Work Text:
Izuku bit the eraser of his pencil as he looked over his notes, trying to figure out why his notes seemed off. Something was missing, if only he could figure out what. Or maybe not missing, but wrong. Something was wrong with his notes, and he couldn’t figure out what. The preteen huffed, looking at his computer and rewinding the video he had been watching.
It was a new video showing the Voice Hero: Present Mic. In it the man was using his quirk to knock back a group of villains from a crowd, keeping them away until other heroes were able to arrive.
Having already watched the video a couple times he had decided to update his notes on Present Mic. He had already added the new information, yet still something was bothering him. Frowning he glanced between the slightly pixelated and blurry image of Present Mic and his notebook. Looking at the drawing he did he paused.
Oh. He had messed up his drawing. Which was to be expected really. He wasn’t that good at drawing. Pulling the pencil down he winced a bit as a trail of saliva connected his lip to the pencil’s eraser. Rubbing it on his sleeve he erased the eyebrows and mustache of Present Mic, redrawing them. Somehow he had accidentally drawn the man's eyebrows as his mustache, and his mustache as his eyebrows.
He must have been more tired than he realized when drawing this. Glancing between the image and his new drawing, he nodded satisfied with his work. Eyeing the page of his notebook he found that it was no longer giving off that feeling of being wrong. Closing his notebook he turned to his backpack and pulled out his schoolwork.
Izuku clutched the burnt notebook to his chest as he made his way home, barely paying attention to what was going on around him. He had met All Might, the number one Hero, who had signed his notebook. The Hero had decided that he, quirkless, useless, deku, could be a hero.
It seemed like a dream, any minute now Izuku thought he would wake up and it would be gone. Arriving home he waved off his mother’s worry and went to his room. Carefully he opened his notebook and started to go through the pages, most of his pages were smudged, the words blurry and almost illegible.
Glancing at the current page he was unflipping he noticed it was his most recent page of Present Mic. The picture was smudged and the words completely unintelligible. Izuku sighed, this notebook was practically junk now, he would have to redo all his notes and stuff in a new notebook. Though he would keep this notebook, if only for All Might’s signature.
Grabbing notebook number 13 and a new notebook he started to write down notes on the heroes, doing his best to write everything down from the two notebooks.
Several days later and he was almost finished, he only had a few pages left, one of which was Present Mic.
Which was where his current confusion originated from. Despite the smudges in notebook 14 he could still see that the eyebrows and mustache were different from his drawing in notebook number 13.
And though it had been a couple years, he remembered redrawing number 13’s eyebrows and mustache. So how did number 14 have the mistake of being switched? He clearly remembered drawing them based on a recent picture of Present Mic. Had he really messed up the eyebrows and mustache again?
Frowning he pulled up a picture of Present Mic and looked between it and the two drawings. Notebook 14 had the correct drawing. But… Izuku could clearly remember having to fix number 13. Which video had he used again?
A google search later and he pulled up the video that was reference to Number 13’s drawing. Looking at it and the two notebooks he found that according to this image Number 13 was the correct notebook.
Just… what was going on? The man’s eyebrows and mustache did look very similar, almost identical. Curious he pulled up several pictures of Present Mic, some older pics, and some newer pics. With a keen eye he looked at them and compared them not only to his drawings, but to each other.
It took him a moment, even knowing what he was looking for, before he really could see it. And as soon as he saw it the first time it became obvious.
Present Mic’s eyebrows and mustache seemed to occasionally switch around.
Izuku blinked.
Rubbed his eyes.
Stared some more.
And then snorted.
Soon it turned into full blown laughter at the sheer ridiculousness of it. It took him almost ten minutes to calm down, and his mom checked in on him. She asked what had him laughing so much and Izuku gestured to the screen, unable to catch his breath to explain.
She left with a confused expression, having been unable to figure out why Izuku kept laughing at the pictures of Present Mic. Izuku glanced at the pictures again, and once more broke into peals of laughter.
Finally though he managed to close the pictures out. With shaking hands he typed into the google search bar, wondering who else knew about the man’s switched facial hair. Only to get no results.
No one had spotted it.
Here Izuku sat, seemingly the only one to have noticed it, and he could prove it with the photos. Could write a post about it and share it with people. But then everyone who read his post would know.
And Izuku found he didn’t want to share it. This seemed special. So he kept it to himself.
It had been almost a month since his discovery, and he was currently sitting hunched down in his chair at school. His entire body throbbed with pain from following All Might’s schedule, and Izuku wasn’t sure it really was doing anything other than causing him pain.
But he kept pushing through it because All Might told him to, and he wanted to get into U.A. Wanted to prove he wasn’t useless.
The teacher was droning on about something or another when a student’s phone dinged. The teacher gave a narrowed eyed look, even as the student pulled it out and looked at it. “Holy shit,” the student whispered, the words echoing around the room.
“No cursing,” the teacher scolded.
No one paid attention as the student turned to his friend, showing the screen. “Check out the news!” The friend called out to the class, and like that everyone was on their phones, ignoring the teacher who failed to regain control of the classroom.
Izuku glanced over Kacchan’s shoulder to read his phone, his own unable to quickly get to the news. Kacchan huffed, but shifted his phone a bit to allow Izuku a better view. It was showing a video of Present Mic having a screaming match with a villain. The villain also had a voice enhancing quirk, though it apparently only worked if he was telling insults. So this villain and Mic were in an insulting contest.
With the voices aimed at each other, and the street clear by a long way, no one else was getting hurt. What was most odd though was that the villain seemed to be having fun with the insult contest just like Mic.
When another few Heroes arrived on scene he let them take him in peacefully. Kacchan scrolled down and later there was a picture of the villain with tears in his eyes and smiling as he shook Mic’s hands.
Izuku skimmed over the words he could see on Kacchan’s phone, and got a rough idea of what was going on. Apparently the villain had never been able to vent because anytime he said anything remotely negative his quirk activated. Today apparently had been a bad day and he just snapped and started using his quirk.
That it wasn’t until getting into the shouting match with Mic that he realized what he was doing. The article ended with a note that the man likely wouldn’t face much jail time for his crimes.
But what really caught his attention was when Kacchan scrolled up. Izuku noticed that sometime in between the video of his shouting match, and the picture of him shaking hands with the villain, that the eyebrows and mustache had been switched.
And like that he lost it. Laughing like crazy despite the looks his classmates shot him. “Man, what a freak,” he heard the boy with the pullable eyeballs mutter.
But Izuku didn’t care. For once, he didn’t care at all what his classmates thought about his behaviour, because they didn’t notice.
They didn’t see what was right in front of them.
And that made it even more hilarious.
Izuku swallowed, hand covering his mouth, trying to desperately contain his laughter as he saw Present Mic. Kacchan glared at him, but Izuku couldn’t help it. His muffled giggling got him scolded by a blue haired boy. It didn’t matter because they were all so blind.
Though by the end of the examinations he wasn’t nearly as happy. In fact he was sure he had failed, having only taken down the bot worth zero points. Even doing that had cost him, having broken three of his four limbs.
He went home and waited.
One long agonizing week later, he received his results and his heart froze as All Might informed him that he had gotten in.
It was only his first day of school, and Izuku realized just how hard this would truly be. Not only was he nearly expelled, but just seeing Present Mic had him wanting to break out into hyena-like laughter. Hopefully being exposed to the man everyday would help.
It didn’t help. He had been in U.A for a little over a month now, and had noticed Present Mic switching his eyebrows and mustache multiple times. Sometimes it was just once a week, other times he had noticed them being switched multiple times in a day.
And every time he noticed they were different he was giggling. It had caught Present Mic’s attention, and the man’s eyes sparkled, his grin becoming just a bit mischievous when he and Izuku shared a glance.
Neither of them had directly spoken about it yet.
But Izuku knew that Mic-sensei knew that he knew.
It was almost like having an inside joke with the teacher.
Izuku’s leg bounced excitedly, this weekend he had noticed a few hairs on his face. He was growing facial hair. Which honestly he thought he wouldn’t. But, this reminded him of Present Mic, and Izuku just knew what he had to do.
So he eagerly waited for the end of the school day. As soon as the bell rang he made his way to Present Mic’s office. He actually arrived before the teacher and had to wait a few minutes. Soon he was sitting inside across from one of his favorite teachers.
“What do you need, little listener?” Mic questioned, giving a friendly grin.
Izuku bit his lip for a moment, then nodded and gave a slightly hesitant mischievous grin to the English teacher, “I mustache you a question, about your eyebrows.”
Mic laughed, and after a moment gathered himself, “I was wondering when you would bring it up with me.”
“First, why? Just… WHY?!” Izuku questioned, the question having been bothering him for sometime now.
“Why not?” Mic threw back at him.
Izuku shrugged.
“An accident when I was younger left me unable to regrow my facial hair, but a friend of mine made these little beauties that I can put on and pull off,” with that Mic raised his hands and pulled them off right in front of Izuku.
Treating Izuku to the image of Present Mic with no facial hair.
It was even weirder than seeing the eyebrows and mustache switched. Izuku lost it in his laughter again. It just was so ridiculous. Mic laughed as well, “I know, I look pretty weird without them, huh?”
Izuku nodded.
Mic put them on, switching the eyebrows and mustache once again. It took a moment for Izuku but he finally managed to stop giggling like a crazy person. “Was that all little listener?”
Izuku shook his head, and hesitated for a moment before speaking again, “I’m growing my own facial hair, and I was wondering if you think I could pull it off as well.”
Mic’s grin grew even bigger, briefly reminding him of one of Aizawa’s logical ruses grins, and he nodded, “Sure, once you grow the mustache then I’ll take you to that friend of mine, though you'll have to shave your eyebrows and mustache once we get you the stick ons.”
“It’s worth it,” Izuku said.
Mic beamed.
Shouta glanced at Midoriya as the boy came into his classroom, noticing with a small blink that Midoryia had some facial hair growing. Though he supposed he shouldn’t be too surprised, it was normal for the boys to grow facial hair at this age.
He soon dismissed the observation and returned to teaching classes. It was a month later that he realized Izuku was growing out his facial hair, and that it was starting to take shape. It was when he realized what the shape was that he nearly groaned in disappointment.
It was one of those stupid mustaches like Hizashi had.
Thin and pencil-like, and way too similar to his eyebrows to look good. He wanted to grab Midoriya and ask why. Why would his student make him suffer like this? Shouta noticed his students even questioning Midoriya about it, but the kid would just grin at them and say he liked it.
Two months after that and nothing anybody said got Midoriya to ditch the horrible mustache. The only person who seemed to think it looked good on Midoriya, was of course, Hizashi.
Shouta’s eyes strayed to the kid's mustache once again, shaking his head at the sight of it. It made the kid look like one of those cartoon villains and it was just ridiculous.
Izuku cackled as he held the eyebrows and mustache in his hands, Mic beaming at him as they waved goodbye to Mic’s friend. Now he could start switching his eyebrows and mustache around like Mic.
Entering the common room of the dorms with switched eyebrows and mustache he resisted the urge to giggle like a loon.
Would anyone ever notice?
Izuku didn’t know, but he couldn’t wait to find out.