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Internships started tomorrow. Izuku was so close, so close, to avoiding Toshinori all week. But then Aizawa-sensei said he was being “too distant” and “distracted in class” and “impossibly more self-destructive, Jesus Christ.” Which, okay, maybe, but he just needed a little time to organize his feelings over his- his mentor and idol telling him that, hey, I might die soon.
But here they were, staring pensively at each other in the infirmary with Recovery Girl and Aizawa-sensei guarding the hall door, probably. Izuku didn’t want to be mad. He was sick of festering with ugly feelings and Toshinori wasn’t deliberately being malicious. And maybe mad isn’t the right word, but he doesn’t know what else to call this searing heat in his ribcage, because despair sounded a little too dramatic and sad to be comfortable.
The silence felt threatening. It felt like a repeat of their last conversation, that some awful, crushing news would fall out again. Izuku was almost hysterical with anticipation.
A minute passed, then two more. He took in a shuddering breath.
“How could- how could you say that?”
There wasn’t an answer. It wasn’t really a question, though.
“How could you say that. ”
He didn’t want to cry, he thought he had exhausted and humiliated himself enough yesterday, but he couldn’t help the wetness on his cheeks.
“You’re- you-” He tried to say something, anything, but the overwhelming explosion of all his fucking secrets closed his throat up. How was he supposed to explain how important Toshinori was without revealing the side of himself UA actively worked against? How was he supposed to love them and trust them knowing that, if UA found out the truth, his father, the league, the traitor, the- the everything, his entire life, they’d turn on him?
Heroes didn’t help villains. Heroes didn’t help villains.
He was crying hard enough for the tears to trail down his neck and soak his collar, but he couldn’t do more than futilely wipe them away with his arm.
Toshinori looked devastated and a little confused. But not guilty. Not guilty. He didn’t understand how his words ruined every good thing Izuku's built up for himself.
Izuku desperately clutched his chest, trying to claw away the pressure in his lungs, suffocating, and curled in on himself. Toshinori looked like he was about to say something, but retreated in on himself. Izuku ignored the burning of his throat and choked out a pitiful cry.
They sat there, the afternoon sun deceptively bright, until his tears slowed and his heaving breaths waned off. His hands trembled as he unclenched them from his shirt, straightening up, but sliding his gaze to the floor. He felt a little breathless, still.
“Why would you say that to me?” Izuku croaks. He clears his throat, but it changes nothing. “You’re… You’re all I have left.”
“Mikumi,” Toshinori begins, sounding small. He shuffles to the edge of his chair, trying to get closer, maybe, but Izuku shakes his head.
“No.” Izuku feels the ache of Bonestealer’s bruises, and the thick sting of Hisashi’s smoke, soaked into the furniture, and Miss Guidance’s golden eyes, cruel and collected. Izuku thinks of Shigaraki’s hands on his throat, the scar on his shoulder, the sneer in his voice when he drags him to Sensei. Kacchan’s faded picture in his wallet. Mom’s wobbly sweet smile, the hazy memory of green hair and eyes as gentle as her hands. “No,” he whispers again. He's going to say too much, blow his cover, even, but that doesn't register as important in this moment of thinly veiled desperation.
“You’re all I have left. I- I lost my Mom, and- and- and my best friend, and my home, my dreams, my freedom, my sister-” Silver is a sister in all sense of the word except biological, really. And they keep separating them. It’s… He calls it bullshit, and it is, but it hurts. “...And my dad.”
He lost his dad before he lost everything else, so early that it’s not even considered a loss in the personal sense. But now he’s living with him and it’s not- they’re not even that. Father and son. Hisashi doesn’t feel like a dad, he feels like a guardian. Only there because a kid can’t do things on their own. A landlord, almost. He lost the chance at having a dad. But none of that’s important, compared to the rest. None of that’s important compared to Toshinori.
“You’re the one good thing I have,” Izuku begins. “You’re my everything. How can you throw that away just because you want to do things alone? What am I supposed to do if you don’t come back?”
You’re not going back, Izuku.
I don’t know if I’ll come back.
It was a sick parallel, really. Izuku wants to lay down and sleep for a very, very long time.
“I can’t do this without you,” Izuku says. It’s so soft that it’s almost lost.
“My boy…” Toshinori chokes out. He takes Izuku’s hands in his, and Izuku can feel the fragile bump of his bones through thin skin.
“Don’t say anything, please. I’m sorry.”
Toshinori moves out of the chair to sit beside Izuku, bed barely creaking under his meager weight. He wraps his arms around Izuku, hesitant, at first. Stiff. But then Izuku leans in and shifts sideways, buries his head in his shoulder and throws his legs over Toshinori’s.
“I’m sorry, too,” words muffled in Izuku’s hair. They stay like that for a long, long while. Quiet, warm, tangled. Steady in each other’s arms.
I don’t know if I’ll come back.
Izuku closes his eyes and focuses on the steady beat of Toshinori’s heart, the slow rise and fall of his breath. It’s okay, he tells himself. You have him now. Just don’t let go.