Chapter Text
Midoriya Izuku was tired.
It wasn't so surprising, what with being quirkless and having the audacity to exist on the same planet as Bakugou Katsuki. He was used to it, really. The burning and pushing and name calling, all because of something he couldn't control. Izuku's life was a living hell because of a fucking extra joint in his toe.
Today was better than usual, though. Elementary school had ended just a few days ago, and now, for a limited amount of time, Izuku was free . No feral bully chasing him down because he had dared to open his mouth, no pity-filled glances from every adult he crossed ways with. Or, well, almost. His neighborhood still knew him as poor, quirkless Izuku, which was the main reason he wasn't near his house right now.
Izuku had always liked animals more than humans, for a variety of reasons that mostly centered around his quirk status. It therefore made absolute sense for him to immediately book it to the closest cat cafe he could find that wasn't in his neighborhood (after telling his mom where he was going and hugging her goodbye, of course).
Spring was Izuku's second favorite season, right after autumn, and he reveled in the blooming flowers and gentle breeze that accompanied him as he cycled his way towards Kitty Land.
He arrived in about twenty minutes. Entering the cafe, he was promptly attacked by three cats at the same time, all of them nudging and clawing at his feet, as if ordering him to pet them. Oh well. How could he not obey such obviously powerful beings?
He giggled softly while trying his best to pet all three fluffy animals at the same time. It was in moments like these that Izuku wished he had a quirk that gave him more arms. Two were so not enough to properly pet all the cats he wanted to.
Izuku detached himself from the animals after a few moments. He fumbled with his fingers while ordering a black coffee and a strawberry cheesecake, cursing his brain for not working properly each time he had to do something like that. There was a reason both him and his mom never ordered anything via phone calls when it could be done otherwise, and that reason was crippling anxiety.
Izuku sat down at a two-seat table situated in a dimly lit corner of the cafe. In five minutes, he had three cats on his lap, a tiny one in his hair, another making his way up towards his shoulder by very painfully clawing through his t-shirt and at his stomach, and a last one curled like a bread loaf next to him, purring so loud Izuku was pretty sure the entire cafe could hear him.
He sighed in contentment. This was nice. He could almost forget about every new way Kacchan would find to make his life miserable when they entered middle school. Almost.
Izuku was falling asleep by the time his order was placed in front of him. Blinking his tiredness away, he dug through the cake like it was a secret recipe that would magically give him a quirk. Sue him, this place sold the best cheesecake he ever had the pleasure of tasting, only topped by his mother's, and she didn't have enough time to make it often.
He was desperately trying to drown a particularly big bite of food with coffee when he heard a voice next to him.
"Um...Can I, huh, sit here?" The person meekly said, and Izuku looked up to find pretty purple eyes looking anywhere but him.
Izuku almost outright said no. This was supposed to be a good, relaxing day, and he didn't need a random stranger ruining it for him by making a scene when they inevitably found out he was quirkless, pretty eyes be damned.
But then the boy hesitantly glanced at him, teeth pulling at his lips, and sunlight gleamed on his face, making his already mesmerizing eyes all the more entrancing, and Izuku found himself saying yes without even thinking about it.
Gods. Why was he so gay.
Izuku resumed his eating, trying his best to ignore Pretty Boy's stare.
A moment of awkward silence passed. Izuku sighed.
"So...what's your name? I'm Midoriya Izuku." Wow, no stuttering this time. The green haired boy wished such confidence would manifest itself more often.
"Shinsou Hitoshi." Pretty- Shinsou. Pretty Shinsou murmured shyly. Izuku hadn't noticed earlier, but his voice too was really attractive. He felt his defenses grow weaker by the second.
"Nice to meet you, Shinsou. Um, not to be rude or anything, but why did you sit...here? There are...other places. Empty." Ah, eloquence. Such a dear friend of his.
Izuku watched in confusion as Pretty Shinsou's entire face turned crimson in the span of a moment. It was...endearing. Izuku cursed himself for thinking it, but it really was. The purple haired boy looked away, a hand behind his neck. He talked again, too softly for Izuku to hear anything.
"I...didn't hear you?" Izuku hesitantly prompted.
"...You're...cute. I, um. I wanted to talk to you."
Izuku felt his entire face flush as red as the other's was. Wow. Okay. Alright. He could deal with this. This was okay.
"I-" His voice cracked and his ears burned even more, if that was possible.
"Okay." Izuku said in a pathetically small voice.
"O-okay." Shinsou said back. This was a disaster.
☆
Hitoshi doesn't know what sort of demonic creature possessed him to sit down next to the cute green boy like he wanted to, but he was surprisingly not regretting it as much as he thought he would.
After the whole 'cute-okay' fiasco, he honestly expected the boy- Midoriya, to just make up a random excuse and get as far away as he could from Hitoshi and his disastrous, well, everything .
He did no such thing. Instead, he stayed right where he was, face as red as Hitoshi's, muttering something about disasters and...pretty eyes? Hitoshi pushed his hands against his burning cheeks when he heard it, trying and failing to convince himself it was just wishful thinking.
A waiter delivering his order was apparently the icebreaker in their moment of extreme awkwardness. Seeing he had ordered the same cake as him, Midoriya started talking about how good it was and how he wanted to learn how to make it, too.
It all evolved from there. Hitoshi said he had been thinking about doing so too, and how his dad with the most free time was absolute shit at cooking, so they often depended on him to cook as to not die of hunger while waiting for his pops to come back.
Weirdly enough, Midoriya didn't seem put out by his terrible case of oversharing. The smaller had laughed (and damn did that do things to Hitoshi's weak heart) and prompted him to talk more about his dads. He was happy to do so.
An hour later, a few cake recipes exchanged and multiple gushing sessions about various heroes (during which Hitoshi found out Eraserhead was apparently one of the green boy's favorite heroes), it was time for Midoriya to leave.
"So…Will you be here again...sometime?" Hitoshi said.
Midoriya blushed and fiddled with his fingers. "Probably. We could meet here again tomorrow? If you want to? You don't have to, of course, and it would okay if you didn't want to because it might be weird and I'm not trying to force you or anything but you're really really pretty and you listen when I talk and-" He violently slapped both hands against his mouth, eyes going wide with embarrassment, and Hitoshi almost combusted on the spot.
"N-no, I want to! And you're also, um. Pretty. Cute." Hitoshi stuttered, and what the hell, he hadn't talked this meekly since he was 7?
"Alright then. See you here tomorrow, same time?"
"Yep." He popped his p with a lot more enthusiasm than he wanted to.
Midoriya grinned (and Hitoshi was pretty sure pure sunlight was coming out of that smile, even if he couldn't prove it), and waved him goodbye. Hitoshi watched him climb on his bright red bike and disappear away through the giant glass wall of the cafe.
A cat mewled on his shoulder.
This really was a good day.
☆
Izuku didn't know when he started considering Hitoshi his best friend. Maybe somewhere between all their meetings at Kitty Land, or maybe after that one disastrous picnic where they both ended up drenched, giggling furiously as water dropped down their clothes. Maybe it was when one afternoon, sitting on the grass with their shoulders pressed close, Hitoshi told him about his quirk. About the chants of 'villain villain villain', the glares from people he considered his parents. Maybe it happened when Izuku started tearing up, and, hugging him close, he in return whispered about his lack of quirk. About loneliness, and the feeling of being worthless.
Izuku doesn't know, and he doesn't mind not knowing, because for the first time in years, he has a friend, a good one at that, and he couldn't be happier.
Or maybe he could, Izuku realised, when one day, at their usual meeting at the cat cafe, Hitoshi confessed, all red faced and stuttering.
Spring break eventually ended, and though he dreaded the incoming year and all that would come with it, Izuku knew he would always have Hitoshi. His boyfriend (and wow, he really wasn't used to calling him that, but it felt so good to do it), constantly by his side.
And Izuku is right, because that year is all but pleasant. Filled with new scars, burned phones and unjust punishments. And more than once, alone in the darkness of his room, he wonders 'what if he's right, what if they're all right, and I'll never be something, I don't deserve to be anything'.
But then, things change, in the aftermath of a particularly bad burn, when Izuku makes a deal with someone he grew not to fear, when he suddenly has support from not only a purple haired boy, but also his caring parents and a worried mom.
Things aren't perfect, and maybe they'll never be, but Izuku doesn't need perfect, because what he has is enough.