his leaves?
Izuku blinks in startled realization, for the first time in weeks actually making an effort to focus on the plants around him. Sure enough, the tree downstairs is radiating a calm, dutiful acceptance, already beginning to shut down in the face of the colder weather.
Catching a breath, he widens his focus, and almost wants to jump for joy—there isn’t a single agonized moan to be heard.
His neighbor’s home.
Izuku feels tears prick at is eyes and scrubs them away with the back of his hand, feeling a little ridiculous but mostly relieved. He starts toward his bed, ready to just collapse into it, when a thought pulls him up short.
I can keep this from happening again.
Biting his lip, Izuku looks down at the floor. Maybe this was a one-time thing, and he can get through it if it happens again. But he doesn’t have to. And besides, if his hunch is right, wouldn’t it make his neighbor feel better too, knowing his plants are actually in safe hands this time?
Mind made up, he heads for the entryway. He hasn’t changed out of his work clothes yet, so he should look fairly respectable, he thinks as he ties up the laces of his shoes. Since he hasn’t tried to sleep, his hair should look as neat as it ever does. He hadn’t brushed his teeth after eating, though, what if his breath tastes like eggs? Halfway down the stairwell, Izuku brings a hand up to his face, trying to channel his breath toward his nose. Nothing smells off, but he’s not actually sure he’d be able to tell.
Izuku’s chewing gently on the inside of his cheek as he shoulders open the fifth floor door. Is he really doing this? There are some suspicious people in his building, like the woman on the second floor who always sits on the landing and stares at him when he’s leaving for work. What if his neighbor gets upset with him? What if they get violent, or tell the landlord Izuku’s stalking them?
He pauses outside the door, fidgeting awkwardly. Probably he should just go back to his apartment—if his hunch is right, the person will probably find someone more reliable to water their plants next time on their own, and if it’s wrong then they most likely won’t appreciate him showing up. Anxiety itches up his throat, and he eyes the brass knocker below the eyehole. He should really go.
Inside the apartment, he feels the money plant in the entryway humming busily, directing new resources to the leaves and stems that have died over the last week. It’s louder--closer-- than he’s ever heard it, and he takes a deep breath, trying to calm down. On the exhale, he feels the tree’s steady calm wash over him once again, and reaches up to knock.
A few moments pass, and he wonders if his neighbor will even answer. It’s likely that they’re just as aware as he is of the shady nature of the building, and Izuku isn’t sure that he would answer a knock on his door at this time of night. He has half a mind to leave, but probably the only thing worse than showing up like an idiot is getting caught knocking and then leaving like some kind of immature prankster, so he looks down and studies his shoes. He has just enough time to process that instead of the sleek black dress shoes he’d bought for work, he’d put on his favorite old red high-tops, when there’s the sound of the door opening.
Suddenly terrified, Izuku doesn’t look up, instead dropping into a short bow and then keeping his eyes down as he straightens.
“Um, hello! Sorry to disturb you, I hope you weren’t busy or anything, but I just wanted to… um say hello I guess? Well I already did that, I should introduce myself now, I’m doing this all wrong. Um. I’m Midoriya Izuku, I’m your neighbor—well, not your neighbor, I live in the apartment above yours, actually, but we still live in the same building so I’ve been thinking of you as my neighbor anyway. But um, my quirk is to hear plants and I heard that yours weren’t doing so well and I wanted to let you know that if you needed someone to water them next time you were away then I’d be very happy to do it. If that’s okay with you. Oh,” he realizes, noticing a stem of heart-shaped leaves creeping out of the doorway, “I hope you had a good trip—“
“I wasn’t on a trip.”
Izuku stops, frowning, and then gasps, looking up.
Standing in the doorway, is, of course, his neighbor. The problem is that, framed by the deep red door on one side and money plant streaming down from a shelf on the other like a green waterfall, stands a man whose face Izuku knows very, very well.
“You’re Todoroki Shouto,” he whispers.