Chapter Text
“Izuku?”
He blinked slowly, trying to overcome the sick dizziness in his stomach. The world around him swam, a nauseating blur of color.
“Izuku, hey, are you okay? You’re with me, right?”
The most prominent blur in front of him coalesced into short, dark hair and wide, watery eyes. Kuusou’s face was full of concern — probably because Izuku had nearly faceplanted into his curry.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m with you,” said Izuku, as the scene took form around him. They were in a small curry dive not far from their shared apartment, a place far more notable for cheap, filling food than for atmosphere. A fluorescent light flickered overhead, casting harsh reflections on the scraped-up metal table that sat between him and —
Kuusou Shimizu. His long-term partner. The memory slid into place like a filter over a camera lens.
“You should eat your curry.” Kuusou used his chopsticks to point to the barely-touched plate in front of Izuku. “You need to keep your strength up.”
“Mm.” Izuku stared at the objectively delicious katsu curry, trying to summon an appetite. He couldn’t even recall what had made him so nervous. Work? He was sure he had just been at work, but the details of what had happened there eluded him. “Sorry, I think I’m just a little tired.”
“That’s okay. You’ve had a long day.” Kuusou’s tone was sympathetic, encouraging. “Your work is really important to you, isn’t it?”
“Of course!” said Izuku, although he couldn’t quite remember what he did. “It’s… I’m helping people, and saving lives…”
“With quirk analytics,” Kuusou clarified.
“Yeah, with quirk analytics.” That was it. He’d always been obsessively interested in the mechanics of quirks, so a career in quirk analytics made perfect sense. “Helping heroes train properly and get the most out of their quirks can mean the difference between life and death when in the field.”
Kuusou was shoving more curry into his mouth while Izuku talked, and for a split second he felt — concern? Disgust? He wasn’t sure. “I’ve always admired how passionate you are about your job,” said Kuusou through a mouthful of curry. “But I’m sure the heroes will manage to survive one week while we go on vacation."
“Vacation?” Izuku wasn’t sure why such an innocent word was ringing warning bells in his mind.
“Yeah. Vacation. Taking a week off. You deserve it. Remember?”
“Right. I remember.” The anxious tightness in Izuku’s chest soldified into a knot and settled at the bottom of his stomach. As his right hand gripped the chopsticks, his left picked at the rough fabric of the restaurant’s seat.
“Seriously, what’s going on, Izuku? Talk to me.”
Izuku opened his mouth. He trusted Kuusou
(he didn’t he shouldn’t he couldn’t)
so he should probably just be out with what was bothering him.
“Do you ever feel like you’re not where you’re supposed to be?” he asked, his face burning hot as he tried to articulate his concerns. He thought he saw Kuusou’s expression harden briefly before returning to an easy smile.
“Is this about wanting to be a hero? Again?” His gentle voice failed to conceal a hint of edge.
Izuku just sighed. He should have known better than to bring this up. He felt something rough underneath his left hand, like concrete. When he brought his hand up again, there was dirt on it, a few small grains of debris stuck to his palm. How…?
“You’re doing important work. Isn’t that enough?” Kuusou pressed.
Izuku hesitated, not wanting to answer, worried about sparking a fight. It wasn’t enough. It had never been enough. It wasn’t something that everyone could understand. Kuusou certainly didn’t seem to.
He’d always understood —
The strong scent of coffee caught his attention as the waiter placed a mug on the table and walked away without saying anything. “Hey, I didn’t order this –“ said Izuku, failing to get the waiter’s attention.
“Well, that’s weird,” said Kuusou. “I hope they don’t needlessly charge you for that.”
“Yeah, I don’t even like coffee,” Izuku watched the steam curling off of the dark brew. “I do kind of like the smell, though. It smells like home.”
“Home?” said Kuusou, confused. “Neither of us drink coffee.”
“I guess not. I don’t know why I said that,” said Izuku, every bit as confused.
Somehow, though, it did smell like home. It smelled like safety and comfort and belonging. He didn’t understand why. The only coffee he had at the apartment was a box of instant shoved in the back of a cupboard, in case a visitor wanted any.
Kuusou leaned over the table, taking Izuku’s free hand in his. His hand was too warm, covered in a thin film of sweat. Izuku fought the urge to pull away.
“Izuku, I never want you to feel bad about yourself for not being a pro hero. You do critical work — no one else can analyze pro heroes like you. Everyone knows that you have the heart of a hero, too. It’s just, you know…”
“What?”
“…It’s unrealistic to be a hero when you’re quirkless.”
Quirkless?
That’s right, he was quirkless. How could he have possibly forgotten? The hazy vestiges of a dream slipped from his grasp.
“But don’t let that get you down. You’ve accomplished so much, despite being quirkless. You should be proud!”
Despite being quirkless. The echoes of the words he’d heard from elementary school teachers, his doctor, his peers, even his own mother. There were few things he hated more, and he had to stop himself from ditching Kuusou and running home in a huff. He should know better, know that Izuku didn’t want to have a meaningful life for a quirkless person. He just wanted to have a meaningful life, period. One where he was valued, one where his contributions were so clear that no one had to tack on “despite being quirkless” when describing his achievements.
But saying that to Kuusou would probably just make him upset, when he had just been trying to cheer Izuku up. “Yeah.”
Kuusou picked up on his hesitation. “You don’t have to worry about a thing. I’ll take care of you even though you’re quirkless. I love you anyway.”
It was, theoretically, the words he wanted to hear. It should be comforting. But something about it didn’t sit well with Izuku at all.
Izuku couldn’t get the smell of coffee out of his head. It was as if it had followed him home from the curry dive, attaching itself to his clothes, clinging to him as if it didn’t want to let go.
That was as good a reason as any why he stopped in front of the Starbucks down the street from his apartment.
The entire time he’d been having dinner with Kuusou, he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that there was something crucially important he was forgetting, something urgent he needed to do. The smell of coffee and his confusing reaction to it was the best clue he currently had, but he couldn’t really sit and think about it with Kuusou sitting across from him, chattering about his life. His plan, if it could even be called a plan, was to buy a coffee and take it home with him, hoping it would shake loose the memory wedged in his brain.
Izuku pushed open the door, and did a double take at what he saw inside.
He didn’t frequent Starbucks, but he’d been in them enough to know what they basically always looked like, and this wasn’t it. The place looked much older than a typical Starbucks, outfitted in dark woods. There was a blue bicycle, covered in stickers, leaning against the wall, and a few mismatched tables and chairs in the main section of the cafe. Behind the counter was a cacophony of coffee making equipment, bags and jars of coffee beans, and stacks of books, among other assorted junk. A small bell attached to the door announced his arrival, and sent a fat gray cat skittering toward a back room.
The smell of coffee filled his senses, once again giving him the feeling of safety, of belonging, of home.
“Hey.” The only person in the shop was sitting with his feet up on the counter, reading a monthly magazine of hero manga. He lightly tossed the book onto the table behind him and stood up.
The barista was in his late 20s, around the same age as Izuku. He had a wild shock of purple hair and deep bags under his eyes, as though he had never gotten a good night’s sleep in his life.
Izuku stared, transfixed. Objectively, there was nothing really special about this guy, but his brain had once more started screaming at him about something he needed to remember.
“Is… is this a Starbucks?” he managed.
“What the fuck? No. I serve actual coffee here, not burnt crap that needs a ton of sugar to cover it up.”
The barista’s voice somehow exactly matched how his coffee smelled, rich and deep and comforting and more than a little bit dark.
“Uh…” Not knowing how to react to this entire strange situation, but absolutely not wanting to leave, Izuku looked around for a menu to place an order, and found none. “Where’s the menu?”
“It’s a coffee shop. I’ll get you coffee.”
“But…” Izuku protested weakly as the barista picked up a large glass flask and poured the contents into a purple mug with a stylized eye on it.
“Here you go,” he said, putting the mug down in front of Izuku. “This is a lot better than that Starbucks shit, trust me.”
Izuku stared awkwardly at the cup of coffee. “Sorry, but… I don’t actually really like coffee.”
Purple eyes bore into him with frightening intensity, and for a moment, Izuku was legitimately scared about how this guy would react. This clearly wasn’t a normal coffee shop. He had no idea what kind of quirk this guy had, and Izuku only had his martial arts training to rely on if a situation went bad.
A sly, Cheshire Cat grin spread across the barista’s face, the least trustworthy smile imaginable, and somehow so familiar. “I know. You like the smell, though, right?”
“How’d you know that?”
“Everyone likes the smell of coffee.” He shrugged. “You probably should at least try to drink that, though. Coffee’s good for waking you up. Helping you remember things. Stuff like that.”
Izuku’s eyes widened. Remembering – it was if this guy knew what was going on his head. A mind-reading quirk, maybe? Somehow, he already knew that wasn’t quite it. He had so many questions that he was having trouble settling on one.
“C’mon, you’ll want to drink that while it’s hot.”
Izuku swallowed hard and looked down at the mug. Maybe he shouldn’t be trusting the lone barista in a coffee shop divorced from reality, who seemed to know him in a way he didn’t know himself.
But he did.
He took a sip of the coffee. It burned in his mouth, the sharp bitterness causing him to involuntarily make an awful face. There were other flavors there, too, tastes almost like bread or chocolate or flowers, but it was hard to pick them out among all the bitter.
The barista laughed. “Yeah, that’s the face you always make when you drink my coffee. Feeling any better?”
“I’ve never been here before,” Izuku protested, wincing as he looked around for something to get the taste out of his mouth. “Why are you acting like we’ve met? What’s your name, anyway?”
“I’ve got a name tag, you know.”
The barista pointed to a black plastic card pinned to his black t-shirt. There were clearly words written on it, but they swam and danced before Izuku’s eyes. “I can’t read –“
“Sir?” A woman’s voice. Izuku looked up to see a bored-looking young woman in a green apron, standing where the mysterious barista had just been. “Sir, please take your coffee and allow another patron to order. Thank you!” She gave a perfunctory bow.
Sweat drops broke out on Izuku’s forehead when he realized he was in an ordinary Starbucks, the one he had seen from the outside windows. An extensive menu above the woman’s head advertised all manner of coffee concoctions and seasonal drinks, and there were a couple of impatient salarymen behind him in line.
“Sorry!” He picked up the cardboard cup of coffee and got out of the way. He sat down at one of the small cafe tables, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
Had he just been in an ordinary Starbucks the entire time, hallucinating that entire exchange? Somehow, the warm, inviting atmosphere of the coffee shop in his imagination felt far more grounded and real than the disposable, interchangeable nature of the generic chain shop he now found himself in.
Was he actually lonely enough to imagine a whole exchange with a barista who was inexplicably interested in him? He had Kuusou. He shouldn’t be having those sorts of fantasies.
The cardboard cup was warm in his hands.
Coffee was good for remembering, right?
He took a sip, and immediately regretted it. It tasted burnt, and didn’t taste like anything else. It didn’t even smell all that appealing.
He threw it in the garbage and left the shop.
“I’m home!” Midoriya said to no one as he entered his empty, quiet apartment. He kicked off his shoes at the doorway, hung up his jacket. The yawning black void of the TV in his tiny sitting area was the only thing that greeted him, looking somehow more ominous than usual.
He considered going into the kitchen to grab a snack, but he was still pretty full from the curry he had ultimately shoveled down at Kuusou’s insistence. The taste of burnt coffee in his mouth had mercifully faded. Kuusou wouldn’t be back from his errands for a little while, so he collapsed onto his couch and grabbed his tablet, intending to distract himself with work. There was a whole batch of recent videos from incidents on patrol that he needed to pore over, creating a report of his observations for the all-hands training in three days.
Even the sound of the videos wasn’t enough to drive away the oppressive silence of the tiny studio.
He stopped on a clip of a young woman with a gravity-related quirk. The skill with which she saved a young boy from the clutches of a villain, wielding her quirk with precision control, was impressive, but that wasn’t what caught Izuku’s attention.
It was the fact that he couldn’t remember her name. Not her civilian name, not her hero name. And he was dead certain he had worked with this hero before. It wasn’t like him to forget a name like that.
“Home!” Kuusou opened the front door wide. Izuku quickly shut his laptop, but not before Kuusou caught a glimpse of it.
“Hero stuff? Your work?” Kuusou failed to entirely conceal the displeasure on his face. “We should decide where we’re going on vacation. It’s only a week away.”
Izuku blinked. “We’re going on vacation in a week and we haven’t even decided where?”
Kuusou looked as if he were thinking on the fly. “Well, you know, I wanted to ask you where you’d like to go.”
“And you couldn’t have — ?”
“But I was thinking maybe a hot spring. It’d be relaxing. You need that. What do you think?”
The thought of being trapped at a hot spring with this guy made Izuku’s stomach flip in disgust. The couch felt like rough concrete underneath him, and for a moment, the image of his comfortable apartment flickered into something stark and industrial.
“Izuku! Hey!” Kuusou grasped his shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. “Are you paying attention to me?”
The moment faded and Izuku returned to reality. His strong reaction to what should be an enticing prospect baffled him — why would he be upset at the idea of going to a hot spring with his boyfriend? For a second, he felt like Kuusou was more of a stranger to him than the hero whose name he couldn’t remember.
“Can we talk about this later?” Izuku said. “I’m pretty tired. I was just about to take a nap.”
Kuusou seemed reluctant to release Izuku. “Sure. A nap might be good for you. Sweet dreams.”
Izuku wasted no time in getting up from the couch and heading to his bedroom. The large bed sat unmade, a tangle of sheets and blankets on the top. The closet was similarly messy, but he could see his hero costumes neatly hanging in the —
Izuku rubbed at his eyes, confused.
There weren’t any hero costumes, of course, just his neatly pressed work shirts and pants.
His eyes traveled to a black hoodie sitting balled up on the floor. He couldn’t remember if it was his or Kuusou’s. It looked comfortable, though.
Izuku pushed it from his mind and curled up on the bed. It felt wrong, smelled wrong, offered him no comfort or relief. He wanted his boyfriend to hold him, offer him comfort, talk to him in his soothing voice.
So why did he push Kuusou away?
He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping sleep would give him some relief, even as something deeper inside of him told him he needed to wake up.
The warmth of the coffee shop danced beneath his eyelids as he finally drifted off.
The next day flew by. Izuku almost felt as if he were sleepwalking through it, as if nothing he did was all that important. He woke up before Kuusou and grabbed bread on the way out the door. He helped heroes train. He scribbled notes. He ate cup ramen for lunch.
He tried really hard not to think of going back to the coffee shop. He knew that doorway only led to disappointment, and he’d had enough disappointment in his life.
And yet.
The plan was simple: enter the Starbucks, order a small tea, and leave. He’d prove to himself once and for all that there was nothing strange about it, and he’d get back to his normal life, the one where he wasn’t inexplicably obsessed with an illusory coffee shop.
“Hey.” The purple-haired barista stood up immediately as Izuku entered, nearly choking on his own breath.
“You’re… here,” he said.
“I wasn’t planning on going anywhere,” he said, leaning over the counter.
“You know this was a Starbucks a second ago, right?”
The barista smiled, glanced over his surroundings. Soft orange sunlight poured in through the front windows, even though Izuku was sure it had been a cloudy afternoon a minute ago. The fat gray cat lay on its side in a sunbeam, yawning. A tiny All Might plush toy sat on top of the cash register, and Izuku couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed that before. “I think this an improvement, don’t you?” the barista said, rubbing at his neck. “You must really care about me to set up a place like this for me. I’m flattered, really.”
“Put you…? What do you mean?”
“Don’t worry about it. Coffee?”
Izuku nodded, accepting the warm and heavy purple mug, trying to process all this. His mind felt hazy and slow, almost as if it were filled with fog. “Thanks, uh…”
“Shinsou Hitoshi,” he said, supplying the name that Izuku had failed to read before.
“Shinsou…” Izuku repeated softly, looking into the swirling coffee. “I…” He tried to think of something to say that wasn’t hopelessly awkward. “I like your All Might toy.”
“That’s not mine,” he said. “Just like the black hoodie on the floor of your bedroom isn’t yours.”
Izuku nearly dropped the coffee cup in shock. If it weren’t for the warmth of his surroundings and the comfortable haze in his brain, he probably would have panicked, but he was too caught in the spell of this place. “How did you know that?”
“We know a lot of things about each other,” he said, clarifying nothing. “It’s been at least a few hours, right?”
“A few hours? I just got here.”
Shinsou continued as though he hadn’t heard the response. “You didn’t come home on time, and you’re not responding to my texts. I’ve definitely gone out looking for you by now.”
“Looking for me…?” Izuku was so far out of his depth in this conversation that he might as well be at the bottom of the ocean. “I’m right here in front of you.”
Shinsou pushed his hand through his messy hair, his expression concerned. “I really wish that were true.” He was pure seriousness, now, any trace of mischief gone. “You’re in danger. You know that, right?”
“Danger?” Izuku gripped the coffee cup tighter.
“Izuku,” said Shinsou, suddenly grabbing Izuku by the shoulders, causing the coffee to slosh onto the counter and sting his hands.
Izuku felt a wave of fear. He didn’t think he had told the barista his name, and he definitely wasn’t on a first name basis with a near-total stranger.
“I’m going to find you. I promise. If you can’t save yourself, you’re just going to have to hold on until I get there. Can you do that?”
“I… Toshi, you’re not making any sense —“
He blinked.
He was back in the Starbucks, harsh reality slapping him across the face.
“Here’s your coffee, sir!” The woman at the counter was holding a paper cup, forced cheerfulness plastered across her face.
“Thanks,” he said, his hand shaking as he took it from her and then immediately turned around and tossed it in the trash. He knew how strange that looked. He didn’t care.
Now that he was back to real life, such as it was, a flood of confusing emotions were battling within him: melancholy, contentedness, fear. Mostly, he just wish he could have stayed.
He looked down at his hands.
There was a red mark where the coffee had splashed onto him.
He ran home as fast as he could, immediately tossing down his bag as soon as he entered the door. Kuusou thankfully was not home yet to question him. He slipped into the bedroom and picked up the black hoodie, burying his face in it.
It smelled just like the coffee shop. In fact, it smelled just like the barista.
He had no way of knowing what the barista smelled like, of course. It was just a fantasy, a fantasy of a man he had barely met, even though he already had a —
The lock clicked, and Izuku shoved the hoodie into a ball and put it back roughly where it was.
“Izuku? You in here?” asked Kuusou, entering the bedroom. “Taking a nap?”
“Yeah,” he lied, immediately feeling bad about it — but what could he say?
Kuusou sat down on the bed next to him. “You’ve been so tired lately, huh? Good thing we’re going on vacation soon.”
He was in danger. Hitoshi was looking for him. He had to save himself or hold out.
If he left on vacation with Kuusou, could he ever be found? What a strange thought — but he couldn’t shake the fear.
For the briefest of moments, Kuusou’s eyes darkened, the bed underneath him turned into concrete, and his wrists ached from restraints.
“Kuusou, what —“ he said, disoriented. “What’s going on?”
“Izuku, look at me,” he said, grabbing Izuku by the shoulders and staring him right in the face, grounding him. The room shimmered back to itself, the walls and bed solidifying. “You’re fine, all right? Everything’s okay.”
“Sure. Everything’s okay,” Izuku parroted back. He’d been hallucinating something, and he was absolutely dead certain he couldn’t tell Kuusou about it.
But who could he tell?
Izuku rubbed at his eyes. “Let’s just make dinner, then. I think I saw pork cutlets in the fridge?”
“That’s right! That’s your favorite.” Kuusou brightened immediately, as though his boyfriend weren’t just in the middle of a meltdown.
“Are you real?”
“Define ‘real.’” There was that duplicitous grin again, the one that made Izuku’s heart skip a beat.
“Stop dodging the question, Shinsou.”
“But I’m so good at it.”
Izuku had intended to stay away. He really had. He even went out of his way to not walk by that Starbucks on the way too and from work.
He was back the next day.
Now that he was here, in the warm sanctuary that smelled like coffee and felt like belonging, it was hard for him to remember why he had even avoided it.
“I just want to know who you are,” said Izuku, forcing his thoughts through the fog that swirled in his brain. “This place looks like a Starbucks most of the time, and there’s never anybody here but me. It’s almost like I’m the only one who can see it. And you know me, but I don’t know you.” He swallowed nervously. “I deserve honesty.”
Shinsou sighed deeply. “You do, yeah, but in my defense, I don’t think it’s my fault I’m being so cagey. Well, it is and it isn’t…”
“See, there you go again!” Frustration welled within Izuku despite his calming surroundings. “Okay, how about this. Are you an actual, flesh and blood person?”
“Hm. Good question.” The smile on Shinsou’s face was absolutely terrifying, and before Izuku could react, he had reached a hand forward and carded it through Izuku’s hair.
“Uh.” Izuku’s brain short circuited. The touch was electric and far too intimate, causing a heady cocktail of pleasure and anxiety to course through Izuku’s veins. Shinsou did not break eye contact as he ran his hand through Izuku’s hair, running it down his cheek and stopping at his chin.
“What do you think?” he said casually, as though he were asking the time of day. “Do I seem real?”
“Uh…” Izuku willed his brain to return to him and received a 404 page not found in response.
[Art by Ferret]
“You’re so much fun to mess with, you know that?” Shinsou was gleefully drinking in Izuku’s stunned reaction. “But seriously, if you don’t think I’m real, why are you even talking to me? It’s a little insulting.”
Izuku had no idea why he felt he could tell this guy everything, but he did. “Okay, please don’t think I’m going crazy, but I’ve been having these weird hallucinations lately. I keep getting flashes of being somewhere else, or feeling like there’s something I’m supposed to be doing. And then there’s you,” he said, not intending to make it sound accusing. “You make me feel like…”
Shinsou leaned in closer. “Like what?”
“Like…” Like he wanted to jump into his arms. Like he needed to get home. Like he wanted to close the distance between them with a kiss. “Like I know you.”
“The simplest explanation is that you do.”
“Yeah. I guess it is.” For a moment, there was no Kuusou, no quirk analysis work, no impending hot springs trip that filled Izuku with inexplicable dread, just this mysterious barista and an immense feeling of relief. “None of this makes sense.”
“You’re the one who decided to ask one of your hallucinations about your hallucinations,” he deadpanned.
“I don’t know what I expected, then.” Izuku laughed easily.
It was an irrational thought, but maybe he didn’t have to leave the coffee shop this time. Maybe he could just stay here forever. Maybe it was where he belonged.
Was it so irrational when nothing else was making sense?
Shinsou was so close. When did he get so close?
With a massive amount of willpower and reluctance, Izuku backed up, away from the counter. “Sorry, I can’t…” he said, on the verge of tears. “I have a boyfriend.”
“A boyfriend?” Shinsou seemed equal parts confused and offended. “The fuck are you talking about?”
“I’ve been with him a while.” He wasn’t quite sure if the nasty feeling in his gut was guilt over having led Shinsou on, or regret that he couldn’t simply go with it. “He’s a nice guy. He’s very…” His brain cast around for a compliment for Kuusou. “He’s supportive.”
“Mmm.” Shinsou crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall, skeptical. “Sounds like you barely know this guy.”
“That’s not true!” Izuku protested. “We met in high school. At UA. He was a gen ed student. I was too… I think.”
“You think?”
“Yeah!” It made the most sense. He had vague memories of having attended UA, but obviously, he couldn’t have been in the hero course or anything like that, being quirkless. It must’ve been gen ed.
“So what else do you know about your boyfriend? What’s his quirk?”
“His quirk? Umm…” Izuku fought the urge to fish his notebook out of his bag.
Shinsou’s eyes were piercing. “You don’t know what your own boyfriend’s quirk is? You?”
“It’s… something with visualization… I think?” Why was this so hazy? Shinsou was right. He dedicated his life to quirk analytics — how would he not know what his own boyfriend’s quirk was? “It’s not like I know what your quirk is, either,” he said, mostly in an effort to distract himself from his rising panic.
“You sure?”
“Brainwashing,” he said, automatically. “It’s Brainwashing. Wait —“ Izuku slammed his hands on the counter. “Are you brainwashing me?”
“You know that’s not how it works,” said Shinsou calmly.
“No, it’s not, but — how could I possibly know that? How did I even know what your quirk was in the first place?” Izuku was more confused than ever. “I’m having all these weird visions and feelings, and you’re the only thing that’s really different. I feel like I shouldn’t trust you, but I do, but maybe you’re just tricking me into —“
Izuku was so wound up that he barely registered Shinsou walking around the counter. The next thing he knew, he was being engulfed in a hug. Shinsou’s warm sweatshirt smelled like coffee and comfort and home. He wrapped his arms around the stranger he knew so intimately, knowing he shouldn’t but unable to help himself.
“I’m tired, Toshi,” he confessed. “I’m just so tired and nothing makes sense any more.”
“It’s going to be okay.” Hitoshi ran his fingers through the hair on the back of his head. “I’ll find you. I promise.”
Izuku didn’t understand why that was so comforting. “Why do you need to find me? Can’t I just stay here?”
“No. I wish you could, but you can’t. You need to figure things out. You need to escape.” Hitoshi’s arms squeezed him tighter. “Trust me, I’d definitely keep you if I could.”
“But —“ Izuku looked up, and the coffee shop began to blur around him, rich woods and afternoon sunset fading into monochrome tile and buzzing flourescent light. “No, wait! Don’t leave me!”
Izuku was standing in the middle of an ordinary Starbucks, crying his eyes out, yelling to a person that wasn’t actually there, as all of the baristas and salarymen stared at him.
“I. Um.” He looked around wildly, as though Hitoshi was just hiding behind the seasonal drinks menu. “Sorry.”
Humiliated, Izuku ran out the door in a panic, crashing straight into —
“Kuusou? What are you doing here?”
“I was worried about you,” he said, but his eyes weren’t full of worry, but simmering anger. “What were you doing in that Starbucks? Do you even like coffee?”
Izuku recoiled from the unexpected line of questioning. “Why does that matter? Am I not allowed to go into a Starbucks?”
Kuusou wrapped his arm around Izuku’s, a gesture that seemed to leech comfort from Izuku. “You’ve been so tired lately. Don’t you think you should be coming straight home from work?”
“…That’s really weird and controlling, Kuusou,” said Izuku, detaching himself.
“I just want what’s best for you,” he said, his anger beginning to surface. “You’re quirkless, and you need to be careful —“
“What’s your quirk?” he interjected.
“What?”
“What’s your quirk?”
Kuusou’s hands had balled into tight fists. “Why the hell are you asking me that? Why does it matter what my quirk is?”
“It doesn’t matter what your quirk is,” Izuku explained, his anxiety rising. “It matters that analyzing quirks is both my career and my hobby, an enormous part of my life, and yet for some reason I don’t know what my boyfriend’s quirk is.” People on the sidewalk were beginning to avoid them, staring at the argument as they passed.
“Listen.” Kuusou grabbed him by the shoulders and made intense eye contact. “You need to relax. That’s not important.”
Izuku felt claustrophobic despite being out on the street, Kuusou’s eyes and the walls of the buildings pushing in on him. “What are you talking about? Of course it’s important!” He knew he was going to sound insane. He knew it, but he was going to say it anyway. “Are you even actually my boyfriend?”
It was a ludicrous thing to ask. They lived together. He had woken up that morning next to Kuusou. And yet he couldn’t remember anything more than a few superficial facts about him, couldn’t clearly recall any dates they’d been on, and, most tellingly, instinctively flinched from any of Kuusou’s attempts at affection.
He expected Kuusou to point out how obviously crazy he sounded. Instead, he sighed.
“This isn’t working. We need to go home and start over.”
“What do you —“