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Powerlessness is a quiet, insidious thing.
It creeps in, slinking through every pitying look and curling around every mocking word until there's nothing left to do but grin and bear it. Until you finally look up from the ground and realize all the doors around you are closed and locked so tightly they splinter. Where every step forward you take sends you back two steps, then three, then ten.
Where everything feels hollow and brittle like a piece of glass caught in a stream, wearing you down until there's no fight left and you can barely remember how it was before.
In one universe, he wants so badly to be like everyone else that he's willing to put them before himself and nearly kill himself multiple times in the process. In one universe, Izuku ignores it until he can't any longer and gets rewarded for his denial in the form of his idol telling him he can be a hero.
(Not without a quirk, however, never without a quirk, and isn't it convenient that All Might's thrives on being passed down? Isn't it convenient that they are both in the right place at the right time?)
This is not that universe.
This is not something happy, nor something kind enough to disregard the stigma of being the only person in his entire school that doesn't have a quirk, where he can push past the name calling and bullying with no consequences. This is a universe where the only other quirkless person he knows is assaulted in an alleyway and left to die before the heroes can get to him. Where the empty apartments he walks by on the way to school every day have slurs and death threats sprayed onto the broken walls and shattered glass scattered around their front doors.
Where Inko bundles him up out of fear and moves them both to a different part of the city when he starts getting the same treatment, hiding him away with homeschooling and as many video games as she can buy on their meager income.
Izuku isn't stupid; he knows what she's doing and why he isn't allowed outside. But he just wants to make her proud of him. He plays along because she's happier like this, happier when he stops watching the news and stops talking about heroes. Stops asking about the park down the street and stops wanting to go out and do something better with his life.
Instead, he sits with a remake of a remake and an older headset, debating strategies against zombies and laughing when his teammates swear at him. They have nothing on his former classmates and if he doesn't tell him his lack of quirk, there's no way it can get worse. And, when they tell him to jump off a building, it's because there's a horde chasing them and he's been regulated to bait.
Nothing else.
Izuku gets the same teammate a lot, late at night when all his schoolwork is finished and he can't quite bring himself to sleep just yet. They're loud and abrasive with a habit of threatening to disintegrate everyone if they mess up, but he's been around the Bakugou's for most of his life. And they don't really mind him whispering to keep from waking his mother up before her shifts.
The disintegration thing is far more interesting than he allows himself to think about, forcing down the urge to ask questions about it until he can't hear it anymore.
"You're not too bad for an NPC." They say, when it's just them and the AI for once, and it shouldn't make him as happy as it does to be praised like that. To be praised at all, really, considering he's not really good at anything, but he'll take whatever he can get.
"I just play a lot of strategy games." Izuku whispers back. Which he does, because picking them apart is almost as fun as doing it to quirks and he hasn't been allowed to do that for a long time. People think it's creepy, or straight jealousy on his part, for the quirkless kid to be so good at dissecting the thing that makes the rest of the population human.
"Doesn't mean shit." They say, and he can't help the sputtering mess that turns him into, like they know he isn't used to having people say nice things about him.
Because, after that, it keeps happening.
"Good job." They say after he knocks away one of the special zombies, startling Izuku enough that he gets jumped seconds later and they get to return the favor. And another time when he pinpoints one of the bosses and navigates the team around it instead of trying to fight it when they're this low on health.
A laugh, accompanying the phrase, that feels like a virtual pat on the back when he lands the killing blow on the witch that startles them by running out from under a staircase at them.
Izuku doesn't know how to deal with the warmth in his chest or the urge to do better just for another chance at their very sparing praise, so he doesn't. Doesn't let his voice betray the wobble in his hands, the shaking shoulders, or the grin he can't seem to get rid of. And it escalates, because of course it does. He can't have a moment of peace to work out what exactly he's feeling so, after about a week of awkwardly trying to weasel out of it, they exchange contact information.
Tomura is beyond driven and says weird, cryptic things out of completely nowhere, but he listens when he goes off on tangents about all the weird things he's found out researching for essays and doesn't ask why Izuku's on half the night and most of the day. He likes first-person shooters and terrible JRPG's, aggressively min-maxing anything he can out of them and lives with a caretaker he only half respects. There's other voices in the background of the calls, sometimes, so Izuku just assumes he either has siblings he doesn't want to talk about, or they're other kids in a foster home. Not that he asks.
It's harder to talk about himself.
Inko works more than she did before, pulling as many shifts as she can to cover all the bills, and he's only really left the house twice since they moved here because he'd gotten sick. And he can't really talk about things outside of his schoolwork and weird facts about the games they play. He likes puzzles and mysteries and old horror games, and the pre-quirk cold case shows he catches on the television sometimes.
(He can't talk about quirks, never about quirks because that would disappoint his mom. It's his fault that he was born wrong and they're stuck living like this. Inko tries her best to take care of him and keep him safe so he's going to obey her stupid rules even though he really just wants to go outside and lay on some grass before he forgets what it feels like under his feet.)
It's an accident that he blabs about his notebooks.
They're playing some co-op puzzle game that's actually rather boring outside of the jump scares when he mentions he used to keep notes like one of the main characters. Maybe not as obsessively, because the in-game notes are weirdly detailed for someone who claims to not have been at the scene of the crime, but enough that he dreads digging them out of his closet. Tomura gets quiet for a moment and he could kick himself for being so open.
That's at least a level ten backstory and they're only about level five.
"What kind of notes?" He asks, setting aside a metal piece that probably belongs in the next room, and it's Izuku's turn to get quiet.
"I wanted to be a hero." Izuku whispers, because its three-thirty in the morning and Inko has to get up in an hour. And he really doesn't want her to hear him talking about this, not when he's been so good about avoiding it. "When I was a kid. So I- I wrote down as much as I could about- about quirks."
Another piece slots into place and they work on turning the mechanism attached to the completed puzzle. Tomura stays quiet, as if he's waiting for him to tell the rest of the story. It gives him something to hang onto, something tangible to attach this story too, and he appreciate the silent support. After a few false starts where his throat closes up on him like it's in a vice, he does.
"It's...it's never going to happen, so I stopped writing." He says. The puzzle clicks open and Tomura hums, leading the way into the sewers level with a flickering penlight, and that's the last they talk about it. Izuku can't help but feel both relieved that he doesn't have to spill his childhood obsession out between them and a little disappointed in himself for bringing it up anyway. But he keeps that close to his chest, same as the flustered smiles when he's asked for a plan before anything else in the next game they start a few days later. It's....
It's fun, for once in his life.
(He still wants to go outside, still stares at the door every time Inko leaves for work. But Izuku can settle for opening all the windows in the apartment during the day and curling himself into the little slivers of warm sunlight that creep in. He's better than disobeying his mother, doesn't want to see her cry any more than she already does when he mentions Tomura is his friend.)
"D'you watch the news?" He asks out of nowhere, when it's finally getting colder out and the leaves outside are changing color. Izuku pauses at the odd question, accidentally letting the fish he was trying to catch get away. They're playing during the day, for once, on an older farming simulator that's calming enough to soothe away most of his anxiety.
"Only when mom isn't home." He says. Like now, though it's currently on an episode of another forgettable crime show from before the era of quirks. "Why?"
"Don't." Tomura says, disdain audibly dripping through the microphone, before explaining. "The sports festival for U.A. is coming up and that's all they can apparently talk about. It's disgusting."
Izuku hums, getting slightly frustrated when the next fish gets away from him too. If he wasn't home-schooled, it would be his first year of high school. Instead, he's completing the coursework for his third year because there wasn't much else to do before he met Tomura. And it's Ka-.
It's Bakugou's first year of high school, too. It's been so long since he's thought about him, about their old elementary school. Izuku silently wonders if he ever grew out of being suck a prick. Probably not.
"I kind of want to watch it. But I don't know if mom will be home then." He admits, quieter, checking his map before switching to cutting away the grass surrounding their tiny garden. Not to mention the fact that she monitors his internet usage so closely that it's impossible to do anything without her breathing over his shoulders or feeling like a criminal just because he wanted to watch All Might's debut again.
Tomura makes an exasperated noise on the other end of the speaker, briefly stopping over to swing his scythe at him before going back to chopping down trees. "I don't see why you'd want to watch the hero-spawn fight over who can beat the shit out of each other the best."
He shrugs, then remembers that it's useless and makes a soft noise in the back of his throat.
"Neither do I, really." He says, before promptly setting aside that line of conversation when he realizes it's almost late enough to hurt their energy for the next day in-game.
Inko is home the day of the festival, working on something in the kitchen, so he spends most of it working on the neglected homework that's been piling up until Tomura calls him, swearing, and tells him to get in his room if he wants to listen to the damned thing. Izuku excuses himself with a cup of tea, his laptop, and his headset and settles onto his bed with his work still open in the background. Not that he has plans to finish it right now, not with the excitement bubbling underneath his skin.
Instead, he listens to a voice he hasn't heard in years introduce the various classes while Tomura keeps up a running commentary of the interesting-looking students. There's one with a bird's head that he immediately likes, as well as one with multiple arms and one he can't even begin to imagine because they're only described as 'one nasty-looking hero-spawn with like, seven eyes, Izuku'. It's enough to make his fingers itch for a pencil and notebook, all the unique quirks the hero world is going to see in a few years teasing him like an old friend.
And then the student representative is called to give a speech.
It's a very, very short speech. Tomura cackles at the declaration, loud enough that he can't hear what they're doing for the first round, but Izuku can't bring himself to care overly much when he can't breathe. Because that's Ka-. Bakugou.
That's Bakugou declaring he's going to win like he hasn't changed at all since they were four. Sure, his voice is a little deeper, a little crackly in a way that might just be the distortion, but he would recognize it anywhere.
"Overconfident brat, isn't he?" Tomura says. Izuku makes a small noise, hands wringing around each other in an endless dance. Does he still look the same as he used to? They've both probably changed so much they wouldn't recognize each other passing by on the street. Not that he's allowed to be on the street, now. Izuku doesn't expect that revelation to hurt as much as it does.
"He's always been that way." He whispers.
"You know that walking biohazard, Izuku?" Present Mic is saying something about the competitors but he's trained on the sound of explosions in the background steadily growing louder. All the breath in his lungs escape at once and he has to press his hands over his eyes to try and settle himself.
"Knew." He says, and almost throws the headset at the next round of them. Even now, he can feel them, white-hot against his arms and chest.
"-ku, Izuku, I can hear you hyperventilating from here. Breathe." Tomura's voice swims back into understanding and he doesn't know how much time has passed, only that there's the voice in his ear and his own erratic pulse swimming through his head. Izuku leans back, the back of his skull bouncing against the wall. His tone is far softer than he's ever heard it and melts at the walls around him in a way he doesn't want to think about. "I've muted the festival for right now. You with me, NPC?"
"Yeah." Izuku breathes, letting his head loll to the side and watching his hands trembling from what feels like a thousand meters away. Tomura sniffs, clearly disbelieving him. The 'I told you so' is painfully obvious, even if he doesn't say it.
"Good, the second round's already started and they're all trying to kill each other for points." He says, and the volume slowly returns. There isn't as many explosions as he expects, and Present Mic's voice is the most prevalent thing he hears. "If this is supposed to teach them anything, no wonder the heroes fail at everything but playing the media."
Izuku swallows, rubbing a hand down his face to get rid of the feeling of tears and chewing on his bottom lip until the dry skin starts to peel away.
"Tell me about the contestants?" He manages to say after a several minute-long rant about the disadvantages heroes present to their society as a whole, and Tomura eagerly launches into another spiel about all the weird, too-flashy quirks everyone gets to see and how it puts long term criminals and villains at an advantage because they have time to plan around future hero graduates from U.A. even if most of them don't take advantage of this like they should.
But he also almost waxes poetic about bird-kid's living shadow and the oddly synchronized actions of another team led by someone in general education. Izuku's just glad he doesn't mention anything when he has to take a moment to calm himself down after a few particularly loud explosions.
They finish the rest of the festival like this, alternating between bullshitting the commentary during the third round when they mute it because he can't take anything more from Bakugou and debating on who was going to win each match. Bakugou wins the whole thing, of course, not that Izuku had any doubt of it. It ends long before dark, so they spend the rest of the day logged on to a random multiplayer until Inko calls him back to the living room for dinner.
"I want to go outside." He quietly admits later, when mom's gone to bed and they're replaying the game because Tomura has a grudge against one of the AI and needs to crush it. It hurts when spoken aloud, even if it's to himself, because it's not even daytime and he just wants to go somewhere, to be anywhere but here in the suffocatingly small apartment.
"What's stopping you?"
Izuku puts a bullet into an explosive barrel and flinches at the noise, but it's worth it to see the enemies scramble like an overturned nest of ants. He also doesn't quite have an answer to that. What is stopping him, aside from his mother's disappointment? He's been a disappointment since they found out he was quirkless, it's not like it's anything new.
"Mom's- mom's happier this way." He whispers. It's easier for both of them when she gets her way, so she doesn't have to worry over if he's safe or not. It's better this way. It has to be. "She doesn't like when I ask about it."
"So don't ask. Just do it anyway." Tomura says, ever the enabler for things he shouldn't do. Izuku doesn't dare listen to him, though, doesn't dare follow the urge that nags at his bones. It'll pass. It has to.
"She's just trying to keep me safe."
"If you say so." He says, and that's the end of the conversation, going back to utterly destroying the AI at their own games. Izuku doesn't know how to feel about it or what to do with the mounting frustration bubbling under his skin. He can't and that's final.
"What would you do if she wasn't there?" Tomura asks a few days later, his voice more aggravated than usual. He's on later than normal, too, so he's fairly confident something happened earlier for him. Izuku doesn't like to think about what sort of job he could have or what his quirk does, but it's hard to ignore something so powerful when he's taken to threatening to disintegrate anyone who pisses him off.
Like Inko.
"You're not getting rid of her." He says, clearing a room of zombies before they can start running at him and being rewarded with a bottle of pills and a pile of ammo hiding in the closet. The thought of his mother being gone fills him with dread and horror because he wouldn't really know what to do without her, even if he thinks about running sometimes. He's safe here, he's loved, and it's painfully not enough.
"Humor me."
It's quiet for a moment, the rasp of a special zombie behind them making it hard to concentrate on forming an answer. It explodes in a puff of smoke that makes it hard to see for a moment and he shoves another zombie off him before hopping down a hole in the floor. When the threat's dealt with, he still doesn't know.
If anything....
"I'd probably be dead, Tomura." Izuku says, smacking the butt of his rifle into another zombie's face and switching to a melee weapon. He really doesn't want to talk about it, but mom isn't home yet and he figures they've played together for years at this point and it might as well come out. "We moved because my only friend bled out in an- an alley before the heroes got there because no one wanted to do anything to help a- a quirkless nobody. And when people found out I was quirkless too, I started getting death threats."
Another horde dies under his hands, vicious despite the urge to cry welling up in his chest. His eyes burn and he can't even hear if Tomura's breathing on the other end of the call. This is it, Izuku thinks, this is where they stop being friends. Where he blocks him and never talks to him again. He's probably rethinking this whole friendship and his next words are going to be-.
"That's fucking stupid, Izuku." Tomura says and he nearly chokes on the indignant conviction he can hear. It's not what he expected, not at all close to how useless he is, trapped inside his own home because he can't get up the courage to go against his mother. "Just because you're quirkless doesn't mean she can keep you inside forever like some sort of hidden boss fight."
Izuku swallows hard, the hard lump in his chest squeezing tighter. He's never been called something like that before, like he's some sort of secret badass instead of an anxiety-ridden fifteen year-old with too much going on in his head. "She's just-."
Tomura cuts him off with a shotgun blast to the zombie that slams him against the wall and a low curse when the fire extinguisher nearby explodes because of it.
"Trying to keep you safe. Yeah, you've said. Stop repeating dialogue and think for yourself for once, NPC."
Izuku doesn't say anything after that. Doesn't know what to say, if there is anything he can force out of his mouth that doesn't sound like he's being dismissive of his opinion because Inko hates when he does that and he's trained himself out of just audibly letting his thoughts run wild. They finish the rest of the round in silence before turning in for the night. He almost says goodbye, because there's no way Tomura will ever want to continue being friends with him after this, but stops himself before he can make it even more awkward.
And, just like that, he's left alone in his room, knees pressed against his chest while he tries not to soak through his comforter and jeans.
Mom finds him like that in the morning, long after his tears have dried and he's blankly staring at the ceiling with his thoughts replaying everything until it's hard to separate them from each other. She wraps her arms around him, cradling him despite the fact that his entire being itches at the contact. He wants to move, wants to get up and yell and throw things until he runs out of energy, but something keeps him meek enough to bury his nose into her shoulder instead.
"Oh, honey, I'm so sorry." She says, petting his hair like it's not Izuku's fault she's crying over him. He swallows down the scream building in his chest, bites his tongue, and accepts the attempt at soothing. But she also has to leave for work, reluctantly making breakfast while she coaxes what happened out of him. Inko worries, she just wants him to be happy and safe, despite his reassurances that he'll be fine and he just needs to cry a bit first.
The door closing behind her feels like a death sentence and Izuku doesn't know how long after he stands with his hand on the knob and an excruciating squeeze in his heart.
He can't.
He can't because she'll be disappointed and cry more, and he can't even make her happy-cry anymore. Tomura dropped him like everyone else once he found out Izuku's not even a person, just a useless waste of space who can't do anything for himself no matter how much it hurts. Maybe it'd be better if he didn't exist, so his mom can live a happier life and not have to isolate herself like this out of the fear he'll be just another quirkless statistic.
Maybe he already is.
Tomura doesn't log on for the rest of the day. He tries not to think anything of it, tries to push it out of his mind with his backlog of homework. Only to start pacing the living room floor when his body demands him to move. The news comes on before he even registers turning on the television, staring at the somber-faced newscaster as what he's been missing of the world scrolls across the screen.
Hosu was attacked scant hours ago, destruction on a scale the pros are still struggling to contain. Someone named the Hero Killer murdered a U.A. student, the one he and Tomura had laughed at for getting played so well by a girl from the support course. They say it's a coordinated attack and are calling for whatever information people can give about the worst named group of villains since EVIL. Only that organization is from the time when Yakuza were a bigger thing than they are now, not something modern like the League of Villains who want to utterly destroy All Might.
It's almost surreal.
He leaves it one without really seeing the rest of what they have to say, curled against the arm of the couch and trying to make sense of the numbness in his veins. U.A. is the best of the best, mean to be an easy stepping stone on the way to becoming a pro hero. To have a student dead feels like some sort of oversight, like they aren't even trying to protect them, and maybe Tomura's rants are getting to him but it make Izuku burn.
Maybe that could have been him, once.
(Not him, never him. There's no way he would ever be able to get into that school, no matter how perfect his grades are. They don't accept quirkless people into their general education department, let alone a hero course like Iida was in. He gave up on that dream a long, long time ago.)
It's still on by the time mom gets home.
Inko's disappointed already, he can tell, because he's disobeyed her implicit order to not talk about heroes and that's all the news ever does. But she doesn't scold him like he expects her to, just turns off the television and goes to make dinner because he hasn't started on that either. Izuku sheds a few tears out of pure frustration, fingers laced tightly together just in case she can sense how badly he's shaking from the urge to get black out angry. Like his father used to.
He will not be his father. Dinner is bland but he eats anyway, not even bothering to open his laptop and collapsing into bed like it could swallow him whole.
His online friends list is still disappointingly empty the next morning. He can't get his hopes up just because Tomura hasn't blocked him yet, it's nothing and he probably forgot. There's only so long he can push away the denial before he's tired of everything. Tired of existing. Izuku doesn't bother getting out of bed, hiding underneath his comforter until Inko leaves and picking a mindless puzzle game to play, keeping his hands occupied in an effort to do the same with his thoughts.
It's not enough. (It's never enough.)
He's back underneath the blanket when mom gets home that night, tired and worn and less disappointed in him because he hasn't even brought up what the news said yesterday. Hasn't brought up anything at all, sitting in silence as she bustles around the kitchen. Inko frets and sighs at him in a way that grates on his nerves, makes him want to smash open his window until he can feel the glass shatter and cut into his palms.
Izuku wants to break something and the feeling terrifies him.
So he sits there, paralyzed by his own fear, until mom gives up trying and goes to bed. Izuku follow suit, pressing his hands over his face and trying to remember how to breathe properly. If he refuses to move, he can't do anything stupid like run for the door and never look back. Just in case. Because Izuku feels like he's drowning, but that's okay. He's always been good at denying the truth of things like that.
And then something taps on his window.
One, two, three, four; slow and deliberate.
He can't breathe, eyes wide and his mind racing. Is someone playing a prank on them? Trying to break in? He doesn't know and the anxiety spiral isn't helping, a hand pressed tight against his mouth to prevent any sort of sound from coming out and listening hard enough that his ears ring.
One-two-three-four.
Faster, now. No one knows he lives here, no one knows this is his room. Maybe one of mom's friends is trying to contact her the only way they know how? A secret lover she doesn't want him to know about? Maybe she already has one but doesn't trust him enough to reveal them after what he did yesterday. Tears prickle at the corners of his eyes, squeezing them shut and letting his shoulders shake. The tapping gets more insistent.
Onetwothreefour.
...Maybe it's a confused bird? Or a flailing branch?
Onetwothreefour.
He has to know, curiosity warring with the overwhelming urge to curl into a ball and hide. Izuku gets up slowly, sliding the curtain aside with shaking hands.
And stumbles back, almost knocking into his desk with a strangled noise, because there's someone outside his window, too-pale and grinning at him like this is all just some terrible game. Their fingertips are pressed against the glass, middle finger raised enough that only four are touching it The fifth comes down in what feels like slow motion, leaving him to watch something spread across the pane with only dust in its wake. Even with the mounting horror and revulsion, there's something familiar about it, like it's something he's seen or heard before.
And then they open their mouth.
"Y'know, I thought you'd be taller." Tomura says, like he isn't sitting outside Izuku's apartment at eleven-thirty at night. His voice isn't even that different, either, only a little rougher where it's not distorted by the speaker. He almost laughs at the absurdity of it all, hands coming up to muffle himself so he doesn't wake Inko, and goes to unlock the window. There's nothing he can do about the window pane, even as he shoves aside the small, vindictive part of himself that likes to make trouble for his mother, and jiggles it all the way open as quietly as possible.
"What are you doing here?" He asks. Tomura's grin widens to the point that he can see blood welling up in the deep cracks, leaning far enough inside that Izuku can practically taste it, too. His fingers twitch against the windowsill, trying to mask how happy he is that he's still talking to him, still treating him like he does online. It feels like they're sharing a harmless secret instead of his shameful existence, like they're nothing more than a few gossipy teenagers in the soap operas mom likes.
"Breaking you out, what else?" He says, and Izuku's good mood drops into the pit of his stomach faster than he thought possible. No, no, this is bad. He's been so good about controlling all the little impulsive thoughts that scream for him to lash out, he can't do this after his accident yesterday.
Not now.
"...You don't hate me?" He whispers, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he can catch them, hands tightening on the sill. Tomura's face does something weird at the question and he can't tell what sort of expression it's supposed to be.
(It's so weird to have a face to put to the voice, because they match more than he thought they would. He can definitely see him threatening to disintegrate someone when they anger him, no matter who it is. Repeatedly. But being face to face like this also means he can't hide his own expressions like he can with a headset. Izuku's always been an expressive person, wears his heart on his sleeve, and mom has told him multiple times that strong emotions run in the family.)
"Izuku, would I be here if I hated you?" Tomura says, reaching inside to smack a knuckle against the bridge of his nose. It doesn't hurt, he barely even feels it, but it still sends his entire being tilting on its axis. Would he be here? No, not at all. Getting him to do anything without good reason and three minutes of an explanation is like pulling teeth, and even then he usually went off the plan not even five minutes later. He's started planning around it, honestly. "D'you still want to go outside?"
His tone is gentle, like he already knows the answer. Because he does. He wants. Swallowing, Izuku pushes back against the thrill of just what's being offered to him and ignores the prickling sense of longing that fills his lungs, shaking his head. He can't. Not now, maybe not ever.
"Mom will-." He starts, and doesn't get to finish before a dry palm covers his mouth. Izuku snaps it shut. The feeling's weird, like an itch in his chest that he can't shake even when he rolls his shoulders, but it's not like Inko's suffocating hugs or the grasping claws that hold him down in his nightmares. For one, it doesn't hurt.
"Your mom's already going to be disappointed no matter what you do." Tomura says and, even though he knows it's the truth, it doesn't mean it hurts any less. He removes his hand and pats his cheek, the usual condescension almost dripping from his voice whenever he talks about Izuku's mother. "Why not do something to earn it for once?"
He surprises himself by leaning into the touch, eyes darting away to take in his room.
It's bare compared to the hero merchandise he'd had as a small child, plain even with the walls painted a cheerful yellow. The only thing he really cares about is his laptop, but that's also under mom's constant surveillance, and the pair of replica Eraserhead goggles shoved between his mattress and the wall. Tomura waits for his answer, even with the impatient set of his brow and the disappointed stare the longer Izuku doesn't say anything.
It's not like he hasn't been dreaming about running away from here for years, of leaving everything behind despite how poorly he's suited to that sort of life. He's been so close to slipping off the edge lately, teetering in a careful balance of guilt and resentment, what's one more step? And he's known Tomura for long enough that he's picked up on most of his habits and tics. Izuku smothers the urge to lash out and takes his hand, flipping it palm-side up and being careful not to touch all five fingers at the same time.
"You should really get some gloves. I can't imagine how many controllers you've accidentally ruined." He says, his heart nearly hammering out of his chest at the casual contact and how Tomura doesn't make any sort of move to free himself. Glancing up, he offers a hesitant smile, pressing closer to the window. "I don't- I don't think the police will look for a quirkless kid for very long."
The grin that spreads across Tomura's face feels like how he thinks sun-warmed ice cream would taste, knife-sharp around the edges and leaving him breathless in excitement. He's doing it. He's finally getting out and it starts with being tugged out his bedroom window just after midnight, tumbling onto dirt and grass and unable to keep himself from laughing.
"C'mon," he says, brushing off Izuku's shoulders when he finally deigns to stand, uncaring about his lack of shoes or the remains of plants in his hair, "Kurogiri's meeting me at the park down the street in an hour. Where did you want to go first?"