Chapter Text
Izuku is different. He always has been, for as long as he can remember.
The other kids smiled so easily, did things with their eyebrows and noses and mouths that made them look happy, or sad, or mad, or any one of infinite in-between emotions. Izuku sort of... Didn't. That was bad, though, it was wrong, so he practiced and practiced until he knew them all. Or, all the ones he could remember. It was a little bit easier to figure out what people were feeling once he learned to use those expressions himself.
Eye contact made him physically uncomfortable. He didn't like looking at them, but his mom got worried, and his friends got bored, and his teachers got mad when he didn't look at their eyes. So he learned to ignore it, but then people said he was weird for staring, and it didn't make any sense because wasn't he supposed to look at their eyes?
Whatever. He got older. He learned better. He learned all the ways he was different, so he could hide them and then deal with the aftermath on his own. Being his normal-person self was exhausting and made his skin feel wrong, but he couldn't shake or chirp the wrongness away because that wasn't normal at all. He had to wait until he was alone to do that.
Sometimes, food tasted just fine but made him want to throw up and flail like a tantruming baby until it was gone. Like cooked peppers and zucchini and most beans. He avoided those foods when he could, and hid them inside other stuff to choke down if he had to eat them.
Pressure helped him settle after a Bad day. He got mom to buy him a blanket that weighed twenty pounds. It was one of his favorite things, and he liked to fold it in half to make it even heavier, pressing him deep into the floor until he melted. Other days, the pressure made him feel worse, and on those days he rocked his body back and forth and around in circles until he found a rhythm that overrode the clenching itch that made him feel like crying and throwing his arms out until they hit something.
Thumping a first against his chest, right under his collarbone, was something he only did when he got so overwhelmed he felt like screaming and breaking things. He was almost always bruised there; Aldera was loud bright loud not fair not FAIR. The rules there didn't make sense, and they kept changing, but only for him. Because he was wrong, something was wrong with him, even more obviously wrong than his Quirklessness.
Auntie Mitsuki got in a fight with Mom about it once. Auntie kept saying that Izuku needed an evaluation, whatever that was, and Mom got more and more upset, saying that how dare Auntie imply that something was wrong with her baby.
They didn’t talk to each other for a few days after that. The evaluation was never brought up again.
Aizawa-sensei never made eye contact with anyone unless he was making an important point. Izuku noticed it right away, since he'd made a habit of studying the color of people's eyes so he could distract himself from the discomfort of looking at them.
Aizawa-sensei didn't really emote with his face the way everyone else did, but Izuku could tell what he was feeling most of the time. Not the little things, but it was easy to see if Aizawa was annoyed or stressed or proud by the set of his shoulders and the tilt of his head, as well as the look in his eyes. It just made sense, way more than the smiles and frowns and furrows that were too easy to fake and sometimes didn't mean anything at all.
Aizawa-sensei made sense in ways that no one else did, but Izuku didn't know why until one important morning, eleven days after everyone moved into the dorms.
Because that morning, sitting behind his desk, Aizawa-sensei's arms were wrapped tight around his torso in a way that looked natural, hands squeezing around his elbows in a rhythm Izuku didn't recognize. Aizawa was stressed, maybe overwhelmed, and doing a thing very similar to what Izuku sometimes did when he was super overwhelmed by lights and noises and figuring out other people, and- and maybe Aizawa-sensei was different in the same way that Izuku was different. Not exactly the same, but functioning closer to each other than to other people.
Halfway through homeroom, Aizawa-sensei rolled his eyes at Kacchan’s temper, and then squeezed them shut, ducking his head down to get away from the lights. It only lasted for a second, and then he was staring evenly at the class again, but Izuku saw. And he understood, or he thought he might.
Izuku made sure he was the last kid out of the room, and turned the lights off before he left-
"Why did you do that?"
Izuku turned around- look at people when they're talking to you- rocked forward on his toes, and quickly corrected himself to stand normally again. "The lights are too loud today," he said simply, not sure how to explain any better than that. "It was bothering you, wasn't it?"
Aizawa-sensei stared at him for a few seconds, then looked away again. pressing against the back of his chair.
"Hm."
He hadn't actually answered Izuku's question, but he looked more relaxed than before, so it was probably safe to assume the answer.
Am I supposed to say something else?
....
Um.
"Bye, Sensei."
“Go to class, Midoriya.”
Izuku left.