Chapter Text
The first time they touch, Izuku blacks out and he’s fairly sure Hitoshi does too.
It’s not exactly the soulmate sign Izuku has been hoping for, if he’s being honest. He has no mark, no words— he thinks life would’ve been easier if he had proof, concrete proof that someone like him is lovable.
Kacchan wears a ragged, vermillion slit down one eye like a badge of honour— it frames his eye lid in rufous red and Izuku thinks it makes him love the boy more than ever before.
He’s always loved the things he couldn’t have, after all.
Because everything he wants is out of reach. He has no future, no past, a world of opportunities that nobody will give him. Izuku has no chances— he will live his life in emptiness, knowing he has no way forward but to trudge, knee deep in the mud of being less than human.
And then there is the day, drowning in the back alley of some forgotten side street, clawing at liquid slime that will not give him purchase, the day he knows he will die.
And Izuku hasn’t lived yet.
The day a man, a hero, the hero, offers him an Avenue to the future and he latches onto it with shaking hands because he has learned that you must hold onto the things you want or they will be taken from you. Izuku has lost too much, gained so much fucking nothing to not remember this lesson.
The day he meets Shinsou Hitoshi is the day that he wakes up in a world from a different perspective. He wakes up with memories of cruelty from hands that are meant to care, scars from people who are meant to love him.
And literally, a taller vantage point.
Hitohsi (because how can he call his soulmate anything but his first name when he is literally living in his body?) towers above Izuku— and isn’t that a trip, to gaze down at himself. He wonders why it feels so strange to see himself this way— he has never seen his own face the way others do. In the mirror, everything is different and it is a jarring difference.
And this body— Hitoshi’s body feels like fresh air, like sitting in cool water. Izuku doesn’t remember how it feels to not feel like his joints are gliding in magma: a body where his mind rests in comfort is a pipe dream.
Izuku wakes up with a body that demands he not talk, that clams up by instinct. Izuku wants to speak but this body remembers only silence, only bitten lips and a bloody tongue where his teeth bite down by habit.
Hitoshi’s body has memories of repressing, of cruelty and no kindness and no love.
He is glad, in a way, that Hitoshi stares back out at him in a body that has memories of kindness. They stare, quiet, shocked, frozen—
Izuku knows that around them, the sport festival rages. Midnight is crouched nearby, face soft and concerned— she doesn’t know what’s going on but from the blooming purple Izuku sees growing on his fingers, she won’t take long to figure it out.
Hitoshi opens Izuku’s mouth to speak—
“You were quirkless ?”
Izuku wants to pass out again, and not wake up to this ever again. But he nods, mouth refusing to respond— he bites a tongue that stings with well formed grooves where these teeth sit by instinct. Nodding is the only thing he can do, while he attempts to pry his jaw open.
“Y-yes.”
“And… these?” Hitoshi gestures to the scars.
Izuku doesn’t want to answer, so he lets this body bite down a tongue reluctant to talk.
Hitoshi’s gaze turns dark, acrid anger: like a storm cloud building across his face, like a compass needle swinging to true north—
Hitoshi turns to stare at a boy in the stands and Izuku didn’t know his face could be wrathful.
Hitoshi blinks out of Izuku’s eyes and scowls, as he stretches out a hand— the arm Izuku knows has a white, wide starburst of scar tissue that stretches painfully when he moves. He knows how to ignore it— Hitoshi, who stares at Izuku with something like horror in his eyes…
Hitoshi doesn’t.
“Why does your body hurt? ”
Izuku blinks. “It always has.”
“For how long?”
Izuku knows Hitoshi knows how long— he is in Izuku’s body, humming with memories but Hitoshi wants to know . “For as long as I… we can remember.”
A body-swap soulmate is potentially the worst gift Izuku has ever gotten.