Work Text:
Shouji Mezou knows that the world is an uncomfortable place.
It’s uncomfortable for relatives at his baby shower, looking at ultrasounds of a baby with too many limbs and a mouth too wide, filled with too many teeth—they smile and try to hid their winces as they pass the pictures around. It’s uncomfortable for his mother during pregnancy, carrying a child nearly twice the size of a regular infant—she has to have a C-section because his shoulders won’t fit through the birth canal. It’s uncomfortable for his father after his birth, trying to hold a baby with webbed arms and thrice the gripping power—rocking their newborn is a daunting experience.
And, once he’s old enough to see how uncomfortable he makes everyone else, it’s uncomfortable for Shouji himself, too.
He learns earlier than most to keep his hands to himself. He grows up in shirts three sizes too big, shirts with the sleeves cut out to accommodate his dupli-arms. His father painstakingly re-hems each and every one of them so they won’t fray into strings of nothingness. Clothes shopping is an unfortunate chore—school uniforms have to be tailored once, twice, three times, usually at their expense. Distant relatives send boxes of clothes during the holidays every year, cool jackets and vests and sweaters. “Thinking of you!” the cards say. Every year he offers his thanks, and then silently gives each article of clothing away to the local clothing drive. He doesn’t have to smile behind the medical mask obscuring the bottom half of his face but he does it anyway. He likes to think they can tell the difference.
One day, when he’s six years old, his father pulls him aside. “I’m losing my sight,” he says. “I need to teach you to sew so you can take care of yourself when I can no longer do it.”
Shouji nods along, taking the thread his father holds out to him.
Threading the needle, it turns out, is impossible. Shouji has six hands, but not one of them is steady enough to hold the needle and the thread and unite them. He grits his teeth behind his medical mask, squinting and frowning in equal measure at the fine tip of the thread that refuses to go into the tiny hole. After a while he starts physically holding his hands steady, two other hands gripping the wrists of the first, tighter and tighter until his knuckles go white.
“Here,” his father says, and reaches for the needle. “You’re getting frustrated. Let’s stop here for now.”
Shouji lets go, pouting. The next day, his father comes home with two knitting needles, each as thick as one of Shouji’s fingers, and a ball of blue yarn.
Knitting, it turns out, is much easier than sewing. It’s still difficult, and Shouji’s fingers hurt after every session from clutching the needles so tightly, but it’s better. Little by little, yarn ball by yarn ball, he grows more deft, more dexterous. His fingers grow faster, his stitches more even, and… for the first time… he starts to think.
Heroes are deft. Heroes are dexterous. Heroes are fast. If he becomes enough of those things… if he makes his dupli-arms quick and agile and strong enough… then maybe he, too, could become a hero.
So he does.
Or at least, he’s on track for it.
Late at night, when no one is up, Shouji shuffles from his room and into the hallway at the dorms. He listens closely—Kirishima just got into bed, Bakugou is snoring slightly, and both the floors above and below are quiet quiet quiet. There is no one around to witness him.
Shouji grins. “Mission start,” he murmurs to himself. With that, he straightens up, heading for the communal bathroom at the end of the hall.
They have personal bathrooms in their rooms but they’re small, cramped—too small to stretch out his arms, and he really needs to stretch out after a workout like today’s. He enters the empty bathroom and immediately spreads out, raising his arms up to the ceiling.
Ah. Nice. Now to get down to business.
Keeping an ear out for movement in the hallway, Shouji walks up to the tallest mirror, made with his height in mind, and watches two hands of his reflection take out a pair of knitting needles from one large pant pocket. They start to knit at a rapid pace. As they do, two other hands come up and carefully begin to peel back his mask.
There are slight abrasions on his neck and jaw from the fabric, and he sighs as the cool night air hits them. This mask is made of silk, which feels a lot better than the one made of cotton that he used to have—still, wear something over your face for fourteen hours a day and things are bound to hurt a little. The sound of clicking needles soothes the ache, at least a little bit. He uses them as a rhythm, a beat, as he starts to wash his face.
Click, click, click, click—he lathers up the soap. Click, click, click, click—he rinses it off. Click, click, click, click—he dries his face on a towel, and click, click, click, click—he puts everything away again.
Face washed, he then turns his attention to his mouth.
No one in the class knows that Shouji knits, just like no one in the class knows what his true face looks like. Shouji is used to keeping quiet about these things. A guy of his size knitting makes people uncomfortable. Just like a baby with six grabbing hands, a baby with a joker smile, makes people uncomfortable.
He stares at his face in the mirror for a long moment, eyes caught on his front teeth, before he sighs again and pulls out his toothbrush. He doesn’t like having his mask off. The winces and tight smiles of his youth have morphed into gasps and even screams, and he doesn’t like scaring people. He doesn’t like the fact that no matter what he does, his mouth sets people on edge. Even in a society of superhumans, he’s singled out as something—uncomfortable.
But that doesn’t matter. He’s going to overcome this, just like he overcame his clumsy hands. He’ll become a hero. Even if he has to hide pieces of himself away to do it.