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For quite some time after Izuku inherited One for All, for a few blurry moments right after waking, he would completely forget. He would wake up quirkless, and the realization would dawn after— he was All Might’s successor. He wasn’t powerless anymore. It was always a nice thing to remember.
Now, though— for a few blurry moments right after waking, he forgets. He wakes up as All Might’s successor, and it isn’t until the haze in his head clears away that he remembers. He is no longer the holder of One for All. He is no longer All Might’s successor. He is, once again, quirkless.
Lately, the haze is taking longer to clear, and when it does more often than not Izuku spends an undetermined amount of time, minutes blending together, just staring at the ceiling. Quirkless. Powerless.
Useless.
He doesn’t regret it. How could he? He saved the world. Izuku would have given his life for that— he should be happy all he had to give was his quirk. Better to be quirkless than dead.
It hadn’t been enough. None of them had been enough. Shigaraki and All for One were going to win, unless somebody did something very drastic and very stupid. Something like a massive chain of One for All transfers, like at Nabu with Kacchan but magnified— a quirk made to beat All for One. A quirk made to share.
They hadn’t been sure if it was going to work, but they were sure that they were all going to die if they didn’t at least try. So Izuku passed it to Kacchan, who passed it to Todoroki, who passed it to— on and on and on, hero to hero to hero, until they were an army living off the last burning embers of One for All. It ended with Endeavor as the last link in the chain, but when the battle ended, Endeavor told them that he could feel nothing left. They’d stretched One for All to its limit; it had done what it was supposed to do. It had beaten All for One. It wasn’t needed anymore.
Neither was Izuku.
No one knew what to do with him after that. He was technically quirkless again, unable to keep up and continue training along with the rest of Class A. But how do you kick the saviour of the world out of school, quirkless or not? How do you remove him from class with his friends, with his comrades of war, just because he gave up his quirk to save everything? He ended up taking all the general studies lessons with his classmates, but when they went off for hero training Izuku would stay behind and do individual lessons with one of the teachers— usually All Might, but sometimes he’d train with Aizawa and, on a few memorable occasions, with Principal Nezu. He is grateful, really— he was able to graduate with his class, with his friends. With his family, really. But it wasn’t quite the same; up there surrounded by people who were going to go on to become amazing heroes, Izuku had sort of felt like their quirkless mascot.
He knows that no one meant to make him feel that way. Everyone continued to include him, tried to act like nothing had changed— except something had changed. Izuku had changed. And a lot of people seemed to be unsure of how to act around him. A lot of them seemed to be unwilling to discuss their own quirks in front of him, not seeming to realize that pretending they didn’t exist actually made it worse for Izuku. It unlocks some buried memories inside of Izuku from when he was a kid, after it became clear that he wasn’t going to exhibit a quirk. The awkward pity in the eyes of adults. The vicious fascination with which his classmates studied him. The sound of Kacchan’s loud, cruel laughter.
That, at least, was the one major difference, and one Izuku is immensely grateful for. The two people who never treated him differently— Shouto and Kacchan.
Shouto never treated him differently, mostly because he was… Shouto. He never pitied Izuku or gave him that facial expression that Izuku has grown to hate so much, the recognition in their eyes that oh shit, he was the one who lost his quirk, and the panic that followed right after as they tried to figure out how to act. Izuku couldn’t stand that look.
He knows his other friends don’t mean it. Uraraka and Tsuyu and Iida— none of them meant to treat him any differently. It wasn’t their intention to make him feel bad. But the sad truth is that sometimes they did— and there were times when the pity in their eyes was too much. Shouto never looked at him in pity. Actually, when you get down to it, Shouto was really the only one who treated Izuku the exact same as he did before the war, because even Kacchan treated him differently.
Izuku still can’t really believe the way Kacchan had attached himself to Izuku’s side after the war. He never once pitied him or treated him like he was weak, and they even sparred still— obviously Kacchan didn’t use his quirk, but he didn’t hold back on the physical front. Unlike with everyone else, the change in Kacchan was more welcome. Looking back on it now, it’s easy to see what it was, but at the time Izuku didn’t understand why Kacchan was always around him, or why he’d do small things for Izuku, like making his favourite meal or buying him some silly All Might collectible he’d found. Izuku didn’t understand, but he was happy.
Every look, every touch, every time he sat next to Izuku with their thighs lined up, the picture he still had as his phone screen of the two of them at graduation, Kacchan’s arm slung around his shoulders as he laughed, holding Izuku’s graduation cap out of reach with his other hand. Four months ago Kacchan had told him what all of that meant, and asked if he wanted to go on a date. Izuku had kissed him full on the mouth.
So after the war Izuku spent most of his time with Shouto and Kacchan. He still hung out with his other friends, too, and after a while people seemed to get more comfortable, and people stopped treating him so weirdly. But by that time, their trio had been solidified.
It’s been a little over two years since the war. His friends were in their first years as sidekicks, and he’s been following each of them to see how their careers are going. And Izuku himself is still working at Endeavor’s agency, just as a dispatcher now. It wasn’t what he thought he’d be doing, but it’s still a way for him to help people, and it lets him see Shouto and Kacchan on a regular basis. He moved back in with his mom after he graduated, which was nice for the both of them; Izuku hadn’t realized how much he missed his mom, and he can’t deny that it’s nice to have someone do his laundry again.
From the outside it looks like he’s adjusting and doing well. Thriving, even. He has a good job, good friends, a great boyfriend. And even though he lost his quirk, he’d lost it saving the world. Izuku smiles at home, and he smiles at work, and he smiles with his friends; it’s only when he’s by himself or with Kacchan that he lets the facade drop.
He hadn’t expected to have such a hard time adjusting. In the grand scheme of things, he’d only had his quirk for a little over a year. He’d lived most of his life without a quirk— it wasn’t like when Mirio lost his. Izuku had been quirkless before, and he was quirkless now. He should be used to it. But it was proving more difficult than he’d feared to go from being ultra powerful to being a nobody again (Kacchan always gets annoyed when Izuku says that. He says that Izuku has never been and will never be a nobody. On good days, Izuku even believes him).
He talks to All Might about it. Mirio, too, although he was a little too… positive, for Izuku. All Might told him that it was going to take some time for him to adjust, and that it wouldn’t be easy. He told Izuku he needed to keep himself busy, that dwelling on it just made it worse. Both he and Mirio told him he needed a new dream, something else to keep him occupied and to strive for. But Izuku has only ever had the one dream— and this isn’t the first time someone has told him to give up on it.
All in all, Izuku is surviving. He’s not really sure how to do any better than that, but for now it’s enough.
It’s Saturday morning, and he’s sleeping in. Izuku sleeps a lot lately, when he doesn’t have anything else to do. Somehow he still always feels tired, though.
There’s a knock on his door, and when he calls out his mother enters. “Honey?” Inko says. “Katsuki is here.”
She’s barely finished speaking when Kacchan comes barrelling into the room. Izuku sits up and squints against the light from the hallway, rubbing at his eyes. Inko and Kacchan exchange looks, as if they talk about Izuku when he’s not around. He’s not sure how he feels about that.
His mother leaves the room; Kacchan flicks on the light and grabs one of the bags from Izuku’s closet and starts throwing stuff into it. Izuku watches this for a few moments before his brain catches up to his eyes.
“What are you doing?” He asks. Kacchan doesn’t look up from what he’s doing.
“Packing. We’re going on vacation.”
Izuku’s eyebrows furrow. “But you work weekends.”
“Does it look like I’m fucking working?”
Izuku considers this as Kacchan keeps going through his drawers. “How did you get the whole weekend off?”
Kacchan looks up at him briefly. “Let’s just say I’m working every holiday for the next year.”
Izuku doesn’t like that. “Kacchan—”
“Let it go, nerd.”
“Kacchan!” Izuku says, more firmly this time. Kacchan stops and gives Izuku his full attention, so Izuku continues. “I know what you’re doing. Thank you, honestly. But I’m not… I don’t want…”
“Izuku,” Kacchan says, matching Izuku’s serious tone. “You seem to think this is negotiable. Don’t make me carry you out of here.”
“Kacchan,” Izuku says tiredly. “I really don’t have the energy.”
Kacchan sighs and studies Izuku for a moment; then he drops the bag to the ground and gets into Izuku’s bed, pulling him down and sliding into the spot behind him, where Kacchan fits perfectly. This is still a new enough thing that Izuku still feels the urge to pinch himself when he gets to have Kacchan like this, pressed up against him, his nose in the back of his neck, his lips on his shoulders.
“What about for me,” he says quietly. “I booked the weekend off, and I wanna spend it with you. If you won’t do it for you, will you do it for me?”
“That’s playing dirty,” Izuku immediately complains, because Kacchan knows Izuku can’t say no to him. Kacchan chuckles and kisses the shell of his ear.
“You know me. I play to win.”
Izuku eventually agrees, obviously, because he can’t say no to Kacchan. He’s never been able to say no to Kacchan, and frankly it’s villainous of him to use that to his advantage. Kacchan also won’t tell him where they’re going, no matter how much Izuku asks or whines or threatens. He just loads them up into his shitty car that he got with his shitty sidekick salary, and they drive. They drive until they reach a cabin on a lake; it isn’t particularly nice, but it’s also not really bad. Izuku is immediately suspicious of how much it all cost.
“Let it go, Izuku,” Kacchan says, when Izuku brings it up again. “Just because you don’t know how to save money doesn’t mean I don’t.”
Izuku still doesn’t trust it; he studies the inside of the cabin with a critical eye, and eventually Kacchan calls him on it, annoyed.
“Izuku,” he snaps. “Stop reading into this. I wanted to spend a weekend with my boyfriend, is that so fucking bad?”
Another dirty trick— Kacchan knows calling him his boyfriend always distracts him. But Izuku does feel bad when he realizes how much of a downer he’s being. Just because he’s comfortable showing this side of himself to Kacchan doesn’t mean it’s the only side he should be showing. Kacchan is just trying to help and do something nice; the least Izuku can do is fake it and smile.
The bedroom is much like the rest of the cabin, but there’s only one bed. This makes Izuku blush for some reason— they’ve slept together in all senses of the word, but something about Kacchan purposely selecting a cabin with only bed makes him feel all warm inside.
Kacchan dumps their stuff on the dresser, but he doesn’t unpack it or anything. Instead he turns back around and says, “C’mon.”
“What?” They just got here! “Where?”
“We’re going fishing.”
For a moment Izuku is certain that he’d misheard. Surely Kacchan didn’t say fishing? “Do you… even know how to fish?”
“I know how to do everything,” Kacchan says grandly. Izuku bites at his lip, and after a moment Kacchan comes up to him and lifts his chin with his hand. He leans his head down to kiss Izuku, and even though he’s doing a pretty good job of hiding it, Izuku can feel the anxiety in his kiss, in the way he holds Izuku. He’s trying. He’s trying so fucking hard.
“Okay,” he says, wrapping his arms around Kacchan. “Okay, let’s go fishing.”
Kacchan directs him to the end of the pier near their cabin while he disappears to get them equipment, from a small little shack down the road that Izuku hadn’t even noticed. Izuku takes off his shoes and sits at the edge with his feet dipped into the cold water of the lake. He watches the swirls and ripples of the water, and he thinks about the ripples of One for All through an army of heroes, and he thinks about being a kid and watching All Might movies, and he thinks about the way Kacchan had cried when they’d had sex for the first time. And he thinks about fishing.
Kacchan finally gets back with two fishing rods and a bucket of something Izuku finds out are worms. He watches as Kacchan sets the worms on the ends of the fishing rods, his hands moving with confidence. It appears he wasn’t exaggerating— Kacchan really does seem to know what he’s doing.
“Kacchan?” Izuku asks, as Kacchan hands him a fishing rod. “How come you know how to do this?”
Kacchan sits down beside him and flicks his line into the water. Izuku tries to do the exact same thing he’d done and ends up with a worm in the back of his head. Kacchan laughs at him, and he doesn’t answer until he’s helped Izuku get his line properly in the water.
“I used to go fishing with my dad,” he finally says, looking out over the water and not at Izuku. “We’d go away to some nice, quiet place like this for a weekend. He taught me how to do it.”
Izuku is quiet, turning this over in his mind. He’s regretting putting up so much of a fight about this— not just because it was childish, but because this is something Kacchan had shared with his father that he wants to share with Izuku, too. Izuku knows how much Kacchan admires his father; despite being the spitting image of his mother, it was Masaru he’d always looked up to, and Masaru who was the only one Kacchan would often listen to when he was younger. Izuku is honoured that Kacchan would include him in something like this, and he leans his head against Kacchan’s shoulder. Kacchan lightly taps his head to Izuku’s.
They sit like that for a bit, comfortable silence between them. Izuku looks down at his hands around the fishing rod and traces over the scars with his eyes. Ugly and jagged, a reminder of what he used to be able to do.
Finally he says, “Kacchan. I know what you’re trying to do.”
“I’m trying to fish.”
Izuku smiles. “It’s okay, Kacchan. I’m not mad, or anything. I know you’re just trying to get me out of the house and doing something, but—”
“Do you know why my dad would take me fishing?” Kacchan says suddenly. “He called it his reset. Things would build up and build up until he’d burst, so he’d take some time and go fishing, spend some time out in nature. He said it always cleared his head, reminded him that there were bigger things. More important things. In middle school, when my anger started getting out of control— I’d feel it growing bigger and bigger inside me, and sometimes I felt like I’d burst from it. So he brought me along. At first I thought it was fucking stupid, but it was actually pretty nice. I didn’t have to pretend to be something or deal with anything. For a day or two I could just… reset myself. Go somewhere where I didn’t need to pretend.” He looks at Izuku, then. “I know you’re pretending all the time, and I know it’s fucking tiring. I didn’t bring you to get a hobby, Deku, I brought you here so you could be yourself. Just you and me and all these fucking fish to see it.”
Izuku starts to cry. He wipes at his eyes with a hand, and Kacchan immediately wraps an arm around him. “I just don’t understand why it’s so hard,” Izuku gets out amongst the sobs. “I went most of my life without a quirk. I don’t— I don’t want to be like this, I don’t want to be such a downer, but everything is just— it’s so much.”
Kacchan pulls him closer, stroking Izuku’s hair with the hand not holding onto the fishing rod. “You saved the world, Izuku. You deserve a rest.”
“I don’t want a rest,” Izuku argues. Kacchan sighs and kisses the top of his head.
“I know.”
He stays tucked into Kacchan’s chest for a few minutes. It’s the only place where he feels completely invincible.
And then— Izuku’s line starts twitching.
Both of them stare at it for a moment before Izuku yells, “What do I do!”
“Reel it in, nerd!”
“You didn’t show me how to do that!”
Kacchan helps him grab the fishing rod and together they reel it in until the line bursts out of the water, leaving them staring at a very disgruntled fish. Izuku clamours back and the fish falls to the pier, flopping around like— well, like a fish out of water.
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
“I dunno. My dad and I never really caught anything.” At Izuku’s incredulous look he adds defensively, “What? I said we went, not that we were good at it.”
Izuku turns away from this revelation and instead looks at the fish. He thinks it looks scared, but he might just be projecting. He thinks about being plucked out of the only world you know and how scary that must be, especially when all you want to do is go back in the lake.
Fish aren’t necessarily the most adaptable— but Izuku isn’t a fish.
Carefully and wordlessly, Izuku bends down and removes the fish hook from the fish. “Sorry,” he mutters to it. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” Then he throws it back into the water. He loses sight of it immediately to the murky depths, but he likes to imagine it swimming off into freedom with a new outlook on life.
“Thank you, Kacchan,” he says. “For sharing this with me.”
“You’re not a fish, you know.” Izuku is surprised that Kacchan had followed his train of thought so well, even though he shouldn’t be. No one knew him better than Kacchan. “I’m just saying,” he continues. “You’re a lot smarter and stronger. Hell of a lot better looking.” Izuku chuckles. “You can thrive wherever you are. You’re Midoriya fucking Izuku. You saved the world. You saved everybody. You saved me, even when I didn’t deserve it. You can do fucking anything, Izuku. Quirk or no quirk.”
Izuku is crying again. He wipes at his eyes and says, “I think I’m in love with you.”
“Oh yeah? Well, I know I’m in love with you. So there.”
Izuku laughs wetly, but Kacchan isn’t finished.
“Look. I know I’m a big reason why you equate being quirkless with being useless. I can’t go back and change that. But you can still change the world, Izuku. You can still be a hero. You just have to figure out the way that you can.”
Izuku’s eyes widen. “Kacchan!” He cries out. “That’s it!”
“Hah?”
“Can we go back to the cabin?” He asks excitedly. “I need one of my notebooks!”
“One of—? How many did you bring? This was supposed to be a vacation!”
Back at the cabin, Izuku grabs a notebook and a pen and sits down. He gets in the zone pretty quickly— Kacchan gets a little pouty, actually. He doesn’t like it when Izuku’s attention is elsewhere. It’s pretty cute, and Izuku will be sure to pay him sufficient attention later.
When Izuku is finished, he kisses Kacchan on the head and then hands him the notebook, chewing his lip nervously.
“You gave me a really good idea when you mentioned being quirkless, Kacchan!” He says, as Kacchan flips through the notebook. “Because it— it wasn’t only you, Kacchan, the whole world sends the message that being quirkless is equivalent to being useless, whether they mean to or not. And maybe I can’t kick or punch like I used to, but that’s not the only way to be useful, and if I keep acting like I’m useless because I lost my quirk, I’d basically be saying that you need a quirk to be useful! Which means I’d be saying all quirkless people are useless, which isn’t true!”
“Did you come up with all of this just now?” Kacchan sounds impressed as he continues to read.
“It’s just a bunch of half-baked ideas right now, support groups and advocacy groups and events and stuff.” Izuku is still talking excitedly. “But the dream would be to eventually have like, a network all through Japan that’s run by other quirkless people— and I’d love to be able to expand beyond the quirkless, I keep on thinking about that heteromorphic lady I met during the war, remember, and just like with the quirkless there were a lot of promises made that were never followed up on! I know there are a few organizations dedicated to this already but there’s really not that many when you think about the fact that the world is still 20% quirkless which is a really high number—”
Kacchan stands up as Izuku is babbling and cuts him off with a kiss. “I’ll help. Anyway I can.”
Izuku smiles up at him, and this time it doesn’t feel as forced on his face. “You’ve already helped me more than anyone.”
“And I’m gonna keep fucking helping you until you don’t want me around anymore,” Kacchan says fiercely.
“You’ll be helping for a long time, then,” Izuku says. Before he might have felt afraid to say something that so blatantly showed how he felt, but he’s starting to get the feeling that Kacchan feels as strongly for him as he does for Kacchan.
“Fucking count on it, loser,” Kacchan says, before kissing him again. “You’ve gotta promise me something, though,” he says and Izuku is nodding before he’s even finished talking.
“Anything. You know that.”
Kacchan kisses him again, but it’s different this time; his hands come up to cup Izuku’s face, and Izuku can feel something hot beginning to burn inside him. “No more work while we’re on vacation,” he says against Izuku’s lips, and each word is husky and dripping with promise. Izuku doesn’t know what exactly he’s promising, but he damn well wants to find out.
“Deal,” Izuku says. It’s the easiest promise he’s ever had to make.