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Things have been a bit awkward since Izuku became a UA teacher, to say the least. Not that anyone is at fault but himself, but it’s a little difficult to make friends with your colleagues when your colleagues used to be your teachers whom you happened to have fought in a war alongside. Jeez, why does everything always have to be so complicated for him?
Not that he doesn’t like teaching. It’s hard to be quirkless again, certainly, and it seems cruel to have gotten everything he dreamed of for such a short time only to have it ripped away. But being quirkless again… it’s actually kind of nice. When he had One for All, he had always sort of felt like an imposter. It wasn’t really his quirk, after all. He was just borrowing it. He felt like a useless deku hiding out among the real people. He constantly feared his secret being discovered, that someone would find out he used to be quirkless, and suddenly it would be just like middle school. He’d lose all his friends, and everyone would hate him.
Of course, rationally, he knows that his friends would never do that, but the mind of a seventeen-year-old boy is scarcely a rational place. Now, though, quirkless once again, he feels more sincerely like himself than he has in years. And as grateful as he will always be to Yagi, he never really wanted things to play out how they had. And of course, he would never turn down such an opportunity, but he never really wanted a quirk. Or, well, he did, at some point, when he was young and hopeful. But then, as he went through middle school and as his resolve hardened, he became completely determined to become the first quirkless hero. Not just a hero, but a quirkless one. He was desperate to be the person kids like him could look up to, the person Izuku never had. And then he wanted so badly to tell everyone who had told him he couldn’t do it exactly where they could shove their doubts.
But he was given a quirk, and things didn’t play out that way. And although in some ways it made things easier, it also made him feel, with each activation of One for All, like he was betraying not only his community, but his younger self, desperate for someone to tell him he could be a hero quirkless.
So although of course he missed it, he missed the power and the ease and the way people never looked at him like something fragile or disgusting—he also didn’t miss it at all. He’s a teacher at fucking UA. He made it. He can be that person that a quirkless kid can look up to. He’s going to be that person; he hardens his resolve, wringing his sore hands. They’re always sore these days. That’s fine.
He scans his key card and pushes open the door to the staff room, which is actually more like the staff-quite-a-few rooms, including, but not limited to, a large common area with a couch, a space off to the side full of each teacher’s cubical office, including his own, and a smaller room always stocked with everyone’s favorite tea, coffee, and snacks. He supposes it’s how Nezu continues to persuade teachers to keep working at the school despite his relentless penchant for causing chaos for his staff.
He’s greeted immediately by a certain notoriously loud blond he’s come to expect more often than not in the mornings
“Morning, Izuku!”
“Good morning, Hizashi. How was your weekend?” He would never get used to calling his former English teacher by his first name, despite the fact that he insisted (many times). He claims it’s so Izuku can get in the habit of thinking of them as colleagues and friends rather than teacher and student, but he privately suspects it has more to do with the running challenge among the faculty of who can get him to call them their given name first; the challenge that none of the staff is aware he knows about and that he’s almost completely certain Nezu had created to stir up drama. Whatever; it was funny, anyway.
“It was great! Sho and I took Eri and a couple friends to a cat cafe!” He exclaims, loud as always, pulling his definitively-not-a-morning-person husband into an awkward side hug at his mention.
“Morning, Aizawa-sensei,” Izuku says with an exasperated yet fond smile.
“I’m not your sensei anymore, Midoriya,” the dark-haired man grumbles. They’ve had this conversation over and over again, but old habits die hard.
“Ugh, would you rather me call you Shouta?” The younger man says with dramatic sass.
“Anything but sensei,” he grumbles. “Makes me feel so old.”
All the teachers close enough to listen in on the conversation begin to laugh, but Shouta levels a glare at them all, shutting them up even quicker than it used to silence him and his former classmates.
“You are old,” Izuku responds brightly, flashing a blinding smile before turning to grab his usual tea from the staff room, and then making his way to his small cubical desk to grab his lesson plans for the day.
“Right, I’m headed to my classroom, bye everyone!”
There’s a chorus of farewells as he closes the door behind him.
This year, Izuku is not only the homeroom teacher for class 1B, but also the teacher of practical quirk analysis for all hero course students, and an elective quirk analysis class available for the other courses. Plus the heroics classes he sometimes teaches. This job is a taxing one, but Izuku loves it more than anything. He’s not sure he ever imagined himself as a teacher, but he would be hard-pressed to find a career that suits him better. He smiles at each student as they begin to file in for the day.
“Morning everyone!”
“Good morning Midoriya-Sensei!” they exclaim in unison with the energy only a class of first-year hero students could ever possess.
“Today will be mostly normal for the most part, but in heroics, myself and Aizawa will be leading a joint exercise with Class 1A on quirkless combat. Good luck!” He says, with a smile that was meant to be bright but seems to bleed more into the sadistic zone. Aizawa has been rubbing off on him. His students fell into complete silence.
“Alright, that’s it. Feel free to chat for the rest of homeroom.”
And with that, the spell is broken, and Class 1B has returned to their usual chaos, talking among one another. He smiles softly to himself.
Most of the day goes by smoothly, leaving only heroics. He hates to say it, but he’s a bit excited. He probably got that sadism from Aizawa too.
“Hello,” Aizawa begins dryly. “Today we’ll be focusing on quirkless sparring. As Midoriya and I have the most experience in this area, we’ll be instructing you today,” he gives his signature smile-but-actually-just-an-intimidation-tactic and hands control over to Izuku.
“Right, to begin, I’d love to show you all something, if you’ll let me." There are affirmative murmurs among the group, as well as one very enthusiastic "Yes Midoriya-Sensei!" from a student who reminds him of Iida.
"Who would like to volunteer to fight me? You may use your quirk, if you’d like.”
“Right now?” Asks a 1A student he can’t quite remember the name of, but his hair is a nice shade of pinkish-purple.
“Yup!”
Slowly and hesitantly, a tentative hand raises. It belongs to Arisa Natabame, a student in his homeroom, tall and strong with an incredible quirk that allowed her to expel kinetic force from her limbs.
“Come on up!” he calls her to the mat.
“Right, so, I don’t want you to go easy on me, Natabame.” She’s not the type to go easy on someone and risk losing anyway. She reminds him of Kachhan sometimes, if much tamer in terms of attitude. “There’s a point I’m making here, I promise.”
“Yes, sir,” she agrees quickly.
“One,” Aizawa begins counting lazily, “two, three.”
In an instant, the student goes to strike her teacher with her quirk, but before she can, there are legs around her neck, using their momentum to twist until suddenly, she’s lying on the mat with no way to move. Izuku scrambles off her quickly as his students stand stunned to silence, until one works up the courage to let out a somewhat petrified “woah,” and the rest seem to follow from there.
“Alright,” he interrupts through the chatter. “As I said, there was actually a point to that," he smiles, helping Natabame back to her feet. "In combat, heroes often fall into the trap of relying too heavily on their quirks, forgetting that a support item, or in this case, your own body and skills, can be an even more valuable asset. So find a sparring partner from the opposing class, and let’s get to work.” The semi-sadistic smile is back, but he can’t even be bothered to care.
So, yeah, things may be a bit awkward; suddenly being equals with people who used to have disciplinary power over you is certainly strange. But things are okay. And not just in the way someone says they are so that the line of questioning ends. Even without a quirk, he knows he belongs here. And he’s determined to teach the next generation that they belong here too, just as a certain grumpy underground hero once did for him.
Yeah. This is going to be okay.