Chapter Text
Sometimes, Izuku wonders what he did in his last life to end up like this. Sure, it’s nowhere near as bad as it could be! He has a mom who loves him, and two best friends who don’t treat him like dirt, and even the bullying has gotten better since Todoroki started defending him. He’s been training with actual Pro Heroes for the past year, and his favorite Hero- after All Might himself- has taken him under his wing. The Todoroki siblings treat him like their own little brother, and Ingenium- Ingenium! - gives him and Todoroki the same hair ruffles and wide-smiling praise that he gives Iida.
Sometimes, though, it’s hard to keep that in mind when he goes to school. It’s hard to remember smiles when his teachers all look at him with thinly-veiled contempt. It’s hard to remember gentle praise when his classmates spend all day waiting for him to fail. It’s hard to remember shoulder pats and Todoroki gripping his sleeve when Bakugou sends him sprawling in the hallway. It’s especially hard to remember any of it now, when Bakugou turns to glare at him, already shaking with fury.
“Midoriya, Todoroki, you’re also going for U.A., aren’t you?”
He tries not to flinch at the laughter. Todoroki, two rows away, is expressionless, watching the board. Is he ignoring them, or dissociating? Sometimes Izuku can’t quite tell.
Bakugou’s laugh is loudest of all, and Izuku expects the explosion that follows it enough that he only flinches a bit.
“A Quirkless little shit like you? You think you can get into U.A.?” The few inches Bakugou has on him feel like miles. “You think you can compete with me?”
“N-No, but-” He smells burning, and he wonders vaguely what the Sensei would do if Bakugou actually caught something on fire. Get it out and then go straight back to pretending this isn’t happening, probably. Maybe yell at Izuku for provoking Bakugou, if he was in a particularly bad mood. It’s certainly happened before.
Bakugou sets off another set of explosions, just to watch him flinch, and Sensei just stands up at the board, watching.
“IcyHot is bad enough! At least he has a Quirk!”
Bakugou takes a step forward, and Izuku takes a step back.
“Leave him alone, Bakugou.” Todoroki’s voice is flat when he steps between them. Izuku didn’t even see him move, too busy watching Bakugou, but there he is, sleep-deprived and half-dissociated, but present enough to do what he knows best: piss off Bakugou. Bakugou opens his mouth, ready to go after him the same way he was going after Izuku, but then-
“That’s enough, you three,” Sensei finally says. “Sit down, please.”
They all watch each other for a moment, waiting for the others to make the first move, before Izuku takes a cautious step toward his desk, and Todoroki and Bakugou move for theirs as well.
The surface of the desk is scorched, the marks from today joining the old ones. They make the surface uneven, difficult to write on, but he’s given up on asking to move seats.
“So, as I was saying, entrance exams…”
He packs up his stuff quickly. Todoroki stands over his desk, waiting for him. He tries to hurry as well as he can, though his hands are still shaking from everything with Bakugou earlier.
“Are we going to your place or Touya’s today?” His voice isn’t quite steady. At times like this, he’s almost jealous of Todoroki’s flatter affect. It makes him harder for Izuku to read, sure, but Bakugou has an even harder time reading him. He wishes, desperately, sometimes, that Bakugou didn’t know exactly how to get to him.
“We’re going to Iida’s, remember? His brother said we can use their gym.”
“Oh, is it Wednesday already?” Iida Tensei, much like his brother, is a very firm believer in making plans as far ahead of time as possible. He has his days off and the patrols he has to travel for planned out weeks in advance, meaning they all know just as early which days they’ll have a supervisor to train with, or an empty track to run laps on for the afternoon. (None of them are very good with schedule changes, which is another reason working with the Iidas always goes so well for them. Both brothers have a lifetime’s experience with Autism.) It’s good, in many ways, but it also gives Izuku’s slippery memory plenty of time to forget the details.
He only turns away from the desk for a second, to make sure he remembered his workout clothes, and that’s when Bakugou strikes. His notebook is smoldering by the time he whips back around, and Bakugou is standing over him.
“Did you think we were done, Deku?”
If you think you’ll have a quirk in your next life… go take a swan dive off the roof!
He shakes himself off, grimacing. Todoroki is quiet next to him.
“That was stupid of him,” Izuku manages, keeping his voice steady. “He could get in massive trouble for something like that.”
Todoroki hums, and stops in front of the koi pond. Izuku doesn’t notice for a few steps, before he turns around and sees his notebook floating in the water. The cover is charred, and he’s sure every page is soaked, but when Todoroki pulls it away from the fish nibbling on it, he carefully slips it between his binder and a plastic folder. Hopefully, that will stop it from getting the rest of his things wet until he can get home and assess the damage.
“I saw something about a new hero taking down a villain this morning,” Todoroki says, because he’s probably just as tired of talking about Bakugou as Izuku is of thinking about him. “With a gigantification quirk?”
It takes a second, and then Izuku remembers all at once. “Her name is Mount Lady! It was her debut! Kamui Woods was there- he’s that other newer hero I was telling you about last week, remember? - and it looked like he had the villain cornered, but then Mount Lady activated her quirk, and-”
He knows Todoroki probably doesn’t catch everything he says when he rambles like this- he has problems focusing for too long even when he isn’t having a particularly spacey day, which he definitely is today- but he never interrupts, even when Izuku talks for hours, which has happened a few times, and he seems interested when he’s not completely dissociating. He’s Izuku’s favorite person to info-dump to for exactly that reason, and because he’s one of the few people who can see that, when he gets like this, Izuku is so excited that he just can’t help it .
He catches himself at the end of his story today, the ramble about gigantification put aside for another time, when he remembers the other thing he wanted to talk to Todoroki about.
“Did you see that article about your brother? About this year’s rankings?”
Todoroki shakes his head, turning to look at Izuku. It’s the biggest response he’s gotten all day.
“They’re saying he might make top twenty this year!” He sees Todoroki’s eyebrow raise before they walk into an underpass and his friend’s face is cast into shadow. “He passed Shimura in the rankings last year, which means Touya, Takami, and Miruko are in the top three for their age range. Actually, the last time there were so many early-twenties Pros in the top twenty was-”
Something shifts in the shadows of the underpass. Todoroki notices it a second before he does, moving toward the wall and calling out his name- probably about to tell him to do the same- but then there is a voice coming from under his feet, from behind him, from above, and he can’t move .
“Ah, a nice-sized body to hide in,” something says, and he’s never been more afraid in his life.
The last thing he hears before the sludge closes in around him is Todoroki calling his name.