Chapter Text
No matter how you look at it, sophomore year was the weirdest year of Izukus’s life.
In retrospect, he still thinks his hormones should have just stayed tucked away in their little vacation retreat he’d miraculously kept them in all of middle school and freshman year, but he couldn’t really help it when they started to rebel and get aspirations in life.
As soon as the year he turned 16 started, after he had made a reputation for himself on the drama club with his skills, and among his peers with the bright red sneakers he had grown incredibly emotionally attached to the summer before, his hormones clearly thought it was time for them to finally contribute to society, and they started working on time-consuming projects like a growth spurt, and feelings.
It wasn’t that Izuku never had a crush before the age of 16, but it was that year that he realized it for what it had been, not mistaking the butterflies that he’d felt when he was thirteen as a weird case of the flu.
A big reason for his obliviousness as a freshly baked teenager, or so Ochako had loudly proclaimed it, one fateful day in sophomore year, had been heteronormativity.
“Of course you didn’t realize you had a crush on Tamaki,” she had exclaimed, their chemistry homework forgotten on the ground of her bedroom floor. “We live in a society that likes to pretend homosexuality doesn’t exist. Every day, heterosexual parents work actively for the erasure of gay people in mainstream media, because they’re somehow under the impression that being exposed to same-sex attraction could be harmful to children–”
Izuku had stopped listening then, and used the remaining ten minutes of Ochako’s rant to truly think about the revelation he’d just made.
He’d known he was bisexual for about a year at that point, but it wasn’t like the realization had come with a series of romantic escapades, especially not with Mirio’s boyfriend.
When Izuku had been thirteen, Tamaki hadn’t been Mirio’s boyfriend. Tamaki had just been the guy who lived across the street from school, and who’d taught Izuku how to skate in the summer he’d started middle school.
Tamaki had only become Mirio’s boyfriend when Izuku turned 15, and by then he had managed to get rid of his peculiar butterfly-flu.
Fast forward to sophomore year, and Izuku was 100% sure he was entirely immune to that particular case of the flu. Tamaki was a great guy, sure, but not only had Izuku grown to see him as nothing more than that in the last year and a half, he was also regularly subjected to witnessing exactly how disgustingly made for each other Tamaki and his older brother were.
One time Izuku had walked in on Mirio making kissy-noises at his phone, in the middle of an exchange of “No you hang up first.” and he could positively say it changed him, fundamentally, as a person.
Still, even after all that, Izuku was only about a third into sophomore year, and he felt bad for ever crushing on Tamaki, and never telling Mirio. Izuku sucked at keeping secrets to himself, as soon as he tried to keep even the smallest white lie alive, he constantly felt like he was going to combust.
For about a week after that fateful afternoon at Ochako’s house, he tried to live with this grave new realization. But soon, sitting across from Mirio at dinner had gotten unbearable, and even their younger sister realized that something was up with him.
“Stop overthinking,” Eri had chimed one night when they were marathoning 90’s cartoons. Mirio had abandoned their year old tradition for a date-night with Tamaki.
“What am I supposed to be overthinking?” Izuku had asked, voice a tad too high, and for once it wasn’t because of his overachieving hormones. He hoped Eri wouldn’t notice.
“I don’t know, but I can hear your brain overheating from all the way over here,” Eri gestured at the empty space in between them on the couch. “Do you wanna talk about it?”
“No,” came Izuku’s reply, way too fast to not be suspicious.
But Eri only shrugged. She’d already given Izuku up as a lost cause. “...Alright. Well, I heard journals are a great outlet, if someone’s as bad at human interaction as you are.”
Izuku wasn’t one for creative journalling. He knew this because he tried, in 6th grade. It was when Mirio had started keeping a dream journal, and he’d bought all that cute stationery, and Izuku, still somehow convinced that Mirio was the coolest person he knew and that everything Mirio did had to be the best way to live life, had attempted to copy his older brother.
It had been a disastrous mix of Izuku’s terrible chicken scratch and liquid glue all over the carpet of his room, and he’d given up less than a week into the project.
Izuku sure as hell wasn’t going to start another try at journaling, as reasonable as Eri’s suggestion sounded. The idea stuck with him though, for about a week, and after another dinner where their Dad had thought it a wonderful idea to invite Tamaki along, Izuku took to the laziest version of an outlet he could think of:
He turned to the first blank page in his history notebook and started pouring all of his thoughts out. Dear Tamaki, he started, and I loved you first he continued. He still made an effort with his handwriting in the beginning, but by the end of the page, he’d already given up. Nevertheless, he didn’t stop writing, and when he finished with a sprawled Love, Izuku and put the pen to the side, he took a second to apprehensively stare at the dried ink.
Then he turned the page over and started on his actual homework.
Dinners became bearable again, he didn’t get the overwhelming urge to change his name and move to Peru when Tamaki asked him if he wanted to come along to the skatepark, and by their next 90’s cartoon night, Eri threw him a meaningful look, one that betrayed wisdom and knowledge far beyond her 12 years of life.
The letter worked like magic.
So it became a habit.
By the end of his hormones’ midlife-crisis that was sophomore year, Izuku’s history notebook held five letters in total:
The first, safely tucked away between half-assed essays about ancient Greece, was the one to Tamaki of course.
The next had followed not long after that, when Izuku realized that what he had felt for Katsuki Bakugou, star of the soccer team, valedictorian and student representative, for the entirety of freshman year hadn’t been deeply rooted fear. Dear Katsuki, it started. You are fucking terrifying, but perhaps I would have been less terrified of you when we first met, if you hadn’t yelled at me to vote you for student rep. When you smile, your eyes shine, kind of. That’s a very useful technique to get people to vote for you. (I did, by the way.)
Listening to Katsuki’s voice over the speakers at morning announcements had become far less tortuous after that.
Katsuki had been a striking exception, he’d realized soon after. Izuku didn’t do pining for strangers, usually. Tamaki had been a good example for that, and so were all of the other romantic excursions Izuku’s feelings forced him on in sophomore year.
He’d only barely managed to hide the letter he’d written to his new neighbour from his history teacher’s prying eyes.
Hitoshi Shinsou was a quiet boy, who’d clung to a cat box with an unreadable expression as his parents started unloading the moving truck when Izuku had come home from school one day. Izuku’s first thought had been how pretty Hitoshi’s lilac hair looked in the afternoon sun, and the next how hard it would be to befriend someone equally as awkward as he was.
It hadn’t taken long for Eri to do the work for him. Only a few days later, Izuku had stepped out of the bathroom without a shirt on, walked into the kitchen to grab a snack, and promptly walked out again, blushing furiously, because Hitoshi Shinsou was sitting next to Eri at their kitchen island, eating one of their father’s muffins and showing her pictures of his cats.
Hitoshi had had his back to the door, and there wasn’t even a slight possibility that he’d witnessed Izukus’s heart-attack, but Izuku had still hidden in his room for the rest of the day.
Dear Hitoshi, he’d written in his notebook. There’s a cat-café across town, I think you’d really like it there…
Eri had annoyed Izuku to drive to said cat café with him and Hitoshi the week after, and Izuku had accidentally spilled chocolate milk all over his shirt, and Hitoshi had laughed at him, and Izuku found that he didn’t even feel like blushing in the slightest anymore.
A little while later, they were nearing the end of sophomore year, his history notebook had been suspiciously devoid of anything non-historical in a while, Izuku had walked into the auditorium for that year's casting call, and was surprised to find Shouto Todoroki there. Seeing Shouto, in general, shouldn’t come as a surprise to Izuku, because Shouto had been one of his closest friends ever since they started high school, but he’d never in a million years expected him on the stage out of all places.
He never asked Shouto what inspired him to pick up the craft, too preoccupied with going over lines, and by the time Shouto had those down, Izuku was too preoccupied with other things. Because Shouto being the only person from their group of friends who was also in the drama club, meant that he spent a lot of time with Shouto without their group of friends, and without Ochako and Yuuga distracting him with their updates on school gossip, and without Tenya drowning everyone out with his impressively loud laughter, Shouto’s attention was on Izuku alone when he explained stage directions and the likes.
Dear Shouto, Izuku had scribbled down after rehearsal one day. They had gone through the final scene of Hamlet and Shouto had looked right into his eyes when he had called him a sweet prince. Your smile when Miss Nemuri complimented that last monologue nearly made me run into the orchestra pit.
Shouto had started dating one of their stagehands, Hanta, only a few weeks later, and when he bounded up to Izuku after practice, smiling and with a small blush on his cheeks, Izuku knew that the high five he offered him was full of nothing but sincerity.
The fifth and last letter sat on the very last page of the history notebook. Izuku had sorted through his school bag for about twenty minutes to find it. Two weeks into Summer and he’d already forgotten where he placed most of his material.
It was unbearably hot that day, and Keigo Takami, the owner of the diner Izuku and a handful of kids from school had found summer jobs at, didn’t believe in something like uniforms. Izuku had thought it was kind of a bummer until that day, because he’d always liked the classic 60s waiter look, but on that particular day he’d downright cursed Izuku’s non-existent uniform choices.
Ochako’s shirt had been made of a light, flowing kind of fabric that had shimmered in pink and blue, and it had been cascading over her shoulders as she bounced around the diner taking orders and Izuku had wanted to slap himself the entire shift because ”cascading” was a word-choice he knew Ochako would have laughed at him for.
When he finally managed to locate his history notebook he immediately flipped to the last page and wrote: Dear Ochako, when your grandma used to joke in kindergarten, about how we would surely end up married someday, I thought that was really weird, but now I don’t think it’s weird at all. When we were 11 you said you wouldn’t wanna take your husband’s last name, and I don’t remember what I replied back then but I think I’d be okay with that.
That summer, after talking to Ochako had become normal again, and Izuku discarded the marriage plans, he had spent a lot of time rereading his letters.
By the time junior year started, he’d come to the conclusion that crushes were bullshit. Not in general, he assured Ochako when Himiko Toga transferred to their school, just his crushes specifically. None of them were ever the real deal, all of them faded out over time, and left him to shake his head in disappointment at himself.
With the beginning of junior year, Izuku banned himself from crushes. He sent all his feelings back to the vacation retreat at the back of his mind, and he put his history notebook away with the rest of his sophomore notebooks.
Love letters, he decided, were for actual love, not for dramatic teenage boys who thought they knew what they were doing.
And it worked. All of junior year, no comment made him blush, no smile made him swoon, no nice gesture made him ready to promise his hand in marriage. It was a nice, peaceful life, junior year, and by the end of it he was ready to continue this nice, peaceful life, up until college, hell, up until retirement if it should come that far.
The universe, of course, never cares for what you’re ready for.
***
“Izuku. Izuku. Izuku. ‘Zuku. Izu–”
“I replied the first time you said my name, Eri,” Izuku whines from his place on the couch.
“I know,” Eri nods, plopping down next to him. “But you didn’t look at me.”
“You’re insufferable,” Izuku grumbles, with no heat behind it. He pulls his legs to his chest, so Eri doesn’t ‘accidentally’ sit down right on them. “What do you want?”
“Mirio is out with Tamaki.”
Izuku blinks at him. “Thank you for that information. It’s not like Mirio reminded us about five hundred thousand times before we even left for school this morning”, he deadpans.
Eri pouts at his sarcasm. “Mirio is out, and he can’t study with me”, she says then.
“Okay”, Izuku replies, before his eyes widen in understanding. “Wait. Wait. No. Absolutely not. No.”
Immediately, Eri bounces closer to him, wrapping a pleading hand around his arm. “C’mon, please. middle school is eating me alive, I have no idea what any of my assignments even mean.”
“That is your own personal problem!” Izuku exclaims, trying to shake his sister off.
“Izuku”, Eri whines. She draws Izuku’s name out in that special way that only a younger sibling ever manages to make as obnoxious as it possibly can be. “You took all of these classes before. It’s basically your moral obligation to explain them to me!”
“I’m a Senior in high school, Eri. Do you seriously think I can explain course material from 5 years ago to you?! I couldn’t even explain course material from last week, if I wanted to!”
Eri’s pout turns into something resigned then, and for a second, Izuku hopes he’s off the hook, but then Eri’s eyes light up with an idea.
“You still have all your notes though, right?”
“Yeah, Dad made me keep them all. For future reference, or something.”
Eri’s grin grows wider. “I’m the future reference!”, she chirps, and then jumps up from the couch.
“What are you doing?”, Izuku calls after her when Eri starts bounding up the stairs.
“I’m gonna copy your shitty history essays from middle school!”, is the reply he gets.
Izuku thinks this over for about five seconds, notes the very overt insult in Eri’s words, remembers that his middle school history teacher retired last year anyways, realizes that this solution means that he doesn’t even have to get up from the couch, and yells back: “They’re somewhere in the box labelled History, have fun!”