Work Text:
it’s your power
Shouto was five years old when he first learned that there was something distinctly unloveable about him.
By the time that his mother poured boiling water over his face, she did not love him. Not anymore. Shouto knew that. But he knew that she did love him once, before her love started to turn into fear and before the fear became too much to bear. She held him and she told him that it was okay for him to become a hero, that he wasn’t bound by his father’s blood. You decide who you want to become, she had told him. He held those memories dear to his heart because they were all he had. But when she was taken away from him, Shouto began to forget those memories, began to forget what love felt like. Then Shouto realized that love wasn’t something that someone like him deserved.
If even his own mother could not love him, the problem must lay with him.
Ten years later, Shouto falls in love.
Midoriya Izuku is a hurricane of unbridled emotion, unrelenting courage, unconditional strength. He loves All Might more than should be humanly possible, he cares for his friends more than he knows to care for himself, and he is forgiving. Midoriya Izuku is the most forgiving person Shouto knows. Unfamiliar things like love and forgiveness are too heavy for someone like Shouto to bear, but Midoriya carries them inside his heart like they are weightless, like they are always a part of him.
He says he’s going to be the number one hero; Shouto doesn’t doubt him even for a second.
Shouto doesn’t care that Midoriya is already in love with someone else. Midoriya has so much love in his heart—too much love for his small body to bear comfortably. Shouto doesn’t care if Midoriya’s love spills into somebody else’s flower pot, even if that somebody else is Bakugou Katsuki. Midoriya’s love is warm, like clean linens and fresh laundry, like honey-colored sunlight and melted candle wax; it would be selfish of Shouto to want that love all to himself.
Midoriya loves him even when he doesn’t feel worthy. And at first, he never feels worthy, but Midoriya cups his face with wounded hands and calloused palms, wipes away his tears, and teaches him that even scars can be beautiful.
Shouto is fifteen years old when he unlearns the lie that he does not deserve to be loved.
He is fifteen years old when he unlearns and starts to remember. He is fifteen years old when he starts to remember that his mother loved him and realize that his mother has always loved him. Fear and anger made her forget. But she loves him, she never stopped loving him, and Shouto wants to save her. Shouto wants to be her hero, just like Midoriya was his.
Shouto is fifteen years old when he first falls in love; he is fifteen years old when he remembers what it is like to be loved.
Shouto is fifteen years old when he realizes that nothing was ever wrong with him.
Only once does Midoriya Izuku ever say the words “it’s your power,” but with every “I love you” that comes after, Shouto hears it anyway.
it’s okay if it’s you
Izuku thinks he fell in love even before he learned how to walk.
His earliest memory is with the boy who lived in the gigantic house across the street, the boy who adored All Might just as much as he did. Izuku couldn’t pronounce his name, so he called him Kacchan, and that’s how he’d know Bakugou Katsuki for the rest of their lives.
They wrestled in the grass until they were both dirty with mud. They listened to the singing of cicadas until dusk. They caught fireflies in clear jars, poked holes in the lid, and laughed until their ribs started to ache. At three years old, fireflies were just as big as the stars; they burned just as bright, just as beautiful—but it didn’t matter because Kacchan was always the brightest star in Izuku’s night sky.
Izuku was never alone, not with Kacchan by his side.
And that’s how it was always supposed to be: Bakugou Katsuki was the only friend Izuku needed, the only person Izuku ever wanted.
But when Izuku turns five years old without a quirk, he realizes that someone like him does not deserve to stand by Kacchan’s side. Izuku has always been a quick learner; it doesn’t take him long to learn that he is not enough for someone as amazing, as smart, as gifted as Bakugou Katsuki.
When Izuku is pushed into the sandpit, beaten until he is bruised and bloody, he thinks that he deserves it. When he comes home from his daily beating, his mom cries, holds him in his lap, and tells him that no one deserves to be treated like this. Izuku doesn’t believe her. He lies about tripping over his feet and falling on his face, but he does not lie when he tells her that it was all his fault. Because it is.
He’s quirkless, he’s a loser, and he is not enough.
But he’s loved Bakugou Katsuki all his life, so why stop now? Even though it hurts, even though loving him hurts more than anything in the world, why stop now if it’s all you know?
Ten years later, Izuku meets All Might.
All Might is his hero—the hero Izuku has always wanted to become. All Might Jr., Super Might, Mighty Boy. To Izuku, he’s the closest thing to a god there is, and he is the first person who looks at Izuku and believes that even he can become a hero, that even someone as weak and pathetic as him can be strong. When All Might hands him that yellow strand of hair, he gives Izuku much more than a quirk, much more than eight generations worth of power.
He gives Izuku hope, and that hope turns into confidence.
Confidence to face down even Bakugou Katsuki—Izuku’s first friend, his first love, his first bully. He learns to carry himself like he is strong, even if he doesn’t think he is. He carries himself like he is strong until he starts to believe it, until one day he looks into the mirror and realizes that his mother was right—he never deserved any of the bullying, any of the cruel words or scrapes on his knees and elbows. Until one day he realizes that he has always been strong.
Strong enough to save someone even as perfect as Todoroki Shouto—the prettiest boy that Izuku has ever seen, who has more raw strength in his fingertips than Izuku has in his whole body. When Todoroki tells Izuku he loves him, Izuku believes him and believes that he deserves it; he smiles and says, “I love you too.”
Izuku learned to love even before he learned to walk, so it makes sense that he’d be good at it, that he’d be an overachiever. Loving two people at once isn’t as hard as everyone makes it out to be, Izuku finds.
When Izuku blurts out the words, “It’s okay if it’s you,” he really means to say something else. Three words, eight letters, stuck in the back of his throat.
But when Bakugou Katsuki takes his hand and stands by his side like they’re catching fireflies instead of fighting for their lives, Izuku realizes that those five words were close enough to three.
A little later, when Bakugou Katsuki (Kacchan—he will always be Kacchan, and Izuku will always be Deku) slams him against the wall, angrily kisses him on the lips, and mumbles, “Thanks for the other day, shitty nerd,” Izuku realizes that he too has always been enough.
but you stayed
Katsuki is good at a lot of things.
Fighting, beating up villains, chemistry, physics, cooking, cleaning, playing the drums, tutoring red-headed idiots. Everything always came easy to him, even as a child. His quirk came early, his teachers adored him, and there was no one his age who could ever come close to him. He was five years old when he decided that he was too good for a quirkless loser like Midoriya Izuku. (Katsuki never thought Deku was weak; he hated him because he was strong even without a quirk. And without his quirk, Katsuki was nothing.)
Katsuki is five years old when he burns the bridge between him and Midoriya Izuku, five years old when he makes the biggest mistake of his life, a mistake he’ll spend the rest of his life regretting.
Ten years later, Katsuki realizes he’s been in love all along.
He doesn’t remember when it happened, all he knows is that it did. At some point, Katsuki fell in love with Midoriya Izuku. It might have been yesterday, it might have been in middle school, it might have even been the day they met, when they both reached for the same All Might toy figurine at the grocery store. Katsuki doesn’t remember, but his mom told him that the store clerks had to break up a fight between two vicious toddlers in the checkout line that day.
When Katsuki is fifteen years old, he learns what regret feels like. But Katsuki is lucky—he was born lucky, after all—because the person he fell in love with happens to be the most forgiving person in the world.
When Katsuki is fifteen years old, he begs for forgiveness. And when he receives it, for the first time in his life, he feels like he doesn’t deserve it.
Katsuki is good at a lot of things, but love is not one of them.
When Katsuki falls in love with Todoroki Shouto, it doesn’t take him ten years to realize it—but it does take him a long time.
The three of them struggle, but Katsuki most of all.
Love is the first thing that he has ever struggled with, the first thing that he has ever not been unnaturally good at.
Todoroki and Deku got together first: one day they walked into class holding hands, and things were never the same. Then Katsuki and Deku: Katsuki slammed him up against a wall in full view of Todoroki and the rest of their classmates, kissed him, and ran away—Deku and Todoroki found him a little bit later, and they worked things out.
But Katsuki and Todoroki never had a moment that belonged to them and them alone. They just happened, and they filled in the cracks.
You see, Katsuki and Deku fight. They fight a lot. Katsuki isn’t good at this: relationships, love, being loved. But Deku is, Deku is really good when it comes to relationships, love, and being loved.
Katsuki wants to be. More than anything, he wants to be good at this. But he isn’t, and it makes him angry, and it frustrates him, and he and Deku fight because of it. They fight a lot. They fight because Katsuki has trouble expressing his feelings, at understanding his feelings.
When Deku tells him he loves him for the first time, Katsuki can’t say it back. He doesn’t know how to.
Katsuki and Deku fight, but Katsuki and Todoroki never do. They bicker, and they argue, and they compete in everything they do—but they don’t fight. When Katsuki is having a bad day, Todoroki hugs him from behind, nuzzles his face in his neck, and tells him that it’s okay to be angry sometimes, tells Katsuki that frustration and dissatisfation go hand in hand with ambition, and ambition makes Katsuki who he is.
Todoroki doesn’t care that Katsuki can’t say the words “I love you.” He says it’s because he already knows. Because every part of Bakugou Katsuki screams that he is in love, even when he can’t get the words out.
By loving someone like Todoroki Shouto—someone patient, awkward, yet so earnest at something that he too is not that good at—Katsuki starts to learn that he does not need to be the best at everything he does. (You, the person you are right now, is enough. You are growing, and you are trying your hardest to change. You will stumble, you will struggle, and you might hurt the people around you—but that does not mean you are not worthy of forgiveness.)
Todoroki Shouto loves the only way he knows how: like a slow-burning fire, raw, and quiet. But it’s enough. It will always be enough.
By loving someone like Todoroki Shouto, Katsuki starts to learn how to forgive himself, how to cut himself some slack, how to stop hating himself, punishing himself for every mistake he makes, because someone will love him even when he cannot bear to love himself.
When Todoroki pointed out, “But you stayed,” as if it was anything other than the right thing to do, Katsuki didn’t get it, didn’t understand why it was such a big deal. He’s used to being the best at everything he does, and being the best entails going above and beyond, even when no one asks you to.
To Katsuki, it was such a small thing to stay; he’s been going above and beyond his entire life. But staying was everything to Todoroki. Little things, little gestures like that, Katsuki learns are enough. Cheek kisses, back hugs, koala cuddles; “I cooked soba,” “shitty nerd,” “I can’t sleep”; if you listen closely, you might hear something else. What is small to you might be everything to someone else; it might be their way of saying the three words, eight letters they fear more than anything.
(One day, Katsuki will say it. Three words, eight letters. But for now, Katsuki will say, “Your morning breath stinks,” “I’ll let you be the big spoon,” and “You’re getting better at cooking.” For now, Katsuki will try his best at love. To Izuku, and to Shouto, Katsuki’s earnest efforts to grow mean more than “I love you” ever could.)
It’s your power. It’s okay if it’s you. But you stayed.
You, you, you.