Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There is a boy on Namir’s beach.

There is also a man on Namir’s beach. Not just a man. A Hero.

It's near impossible to ignore their endless fucking racket, that boy and All Might. Because of course, Namir knows All Might. They’ve seen him on the billboard screens and heard him in the whispers calling for a Hero to catch the stray. He’s even more impossible to escape, as his voice bounces off garbage metal as garbage noise.

Namir listens in on their conversation, curled up in a derelict van they’ve turned into their den, with absolutely mouldy pillows.

(They feel more tiger than human these days. With their jaw, and tongue locked in a muzzle, they haven’t spoken since Before. Vocal cords remind Namir of their existence only in mute growls and whines. Their diet is made up of whatever they catch in their claws—seagulls, pollution-poisoned fish and crab, or rats, and shove through the bars. The area around the van is stalked. They do their business in a wide arc around it. Disgust is only felt because they notice they feel more instinct-driven pride than shame for the act when they realise it's a mark of territory.)

All Might speaks the impossible so loudly and plainly that they can hear from two hundred metres away, with their Quirked hearing.

The idea of a Quirk’s power transferred, destroying the body, is not so impossible to Namir, at least. They simply stuff their ears with perished cloth and fall back into rest for the day. Stave off the hunger while they can’t hunt because of the humans’ thundering.

Garbage noise.

Rare tears slip across their face as they learn that the most powerful Hero is just as fallible as a cub. That Namir really was never meant to be saved by them.

Namir is silent as they cry. They are more worried about being heard than the humans are.

Distracted by trying to calm themself—carrying their breath with the sound of the waves—Namir finds that by the time tears stop coming, the sound of All Might has left too. 

Namir is not a fearful cat, as much as the idea of people on the(ir) beach makes the wild part in the base of their brain feel angrycagedSCARED. They are hungry; they need to hunt; so they will come out. Through the van’s top hatch, they exit. The door has long been buried by other garbage, piled high.

First, by curiosity unbidden, they stalk low on their fours, over the ridges, toward the lone noise of the boy. Rusted metal brushes perilously close to their belly, protected only by a thin t-shirt. 

The boy is… a teenager, in truth, now that they see him. But he’s small, with brown skin shrink-wrapped around his bones with no muscle between, over the barest layer of baby fat, and his coily unstyled hair is the only thing getting him to average height. Namir relaxes. He’s no threat. If they had their teeth, any altercation could be over in a bite, but their claws could still wrap the circumference of his neck.

And he is trying to haul a flattened fridge to the shore.

Okay.

It's a mote of entertainment, watching the boy try so determinedly, despite no progress, as he formlessly flails, pulls, and shoves. Didn’t All Might want him to train to inherit the Quirk? If this was the ‘Aim to Pass: American Dream Plan’ they were talking about, Heroes were fallible in both power and sense. 

Namir can see the thick booklet, tossed to the side on the sand.

Marigold eyes narrow. No. This is just a teenage boy’s aspirational idea of how strength works… how Quirk training at all works, it seems. Even if his Quirk isn’t physical (like it so obviously seems), any type needs to be built slowly.

As they think that, though, Namir’s eyes catch on his chunky, rust-red shoes. They haven’t seen the T-Joi brand since…

…It doesn’t matter. A Quirkless boy and a preying Hero aren’t Namir’s monkeys. 

Right now, all they care about is getting far aways enough so they can find some food. 

———

They’re hungry. Getting skinnier. Becoming a juxtaposition. The Tiger part of them hoards the fat and muscle in their body, leaving their forelimbs healthy while the Human in their body atrophies. The Boy is too loud.

The Boy is less aspirational than Namir had thought.

He’s slowly, consistently, clearing away the garbage. 

As he eats away at the rubble, rats disappear as their nests do. Seabirds are becoming more erratic with all the noise of falling scrap and heaving; sometimes their nests are taken too. Fish are the only thing around, and are less bitter to the tongue as he filters the sea. But as the horizon clears, there are less and less safe hours in the day to hunt.

The moon has waxed and waned twice. The Boy is getting stronger with the elapsing time.

Namir is getting hungrier. Weaker.

They need to scare away The Boy before they can’t anymore.

———

There’s an animal on Takoba beach.

Izuku puts down the box TV he’s carrying very, very carefully. The silhouette is quadrupedal, with round felinic ears and a long cat-like tail that’s flicking agitatedly. Perching atop a particularly tall mount of trash, any detail is shadowed by the setting sun, but it's big . Probably Quirked. They need to be careful. 

He slowly starts to back up, head forward but eyes down. For all they’ve researched about Quirks online, Izuku’s never gone down the ‘how to survive a big cat encounter’ internet rabbit hole. Hysterically, he wonders if All Might put this in the Dream Plan.

There isn’t much they can do as the animal stalks down the hill and into their tracks, sunlight spilling onto…

A person. A teenager, if he’s honest. 

Izuku represses a flinch. 

Not because they’re a heteromorph, because Izuku doesn’t need to write another blog post about how little that should matter, but because—

Izuku looks at them, for just a second, top to bottom, and takes in the flattened posture of their ears, the flaring of their striped hair, its texture somewhere between fur and the matted former, showing bristled agitation. The broken eye tooth, the muzzle trapping their face. The unwashed, ragged clothes most would consider unwearable—a pair of boxers for bottoms and a discontinued Hawks Energy Drink! brand t-shirt; the cloth perished and filled with holes. That their Unquirked anatomy looks skinny to the point of starvation. A stammering growl buds in the person’s throat, and with little shinks , they rapidly sheath and unsheathe their claws as if to remind Izuku they’re there. 

Izuku looks for just a second and sees someone hurting so unequivocally, and acts before they can think.

“I’m– I’ll be right back, okay?” he says and begins to run.

Their eyes are on his phone rather than his surroundings—the konbini nearest is on their daily run route (one convenient in location but not in price; one of the many that upcharges them for being them). It’s probably something about the number of times he’s almost upchucked on the track that has cemented the path in his brain as muscle memory already. Instead, Izuku’s on SearchIt , and for lack of better articulation, searches ‘heteromorph feral because trauma???’

Their lips thin to a pursed line as the engine responds with inflammatory articles like ‘Mutant Quirked Rampage in Tokyo Plaza’ and ‘How Human Are They? Top 10 Most Vicious Take-Downs From Mutant “Pros!”’

Slowing to enter the shop door, he filters by his Scholar-Check add-on. The clerk doesn’t greet them. Izuku ducks his head close to his phone, the results now far more productive. It turns out; that there is a medical precedent for heteromorphs going ‘feral,’ called chronic Quirk stress response. 

‘Quirks, as a natural weapon in many cases, often interact with a person’s flight, fight, fawn, or freeze reflex—also called the stress response. This is a normal fact of life and in fact, is the result of 42% of Quirk Manifestations in the Japan Quirk Census last year across Emitter and Transform types. But when the stress response is overextended for a relative period of one week to one month and the Quirk is used at a constant during this time, a person may be at risk of chronic Quirk stress-response. This is where the affected person is unable to disable their Quirk Factor, even after the incurring stressor has passed. If the person is a Mutant with altered brain anatomy wherein homeostasis can change (see: Quirked limbic system ) and lacks a conscious Quirk Factor, the overuse of Quirked anatomy may be a risk factor for chronic Quirk stress response. This may cause a Mutant-Quirked person to draw from the behaviour and instincts of their Quirk unless their stress response is regulated.’

So, a phenomenon not exclusive to heteromorphs, Izuku thinks, as they grab some diet-friendly, and carnivore-friendly cured beef chews, but attributed to by the media, with what ‘Mutant Rampages.’

On a whim, he grabs some water bottles out of the store fridges, both regular and electrolyte-infused. They of course have their own, somewhat scorched All Might one on the beach, but Izuku isn't sure if the teenager would—in all fairness—be so trusting as to drink out of a stranger's bottle.

(Izuku sure wouldn't be.)

The store clerk looks at Izuku suspiciously as he sets his finds down. They’re new, a trainee, and haven't gotten used to them as a regular yet. Izuku’s Blackness (although he’s half Japanese) or his visible Quirklessness (his green hair a fickle thing; dyed and grown out, a Mother’s Day surprise turned semi-regular routine, to try and fail to cover up that the Quirkless always have unmiraculous colouring—the deep, near-unnoticeable forest green of his eyes is miraculous where he least need it be) might be passable individually, but together, was just too much for most.

(Blackness is almost normal in Japan. Almost as normal as any other gaijin , or first-generation hafu , both of which are a-plenty. Both terms are ancient, and known to have been used derogatorily, but in the modern world, are neutral, as is migration. If Izuku remembers correctly, 53% of the Japanese population is at least 50% or more an ethnic background other than Japanese, as of the turn of the century. But Japanese people and the culture are still the norm —even if you’re mixed race, or not at all Japanese, you’re expected to assimilate. It’s funny, considering groupness is such a culturally Japanese thing.

It’s why being Blasian and Quirkless is the problem. One or the other, you can do the twice-as-hard work to be A Japanese Citizen. Both?

It’s a good part of why they took up All Might’s offer.)

Quickly, he turns out his pockets, pulling out nothing more than his wallet, a mechanical pencil, and Hero Analysis for the Future; No. 13. They wait, still, until the woman shows appeasement with a short nod, and pulls out the; “1551.82 yen, please.”

Shoving everything back in pockets—sans the bottles, treated as minor weightlifting practice—they say, “Keep the change, please. Thank you!” over shoulder as they briskly walk out the door, happy she didn’t overcharge them, before breaking into a jog.

Now, Izuku opens up his messages and shoots some off in short succession.

かあさん💚

息子💚: Do you mind if i buy something online?

Delivered 18:23

And,

八木俊典 (AM!!!!)

MIDORIYA MY BOY: Hello All Might-san! I hope you’re having a good evening! I just wanted to let you know that progress on cleaning Takoba beach might slow down just a little for a bit 🙏 There is an unhoused person who is living in I think probably one of the vehicles there so I am just working to negotiate at the moment so I’m not disturbing them.

MIDORIYA MY BOY: if you think my workout plan needs any adjustments because of that just say the word!

MIDORIYA MY BOY: Plus Ultra 👊⭐!

Delivered 18:25

Both respond nearly instantaneously—which is usual.

かあさん💚

息子💚: Do you mind if i buy something online?

Read 18:23

かあさん💚: Of course, honey.

かあさん💚: As long as it's safe and not too expensive!

息子💚: 🤣 Yes, Kaasan

息子💚: Thank youu 🫶

八木俊典 (AM!!!!)

MIDORIYA MY BOY: Plus Ultra 👊⭐!

Read 18:26

八木俊典 (AM!!!!): THAT SOUNDS LIKE A VERY HEROIC ENDEAVOUR MY BOY

八木俊典 (AM!!!!): I WOULD ONLY SUGGEST AN EXTRA SET OF EACH UPPER BODY EXERCISE TO KEEP BALANCE

八木俊典 (AM!!!!): EMOTIONAL LABOUR IS ALSO A WORKOUT!! PLUS ULTRA!!

MIDORIYA MY BOY: Thank you All Might-san!

Good thing, because if his mum said ‘no,’ Izuku would have to reconcile both lying about buying something behind her back, and buying a lock pick set behind her back.

———

Namir hears The Boy before he sees them come back.

They are upset. Pacing. Hungry. They understood every word The Boy spoke—surprisingly, considering they learned Japanese against their will —but they didn’t exactly believe it. He had looked scrawny and breathless and calculating. Namir thought he might be calling animal control on them or something, not be coming back .

But they can hear the heavy thundering of The Boy all but sprinting along the shoreline path. Encroaching His empty sand Territory, Namir crouches low and unsheathes their claws. They had passively slipped back while he was gone.

The Boy runs into view and slows to hop down the steps. He’s carrying things. Why is he carrying things? They growl.

“Hi–” he says, an exhale. The Boy sits down, next to his items, far away from them. “Sorry for ______ a ____! I just needed to get some things.” He puts down his things. Water.

Namir hasn’t had refrigerated, unsalted water in ages. They lick their lips—as much as they can with the muzzle.

The Boy looks at them; the motion and his eyes widen. “Oh! Ēto, yeah, yeah, right! This is for you. I also have ___. You look a bit, ano , yeah.”

Namir’s hackles—more like their fur all over—bristles at that as another growl tries to spark in their throat, but the threat display pitters out when The Boy pulls another thing out of his pocket.

Food. Meat . Cooked, spiced meat. Packaged, muting the smell, but now that they know it's there they don’t know how they didn’t, it was right there–

The Boy and his fucking taunting. Torturing Namir by encroaching into their Territory and chasing away their hunt, then waving around Michelin Stars in a bag right after. 

Namir whines, trying to cover the sound of their growling stomach. They dance on their toes. Up and down. Forwards, so slightly, towards the smell, then backwards, when they remember He’s the one holding it. 

The Boy begins to bluster, a broad gesture that brings Namir seizing backwards and drawing in on themself. He, then, shrinks back too. 

(It looks practised, the way he rolls his shoulders in and tucks his neck down, eyes downcast.)

He speaks into the sand.

“_-_____. I’m _____. Would, ēto , it be ______ if I put your _____ in the ______ of __ and you can take it?”

They tilt their head and flick an ear, confused. The Boy must take this as some invitation, because he stands up, towering over them (Namir’s much taller, if they stand like he does, but they aren’t safe enough to be that human) and tries to close the gap between them.

Namir’s growl rumbles through the sand, and The Boy freezes.

“ E ,” he says, eyes wide, “Can you understand ________ I’m saying? Ēto , English? Português? ¿Español? Français? Deutsche? ” The Boy spouts each language rapid fire, and it hits Namir.

The Boy isn’t trying to torture him—he’s trying to help .

Because he isn’t an actual Hero yet: full of false promises and quotas to fill and animals to ignore, even if he’s training with one. That doesn’t make him trustworthy, (nobody is to Namir anymore), but he isn’t going to hurt them, either.

They sheathe all but one claw, and write in the sand, in as much Japanese as they can.

‘cant speak. Muzzle. can understand’—they phonetically write out what they heard The Boy say in hiragana—‘little Japanese. I speak English.’

After a moment, they decide to write:

‘name Nāmiru

            Namir

                كالن                                                                                                         

(Namir doesn’t know any more Arabic than their name and pleasantries, but added it simply because most Japanese people think they're a hakujin. )

The Boy leans forward to read, ending up on his knees and shuffling forward. He really is much shorter than them.

“Nāmiru,” he says, like a confirmation. Slow and steady.

How long has it been since someone said their name, even wrong? Namir underlines the English spelling until he says it accurately enough.

“So ____… Oo-okay, ēto , one second.”

In a weird mix of exceedingly subtle, gentle movement—for Namir’s sake, they realize—and swiftness, The Boy ducks over to the things and brings them back in a second flat, placing the food and drink between them.

“Here! Ano , can you”—he wrings his hands around each other—”are you ____ to…” Then, he switches to English, quite stilted, but understandable; “ Can you take the… mask? off? I buyed something to open a lock, but if you need it I did not think about that until now… ”

Namir shakes their head, ears pressed flat. They swipe over where they had written and pat the sand down flat.

‘no, can’t. is forced on and locked you’re right. can eat + drink tho’

They open their jaw as much as they can before the barbs on each outer side pierce skin, which they tap with a claw-sheathe to show him. It's like a metal basket cage, one for pets, narrow enough that they can’t roar—the points are just a warning. A palette lined with prongs on the underside presses their tongue down, which they describe in the sand.

The Boy gasps as he looks from through the bars and to the lettering. “ That is evil. I am very sorry, Namir-san .”

Namir flicks their tail; a dismissal. 

‘more okay now. even more okay tomorrow, and day when it's off’

The Boy’s teeth are blooms of white on his face as he smiles. He unceremoniously tears open one of the snack bags and nods with contentment at the first taste of one. The bag is offered to Namir. It's an effort to take it calmly , rather than snatching it. Pouring out a handful of the little cut sausage-shaped bits, they drop them through the grate of their muzzle.

Warm, salty, fatty, oily and spicy—they can’t help but hum in contentment. It reminds Namir of chorizo, something they haven’t eaten in years. Their sense of taste is limited by the muzzle, as they aren’t able to do much more than awkwardly masticate the meat and then swallow, but their enhanced sense of smell alone makes up for the inhibition. 

‘what is your name?’ Namir writes after some time.

———

Izuku hopes the smile they put on covers their wince.

Go figure, the person who can’t speak somehow has more courtesy than me, the derisive internal voice that’s an overlap of his own and Kacchan’s says, so focused on their fucking maybe-support items or maybe-traumas I run my mouth about anything but what a normal person would say. 

How about instead of spiralling into doomerism and proving my own point, I actually respond and try not be creepy again? a more productive part of them responds.

All of Izuku wants that, (the simple fact Namir-san hasn’t said anything about his general weirdness-and-social-incompetence irrelevant; the stark keywords in Izuku’s mind always being as of yet and out loud ), so he speaks;

“Ahh, I’m sorry, I did not say! My name is Midoriya Izuku—Izuku Midoriya—but because I call you Namir-san, you can call me Izuku-san also.”

Izuku’s not sure if that choice is driven by their guilty, secret desperation for their given name to come from someone other than their mother, or their gaping, much vaguer one—the desperation to simply be liked. 

‘i know the custom ,’ Namir-san writes, to the glee of his fantasies. ‘Thank you, Izuku-san.

The evening pushes past dinner time without Izuku even knowing. They swap pronouns, Izuku actually being the one to ask this time, and he teaches them how to write his name in Kanji, as well as their own in Katakana. Namir-san explains the reason they needed to ‘ scare him away ,’ too.

“ Ēto ,” he says the word in Japanese to Namir-san, but they don’t know it, so he plugs it into a translator: ” Instead , I could get Namir-san food? So you don’t… need find food, and I train? And your car stays also. If you want, ” is an easy idea to verbalise, even in the difficulty of English.

Under Izuku’s phone light they’re sharing, Namir-san’s throat bobs as they touch claw to sand.

‘you don’t have to do that, Izuku-san. i’m not your issue. you’re already helping.’

Izuku can feel a vortex hole up in their stomach; made of all the fear, self-loathing, and knowing ; it’s the part with the voice of their own and Kacchan’s; it's what makes them so, so afraid that if they push too hard, Namir-san will somehow just know what they are and run.

But Izuku knows that some things are more important—than his fear, than his desperations; things he’s known since he saw All Might-sensei on the computer screen for the very first time.

Izuku wants to push— needs to —because it's what a Hero does. 

They pull up their translator and say:

“ I insist .”

Chapter Text

“I insist,” The Boy—Izuku Midoriya, Izuku-san—says, words foreign but so, so sure. 

Oh.

‘okay,’ they write. ‘thank you.’

———

At the word, Izuku instantly forces himself into Namir’s life as a most kind, unstoppable object.

———

13:02, Saturday, June 9, 2306

“Namir-san!”

His voice is a victorious crow, one much too loud for the sleepy afternoon. Thoroughly woken, though, Namir resigns to opening their eyes and unfurling themself from their nap. 

They land to the sand with a sure, four-footed thump. Then, scratches out;

‘WHAT.’

The other is still in his uniform, holding whatever it is behind his back. Feelings of unsafeunsafeunknown begin to pile, but Izuku’s humanistic body language is ever-open: just jittery, happy excitement. He woke them up, so, something happy to be shared. The harsh crests of their tail slow. 

“Right, okay! Sorry for making Namir-san get up, but…”

He whips it out.

“The lock-pick came!”

Namir finds they can’t articulate themself better than; ‘!’

“I know!”

‘!!!!!!’

After gracelessly opening the roll of tools and staring at it blankly for a long moment, Izuku says: “I need to learn how to do this.”

They furiously type on their cell while Namir blinks contentedly.

———

Izuku has about two dozen embarrassing, wholly incorrect moments aloud where he says something like, ‘I think I got it,’ and at least another 50 internally. They end up needing a frustration-induced snack break when they break one of the lock picks. When forced to get tweezers from home to fish the broken bit out of the lock, Namir-san blandly reminds him to log the run in his Dream Plan, and he ends up sent to surprised, near-manic tears of laughter at the display of personality, and Namir in a less raucous, but similar, subdued, silent fit.

After three-and-a-half, long, gruelling hours, the mechanism finally clicks open. With careful hands, Namir-san lifts the once-locked joints that snakes into their mouth, pulls the depressed palette off their tongue, and the muzzle away from their face. Izuku finds themself averting their eyes, the moment seeming private.

It's abrupt, but unsurprising when Namir-san lobs the thing into one of the distant piles of garbage.

Their first spoken words to Izuku are: “Thank you.”

(They then write; ‘it’s not littering if ur getting it later right?)

——— 

16:32, Monday, June 11, 2306

Namir is still sure to slink away when All Might thunders in, despite Izuku showing his ardent message stating that: I AM MORE THAN HAPPY TO MEET YOUR NEW FRIEND!

The most they can explain in their own voice, still stiff and slow like a rusted, garbage chainlink, is that: “I’m just… not comfortable.”

“It’s okay, you do not need to! It’s just, ano…” Izuku trails off.

Namir chuffs a ‘keep going,’ quiet, but still heard, sitting not-quite side-by-side against the base of an old sofa.

Izuku pokes absent-minded dots in the sand as they continue. “You, ah, you know about his Quirk, yeah? You hear us talking, maybe. He is a little loud.”

“You are, too.” Crescents from their claw build up beside Izuku’s divots. “…Yeah.”

“Okay—okay,” he says, after a constricted sigh.

“Do I…” Namir switches to writing, after patting down the scribbles. ‘Do I need to talk to him because it's confidential—secret?’

An unsure groan hums in Izuku’s throat. “I think that… both you need to be… feel okay? Be ____________ for. ”

‘Be accommodated?’

“Yes!” They nod. “All Might-sensei might want to see you because his Quirk—One For All—is confidential. Only All Might-sensei… some other Heroes, maybe, and us know. He might want to know you so he can trust you will not tell. But–”

“I have no one to tell.”

“ I trust you will not tell.”

Namir’s voice strains from the outburst, as their voices overlap. The smile on Izuku’s face looks wrong.

“I… don’t mean that. I–I mean that, I think that All Might–sensei trusts me, so that if I trust you, it will be okay.”

Against the sofa base, Namir tilts their head back and lays it flat.

The sky is clear.

‘Thank you, Izuku-kun.’

They can practically hear his smile brighten. “It’s no worries, Namir-kun!”

——— 

18:12, Tuesday, June 12, 2306

“Do you do, um, safe fighting with All Might?”

Izuku peaks their face out from behind a cabinet they’ve been trying to plus-ultra into levering onto a hand truck.

“Like, sparring?”

Namir-kun chuffs what he’s learned means yes . “I only ever hear him being… world’s most ___________ _______.”

“E, what?” Izuku says, brow furrowing at the unfamiliar English. Especially with their Australian accent being more pronounced in their home tongue—though Izuku would never, ever, ever say so out loud. 

Namir-kun grabs their phone from the bank, and in a couple of long strides makes it to Izuku, holding it up to their face to unlock it with the recognition tech. Despite Izuku’s protesting “H-hey,” Namir-kun punches a phrase into the translation app, then flips it over to show them.

Izuku squints—then laughs. 

“I mean, yeah now that I think about it, he’s never… What, do– does Namir-kun want to be my world’s most motivational spar trainer?”

Namir-kun’s smirk is toothy but harmless. The canines, unfit for their mouth so that they sit over their lips, and mark as long as his pinky fingers, haven’t been used as threats since they met. It’s just a simple expression of amusement if coloured by doubt. 

“I thought Japanese Heroes were all fighting? Have you done– hand-to-hand before?” they say as they put his phone to the side before walking out to a clearer area.

Izuku feels his cheeks heat as he says: “E, no—ot really. I’ve, ah, blocked a lot, if that counts?” They mime putting their forearms up parallel to shield their face as they follow them.

They chuff a laugh and appraise his form, starting to circle around him—swaying like a willow as they check for details. 

“Not really.” Gently kicking the backs of their knees, Namir-kun forces their stance to loosen. “You should think to going to a local dojo—All Might should have make you go, at least, if not spar himself. I’m– surprised you weren’t going before that.”

All the good-natured colour drains from Izuku’s face in record time, and he stiffens up like a fast-growing bamboo shoot. “No, no way, my o-kaasan would die of–of I dunno, heart shock! Stress! Before that, she’d– she would ground me until I’m eighteen!”

Brows knit, casting a shadow over Namir-kun’s eyes, confusion fair considering they’re only on one side of the Dangerous and Fraught Flipping Coin that is Izuku’s Double Life, the other yet unknown to them.

(Hell, they’re the only person, aside from All Might-sensei, on the cool side.)

“Um, okay… W—Why?”

Despite the mutual understanding that All Might-sensei—and he—are loud , so loud no beachside secret was one kept, Izuku finds that he still says: 

“Because I’m a null,” like it's a skeleton coming unburied, burst out and shameful. Not just as if still new (as established, not,) but as if uncompromisingly shameful, (established so, time and time again,) as if Namir will this time listen in the broad open air and find they didn’t hear them right the first time round.

“A null,” Namir-kun repeats, tasting the slur unbeknownst. 

“Namir-kun,” he says, almost a whine. “Don’t. I can’t… You fucking know .”

Marigold eyes skitter away from dull darks—down. “A red? Quirkless, I mean.”

In turn, Izuku becomes confused. “A red?”

They nod with the flick of an ear toward…

Red shoes. T-Jois. The only double-jointed specialty—that wording so sublimely unsubtle—footwear brand.

“It's Australian– Aussie slang, for Quirkless.” They look away from Izuku’s shoes, to somewhere in the middle distance. “I had… a friend, Before; a red, so.” Namir-kun shrugs, and to Izuku it says: ‘so I know,’ yet also; ‘now you know—something that’s sacred—a piece of them from that time said like a proper noun.’ “So I think… I don’t think that being… Quirkless should be to do with if you go to a dojo or not. Your o-kaasan should know that; especially if you are going to be a Hero, and get a Quirk… if you as Quirkless means so much to her?” 

Their voice is beginning to wear thin, soundless peaks making due form. But Izuku—selfishly—has to keep talking. Has to make them understand.

“I won’t get a quirk for ten months, it won’t even matter until then, O-kaasan doesn’t– Kaasan’ll never let me go Quirkless, you have to understand—and how…” He’s long been tearing up, but his voice cracks, now, “I’m not supposed to even tell her!”

“You… Sorry?”

He brings his hand linked to his nape and presses, rancorously, by the heel of his palms. It doesn’t help.

“The–secret,” he says, words stressed, “Confidential–remember?”

“Fuckin’… ” they begin to whisper. “ ‘S surely not a secret secret—not for your mum!” 

Izuku’s hands, which had gone to rub at their streaming eyes, explode out, as they say, “I don’t know! Confidential means confidential, right?” (Vitriolic bile awashes his conscience when he sees Namir flinch at the sudden movement.) “He was giving me a Quirk, Namir-kun. His quirk. I couldn’t ask what he meant when he’s…”

Helping me.

Saving me.

Fixing me.

“Making me a Hero.”

“Oh, fuck off.” 

“Fuck off?!” Izuku repeats, almost a shriek. They look away and duck into themself as they rub away tears. 

He doesn’t know whether to run or argue louder or cry harder.

“Fuck off,” Namir-kun whispers, and hisses, seemingly to themself. “I did not…”

When they trudge away and make for Izuku’s phone, there isn’t one positive outcome they can think up. He lets them open it, anyway. That guilt, guilt, guilt, roils in their stomach. Namir-kun’s expression is sharply underlit in the screen’s glow. It hides nothing from Izuku; not their jaw that grinds, almost exploratorily, or the line of brow that jitters along twitches of muscle each time their thumb pads slip on the undersized keyboard.

Get ready. Finally, abandon hope, Deku, ye who enters here.

With a final, harsh press, the crisp sound of translated Japanese effuses out.

“I’m typing because my voice is gone, I hope you got that. I’m sorry. Sorry that this will take a while to type, and that I told you to fuck off. I was hoping that would translate to intercourse off or something to make this less tense but that's an outdated joke isn’t it. 22nd century? Earlier? I don’t know.”

A surprised huff of laughter escapes from their lips, which brings a quiet, eyes-askance grin to Namir-kun’s lips. It unspools the tautness in their expression. Their tail grazes his thigh; motioning him to sit down as they do. The voice drones on.

“It’s hard to articulate everything I want to say in the right order. I’m going to go from ‘fuck off’. I said fuck off, because you said All Might was making you a hero. I thought; bullshit, but I said; fuck off, because that’s what I know in Japanese. I believe that’s a bullshit thing to say because All Might's quirk is not what makes you a hero, Izuku. Quirks aren’t, at all. That’s a larger point and I’ll get to that.

"You, Izuku, are not thinking about how you are already a hero just as yourself. You got me food, and drink, and left me alone, and then didn’t, and kept All Might away. I’m sure that isn’t what a Japanese hero does, but that’s what you did. You helped me Quirkless, and even under All Might’s fucking ‘confidentiality,’ you could’ve told your mum about everything; because it was all you, and you have nothing to hide if you’re proud about that. I know he’s your hero, Izuku, but I just don’t think he’s right about this. There’s a word limit I didn’t notice, I’m hitting it now.”

Izuku had begun to weep in earnest not ere long into the message; disgusting fat rivulets of fluid from both the eyes and nose that constantly need swiping at to avoid swallowing. It takes all effort to avoid choking on the raucous hiccoughs; to keep listening over their own noise.

‘I’m afraid there’s no hope for him.’

Can I…be a Hero, too?

‘I’m sorry, Izuku, baby. I’m sorry!’

‘Forget having a weak-ass Quirk; you don’t even have one! So, where do you get off putting yourself on the same level as me?!

Wa–wait, no Kacchan, h-hold on…

‘What can you even do?!’

Can someone without a Quirk become a Hero like you?

‘Without power, can one become a Hero? No, I should think not. You need to be realistic, kid.’

‘All Might’s Quirk is not what makes you a Hero. Quirks aren’t, at all.’

“Are you”—his breath hitches on a sob, brought on just by the thought of saying—”are you s–sure?”

Namir glances from them to their phone, to them again. The bristly assurance of their tail has been sweeping on his back for some time now.

“Will you cry harder if I tell you: fuck off?”

Izuku, as they shake their head, crossing their arms, really, truly, laughs. It feels both wholly familiar, and novel.