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Izuku has always been selfish.
Self-centered in a specific sort of way.
It’s a fact that’s been hammered into his skull over and over his entire life. From the kids at school on down to every sensei of every class he’s had since he was four.
He wants too much.
Reaches too far.
Sees and hears and knows things about the people around him that they don’t like being seen and heard and known by someone like him. Things that are not his to carry.
Kacchan had said it for years, with biting words and sparking fists.
Inko has always loved him, deeply but carefully, always so careful with him, but she’d told him too.
Slow down, Izuku.
Calm down, Izuku.
You go too fast/talk too much/dream too big, Izuku.
But Izuku has always kept going anyway.
Selfishly.
Unable to stop himself from reaching.
Hands outstretched, always grasping for things just out of reach, just like Tenko.
For knowledge, with his notebooks and ink-stained hands, leaving his bookshelves bowing under the weight of notebook after notebook filled with thoughts no one wants to hear, and he’s incapable of completely swallowing. Thoughts that Izuku has to bleed out through his hands just to make his head feel even the tiniest bit less full.
For those around him, desperate for connection with the people who will never really want him in the way he’s starving for them to.
For heroics, no matter how it broke him in the process, no matter how Inko had begged him to just stop, or the world had said you can’t.
So yes, Izuku knows that he has always been a hungry, clawing, selfish sort of person.
Always wanting more even when he doesn’t have the right.
Izuku’s had years, his entire life really, to sit with his flaws, to know them and accept them.
And yet …
Selfishness and all of his other flaws aside, Izuku just …
He doesn’t want to be bitter too.
But sometimes …
~~~
Sometimes Izuku drops things.
His pens.
Papers and notebooks.
The strap of his bag.
Small things that no one else ever seems to notice. Things that Izuku has always managed to brush off, to dismiss, to move past.
Things he could always pick up, dust off, and put back to rights.
But then he had managed to drop his favorite coffee cup.
Izuku had had that mug since he was small, had begged Inko for it when he was five, despite how awkwardly oversized the thing was. It had been too big for him to really drink out of for years without a straw, but he’d adored it regardless.
It had survived Izuku’s childhood, his move to the UA dorms, and beyond. It was a faded old thing, barely holding onto the colors of All Might’s debut costume, but Izuku had loved it.
Then he’d pulled it down from the staff room’s cabinet one random Tuesday morning in his second year as a teacher, and dropped it.
It had shattered against the counter before he could get his arms to move and try to catch it.
Izuku had stood there staring at the pieces of it for a long moment before he’d moved to clean the mess up on autopilot.
He’d settled the broken pieces in the trash, wiped down the counter for any stray shards, and then turned on his heel and strode out of the staff room without looking back. He’d ignored the not-so-subtle whispers he’d heard as he’d closed the door behind him.
Pretended like he didn’t see or feel that familiar dark eye drilling into his back as he left.
Izuku had spent the next thirty minutes locked in one of the less-used storage closets, his hands clenching rhythmically in front of him as he cried his eyes out and told himself he was being stupid.
It was just a mug, not the end of the world.
Just a stupid old coffee mug he’d had for the better part of two decades.
It wasn’t worth crying over in the closet like he was nine again, nose bloodied, hiding away to avoid having yet another notebook destroyed.
And yet …
~~~
It was never about the mug.
~~~
Izuku is used to pain.
It’s one of the things he’d learned early.
Black eyes, busted lips, weeping burns.
He’d known all of those things young.
Then, later, with One for All humming like a living hurricane inside his veins, Izuku had learned newer, deeper, more vibrant pain.
Shattered bones, strained joints, ripped muscles.
The aching weight of letting someone he wanted to save slip through his fingers.
And each and every bit of it, every cut and bruise and shard of bone had been worth it.
The lingering pain, the stiff joints, the loss of articulation, the scars, and the fragility that followed were worth it.
Izuku regrets none of it, would do it all again, bit by painful bit.
It’s just …
~~~
Izuku tells himself that wallowing will do him no good.
No matter what he feels or doesn’t feel, no matter what hurts or doesn’t hurt.
Because, at the end of the day, Izuku was lucky.
Izuku got his arms back.
Unlike Kyōka, with her missing ear that halved her quirk in a way that had taken her months to adjust to.
Unlike All Might, whose injuries have seen him confined to a wheelchair.
Unlike so many of the friends and heroes who had ended the war in a grave instead of with their loved ones.
Unlike Aizawa-sensei, Shōta, who has become important to Izuku in ways he can barely stand to name, who had lost an eye as well as a leg and had learned to live without either, with the kind of stoic determination that makes Izuku feel just a little bit ashamed. Just a little bit guilty and unworthy and so much more.
Izuku is functionally whole, his limbs restored through Eri’s selfless sacrifice.
He has no reason, no right, to be upset, to be less than completely grateful.
It’s just …
Sometimes, when he’s alone in his silent apartment in the teacher’s dorm with nothing and no one to distract him …
Sometimes Izuku feels like all he does these days is ache.
~~~
Izuku would cut his own arms back off, would rip them from his shoulders and happily bleed out, before he ever tells Eri, tells anyone really, about how sometimes his arms are just gone.
How sometimes his brain is incapable of remembering anything but how it had felt to bleed into the rubble and the dust, what remained of his arms little more than ruined tatters of meat and pain, the nerves and bones and muscles left torn open and exposed to the elements, air touching things inside of Izuku that were never meant to see the light of day.
How sometimes they’ll disappear on him mid-motion, mid-step, mid-thought, and whatever he’s holding, whatever he’s reaching for, will just slip right through his fingers because his mind is suddenly convinced his hands are still missing.
How sometimes he’ll look down at the scarred and crooked mess of his own hands and think:
Are these even mine?
Are they really there?
Why can’t I feel them?
It’s a secret that Izuku fully intends to carry to his grave.
Because Izuku has always been selfish.
But he has always done his level best to never be cruel.
~~~
On his worst days, Izuku finds that he can’t bear to be near Shōta.
Too ashamed of his own weakness.
Too guilty of wallowing in his own petty issues to feel comfortable hanging around Shōta.
He starts missing the shared lunches that had somehow become their norm, a part of his week that he’s always looked forward to with a breathless sort of anticipation.
Stops spamming Shōta with texts, rambling about whatever crosses his mind.
Stops forcing himself and his selfish hunger into Shōta’s space at every opportunity.
He doubts Shōta, always so long-suffering but ultimately kind to him, notices all that much.
Except, maybe, to be relieved to finally have some peace and space from Izuku and all of the mess he always drags around with him.
~~~
Eventually, slowly, bit by aching bit, Izuku stops doing much of anything at all.
Izuku goes to work, he cares for his students, does his grading, and writes out analysis in carefully numbered notebooks that no one else still wants to see or hear.
He keeps to himself, folds down and into himself like people have been urging him to for years.
He reminds himself with every flex of his fingers, every turn of his wrists, that he is whole and has no right to feel less than that.
Rinse.
Repeat.
Izuku doesn’t do much else.
It’s not like there’s anyone around to really notice.
Or care.
~~~
Sometimes, in his weakest, most ungrateful moments, Izuku can’t help but think …
He would happily give up his arms permanently if it meant he would get back even a fraction of everything else he’d lost.
~~~
Izuku crosses another work day off his calendar, his feet dragging just a bit as he takes the back stairs up to his apartment, intent on avoiding the common floor and everyone who routinely lingers on it.
He locks his door behind him, kicks off his shoes in the genkan, and then shuffles forward far enough to click on the nearest lamp, uninterested as always in using the easier-to-reach switch for the overhead light.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Shōta says from his place on Izuku’s couch.
Izuku doesn’t jump, doesn’t even startle.
It’s not the first time he’s come home to Shōta waiting for him in the dark. Shōta tends to take the fact that they share a balcony as an open invitation when the mood strikes him.
A part of him, that selfish, hungry part that he’s been trying so hard to press down, might even have been hoping for it.
Because it’s not really Izuku’s fault, not really him being greedy, if Shōta makes the first move.
“You’ve stopped texting,” Shōta continues, “we haven’t had lunch together in days. Hizashi keeps asking me if you’re sick.”
“I’ve been busy,” Izuku says as he tosses his bag onto the far end of the couch and heads toward the kitchen.
He flexes his hands, does his best to ignore the fire-like tingling in his fingers.
“Busy avoiding me,” Shōta counters.
Izuku doesn’t answer. Instead, he busies himself with setting up the kettle and pulling down the tea Shōta likes but always refuses to ask for when he’s over.
Shōta, undeterred, slides into place behind him, a hand coming down to rest on the countertop on either side of Izuku. Shōta’s chest presses against the line of Izuku’s back, boxing him in against the counter with that casual disregard for personal space that Shōta has taken to acting on with him over the past year or so.
Izuku knows that he probably shouldn’t enjoy it as much as he does, knows it doesn’t mean the kinds of things he wants it to mean.
Shōta doesn’t …
Izuku’s just being selfish again, being greedy for things he has no right to want, to reach for.
“You mad at me?” Shōta asks softly, lips barely brushing the sensitive shell of Izuku’s ear.
“No,” Izuku answers easily as he shifts up onto his toes a bit to reach the mugs in the cabinet.
Still pressed against his back, Shōta just hums and shifts so that his chin is resting on top of Izuku’s head.
Izuku pulls down his own mug, Gang Orca this time, and then reaches back up for the black cat-eared mug he’d bought specifically for Shōta because of the way he smiles a little bit each time he sees it.
Which is, of course, the exact moment that his hands decide to stop existing again.
The mug slips from Izuku’s grasp.
Shōta catches it right before it hits the countertop.
All Izuku can do, his arms frozen in place as his fingers twitch and spasm, is stand there and try to breathe.
Shōta settles the mug on the counter with a quiet click and then sets about making both of them tea without ever moving from where he’s settled against Izuku’s back.
Izuku watches Shōta’s hands move.
Breathes.
“You drop things,” Shōta says bluntly. “I’ve noticed it. Pens, papers, your staff room mug.”
Izuku tries to flex his fingers, but his brain hasn’t given them back to him yet.
“I know you do your exercises for your joints and mobility,” Shōta reaches for the kettle when it chimes, working around Izuku easily enough and pouring the water with an elegant turn of his wrist that Izuku has always enjoyed. “I know they hurt you, I know what that looks like, how you carry that kind of pain. This isn’t that, it’s something else.”
Izuku hears the unasked question in Shōta’s words.
And Izuku …
He’d sworn he’d keep it to himself. Had promised he’d never breathe a word about it.
Not to anyone.
But especially not to Eri or to Shōta.
Not to the two people in his life he cares for the most, who deserve better from him than something like this.
But at the same time …
“They … sometimes,” Izuku finds himself whispering, “my arms … sometimes they … leave.”
It’s Shōta.
Of course, all he ever had to do was ask.
Shōta hums.
Puts the kettle down.
Reaches up to wrap his hands around Izuku’s wrists and then slowly, carefully, guides his arms back down until they’re crossed against Izuku’s chest.
They stand there for a long moment.
Tea on the counter.
Shōta wrapped around Izuku.
Their hands pressed together against the unsteady rise and fall of Izuku’s chest.
“I got them back,” Izuku whispers, tears burning the corners of his eyes and shame bubbling in his chest. “They’re still here, but sometimes they’re just gone again and-and it hurts.”
“Phantom pain,” Shōta murmurs. “Sometimes my eye is dry and my ankle itches, even though neither of them are actually there anymore. Sometimes they both hurt so bad I want to crawl out of my skin.”
“It’s not the same,” Izuku protests immediately. “You … you’re pain matters. Mine is … it’s stupid. Eri, she sacrificed so much for me and … I got them back. S-so I shouldn’t … it’s not right for me to feel so …”
Shōta sighs.
His arms tighten around Izuku.
There’s the barely there brush of a kiss against his temple that makes Izuku’s breath catch.
“It’s not wrong to hurt, Izuku,” Shōta says softly. “Even if you think you shouldn’t. Even if you’ve convinced yourself you should be grateful for what you have, how things turned out. I tell myself it’s just an eye, just a leg, at least I’m alive, right? Doesn’t make them hurt less. Pain is still pain.”
Izuku’s eyes slip shut, his fingers flex.
“It matters,” Shōta continues. “You matter.”
Shōta’s fingertips smooth over the backs of Izuku’s hands, tracing the lines of his bones and the bumps of his knuckles like a reminder.
Izuku relishes the way he can feel the callouses and the gentle pressure through the slowly fading ache.
“Next time you feel like this,” Shōta says, lips pressed against Izuku’s temple like a promise, “next time they’re gone and you’re hurting, just … reach for me. I’ll reach back, I’ll help you remember.”
Oh.
“Okay,” Izuku agrees, helpless to do anything else but take what Shōta is offering him.
What a part of Izuku has been hungering for from Shōta for so long now.
They stay there, standing in Izuku’s kitchen, tangled together, for the longest time.
If this is being selfish, Izuku can’t help but think, then maybe, just this once, it’s okay.