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You never know when you’re going to have a bad day but then there are days when you just know.
It’s there when you wake up and there when you get out of bed. It’s there before you have your first cup of coffee or when warm water hits your skin. It’s there when you don’t want to look at your messages, when your phone can only go so far as a distraction, when you can’t keep food down your stomach, when something heavy pools in your guts, when anxiety coils in your lungs like a snake, and it’s there when you stop and stare and wonder why it feels so cold.
It’s there even when it wasn’t yesterday, and it’s there even when it doesn’t have a reason to, today.
And you just know.
And Izuku knows, by the way it hurts to breathe, that today is one of those days.
…
The world is unfair, Izuku knows that – to have it cemented by One for All killing him, Izuku can probably win an award for the world’s cruelty. He doesn’t. What he gets instead is a body that aches, lungs that feel cold, hands that are too stiff to write, head too heavy to think.
There are good days – days when he feels well enough to walk with Uraraka in the gym; days when he can sit with Todoroki and eat cold soba under the sakura trees in the; days when Aizawa-sensei lets him train like he used to.
There are days – just days – when he enjoys sitting in mom’s company in the kitchen and drink tea in Heights Alliance; days when Eri and Kouta visits and he can watch them play heroes and Izuku the damsel that needs saving; days when Shinsou grumpily makes him pancakes with sugar and lemon; days when Izuku doesn’t feel like dying but otherwise knows that he is.
Today Izuku sits outside Heights Alliance, feeling the wind brush against his skin, watching the night sky glitter with stars.
He doesn’t know much about astronomy. He can’t name constellations if he tried. He doesn’t want to know. The unknown used to scare him as much as it excited him, used to make him feel small and helpless, curious and excited. He doesn’t care much for it now.
There is no unknown after this.
Perhaps that’s what scares him more.
He hates that how it feels like he isn’t allowed to be scared anymore.
He hates how being scared makes All Might look at him like his world is ending, like mom is dying alongside him, like his friends walk on eggshells around him.
They tell him he can be scared but Izuku doesn’t feel it’s safe to be scared – not when he’s scaring them, too. Not when he has to comfort them, too.
Izuku doesn’t want to comfort anyone.
“Here,” something cool hits his cheeks and he looks up from the All Might fruit juice to Kacchan who was sipping his own.
“I’m not allowed to drink that,” Izuku says but he takes it in his hand anyway, noticing how everything feels cold without being cold.
Kacchan scoffs and sits next to him, feet dangling by the ledge of the porch, “Since when do you care about rules?”
Izuku hums at the thought and opens it.
He listens to the quiet of the night, the silence inside the dorms, and the soft beating of his heart.
Sometimes he wonders how it will sound like when it stops.
Sometimes he wonders what will happen when he’s finally dead.
It’s tempting, when Izuku thinks about it. It wasn’t tempting then, no, not when he was quirkless. It’s tempting now, when he’s finally quirked.
“What are you smiling about?” Kacchan asks, voice soft. He never would’ve thought that Kacchan can be soft but he is, in quiet moments – in soft apologies, mumbled compliments, when he doesn’t need to be a hero. He was soft when Izuku needed him the most yet firm in the way he had held him, a reminder of a friendship Izuku desperately clung on to.
Kacchan is abrasive and violent. He is determined. He is harsh in his words yet kind in his actions. Kacchan is a hero whether he believes it or not.
And Kacchan is consistent.
If there is one person Izuku can trust to never pity him… it’s Kacchan.
“It’s stupid,” Izuku admits.
“Everything about you is stupid, stupid nerd. You do it anyway.”
“Not always.”
Kacchan eyes him critically. “You went after the zero-pointer with no quirk.”
“That was one time!”
“Twice, counting the stupid sports festival.”
“You were so reliant on your quirk, that’s not my fault!”
“You went after a serial killer.”
“Kacchan, Iida was in danger, I can’t just not help.”
“And you went after the sludge villain.”
“Kacch-!”
“You decided that fighting All for One alone was the smartest thing in the world, you literally broke your bones for half-and-half, you fought a criminal during the culture festival in our first year, you ran away from school, you keep sneaking coffee up to your room even when the old lady told you not to, you – mmf!”
Izuku is red by the time his hands shushed Kacchan.
Yet the boy doesn’t explode. He waits for Izuku to take his hands off him.
“And you burned breakfast yesterday.”
“Kacchan!”
“But we still ate it anyway. So whatever it is that’s bothering you, let me have it.”
Kacchan says it like fact – like it isn’t a breath of fresh air.
It really is as Izuku thinks of him.
Kacchan is amazing.
There is no pity in the way Kacchan treats him. He just sits there looking at the forest outside their dorms, fingers tapping lightly on the floor as he waits, obviously listening but not being overbearing. It’s refreshing.
Izuku pulls his knees against his chest, head resting in the small space, and he listens.
Heart beating.
Fingers tapping.
Soft breaths.
Rustling leaves.
Hearts beating.
Fingers tapping.
Soft breaths.
Rustling leaves.
Hearts beating. Fingers tapping. Soft breaths. Rustling leaves.
Heartsbeatingfingerstappingsoftbreathsrustlingleavesheartsbeatingfingerstappingsoftbreathsrustlingleavedyingheartscoldfingerslaboredbreathsspiderlilies-
“Sometimes I wonder what will happen if I don’t wake up.”
Izuku angles himself away from Kacchan.
Kacchan is amazing. He is! If there’s anyone Izuku can trust to always treat him like an equal, to never pity him, never go easy on him, it’s Kacchan.
But he has never spoken these words out loud.
And he doesn’t know what he’ll do when Kacchan turns out to be just like everyone else.
“Sometimes I wake up and wish I didn’t.”
Izuku pauses. He waits. He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, what he expects, but suddenly he can’t wait anymore.
“I’m tired, Kacchan. I’m tired and I’m scared. Everything hurts. Breathing hurts. Smiling hurts. Everything hurts.” Izuku wonders what Kacchan thinks of him when his voice is as dead as his words. “I wake up and I always see that relieved look on mom’s face and it feels like I can’t breathe. All Might looks at me like he wants to beg me for One for All back and I’m almost tempted to give in just to shut him up. I’m tired of the vestiges apologizing to me. I’m tired of people coming in and wondering when I’ll just kick the bucket. I’m scared and I’m tired and everyone keeps on treating me like I’m some fragile kid in some fragile glass and – and it feels like I’m quirkless again. Except this time I am dying. I’m a dying breed. I’m going extinct. And no one listens. No one listens to me because they’re all so focused in what I’m doing, how I’m holding up, if I want to rest, if I feel too tired.
“I don’t. I don’t want to rest. I feel like that’s all I’ve been doing this whole time. But I’m tired. I’m really, really tired, too. I – sometimes I just wish I stop waking up. And it scares me because I don’t want to leave mom. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to die. But I am so tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop I haven’t had the chance to actual breathe.”
Izuku rubs at his eyes, unsurprised that he isn’t crying.
He hasn’t cried in a long time either.
Kacchan still hasn’t said anything.
Izuku risks a look to find Kacchan looking at him, face unreadable.
Izuku doesn’t know what it means.
He doesn’t want to find out.
“Never mind, forget I –“
“Get up,” Kacchan says decisively.
“What?”
“I said get up,” and suddenly, hands are pulling him up and dragging him to the grass, a few feet away from their place in the porch.
“Kacchan – wait! Where are we going?!”
Kacchan ignores him and drags him even further, goes beyond the forest, ducks underneath branches, until Izuku recognizes the path they’re on.
“Fight me,” Katsuki says once they reached Ground Beta. “I don’t care if it’s with your quirk but I know I can fucking take you down without one.” Deku stares at him like he’s crazy.
Maybe he is.
He’s definitely sure Aizawa was alerted by the damn robots by now but the nerd needs this.
“I can’t fight you.”
“Right, and I can’t cook. Fight me, nerd.”
“No, Kacchan. I don’t know why you-“
Katsuk doesn’t wait. Katsuki has never been fond of waiting.
He dashes towards Izuku and starts off with a right hook, the way he’s always done. Izuku barely dodges but Katsuki doesn’t care. He follows it up with a backswing, a jab, a kick. Deku fumbles.
“What’s the matter, Deku? You look like death warmed over.”
Deku tries explaining why he can’t.
Katsuki doesn’t listen – until he flicks a quirked-burst punch, and Izuku blocks it with the glow of One for All.
“Finally find your spine?” Katsuki’s grin is feral but the light in Deku’s eyes is the brightest he’s seen in the longest of times.
And when they’re done and bruised and tired, Katsuki focuses on the sweat trickling down his skin as he looked at Deku lying flat on his back on the ground, breath coming out harsh and labored. Katsuki worries for a minute until he hears Deku laughing.
It’s not the same sound he’s used to but it’s definitely an improvement from these past few weeks.
He doesn’t understand what Deku is going through.
He doesn’t understand what it feels like to be sheltered and coddled. He’s always hated that kind of affection with how suffocating it is that he’d lashed out at every opportunity it was shown to him. It’s why he thought Deku was looking down on him before. It’s why he doesn’t know how to be like Aunt Inko or Round Cheeks. It’s because softness never worked on him. He always hated at how it feels lie he’s being patronized.
He can’t imagine what Deku is going through. And he doesn’t have any words for him, either.
It’s not like it would even matter.
So he gets up, feels the aches in his body and knows he’d have bruised ribs in the morning, limps towards Deku, and stretches out his hand.
“Come on, I’ll make you some Katsudon while you make up some shitty excuse to Aizawa. I can feel his eyes glaring at us a couple miles away.”
Deku reaches back.
That’s what matters most.
That’s how he knows he’s alive.